PWC-ing

PWC-ing has moved

2006-12-18T21:01:00.000+05:00

PWC-ing has a new site and a yet-to-be-determined new name:

www.cyrilalmeida.com

Pakistanism No 7

2006-12-15T21:01:00.000+05:00

“As a journalist you can raise as many questions as you like with regard to the political fallout, morality or whether the re-election of the president by the same assemblies would go down well in the history or not, and whether there would be a hue and cry over the re-election of the president by the same assemblies, but the fact remains that we have to go by the Constitution,” according to an aide of Gen. Musharraf.

At issue is the re-election of Gen Musharraf as president for another five year term by the present national assembly, which has already elected him once. It's worth spelling out what this means: a government elected for five years - one term - will elect a president for ten years - two terms.

Pakistanism No 6

See no evil

2006-12-15T20:12:00.001+05:00

The Karachi Stock Exchange scandal has had many twists (See Bears and bulls; foxes and eels?), but appears to finally have been definitively buried. Dawn reports that "data pertaining to the booking of shares were deleted not only from the records of the stock market and the brokers but also that of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, leaving no proof for the forensic experts to ascertain anything substantial."

Is this freedom?

2006-12-14T21:42:00.000+05:00

The much ballyhooed "free press" during Gen. Musharraf's regime has had its share of consistent critics, who argued that the methods of coercion may have changed, but the ethos had not (See Carrots and sticks and the media). Now, with an upcoming general election, widespread political unrest and armed resistance to the government's policies, the old ways appear to be making a comeback.

The News reports that its Islamabad editor was followed on his way home at 4 a.m. by several unmarked cars and then surrounded outside his home by the occupants of the cars. The editor was not harmed, but the message was loud and clear: "We can get you any time we want".

Military Inc.

2006-12-13T22:00:00.000+05:00

Most countries have an army; in Pakistan, the army has a country. Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, writing in Newsline, exposes the hidden economy of the armed forces. Excerpts below.

On the scale of the armed forces' commercial ventures:

"The Pakistan military is among several other armed forces in the world engaged in commercial ventures. Today, its financial empire has an approximate financial size of 200 billion rupees with military-controlled welfare foundations operating in areas ranging from banking, insurance, leasing and real estate to private security, education, airlines, cargo services, knitwear, and major agri-based industries."

On the financial cost to the state:

"These businesses denote an additional cost for the government because of the use of state assets. A number of the commercial operations of the four welfare foundations, the Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust (AWT), Bahria Foundation and Shaheen Foundation, as pointed out by several reports of the auditor-general of Pakistan, use state resources without reimbursing the government. However, the military's top management continues to claim that these are purely private sector ventures that do not fall under the scope of government accountability procedures and, hence, have continued to grow as part of the military's hidden economy."

On blatant illegalities:

"Referring to the military's small and medium enterprises, one would like to cite the example of one recent venture started by the corps command/cantonment board Bahawalpur. In this case, the cantonment board erected a toll plaza on the main GT road and started to collect money, an action that is in contravention of the cantonment board/local bodies law. As per the rules, none of these organisations can impose a tax on a highway."

On support from civilian politicians:

"Some of the military's concerns have huge operating/management costs. As for the AWT, it had to ask the government for a 5.4 billion rupee bailout in 2002. According to sources, the Nawaz Sharif government bailed out the trust through helping it with one of its foreign loans. This is highly scandalous, and certainly as scandalous as the Sharifs getting unfair concessions for the Ittefaq group.

"Nawaz Sharif is not the only one who supported the military's business. A number of projects by the welfare foundations were sanctioned under Benazir Bhutto's government as well, with rumors of close linkages between Asif Zardari's close friends and Shaheen Foundation's management regarding the setting up of the Shaheen pay-TV and radio projects. None of the political governments raised any major objection to the military business complex during the 1990s."

On the impact on professionalism of the armed forces:

"(C)ommercial ventures, even if they do not use serving officers, do, unarguably, have an impact on the professional mindset. Senior officers, who are quite aware of the rewards that await them after retirement in terms of extension of perks and privileges as a result of jobs in these companies, tend to compromise on the quality of their work during service. It is important to note that there is no streamlined system for selecting people for appointment in these organisations."

Click here for more Ayesha Siddiqa Agha.

Baluchistan and the federal government

2006-12-11T21:41:00.000+05:00

Worldpress.org has an excellent two-part series on the present Baluch insurgency. In Baluchistan: Pakistan's Internal War and Baluchistan's History of Insurgency, Ray Fulcher presents Balochistan as the federal government would rather not have you know. The commonly held view is that the Baluch sardars have been denying their people the fruits of development and that the creeping Islamisation in the province is also somehow the sardars' doing. The excerpts below prove both views to be wrong.

On the sardars' record on development:

"The Musharraf regime has long blamed the nationalist leaders for Baluchistan's underdevelopment, arguing that they are "anti-development." However, research conducted by the Social Policy and Development Center in 2001 shows those areas under control of nationalist leaders, such as the late Nawab Akbar Bugti, Nawab Khair Mari and Sardar Attaullah Mengal, were often better developed. A number of indicators, such as road networks, primary school enrollments, access to clean water and irrigation are often ranked higher than areas aligned to the federal government."

On the sources of discontent:

"A central demand of Baluch nationalists is the equitable sharing of revenue from the province's natural resources. A case in point is Baluchistan's production of natural gas, which is crucial to Pakistan's economy. Despite accounting for 36-45 percent of Pakistan's gas production, the province consumes only 17 percent of what it produces. The remainder is sold at a much lower price to the rest of the country than gas produced in Punjab and Sindh. That the federal government returns only 12.4 percent of the gas royalties actually due to the provincial government compounds this inequality."

"Almost all the construction contracts were awarded to non-Baluch, mainly Punjabi, firms. Despite thousands of jobless Baluch engineers and technicians being available, only low-grade jobs are offered to Baluch workers. The rest of the positions are filled largely by Punjabi and other non-Baluch workers. Of the 600 personnel that worked on the first stage of construction, only 100 were Baluch, and they were mainly day laborers. No effort has been made by the central government to train the local population so they can obtain jobs at Gwadar."

On the Islamisation of the province:

"Through the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the federal government continues to establish madrassahs (religious schools) to bolster the mullahs' influence. The lack of secular education is more noticeable in Baluchistan than in any other province, with 50 percent of children compelled to attend the religious schools. This is not surprising given that the national budget for the Ministry of Religious Affairs is around 1.2 billion Pakistani rupees ($19.7 million) while the secular education ministry is allocated 200 million rupees ($3.3 million). It is leading to what Baluch nationalists call the "Talibanization" of Baluchistan."

Click here for more on the Baluch insurgency.

Rain Redux

2006-12-10T04:04:00.000+05:00

Kolachi

Pakistanism No. 6

2006-12-07T00:51:00.000+05:00

“The Naib Qasid got it from somewhere and even had a bite of it, thinking it is a biscuit. He later threw it in a dump in front of our office when realized it was not something eatable,” explained a chief of the Intelligence Bureau, while trying to clear up why a stick of dynamite was thrown outside the NWFP Chief Minister's house by one of his agents.

It should be noted that the MMA-led NWFP government is at loggerheads with the president.

Pakistanism No. 5

Carrots and sticks and the media

2006-12-05T01:09:00.000+05:00

Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a civilian defence analyst and a shrewd political observer, writes in the News: "General Zia’s days were bleak; the present system is smarter. But the essence has not changed."

Excerpts:

"The strategic management of the media is about using it to create an image that benefits the regime. The rulers understand that co-option and carefully monitored freedom can prove a more effective tool than uncouth coercion."

"Most of the print media groups have learnt the art of strategic silence and acquire the benefits of being cautious. Therefore, while some members of the media will keep their silence and engage in selective reporting and commentary because they believe it is in the national interest to do so, others might become careful because there are material benefits in toeing the official line. The construction of housing schemes for journalists and other important communities such as the judiciary or the civil bureaucracy is another such method."

"Surely, the method of negative coercion has not entirely been abandoned. The disappearance of over 40 journalists reporting from areas of critical importance to the military or the fact that journalists are randomly picked up and released indicates that the art of coercion has been fine-tuned. The statements of the information minister highlighting the government’s zero tolerance towards those that are critical of the armed forces further underscores the aforementioned policy."

Dirty deals

2006-12-01T01:14:00.003+05:00

"With the army at the helm, the DHA [Defence Housing Authority] is doling out thousands of acres of Karachi’s coastline for peanuts, as the Sindh government watches helplessly," Newsline reports in an expose.

Abused and missing women

2006-11-28T20:08:00.000+05:00

From the Nation:

Eighty per cent of women in Pakistan face domestic violence at one or the other stage of their lives and seven million of them are missing, revealed Farhana Faroqi representative of Oxfam at a seminar on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women here on Monday.

"Missing women" was a term coined by Amartya Sen to label the skewed male to female gender ratio in Asian countries, where the abortion of girl foetuses and the maltreatment of girl children resulted in fewer of them growing to maturity.

The Nation's article is a reminder for every Pakistani that the fight for female emancipation is not just against obscurantist beards, but society itself.

Karachi needs better IDEAS

2006-11-27T20:23:00.000+05:00

In this city awash with arms, where mosquito repellent is harder to come by than a pistol, the country’s administrators, in their infinite wisdom, have made a habit of hosting a biennial arms fair, the International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS). Grin and bear it, Karachiites were told, it’s good for the image of the city. “Arms for peace” was the organisers’ slogan. Orwell was smiling from his grave.

As VVIPS (Very, Very Insecure Persons?), foreign delegates and sundry other people from the military world converged on this city, even the most jaded Karachiites were left wondering what sins of their forefathers they were being punished for. Busy thoroughfares were closed, traffic diverted and parking disallowed as the special ones made their way to and fro in phalanxes of flashing lights. If the country’s guardians-cum-overlords wanted to prove that Karachi was a city of lights, they did a bang-up job - though perhaps not in the manner they hoped to. The administration’s idée fixe is an “investor friendly” country, but there is nothing friendly about a city under siege.

As sieges go, the one in Karachi vied for the beauty title. The obsequious CDGK mobilised hordes of workers to scrub roads, daub paint, erect billboards and drape the city’s thoroughfares with Christmas lights, even as dengue and other haemorrhagic fevers continued to stalk the city. Frightened residents desperate for fumigation were instead treated to scores of rented police cars and paramilitary vehicles. Let them eat cake was the message to the people of this city.

The toll the arms fair took on this city is still being counted. On the eve of the arms bazaar, some ingenious officials struck upon an idea to facilitate the movement of participants: close all schools in the city. Trading weapons for education was what brought this city to the knees in the first place, but tears of despair are no match for chutzpah. The venue for the bazaar was a stone’s throw from the nerve centre of the city’s administration, so that too was shut. The logic of madness is impeccable, Foucault has told us, and Karachiites would be hard-pressed to disagree. And for all the swarms of police, paramilitary and armed guards, it was business as usual for the petty criminals at Ground Zero. An indignant resident wrote to one newspaper, bemused at the mugging of a relative close to the venue. A delegate was relieved of his possessions at the door of the venue, by men in uniform no less. It would seem that the only people who came out of this whole sorry affair with their reputations enhanced are the petty criminals: at least they proved themselves to be equal opportunity bandits.

The upshot of deputising virtually every able bodied policemen to facilitate the arms circus was that the rest of the city wore an anarchic look. The police barely contain the beast of Karachi traffic at the best of times; however, with no one left to watch over the roads, drivers had a field day. The fair itself was shrouded in mystery: arms were being sold, but by whom and to whom nobody quite seemed to know. Ordinary Karachiites who weren’t privy to the secrets of the military elite were shut out altogether. When the organisers finally did condescend to allow some school children to visit on the last day, they shut up shop earlier than expected, leaving hundreds of schoolchildren stranded outside. So much for a “thank you” to this city.

Yet, Karachiites are nothing if not tolerant. The fair will be back in 2008, so here’s an idea for IDEAS: Karachiites will welcome the big men with their shiny toys, if the profits from the arms bazaar are used to finance the army and the savings in the defence budget are allocated to development expenditures in Karachi. Any takers?

The little VIPs of Karachi

2006-11-26T04:35:00.000+05:00

Koloachi

This land is my land

2006-11-23T20:07:00.000+05:00

The prime minister's cabinet appears to be the place to be if you want to more or less perpetuate the status quo, i.e. more for the rich, less for the poor. Senior ministers, who also happen to own a number of the country's sugar mills, made sure that investigating the sugar crisis would remain a non-starter (Leaving a sour taste). Now the landlords in the cabinet have acted to scotch any attempt to breathe some life into the country's dormant laws on ceilings for agricultural landholdings.

The landholding ministers objected on the grounds that there was no ceiling on industrialists and others. They would. But what they won't say is that a) they don't get taxed and b) the agricultural sector employs approximately 50% of the labour force. Vast landholdings are inimical to social cohesion and the well-being of the country's poor. They are, of course, good for those who can get them; and those who do have them won't give them up without an almighty struggle.

Bulls and bears; foxes and eels?

2006-11-21T23:54:00.000+05:00

Countries looking to burnish their international economic credentials crave record-breaking stock markets. So, when General Musharraf determined that economic growth would be the cornerstone of his rule, his minions went out and conjured up the shiniest stock market in the world. But emphasis on records and not regulation, on form and not substance, had wrenching consequences for the small investors, who were lured by the mirage of impossibly high returns only to have their worlds implode when the powerful and the mighty engineered a spectacular collapse in March 2005.

The then-chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Dr Tariq Hassan, identified powerful brokers responsible for the scam, but was unceremoniously shown the door when it became apparent that he was going to take action against the brokers. Dr Hassan later publicly accused the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, of protecting the culprits. Public pressure, however, led to a commission being formed to probe the market crash and issue a report of its findings. That report is now ready, but the government is trying to bury it by stealth and parliamentary subterfuge. The message to the people is clear: money matters; they don't.

Why I am a liberal extremist

2006-11-20T22:32:00.000+05:00

President General Pervez Musharraf is angry with extremists; not just your garden variety bearded kind, but also “liberal extremists”. Addressing the nation in the wake of the passing of the watered down and egregiously named – more on that in a minute - Women’ Protection Bill, the President patted himself on the back for masterminding a path through the middle ground. Women are safer; the beards have been dealt a blow; and the demands of liberal extremists have been parried.

The beards have long been the bête noire of progress in Pakistan, but liberals have come in for some stick lately. For sure, the objects of the president’s displeasure were not all extremist liberals. Indeed, in the current dispensation, a certain kind of liberal extremist has been embraced and feted: the economic liberal extremist. Laissez faire is the order of the day with coastlines, islands, land and other assets being sold for a song and with the president regularly heard praising the “investment” in our country.

No, it is clear that the president reserves his disapproval for a particular kind of liberal extremist – the social one. Indeed, the label of “liberal extremist” is disingenuous for more often than not it is used as a proxy for a secularist. Secularists are definitely the most misunderstood group in the country; they are scorned as evil people who are determined to rid the world of religion, thereby invoking the wrath of God and expediting the end of the world. The particulars may vary, but they are all tarred with the brush of godlessness. Of course, the protests of secularists traduced in this manner are dismissed; the subtleties of the difference between neutrality and opposition to religion are ignored. Secularists, we are told, cannot comprehend the cosmic forces that they threaten to unbalance. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

Well, Mr President, I protest this imprimatur given to misogyny in the name of religion. If secularism is liberal extremism, then I’m a liberal extremist and proud of the fact. I take umbrage at the charge that we are an incoherent lot. I pour scorn on the title of your bill to protect women; women don’t need “protection”, they need emancipation and empowerment. It’s not mere semantics; women are not the wards of the state and, if history has taught us anything, meddling in their lives only worsens their plight.

Mr, President, as a proud liberal extremist, I am neither an aberration nor a perversion of right-thinking. On the contrary, liberal extremists have a rich pedigree in this land. Allow me, Mr President, to quote the standard-bearer of liberal extremists:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

I’m sure you know those words well, Mr President. Despite the best efforts of your predecessor to erase the record of Mr Jinnah, his words have survived and continue to inspire. Liberal extremists are nothing if not determined to preserve the truth, Mr President. Many have tried to debunk the notion that Mr Jinnah was a secularist – a liberal extremist, if you will – but none have been able to reconcile his personal affairs and eating and drinking preferences with that assertion. Indeed, Mr Jinnah would have had to have been a self-loathing man of the highest order to live his life in the manner he chose and yet advocate that the state he created ought to dictate the religious mores of its people.

As a liberal extremist, I worry about the alternative. Religion is either a part of the state or it is not – the middle ground will yield no more than a slippery slope towards religious intolerance. It may be difficult to accept the word of a self-confessed liberal extremist, Mr President, so I refer you to the Report on the Punjab Disturbances of 1953, i.e. the Munir Report. Charged with examining the causes of anti-Ahmadi riots, Chief Justice Munir called the great and the good amongst Islamic scholars and asked them, amongst other things, to define a Muslim and the grounds for apostasy. After hearing the opinions of all the learned men who came before his commission, the Chief Justice made an observation that is so stunning in its logic and clarity that it is would be considered subversive today:

“The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim. If the constituents of each of the definitions given by the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule of ‘combination and permutation’ and the form of charge in the Inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count.” (Emphasis added.)

Chief Justice Munir’s comments ought to have been printed and dropped from the skies all across the country, but truthfulness has never been a forte of our leaders. The report was buried for decades, an uncomfortable reality for a country bent on turning its back on the principles its founder. Mr President, it is easy, indeed, fashionable, to flog the body of secularism – liberal extremism – but it cannot be killed for it has already been immortalised.

I do not, indeed cannot, aspire to reach your high office, Mr President. But I do decry the pusillanimity of our elected leaders in the face of the beards’ bluster. And I demand that all the misogynistic and religiously intolerant laws that are a blot on the country’s consciousness be struck out. If I were ever to occupy a public office, I would eschew travelling across the globe to make a pilgrimage to the village of Miranwala and proudly stand besides that brave woman, Mukhtar Mai, who is probably the only genuine hero figure this country has produced since the death of its founder. I would do that, Mr President, because I am proud to stand up and be counted as a liberal extremist.

Spare the others their lives, too

2006-11-19T03:20:00.000+05:00

Mirza Tahir Hussain is a lucky man: he was born British. Undoubtedly his release after 18 years on death row is a good decision - Amnesty International has campaigned for his release, arguing that Hussain did not receive a fair trial - but it was the personal intervention of the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that prompted Musharraf to release the man.

Others are not so lucky in Pakistan. The Asia Death Penalty has highlighted the plight of the more than 7,400 men and 36 women who are on death row in Pakistan and the rapid rate at which people are added to it. Given the broken state of Pakistan's judiciary and the country's overcrowded prisons, the president should declare a moratorium on the death penalty - not only should all current prisoners on death row have their sentences commuted, but the courts should be estopped from sentencing anyone to death.

A theoretical defence of the death penalty is possible in strictly limited circumstances; however, the praxis of capital punishment in Pakistan will remain dysfunctional in the foreseeable future. No one deserves to die if they are innocent; not even if it means the guilty get less than they deserve.

When servants become masters

2006-11-17T00:10:00.000+05:00

Civil servants are by definition servants of the people; however, Pakistani civil servants are of a different ilk. In The State of Martial Rule, Ayesha Jalal authoritatively argued that, soon after the creation of Pakistan, "senior echelons of the civil bureaucracy and military succeeded in tilting the institutional balance of power against parties and politician". Nearly sixty years later that partnership is stronger than ever: the generals are de facto in power and senior bureaucrats set their own rules.

From a report in The News:

"Sources told The News that the Punjab bureaucracy in particular has repeatedly foiled the federal government’s attempts to transfer the Centre’s officers outside the province, particularly to Balochistan, that is facing a serious deficiency of District Management Group (DMG) and Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) officers.

"Last week, the Establishment Division (ED) yet again had to eat humble pie by cancelling the transfer orders of six DMG officers, who were posted to Balochistan from the Punjab several months ago. Instead of complying with the government orders, these officers continue to serve in the Punjab."

The News goes on to detail how the federal government has in essence tried to bribe bureaucrats to take up posts in Baluchistan by offering them lucrative financial incentives, but have been rebuffed by the bureaucrats. In desperation, the government has resorted to nominating junior bureaucrats without the relevant (read: Punjabi) political contacts to send to Baluchistan.

That the bureaucrats have defied government orders is merely another instance of their power. But what does it say about the state of the federation if those most attuned to the country's political current refuse to serve its most backward province?

Not even if you wish upon a thousand stars

2006-11-15T22:52:00.000+05:00

In the build up to talks between the Pakistani and Indian foreign secretaries, the Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, raised eyebrows on both sides of the border by claiming that the two countries were close to an agreement on the Siachen dispute. It quickly became evident that Mr Kasuri was bluffing; the foreign minister was hoping to paint the Indians into a corner with a combination of bluster and spin. The Indians were having none of it; even the army expressed its disapproval - a rare instance in a service firmly wedded to the principle of civilian control.

The reason for the Pakistani foreign minister's bravado? The degenerating security position in west (Afghanistan and the tribal belt) and south (Baluchistan) Pakistan are cementing India's ascendancy between the two neighbours. A quick peace is always sought by the party most likely to lose from the perpetuation of the status quo.

India, of course, knows this. Ajay Sahni, director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, told the CS Monitor, "The more difficulties (Pakistan) has internally, the more the calculus favors India. India's position will tend to become a little more inflexible. Why make concessions at a time when your enemy is weakening?"

The paper continues:

"Analysts in both countries agree that the unrest, while unlikely to change the overall tone of the discussions, is liable to weaken Pakistan's position at the negotiating table. That means Paki- stan's pushing on the large issue of Kashmir, the Himalayan territory to which both sides stake claim, will fall on deaf ears."

Indeed. Upon the conclusion of the foreign secretaries' talks today, the Times of India reports:

"On the Siachen issue on which Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri had claimed a settlement was on the cards in a few days, Khan said that talks were on and further discussions were needed."

The HDI report card

2006-11-15T21:37:00.000+05:00

The Human Development Report 2006 makes for grim reading for Pakistanis. Based on statistics from 2004 - five years into the Musharraf regime - the country has limped to 0.537 on the Human Development Index which gives it a rank of 134th out of 177 countries.

From the Pakistan Fact Sheet:

"The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).

"The HDI measures the average progress of a country in human development. The Human Poverty Index for developing countries (HPI-1), focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level in the same dimensions of human development as the human development index - living a long and healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living.

"The HPI-1 value for Pakistan, 36.3, ranks 65th among 102 developing countries for which the index has been calculated.

"The gender-related development index (GDI), introduced in Human Development Report 1995, measures achievements in the same dimensions using the same indicators as the HDI but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. It is simply the HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. The greater the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower is a country's GDI relative to its HDI.

"Pakistan’s GDI value, 0.513 should be compared to its HDI value of 0.539. Its GDI value is 95.2% of its HDI value. Out of the 136 countries with both HDI and GDI values, 132 countries have a better ratio than Pakistan's.

"The gender empowerment measure (GEM) reveals whether women take an active part in economic and political life. It tracks the share of seats in parliament held by women; of female legislators, senior officials and managers; and of female professional and technical workers- and the gender disparity in earned income, reflecting economic independence. Differing from the GDI, the GEM exposes inequality in opportunities in selected areas.

"Pakistan ranks 66th out of 75 countries in the GEM, with a value of 0.377."

It is worth noting the gender empowerment measure (GEM) amongst all these depressing statistics. Pakistan's ranking of 66th out of 75 comes despite having a generous 1/3 of reserved seats for women in parliament and a sizable percentage of reserved seats in the local government structure. The presence of women in the legislature is largely a token gesture ( indeed, the MMA-nominated women parliamentarians, in a singular act of self-loathing, have urged the government to send female legislators back to their homes) and if the measure is taken out, Pakistan would probably finish at the bottom of the pile.

Most worryingly, Pakistan's HDI trend has been falling behind the South Asian trend since 2000.

Read the full report here.

Organs for sale

2006-11-13T23:48:00.000+05:00

With all the wars being fought in and around Pakistan, it's easy to forget that for the majority of the country the biggest battle is the one against poverty. The daily grind of a hard life has led an increasing number of Pakistanis to resort to selling their kidneys through middlemen and clinics to rich Pakistanis. The AP story estimates that 'organ tourists' make up less than 10% of the current demand in Pakistan, but, as word spreads and more clinics start cashing in, Pakistan could find itself with a distasteful solution to its tourism problems.

Free media?

2006-11-11T02:31:00.000+05:00

Gen. Musharraf is fond of trumpeting the era of "free media" that he has purportedly ushered in. Well, General, all is not well in the fourth estate. From the Daily Times:

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) is understood to have suspended the transmission of a Sindh-based TV channel.

The reason? "Sindh TV has been airing documentaries and programmes with a special focus on the chaos in Balochistan and issues related to rural Sindh."

"The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) issued a press statement Thursday condemning the “forced suspension” of the channel allegedly on the order of high officials, following a news film related to the murder of a policeman and his alleged links with an ex-MNA close to the ruling party.

"The PFUJ’s Mazhar Abbas said that Sindh TV journalists have been working under stress after they received threats and a few days back its Dadu correspondent Pervaiz Narejo moved to Karachi with his family following his reporting and filming of the murder of a policeman after the attack on Dadu District jail."

This land may be pure, but its rulers are not

2006-11-07T21:55:00.000+05:00

Good governance starts with bigger plots. Or so the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, would want the country to think as he hands out 82 plots of land, valued at Rs20 million ($330,000) each, to federal secretaries and grade 22 (the highest ranking) civil officers.

On the same day as the news of the land allotment, the Daily Times reported that Pakistan had slipped to 147th out of 163 countries in a Corruption Perception Index compiled by Transparency International.

Accountability, anyone?

2006-11-03T21:44:00.000+05:00

Excerpts from The Nation on proceedings in the Supreme Court:

"During the hearing of an appeal seeking release of a NAB prisoner Ishfaq Khalid, the bench was informed that the four former provincial ministers were released without paying the fine imposed on them by the NAB courts.

"According to NAB, the four former provincial ministers were ordered by the trial court to collectively pay a fine amounting to 468.9 million rupees for embezzlements and abuse of their offices but were later released by the Balochistan Home Ministry without recovering the huge amount of fine.

"Under separate orders in various corruption references, Faiq Jamali was ordered to undergo 38 years, Behram Achakzai 19 years, Hafeez Looni 10 years and Nisar Hazara four years imprisonment."

"Noting the release of prominent persons even after being convicted by the courts of law, the bench asked that if all the big fishes (sic) were released then what was the need for keeping ordinary persons behind the bars in the name of accountability."

Indeed. What is the reason?

Pakistanism No. 5

2006-10-16T09:30:00.000+05:00

'We won’t allow anyone to criticise Pakistan, the integrity of Pakistan and the institution of the armed forces as it is enshrined in the constitution,' said the minister of information, Ali Durrani, while addressing the Pakistani media.

And for good measure he threw in the following:

'Pakistan and the armed forces, which are responsible for the protection of Pakistan, are beyond criticism.'

Pakistanism No. 4

Pakistanism No. 4

2006-10-14T11:22:00.000+05:00

On the government's refusal to pass on the benefits of lower fuel prices to consumers:

Azeem (State Minister for Information and Broadcasting) said that between May 2004 and October 2006, the government froze prices for 26 months, allowing partial increases only eight times.

Pakistanism No. 3

Unlucky seven

2006-10-13T00:20:00.000+05:00

Seven years. Seven points. Decide for yourself.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, the brave and passionate Pakistani activist, in a stinging op-ed column in Dawn wrote:

Like the other insecure governments before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a single-point agenda: to stay in power at all costs. It, therefore, does whatever it must and Pakistan moves further away from any prospect of acquiring modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.

Dr Hoodbhoy concluded:

Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power -- the army. They will accommodate those they must -- the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason why Pakistan fails.

One man's boast is another's nightmare

2006-10-07T07:36:00.000+05:00

Gen Musharraf bragged in his memoir that Pakistan received millions of dollars for delivering suspected terrorists into American hands. The resulting furore caused him to issue a clumsy denial, but the essence of the claim remains: Pakistan has handed over many hundreds of alleged terrorist to the Americans.

Moazzam Begg was one of the men handed over; he was innocent and was released from Guantanamo bay without any charges after three years in captivity. His story is a sobering reminder that many ordinary Pakistanis have been tortured and maimed in the name of the 'war on terror'.

Pakistanism No. 3

2006-10-06T12:30:00.000+05:00

"Law enforcement personnel rushed to the site and took the rockets into custody," according to The News in report on the latest plot to kill Musharraf.

No word yet on whether the police have tortured the rockets or forced them to sign a confession.

The irony is that the same edition of The News also carried a piece by Shaheen Sehbai lambasting Simon & Schuster for grammatical errors in 'In the Line of Fire'.

Pakistanism No. 2

Sifting through the bombast

2006-10-02T03:18:00.000+05:00

He came, he saw, he conquered. Well, not quite. The New York Times has published refutations of claims made by Musharraf in his speech at the Council of Foreign Relations. This is no 'he said, she said' stuff; the Times has pounced on factual errors made by Musharraf.

AI slams Pakistan's HR record

2006-09-30T04:08:00.000+05:00

Amnesty International has slammed Pakistan's terrible human rights record in a recently published report. Excerpts from the executive summary:

The Pakistani government has committed numerous human rights violations as a result of its cooperation in the US-led "war on terror". Hundreds of people have been arbitrarily detained. Many have been subjected to enforced disappearance - held secretly, incommunicado and in undisclosed locations, with the government refusing to provide information about their fate and whereabouts. Many have been tortured or ill-treated. Their families, distressed about lack of information about fate or whereabouts of their loved ones, have been harassed and threatened when seeking information. The right to habeas corpus has been systematically undermined: state agents have refused to comply with court directions to provide information about the whereabouts of detainees or have denied any knowledge in court. Many detainees have been unlawfully transferred to the custody of other countries, notably the USA.

In May 2006, Pakistan was elected to the newly established UN Human Rights Council which, in June, unanimously adopted the draft International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. The draft Convention bans enforced disappearances and declares widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances a crime against humanity. Amnesty International calls on the Pakistani government to uphold the standard that it has contributed to developing.

On the capture and incarceration of children:

Several children of varying ages have been detained in the "war on terror" and denied necessary safeguards contained in international and national law. Some were arrested alongside their adult relatives, some were themselves alleged to be terror suspects and some were held as hostages to make relatives give themselves up or confess.When Tanzanian terror suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested in Gujrat, Punjab province on 25 July 2004, three women and five children were also arrested. They reportedly included a baby and a 13-year-old Saudi boy, Talha. Nothing is known about the fate and whereabouts of the women and children.

On torture:

The secrecy surrounding the detention of terror suspects provides conditions in which torture and ill-treatment flourish. Forms of torture reported by detainees include: being beaten; being hung upside down and beaten, including on the soles of the feet; sleep and food deprivation; hooding; prolonged solitary confinement; and threats to the detainee and their families. These methods are often used in combination. Torture was reportedly inflicted in many places of detention; some former detainees reported seeing rooms apparently specifically set up for torture.

On enforced disappearances:

Hundreds of people have been subjected to enforced disappearance since Pakistan joined the "war on terror" in late 2001. The government has failed to acknowledge that enforced disappearances have occurred. In habeas corpus proceedings before provincial high courts, state representatives have consistently denied knowledge of the fate and whereabouts of detainees, despite eyewitness accounts of arrests and even in cases where the individuals have subsequently reappeared.

On ineffective remedies:

Ineffective remedies Relatives of persons subjected to enforced disappearance can either file a complaint with the police, who are then obliged to investigate, or assert their right to habeas corpus by filing petitions in provincial high courts. In the context of Pakistan’s cooperation with the "war on terror", both options have proved ineffective in tackling the violations. Many relatives have turned to informal mechanisms for tracing victims of enforced disappearances, usually without success.Police have in virtually all the cases monitored by Amnesty International refused to register First Information Reports (FIR) on the basis of which a police investigation begins. In some cases police have said that they have no competence to do so as the individuals were reportedly captured by intelligence agencies.

On extrajudicial killings:

Amnesty International is also concerned that the clandestine nature of the conduct of the "war on terror", particularly in the tribal areas of Pakistan, may conceal widespread and systematic human rights violations. In particular, the organization is concerned about reports that Pakistani and US law enforcement and security forces may have used force, including lethal force, unnecessarily and excessively, and have extrajudicially executed a number of individuals, some suspected of links with al Qa’ida and others unconnected with any terrorist activities. Under international law, extrajudicial executions are prohibited at all times. In none of the cases reported do Pakistani or US forces appear to have made any attempt to arrest the suspects before using lethal force.

Pakistanism No. 2

2006-09-30T03:44:00.000+05:00

'The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not pay the Pakistan government for handing over Al Qaeda suspects, but paid the agency which hunted them down,' Gen. Musharraf.

The comment was a clarificiation - or obfuscation? - of Musharraf's claim, in his own memoir no less, that Pakistan received payments from the American government for delivering captured terrorists.

Pakistanism No. 1

Musharraf shows a lighter side

2006-09-28T03:14:00.000+05:00

Musharraf's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was one of the most anticipated stops on his 11 day American tour. How would the general handle Jon Stewart, host of a faux news programme, who has adroitly skewered political guests on his show before? The answer is pretty well.

After making a show of serving Musharraf jasmine tea and twinkies, Stewart tried to blindside Musharraf by asking, 'Where is Osama bin Laden?' A relaxed Musharraf replied, 'I don't know. You know where he is? You lead on, we'll follow you.'

And at the end of the interview Musharraf drew a roar of laughter from the audience. When asked by Stewart who, between Osama and George Bush, would win the popular vote in Pakistan, Musharraf mischievously responded, 'I think they'll both lose miserably.' Musharraf was so pleased with his joke that he threw his head back and giggled like a schoolboy, failing to notice the extended hand of Stewart's for a few seconds.

If only the general could remember his sense of humour while dealing with his own countrymen.

Daily Times gets it wrong - again

2006-09-25T17:54:00.000+05:00

The Daily Times just doesn't get it. The National Perception Survey 2006 conducted by Transparency International was picked up by Daily Times journalist, Khalid Hasan, who claimed that the survey showed that Pakistanis considered the post-2002 Musharraf government to be the most corrupt of any government since the end of Zia's regime. This was wrong; I blogged on the Daily Times report the day it appeared, but when I sat down to peruse the the 75 page survey I caught the Daily Times' error and fired off this missive to the Daily Times:

Cyril Almeida

To: letters@dailytimes.com.pk

Dear Sir,

This is with reference to Khalid Hasan's report on the National
Corruption Perception Survey 2006 conducted by Transparency
International and the subsequent editorial on the subject in your
newspaper.

Both Mr. Hasan and the editorial make the claim that the NCPS suggests
that Pakistanis view the present Musharraf government to be the most
corrupt of all governments, civilian and military led, since the late
1980s. This is simply not true. A glance at page 30 of the NCPS report
shows that respondents were asked to compare only the four civilian
governments of the 90s and then, separately, asked to compare the
pre-2002 and post-2002 governments of Gen. Musharraf. The survey
merely tells us that of the four civilian governments, Ms. Bhutto's
second government was considered the most corrupt and of the two
Musharraf governments, the post-2002 government is more corrupt than
the one that preceded it. To claim that the post-2002 Musharraf
government is perceived as more corrupt than the second government of
Ms. Bhutto is disingenuous as respondents were not asked to compare
the two.

Surveys are notoriously difficult to interpret, but in this instance
the conclusions are plainly wrong.

Cyril Almeida.

Daily Times and other newspapers received a clarification from Transparency International Pakistan itself, expressing exactly the same opinion on the interpretation of the NCPS 2006. What was Daily Time's reaction? A preposterous editorial suggesting that dark powers were at work to force TI to contradict the findings of it's own survey.

Two questions arise. Why should the TI office in Islamabad rise in defence of the present regime by trying to obfuscate the conclusions of its own survey? More intriguingly, why didn’t any of the other newspapers of Pakistan carry the results of the survey like we did even though they were quick to carry the clarification? Something is clearly rotten somewhere. Did this government lean on the local office of TI to issue a pathetic clarification? Does TI’s head-office know about this and approve of it? Did this government lean on the other papers not to carry the original story because it was so embarrassing?

No, sir. You, the editors of the Daily Times, got it wrong on the first instance, and now are compounding the original error with chutzpah unbecoming of a serious news organisation. Shame on you, Daily Times!

To recapitulate the disputed aspect of the NCPS 2006:

Respondents were asked two separate questions : firstly, of the four civilian governments since the late-80s which was the most corrupt? And secondly, which of the pre- and post- election Musharraf governments has been more corrupt?

So when the Daily Times wrote in its latest editorial "(the statistics) prove one evident comparative fact. On both counts of first and second term, more Pakistanis thought the Musharraf regime to be corrupt than did those for the Bhutto and Sharif governments" the newspaper itself is guilty of obfuscation. Of course, in absolute terms more Pakistanis would think either of the Musharraf governments were more than the four civilian governments. When given four options the statistical spread is likely to be greater than when given only two. The Daily Times has fallen into the age-old trap of comparing oranges and apples.

Coups are in the air

2006-09-25T03:24:00.000+05:00

Thaksin Shinawatra, prime minister of Thailand, lost his job while in the United States last week. Could lightning strike twice? Pakistanis certainly think so. When the national electricity grid collapsed on Sunday afternoon, the state-run Pakistani Television (PTV) temporarily ceased its transmission, triggering rumours of a coup.

Earlier in his American trip, Gen. Musharraf dismissed fears of domestic instability and boasted to journalists:

“The fact that I am roaming around shows how confident and relaxed I am,” he said, adding that there was no problem in Pakistan. “This is my longest trip and it shows my confidence.”

Musharraf may want to take note; his countrymen don't share his optimism.

Talking in America

2006-09-25T00:22:00.000+05:00

Gen. Musharraf has announced a six point strategy to tackle extremism. Apart from the cynicism that announcing a domestic policy while on a trip to the United States will generate, let's examine the general's strategy:

The strategy provides (i) reforms in education with changes in curricula (ii) elimination of use of religious places for extremism (iii) stoppage of publication of hate material (iv) dissemination of knowledge (v) reduction of poverty and (vi) effective check on the activities of disgruntled elements.

Reforms in education - anyone recently hear of news on the government's plan to register madressahs? No, apparently not. Dissemination of knowledge - more like dissembling; read Dawn's editorial on education in Pakistan. Reduction of poverty - when the government isn't fudging numbers, it's strategy to reduce poverty is being knocked by international organisations. As for the disgruntled elements - appeasement of the Taliban in Waziristan and crushing the Baluch will only effectively ensure more problems down the road.

Musharraf also referred to the most urgent matter for citizens, inflation:

Musharraf acknowledged that the prices of essential commodities have increased in the recent months. “This is because of the demand and supply situation where the former has increased due to the overall development of the country,” he added. “The government is working on a mechanism to tackle the spiraling prices.”

Curiously when talking about supply and demand, he made more mention of the former. Undoubtedly referring to supply issues would have raised awkward questions regarding the sugar scam.

Pakistan's worsening trade gap

2006-09-23T08:16:00.000+05:00

The worrying trend in Pakistan’s trade deficit has continued in the first two months of the new fiscal year. According to the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS), Pakistan’s trade deficit rose by 36.7% to a record $2.13 billion for the months of July and August 2006. The trade gap was propelled by a sharp increase of 17.86% in imports to $4.98 billion which eclipsed the anaemic 6.87% growth in exports, rising to $2.85 billion. The FBS has also indicated that the growing trade deficit will continue to increase over the current fiscal year, calling into question the government’s target of $9.4 billion. If the July-August 2006 trend continues the trade deficit for the fiscal year 2006-07 will approach $13 billion. The key concern for Pakistan is that the widening trade gap will adversely affect the rupee’s exchange rate against foreign currencies, especially the US dollar, which may lead to a spike in interest rates and ultimately squeeze the already pressured common man.

A worsening trade gap leads to downward pressure on the rupee because Pakistani importers will require more US dollars to pay for the higher levels of imports, rendering dollars dearer in the local market. In principle the higher demand for foreign currency can be met in one of two ways: one, an inflow of foreign currency into Pakistan from abroad; and two, Pakistan can tap into its own foreign currency reserves.

The first, inflow from abroad, route, while preferable, is unadvisable or problematic, especially keeping in view the rapid deterioration of the trade balance. The inflow of currency can be achieved in several ways: an increase in foreign investment; increased remittances; foreign aid and/or loans; and an increase in exports. Other than resorting to foreign loans – the least desirable option – the other avenues cannot be short term solutions. Foreign investment will not experience a steep increase so long as the country’s political climate and law and order situation remain volatile and infrastructure bottlenecks persist. The flow of foreign remittances is already considered to be near its potential following the post-9/11 crackdown on alternative, non-official channels.

Enhancing exports may be the most economically sound course of action; however, Pakistan’s export sector is showing worrying trends of not just failing to keep up with imports, but potentially declining in monetary terms. Consider the data from July 2006 (the FBS has not yet released the breakdown of exports and imports from August 2006): growth of cotton exports, still the backbone of Pakistan’s export sector, continue to skew away from high value-added products, such as knitwear, bed wear and cotton cloth, and towards the low-profit cotton yarn and towels segments. Knitwear, bedwear and cotton cloth accounted for Rs. 27.491 billion of total exports of Rs. 73.558 billion in July 2006, but declined by 0.03%, 8.62% and 11.62%, respectively, when compared to July 2005.

A depreciation of the rupee may provide a small, short-term boost to the competitiveness of Pakistan’s exports, but, besides risking higher inflation, such a move is a disincentive for exporters to increase their competitiveness and only encourages rent-seeking behaviour.

The second route that Pakistan can follow to pay for its increased imports is to dip into its foreign currency reserves. However, as already noted, if the July-August 2006 trade trend continues, Pakistan’s trade deficit at the end of fiscal year 2006-07 will be in the region of $13 billion – wiping out the country’s entire stock of foreign currency reserves in a year, were they to be used for this purpose.

The conclusion then is that the current level of imports is unsustainable. Tightening fiscal and monetary policy can help reduce the demand for imports by reducing aggregate demand. However, as sustained, high growth rates are vital for Pakistan’s economy, a targeted regime of import cutbacks is more desirable than blanket measures, which would reduce economically salubrious imports, such as capital investments in manufacturing, plant, machinery, agriculture, etc.

The starting point for identifying possible cutbacks in the country’s import bill must be petroleum products, the single largest imported commodity according to the FBS. In July 2006 the import of the petroleum group of commodities rose by 43.73% as compared to July 2005 to Rs. 43.717 billion. With few economists forecasting a significant reduction in oil prices over the next few years, Pakistan needs to urgently increase its use of CNG and alternative fuels.

July 2006 also saw Rs. 2.269 billion spent on the import of foreign assembled cars. In light of the required belt tightening this is an unwarranted expense. However, it should be noted that were such a cutback established a caveat must be better regulation of the local car industry in order to prevent local manufacturers from exploiting consumers.

The FBS also indicates that in July 2006 Rs. 3.746 billion worth of sugar was imported – an increase of 293.49% over July 2005. While the government continues to prevaricate over the sugar crisis and refuses to launch an independent and transparent investigation of the sugar cartel, the real need for such quantities of imported sugar cannot be established. Clean governance may directly help reduce the country’s import bill in this instance.

Beyond these areas the opportunities for targeted import reductions are limited, suggesting grim choices lie in the months ahead. Macroeconomic measures to reduce imports across the board will hurt economic growth, but so will the alternative of financing the import binge. The present government is truly caught between a rock and a hard place, but it is a situation of its own making; the economic cul-de-sac the government finds itself in is a logical and predictable outcome of its economic policies since 1999.

Pakistanism No. 1

2006-09-22T01:56:00.000+05:00

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence" - Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.

More details wanted

2006-09-21T11:57:00.000+05:00

A roundup of the mainstream media's opinion of the latest in the awkward Pakistan-India peace process can be found in the excellent CS Monitor's daily update on Terrorism and Security. The verdict: possibly interesting, but more details are needed.

Eating crow instead of crowing

2006-09-19T11:57:00.000+05:00

One of the criticisms of the Bhutto-Sharif game of musical chairs was that the civilian-led governments of the 90s were undoubtedly corrupt. Musharraf's coup, the immediate reason for which was the general being fired by the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was later justified on the grounds of corruption. Now 7 years into his rule, Musharraf stands accused of sitting atop a pyramid of corruption that, in the eyes of the public, exceeds that of the civilian governments of the 90s.

From the National Corruption Perception Survey 2006:

Comparative assessment about the previous of government of Ms.Benazir , Mr.Nawaz
Sharif, the first phase of each one has been rated as less corrupt than second phase. In
case of General Pervaiz Musharaf the 1st period (without assemblies) is cleaner than
the 2nd period (with assemblies), and the corruption has been linked with inflation,
unemployment, Power shortage, ris ing trend of street crimes.

Click here for the main page of Transparency Internatinal's Pakistan site.

Deal with Taliban panned

2006-09-06T23:10:00.000+05:00

The reaction to the government's deal with the militants in Waziristan has been given the thumbs down by the Western media. Click here to read the CS Monitor's review of comment on the deal.

HRCP clarifies

2006-09-05T16:10:00.000+05:00

The Sept. 1 countrywide strike to protest the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti was supported by opposition parties, sundry organisations - and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

The HRCP's endorsement of a strike was contrary to its purpose and seemingly undermined the tremendous work carried out over the years. I e-mailed Asma Jahangir, Chairperson of the HRCP, requesting her to explain the HRCP's position. Below are excerpts from the correspondence:

Cyril Almeida

To: AGHS

Dear Ms. Jehangir,

I have had great respect for the work of the HRCP and the manner in
which it has served the people of Pakistan. However, the HRCP's recent
endorsement of the countrywide strike to protest the killing of Nawab
Akbar Bugti has left me bemused and distressed.

Can you explain the reason for the HRCP's support for the strike? In
particular how did HRCP square its commitment to the ordinary people
of Pakistan with a strike that compromised their economic and social
rights?

Furthermore, while the HRCP was right to condemn the killing of Nawab
Bugti, by endorsing a strike called by the MMA and ARD the
organisation has called into question its impartiality. Would you not
accept that the average Pakistan will perceive that the HRCP has waded
into the muck of Pakistani politics, instead of staying above it as it
ought to?

I look forward to your response.

Regards,
cyril.

AGHS

To: Cyril Almeida

Dear Cyril,

You are absolutely correct and right. I myself was shocked to see a
statement from Karachi on an issue which is fundamental to HRCP. It
transpired later that this statement was issued by a partner organisation of
Joint Action Committee of which we are a member but were not aware of this
decision. This is my understanding from our Karachi colleagues.

Regards.

Asma Jahangir

Soft image?

2006-09-03T10:59:00.000+05:00

Pakistan's quest for a soft image just got brighter - Mariyah Moten was the Pakistani representative at a no-name bikini contest held in China.

Cue the beards to denounce women, freedom, sex, and all-around depravity of modernity.

Update (Sept. 6): Government reaction

“In Pakistani culture, there is a tradition of cattle shows only, whereas women are connected with respect and honour of the family,” an official told The News in a bid to distance itself from the bikini contest.

Bugti and the Baluch insurgency

2006-08-29T10:16:00.000+05:00

In the aftermath of the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti one of the casualties has been informed commentary. Sifting through the slew of articles does, however, unearth the Nawab's background, his role in the present Baluch insurgency and the regional impact of the insurgency.

From Time magazine's Pakistan's Other War, a look at the complex, contradictory Nawab:

"Bugti symbolizes Baluchistan's character. He says he killed his first man when he was just 12, and his life ever since has been a series of unending blood feuds with other clans and with the Pakistani military. Bugti sees himself as a warrior fighting a noble cause. He is self-taught and an avid reader—until March, the library in his rambling, earthen castle was lined with hundreds of books on philosophy, Western and oriental religions and the European classics. Then the castle, and the library with it, were destroyed by army cannon fire. Bugti is a vegetarian, a rarity among the meat-chomping Baluch, and sups every night on a bowl of green chili peppers, according to a frequent guest."

On Bugti becoming the face of the current insurgency, Imtiaz Alam writes in The News:

"Ironically Akbar Bugti had never joined the nationalist movement or the alliances of various nationalist groups formed in Pakistan ... He became chief minister during the first tenure of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and ran the province like an authoritarian patriarch. However, he developed serious differences with Islamabad over the issue of royalty which he said that the government needed to pay to him for the Sui gas field.

"His survival depended on making a larger nationalist cause out of this dispute, especially when he was engaged in a battle with the rival Kalpar Bugti clan and at a time when the military authorities were bent upon constructing a garrison in the area.

"The fact of the mater is that after losing his sons Akbar Bugti had taken refuge in his home town, Dera Bugti, to evade retaliation from the clans locked in a bloody feud with him on the one hand and to put up resistance to the Musharraf government and the military's plans to establish a cantonment in the area on the other. The construction of the cantonments became the main irritant to Bugti who wanted to keep his tribal-feudal fiefdom unchallenged."

On the possible transnational impact of Bugti's killing, The Christian Science Monitor reports:

"Bugti's death could also reverberate in the region, some analysts say. The Balochis are spread across several countries, with millions living in parts of Iran and Afghanistan that border Pakistan."

The CS Monitor's report also adds the following on the fight against the Taliban:

"The province also shares hundreds of miles of unmanned border with Afghanistan, giving the Taliban a sprawling front for their operations.

"The solution, such as it exists, masks a potent irony. The most effective counterbalance to the Taliban, observers say, are the very people the Army is targeting in its military operations.

"Baloch nationals have acted as a countervailing force to extremists, espousing democratic and liberal political values, observers say. In the arena of the provincial assembly, Baloch leaders argue, they regularly battle against measures that create an amenable atmosphere to the Taliban."

Lest one assume that the regional dimensions of the current insurrection are exaggerated, consider this report from GlobalSecurity.org on the last insurgency in the 1970s:

"A long-dormant crisis erupted in Balochistan in 1973 into an insurgency that lasted four years and became increasingly bitter. The insurgency was put down by the Pakistan Army, which employed brutal methods and equipment, including Huey-Cobra helicopter gunships, provided by Iran and flown by Iranian pilots. The deep-seated Baloch nationalism based on tribal identity had international as well as domestic aspects. As the insurgency wore on, the influence of a relatively small but disciplined liberation front seemed to increase.

"External assistance to Bhutto was generously given by the shah of Iran, who feared a spread of the insurrection among the Iranian Baloch."

Sex, lies, and beards

2006-08-26T10:41:00.000+05:00

When is a rape not a rape? When it is committed by a husband, according to Aamir Liaquat Husain a.k.a. Dr. Fake, Minister of State for Religious Affairs in this government of enlightened moderation. Mr. Liaquat made his assertion in response to a demand that marital rape be recognised as a crime. The demand was made by Kashmala Tariq, member of the National Assembly Select Committee on Women’s Protection Bill, citing a woman's right not to be treated as a 'buffalo'.

ISI and Jenna Bond?

2006-08-26T10:19:00.000+05:00

Camera rings. Fervent speculation. Massive manhunts. Rafata, a Kashmiri woman, has Indian Punjab in a tizzy: police are desperate to locate the alleged ISI spy who 'heads one of the biggest spy networks for Kashmiri militants'. ISI: An equal opportunity employer.

He said, she said

2006-08-26T00:54:00.000+05:00

With the explosion in the number of op-ed contributors in the country's dailies, the quality of the commentary has often been criticised. In an op-ed column for The Nation, Wajahat Latif began by attacking Dushka Saiyid, wife of Mushahid Hussain and a current Allama Iqbal Fellow at Cambridge, for allegedly ignoring the military's role in the country's brief experiments with democracy.

I e-mailed Dr. Saiyid and requested a response to Mr. Latif's claim. The following are excerpts from the e-mail exchange:

Cyril Almeida

To: Dushka Saiyid

Dear Dr. Saiyid,

I am writing to you to seek your response to an op-ed piece in The
Nation by Wajahat Latif that started off by referring to you:

'Ms Dushka Syed did not have the courage last night (19th August) on a
private TV channel to blame military coups for the mess Pakistan finds
itself in today. She blamed the political leadership for corruption
and failure of democracy and justified army interventions without
naming the army.

According to her, the failure of the political leadership forced "a
well organized body of people of the middle class to take over the
government from time to time".'

I don't know who Mr. Latif is and I haven't seen the show in question,
so is it true that you 'blamed the political leadership for corruption
and failure of democracy and justified army interventions without
naming the army'? To my mind that would be disingenuous and I would be
interested in reading your opinion, as a Pakistani scholar, on the
issue.

Regards,
cyril.

dushka saiyid

To: Cyril Almeida

Dear Cyril,

The following is what i said on the program:-
a)that the failure of the political system and
weakness of the political institutions is because of
the dialectical relationship between the two, military
and civil both. Political leadership fails, hounds the
opposition, and the latter run to the military to
takeover.

b)Democracy flourishes where there is a strong
middle-class. Pakistan has a strong landed class and
tribal heads and so the constituents are captives and
can vote for either one regressive feudal lord or the
other.

In other words my comments were very nuanced as an
academic, and I certainly did not eulogize the army or
its takeovers. I DO NOT believe coups are the answer,
but i also believe that our country is hostage to
corrupt political leaders.
Best wishes, Dushka

Mo' money, no problems

2006-08-25T10:15:00.000+05:00

500 million. That's what it costs to ferry Musharraf and his sidekick, Shaukat Aziz, to and fro on their mission to drag Pakistan into the 20th century - yet, it's already the 21st century, but they would do well to keep us only a few decades behind modernity.

From the government's website comes this list of journalists allotted plots in Islamabad. Dawn, The News, Daily Times, The Nation and Business Recorder all have successful candidates.

A new father of the nation?

2006-08-22T02:07:00.000+05:00

If the beards had their way, Jinnah would likely be erased from Pakistan's history. But since their time has not yet come to pass, they have to make do with excising the memory of Jinnah from their personal lives. So it is that Fazlur Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, has taken down the portrait of Jinnah in his parliamentary chambers - and replaced it with one of his father, Mufti Mehmood.

What values did the late Mufti Mehmood espouse that make him a better role model than Jinnah?

According to Aijazz Ahmed: 'Both Mufti Mehmood and Maulana Maodudi played vital and central roles in the politics of Pakistan after partition and they provided their weight to general Zia ul-Haq's toppling of a democratically-elected government for a military coup in 1977.'

The arch constitutionalist discarded in favour of a father who supported the country's most regressive military dictator - sometimes a son's love is a nation's fear.

An unhappy marriage, but no divorce

2006-08-20T23:59:00.000+05:00

The alleged London airline terror plot has prompted a slew of commentary in the American and British press on Pakistan's role in global terrorism.

The key concerns are summed up by an Aug. 14 article in the New York Times:

'A series of planned terrorist attacks with links to Pakistan as well as a sharp rise in crossborder Taliban attacks in Afghanistan have prompted renewed debate within the Defense Department about Pakistan, according to two people involved who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

They said that in particular, the sharply rising American casualty rate in Afghanistan had increased skepticism among some American military officers about the Pakistani intelligence service’s efforts to rein in the Taliban.

“There is an increasing view in the United States that Pakistan isn’t very helpful,” said one researcher involved in the debate, referring to frustration among some officers. “There are people who are really thinking twice about this relationship with Pakistan.”'

Lest one be tempted to think that support for Gen. Musharraf is ebbing, an op-ed column co-authored by Richard Armitage in today's New York Times dismisses that notion:

'We believe General Musharraf continues to stand for these principles (enlightened moderation) and deserves our attention and support, no matter how frustrated we become at the pace of political change and the failure to eliminate Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.'

So despite being caught in, according to Sengupta in her Aug. 14 article, 'one of the most serious political binds of his nearly seven-year tenure', Gen. Musharraf still has the support of his chief patrons. For Pakistanis, the 'war on terror' can more aptly be described as the war on democracy.

Musharraf the real target of London airline plot?

2006-08-19T05:17:00.000+05:00

According to John B. Roberts II, an official in the Reagan White House, the alleged terrorist plot uncovered by British and Pakistani intelligence agencies was aimed squarely at Musharraf:

' The objective of those who backed the British plotters was to pull off a terrorist spectacular that would demonstrate the strength of the Islamic militancy and spark popular uprisings against the Musharraf government. The symbolism of Pakistan breaking away from its close alliance with the West on its 59th celebration of independence would have resonated throughout the Muslim street. Pakistani officials are probing whether there was an inside coup plan to complement the terrorist plot and planned street agitation.'

Hyperbole? Probably. But if true, it may be the best news Musharraf has heard in a while. Lashed by domestic crises and faced with political opposition that is increasingly united, another assassination attempt would ensure virtual carte blanche in domestic politics for the general from his American supporters.

Vermont to Pakistan

2006-08-18T13:28:00.000+05:00

Pakistan just can't cut a break. When a white American woman, Catharine Mayo, became unruly on a London-to-Washington D.C., leading to a security scare and an emergency landing in Boston, a Pakistani connection seemed improbable.

But when the Associated Press sent a reporter to Mayo's hometown of Braintree (population: 1,200) in Vermont, the improbable became fact: Ms. Mayo has been a frequent visitor to Pakistan since 9/11. But unlike most of the visitors to Pakistan in the news lately, Ms. Mayo was neither a guest of one of the country's estimated 14,000 madressas nor did she meet any terrorist mastermind; instead she came to Pakistan to visit her boyfriend who was unable to secure a US visa.

Described by her son as a peace activist, Ms. Mayo published her views on American democracy in the Daily Times in 2003.

Absentee democracy

2006-08-13T08:00:00.000+05:00

As the country's political elite gear up for next year's general election, 'democracy' is this political season's hottest accessory - everyone wants a piece of it. The government led by a serving uniformed general claims it has already given the people democracy; nonsense, cry the opposition, pointing out that parliament is parody of itself.

Who is right? Absentee ministers and a helpless speaker tell their own tale; the claims of democracy ring hollow when the government's ministers bluntly remind the country that power lies not with the people, but with Musharraf. 7 years into his rule, on the eve of Pakistan's independence, the General has not led us out of the wilderness. Indeed, he seems eager to continue for another 33. But on the evidence before us thus far, even a miracle of Biblical proportions may not be able to deliver democracy then.

Bureaucrats' SOS

2006-07-24T02:27:00.000+05:00

The Pakistani bureaucracy is often accused of being corrupt, incompetent and in disarray. Poor training, spotty accountability and great power are a poisonous combination in any organisation. Add political interference to that combination and the possibility of a turnaround is further diminished.

In an era when good governance is one of the government's favourite catchphrases, the bureaucrats' political masters are increasingly being blamed for exacerbating the sorry state of affairs. For every Saira Kazim, Dr. Aleem Mehmood and Javed Nizam that the public hears of, there are likely scores of other civil servants who acquiesce to illegal demands.

The general's shame

2006-07-18T19:06:00.000+05:00

Enlightened moderation be damned when there's power to be held on to. Musharraf has spoken: the misogynistic Hudood Ordinance is only to be amended, not repealed.

Ignoring the impassioned case presented by three sensible ministers to scrap the ordinance altogether, Musharraf saw sense in the following:

The president was told that according to one proposed amendment, if charges of adultery were not proved against an accused woman, the person levelling the allegation would be prosecuted.

The flip side is that where adultery can be 'proved' women ought to be thrown into jail. The beard's must secretly be rejoicing: if this is the furthest a liberal dictator can go, surely the beards' time will come.

For women this is yet another case of one step forward, two steps backward. A cuckolded husband's motive for prosecution is almost invariably vengeance, which, even in the absence of conclusive proof, may still be fulfilled by a conservative judiciary and a shambolic judicial process. Indeed, the trial process itself is akin to punishment in Pakistan.

Even the eternal optimists must surely have lost faith in Musharraf by now. 7 years into his rule, he can't still claim to be biding his time.

Could Maduro and Oscuro be far off?

2006-07-17T09:53:00.000+05:00

The establishment of a Cuban embassy in Islamabad is testament to the possibilities of solidarity in the midst of adversity: Cuba sent 2,400 doctors and medical staff to Pakistan's quake ravaged northern areas last year despite not having diplomatic relations with the country at the time. It is only right that Pakistan at least have taken this small step to express its gratitude.

Amazingly, the Cubans are not satisfied with just providing us with fish - they want to teach us how to fish, too. The Cuban healthcare system is one that Pakistan, indeed most developing countries, would do well to emulate. The system does have its critics, but they emphasise the problems of resource allocation in a centralised economy - something Pakistan does not have to fear in the foreseeable future.

The 1,000 medical scholarships the Cubans are offering will be a boost to Pakistan's chronically understaffed clinics and hospitals. However, the full effect of the Cuban miracle will only be felt if Pakistan's policy makers and administrators are also sent across to learn how the system itself operates: governance and development issues are fundamentally about good management.

The choice is ours: will we import knowledge or will we import cigars?

The secret war

2006-07-13T23:19:00.001+05:00

In an interview with a local news channel, Musharraf has rejected Nawaz Sharif's claim that he was in the dark over the Kargil conflict until Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Prime Minister of India, called to demand an explanation.

Let's set aside the accusations and counter-accusations for a minute - from the assassination of the first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, onwards, Pakistanis have rarely learnt the truth on any matter of national interest - and instead focus on some of Musharraf's comments:

Sounding a note of warning, he said issues relating to Kargil were extremely confidential and of paramount national importance, and these should not be publicised in the way in which the former prime minister was doing so consistently.

“I would advise him to talk economically on this issue because it is an issue of great national confidentiality,” he said.

The reasons for provoking a war are of 'great national confidentiality'? If so, maybe even Allah won't be able to save us from ourselves.

From Muridke to Bombay: Lashkar-e-Taiba's journey of mayhem?

2006-07-13T03:33:00.000+05:00

The future is now. Yesterday I posted an article from the Economist, The future looks bearded, which criticised Musharraf's chicanery when it has come to dealing with Islamic extremists, particularly Jamaat-ul-Dawa, the alter ego of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Then the dastardly attack on Bombay's trains shook the world. Lashkar-e-Taiba have denied involvement, but the use of RDX explosives and other intelligence indicate elsewise. It is too early to reach any conclusions on the Bombay attack. But it is not too early for Pakistan to dismantle Laskhar-e-Taiba and its counterparts. Indeed, it may already be too late.

The Economist on Pakistan, Part IV

2006-07-12T02:27:00.000+05:00

The future looks bearded is perhaps the best article in the Economist's survey of Pakistan because it nails a key problem of Musharraf - his half-hearted attempts to tackle extremism. As this editorial in the News points out Musharraf is adept at making the right noises, but poor when it comes to delivering.

The Musharraf era is rife with contradictions when it comes to dealing with Islamist extremists: ban the Lashkar-e-Taiba, but let its alter ego, Jamaat-ul-Dawa, flourish; hound the secular PPP, but cut a deal with bearded politicos; jail reporters rather that the Taliban they report on.

Pakistan's political elite have a painful habit of dismissing the past. 1971, a monstrous war that ought to have been seared on our collective conscience, elicits no more than a shrug. The senseless Kargil war has been forgotten even during the rule of its architect, Musharraf. The Afghan war only stayed on the radar because of the devastation it wrought on Pakistani society in the form of guns, drugs, and Islamic extremism.

9/11 was a major blow to the Americans, but it was also a stark warning to Pakistan: slay the dragon of Islamist extremism or else it will destroy you. Musharraf decided to play with fire instead. As a result, 5 years on, Pakistan is a more dangerous place.

The future looks bearded

Jul 6th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Islamist militancy is alive and well

ON OCTOBER 8th 2005, earthquakes rippled across northern Pakistan and the area of Kashmir it controls, opening mile-wide fissures and sending mountain villages clattering into the valleys below. Over 70,000 people died in the debris and 3m more were made homeless. The army took days to deliver much relief, and the civil administration proved ineffective. But from one direction help came fast: hundreds of bearded Islamists, including armed guerrillas already in the area to infiltrate the nearby border with India, pitched tents and began dispensing aid.

Eyevine

The cartoon that turned serious

They are doing so still, long after most foreign agencies came and went, and Kashmiris are indebted to them. The interior minister, Mr Sherpao, has called them “the lifeline of our rescue and relief work”. The biggest Islamist charity, Jamaat-ul-Dawa (JUD), has supplied the army with medicines. After the quakes, JUD's fundamentalist helpers ferried NATO soldiers across angry rivers. Yet in April America banned the charity, which is a front for the biggest Islamist militant group in Indian-held Kashmir, Lashkar-i-Toiba. Founded by JUD's leader, Hafeez Saeed, it is banned by Pakistan, America and the UN because of its close links to al-Qaeda, and because it tried to kill General Musharraf. But Pakistan refuses to ban JUD.

There are dozens of militant groups in Pakistan, including several, like JUD, that are banned under other names. Most, including JUD/Lashkar, have roots in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s, when General Zia's intelligence agents armed them to fight the Soviet Union with American and Saudi cash. After the Soviet army withdrew in 1989, Pakistan sent the jihadists to Indian-held Kashmir to help wage an insurgency estimated (by India) to have claimed over 40,000 lives.

Pakistani governments also used them to fight their wars at home. They armed Sunni militants to kill Iranian-backed Shia groups, for example, and turned a blind eye when these assassins also killed Christians, Hindus and members of other Muslim sects. Some 4,000 Pakistanis, mostly Shias, are estimated to have died in sectarian violence in the past 15 years, especially in poor, swollen Karachi.

Treading carefully

From the start, General Musharraf seemed to realise that this was a mess. He denounced extremism shortly after his coup and has campaigned against it since, but selectively. He has caught scores of al-Qaeda members and handed them to America, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, designer of the attacks on New York's twin towers. He has turned his back on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, but arrested few of its members when they fled to Pakistan. He has sent Pakistani troops into the northern tribal areas to fight the foreign jihadists who have found refuge there (see article). He has stopped, or at least greatly reduced, support for the militant groups in Kashmir. But he has not dismantled the biggest group, JUD/Lashkar, or arrested its leaders; and sectarian murders continue. Justice rarely catches up with the killers. Though a few dozen are currently on death row, the supreme court's judges are too frightened of a deadly reprisal to hear their appeals.

There are two explanations for General Musharraf's reluctance to crack down harder, and probably both are correct. The first is that, unlike America, he distinguishes between truly dangerous militants, such as members of al-Qaeda, and those that he thinks he can control.

The second explanation for General Musharraf's half-measures is that he is afraid of the extremist groups. There may be only a few thousand active militants, but their potential support is much greater. The biggest jihadi newspapers, including several banned under different names, have print-runs of up to 100,000. Islamic extremists are the only political force in Pakistan easily able to rally a crowd. On February 14th, after JUD's Mr Saeed denounced cartoons of the Prophet published in a Danish newspaper, a mob rampaged through Lahore, burning hundreds of cars and foreign businesses as well as the Punjab provincial assembly. JUD thugs were in the thick of it. “They have to be squeezed systematically,” said a senior intelligence official. If confronted suddenly, “they will kill the president, the prime minister, a couple of generals, a couple of chief ministers; there will be bomb blasts all over India.”

The militants would pose a security threat to Pakistan and its region even if deprived of the state support that they have enjoyed for so long. There is no question, however, of them taking over the country soon. A heavy majority of Pakistanis, certainly outside North-West Frontier Province, are politically secular. The Islamic parties have never won more than 11% of the vote—and that was with considerable help from General Musharraf.

But Pakistan is a bigoted place, and becoming more so. That may be true of all countries with a Muslim majority, yet few have hurtled towards the Islamist edge as fast as Pakistan. Its leaders are at least partly to blame. Almost all of them, civilian and military, have pandered to the mullahs. In 1977 whisky-swigging Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned alcohol. Under General Zia, the only sincerely pious leader, Pakistan introduced draconian sharia punishments, made blasphemy a capital offence and ruled that unless rape victims could produce at least four male Muslim eye-witnesses they would be held guilty of fornication, a serious crime. Ms Bhutto did not seriously attempt to repeal these laws. Nawaz Sharif tried to introduce full sharia law. And General Musharraf helped the mullahs to unprecedented power. The Islamic parties, it should be noted, are not much better than any other extremist group in Pakistan: their ends are the same, and so, often, are their people.

Islamists have an influence in Pakistan far greater than their vote-count suggests. Take education. At the time of its creation, Pakistan had a couple of hundred Islamic schools, or madrassas. Now, having failed to build a decent education system, it has accumulated between 10,000 and 40,000 madrassas—up to 20% of which, according to a World Bank study, teach fighting skills. The national curriculum for regular schools is infected with religious and sectarian bigotry; until recently, ten-year-olds had to learn to “make speeches on jihad and shahadat (martyrdom)”.

Pakistan's impoverished public universities are largely controlled by the youth wing of the biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islaami. At the University of Punjab, in Lahore, these ambitious religionists have banned Coca-Cola, which they call “Jews' drink”. Last year, they broke the legs of a student accused of flirting with one of his female class-mates. In Islamabad, Quaid-i-Azam University has three mosques but no bookshop. One of Pakistan's handful of serious academics spoke yearningly of the liberal scholarly atmosphere he had recently enjoyed at a conference in Tehran.

Without deep reform to Pakistan's laws and institutions, a young and rapidly growing population seems likely to continue drifting towards extremism. An increase in public disorder and in electoral support for the mullahs would logically follow. Evidence from other countries suggests that economic growth would not prevent this. Nor will elections alone: indeed, Pakistan would perhaps be more Islamist but for the pervasive influence of its most undemocratic force, the feudal landlords, who keep rural mullahs in check.

After nearly seven years in charge, General Musharraf has overseen a few minor changes to the inflammatory school textbooks and promised a more thorough revision. “There will be no hate or teaching against any caste, sect, nationality or whatever,” says the education minister, Javed Ashraf Qazi. But given the president's lack of progress on repealing General Zia's Islamic laws, there is cause for some scepticism. True, the law ministry recently proposed changing the burden of evidence in rape cases, but its suggestion was not a liberal triumph: still four eye-witnesses, but only three of them need be Muslim males. As for madrassas, General Musharraf has introduced laws to bring them under closer supervision, but extremist institutions have ignored them.

The president also vowed to expel a couple of thousand foreign Islamic students, but he has not done so. The Jamia Binoria, a madrassa in Karachi, run by Deobandis, the sub-continent's home-grown extremists, has 4,500 students, including 500 foreigners. Sitting under whirling fans, during a break from the Koran, youths from countries including Britain, America, Canada and Australia said they had received notice last January to quit Pakistan, but the police had told them to ignore this.

Some liberal progress may yet emerge from General Musharraf's rule. If he fulfils his promise to improve regular schools, he may put many of the madrassas out of business. He has also liberated the media, prompting a proliferation of television stations that are giving Pakistanis more and better information about the outside world. Mullahs feature in many televised debates, and some of them sound quite sensible. One such pundit, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, is no liberal: he supports the use of Islamic punishments, including amputations in extreme cases. He is scathing about America's recent foreign policy, but also about his own country's Islamic laws and Islamic parties. Having received death threats from JUD's Mr Saeed, he has only recently emerged from hiding. But unlike General Musharraf, Mr Ghamidi is a passionate democrat. “Pakistan should be a democratic state, neither secular nor Islamic,” he says.

Across Pakistan, roads are being excavated and optical-fibre cables laid. Television viewers can increasingly receive foreign stations, including Indian ones. Pakistani television stations are already putting out lots of Indian music videos, and in May for the first time broadcast a couple of carefully selected (and not terribly good) Indian films. Pakistan's beleaguered liberals are hoping for a cultural return from the Middle East, where General Zia dragged them. According to Khaled Ahmed, a Pakistani columnist: “If we lost our culture through Talibanisation in the west [of the country], we can get it back from India, where our culture is still alive.”

The Economist on Pakistan, Part III

2006-07-10T23:11:00.000+05:00

Parliamentary puppetry

The messy business of Pakistani politics

“THERE is a whiff of shame, something repugnant, in the cabinet,” says a former minister, who recently left the government. Where to begin? The government has 63 ministers in all, a record number for Pakistan; almost as many as in India, with a population seven times bigger. But unlike in India, Pakistan's ministers take few important decisions. From foreign relations and counter-insurgency in the tribal areas to devolution and civil-service reform, everything that matters is decided in Army House by General Musharraf and his coterie of advisers. The cabinet includes a few key technocrats such as the general's favourite, Mr Aziz, who had little political experience before he was made prime minister in 2004. Mr Aziz cannot control his ministers, who include many opportunists gathered around a clan of conservative Punjabi landowners.

Reuters

Bhutto and Sharif make unlikely allies

Most of these defected from Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party to join the party that General Musharraf's agents founded for him, Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam), or PML-Q. Pakistanis call it the “king's party”. Other ministers left Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), having been offered inducements or threatened with prosecution for past corruption. Indeed, several had already been convicted. The interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, formerly of the PPP, was in exile in London at the time, having been found guilty of graft. Compelled to declare their assets, Mr Sherpao and eight other ministers recently claimed they owned neither a house nor a car.

The national assembly often fails to get the 25% attendance needed for a quorum. Ministers rarely turn up for the daily “question hour”, when the government is supposed to justify its policies to the opposition. After all, the most important policies are introduced by presidential decree, as ordinances. These can be issued only when parliament is in recess, so it is often suspended. Technically, parliament has to pass an ordinance into law within four months or it becomes void. But as PML-Q and its allies cannot always muster a majority, and do not support General Musharraf's more liberal proposals, this seldom happens. In almost seven years in power, the general has issued 44 ordinances, five of which have been passed into law. The others are renewed by decree every four months—or perhaps not; Pakistanis are rarely informed. Confusion envelops large areas of law, as it envelops parliament. “People are at a loss to know what this parliament does,” says Sherry Rehman, an elegant PPP member who likes to blow her cigarette smoke in the faces of the assembly's mullah members.

So this is a Punch and Judy democracy show, reminiscent of those put on by a succession of earlier uniformed and civilian puppeteers. General Musharraf has proved himself as skilful as any of them. In 2002, three years after seizing power, he held a referendum on his rule in which he got a 98% approval rating. It was so grossly rigged that he apologised on national television for the “excesses” of his supporters. Yet he proceeded to hold general elections in a similar spirit. He cannibalised Mr Sharif's party to staff his new PML-Q. Nominally Pakistan's independence party, the Pakistan Muslim League has been co-opted by successive military rulers, each forming his own faction. The election was contested by six different PMLs.

The PPP, Pakistan's nearest thing to a national political party, was much harder for General Musharraf to co-opt. It was formed in 1967 under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was ousted as prime minister in 1977 by General Muhammed Zia ul-Haq and subsequently hanged. Under the leadership-in-exile of Ms Bhutto, Zulfikar's daughter, the PPP's support has held up surprisingly well. It is strongest in Sindh, the Bhuttos' ancestral land, but to some degree it has become a rallying-flag for all Pakistanis who object to the army's political meddling. Had Ms Bhutto returned from exile to fight the 2002 election, with Mr Sharif's party in ruins, she would have won. General Musharraf kept her out by banning any fugitive from justice from being a candidate and, just to be on the safe side, by stopping anyone from serving more than two terms as prime minister. Both Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif had already held the job twice. He also decreed that the president could dismiss the government.

Tricks of the trade

To rig the election, General Musharraf's supporters used the standard tricks of every incumbent government in Pakistan, as well as some available only to generals. The key to winning elections is to ensure that judges in the provinces are sympathetic, because they appoint the magistrates who conduct the polls in the constituencies. Those who come to power through a coup, like General Musharraf, have a considerable advantage here: they can require senior judges to swear allegiance to them and sack the ones who won't. With the returning officers on his side, the rigger's job is mostly complete. In areas dominated by the opposition, a friendly returning officer may well put polling stations in inaccessible places and select compliant people to staff them. “By the time the stations are placed and the staff-list is done, almost half the work is done,” says Nawabzada Ghazanfar Gul, a PPP candidate from the Punjabi town of Gujrat. His example shows how deeply Pakistani politics is rooted in local power struggles. His clan migrated to Pakistan from Central Asia with the Mughal emperors. His political rivals, Chaudhry Shujaat and various of his relatives, belong to a subcontinental family that has prospered only since Pakistan's creation. Mr Gul describes them as “upstarts, 1947-model”.

Anwar Kamal, a venerable PML-Nawaz politician in Peshawar, offered another example of the importance of local politics. On the evening your correspondent called on him, he had just returned from a huge Pushtun tribal gathering to settle a blood-money claim against his tribe. Asked what had provoked the claim, Mr Kamal explained that he had recently led 4,000 armed tribesmen in an attack on a neighbouring tribe. They flattened a small town and killed 80 people. The fine they incurred for this was $60,000, which Mr Kamal thought was not too bad.

Even though the 2002 election was rigged in favour of the king's party, the PPP won the biggest share of the vote (but not a majority). General Musharraf, in another favourite ploy of army rulers, had made a secret pact with the six biggest Islamic parties, which his agents had organised into an alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). This went against the grain; the mullahs mostly hate each other. But it served them well. United against a divided opposition, and with anti-Americanism running high over the war in Afghanistan, the MMA won 11% of the vote and 53 seats in the national assembly. By badgering and buying ten PPP members, PML-Q formed a coalition government. But it was the MMA's votes that gave General Musharraf the two-thirds majority he needed to change the constitution, thereby legitimising his coup and the scores of ordinances he had issued since seizing power. The MMA was then made leader of the opposition, even though together the PPP and PML-Nawaz formed a bigger block. It also won control of a regional government for the first time, in North-West Frontier Province, and formed a coalition government with PML-Q in Baluchistan.

The one thing that can be said with certainty about the next national election, due in October next year, is that General Musharraf's supporters will rig it. Indeed, having rigged local elections last year, implanting many loyal nazims, they may find this unusually easy to do. Meanwhile General Musharraf says he will remain army chief, even though he had promised the mullahs that he would not. He points out that the constitution entitles him to wear his uniform until the next election—and he should know, because he wrote it. Asked whether the uniform will go after the poll, the president ponders: “I don't know. We'll need to see, we need to cross the bridge when we reach it. I'll take decisions, I'll see the environment, and obviously I wouldn't like to violate the constitution.”

It is almost certain that General Musharraf, and very likely his uniform, will survive the election; but the colour of his next government is less clear. The PML-Q is a feuding mob, able to agree on almost nothing. As president, General Musharraf is supposed to be above party politics, yet he has often intervened to end the bickering. The party also obstructs liberal reform, which embarrasses the general. Moreover, even if Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif remain in exile, the king's party may not win a majority at the polls. And next time the president wants to change the constitution, the MMA's votes may not be available to him. The biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, loathes him for breaking his promise to shed his uniform. And internationally, the mullahs' success in 2002 has made it harder for General Musharraf to present himself as an enlightened moderator. The MMA may well splinter.

But if the president has problems, Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif would gladly trade theirs for his. In May they met in London to declare a “Charter of Democracy”, cementing their alliance and vowing, among other things, to return and fight next year's elections. In fact, their alliance is pretty unconvincing. The two leaders dislike and distrust each other. They would probably both make a deal with General Musharraf, accepting him as president, in return for a legal pardon and the dropping of any outstanding charges against them. But the president dislikes them and seems to think he can do without them, saying, “I don't think individuals who have looted and plundered the country have a place to come and govern again.”

In recent weeks, the general has redoubled his efforts to unite the PML-Q. This slightly irks America, which wants him to broaden his political base, preferably by dropping the PML-Q and working with the PPP instead—perhaps minus Ms Bhutto. It might seem cynical to want Pakistan's handful of liberal politicians, whose single achievement has been consistent opposition to army rule, to step into line behind the general. But he is anyway more likely to stick with the PML-Q.

That would be bad for most Pakistanis. The two mainstream parties performed dismally during the 1990s. In power, their rulers were as autocratic and unprincipled as General Musharraf, and more vindictive. They treated parliament with equal disdain, and managed the economy incompetently. In opposition, the respective supporters of each of them badgered the army to undermine the other. Yet they could never exert as much institutional control as General Musharraf is doing. Their candidates therefore had to win elections, rigged though they were, by appealing to voters. In the process, some political patronage percolated down to the villages.

It would be bad, too, for Pakistan's future. Already shaken, the mainstream political parties would be seriously damaged by another round of military-political puppetry. And as they have wilted, the Islamic parties have thrived.

The Economist on Pakistan, Part II

2006-07-10T07:39:00.000+05:00

Too much for one man to do

Reuters

Pakistan needs more democracy to make it a less dangerous place, says James Astill

THINK about Pakistan, and you might get terrified. Few countries have so much potential to cause trouble, regionally and worldwide. One-third of its 165m people live in poverty, and only half of them are literate. The country's politics yo-yo between weak civilian governments and unrepresentative military ones—the sort currently on offer under Pervez Musharraf, the president and army chief, albeit with some democratic wallpapering. The state is weak. Islamabad and the better bits of Karachi and Lahore are orderly and, for the moment, booming. Most of the rest is a mess. In the western province of Baluchistan, which takes up almost half of Pakistan's land mass, an insurgency is simmering. In the never-tamed tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the army is waging war against Islamic fanatics.

Nor is that all. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until recently was selling their secrets to North Korea, Iran, Libya and maybe others. During its most recent big stand-off with India, in 2002, Pakistan gave warning that, if attacked, it might nuke its neighbour. Mostly, however, in Kashmir, Afghanistan and its own unruly cities, Pakistan has used, and perhaps still uses, Islamist militants to fight its wars—including the confused lot it is fighting, at America's request, in the tribal areas. Several thousand armed extremists are swilling around the country. Thousands more youths are being prepared for holy war at radical Islamic schools. Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be in Pakistan.

When General Musharraf launched his coup in 1999, it was not—or not principally—to clean up this mess. Instead, he wanted to save his career, having been sacked as army chief by Nawaz Sharif, then the prime minister. Mr Sharif had tried to subordinate the army—which in Pakistan is a parallel state, some say the only state—to civilian rule. But however unpromising his start, General Musharraf has generally proved much better at running the country than either Mr Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's other elected leader in recent times. He also remains more popular than either of them, though his support has recently been slipping.

General Musharraf's shopping list

General Musharraf inherited an economy in crisis. Shackled by sanctions and parched of capital, Pakistan had defaulted on foreign debts. He ensured that the country did what the IMF told it to do, and ended the crisis. Thanks partly to continued fiscal prudence and some sensible reforms, Pakistan has notched up average growth of 7% over the past three years, about the same as India.

It also helped that after the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, General Musharraf decided to stop supporting the Taliban government in next-door Afghanistan and grant America access to airbases from which to fight it. The benefits have not been confined to a surge of American aid dollars that boosted the growth figures. Having joined the “war on terror”, the general reined in Islamist militants fighting India in the disputed Kashmir region. He then surprised many by throwing himself into peacemaking with India. Peace on the subcontinent is still hard to imagine, but it may be more possible than at any time since British India's bloody partition.

This is encouraging. But a bigger concern for most Pakistanis is the state of their broken and predatory institutions, which have helped to make Pakistan unstable and prone to extremism. General Musharraf pledged to fix them, and to promote liberal values, or “enlightened moderation”. If he were to make serious progress towards either of those goals, history would smile on his coup.

But this survey will argue that General Musharraf is unlikely to deliver on these crucial promises. He has introduced many sensible reforms, such as making the lowest level of the judiciary independent. But they have almost all been implemented only partially and corruptly. Part of the problem is that General Musharraf does not rule Pakistan by fiat, though he often seems to think otherwise. He rules behind a façade of democracy. Thus, for example, he has rewritten the constitution in his favour, allowing him to sack the government and impose martial law; but he needed political allies to vote through those changes. Such alliances have led to paralysing compromise.

To sideline the mainstream parties, whose leaders he fears, General Musharraf has sought support from religious conservatives, so his liberal reforms have gone nowhere. With the same intent, he pandered to Taliban-friendly Islamic parties, helping them win unprecedented power. Moreover, General Musharraf has clung on to his job by the same undemocratic measures as his predecessors: by manipulating the institutions he had vowed to clean up. Only, unlike any civilian leader, he has the army behind him, which means he can do that much more damage. Whereas Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto packed the supreme court with their supporters, General Musharraf sacked half its judges for refusing to swear allegiance to him.

Pakistan is too big, too fractious and too complicated to be ruled so overwhelmingly by one man. General Musharraf has been lucky to survive three assassination attempts, and his succession is unclear. He has, moreover, limited time at his disposal to get to grips with an unlimited number of problems. His period in office has been littered with initiatives—a diplomatic proposal to India here, a promise to reduce the army there—that never got off the ground or fizzled to nothing for want of the general's attention.

And even if he had unlimited time, he has limited understanding. In army fashion, he considers Pakistan's problems to be mostly practical. But they are invariably political. To deal with a mounting water crisis, for example, General Musharraf has decreed that three long-stalled dams will be built in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. In Sindh province, the lower riparian, this has caused uproar. Sindhis say their water supply will be diminished by the dams; General Musharraf says it will not. He has no patience for the Sindhis' distrust of the Pakistani state. They complain, with good reason, that it is dominated by Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, where most of the army is raised. Sindhis make up about a quarter of Pakistan's population, but hold only a couple of the top 50 jobs in the water ministry. If General Musharraf wants the dams built, he should start by increasing that number.

Pakistan is torn by such grievances. Where people feel unprotected by their government, regional strife and Islamic militancy have bred. The longer they are allowed to fester, the more unstable Pakistan will become. Neither General Musharraf nor his obvious rivals for the leadership, Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif, could heal these rifts. But then Pakistan does not need a saviour to become stable and well. It needs a sustainable political system, representing the majority of its people. General Musharraf has had some successes. But by sabotaging Pakistan's fragile democracy, he may well have made the country even more dangerous.

The Economist on Pakistan, Part I

2006-07-09T18:53:00.000+05:00

As the number of British soldiers killed in Helmand, Afghanistan, rises, the UK press has begun to turn the screws on the country they largely hold responsible for the chaos - Pakistan. In the June 6 edition of the Economist, the venerable news magazine has trenchantly criticised Musharraf's Pakistan. The inside pages also contain a must-read survey of the political landscape in Pakistan.

The Economist is a subscription only website, so over the next few days I will republish the articles here. Paraphrasing the articles would simply not do justice to the eloquence of the Economist.

The trouble with Pakistan

A country that everyone should worry about

TERRORISM has many sources and claimed justifications, but if it can be said to have a centre, it lies in the training camps, madrassas and battlefields of northern Pakistan and south-eastern Afghanistan. There the Taliban and their ally, al-Qaeda, were both formed. From there, in hellish diaspora, jihadis have fanned out across the globe. Add to that Afghanistan's lawlessness and ability to produce vast amounts of opium, not to mention Pakistan's wretched history of venal democrats and clumsy dictators, and its lamentable record on nuclear proliferation, and it is clear why what happens in those two places is of huge importance to the rest of the world. From neither place is there much good news.

The West has invested a huge amount in Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999. This newspaper was prepared to give him a chance on condition that he acted swiftly and firmly to rein in extremism and sort out the economy, and then returned to barracks. He failed to do any of that. After September 11th 2001, however, he was recast as a provider of relative stability in a dangerous neighbourhood, and an essential ally in the “war on terror”. Money was showered upon him; he was feted in Washington, DC, and London. Only gradually has it started to dawn on his admirers that, in the past five years, he has not done very much to make Pakistan a less dangerous place.

A destroyer of democracy

True, the economy has improved quite a bit since 2001—and not just because of all that donor money. But promises, made even before September 11th, to bring the country's most radical madrassas under control have not been kept. The training camps that Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has long tolerated because of their usefulness against India and in Afghanistan still exist, though they have been told not to mount any operations for now. The most dangerous outfits, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (the Army of the Pure), have been banned, only to reappear under new guises. Not until 2004 and under the most intense American pressure did Pakistan arrest Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist who had cheerfully sold nuclear secrets to anyone prepared to pay.

But perhaps the most damning criticism of General Musharraf is that he continues to do grave damage to the long-term political health of Pakistan (see our survey). In his seven long years in office, he has insinuated the army into every nook and cranny of Pakistani public life, weakening institutions that were feeble already, emasculating its political parties and reducing parliament to a squabbling irrelevance. He has sacked judges when it suited him, created and dismembered parties at his own convenience, rigged a referendum on his presidency and used Pakistan's constitution to write his own job description. None of this bodes well for a post-Musharraf future—which could arrive at any moment given the enthusiasm of his enemies for trying to kill him.

Like a previous “caretaker” dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who held power for 11 years before being killed, General Musharraf has been unable to resist the temptation to play politics with Islam, even if, unlike Zia, he has also had some success at purging fundamentalists from the top ranks of the army. He has forged a disparate group of Islamic political parties into a block that has helped him outmanoeuvre the democratic opposition; these Islamists are pushing hard for the extension of sharia law.

And then there's Afghanistan

It would not be fair to blame Pakistan for everything that is going wrong in Afghanistan. The government of Hamid Karzai is weak and corrupt; because of the West's continued failure to live up to its promises, much of the country, outside the big cities, is in the grip of bandits and warlords. But Pakistan's contribution to Afghanistan's chronic insecurity should not be underestimated. Both the Taliban and the remnants of al-Qaeda are able to take refuge on Pakistani soil, which makes the job of the soldiers from Western countries who have been struggling to eliminate them for the past five years much more difficult. The Taliban, after all, were in part a creation of Pakistan's ISI, which saw in them a way to establish a friendly state on their western flank, a vital strategic consideration for an organisation that sees itself as locked in perpetual conflict with India to its east.

General Musharraf, by contrast, contends he is doing all he can to root out Taliban fighters from their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, and Pakistan has lost more than 600 soldiers fighting there. Even so, say the critics, it could try much harder, especially given the size of its army. And as for al-Qaeda, none of General Musharraf's protestations can hide the fact that Osama bin Laden is generally reckoned to be holed up on Pakistani soil. Lesser terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11th attacks, have been caught and handed over by the general, but Mr bin Laden goes on evading capture.

The danger is that Afghanistan may now, thanks to Pakistani meddling and Western neglect, gradually revert to what it was before September 2001: a state partly captured by the most dangerous Islamists. Belatedly waking up to this threat (see article), Britain is leading NATO into risky action in Afghanistan's southern provinces, a swathe of territory where the Kabul government's writ is ignored and where a record-breaking crop of poppies was recently harvested. With a remit that has been altered to war-fighting at short notice, inadequate numbers and an apparent lack of enough helicopters and armoured support, these soldiers are taking politically painful casualties. There is a risk that the will of the politicians back home to go on fighting will swiftly fade.

An unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan, intertwined with a chaotic and Taliban-dominated Afghanistan: it is not a settling prospect. It has all happened before, of course. The result was September 11th, swiftly followed by a terrorist outrage in Delhi that came close to provoking full-scale war between Pakistan and also-nuclear India. What will happen next time?

A positive, albeit small, step

2006-07-09T04:16:00.000+05:00

They both were the chief of army staff, came to power by deposing an elected prime minister, held referendums to secure themselves as head of state, presided over manipulated elections and amended the constitution to give them ultimate control over parliament. But Zia and Musharraf part ways when it comes to the role of Islam in the state: Zia was an unabashed Islamist while Musharraf professed love for his dogs.

The problem was that Musharraf lacked the courage of his convictions and refused to annul the misogynistic and repressive laws of his predecessor. But with the promulgation of the Law Reforms Ordinance 2006, which will see the immediate release of 1,300 women prisoners, the majority held under the odious Hudood Ordinance, Musharraf may finally have taken a small step on the long road to making amends to the women of Pakistan. Yet, much remains to be done as this editorial in the News suggests: most imporantly the 2006 Ordinance does not affect the status of the odious Hudood Ordinance.

An improvement in the legal position of 1,300 women must be celebrated, as must the possibility of further changes. Yet, Pakistan is rarely blessed with undiluted good news and so is the case with Musharraf's ordinance. With an elected parliament in place the obvious path for any change in the law should be a parliamentary Act. Musharraf's choice reflects his lack of confidence in his handpicked government. A small victory for women is another nail in the coffin of democracy.

A blow to workers, but a silver lining for women?

2006-07-06T08:08:00.000+05:00

When the government promised a 'people friendly' budget yet again this year, conventional wisdom held that, with an election on the horizon, the government would likely dole out some palliatives.

But the working class was in for a rude shock: during the budget session in the national assembly, the government brazenly altered the laws governing working hours. Iqbal Haider, Secretary General of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, summed up the changes made by the government:

"(B)y amending the Shops and Establishment Ordinance 1969, the government had increased daily working hours from eight to 12 hours.

"Similarly the compulsory closed weekly holiday has also been abolished, and through an amendment in Section 38 and 45 of the Factories Act has allowed the employers to make female workers work till 10pm in two shifts. Earlier, female workers were bared from working in factories before sunrise and after sunset. Besides, by changing the West Pakistan Standing Orders Ordinance 1968, the contract workers had been added to the categories of work without entitlement of overtime."

The effect of increasing the work day from 8 to 12 hours will be devastating for labourers. The reason is simple: already forced to work more than 8 hours, they will now be deprived of overtime pay unless they work more than an incredible 12 hours a day. If this is the government's idea of people friendly, one shudders to think what an unfriendly government would have cooked up.

However, in its zest to convert Pakistan's stores and factories into virtual prsions, the government may have unintentionally have empowered women. By allowing women to work beyond sunset and until 10 pm, the boost to businesses is what the government had in mind. Yet, the increased earning power of women will undoubtedly provide women with more leverage and leeway at home.

Researching the use of child labour in the carpet weaving industry several years ago, I was surprised to learn that families who put their young daughters to work at an early age actually ended up treating them better. The girls were married off later, allowed to watch TV and given a small measure of autonomy in their daily lives. Counterintuitive at first blush, the reason was that the increased economic value of girls meant that families would not be in a hurry to dispose of them through marriage, and the girls, knowing their increased worth, could afford to be more assertive at home.

Therefore, it's important not to be reactionaries and issue a sweeping denunciation of all the changes in the country's labour laws. Yes, it is important that adequate checks and balances be introduced to ensure women are not exploited. However, the emancipation of women is cause for celebration, not remonstration.

Dr. Johnson is the only one left smiling

2006-07-04T23:38:00.000+05:00

Jaranwala tehsil is the largest of Punjab's tehsils (administrative divisions that are the rough equivalent of counties) in terms of the number of union councils and as such has a relatively typical law and order situation. I know this because Jaranwala was my stamping ground for several months in 2004 when I was part of a team of researchers seeking to measure the impact of Pakistan's latest experiment in devolution. The villagers and townsfolk were genial and accommodating and we only raised the hackles of the locals when a lazy afternoon of cards ended in a rout.

Yet, the federal government would have you believe that Jaranwala is a hotbed of human rights abuses. The Federal Human Rights Division, overseen by the Law Minister, Wasi Zafar, distributes a human rights fund amongst victims of rape, torture, extra-judicial killings, etc. and last year 305 of the 365 successful applicants nationwide were residents of Jaranwala tehsil.

That a staggering 85% of victims were from Jaranwala was evidence of serious foul play, though patently not of the human rights kind. The dubious distinction of Jaranwala being the country's human rights abuses capital is owed to the fact that it is also the constituency of the Law Minister who has been using the human rights fund to dole out patronage amongst his supporters.

This year Wasi Zafar was caught red handed with his hand in the cookie jar when a senior bureaucrat, Saira Karim, refused to release funds to a further 560 of Mr. Zafar's Jaranwala supporters. The story hit the national press when Mr. Zafar tried to intimidate Ms. Karim and punish her for the perceived insubordination.

The government, however, is sensitive of its image and in late June an investigation into the corruption was launched by the ISI apparently on orders from the very 'top' i.e. Musharraf or Shaukat Aziz. Political expediency has seen many a ministerial scandal hushed up in the past, but it was hoped that the investigation indicated a new willingness to back up the rhetoric of good governance and accountability.

That hope was dashed yesterday when Ms. Karim was transferred to another division, signalling the end of the issue as far as the government is concerned. According to The News,Musharraf and Aziz were unhappy that the issue had been picked up the international news media and felt it was damaging the country's reputation abroad. This was the same rationale for banning the heroic gang rape victim, Mukhtaran Mai, from travelling to the US at the invitation of a human rights organisation. It seems that the President and the Prime Minister have not learned a lesson from that debacle. To recapitulate: a country's international reputation is enhanced when it takes positive steps to address wrongdoing and harmed when the country is seen bundling its problems out of the public eye. And 231 years after Samuel Johnson first pronounced it, patriotism is still the last refuge of a scoundrel.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2006-07-04T00:51:00.000+05:00

The revival of the Pakistani economy has triggered a bout of conspicuous consumption which, inevitably for a developing country, thus far hase been largely confined to imported indulgences. Yet, Pakistani entrepreneurs appear to have stumbled upon a way to reverse the flow of precious dollars: cosmetic tourism. Expatriate Pakistanis with cash to spare and looking to shed their flab, get a headful of hair or a curvier figure are heading to the homeland to have these surgical procedures performed at a fraction of the cost in the West.

Yet, exploitation in the medical sector is never far off. The vanity clinics have more sinister counterparts who prey on the desperation of the impoverished as they ply their trade in human organs. Clearly government regulation is required in both areas: the poor may viscerally attract more sympathy and face the more acute risk of medical malfeasance, but cosmetic surgery has its own book of horrors.

The two businesses also combine to make an elementary point on state regulation: whichever way you go on the economic ladder, the state must regulate the medical sector to protect public health. Obviously regulation is easier when you're climbing up the economic ladder rather than going downwards. However, as Pakistan climbs that ladder it is imperative that our government be reminded not to neglect the people languishing on the lower rungs.

Till death do us part

2006-07-02T03:26:00.000+05:00

Political memoirs are meant to be saved for when one has been put out to pasture. Certainly you can't imagine any democratic leader writing his memoirs while in office: the electorate wouldn't take too kindly to a leader who takes time out from the business of govnerment for a vanity project. Of course things operate differently in Pakistan and now it seems Musharraf is set to publish an autobiography.

If one were to read between the lines, the autobiography-while-in-office is also an unmistakable signal that Musharraf doesn't intend to retire from office. If you decide to write a book but don't intend to relinquish office in your lifetime, you of course write one while in office. It may well be that we already know the most important of all the things that Musharraf has to tell us.

Prime Minister, do your job and let them do theirs

2006-06-29T18:46:00.000+05:00

Much is made of Musharraf loosening the reins on the national press and allowing the news media a freer hand than they have enjoyed in decades. Yet, Musharraf was not motivated by altruism. In the first place, the mushrooming cable TV providers in the informal sector were difficult to regulate and foreign news and entertainment flowed unchecked into people's homes. In the second place, even a crackdown on the cable providers would not have stemmed the flow from foreign news channels because the cost of owning a satellite receiver had fallen to an almost insignificant level. Of course, Chinese style media controls were always out of the question, so Musharraf chose the politically savvy option: open the floodgates and bask in the praise that comes your way.

Yet, governments by their very nature dislike scrutiny. So it is that the federal government is seeking to ban the media from meetings of Parliamentary standing committees. The reason: the government has been embarrassed by a series of disclosures made by opposition members in the Public Accounts Committee. At one level the measure is almost farcical as the current Parliament must surely have set some kind of record for the amount of work it undertakes. But a more serious democratic principle will be eroded if the media is barred from sitting in on the meetings: the media is a watchdog that should be free to report on what the people's representatives are doing. This is all the more important when it comes to financial oversight which the PAC undertakes. The Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, never misses a chance to talk about good governance and transparency. Perhaps it's time to stop talking and start acting. Nip this in the bud, Prime Minister.

For more on the topic, read an editorial in the News here.

Ghoulish, not cartoonish

2006-06-29T05:07:00.000+05:00

The tragedy of the 'honour killing' of a young Danish woman of Pakistani origin is also bitterly ironical given the virulent protests of the beards in Pakistan against the publication of cartoons in Denmark. Is there a connection between the murder of an innocent woman and rampaging beards? Yes. The beards' preoccupation, nay, obsession, with religious ritual and dogma creates the space for the morally bankrupt amongst us to continue to perpetrate their evil acts. Cartoons and the like are no more than red herrings, but so long as they are forced down the gullet of society there will be little appetite for change.

Name and shame

2006-06-28T04:17:00.000+05:00

When members of the provincial assembly in Sindh recently turned to fisticuffs to defend the honour of a female counterpart who was being sexually harassed by an MPA from the ruling party, the high profile punch-up turned the spotlight on the routine harassment of women in all spheres of life. That women are harassed, brutalised and even murdered in Pakistan is not news nor is the fact that little is done by the government to curb the institutional and social repression of women.

Yet, every once in a while the juxtaposition of the abuse of women and the complicity of the state and society in that abuse is hard to ignore. Yesterday was one of those days in Peshawar. In the NWFP assembly a female member of the provincial government of the beards submitted an adjournment motion to suspend the regular proceedings of the house to discuss an important issue: renaming the province to give it an appropriately Islamic appellation. Meanwhile, in a lawyer's office yet another sorrowful tale of exploitation was being narrated. It has all the usual ingredients: an impoverished woman, a rich, licentious man, threats and intimidation, and elders willing to subordinate morality to a misogynistic culture.

That the unfortunate woman had to give an account of her suffering to a reporter while her democratic representative sought to adjourn the assembly's proceedings to discuss the 'urgent' matter of changing the province's name is an elegiac lament for a society that has lost its soul. More damningly, they are few mourners.

Neo-liberalism: clinging to the past

2006-06-23T19:01:00.000+05:00

Over lunch with Wasim Sajjad this weekend I had the opportunity to question him about the government's neo-liberal economic policies. Even as the world is reassessing its commitment to liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation, Pakistan has embraced neo-liberalism with a gusto that rivals anything seen at the height of the discredited theory's heydays in the 90s. The result of that commitment has been entirely predictable: increased inequality and a static, arguably worsening, level of poverty.

Wasim Sajjad acknowledged that the problems of inflation, unemployment and inequality needed to be addressed urgently, but he was less forthcoming on the specific policies necessary to tackle those problems. I asked him whether Shaukat Aziz was the right man to continue to set the country's economic compass given that he seemed incapable of thinking beyond stale and discredited policies and again he was reluctant to comment. Obviously as Chairman of the Senate, Wasim Sajjad must toe the party line - a party that is nominally headed by Shaukat Aziz.

However, the Supreme Court has finally shown some steel and cancelled the corrupt auction of the Pakistan Steel Mills to a consortium of Pakistani and foreign businesses. The Steel Mill's debacle highlighted a critical flaw in the government's neo-liberal policy: a fire sale of the country's assets will only harm the state rather than strengthen it. Disinvestment is only beneficial if it is carried out transparently and at market prices, but in the Steel Mill's case neither was achieved.

The other fundamental flaw in the government's strategy is that the necessary degree of market regulation and oversight has not been enforced. The crash of the Karach bourse can be attributed to a reluctance of the government to take on the powerful financiers; in the absence of the proper regulation it was only a matter of time before the market crashed.

Now that 7 years of neo-liberal policies are proving to be inadequate to address Pakistan's structural problems, the crucial question is whether there is any meaningful internal dissent that could mitigate the worst excesses of neo-liberalism. On the evidence before us so far, the answer is a resounding 'No'.

Gagged and bound - if you're lucky

2006-06-23T01:16:00.000+05:00

The government has ballyhooed its commitment to a free press even as its tried to keep the skeletons in its closet firmly out of view. Topping the list of issues that are off-limits for reporters is coverage of the Americans' presence on Pakistani soil. Now, 3 months after they first disappeared, a reporter for Geo TV, Mukesh Ropeta, and a cameraman, Sanjay Kumar, have been charged with revealing state secrets for filming an air base in Jacobabad that was used by Americans to support the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The charges come in the same week that another reporter, Hayatullah Khan, abducted in Dec. 2005, was found dead with a bullet in his back. Mr. Khan disappeared soon after he photographed fragments of an American Hellfire missile that had killed an Al-Qaeda operative inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government had earlier claimed that the Al-Qaeda man had died from a blast caused by a bomb-making accident.

The Supreme Court has taken suo moto notice of Mr. Khan's death, but surely it must do so in the case of the Geo reporter and cameraman, too. As they are alive and capable of testifying, they can shed light on their 3 month long disappearance; were they indeed abducted and tortured by one of Pakistan's intelligence agencies as alleged?

As the Supreme Court celebrates its golden jubilee the court could regain some credibility amongst the public if it took on the ubiquitous intelligence agencies and stood up for the rule of law.

The wrath of the beards

2006-06-22T21:41:00.000+05:00

The country's beards have fiercely guarded the misogynistic and antediluvian hudood ordinance ever since its introduction by the dictator Zia and now a new campaign is afoot to beat back any discussion of reform. The beards ire has been stoked by the tepid Zara Sochieye (Think) campaign of Geo TV and Islamabad is now being lobbied to rein in private media channels. Of course this lobbying effort is backed up by an implicit threat of mob violence.

One hopes that the government will for once do the right thing and stand up for its own declared agenda of 'enlightened moderation' and media freedom. But with an election year on the horizon and with the government's record of yielding to the beards, the country may need to brace itself for another lurch towards extremism.

Developing the army?

2006-06-22T03:47:00.000+05:00

The PSDP isn't working and the utilisation of funds remains woefully inadequate, so the government has offered a way out of the quandry: give the money to the army.

Public Sector Development Program - the very words suggest that a project to shift 60 telephone exchanges of the army from the recently privatised PTCL could not possibly be financed by this account. The financing for the project comes on the back of the recent hike in the defence budget. The billion rupee project raises an obvious question: why not just add it to the defence budget? Surely in a year that the defence budget has been raised by 30 billion rupees, another billion would not have caused much of a stir. And using the PSDP just exposes the military led government to further critcism - the military is probably the single most developed institution in the country.

The likely answer is hubris. The same hubris that led to this exchange:

During the course of approval of the project, the Planning Division asked about the economic viability and financial analysis of the project, but its officials were told that shifting the armed forces’ network from the PTCL to NTC was a strategic decision to address security concerns and so the issue of economic viability did not arise.

The DNA of beards

2006-06-20T03:18:00.000+05:00

Pakistan's role in the 'war on terror' has spawned at least one positive byproduct: the introduction of DNA testing in the country. The catalyst was the need to identify the remains of suspected terrorists, but the technology can also be used in other criminal contexts, such as rape, or even to settle civil disputes over paternity and child support.

As if on cue, the beards are queuing up to denounce this diabolical intrusion of science. Referring to the onerous requirement of four male witnesses, a beard had the following to say: "The condition to provide four eyewitnesses cannot be done away with. Technology or no technology, we have to stick to the divine dictates."

And on the issues of determining paternity: "Our religion prohibits us from publicizing others' sins. Publicly declaring someone illegitimate or of having fathered a child outside marriage is no service at all."

So there you have it - crimes against women and the neglect of one's biological children ought to be swept under the carpet to protect dogma and society's double-standards.

Fool's gold

2006-06-19T21:51:00.000+05:00

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is celebrating 2006 as its golden jubilee year, but the court's history gives little reason to celebrate. Capitulating time and again before military interlopers and usurpers, the superior judiciary has little credibility amongst ordinary people. Restoring judicial independence is critical to the rule of law, but for obvious reasons this remains low on the government's list of priorities.

In a 2004 report on the judiciary in Pakistan, the International Crisis Group made the following recommendations for building judicial independence:

To the Government of Pakistan:

1. Establish, by proposing and urging adoption of a constitutional amendment, a transparent system of judicial appointments to the High Courts that expands accountability for such appointments beyond the executive and Chief Justices to include parliamentarians and bar councils and associations; prior to the adoption of such an amendment, involve the bar and parliamentarians in public discussions of candidates for posts on the High Courts.

2. End deviations from the seniority rule in the promotion of High Court judges to the posts of Chief Justice, establish by statute a seniority rule for promotions from the High Courts to the Supreme Court, and when filling vacancies on the High Courts and Supreme Court, promote female judges who are qualified candidates under the seniority rule.

3. End the practices of not confirming additional judges and of awarding government positions to retired judges; establish public audits of all members of the superior judiciary and close family members to ensure that only statutory benefits are awarded and corruption is avoided.

4. End the practice of selectively offering new oaths to judges, and renounce publicly the use of the judicial oath as a mechanism for purging the judiciary.

5. Institute new internal administrative mechanisms for the prevention of corruption and the removal of corrupt High Court judges, with oversight from a judicial commission that includes members of the bars and parliamentarians, and ensure that women and minorities are adequately represented in these mechanisms.

6. Institute administrative reforms that curtail Chief Justices' power over the assignment of cases and of judges, and establish professional, managerial divisions within the courts to fulfil this task.

7. Absorb the anti-terrorism and accountability courts into the ordinary judiciary, jettisoning procedural variations in bail, plea-bargaining, and the physical circumstances of trials that presently characterise those proceedings.

8. Institute courts within Pakistan's ordinary judicial hierarchy, with review in the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court, for the FATA, and conform courts' jurisdictions, judges' tenure and judges' privileges in the judiciary of the Northern Areas, including the new Court of Appeals, to practices in the ordinary courts.

9. Endeavour to ensure that judicial decisions at all levels respect international human rights, including the rights of women, and make efforts to eliminate traditional and religious practices imposed by tribal and village councils that are harmful to women.

The full report is a worthwhile read to understand the way in which the government bends the judiciary to its will. As the Supreme Court celebrates, Pakistanis only have reason to mourn.

Prisons of shame

2006-06-16T02:29:00.000+05:00

The killing of the deputy superintendent of Karachi's central jail ought to lead to scrutiny of conditions inside Pakistan's jails. While no one has yet claimed responsibility for the murder of Amanullah Khan Niazi, the speculation has centred on enemies Niazi made inside the jail he helped run.

As the following excerpt from a PBS Frontline report indicates, Niazi had no shortage of enemies inside the prison:

I went to the Karachi Central Jail, in which more than 5,000 prisoners are incarcerated, including some of the most notorious terrorists. As I passed through to the inside, it struck me how primitive life has remained here. For example, there are no X-ray machines to monitor what guards or visitors might try to smuggle inside. The prison can't afford these machines.
When I met with the jail's superintendent, Amanullah Khan Niazi, he showed me his badly scarred arm. Last year, while Niazi was on a routine walk through the cellblocks, a militant threw boiling water mixed with sulphuric acid on him. Niazi was lucky to escape with only a burned arm. "These people are not scared at all," said Niazi. "They are capable of building bombs with sugar, fertilizer and some chemicals, and they are convinced that their ideology will lead them to heaven."
Reporter Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy visits Karachi Central Jail where some of Pakistan's most notorious terrorists are held.
Jail is meant to help reform people, but the militants in the Karachi Central Jail vow to return to their past activities as soon as they are free. "We have tried our best to convince them to change their ways," said Niazi, "but they tell us that they will fight until they die and that they will get new recruits in the process. These are very dangerous people."

In 1996 the UN's Special Rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment published a scathing report on prison conditions in Pakistan, and it's safe to say that not much has changed in the past decade. While the Supreme Court has taken note of the unlawful use of fetters on child prisoners, a 2003 special report by The News on Sunday indicates the acuteness of the problems that still plague the country's jails.

Amanullah Khan Niazi, three other policemen and an innocent bystander lost their lives in Karachi today. Their killers should be brought to justice. But so should the perpetrators of crimes inside our jails.

Losing the plot

2006-06-11T16:37:00.000+05:00

A pair of editiorials in the Daily Times highlighted the country's drift into the smothering embrace of intolerance and extermism. First, Jamaat-ul-Dawa, the same group involved in the trafficking of children and allowed to operate freely in earthquake zone, organised prayers for Zarqawi. Second, beards in the Punjab assembly demanded an end to the practice of allowing non-Muslims to legally purchase alcohol produced by local distilleries and single brewery.

The government's reaction? None. Jamaat-ul-Dawa, as the Daily Times editorial points out, could not operate so openly without the government's tacit approval. As for the beards, Musharraf has demonstrated time and again that he is willing to accommodate them if it suits his political needs. The government's view may well be that the ends justifies the means, but all too often the means can alter the ends.

Switched off

2006-06-09T14:34:00.000+05:00

Karachites have been suffering more than ever this summer with frequent and prolonged power outages. The situation has already led to violent protests by frustrated and angry residents in a few neighbourhoods and may yet escalate as warnings of disruptions deep into August are being sounded.

A creaking distribution network is the usual culprit, but this particular crisis appears to have been caused by the shortage of 200 MW of electricity at peak hours. The two power authorities at the heart of the problem, KESC (Karachi Electric Suppply Corporation) and WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority), have traded accusations over the reasons for the shortage, but suspicions keep growing that it has been contrived.

KESC was privatised last year as part of the government's ongoing privatisation process and this is the first summer that the new management has been in charge. It appears that officials at WAPDA, a government organisation, fearing that their organisation might be the next on the chopping list, are doing their part in undermining confidence in private sector management of electricity supplies. The unfortunate residents of Karachi are simply the pawns in this high stakes game.

Transparency International has labelled WAPDA as the second-most corrupt organisation in Pakistan, but there appears to be no political will to tackle the problem. Instead the government has decided to force traders and other businesses to close at dusk, thus compounding the misery of the city's shopkeepers and workers. The fact that the electricity shortages are most acute during the sweltering afternoons appears to have been overlooked by the government as has the fact that people are likely to shop on their way home from work.

The issue goes to the heart of the government's neo-liberal policies - all the privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation in the world can be scuppered by the lack of political will to effectively enforce the rules. And ultimately it's the consumers who will pay the price.

A forsaken father

2006-06-03T17:28:00.000+05:00

Outside Pakistan there are few salutary images of the homeland. One that comes to mind is the Empire State Building lit in green and white on August 14. Another that could warm the cockles of any Pakistani's heart is the portrait of Jinnah that hangs at the entrance of the magnificent dining hall in Lincolns Inn. Accomplished individuals are legion at the Inns of Court and for Pakistan's greatest citizen to be honoured thus is significant.

Then there is Pakistan - where the sacred is regularly defiled. This time it's the turn of Jinnah's birthplace. Bureaucrats in charge of the renovation of the home have been accused of embezzling funds for the project. In a long history of pelf and corruption this particular mischief will likely be become a mere footnote; yet, the juxtaposition of Jinnah and corruption is full of pathos.

Over lunch at the aforementioned dining hall, I once explained to a judge the meaning of Jinnah's appellation, Quaid-e-Azam. "Well, as things have turned out, I'm not sure how happy he'd be with that association," was the wry response.

For a reminder of the values the Quaid hoped to impart to the custodians of his progeny, click here and listen to a sample of his speeches.

Yellow brick road

2006-05-30T17:32:00.000+05:00

In the month that Pakistan secured a seat on the new UN Human Rights Council, a UN Special Rapporteur has denounced the forced evictions of Karachi slum dwellers by Pakistani authorities. The evictions are designed to make way for the controversial Liyari Expressway, but the need for the expressway has been thoroughly debunked by Arif Hassan, a renowned urban designer and town planner.

Soldiers of the Pure will sell you a Christian slave

2006-05-29T17:28:00.000+05:00

As if minorities in Pakistan didn't have enough to worry about already, now a banned militant organisation, Jamaat-ul-Dawa aka Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure), has added to their woes by selling Christian boys in a market in Quetta. As this story in the UK's Sunday Times documents, 6 Christian boys were rescued by missionaries from the market and returned to their homes in Punjab.

Jamaat-ul-Dawa gained popular support when it rushed to the aid of earthquake victims last October, but the organisation is really a reincarnation of the ultra-violent jihadi outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba, as both organisations were founded by Hafiz Sayeed and headquartered in Muridke, a town near Lahore.

Taleban? What Taleban?

2006-05-28T01:30:00.000+05:00

Pakistanis have long been familiar with accusations of their government/military sponsoring 'cross-border' terrorism in Kashmir, but we've never been too keen on labelling the Line of Control as a border (de facto though it may). But never one to be tarred by a misstatement, our government/military has diligently ensured that the accusations are true with respect to another border - the one with Afghanistan. As this article in The Guardian chronicles, our support for the Taleban has only undergone cosmetic changes.

The Pakistan government/military has cried itself hoarse denying the claims. The official line: it's a porous border and the Afghans are no better are preventing infiltration. But speaking off the record, we're told something else entirely: "We kept telling the Taleban that they do have a future as a political entity indigenous to the area, whereas al-Qaeda doesn't."

By it's very nature, cloak and dagger stuff means the public may never fully learn the truth. But the documented and continuing presence of the Taleban in Baluchistan tells it's own tale.

The little engines that couldn't

2006-05-27T15:45:00.000+05:00

The stage was set: three retired lieutenant generals accused of corruption by their civilian counterpart; the evidence was incontrovertible - the generals in charge of the Pakistan railways had imported Chinese locomotives that were sub-standard and of the wrong specification; the defence was particularly derisory - a $100 million faux pas blamed on 9/11 and the lack of prospective suppliers.

The result? “Though there was misconduct in the procurement of locomotives, the then administration had made the deal in good faith, therefore, this issue stands settled.”

Misconduct in good faith - an oxymoron if ever there was one. Read more about it here.

Leaving a sour taste

2006-05-26T18:07:00.000+05:00

The clamour for heads to roll over the sugar crisis in Pakistan (prices have doubled in the last couple of years for a commodity close to the hearts of the country's many tea drinkers) has left the PM unperturbed and he has all but exonerated his cabinet colleagues of any mischief. As this article in Dawn catalogues, the PM's comments are simply disingenuous. The irony of the behind-the-scenes politicking is that it's another body blow to this government's image as economic saviours of the common man. It's one thing to fail at improving the lot of the country's poor, but it's quite another to collude in making them worse off.

Battening down the hatches

2006-05-26T01:24:00.000+05:00

It's hardly comeuppance (the less hospitable Adiala Jail has been home to many political prisoners), but apparently the Pakistani government has tightened the house arrest of A.Q. Khan. With the US in a tizzy over Iran and a few days after the House of Representatives reopened the case on the erstwhile 'national hero', it would appear the powers that be have gotten a case of the jitters. Perhaps they were worried that his daughter, a regular visitor until being denied access recently, would sneak out a note naming names?

For an excellent piece on A.Q. Khan's lifetime of deceit and hubris, click here.

A personal failure

2006-05-25T22:46:00.000+05:00

With Musharraf's future dominating the Pakistani political landscape recently, it's an opportune moment to assess his performance so far. Undeniably the choice of metrics is itself a subjective process, but here goes:

1. Economy: far removed from the brink of default and healthier macro statistics; a booming services sector with promise of more to come; inflation and anemic pro-poor policies have marred the report card.

2. Militantism: 80,000 troops in Waziristan have failed to prevent the Talebanization of the area; sectarian violence in Punjab has receded, but now frequently cripples Karachi.

3. Baluchistan: alienation and mega-projects in Baluchistan (which locals believe will dilute their stake in their resource rich province) stirred up a fifth insurgency which Musharraf has shown little capacity for understanding or controlling; ignored his own party's assessment of the problem.

4. India: CBMs galore, but Indians, be it the BJP or Congress, have dug in their heels on Kashmir; dreams of a Nobel Prize have receded.

5. Women: a few firsts (1/3 allocation of seats to women in elected assemblies, appointed woman to head the State Bank), but nothing for the ordinary woman; notoriously dismissed rape victims as gold-diggers; bundled another, Dr. Shazia Khalid, out of the country; no attempt to revise the Hudood Ordinance.

6. Minorities: set back any discussion of the blasphemy law by a decade when minimal cosmetic changes were quickly shelved to placate the beards

7. Enlightened moderation: if we had late night comedy on TV, the phrase would be comedians' manna; courted the beards to get his constitutional amendment and handed over two provinces to drag further back into the dark ages; mercifully has stopped casting himself as a modern day Ataturk.

It would appear then that the General has been a personal failure. The economy has never been his forte, and credit - as well as the blame - should be laid at the feet of his team of imported economic managers. Yet, it's also the one topic he prefers to focus on because it's the only area where his government has met with success. Everything he appears to personally initiate, administer or supervise either goes into decline or is afflicted by stasis. Which brings us to the key question: how much does Pakistan really need this one man? For his western supporters, he's cast himself as the bulwark against extremism; meanwhile at home he's been quick to jump into bed with the political sponsors of that very extremism. It's widely believed that his key constituency, the corps commanders, acts on consensus, and, anway, after seven years of purging and gently nudging out rivals, it's likely they largely share his outlook.

So what use then this man in uniform? Isn't it time he took off the uniform and jumped into the mud pit of Pakistani politics? If anything, his rule has pointed to one irrefutable trait: he can can mix it up with the best of our civilian politicians.

Hoodwinked by the Hudood Ordinance

2006-05-25T01:26:00.000+05:00

Geo TV's 'Zahre Sochieye' (Think) campaign has turned the spotlight on the sacrosanct status of Zia's Hudood Ordinance, and the conclusion of the beards they sought out for comment is unanimous: the Ordinance is indeed amenable to scrutiny and revision.

But don't pop the champagne (non-alcoholic, if you so choose) corks just yet. While it is a good thing that the topic is being debated on Pakistan's most popular TV channel, in my opinion it leaves a lot to be desired. The framing of a debate is critical to its success, and on this score Geo fails miserably: the channel posits the Hudood Ordinance as divine law that may be legitimately considered to be immune from scrutiny. The very idea that a repressive militay dictator could be acting as an agent of Allah is clearly an insult to any religion, but Geo isn't brave enough to tackle the obvious head on. Indeed, in the FAQs section of its website, the channel issues this disclaimer: Geo does not aim to repeal the Hudood Ordinance or amend it.

So expect no more than talking heads and learned beards to soberly state the obvious. My suggestion: tune in to the Late Show with Begum Nawazish Ali on Aaj TV instead.

Refusing to grow up

2006-05-24T18:49:00.000+05:00

The recent glut of imported cars in Pakistan has been a significant factor in the country's worsening current account and the local automotive industry is - predictably - up in arms. But there are two sides to every story. The local automotive sector was cosseted for over a decade in a classic example of 'infant industry' economic reasoning: protect local industry from foreign competition in its nascent phase so as to allow them to reach economies of scale, expertise, competitiveness, etc. later on. The national economy is the winner as both consumers and producers are better off in the long-term. Impeccable logic.

Except it doesn't work. Weaning local industry off its incentives and lack of competition is notoriously difficult. The automotive lobby in Pakistan has grown to be particularly formidable, and moves are afoot to restore their ascendancy. As this report from Dawn suggests, the lobby and its allies in parliament are conspiring to continue to defraud the consumer. According to the report,the Indus Motor Company, which began production thirteen years ago, has stated that a 'long-term policy and restriction on imports of used car is necessary'. Obviously a decade isn't enough to get their house in order.

Whether the industry is simply incapable of ever achieving competitiveness is a technical question, but anyone who has tried to buy a car in Pakistan can attest to another truth: motor companies, car dealerships and banks have conspired to keep the sticker price of a car out of reach. Through a combination of that peculiar creature known as 'on' money and long waiting lists, anyone who wants to buy a car outright is probably better off obtaining car financing from a bank.

Given the collusion between the industry and our legislators, effective policing of the industry appears out of the question. In the meantime, for once the government's mantra of neo-liberalism can come to the rescue of consumers. For the sake of car users across the country, let's hope efficiency trumps nepotism.

Killing fields?

2006-05-23T22:41:00.000+05:00

A day after the US House of Representatives re-opened the case on A.Q. Khan's network of death, a Pakistani senator has come out with claims that the country's nuclear program has been dumping radioactive waste in the open. The government has issued its predicatable denial, but more revelations will undoubtedly follow in the days and weeks ahead. If our nuclear guardians turned a blind eye to the export of their deadly technology, it would be hardly be surprising if allegations of domestic malfeasance are proved to be true.

Discussion of the country's nuclear program is conspicuously absent from the national press and it remains firmly hidden behind a veil of secrecy. If these allegations gain momentum they may be welcomed for not only exposing possible criminal liability but for also chipping away at that wall of secrecy. Another interesting fact: the allegations have been made by a member of the ruling PML-Q - Musharraf's own party. The cracks in the system keep growing wider.

Pakistani lawmaker says nuclear waste dumped in open

Tue May 23, 2006 5:24 PM IST

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani lawmaker on Tuesday accused the country's nuclear authorities of dumping radioactive waste near a village in central Punjab province, causing cancer, miscarriages, and infertility among villagers and livestock.

Senator Sardar Jamal Khan Leghari said tonnes of contaminated waste from milled uranium had been dumped outside abandoned mines in Baghalchur village, some 350 km southwest of Islamabad, flouting international nuclear safety norms.

"It is fact. It is a matter of security of our people and animals," Leghari, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) and son of a former president, told Reuters.

The lawmaker said the country's two prime nuclear institutions, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and Kahuta Research Laboratory (KRL), dumped radioactive waste in the area.

PAEC issued a statement on Saturday saying no waste was dumped in the open. It was disposed of in caverns that were fenced off and guarded against intruders.

PAEC said it has not found radioactivity in water, vegetation and air during its regular surveillance in the area.

"No dumping of this waste is being undertaken in the open but in specially prepared rooms/caverns," it said.

Leghari maintained that, due to uranium radiation, the rate of miscarriages, infertility, cancer and skin-related diseases had increased 200 percent in his constituency of Choti, some 100 km away (62 miles) from the dumping area.

"I have proof. We conducted survey and collected about 1,200 samples from Choti," he said adding that he planned to present the evidence in parliament.

Last week, a bushfire broke out near PAEC's uranium extraction plant near Baghalchur, in Dera Ghazi Khan district, raising a scare over safety at the facility.

Residents had earlier filed a case against PAEC, out of fear that it was dumping nuclear waste in the area. The proceedings were being conducted behind closed doors.

Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and many aspects of its nuclear programme remain secret.

openDemocracy.net

2006-05-23T01:51:00.000+05:00

A valuable alternative to the MSM on the web is openDemocracy.net. Described as a forum for human rights and democracy, there's a wealth of information that is organized thematically. It's interesting to note that the India/Pakistan section is listed under the theme of Conflict. While this says much about how the outside world continues to view Pakistan, the section nevertheless contains some incisive analysis from regional journalists. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Shooting the messenger

2006-05-22T17:24:00.000+05:00

Fourteen months into the job, the NWFP Governor, Khalilur Rehman, has been unceremoniously dumped by Musharraf. According to this report in Dawn, Musharraf was unhappy with Rehman's handling of the situation in Waziristan.

At his swearing-in ceremony the Governor told reporters, "I would follow merit and ensure justice and fairplay. Accelerating the pace of development in Fata would be my foremost priority." Against a backdrop of 80,000 troops waging an all-out war in Waziristan, it was always unlikely that the political option would succeed.

Perhaps instead of changing his Governors, Musharraf needs to re-think his policy in the tribal areas. Seven years of political machinations at the top haven't blunted his soldier's instinct for using force to crush opposition. FATA's tribal leaders may be anathema to democrats, but in times of crisis a silken touch is needed. Unless the centre moderates its language of force, Governor No. 26 may soon find himself making way for No. 27.

They take the bus

2006-05-21T15:09:00.000+05:00

It seems that the recent boom in the automobile sector has passed by some of the country's political elite. At a time when its probably easier to obtain car financing than to pay a utility bill, some 100 parliamentarians would have us believe that they - and their spouses and dependents - don't own a car.

Based on the list, I have a few suggestions:
-Humayun Akhtar Khan, the Commerce Minister, should be relieved of his post. What use an architect of commerce who can't afford his own car? Incidentally, perhaps it's time people stop referring to him as 'Million Dollar Khan'.
-Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali should sell some of the official gifts he carted off to buy himself a car.
-Qazi Hussein Ahmed should have educated his sons in one of his madressahs instead of the US and used the savings to buy his family a car.
-Had 'Maulana Diesel' aka Maulan Fazlur Rehman stored away a few gallons he may yet have been able to afford a car in these days of high petrol prices.

You can log your protest here.

The News, 21/05/06
Believe it or not — they don’t own a car
By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: Almost 100 members of the National Assembly including those known for being fabulously rich do not have any conveyance of their own.

Their declaration of assets as notified by the Election Commission exposes the financial strength, if one tends to believe their returns, of the Chaudhrys, Soomros, Pirs, Gilanis, Qureshis, Sardars, Mirs, Achakzais, Rajas, Fatianas, Nakais, Wattos, Mengals and many others of the country’s elite.

It really looks unbelievable when the likes of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Rao Sikandar Iqbal, Humayun Akhtar Khan, Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Faisal Saleh Hayat, Muhammad Nasir Khan, Ejaz-ul-Haq, Raza Hayat Hiraj declare “solemnly” that they don’t have a car to drive.

A total of 13 MNA ministers and ministers of state are included in the list of those having no conveyance.

Even some opposition members who are considered well-off like Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s Mian Muhammad Aslam, Pakistan People’s Party-Parliamentarians’ Raja Pervez Ashraf, MMA’s Hafiz Suleman Butt, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, etc, also fall in the same category of MNAs.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rehman also say that they don’t own any car. Amongst the women MPs, besides several others, Dr Attiya Inayatullah and Kashmala Tariq have also declared to have no vehicle.

The Election Commission declaration bound members of the National Assembly to declare not only their own assets but also the assets of their spouses and dependent children.

Amongst the ministers and ministers of state the “car-less” brigade includes Rao Sikandar Iqbal, Humayun Akhtar Khan, Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, Maj (retd) Tahir Iqbal, Dr Sher Afgan, Wasi Zafar, Muhammad Nasir Khan, Ijazul Haq, Ghaus Bux Khan Mahar, Ghulam Bibi Bharwana and Muhammad Raza Hayat Hiraj.

Begum Shahnaz Shaikh had a car but sold it.

Such MNAs, both of the treasury and opposition benches, include Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Chaudhry Amir Hussain (wife has a car), Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Mian Muhammad Aslam, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Hafiz Salman Butt, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, Zumarud Khan, Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi, Chaudhry Muhammad Asim Nazir, Raja Ali Khan Baloch, Muhammad Safdar Shakir, Rana Asif Tauseef, Dr Nisar Ahmad, Mushtaq Ali Cheema, Chaudhry Abid Ali, Ch Amjad Ali, Muhammad Farhan Latif, Riaz Khan Fatiana, Ch Imranullah, Qari Hameedullah Khan, Imtiaz Safdar Warraich, Chaudhry Bilal Ejaz, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Rehman Naseer, Muhammad Pervez Malik has got a tractor but wife owns a car, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Farooq Ahmad Mir, Malik Zaheer Abbas Khokhar, Samina Khalid Ghurki, Brig (retd) Zulfiqar Ahmad Dhillon, Khurram Munawar, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad, Sikandar Talib Hussain Nakai, Rai Muhammad Aslam Khan Kharal, Rubina Shaheen Watto, Rana Mahmoodul Hasan, Makhdoomzada Syed Asad Murtaza Gilani, Engineer Muhammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, Syed Ali Hussain Gilani, Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob Khan Nasar, Maulana Muhammad Khan Sheerani, Mir Ghulam Haider Khan, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Abdul Rauf Mangal, Maulana Hamidul Haq Haqqani, Attaur Rehman, Maulana Amanullah Khan (using son’s car), Asadullah, Maulana Syed Naik Zaman, Habibullah Bughio, Mir Ijaz Hussain Jakhrani, Shamshad Sattar Baghani, Pir Aftab Hussain Shah, Syed Ayaz Ali Shah Sheerazi, Muhammad Ali Malkani, Muhammad Laeeq Khan, Syed Haider Abbas Rizvi, Israul Ebad Khan, Abdus Sattar, Muhammad Shamim Siddiqi, Sher Mohammad Baloch, Maulvi Noor Muhammad, Haji Gull Muhammad Dummar, Maulana Rahmatullah Khalil (using brother’s Suzuki), Sabir Hussain Awan, Maulana Muhammad Qasim, Muhammad Usman advocate, Maulana Khalil Ahmad, Shah Abdul Aziz, Sardar Shahjahan Yousaf, Maulana Abdul Malik, Maulana Abdul Haleem, Haroonur Rashid and Muhammad Noorul Haq.

Amongst women MPs, who were voted to the NA on the reserved seats for women include Dr Donyia Aziz, Kashmala Tariq, Dr Attyia Inayatullah, Begum Tehmina Dasti, Ms Onaza Ehsan, Bushra Anwar Sipra, Dr Rozina Tufail, Rukhsana Bangash, Samia Raheel Qazi, Mrs Mahmoona Hashmi, Ayla Malik Rind, Dr Firdaus Ashiq Awan, Riffat Amjad, Ms Ruqia Khanam Soomro, Rubina Saadat Qaim Khan, Mrs Shamim Akhtar, Mrs Shabina Talat, Afsar Begum, Gul-e-Farkhanda, Khurshid Afghan and Inayat Begum.

Such minority members of the National Assembly are M P Bhandara, Professor Mushtaq Victor, Krishan Bheel and Devdas Shagman.

As against the above there are two Maulanas — Maulana Abdul Malik and Maulana Merajuddin — who have no assets but a car each.

P.S. The PSDP isn't working

2006-05-20T13:41:00.000+05:00

The numbers are in and yet again the utilisation of the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) funds is abysmal: only Rs. 103 billion of the Rs. 204 billion federal share has been spent in the first nine months of the current fiscal year. One can only wish that the military emulate their development counterparts in thriftiness.

Three observations are in order. First, the last quarter is going to see a spurt in expenditure as departments scramble to meet budgetary targets. The planning commission has baldly stated that '(t)he expenditure is likely to further pick up in the last quarter ... Rs193 billion (95 per cent) of the total Rs204 billion federal allocation would be spent up to June 30, 2006.' (Dawn) In turning on the spigot issues such as quality, merit and utility of projects are sure to fall by the wayside.

Second, the same planning commission has budgeted Rs. 250 billion as the federal share of next year's PSDP fund. No one realistically expects such an amount to be utilized, but it's a nice number for Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz to throw around in the countless foreign capitals they will visit next year.

Third, there will be no attempt to understand why the PSDP has failed to be fully utilized year after year now. A developing country by definition has no shortage of sectors in need of development. The likely culprit is institutional capacity: there just isn't enough expertise or manpower to take advantage of the vasts sums of money being poured into the system. In fact, providing departments with the financial wherewithal but not the necessary management is a recipe for incompetence, corruption and worse.

Early into his regime, Musharraf's financial mandarins set out a three-stage plan to rehabilitate the economy. Seven years on we are firmly into the third stage - long-term social development. Embrace neo-liberal policies and pay no attention to the new class of the super-rich, we were told, for they were only a means to an end. Now that the time has come to start to deliver on the promised end, it keeps getting pushed farther into the future. A particularly damning statistic from the PSDP accounts is that the utilisation ratio of social sector and infrastructure funds is amongst the lowest of all sectors. Khaleeq Kiani (The Outcome of Increased Public Spending, Dawn, 27/03/06), in an assessment of half-yearly expenditures, provided the following utilisation statistics: labour ministry (1.2%), women development (5.3%), local government (nil), industries (5.7%), commerce (3.9%), water sector infrastructure (28%).

It's time our economic managers made the postscript of their memos the main subject.

Wither revolution?

2006-05-20T04:07:00.000+05:00

Not if you're Nepalese! The reinstated House of Representatives has begun to systematically dismantle the Monarchy-Army nexus that tried to turn back the clock on modernity 15 months ago. The army is being placed more firmly under the control of the Cabinet and soon the army chief's head may roll.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan the army seems more entrenched than ever and the Bhutto-Sharif Charter of Democracy has been met with snickers. In fact Musharraf himself couldn't resist mocking the Charter by assigning Mushahid Hussain to examine the document - Mushahid after all was the trumpeter-in-chief of the deposed Sharif government, but is now the Secretary General of Musharraf's party. There is also the wonderful irony of Pakistani politicians hunkering down in the capital of the erstwhile British Raj to devise a strategy to depose a government of their fellow Pakistanis. Jinnah is surely turning in his grave.

The problem for democrats in Pakistan is simple, yet depressing: Bhutto and Sharif have been utterly discredited by their 90s back-and-forth, while the radical Islamist option (assuming it can itself move beyond its own corrupt politics) is pure anathema. Who will lead us out of the wilderness?

Protecting the Taleban?

2006-05-19T13:05:00.000+05:00

As frustration mounts over the rising number of deaths on the Afghan side of the border, the chorus of accusations aimed at Pakistan grows louder. The former editor of Herald, Aamer Ahmed Khan, has given a cogent explanation of post-9/11 events: in the wake of the American war the Pakistan military/government reassured their erstwhile allies, the Taleban, that they still had a future in the region. The Taleban's presence in and around Quetta is well-known; Pakistani reporter, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, was jailed for four months for acting as a stringer for two French journalists who filmed the Taleban moving around freely in Quetta and other nearby tribal areas.

Pakistan sheltering Taliban, says British officer

Declan Walsh in Kandahar
Friday May 19, 2006

Guardian

A senior British officer accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban to use its territory as a "headquarters" for attacks on western troops in Afghanistan as insurgents struck on multiple fronts yesterday.

In one of the worst 24-hour periods since they were ousted from power in 2001, the Taliban launched two suicide bombs, numerous firefights and a massive assault on a village in Helmand province, where 3,300 British soldiers are being deployed. The violence, which started on Wednesday night, caused 105 deaths including 87 Taliban, 15 police, an American civilian and a Canadian woman soldier, according to the highest estimates. British forces were not involved.

Colonel Chris Vernon, chief of staff for southern Afghanistan, said the Taliban leadership was coordinating its campaign from the western Pakistani city of Quetta, near the Afghan border. "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It's the major headquarters," he told the Guardian. "They use it to run a series of networks in Afghanistan."

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, echoed these comments by accusing Pakistan of arming the insurgents. "Pakistani intelligence gives military training to people and then sends them to Afghanistan with logistics," the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency quoted him as saying.

Col Vernon said the Quetta leadership controlled "about 25" mid-level commanders dotted across the Afghan south, one of whom was captured last month. He declined to name him.

The unusually forthright British criticism, reflecting sentiments normally expressed in private by western commanders, drew a furious denial from the Pakistani military.

"It is absolutely absurd that someone is talking like this. If the Taliban leadership was in Quetta we would be out of our minds not to arrest them," said a spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan. "They should give us actionable intelligence so that we can take action."

The clash reflects growing tensions between Pakistan and the west as Nato prepares to assume command of southern Afghanistan from the US on July 31.

About 7,000 troops from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are deploying to Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces, while another 1,000 Americans and Romanians will be stationed in Zabul.

Kandahar has suffered the worst upheaval, much of it apparently aimed at unbalancing the Nato mission before it can settle down. Canadian troops have been pummelled with a string a suicide attacks, roadside bombs and an axe attack on an officer during a village meeting.

On Wednesday a suicide bomber rammed into a UN vehicle near the main coalition base at Kandahar airport, killing himself and injuring the driver. Col Vernon said he had tightened security on the road after similar attacks in March by "imposing Northern Ireland procedures". On Wednesday night hundreds of Taliban fighters assailed Musa Qala village in northern Helmand, sparking an eight-hour battle that officials said left 40 militants and 13 police dead.

Having convulsed the volatile south, the guerrilla summer offensive now threatens the rest of the country. Yesterday suicide bombers struck in the normally peaceful cities of Herat in the west and Ghazni to the north, killing an Afghan motorcyclist and a US police trainer.

"This is the worst things have been since the fall of the Taliban," said a western source in Kandahar.

Across the border, worried British and Canadian diplomats are pressing the Pakistani government to take a tougher approach to the Taliban. Although Pakistan forces have killed or arrested hundreds of al-Qaida suspects since 2001, it has detained only a handful of Taliban officials. The last big catch was spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi, who was arrested in October 2005 after his mobile phone was traced to Quetta.

"Clearly the Taliban are at large in Baluchistan, operating in Quetta. Obviously that's a cause for concern," said a British diplomat in Islamabad. "There's no evidence of a serious network of Taliban camps but it's easy for them to take cover in Afghan refugee camps."

The 930-mile border, most of it barren mountains and desert, is notoriously porous. Maj Gen Sultan said that it was impossible for Pakistani officials to discriminate between ordinary Afghans and Taliban insurgents.

Col Vernon did not say whether Mullah Omar, the Taliban's leader, was also sheltering in Quetta. Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan worsened sharply in March after Afghan allegations that Omar, Osama bin Laden and more than 100 Taliban leaders were hiding in Pakistan.

The Taliban fight has also become a propaganda war. The insurgents regularly paste "night letters" - threatening tracts against "collaborators" - on walls and doors in southern villages. A Taliban radio station has also started operating in Helmand, where the British troops are being deployed. Nato commanders are retaliating, pushing local media to publicise their successes. Domestic pressure means western journalists are also coming under scrutiny.

Of Champions and Supremacy

2006-05-19T02:59:00.000+05:00

Musharraf's latest gems:

“There is no ambiguity in Constitution in this context. But people debating the issue of president’s election are unaware of the constitution,” President Musharraf said in a brief interview with AVT Khyber late on Wednesday.

“I completely believe in supremacy of parliament and stability of democratic institutions. And completion of the legitimate five-year tenure by the existing assemblies will provide an ample proof of my assertion that I’m the champion of democracy,” the president said.

Famous for shooting from the hip, these latest pronouncements are all the more cringe-worthy as only a few days ago our 'champion of democracy' decided to set up shop in Parliament for the day to paper over the cracks in his PML-Q coalition.

Champion of Democarcy v Charter of Democracy: Pakistanis really do suffer their fools gladly.

What's in a number?

2006-05-18T14:12:00.000+05:00

Well, everything really if you go by budgets. For 2006-07 the Government/Military of Pakistan has proposed increasing defence expenditure from Rs. 224 billion to Rs. 280 billion. That's a full 25% increase! Puts war budgets to shame. But there you have it; proof, if you needed any, that the army looks after its own.

Thinking about Musharraf's attempts to cling on to civilian (President - or perhaps PM?) and military (COAS) power, it occurred to me that it was another indication of his failure of leadership over the past 7 years. 7 years this man has had and he hasn't even been able to convince his most important constituency, the Corps Commanders, that his policies are the best option for Pakistan. Musharraf doesn't strike me as a megalomaniac, so it's safe to say he doesn't want to hang on for fear of becoming one of the many Generals of Coups Past that dot the rolling hills of Islamabad and Pindi. Essentially this man can't trust his own people - the army, of course - to carry the baton for his brand of change. What hope for the rest of us then?

Hello

2006-05-15T02:37:00.000+05:00