Economy in 2003

In 2003, Pakistan made a number of impressive strides in two areas, economic development and diplomacy. Let us first look at the economic front. A good indicator of an economy's health is the capital market. During the year, the Karachi Stock Exchange's composite index, the KSE-100, beat a number of records - the highest level ever reached, the largest number of shares traded in a day, the sharpest increase in the value of the index in a day.

The index closed at 4472 on December 31 compared to 2667, the level at which it opened the year, implying an increase of 68 per cent in rupee terms. The capital market also saw the arrival of a new scrip hugely appreciated by the investor community. The OGDC's debut on the market was welcomed to the extent that its offering was over-subscribed eight times.

The enthusiasm shown for the OGDC signified a number of positive developments. The government was finally moving towards the privatization of the assets it continued to hold. This was reconfirmed on December 29 when the privatization commission announced the results of the bidding on Habib Bank, the second largest commercial bank in the country. The interest in acquiring government assets showed not only investor confidence but also great liquidity in the market.

People had the money; they wanted to invest, but they were not sure about the sectors they should enter. Public sector entities offered for sale provided assets with good brand names, reasonable track-record and the promise that with good management the investors could reap handsome returns.

There was some indication of the revival of foreign interest in the Pakistani economy. According to some analysts, an estimated $60 million had come into the stock market from abroad, mostly from the Pakistani expatriate community looking for returns better than those currently available in the western economies.

This amount could increase enormously, if the security situation in the country changed for the better. The bids for Habib Bank by two foreign groups was another sign of external capital looking favourably at the opportunities available in Pakistan.

The foreign interest in Pakistan was mostly from the Muslim diasporas in America and Europe and from the cash-rich individuals and institutions in the Middle East. The way the US conducted its war on international terrorism, targeting not only Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the Muslim-owned financial houses and charities had created a great deal of nervousness in the Middle East about investing in the West, particularly in America. This money was looking for new opportunities; Pakistan was one of them.

On the economic front, there was enough accomplished to bring good cheer to Pakistan. As The Economist wrote in its special year-end publication, "economically, Pakistan will be one of Asia's success stories in 2004. Growth will be among the fastest in the region, underpinned by inflows of foreign funds and a big debt-rescheduling package.

Inflation will increase, but this is because of industrial bottlenecks and increased sales taxes, not food price rises." The magazine predicted a GDP growth rate of 5.5 per cent in calendar 2004, a budget deficit of 4.1 per cent, unemployment rate of 7.7 per cent, and current account surplus of 2.8 per cent of the GDP.

All these numbers showed an enormous improvement over 2002 when the GDP increased by only 2.8 per cent, the budgetary deficit was 4.6 per cent, the rate of unemployment was 7.8 per cent. The country seemed set to repeat the good performance of 2003 in 2004.

If there was cheerful news from the economic side, there was also considerable comfort Islamabad could draw from several developments on the diplomatic front. In spite of the liberal media's misgivings about Pakistan and its military leader - a stance that, incredibly, didn't change after two failed assassination attempts on General Musharraf - Washington and Islamabad remained close allies.

It was not fully understood in Pakistan that General Musharraf and his associates were not doing America's bidding in the efforts to control Islamic extremists operating in the country. It was in Pakistan's greater good to put that genie back in the bottle again.

As a part of that campaign, some 500 Al Qaeda operatives were either arrested or killed by the Pakistani security forces in 2003. Some of them were handed over to the US authorities and now sojourn at the notorious Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba run by the US department of defence. Some others remained in Pakistan's custody. These moves perhaps motivated the two assassination attempts on President Musharraf in December 2003.

However, the stance against Al Qaeda, the Taliban remnants and the Islamic extremists at home, won President Musharraf many favours from the United States. For instance, during his official visit to Washington and a long meeting with President George W. Bush at the latter's Camp David retreat, the U.S. announced a $3 billion aid package that would run for five years.

Half of it would be used for economic development, particularly for improving the working of the education sector, and half for military training and procurement.This was the third time in two decades that America had pledged economic and military assistance to Pakistan within a medium term framework.

The first two occasions were during the presidency of Ronald Reagan when Pakistan, alongside America, fought against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. The second programme was suddenly terminated in 1990 by President H.W. Bush, the current US president's father, once Islamabad had served the American purpose and the Soviet Union had pulled out of Afghanistan.

Will the current friendship with America meet a similar fate? It could, since there are enough people and interest groups in the United States opposed to Washington's close alliance with Islamabad. Their arguments are centred around what they view as Pakistan's slow movement towards democracy, poor treatment of women, alleged human rights violations, continued disrespect of religious minorities and - extraordinarily - less than total commitment to the American war against terrorism.

Even the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign Relations, in a report titled "New Priorities in South Asia: US Policy Towards India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan" issued in December 2003, offered advice to Washington that was highly cautious in its tone and content.

"Pakistan presents one of the most complex and difficult challenges faced by US diplomacy. Its political instability entrenched Islamist extremism, economic and social weaknesses, and dangerous hostility toward India have cast dark shadows over this nuclear-armed nation.

Even though Pakistan offers valuable help in rooting out the remnants of Al Qaeda, it has failed to prevent the use of its territory by Islamist terrorist as a base for armed attacks on Kashmir and Afghanistan," wrote the authors of the report, two of whom (Frank G. Wisner and Nicholas Platt, are former US ambassadors to South Asia, Wisner served in India, Platt in Pakistan) have great influence in US diplomatic circles.

There cannot be any doubt that this report will be read with keen interest by the American policy makers and will have influence in Washington. What do Messrs. Wisner and Platt recommend the US to do in Pakistan? They suggest that the $3 billion in aid promised to Pakistan over a five-year period should come attached with a number of strings, including further economic and political reforms and continued assistance in the war against terrorism. Also, three-fourths of the assistance should be for economic and political development and only a quarter should be used for re-equipping the Pakistani military.

The main point of quoting at some length from this report is that Islamabad, while managing to retain a close association with Washington, will have to tread cautiously if it wishes to remain on the right side of the world's sole superpower.

In 2003 much of this relationship was based on the warmth that existed between Presidents Musharraf and Bush. This could dissipate quickly if the lobbies working against Pakistan gain an upper hand. They have already begun to play on the suspicion that Pakistan - or at least some of its nuclear scientists - may have aided the uranium enrichment efforts of Iran, Libya and North Korea. This impression was the basis of long investigative reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post, two newspapers that carry a lot of influence.

The major surprise on the diplomatic front was the sudden thaw in the frigid relations between India and Pakistan that had existed since the collapse of the Musharraf-Vajpayee summit in Agra in July 2001. The first step toward rapprochement was taken by the Indian Prime Minister in April in a speech in Srinagar.

A series of gestures by both sides in the eight-month period since that initial overture resulted in the restoration of diplomatic relations at the high commissioner level; resumption of a bus service between Lahore and Amritsar; the permission to the airlines of the two countries to fly over each other's territory; the agreement to restore sports competition, particularly cricket matches, between the national teams of the two countries; and Vajpayee's visit to Islamabad in January 2004.

The signing of a trade agreement during the Saarc summit in Islamabad in January 2004 could lead to the establishment, in a few years time, of the South Asian free-trade area. This was another indication of the warming relations between Pakistan and India.

Pakistan's relations with China, its other large neighbour, remained sound in 2003 even as Beijing saw a new leadership take command of the country and the ruling communist party earlier in the year. General Pervez Musharraf paid a visit to Beijing and held talks with the new leadership - President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. The two countries signed a number of agreements during the visit. It was significant that one of these included the agreement to extradite citizens accused by the other side of crimes committed against their homeland.

By agreeing to this Chinese demand, Pakistan was making clear that it would not allow its country to be used as a sanctuary by the groups in Xinjiang province who were agitating for greater autonomy - in some cases even independence - for China's western most province which has a Muslim majority.

The only really troubling diplomatic spot for Pakistan in 2003 was to its north, Afghanistan. Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan remained uneasy as the Tajik-Uzbek dominated government in Kabul continued to suspect that Islamabad was not doing enough to counter the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants who remained active along the long and porous border between the two countries.

President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad during the year and brought most of his cabinet colleagues with him. A joint commission was set up to oversee the fight against terrorism by the two sides. Whether this cooperation would lead to a better understanding between the two countries would depend, in part, on how the Afghans settle the dispute among the country's various factions and how that country's political system develops. Pakistan's business in Afghanistan remained unfinished in 2003. How this will evolve will be an important question for 2004.

Is there oil on Mars?

Is George Bush's sudden interest in a space programme that will ultimately land a man on Mars an election stunt? Is it an attempt to create a feel-good factor among the voters? To divert attention from the quagmire in which the United States finds itself in Iraq?

So cynical has the rest of the world become and so weary of the declared idealism of making the world a safe place that even ardent Bush supporters have their doubts. The timing is self-serving. Anything goes in an election year but a man on Mars is going too far.

Among the many conspiracy theories circulating is the one that claims that the original moon landing ("one giant leap for mankind") was a fake and the television pictures that we saw had been filmed on a movie set. This conspiracy theory has been resurfaced and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in its programme Passionate Eye showed a documentary that debunks the man-on-the-moon landing some 45 years ago.

I have not seen the documentary myself but those who have say that it makes a compelling scientific case that the television pictures were fudged, that there being no wind on the moon, it was not possible for the American flag that was planted to flap, that the foot-prints were too large. I don't subscribe to this conspiracy theory.

I would like to believe that Neil Armstrong and his crew did reach the new frontier because I am a romantic and would like to see our cosmic loneliness ended. Besides, we have made such an unholy mess of the earthly scheme of things that we need to start all over again. But conspiracy theories cannot be dismissed out of hand because they appear to be far-fetched. We need to trust but we also need to verify.

The space programme was very much a part of the cold war. Indeed the race to the moon was fuelled by the fear that the Russians might get there first. The man credited with the push towards the new frontier was John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek in his biography of him quotes him as saying:" I think the fact that the Soviet Union was first in space in the fifties had a tremendous impact upon a good many people who were attempting to make a determination as to whether they could meet their economic problems without engaging in a Marxist form of government.

"I think the United States cannot permit the Soviet Union to become dominant in the sea of space. No one can tell me that the United States cannot afford to do what the Soviet Union has done so successfully with a national income of less than half of ours".

Thus there was international prestige involved but the space programme was reduced to a rivalry between the two ideologies. And it had to be sold to the hard hats in the military and industry complex and the vision had to be shown as having military and commercial advantages without which the funds would not be forthcoming.

But Kennedy had a style. He did not believe in the limits of human knowledge and he was an explorer by instinct. His life was cut short by an assassination that to this day remains the subject of conspiracy theories though the official version that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman and acted on his own has been accepted. It was, ironically, Richard Nixon, who basked in the glory of the moon-walk.

George Bush's image is that of a down-to-earth, gung-ho Texas Ranger whose idealism does not extend beyond the super-patriotism he extols so vigorously. He seems an unlikely visionary whose sights are set on discovering the mysteries of other planets. His mission to Mars has drawn attention to more scepticism than it has approval.

There is, of course, the financial factor and the sums of money that are being mentioned are astronomical (!), hundreds of billions of dollars. No one has any idea of how this will be funded. But even more important is the danger that long before a person lands on Mars that millions of human beings will perish from man-made disasters, like wars and from diseases like HIV/AIDS.

There is a lot of unfinished business in this planet of ours and if environmentalists are to be believed, the clock is already ticking and the count-down has begun. Of course, space programmes need research and development and this means huge profits for corporations who carry this out. And because there is a direct connection with the arms industry, the money is deemed to be well spent.

It is too obvious to say that the priorities are cock-eyed. We spend more money on taking human lives than we spend on saving them. Even in the developed countries, defence budgets are out of all proportion to the budgets on health and education. Tragically, this is true of Third World countries as well. We are greatly concerned with the spread of terrorism without a thought being given to the breeding grounds of terrorism, which happen to be among the poorest sections of society.

Even in the United States itself, the crime rate is higher in the inner cities than it is in the more prosperous areas. Given the strength of the Afro-American population, the percentage of blacks in jails is higher than that of whites. Why? Because there is a nexus between deprivation and crime. Add to this the inherent bigotry and the American dream too is for the rich or for those who aspire to get rich and not for the ghetto kids.

A fraction on what is spent on arms will bring health care and education to millions even in the United States, which is the richest country in the world. It is elementary that one should put one's own house in order before setting out to put someone else's. A mission to Mars is asking people too poor to afford bread to eat cake instead. This is lunacy and it has nothing to do with a full moon.

However, it is entirely possible what we are looking for is not traces of water on Mars but of oil. That would make good business sense!

Dehumanization of women

Whenever a nerve-racking crime against women is reported, there is some protest by the saner elements for a few days, and then it subsides till a new tragedy jolts us. Never before have the women of our society found themselves so brutally victimized and helpless as they are today.

The way they are being tortured, dehumanized, forcibly married, sold off, murdered and paraded naked through the streets speak volumes about the degradation and victimization of our weaker gender in a male-dominated traditionally sick society. The law seems toothless, the legislation ineffective, and the authorities indifferent.

About a month ago, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that an adult, sane Muslim girl could marry on her own and she did not need her guardian's consent for the validation of her marriage. Though, the Federal Shariat Court in 1981 had already resolved the issue, a bench of the Lahore High Court, while disposing of the famous Saima-Shabina cases simultaneously, had overruled the FSC's verdict on the matter and stirred up an uproar.

An appeal against the verdict by the LHC bench had been pending in the Supreme Court since 1996 - a long period indeed for straightening out a very simple matter.

Forced marriages of adult Muslim girls are still the order of the day in our society. Not only adult girls but even minor ones are forcibly married, obviously against their will on the pretext that they are not sane enough even to know what a marriage stands for.

Thanks to our pre-historic, inhuman practices, ours might be the only part of the world where even infant and child marriages are solemnized with fanfare. Such tradition-stricken sick clans and tribes would prefer to sacrifice hundreds of lives, but would never compromise over their barbaric practices, which they unabashedly call as 'traditions.'

Look at the traumatized, forcibly divorced, shelterless Shaista Almani. A young, educated sane Muslim girl from a remote town in upper Sindh, who left her home and married Balakh Sher Maher against her parents' will. Since Balakh belonged to another clan, her marriage with him was not only against her parents' will but also against her clan's traditions for Almanis do not marry their girls out of their clan.

Pressure was mounted through different tribal chieftains by the Almanis on the Maher clan for the early retrieval of Shaista. Sensing a bloody tribal feud and a political backlash for Maher tribe, the chief sardar of the Maher clan reportedly managed to pressure Balakh for divorcing Shaista. However, the timely intervention by the judiciary did save Shaista from being crucified at the altar of karo-kari by the Almanis. She lost Balakh, who gave her a "forced divorce" for whom she put her life at stake and even left her family and tribe.

Take Afsheen Mussarat's case, for example. A computer science graduate from Multan, an adult sane Muslim girl, she wanted to marry her maternal cousin and classfellow, but her parents forcibly married her to her paternal cousin. Later, she ran away with her maternal cousin and the duo took refuge with some family acquaintances in the upcountry. Afsheen's parents, after tracking her down and convincing her that she would be pardoned and allowed to live with her husband, managed to bring her back to Multan. Few days later, she was reported dead. It was only after some NGOs and the media took up the case and launched a campaign that President Musharraf took notice of the case and ordered inquiry into it.

The initial inquiry and the medical report of the exhumed body proved that she was strangled. Her father, Mussarat Sahu, later confessed that he single-handedly strangled her, but the medial report claims that more than two people were directly involved in her murder. While the authorities are still to come up with the exact number of her killers, the poor Afsheen lost her life.

Why had Shaista and Afsheen to suffer such a fate? Their only crime was that they wanted to marry of their own free will - the inalienable right granted to them by their religion and the law of the land. The punishment: one lost her husband through "forced divorce" and the other was killed by her own parents to 'save' their 'honour'.

The heart-rending stories of helpless women are endless. There is another horrendous addition. Ms. Faiz Batool, an elderly woman councillor from Sillanwali Tehsil in Sargodha District, was recently paraded naked through a local bazaar by the members of the Kalaryar tribe, an influential clan of the area, in order to settle some old scores. The disgraced Ms. Batool and her family are now reportedly being pressured by the same influentials to withdraw the complaint they have lodged with the local police against the perpetrators of such barbaric crime.

It goes without saying that we are witnessing an awful rise in such grisly and ghastly crimes against women in our society which now occur on a daily basis, and majority of them are not even reported. The worst is that the perpetrators of such crimes are not brought to book in the manner they should be.

The unabated, unquestioned oppression of women by male chauvinists thus seem to have crossed all previous moral and criminal benchmarks.A multitude of factors contribute to such a sorry state of our women. Widespread ignorance and illiteracy, compounded by anti-women bias in our feudal polity, have not only deprived women of their basic rights but also led to their brutal oppression. As a consequence, the inhuman practices of karo-kari, swara, walwar and other barbaric customs and traditions are still intact in this modern era and swallowing up the female populace of our society at an unprecedented rate.

The feudal lords, who rule our rural areas like personal fiefdoms, have always tended to tacitly encourage such barbaric customs for their petty ends. They fear that if they let their tribesmen disregard the tribal traditions, they might lose their hold over them. That is why they invariably discourage enlightenment and mass awareness through education and media.

On the other hand, the law enforcers and the local authorities always appear to be in collusion with these feudal lords in committing heinous crimes against women. The police do not even bother to register FIRs against them, not to speak of arresting them. Left with no recourse, the victims either remain silent to avoid inviting the wrath of the local lords, or, in rare cases, approach the local courts. And only on the intervention of these courts are the police compelled to entertain the FIRs.

It is high time the government took drastic measures to emancipate our women from age-old practices that degrade and dehumanize them and enable them live a respectable life. In this regard, the discriminatory Hudood Ordinance must be revised and made women-friendly. Female education should be made mandatory through proper legislation, and the feudals and tribals who oppose female education must be prosecuted and punished.