| 04 December 2004 | Saturday | 21 Shawwal 1425 |
Indictment by Red Cross
It is, indeed, a matter of joy and pride to learn that Pakistan has at last been able to say goodbye to the IMF programmes on what appears to be a mutually satisfactory note.
The immediate upside of the development is that Pakistan will now regain a measure of economic sovereignty which had been severely curtailed all these years by the closely monitored programme and prescriptions that came along with the Fund's assistance package.
This is not to say that all the Fund conditionalities were bad. In fact, many of them were just what we should have adopted on our own. However, some of them were shown time and again to be totally incompatible with the peculiar social, economic and political conditions obtaining in the country.
Also, by its own admission the Fund's policies are known to get decisively influenced by the global interests of the major contributors, mainly the US, which at times have been seen to have curtailed our political sovereignty as well.
Countries go to the IMF only when they are facing serious current account deficits and threat of debt default. In recent history Pakistan had passed through similar situations twice before the year 2000 when the present government, facing certain default, went to the IMF asking for emergency Standby Arrangement (SBA) loans.
The first time was when in 1979 the country found itself in dire need of emergency assistance. And the second time was when in 1988, a newly elected government was about to take over from an interim government formed after the death of President General Ziaul Haq in an air accident.
In the first stance, the military government said goodbye to the Fund programme immediately after the first tranche of $500 million was released out of a three-year 1.5 billion dollar assistance, as in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan came the offer of a $3.02 billion, five-year assistance programme from the US.
There is, therefore, a similarity between what is happening today and what had happened then except that then the US assistance came immediately after the first tranche had been disbursed while this time it has come when the last tranche was to be disbursed.
The then government of Ziaul Haq, after saying goodbye to the IMF programme, simply went berserk and indulged in financial extravagance and economic mismanagement on a colossal scale on the premise that the Soviet Union would never leave Afghanistan and the international manna would continue to flow in without any let or hindrance.
This did not happen and, therefore, the threat of default in 1988. It was a different story which led to the danger of default in 1999 forcing the present government to run to the IMF for emergency assistance.
Between 1990 and the end of 2000, Pakistan was perhaps the most 'sanctioned' country in the world not because of economic mismanagement but because of our nuclear, Taliban and Kargil adventures and also because of the so-called donor fatigue that was supposed to have set in in early 1990s for Asian recipients, presumably because of the increasing demand on their resources from the Eastern European countries freshly released from the Soviet clutches.
One only hopes that this time the US will not walk away from Pakistan as it did in early 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and take along with it all the multi- and bilateral donors.
One also hopes that this time, instead of writing blank cheques of grants to Islamabad, the US and other bilateral donors would help Pakistan create a system of interdependence rather than dependence by providing it the required industrial technologies, the capital and market access for its exports.
On the other hand, the official economic managers of Pakistan should learn from the mistakes of general Ziaul Haq's economic planners and policy makers and use the newly available wide fiscal space to take in hand socio-economic projects which would expand Pakistan's industrial, agricultural and human resource capacities.
Also, the top leadership should ensure that no misadventures on the lines of those that were undertaken in the 1990s would be repeated. The ruling elite should also remember that we are still far away from the point where we can do without economic aid or assistance.
It is by ensuring and deepening the interdependence principle that we can regain complete economic and political confidence and sovereignty and have the freedom to order our lives in accordance with our national priorities.
Here, it would not be out of place to remind the official economic managers that the growth rate of over six per cent that the country achieved last year did not reflect any significant growth in the real economy. Neither did it make any dent in the ever-growing rate of unemployment.
It resulted, instead, in the purchase of three Boeings777 and a 63 per cent jump in durables which constitute only 10 per cent of gross value addition. So, the name of the game still is caution and responsible economic management and spending to achieve sustainable macroeconomic stability and employment generating economic development.
Indictment by Red Cross
The US has reportedly rejected a confidential report submitted by the International Committee of the Red Cross which charged that prisoner abuse was the norm at the Camp X-Ray prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Leaked to a section of influential New York press, the report speaks of psychological and physical coercion of prisoners which it says is "tantamount to torture" and thus unacceptable.
The US had reluctantly allowed the Red Cross team to visit Guantanamo Bay in January 2002 after the media alleged widespread human rights abuses at the prison there.
The chilling accounts given by some of those released from the dreaded camp seem to confirm the general impression rights groups have had of the off-shore American prison.
The Pentagon itself had stated at one point that the Guantanamo Bay facility was chosen to keep those rounded up in Afghanistan because defendants' rights under US law did not apply to prisoners held on the island.
Then, coining the term "unlawful combatants", the Bush administration brazenly denied them the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. It took the relatives of those detained at Guantanamo Bay months and many legal battles in American courts for the US to relent and finally allow the Red Cross access to the prison.
In a country notorious for prison abuse and torture of prisoners, it is hard to believe that those held at Guantanamo Bay are now being dealt with more humanely by their captors.
The Red Cross report also mentions the inclusion of doctors and medical personnel among those assigned the task of interrogating the prisoners. This, it says, is in "flagrant violation of medical ethics."
The hasty and "sharp rejection" of the report in question by Washington once again points to the dangers and recklessness inherent in the policy of uni lateralism being pursued by the Bush administration in its global war on terror.
It is such behaviour on the part of Washington that makes the world, especially Arabs and Muslims, weary of its double standards and suspicious of its real agenda behind the war on terror.