GENERAL Pervez Musharraf needs to act now, act decisively and act comprehensively to ensure that Pakistan does not return to political and economic instability after October 2002. There are enough people in Pakistan — among them not only bankers and businessmen but also politicians — who worry that something quite significant needs to be done in order to save the country from another period of chaos and uncertainty.

Given where Pakistan is situated, there must also be a large number of people concerned about Pakistan’s economic and political situation to hope for some fairly significant reshaping of Pakistan’s political landscape. Will General Musharraf rise to this challenge? Has the Supreme Court judgment that legitimized his assumption of power on October 12, 1999 given him enough space within which to introduce a fundamental change? Will the political establishment allow him to change the structure in a radical way? Should the general and his advisers treat the 1973 Constitution as if it is divine revelation not subject to any kind of tinkering? Or, conversely, should he take the courageous step of wiping the slate almost clean and starting all over again?

These are all very important questions; to answer them will need more space than available in one article. Accordingly, this article will appear in two parts. In today’s piece and the one that will appear in tomorrow’s edition, I will suggest the approach the military government could adopt in correcting the imbalances that are at the root of Pakistan’s political problems. However, before I get to the main subject of these two write-ups, I need to explain how I got engaged in this enterprise in the first place.

Political science is not my subject. Politics has never been my vocation. The only time I came face to face with politics and politicians was in 1996-97 when, as a member of Prime Minister Meraj Khalid’s government, I managed Pakistan’s economy and finance.

But economists — a profession I have pursued now for nearly four decades — cannot be unmindful of politics. Economics and politics act and react in many different ways. Those who practise one discipline but ignore the other do so at considerable peril to themselves and their subject. This is the lesson taught by Pakistan’s turbulent history of nearly 55 years. Politics intervened every time Pakistan seemed on the verge of economic take-off.

Similarly, economics intruded on every occasion Pakistan seemed to be finding its political feet. The time has come for us to produce a positive interaction between these two forces rather than continue to have them interact negatively upon one another.

We need to get economics and politics to support each other since Pakistan’s economy seems poised to move forward. Investor confidence is returning. Karachi, the heart of Pakistan’s finance and commerce, is buzzing with activity. State Banks’ coffers are full. The rupee has strengthened against the dollar. There is excitement in the air. All this is happening in spite of the damage done to the economy and the uncertainty created by the events of September 11, 2001.

However, co-existing with this palpable return of confidence is a deep worry about October 2002. What will happen once the Musharraf government gives way to an administration peopled by politicians? Although the general has indicated that he will stay on in his present job for a period of five years and although he has pledged that the policies adopted by his government will continue even under the new administration, can we be sure that the economy will not be disturbed? Will the Pakistani economy continue to run on the track laid down by the general and his associates or will it be derailed once again by people’s elected representatives?

Before answering this question, I will take a moment to say a few words about my recently concluded thirteen day stay in Pakistan. I arrived in the country on February 25 and left on March 10. During that time, I visited Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. Along with Professor Mohammad Waseem, I spoke at four seminars — one held in Islamabad, two in Lahore, and one in Karachi. Two of these seminars were organized by the British High Commission in Pakistan, one jointly by the newspapers Jung and The News, and one by the Lahore University of Management Sciences. About a hundred and fifty people came to these events and several of them engaged us in earnest debate.

All four seminars dealt with the same subject — “Strengthening Democracy in Pakistan: A practical Programme.” Our presentation at these seminars drew from a study Professor Waseem and I had prepared at the invitation of the United Kingdom Department of International Development (DFID). The study was published under the same title used for the four seminars.

Although the study as well as our visit to Pakistan was financed by the DFID, the report was written entirely by Professor Waseem and myself. The U.K. authorities made no attempt to influence in any way the content of the document. But why were they interested in this project? I can only guess what might be their reason. London is perhaps concerned that in spite of several past attempts, Pakistan has not succeeded in achieving political stability. In 55 years, it has tried four constitutional arrangements -in 1956, 1962, 1973 and 1985. Although the structure put in place in 1985 was built on the Constitution promulgated in 1973, the eighth amendment introduced a number of significant changes — especially in the distribution of powers between the legislative and the executive. It is therefore legitimate to regard the 1985 structure as something quite separate from the one put in place in 1973.

None of these arrangements proved durable. Given that, what is the assurance that using the old system, even with some changes, would bring stability back to Pakistan. The West is worried about continuing political turmoil in Pakistan for an obvious reason. As already indicated, Pakistan sits on the faultline where Arab Islam meets the Islam of Central and South Asia. It is interesting that Al-Qaeda, which drew its inspiration from a number of radical Arab activists and thinkers, found its feet not in an Arab country but in a Central Asian nation.

Why that happened is a subject to which serious scholarship will be ultimately attracted. For the moment, I need only to underscore the important point that persistent political instability creates non-governable space within which movements such as Al-Qaeda could take root. The West obviously wants to prevent such a development and it is important for Pakistan to join that project.

The recognition that the region of which Pakistan now has become an integral part is still a long way from becoming stable has come, but it has arrived slowly. To take one example, Martha Brill Olcott, an expert on the Central Asian region, worries in a recent article about a proliferation of “Afghanistan-like states.” Such states could appear in the region of Central Asia. Or, Pakistan could move in that direction.

The UK government is not the only one to recognize that there has to be some serious nation building efforts launched in the world’s sensitive spots to ensure that the events of September 11 do not repeat themselves.

As the West observed the six-months’ anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America, several commentators began to articulate the belief that military action of the type undertaken by America will not provide a solution to the underlying problem — alienation from both domestic and global institutions of a very large number of people.

Some are deeply worried that President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech may provoke destabilization in the very regions where political and economic tranquillity needs to prevail. As Dan Plesch put it in a recent paper: “the international equivalent of inner-city regeneration are neglected at the expense of more equipment for the riot squad.” Applying force can be only a small component of solving the problem that produced September 11. A large part of it will be the building of political and economic institutions that will provide a sense of participation as well as economic rewards to the unhappy segments of the population. It was in this spirit that I approached my own participation in the project on strengthening democracy in Pakistan.

This thirteen-day stay in Pakistan was not spent in only addressing seminar audiences in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. I also spent a good amount of time meeting with a large number of people. I met one-on-one or in small groups scores of politicians who had held senior position in previous administrations. I also met many journalists, academics, bankers and members of the business community. As can be expected, I encountered a vast range of views on the subject at hand — strengthening democracy. There were those who held with great passion that repeated military interventions had held back Pakistan’s political development.

As one academic put it: “Send the military back to barracks, bring back the political parties and give them the opportunity to serve their full term in office and all will be well.”

I do not agree with this view. I am more inclined to accept the argument advanced by those who believe that this is a good time to take a good look at Pakistan’s political history and draw some important lessons from it.

One of them is that the political structure that is currently on hold will not serve the people when it gets restored. It needs to be dismantled with a view to putting in place something very different. Before going on to recommend what should be the shape of things to come, I want to make one more general observation.

President Pervez Musharraf, during his recent visit to the United States, said that the Pakistani society was divided into three components: Two fringes on either side of the spectrum and a vast majority in between.

One fringe comprised the devotees of radical and militant Islam; the other the ultra liberal community that blindly followed the West. Both fringes were rejected by the vast majority of the Pakistani population. This majority — the silent majority — wanted its voice to be heard and he was determined that he would make that happen.

I divide the Pakistani society also into three components but one of them is different from President Musharraf’s list. He is right in saying that there is a small radical Islamic element in the country with little support among the people, occupying a small amount of space on one side of the political spectrum. He is also right in saying that there is a vast majority in the middle that has been silent and now wants to be heard. But the third element in my scheme is not the ultra liberal but the powerful political elite that has quite deliberately refused to allow the silent majority to find its voice.

The programme of political reform that Professor Waseem and I presented in our study is directed at loosening the grip of this group on Pakistan’s political system. Another general election in October 2002 — following upon the general elections of 1985, 1988, 1990, 1993 and 1997 — will not release the powerful hold of this small elite on the country’s political system. To do so will require some radical political engineering. What form should that take is the subject of tomorrow’s article.

IS it safe to say that ever since the war against terrorism began, the threat of future terrorist action has diminished? That would be one way of measuring the progress of the war.

In the same vein, have the number of terrorists and potential terrorists increased or decreased? Certainly, in Palestine, the risk is very real that the Israelis may turn an entire people into terrorists as the only option against genocide or what appears to be a genocide in instalments.

In the memorial service that was recently held for the September 11 victims, someone should have prayed for the Palestinians who seem to be paying the price for the shameless terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

It was September 11 that emboldened Ariel Sharon to go on the rampage. Ariel Sharon could have been stopped but the Israeli lobby is too strong in the United States.

Whatever we may think of the late Richard Nixon, and I have a low opinion of him, in the recently released tapes (previously embargoed) Nixon and Billy Graham, the evangelist, agree that the problem was “the total Jewish domination of the media.” What the Israelis are doing in Palestine would make the Nazis appear as saints.

The Israelis are committing war crimes but they are safe in their knowledge that they will not be held accountable because war crimes are for defeated people and their leaders, not the victorious ones. No one weeps for the dead Palestinians except the Palestinians and even as they attend the funerals, they know, the next time, it could be their own funeral.

I have been reading The Rogue State by William Blum and since the book is available in Pakistan, I would recommend others to do so. Not because the book blows the lid off the myth that “the US is hardly the beacon of democracy, freedom and justice it proffers itself to be,” but it shows how slippery the moral high ground can be. And how easily the people can be misled.

I spent my formative years in the United States and count myself as someone who made many friends in that country and received kindness and generosity from so many decent people. A person like me would be a natural sympathiser. I cannot say that the book ‘shocked’ me for I have done a lot of reading on the United States such as Anthony Summers The Arrogance of Power, Seymour Hersh’s The Darkside of Camelot, Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie, Robert McNamara’s In Reterospect, Christopher Hitchens’ The Trial of Henry Kissinger, David Harris’ Our War among others.

None of these authors would be on the watch-list of the FBI as being suspected terrorists of enemies of the United States. Neither, I would suspect, would William Blum be. In the good old days, Joe McCarthy would have called them “communists” and sought and got Edgar J. Hoover’s assistance to have them put on a blacklist. But there is no communist threat now except from North Korea, a country mentioned in dispatches as being one in the axis of evil.

Because Afghanistan is in the news, William Blum’s book gives an insight into certain facts that are not so well known and may be even embarrassing. He writes: “Consider Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter. In a 1998 interview, he admitted that the official story that the US gave military aid to the Afghanistan opposition only after the Soviet invasion was a lie.

The truth was, he said, that the US began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahedeen six months before the Russians made their move, even though he believed and told this to Carter that this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Brzezinski was asked whether he regretted this decision and his response was: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it!

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed for almost ten years, Moscow had to carry a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralisation and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”

William Blum adds his own epitaph: “Besides the fact that there is no demonstrable connection between the Afghanistan war and the breakup of the Soviet empire, we are faced with the consequences of that war... half the population either dead, disabled or refugees.”

We have always known that things are not that clear-cut as they seem. The real tragedy lies in the refusal to learn from mistakes and even worse to divide the world into good guys and bad guys, the good guys can do no evil, the bad guys (who keep changing) can do nothing but evil.

Perhaps, there is no such place as the moral high ground. It is one of those shining, bright lies that governments are given to telling gullible people who, otherwise, would have placed some value on human life.

LAST month General Pervez Musharraf travelled to Washington to bask in the limelight given to the leader of a key nation in the global war against terrorism. This month he travelled to Tokyo to receive accolades for the role Islamabad played in the fallout of the events of September 11.

There were dinners and toasts and warm words. Yet the bouquet the general most yearned for remained outside his reach. He failed in his bid to derail Pakistani democracy.

The general hoped that by joining the war against terror, he could keep himself in power and deny the will of the people. He has said he is interested in democracy “as a label”.

In Washington he surprised audiences by declaring, “you want the label of democracy. Okay. I will put a label” making it clear that dictatorship would continue under re-labelling. His foreign secretary advised discretion. But the general, being “forthright” when needed, made the same statement at his next meeting.

“My foreign secretary”, he said, “doesn’t like me saying this but you want me to put the label of democracy. Okay, I will put it”.

Since then, he repeatedly labels dictatorship as “democracy”. In the new language, engineered elections are labelled “fair elections” and “military will” is labelled as the “people’s will”.

Musharraf was met with much fanfare in Tokyo as befits the leader of a key country in an international alliance. His own role in guiding Islamabad to join the international alliance was appreciated and acknowledged. However, Japan, committed to democratic values as its global foreign policy made it clear that it supported the restoration of democracy in Pakistan through the holding of fair and free elections.

The insistence on the restoration of Pakistani democracy is critical to the global democratization structure put in place after the fall of the Soviet Union. There are many other countries out there, and many other ambitious generals and politicians watching Pakistan to see if they too can come out of the wings and impose tyranny. The world can ill afford a community where the choice is between the military dictator and the Taliban dictator.

This places General Musharraf in a quandary. Fair elections, according to political indicators, mean the return of the popular Pakistan People’s Party and its leadership. This the general has, rather unwisely, sworn to oppose — and boxed himself into a corner.

He has threatened to lock up the key opposition. He did it by arresting over one thousand peaceful activists agitating on a water issue on March 15. However, locking up the opposition is one thing and stopping them from contesting from behind the prison bars is another. And the more the general fights the opposition, especially the ladies, the less heroic he looks to his own men. Muslim culture venerates women as mothers and sisters. Men who lock them up lose respect.

Caught in the bind between culture and politics, the military regime considers passing a law preventing a political leader from contesting for chief executive thrice. The problem is that any law the regime passes needs parliamentary ratification. And the laws that the parliament ratifies depends on whether the elections are engineered or fair.

The military regime did hold several rounds of talks with political leaders of all shades and hues initially. But the negotiation between the main opposition and the generals is logjammed on three issues.

The first issue pertains to the release of political prisoners, the return of the exiles and the withdrawal of politically motivated cases that ran their course and remain unproven in their sixth year. The second logjam is on the proposed law banning a person from election as a chief executive for the third time. The third logjam is on the opposition insistence that certain election modalities be adopted to ensure fair elections in name rather than in labelling.

The third logjam causes the most apprehension among the military regime. It apprehends that if there are fair elections, a popular party leader can influence the Assembly from Dubai, London or Washington. The case study of the previous opposition Azad Jammu and Kashmir government is cited. This would make the general dependent on the goodwill of the party leader rather than the parliament dependent on the goodwill of the general. Thus it appears that the military regime is on a double collision course: both with the democratic opposition candidate for prime ministership as well as with the concept of fair elections.

The absence of fair elections condemns Islamabad to continuing instability. The new premier can blackmail the president by threatening to join with the democratic opposition. This is what Premier Junejo did in the eighties taking generals from their plush Mercedes Benz limousines and putting them in small Suzuki cars. He defied them on other issues too, such as the Geneva process relating to Afghanistan. Such defiance strained his relations with the military president. He was dismissed, of course ostensibly for corruption and incompetence. Islamabad plunged into further turmoil. Extra-constitutional measures lead to extra-constitutional reaction. It is expected that rigged elections can allow extremist elements to hijack domestic opposition. Thus a fair election is important to Pakistan’s national interest although a few persons may see it as damaging to their personal interest.

Before Islamabad joined the international intervention in Afghanistan, it was regarded in a hostile light. Islamabad was then considered the patron-saint of the Taliban as well as a sympathizer of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden who had taken refuge in Afghanistan.

The military nature of the regime made it an outcast. When American president Clinton visited South Asia in 2000, he went to India for five days. He visited Islamabad for five hours.

History can change in a minute. And it did on September 11. The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon made Islamabad a key country. In breaking ties with the Taliban and the Osama bin Laden group, even if under pressure and threat, Musharraf made the war against terror easier to organize. As such, he is now recognized and welcomed in capitals and by leaders who previously had little to do with him.

Emergency economic aid has flowed in generous amounts from Japan, Pakistan’s largest aid donor as well as other countries. Tokyo promised $300 million over two years to the country. For a country with a debt in tens of billions of dollars, that is a generous help. But it is not a long-term solution.

Pakistanis decry Musharraf’s inability to get Islamabad’s debt written off. They cite his poor negotiating skills. After all, Egypt, Jordan and other countries managed to get their debts written off in incidents of international crisis. Musharraf, unaware of economic intricacies, got Pakistan’s debt “restructured”. Restructuring is a euphemism for adding on debt. Now Islamabad has double the debt that it had earlier. The difference is that the payment will start in post-Musharraf period. His regime gets the benefit and the unborn children get the punishment.

Prime Minister Koizumi, as leader of a country that knows the devastation caused by nuclear attack, would also have spoken to General Musharraf about nuclear affairs. Tokyo has urged Pakistan to continue its moratorium on nuclear testing. It has urged the country to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And the leaders must have discussed these issues too.

But the issue that would have troubled the military leader most was the issue of democracy and the holding of fair elections. It is a tune that is sung wherever he goes.

Last month he was in Washington. This month in Tokyo. The continents, culture and cuisines change. But one item on the menu remains constant, an item the general could not digest: continued economic support to Pakistan is contingent on the restoration of the democratic process through the holding of fair, free and impartial elections.

And the disempowered people of Pakistan appreciate that message.

A BADLY bruised peace process in the subcontinent received a further blow when the communal violence erupted in India’s western state of Gujarat following a crazy attack on a train. So far more than one thousand persons have lost their lives, sixty thousand are badly injured and property worth billions of rupees has been destroyed.

These events have further darkened the thick clouds on the overly-tangled peace process in the subcontinent. An important question that looms large is: how should the derailed peace process be untangled. Following the visit of the US secretary of state, the UN secretary-general and several other world leaders over the last few months, there was some hope that border tensions between India and Pakistan would be defused by initiating negotiations between the two countries.

Serious efforts were being made to find diplomatic solutions to the continuing standoff. Now that the countries are lurching from one crisis to another it is not clear how the quest for peace will end. The general apprehension is that the weakened government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, which was still nursing its wounds inflicted by election results from the four states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttranchal, Punjab and Manipur, would probably not pull back from its hostile diplomacy against Pakistan even though the electoral message was to opt for dialogue and peace.

Some columnists say that the state election results signify “a forceful rejection of the politics of Hindu chauvinism and communally driven war-mongering”. The general feeling now is that the BJP’s image would get further tarnished if it did not handle the communal violence with a firm hand and also failed to correctly read the electorate’s message.

The fact is that many efforts over the past thirty years did not even resolve the Kashmir issue. Rigidity of the Indian side on this point and Pakistan’s reluctance to let the cross-border phenomenon be described as infiltration or terrorism have been the sticking points that have stalled and entangled their dialogue Pakistan and India have frequently shown an amazingly high propensity to spring up surprises and slide into difficult situations. This must be avoided when the two leaders meet next time. How is that possible?

First of all the hostile rhetoric and negative vibrations coming out of the two countries should be lowered. Another immediate need is to reinforce the positive features. What are these positive elements that need to be recognized and properly nurtured?

Those involved in the promotion of peace must underscore the need for change, co-existence and tolerance. If these trends prevail for some time, there is a fair chance of India and Pakistan becoming peace-loving neighbours in the near future. The absence of mutual distrust and hostilities would allow them to divert over the next ten years at least $65 billion in India and $25 billion in Pakistan to their economic and social development. These peace dividends are about half of what they would otherwise spend on conventional and nuclear weapons. More importantly, the huge expenses involved in the current war-like situation must be saved by pulling back their respective armies back to the peace-time positions.

It is true that the peace process could not be revived despite several attempts in the past but the process has not hit the cul-de-sac. While the two countries disagreed on several previous occasions, the process of dialogue has rolled on. A significant number of government officials and private sector opinion makers in the two countries appear to have realized that: (a) wars entailing huge financial and human cost are not an option, (b) a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir problem is essential even though it is an awfully hard nut to crack and (c) the ongoing fight against the extremists on both sides must continue.

Pakistan’s negotiating paradigm may have played up the Kashmir-first approach at the relative neglect of other important issues such as the nuclear weapons, Siachen glacier a gas pipeline to India, travel and trade arrangements etc. Nevertheless, a simultaneous tackling of the Kashmir and other issues is considered more feasible now than before. Consequently, the two countries must rethink their postures and take positive steps.

The two countries must also move towards establishing “functional relationships.” Both leaders have recognized the urgency of the peace process. They have also realized that the negotiations will be highly complex, time-consuming and at times heavily tortuous. However, the driving force behind the two leaders, commitments to pursue peace is to fight the scourge of poverty, ignorance, ill-health, malnutrition and general economic backwardness in their midst. And, this is a powerful driving force.

There is also an urgent need for the leaders to depart from the beaten track. They will have to get out of their fixed mental locks and entrenched “official” positions. They have to realize that small compromises to establish a lasting peace may also be highly valuable.

In order to make the next round of discussions a landmark first step towards a durable peace in the subcontinent, the mistakes made in the previous talks must be kept in perspective. There were many mistakes that have chocked the peace process. In the light of the past experience let me mention just a few points to illustrate a revised seven-prong approach to make the next round of negotiations a productive event.

First of all, broad contours of the end-of-the-next summit document should be given full attention before President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee meet again. The pre-summit work should be of real substance. Efforts should be made to hammer out agreed common ground in pre-summit deliberations. Before the summit, a broad interim agreement should be reached on the most important issues in a series of pre-summit meetings at the secretaries ministers levels.

Secondly, back-channel contacts, as distinct from people-to-people track-II diplomacy, need to be used more fully before the summit itself.

Thirdly, “quiet-diplomacy” away from the media glare could also be a useful vehicle to iron out the thorny problems and should be given due considerations.

Fourthly, the reason why the ‘confidence-building measures’ (CBMs) without a self-executing solution of the Kashmir problem would achieve hardly any thing is the unfortunate fact that the CBS would founder because of deep mistrust on both sides of the border. A scholar or a researcher in either of the two countries could be easily dubbed as a ‘spy’ if the Kashmir-driven animosity is not first laid to rest.

Fifthly, given the realization that the armed conflicts will not solve the Kashmir problem, the sustainability of the dialogue must be ensured.

Sixthly, India’s dream of becoming a regional/global power will remain an unfulfilled dream if Kashmir remains a giant thorn in its flesh. India’s first priority towards that dream should be to broaden its outlook and find a mutually acceptable solution to the Kashmir problem to all the three parties: Pakistan, India and the Kashmiries.

Seventhly, efforts should be made to convince the political and civic leaders as well as government officials in India that a stable Pakistan is plus for them and Pakistan needs to realize that an economically vibrant India is not against Pakistan’s long-term interests.

It is important that the above mentioned and similar points are reflected upon before the next summit takes place. Otherwise, the chances are that the deep-seated mistrust and entrenched hostilities would derail the peace process, once again. International community also has a heavy responsibility in this respect. If the next summit also appears to be drifting towards a deadlock, then the USA, the European Union, the OIC, Russia and China should play their role by convincing the two countries to take the Kashmir case to the International Court of Justice at the Hague, Mutually agreed mediation and arbitration, as in the case of the Runn of the Kutchh dispute between the two countries in the past, would seem not only desirable but necessary to save the volatile states drifting towards a nuclear holocaust.

For those who have forgotten the havoc and destruction wreaked by the use of the atom bomb, let me quote the eyewitness account given by Nickolay Pulchik off in his recent article entitled, “The Nuclear August of 1945”, “Although I had seen war time atrocities, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw now: Nothing. No birds. No people. No buildings. No trees. No life. Outline of human bodies burned like negatives in cement. The house I had grown up was gone. The city had vapourized.”

At the beginning of the new century we want to see less destruction, not more. We should worry for the future of our children and grandchildren. Peace is not easy to achieve but there is no other objective as glorious and noble as this. Our deepest wish must be peace and peace alone. And, for that to happen President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee must be prepared to learn from the entangled past negotiations, and work very hard with open minds.

The writer is a former adviser to the World Bank, and currently honorary adviser to the Mahbubul Haq Human Development Centre.