EVEN if the newly elected government does not want to act resolutely to reduce poverty in Pakistan and achieve positive results because of its feudal character, it is under increasing external and domestic pressures to act.

The external compulsion comes from a trio of international aid agencies, the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and there is increasing awareness in the world of the need to fight poverty to reduce the number of threats it faces, with poverty acknowledged as one of the causes of terrorism. These agencies and other donors are willing to come up with large assistance for poverty reduction if we go about it properly and consistently.

The current IMF programme to assist Pakistan is known as the Poverty Reduction and growth Facility (PRGF). The assistance likely to be forthcoming from the World Bank and the ADB is much larger, including a $ 3.4 billion programme spread over five or more years, depending on how we perform.

Several donor countries led by Norway and Canada have also said that if we make effective use of the loans already given for social sector development, they could convert the loans into development grants.

On the domestic front, massive unemployment, of which a spate of suicides by desperate youth is a grim reminder, demand early action to reduce poverty, with almost 40 per cent of the people living below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

More and more unemployed young men are taking to major crimes, which are also behind the increasing violence against housewives demanding money from their husbands to feed their children.

The World Bank two years ago held a series of seminars or workshops in Pakistan to formulate a poverty reduction strategy for the country in view of the deteriorating situation and recently came out with a comprehensive report, “Pakistan Poverty Assessment — Poverty in Pakistan: Vulnerabilities, social gaps and rural dynamics.” It was struck by the rise in rural poverty in a country in which 72 per cent of the people live in the rural areas with very little to fall back on.

On the basis of that an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper has been prepared. After its approval by the military government, it awaits the sanction of the newly elected government of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali. Thereafter, specific aid commitments may follow and the strategy implemented step by step. In this context, a workshop was held in Karachi last week by Tara Viswanathan, who had organised the series of seminars two years ago. It was presided over by Dr Ishrat Husain, Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, and was designed to make the stakeholders and others familiar with the anti-poverty strategy.

According to Dr Husain, devising a strategy is the easier part; implementing it is the difficult one. That has been our economic history for the last 50 years. A major drawback was lack of adequate funds as the bulk of public funds remained committed to debt servicing and defence. When foreign funds were available, matching counterpart funds were not. So it was not uncommon to see over $ 10 billion of committed aid in the pipeline on which an interest of half a per cent per year had to be regularly paid.

All that has changed a great deal. The budget deficit has come down to below five per cent from 8 to 10 per cent in the past when the national debt kept on piling, leading to even our modest annual development programmes getting slashed time and again. Now, external aid specifically for poverty reduction is being committed in increasing measure.

One of the pillars of the poverty reduction strategy is privatization of major public sector projects, which are currently causing a loss of Rs 100 billion annually. If this amount is saved within a period of three years, beginning with Rs. 50 billion in the first year, the budget deficit would eventually be reduced by more than a half. Dr Ishrat Husain says that Rs. 36 billion were collected through privatization during the last three years. Public sector enterprises earmarked for privatization now should yield Rs 40 to Rs 60 billion.

Along with that, the external debt has been reduced by $2 billion or Rs 120 billion, says Mr Shaukat aziz, adviser to the prime minister on finance. The interest on domestic loans is also coming down sharply. All that should reduce the debt burden and the debt servicing cost, which now stands at Rs. 291 billion. The dollar cost of servicing external loans, including private sector loans, has also come down by almost 10 per cent as that debt has to be cleared at around Rs 58 to a dollar.

In addition, we are getting over a billion dollars worth of oil from Saudi Arabia each year as grant since 1988 and that has been exceedingly helpful to the country. This year the Saudi facility is reported to cost $ 1.3 billion in view of the higher cost of oil.

We ought to be given a full picture of the accounting pattern following these reliefs instead of isolated statements made by the officials from time to time. If we need a higher rate of economic growth — far higher than the current year’s 4.5 per cent against a population growth of 3 per cent or less — far more will have to be invested, particularly in job-creating infrastructure projects. By reducing wasteful or needless expenditure all round we should be targeting growth rate of six to seven per cent, if not eight per cent, to reduce poverty within a short time. But our rulers and law-makers have been doubling their salaries while surplus labour is to be retrenched. That is not how the new regime should act when unemployment is so widespread and the people are being employed at lower and lower salaries. The new rulers should have been more tactful.

This has happened at a time when, according to this newspaper, there was a 12 per cent rise in suicides by teenagers in 2002 as compared to the previous year. the number of young people who killed themselves in 2001 was 125 while the number was 142 last year. Most of them were responsible for supporting their families but could not find employment. And some young women killed themselves in economic distress as their husbands could not support them.

Will the doubling of the salaries of the rulers from the president downward and of all legislators, central and provincial, make them work harder for the betterment of the masses who pay them their higher emoluments? As far as Prime Minister Jamali is concerned, he is only promising a “relief package” before Eid, but the people expect more substantial benefits.

Reducing poverty is no longer a matter of providing food and clothing. The task has become far more comprehensive. Dr Ishrat Husain has spelled out some of the pre-requisites for that, beginning with higher economic growth and macro-economic stability and ending with specific safety nets for the very poor and highly vulnerable groups. And now Mr Shaukat Aziz says that an economic growth of six per cent will be achieved in three years, by 2006, and poverty will be reduced to 22 per cent from the current level of 30 per cent. But development spending is set to increase to only four per cent of GDP from the current 3.3 per cent less far than is required to tackle unemployment in any significant way.

To achieve even the modest goals outlined, there are a number of vital preconditions such as political stability, regional stability, better law and order situation, continuation of consistent and transparent economic policies, continuation of the structural reform programme, and sustained fiscal responsibility.

But are the political policies of the government leading to political stability in the country? Are they creating regional stability in a province like Sindh? Will General Pervez Musharraf come to a settlement with the opposition on the issue of the Legal Framework Order and continuing to be both president and military chief? And will the National Accountability Bureau be used selectively instead of in a fair and transparent manner?

There is the question of good governance as part of the poverty reduction programme. People have to be given educational facilities, public health services beginning with clean and safe drinking water, a far better environment and access to justice. Above all, there has to be absolute elimination of corruption at all levels. We do not have enough resources for the rich and the corrupt to grab a large part of them and also spare enough for the poor. Corruption and conspicuous corruption have to be checked. The population explosion has to be controlled by educating women and providing them with jobs. Bangladesh has achieved considerable success in that. Iran, though governed by the clergy, has been able to bring down the population growth to 1.2 per cent. We have to do much more in this area than we have done so far because of our reluctance to adopt the obviously needed steps.

Strong political commitment is essential to bring about such changes. But feudal rulers do not usually feel much compulsion to change. Fair, regular and clean elections provide a way for people to exert pressure for a change in their lives. But elections in Pakistan are only an occasional exercise and are deeply flawed. And we have too many parties with their racuous voices to achieve the transformation that is urgently needed.

IF there was an award in Washington for the ‘most loyal ally’ it would undoubtedly go to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. His support for the Bush administration’s ‘war against terror’ has been rock solid.

As other allies distanced themselves over concerns about bombing of civilians, treatment of POWs in Afghanistan, lack of reconstruction funds and Guantanamo Bay, Blair stood resolutely with the US. Even as Washington raised serious international alarm by widening the war against terror to include Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and justify ‘pre-emptive offence’, Blair did not back off. Some differences did emerge over the Middle East — Blair tried to revive peace efforts while Bush remained indifferent — but not on the scale to be called a disagreement.

Tony Blair has indeed been George Bush’s most loyal ally. The time has come, though, for him to break ranks with his Texan friend. Britain’s prime minister has to join the anti-US movement. To be more precise, he has to join the movement opposed to US military action against Iraq.

The reasons for Blair to do so are both many and compelling. At the most basic level, he has to consider whether he backs Bush’s motives in going to war — not the declared motive of eradicating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but the real motives: domestic political ambitions, revenge for George Bush Senior and oil. Bush is using war against Iraq to maintain his popularity at home. His father failed to oust Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and was almost assassinated by him in 1993. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. All these might be ample justification for the US, but they are not causes that Tony Blair can or should be backing.

Even the overt reason for attacking Iraq — destroying WMD — is open to question. War can only be waged to eradicate WMD once the existence of WMD is established. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer’s simple assertion “We know for a fact that there are weapons there” is not sufficient. UN Security Council Resolution 1441 calls for Iraq to cooperate with weapons inspectors. It is doing so. Hans Blix’ team has open access to any site it chooses, but has so far failed to uncover ‘any smoking gun’. So long as Iraq continues to cooperate, and so long as nothing is discovered by UN weapons inspectors, war cannot be justified. Blair cannot and should not back an unjustifiable war.

The US is making increasingly desperate attempts to show a breach of Resolution 1441. American ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, defined ‘cooperation’ as Iraq admitting to have WMD: “anything less is not cooperation, and will constitute a further material breach”. This is the judicial equivalent of an accused person being found guilty because he failed to confess to his crime. Such calls for ‘pro-active cooperation’ by Iraq reveal the Bush administration’s resolve — irrespective of what the inspectors do or do not find — to go to war. Britain cannot and should not share such blind obsession.

These are early days for the inspection teams. They could yet find something incriminating in Iraq: as Blix said, the 12,000-page Iraqi declaration on WMD “leaves many questions unanswered”. But even if WMD is found, Resolution 1441 does not specifically authorize the use of military force against Iraq. A UN mandate for attack could only come through a second specific resolution. Washington has made it amply clear that it will go to war using just 1441. This would amount to a unilateralist, action. Britain cannot and should not support the US in such a violation of international law and norms.

The US claims that its forces would enter Iraq not as conquerors but as ‘liberators’. It is inconceivable, though, that war would hit the desired target, Saddam Hussein, and not kill or maim the Iraqi people it is supposed to liberate. A UN report entitled ‘Likely Humanitarian Scenarios’ warns that war against Iraq would lead to electricity shortages, widespread famine, cholera and typhoid in “epidemic if not pandemic proportions”, mass migration of two million refugees, and up to ten million civilians in urgent need of aid. Britain cannot and should not participate in a carnage of this kind.

It is uncertain what the post-war consequences of ousting Saddam Hussein by force would be. What is certain is that they would be disastrous. The break-up of Iraq into Shi’a, Kurd and Sunni fractions, civil war, a wider conflagration, regional and global economic decline — this is the depressing menu of options. Afghanistan showed Washington’s failure to live up to promises of post-war stability and reconstruction. Britain cannot and should not wait for the US to break similar promises in Iraq.

Support for Al Qaeda and Islamic militancy is the other definite consequence of western attack on Iraq. The attacks of 9/11 were motivated by the first Gulf War and the presence of American forces on Saudi soil, US partisanship in the Middle East, crippling sanctions against Iraq and the general perception that Washington saw Islam as the new enemy.

No great insight is required to predict that an assault on Iraq, especially with no WMD discovered and no UN resolution cover, would enrage the Muslim people and push at least some into the arms of Al Qaeda. That in turn means a heightened risk to the nationals and interests of America, Britain, Israel and any western country. In short, it means defeat in the ‘war against terror’. Tony Blair cannot and should not stand by while Washington puts Britons in danger.

Lest this long list of reasons be insufficient to convince Tony Blair, he should consider the final and — from the perspective of a politician — most compelling reason: self-preservation. It is becoming increasingly clear that neither the British public, nor Parliament, nor the Labour Party, nor even the cabinet, share Blair’s commitment to George Bush and war against Iraq.

Labour MPs have been reminding their leader of the consequences of a politically divided Britain going to war the last time — Suez in 1956. If Blair wants to avoid Anthony Eden’s ignominious fate, he can and should act now.

Tony Blair is showing signs of being aware of, and responding to, the anti-war movement: addressing a gathering of British diplomats last week he promised he would never “commit UK troops to a war that I thought was wrong”. This is a good start, but only that — a start. Blair needs to follow it through with a firm commitment not to act outside the UN and not to join a war against Iraq unless there is a clear legal and moral justification for it.

And he needs to go even further. It is not in the Bush administration’s nature to listen to the advice of others: so far it has shown an obstinate refusal to unplug its ears. It is equally true that Britain’s or Blair’s claims to have influence over the White House are more illusory than real. Nonetheless, there is a small chance that George Bush would heed his British counterpart and call off his war against Iraq. Tony Blair cannot and should not let that chance go.