IPI price formula

AFTER protracted negotiations, an understanding has been reached at the experts’ level on the gas pricing formula for purchase of Iranian gas by Pakistan and India in the tripartite talks which concluded in Teheran on Friday. The proposal will now be placed before the governments of the three countries for their approval. That the three sides have also agreed to give response within a month to the price formula indicates the urgency with which they want to move, concerned as India and Pakistan are about the surging demand of energy for their fast growing economies. The understanding on price is a major breakthrough towards finalising the gas pipeline project for which talks were initiated as far back as in 1994. Once the formal agreement on pricing formula is reached, Pakistan and India are expected to work out the transit fee for a pipeline passing through Balochistan and Multan into India. This will yield substantial earnings for Islamabad. Apart from meeting the rising energy needs of the two South Asian countries, the economic benefits of the construction of the 2600-kilometre Iran-Pakistan-India Pipeline, (IPI) originally estimated to cost seven billion dollars, will be shared in terms of business and employment by the three countries. The chances of building the project have also brightened by the interest shown by the Russians in this giant enterprise. Russia, which is politically close to both India and Iran, is the worlds largest producer of gas on which the Europeans are significantly dependent for their needs. Whatever the form of Russian participation which has not been spelt out yet, it would attract global financiers and gas companies.

While the progress of IPI pipeline is a welcome development, policymakers in Islamabad also need to give priority to meeting the countrys increasing energy requirements from indigenous sources. It will take three to five years for the IPI project to materialise if things move on smoothly. Besides, since Pakistan cannot remain heavily dependent on imports of oil whose prices are rising with the passage of time, it must speed up efforts on developing indigenous sources of power — gas, oil and coal. Sindh is known to have huge massive coal reserves in the Thar area which have remained unexploited for decades despite the interest shown by the Chinese. They can be invited back to help any time soon because of the close ties that Islamabad enjoys with Beijing. There is also evidence of the presence of much more oil and gas reserves in Balochistan than those of the Sui fields. These can be explored and harnessed provided peace and security are stored in the troubled province. The security concern of the foreign investors needs to be addressed primarily through political reconciliation and federalism. A peaceful environment is also required for laying Balochistan section of the IPI pipeline.

The success of the IPI project would also encourage Central Asian States with potentials of energy exports and major international investors to look at Pakistan with renewed interest and can turn Pakistan into an energy and trade corridor for the region, including western China. The Gwadar port could help develop a major international trade route for the southern Asian continent and enhance regional economic cooperation. But any significant regional economic cooperation with the Central Asian republics and South Asia is dependent on peace and security in Afghanistan. Once the situation in the troubled country has been normalised, it could serve as a pivotal trade and power route for the Central Asian republics, providing the framework for a larger regional system of economic cooperation.

Another person goes missing

A FORMER ISI official is the latest person to be added to the growing list of people who have mysteriously disappeared. He serves as a coordinator for an organisation that has been pursuing the case of ‘missing’ people and is also said to have played a “negative” role in the talks between the ulema and the government over the demolition of ‘unauthorisedly’ built mosques in Islamabad. It is clear that it is no longer those with suspected ties to Al Qaeda or local nationalist groups that are being picked up on some pretext or the other. Anyone with a dissenting voice can be made to ‘disappear’. This is blatantly against the law and if the government is not going to respect its own law, how can it expect others to do so? But it does not seem to care for the mounting pressure against such enforced disappearances — be it from international organisations like Amnesty International or from the families of the missing persons. Their peaceful protests have been callously ignored by the police, most notable was the one in December last year where the photograph of a teenage boy being publicly stripped and beaten shocked the nation. Many families allege that their members have been picked up by the agencies and handed over to US authorities as ‘terrorists’ in exchange for money.

It is noteworthy that society is standing up to these illegal and inhumane acts of forced disappearances. Since the 9/11 episode, scores have been picked up in the country whose whereabouts remain unknown to date. One such case is of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, the MIT-physicist who was picked up nearly four years ago with her children, for alleged links with Al Qaeda. This is just one example of the 200 who the HRCP recently said are presumed to be missing. There is a legal process in place which ensures that very person has the right to a free and fair trial. This must be adhered. The Supreme Court is in the process of hearing a case on the whereabouts of 40 missing people, of whom only a few have returned home. One hopes the rest are found and that no more names are added to the long list of the missing.

Rising crime in Lahore

WITH burglary, banditry and murder now common in Lahore, reports of serious crimes tend to be read as routine news by an increasingly desensitised public. The severity of the crime situation is brought home with far greater effect when seen in the light of hard, cold statistics compiled over six years. According to the Punjab police chief, the overall crime rate in the provincial capital increased by an alarming 85 per cent between 2001 and 2006, with heinous crimes also registering a sharp rise. The standout year, for all the wrong reasons, was 2004 while 2005 saw a relatively small increase in the official crime rate. However, the situation deteriorated sharply over the last 12 months. The real rate is no doubt even higher given that many crimes go unreported because of the public’s lack of faith in the police force and the latter’s reluctance to register FIRs. Then there are the roznamcha (daily log) entries which are excluded from the official figures provided by the police chief.

Clearly, the recent massive increases in the budget of the Punjab police force and the creation of ‘elite’ units have failed to bring crime in Lahore under control. This lawless situation can, in part, be attributed to a growing urban population and the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. But while socio-economic conditions are a factor and must be addressed by the government, the police force simply cannot be absolved of its share of the blame. Many officers have paid handsomely for their posts and some are political appointees interested only in raking it in while the going is good. Ordinary policemen, meanwhile, are poorly paid and woefully lacking in motivation. Some have criminal backgrounds or are connected to organised gangs. The answer lies not only in the quantity of policemen but their quality.

Time for Islamabad to correct its stance: What lies ahead for the fateful triangle-II

Overwhelmed by the mujahideen forays and incessant pounding of Kabul, President Najibullah resigned in April 1992 and sought asylum in the UN compound in Kabul.

Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif hastened to broker the Peshawar Agreement to set up an interim Mujahideen government in Kabul on a rotating basis. Sibghatullah Mojeddedi was appointed president for six months to be followed by Burhanuddin Rabbani to stay as the head of the state for one year, hold elections and then quit. However, Rabbani prevaricated and prolonged his role until overthrown by the Taliban in September 1996.

The dramatic emergence of the Taliban in Kandahar in 1994 upset the balance of power to throw Afghanistan into endless civil strife. While the emergence of the Taliban and their acceptance by the war-weary people had been an internal development, Pakistan had its own axe to grind in their phenomenal rise to power to act as a pro-Pakistan force in Afghanistan it was the first to recognise and accord full diplomatic status to the Taliban regime in Kabul. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also followed suit and exchanged envoys with Kabul but not at full ambassadorial level.

After the overthrow of the Taliban regime in November, 2001, by the US-aided Northern Alliance, Abdul Hamid Karzai was recogsized as the interim head of the transitional government at the Bonn Conference (Bonn-I) in December 2001. He was elected president in the general elections in 2004. Off to an apparently friendly start vis-a-vis Pakistan, Karzai would soon be parroting the anti-Pakistan litany of the American media and establishment led by the US envoy to Kabul, Zalme Khalilzad. He had by now reached a frenzied pitch of bitterness against Pakistan, unusual between neighoubrs professing the same faith and sharing much of the same geostrategic space and ethno-cultural mores.

To every conciliatory move and matching action from Pakistan, Karzai’s response remains uncivil and offensive. His latest statement from Kandahar accusing Pakistan of trying to ‘enslave us’ more than a dirty rebuke to Pakistan is the ultimate insult to the proud, freedom-loving Afghans. “Pakistan still hasn’t given up the hope of making us slaves, but they cannot.” He declaimed how could any country, least of all a fraternal Pakistan, ever think of ‘enslaving’ the Afghans, where imperial Britain, the Soviet Union and now the Euro-Americans failed?

In his zeal to toe the American line and echo their verbiage, Karzai would even forget that the Taliban, despite the terrorist tag America has hung around their neck, are predominantly his own co-ethinic Pakhtoons. In the final tally when the last of the Taliban and their patrons have been killed or wounded, what would remain of Karzai’s own kinsfolk? What would be left of Afghanistan’s majority population? Throwing all the diplomatic norms to the winds, Karzai even names President Musharraf for the disturbed state of affairs in his own country and the widening gulf between the north and the south, east and west. Except for throwing in its lot with the US in its global war on terrorism, Karzai’s government has little or nothing to show to his war-torn country and its people by way of regaining their dignity, peace and security.

In the overall regional geo-strategic environment, Karzai’s Afghanistan is also obstructing, even if inadvertently, the peace process between India and Pakistan. After years of high tension between the two countries, the peace process has made progress in spite of all the ups and downs. Karzai should realise that Indo-Pakistan peace holds the key to regional peace and stability. He should help rather than hinder it.

As for India it is one thing to use Afghanistan opportunistically against Pakistan, and quite another for Afghanistan to act as India’s pliant tool against Pakistan. The Indian attitude towards the Taliban and Al Qaeda is shaped basically by America’s global war on terrorism. Physically and geo-strategically India has little to do with the Taliban and even less to fear from them. It is only to placate America that its new-found and senior strategic partner that India goes out of its way to support Afghanistan in its war against the Taliban.

Indian ambassador to the United Nation, Nirupam Sen, during a recent debate on the Afghanistan situation in the Security Council used some cheap rhetoric in a face off with his Pakistani counterpart, Ambassador Munir Akram. He said, “the snakes are still swirling because of the cross-border dimension”.

He would have Pakistan ‘confront’ Taliban 'snakes’ rather than ‘strike deals’ with them making a snipe at September 5 North Waziristan peace accord with the local Maliks and tribal leaders. He went on to urge the international community to focus on ‘roots’ of insecurity in the process of “rebuilding and strengthening the Afghan state.” Efforts to achieve peace and stability in Afghanistan would be ‘unavailing’ unless this aspect was addressed.

Earlier, Ambassador Munir Akram identified lack of effective governance, widespread corruption, an incompetent police service, rising narcotics trade and continued warlordism as major factors responsible for the state of instability and violence in Afghanistan. India’s growing interest in Afghanistan is no more than fishing in the Pak-Afghan troubled waters.

Over time India’s interventionist role in Afghanistan would increase after Afghanistan’s full membership of Saarc is confirmed by the middle of this year. More than helping Afghanistan in real terms, his may well exacerbate tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the one hand and adversely impact the Pak-India peace process on the other. As for Afghanistan’s dependence on transit trade and vital supply lines, the situation would stay as before except as a disturbed zone of peace and tranquillity.

A brief, even if tentative, prognosis of the future Afghanistan- Pakistan-India relations would suggest that Pakistan would be saddled with the main burden and responsibility of correcting its stance regardless of errors of judgment the other two might commit. America and the West, not too happy with Pakistan’s proactive role as ‘the frontline state’ would continue to endorse the Indo-Afghan version of the situation as against Pakistan’s.

India’s newly attained status as America’s strategic partner in Asia after the conclusion of the nuclear accord, would be yet another major problem for Pakistan to face. It would add greater weight — in plain language nuisance value — to the Kabul peception and appraisal of Pakistan hand in the deteriorating internal security across that country already beyond Karzai’s control.

Nato Commander General David Richards squarely blames Pakistan for the Taliban resurgence in recent times. He would want America to revise its “peacetime approach helping the Taliban to regroup” assume more aggressive approach and put Pakistan in the dock for not doing enough to deal with the Taliban/ Al Qaeda militants. Together with the American administration and US analysts, the Nato commander has been critical of North Waziristan peace accord of September 5, 2006. Phased withdrawal of some 80,000 regulars from the disturbed area under the agreement encouraged the militants to carve out their own ‘mini-state’ in Waziristan.

The New York Times, in a detailed oped piece by Elizabeth Rubin, categorised the Taliban fighters under three basic heads. “The new Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are of three basic types. There are the old war-addicted jihadis who were left out of the 2001 Bonn conference, which determined the post-war shape of Afghan politics and the carve-up of the country. There are the ‘second generation’ Afghan refugees: poor, educated in Pakistan’s madresahs and easily recruited by their elders. And then there are the young men who had jobs and prestige in the former Taliban regime and were unable to find a place for themselves in the new Afghanistan.

“Coincidentally, there are also now three fronts. One is led by Mullah Omar’s council in Quetta. The second is led by Jalaluddin Haqqani. Although well into his 80’s , he orchestrates insurgent attacks through his sons in Pakita, Khost and Paktika, the Afghan provinces close to Waziristan, where he is based. Finally, there is Gulbadin Hekmatyar, the anti-Soviet fighter entrusted with the most money and arms by the US and Pakistan.”

Yet another American South Asia expert, Stephen Philip Cohen, in a recent interview to The Nation, urged Pakistan and India to declare truce in Kabul. India has thus come to have a hand in the Afghan pie. Even if a purely scholarly perception, its importance cannot be overlooked.

Mr. Cohen takes a very dismal view of Pakistan as a country “slow, almost static to change and move on with his rest of the world.” As he sees it, Pakistan has not changed very much since 1977 (the year of Zia’s coup d’ etat). People are still worried about the same issues despite the fact that a lot is changing has taken place in the rest of the world.

“That is the one conclusion that I have the world is changing very quickly. Pakistan is not changing with it” Such is the image of Pakistan abroad in spite of our own media projection of Pakistan as a progressive, liberal country endorsing General Musharraf’s enlightened moderation.”

Pakistan it would have to bear the burden of common borders with both India and Afghanistan — one cast in the role and the image of an 'arch rival’, the other noted for its historically unfriendly to even hostile attitude. The success of Pakistan’s balancing act on the scenario will depend very largely on the effectiveness of its on-going peace process with India, which, together with America- backed Afghanistan accusing it of serving as the patron saint and protector of the Al-Qaeda/ Taliban terrorists.

While the Karzai government lasts, its diplomatic offensive against Pakistan would, in all likelihood, continue unabated. This is all Kabul seems to have in its armory to divert the attention of his people from their sad plight, on the one hand, and persuade foreign military forces, US’s in particular, to stay on as his ramshackle regime’s security shield.

In a recent interview to the The New York Times, Karzai openly accused Pakistan’s ISI of supporting the comeback of the Taliban. The tirade would continue.

Depending on how soon and how well Pakistan succeeds in stabilising its own internal situation together with mending its fences with India, Afghanistan should lose a good deal of US-India support for Pakistan-bashing and look inwards for the sources of its internal instability to deal with them correctly.

Concluded

The writer is a retired brigadier.