ZAKAT is one of the five essential pillars of Islam and, within the religious context, is an obligatory tax targeted towards the alleviation of poverty and judicious redistribution of wealth and resources within society. It can, potentially, be an important and effective tool of social justice after the government of Pakistan, through an ordinance promulgated in 1980, took upon itself the responsibility of collection, management and distribution of this important religious duty.

Looking back over the past 23 years, the total zakat collected by the government amounts to Rs 70 billion at an average of slightly above three billion rupees per annum. Moreover, the yearly zakat collection figure for the previous three years has been around four billion rupees per annum whereas the zakat budget for the year 2003 amounted to Rs 10 billion. These numbers are by no means insignificant.

The yearly zakat collection figure is more than the yearly allocation for the poverty alleviation fund, the food support programme and the Khushal Pakistan Programme — the main national budgetary tools meant for poverty alleviation. Thus, in this context, it is a sizable figure that represents a major opportunity for poverty alleviation in Pakistan. Although being available at the disposal of successive government in Pakistan, the impact of this 70 billion figure is visible neither to the naked eye of an unbiased observer nor to the scrutiny of the yearly poverty quantification statistics, which have been steadily rising in the country.

This situation merits serious scrutiny, as the government is collectively responsible for ensuring that the amount, which is deducted as zakat on the first of Ramazan from individual bank account, which is deducted as zakat on the first of Ramazan from individual bank accounts, gets directed towards the country’s most deserving and destitute people. Any slackness in the fulfilment of this important responsibility not only amounts to usurping the religious rights of individual donors but also makes the government answerable for this failing on the Day of Judgment.

A careful analysis of the zakat management by the government brings out some astonishing facts. The most striking of which is that a huge amount of Rs 14 billion is now lying unutilized with the government in the zakat fund. This could have been understandable if it happened in the context of a satisfied and contented society without needs. However, the figure truly defies logic and belief, considering the rising incidence of poverty, growing destitution and mounting depravation strikingly visible in the country. The burgeoning amount of unutilized zakat, under these circumstances, clearly points to apathy and inefficiency in the present zakat distribution system.

According to a recent report by the Centre for Philanthropy, the same Pakistan society that allows only four billion rupees to be deducted from its accounts as zakat, generously donates Rs 170 billion per annum as charity. This confirms the low credibility attached to the government-run Zakat system by the citizens of the country. It is, in fact, a clear indicator that the people in Pakistan are certainly not reluctant or unwilling to pay zakat but, at the same time, are seriously sceptical about the government’s zakat system and apprehensive of it’s ability to deliver to the deserving his/her share in the fund.

After 23 years, it is time for the government to wake up to this disturbing situation and take stock of its own performance as well as benefit from the feedback available from many sources so that the glaring weaknesses in the zakat system can be carefully identified and properly rectified. A starting point for this exercise has to be the Zakat and Ushr Ordinance of 1980.

The zakat ordinance lays out an extensive framework for the operation and administration of the zakat collection and distribution system consisting of a policy-making central Zakat Council supported by a sprawling network of district, tehsil and local zakat councils. This massive system is, however, beset with serious flaws that mostly relate to the ordinance itself.

To start with, the ordinance surprisingly does not stipulate a monitoring system to oversee, check and correct system lapses and abuses. The only mechanism available is the yearly financial audit, which is not capable of extending the much needed administrative monitoring. This is a serious flaw in the ordinance that has left the working of the distribution system exposed to abuse. This situation is further compounded by the absence of any formal forum for redressal of grievances or complaints at any level within the administrative system. Consequently, all transgressions in the distribution system continue unmonitored and unchecked.

The 49,000 Local zakat Councils spread all over the country were supposed to provide the basic building block of the entire system. In the absence of a monitoring system these have, unfortunately, become the bedrock of corruption and nepotism. Astonishingly, the federal government that is responsible for zakat collection and is, in effect, the intermediary donor feeding the zakat proceeds into the distribution system, is devoid of any monitoring authority or administrative leverage. This also comes across as a striking anomaly that needs to be removed.

The distribution priorities of the zakat proceeds reveal that the majority (60 per cent) of the proceeds are distributed under the category of the “Guzara” allowance of Rs 500 per month. This practice instead of assisting in the alleviation of poverty is, in fact, instrumental in perpetuating it, as the meager amount neither reduces poverty nor supports any productive employment. Instead it is instrumental in creating and sustaining an army of beggars in the country. an urgent re-alignment of this prioritization is required towards promoting productive and self-sustaining activities such as education and employment generation.

The Central Zakat Council was constituted under a martial law regime in 1980. It is, thus, not surprising that it did not provide for any public representation, but what is astonishing is that it remains so to this day. This flaw has kept it continuously and conveniently detached from the concerns and complaints of the public at large and allowed it a comfortable and cocooned existence. The subsequent bureaucratic inertia has also allowed it to have as high an amount as Rs 14 billion unutilized over the years. It is now time that the public representatives who are both responsive and answerable to the people of Pakistan, need to be associated with the system and pull it out of the bureaucratic morass it has dug itself into.

After years of mismanagement, it is incumbent on the government to pay heed to the growing criticism of the zakat system and correct it further. In this regard, a proper and effective monitoring system, supported by a formal complaint redressal mechanism, needs to be instituted. This could include random independent third party monitoring complemented by strict penalties, a strengthening of the role of the federal government as well as active and formal involvement of public representatives for improving the public responsiveness of the system.

If properly streamlined, and managed, the zakat system in Pakistan can become our most effective tool in the fight against rising poverty. This tremendous opportunity needs to be capitalized through timely correction of the system rather than being sacrificed at the altar of apathy and indifference. It is time for the government to live up to the huge responsibility it voluntarily took upon itself 23 years ago. It owes this duty to the people of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well as to God Almighty.

IN the annual ritual of recalling the traumatic happenings of December 16, 1971, it is customary to talk of the factors which contributed to the break-up of Pakistan, as also the excesses committed on the people of erstwhile East Pakistan in the process and the persons responsible for them.

However, much less time seems to be spent on an objective introspection of the event immediately following the break-up and the subsequent developments in Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is almost with unseemly haste that Pakistan appears to have reconciled to the loss of the eastern wing.

It does not appear to be adequately realized that once the army action had been launched in the eastern wing things did not remain the same for Pakistan. The eastern wing was an important balancing factor in the political and cultural life of the country for the 24 years that it remained part of it. The Quaid-i-Azam’s secular outlook for Pakistan has in fact survived in Bangladesh after its breakaway, even though in Pakistan it has virtually been abandoned. Even a casual visitor to Dhaka or Chittagong cannot but be impressed by the multi-religious, multi-cultural character of life in Bangladesh.

The religious minorities about whose future the Quaid was much concerned, as was evident from his address in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, appear to enjoy equal status with the majority in the social setup in Bangladesh. There is nothing to suggest that they have been consigned to any secondary or inferior status.

This is not to suggest that Bangladesh’s traditional moorings in Islam have been diluted. On the contrary, the Bangladeshis’ deep attachment to Islam is evident at the social and cultural events there. During a recent visit to Dhaka this writer was struck by the fact that almost every public function began with a recitation from the Quran and that whenever one happened to be in the bazaar at prayer time one found that the Muslim women doing shopping there would invariably instantly cover their heads as the azan was heard.

While Pakistan has experienced a rapid and perceptible descent into religious and sectarian chauvinism, even militancy, the Bangladeshis do not appear to be caught in the web of extremism. They now enjoy the freedom to include the poetry of Tagore and Qazi Nazrul Islam in the syllabi for schools and colleges but Iqbal has by no means been abandoned. A great deal of research continues to be conducted into the literature and philosophy of Iqbal and scores of institutions continue to promote Urdu and its rich literary heritage.

Life in Pakistan — in Karachi particularly — is now much the poorer with the elimination of Bengali literature, art and music which was once an intrinsic part of the cultural scene here. In Karachi particularly, the localities which were conspicuous by their large concentrations of Bengalis until 1971 no longer seem to be as rich in their diversity of culture as they once did. There used to be regular literary sittings with poets and writers whose creative work was mostly in Bengali and the old timers in Karachi miss the soirees of Bengali music which were once regularly held in the metropolis; they are now but a memory of the past.

It was not only the lighter side of life which was rich on account of the presence of the Bengali writers, artists and musicians. The Bengalis also made an outstanding contribution to the debates and discussions in the houses of parliament. Indeed, the representatives of erstwhile East Pakistan in the national legislature were among the most bold, outspoken and non-conformist element.

It was mostly the Bengali members of the Constituent Assembly who during the process of the drafting of the Constitution opposed (without success, of course) the induction of the Objectives Resolution to which must be traced the extreme form of Islamization that Gen. Zia-ul-Haq was able to enact during his years in office.

The courageous position adopted by the Bengali members in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan has been recorded in detail by the late Begum Shaista Ikramullah in her memoirs. If the counsel of sanity tendered by two Bengali politicians, Mr Nurul Amin and Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, had been heeded to, the trauma of Dec 16, 1971 may well have been avoided.

The editor-in-chief of weekly Holiday of Dhaka, Enayetullah Khan, has recalled the views of the two eminent political leaders, from his editorial of February 6, 1966. He says that the Tashkent Declaration (which was signed by President Ayub Khan) “has acted as a catalytic agent and has brought the question of understanding (between the two wings of Pakistan) to the fore... Two things mentioned in these statements (by the two eminent Bengali leaders) are essential: there should be complete regional autonomy (in Pakistan) under a parliamentary federal system of government, and East Pakistan must be made confident that it has a self-sufficient defence system...”

Enayetullah Khan has also expressed the view that with their differences on the Tashkent Agreement, the Combined Opposition Parties (which had leaders from both wings) suddenly lost its sense of direction and has confronted the leaders “with the most disturbing but pertinent question of defining the terms of unity” of the two wings.

What particularly deserves to be brought on record on the occasion of Dec 16 is what had been the general lack of concern of the people of West Pakistan for what the eastern wing was going through in 1971 after March 25.

Since a general impression persists in Pakistan that the affairs of Bangladesh continue to be in some manner or the other controlled by India, it is important to recall that differences between the Bangladeshi leadership and New Delhi came to the surface not too long after Pakistan’s break-up. One of the earliest problems to impair the relations between Dhaka and Delhi concerned the demarcation of the maritime boundary between the two countries.

The then Bangladesh foreign minister, Dr Kamal Husain, visited New Delhi for talks with the Indian authorities in March 1975. The comment on the joint statement which was issued after the talks by a former foreign secretary of India J.N. Dixits was: “The joint statement... was bald and brief signifying the distances which were emerging between India and Bangladesh.” Dixit also says that most of the joint statements issued at the end of official-level Indo-Bangladesh talks in the period mid-January 1974 and mid-1975 indicated that the talks remained “inconclusive and ended in an impasse.”

Dixit has also gone on record to say that when the medium-term India-Bangladesh agreement on sharing of the Ganges waters came to an end by the early 1980s, “the old controversies and rival claims to the waters below the Farraka barrage were revived.” The delay in transferring the Teen Bigha enclave corridor to Bangladesh by India because of the issue having become subjudice also proved another bone of contention between Dhaka and New Delhi.

More recently, India has also accused Bangladesh of aiding and abetting the anti-New Delhi insurgency by some Indian eastern regions.

The issue of some 15 million Bangladeshis that India claims are residing illegally in India has added to tensions between the two countries. In his address to the Indian parliament last February the Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said that the “problem has assumed serious proportions.” The issue had also led to a standoff between the two countries along a 4000-kilometer long border.

Despite the antecedents of the birth of Bangladesh its relations with Pakistan are by and large free of tensions. Dixit has acknowledged that Indo-Bangladesh relations have been in a state of drift since the assassination of Shaikh Mujibur Rahman and has spoken of “increasing linkages” between Dhaka and Islamabad. However, if Pakistanis believe that Bangladesh would want to return to Pakistan’s fold or otherwise have some sort of constitutional linkage with Islamabad they are living in a world of dreams.

Referring to Faiz’s well known verse “khoon kay dhabbay dhulangay ketni barsaton kay baad”, a Bengali friend once said something to the effect that the poet should have known that rainwater may wash away stains of blood since they are on the surface but the real hurt is much deeper and for that the rainwater can be no healing touch.

AMERICA’s occupation of Afghanistan — and, for that matter, of Iraq — is not going well. The summer and early autumn turned out to be very hot for the forces of occupation. Why did that happen? The answer is being provided by a number of analysts, including some from America, who have begun to explore the reasons for the Afghan and Iraqi quagmires.

According to one, writing for a recent issue of The New Yorker, the planning for both occupations was so wishful that it bordered on self-deception. “It isn’t pragmatism, it isn’t realpolitik, it isn’t conservatism, it isn’t liberalism. It’s theology.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a recent essay, uses the same phrase — “theology” — to explain why America got stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq after successful military occupations and why it became so isolated in the world. “War on terrorism, reflects in my view, a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy for a superpower and for a great democracy with genuinely idealistic traditions... It is important to ask ourselves as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety... That calls for serious debate about America’s role in the world, which is not served by an abstract, quasi theological definition of the war on terrorism. That definition oversimplifies a complex set of challenges that needs to be addressed. It talks about a phenomenon, terrorism, as the enemy while overlooking the fact that terrorism is a technique for killing people.”

Against this background, let us address a few questions. What has been happening in Afghanistan recently and why have the developments led to so much despair about the country’s prospects? Is it right to hold Pakistan responsible for some of the things that have gone wrong in Afghanistan? Do the recent developments in Afghanistan pose real problems for Pakistan?

There are plenty of reports coming out of Afghanistan to suggest that Kabul is still not able to exert its authority much beyond the city’s perimeter. While the capital is protected by the International Security Force (Isaf) which operates under the command of Nato, much of the rest of the country is in turmoil. According to one western analyst, “in Afghanistan there are now two conflicts: a continuing war pitting the U.S. led coalition against the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; and a flickering civil war which the coalition’s invasion interrupted. In recent months Afghanistan has seen its worst violence on both fronts... American officials report more attacks on the coalition’s 11,500 troops in the past three months than the previous twelve.”

By November 2003, the Afghan resistance to the occupation coalition changed its tactics. It appeared to be learning some lessons from the people who were battling the American occupying forces in Iraq. Anti-US fighters stepped up attacks on aid workers in a bid to undermine Kabul’s American-backed government. The consequences of this switch in tactics were grim.

Nine charities working in Afghanistan including Care and the international rescue committee said in a report issued in mid-November and “circulated among policymakers that the growing insecurity has delayed, reduced or cut off reconstruction aid for 600,000 Afghans.” According to Said Tayeb Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the US and former chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai, “in most cases the terrorist groups are coming with clear instructions to undermine the reconstruction activities.”

Why did the coalition that defeated the Taliban in December 2001 fail to help the Kabul regime bring the rest of the country under its control? There are many reasons for the coalition’s failure and each reason will produce its own dynamic. Each dynamic will have grim consequences for Pakistan. First, it was a mistake for the Americans to rely on one Afghan faction — the Northern Alliance — to win the war. This alliance may have initially saved the lives of the soldiers of the invading army, but it has created a situation which may take years to resolve.

Numerous experiments at nation building in Afghanistan floundered in the past when an attempt was made to impose the will of one ethnic group on the rest of the country. By putting so much trust in the Tajiks, the US war planners failed to factor in the long term consequences for political and social stability in the country. Also, the reliance on the Northern Alliance which was a loose coalition of warlords operating in the country’s northern provinces meant strengthening the centrifugal forces that are inherent in the Afghan society.

Afghanistan — and by default, Pakistan — confront three problems. One, the resistance to the government led by Hamid Karzai is increasing in the southern part of the country, in the areas contiguous to the Pakistani provinces of Balochistan and North-west Frontier. In a long essay contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid tells the story of the growing influence and power of Taliban remnants particularly in the border areas of Balochistan and Afghanistan. According to Rashid there is much traffic of Taliban sympathizers across this border, an impression confirmed by The Washington Post’s John Lancaster.

If these impressions are correct, this should be a cause for great worry for Islamabad. Pakistan should worry since some parts of its territory could become a base for radical Islam’s assault on the rest of the Muslim world. That such an assault remains the main objective of Al Qaeda and the groups associated with it was underscored by an attack on November 9 on al Muhaya, a residential compound a few kilometers away from Riyadh’s diplomatic quarters and the residences of the Saudi royal family. This was the second time Islamic terrorists had struck a housing complex in the heart of the Saudi capital. The first one, in May, had claimed 35 lives. This time eleven people were killed.

The second reason why Afghanistan could become once again a problem for Pakistan is the revival of poppy cultivation and trade in narcotics. Projections are disheartening and these were made by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations office on drugs and crime. According to him the area under poppy cultivation in 2003 increased to 200,000 acres, eight per cent more than the year before. Production of opium increased to 4000 tons, 6 per cent more than in 2002. “UN figures show that in 2003 the Afghan opium economy generated about $2.3 billion, a sum equivalent to about half of Afghanistan’s legitimate gross domestic product.”

These two developments — the continuing presence of radical Islam and increasing Afghan dependence on its drug economy — pose a serious problem for Islamabad. One feeds on the other. Terrorists need funds and a kilogram of opium is worth $10,000 on the streets of Moscow, London and Berlin. If the Afghan farmer is persuaded that his efforts are helping the cause of Islam, as interpreted for him by the local mullah who is also, possibly, a Taliban and Al Qaeda supporter, he would be happy to engage in this activity and retain a bit of profit for himself. But both activities, the unrelenting campaign of radical Islam and the availability of cheap narcotics just across the border, will become tremendous burdens for Pakistan.

The third reason why the increased resistance to the Kabul regime would be an unhappy development for Pakistan is that it will sour Islamabad’s relations with the West, not just Washington. The war against the Taliban had the full support of the international community. In that respect it was totally different from the war against Iraq. The latter was resisted by most of Europe and practically all of the Islamic world. On the other hand, the international community, not only Washington, remains committed to the pacification and development of Afghanistan. The havoc wrought by Al Qaeda and like-minded groups has convinced the world that these people should not be provided the luxury of a failed state once again becoming a sanctuary for them.

If the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, particularly in the areas across the border from Pakistan, there will be finger pointing at Islamabad. Some of that has already begun. Zalmay Khalilzad, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan suggested a day after he was confirmed in his new position that Pakistan had to do more. “There are Taliban leaders and people that are using Pakistani territory to come across and carry out attacks in Afghanistan,” he said. He noted that Pakistan is an important US ally in the war against international terrorism and that Washington would give more assistance to Islamabad in return for more cooperation.

Given the difficulties continuing deterioration of security in Afghanistan could pose for Pakistan, it is clear that Islamabad must play an active role in helping to contain the situation. There are several things Islamabad could do to steady the situation and these are not necessarily confined to military action. There are some longer term aspects to Pakistan’s Afghan policy that need to be factored into the way we deal with our northern neighbour. Among them is a serious effort to launch a well thought out programme for the social and economic development of the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Afghan border.

(Concluded)

The first part of the article appeared on December 16, 2003.