Difficult times ahead

EVER since its birth almost 60 years ago, Pakistan’s economy has been on a roller-coaster. It does well when foreign capital flows become available to the country. This happened in the first seven years of President Ayub Khan’s tenure when America poured in economic and military assistance into the country. The consequence was a pick up in growth with the rate of increase in GDP improving to more than 6.5 per cent a year.

In the first post-independence decade, the GDP had increased by only 2.7 per cent a year. The American flow of money was in return for Pakistan’s participation in the defence pacts sponsored by the US to contain the spread of communism to Asia. America’s help stopped after Pakistan went to war with India. It resumed again but at a much reduced level.

In the 1970s, Pakistan isolated itself from the West first by initiating military action against the secessionist forces in East Pakistan and then by opting for an independent foreign policy. Under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan built strong relations with China, a country that was out of favour with the United States.

Accordingly, Bhutto’s Pakistan was not a favoured destination for foreign assistance. His socialist policies which led to the nationalisation of large scale industries and commercial banks were not popular with such development institutions as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. They also reduced the amount of assistance provided to the country. There were other reasons for the economy’s poor performance during the Bhutto period, but fall in foreign flows played an important role. The rate of growth in GDP declined to only 3.9 per cent in 1971-77.

Pakistan did not immediately return to favour following the demise of Bhutto’s regime. That happened in 1980 following the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. Once Pakistan signed on as a very active partner in the American effort to force Moscow out of Afghanistan, foreign flows started in large quantities once again. That led to a pick-up in GDP growth; it increased to 6.5 per cent a year. But the flow of American money began to dry up again once Pakistan’s job was done and the Soviet Union vacated Afghanistan. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush failed to certify that Pakistan was not engaged in developing a nuclear bomb. That certificate was a condition of continuous American support. In its absence, US aid stopped flowing.

In terms of foreign capital flows, the 1990s were a difficult period. The decision by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to follow India and carry out nuclear tests in May 1998 resulted in western sanctions being imposed on both countries. Once again, there were other reasons for the slowdown in economic growth but a decline in the availability of foreign capital was an important contributing factor. The rate of GDP increase declined to 4.7 per cent a year in 1988-99.

The military government that took office in October 1999 had to wait for two years before Pakistan gained favour once again with the West, in particular with the United States. That happened immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States. Large amounts of foreign assistance began to flow into the country after General Pervez Musharraf pledged his full support for the American war against terrorism.The economy benefited from the opening up of the aid tap. America also helped by easing Pakistan’s debt burden. The rate of GDP increase began to pick up in 2003. For the 1999-2006 period, I estimate GDP growth at 5.7 per cent a year. The conclusion from this quick overview of the performance of the economy over the last 60 years is obvious: there is a direct relationship between Pakistan’s economic performance and its foreign policy.

Pakistan is about to hit a rough spot again. What happened in 1965 when the country fought a sharp and brief war with India and what happened again in 1989 when Pakistan, working with the United States, was able to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, is going to occur again. History will repeat itself, perhaps not this year, perhaps not also in 2008, but most likely in 2009 when the reins of the American government will change hands in Washington.

What I am referring to is the likelihood of the withdrawal of American assistance to Pakistan. This will happen as the situation worsens both in Iraq and Afghanistan and Washington, under a new set of leaders, begins the process of pulling out of these two countries.

Two, not so subtle changes are afoot in Washington. The first is a growing belief that it was wrong for America to attack Iraq and, once having attacked that country, not plan properly to occupy it. For the moment, the critics of the Iraq war — and they are growing by the day as the number of American casualties mount and the Sunni-Shia conflict takes on a sharper edge — are of the view that instead of spending more human and financial resources in that losing endeavour, Washington should concentrate on Afghanistan.

The American invasion of Afghanistan and the defeat of the Taliban are generally considered to be justified moves. It troubles many people that by going into Iraq, Washington allowed itself to be distracted from what should have been its main aim: to destroy for good the bases from which terrorists could attack America and its interests, and to create an environment that would not produce movements such as Al Qaeda.

The second change in thinking is equally important. For instance a recently published book by a highly respected scholar, John Mueller, presents a case to the American public that it did not adopt the right set of policies after the terrorist attacks on its territory. Titled Overblown, the book argues that the United States’ response to 9/11 — not just the war in Iraq but the entire war on terror — was an overreaction. The response was overblown.

In his words: “Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or our reaction against it? . . . A threat that is real but likely to prove to be of limited scope has been massively, perhaps even fancifully, inflated to produce widespread and unjustified anxiety. This process has then led to wasteful expenditures and policy overreactions.”

The stage, therefore, is being set for America to pull back from some of the forward positions it has taken since 9/11. There are many moments in the country’s history when, after a military effort that produced unhappy results, America withdrew into itself, leaving the world to take care of itself. Such a moment arrived more than a century ago when its military involvement in the Philippines became unpopular at home. The result was a period of isolationism broken only by the First World War. America was reluctant to enter the Second World War. It was drawn into it by the successful machinations of Winston Churchill and the ill-advised Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

If the successor to President George W. Bush in the White House decides to rewrite American strategy in the world he (or she) is very likely to abandon the pre-emptive strike option that became the Bush doctrine. There is great likelihood that the next US administration will leave the world more or less on its own.

If that happens, what will be the consequences for Pakistan? What I have said above about the possible change in thinking by the American policy elite was by way of a prelude to the suggestion that Pakistan is once again headed towards difficult times. Contrary to what the country’s leaders have repeatedly said — and possibly believe in — Pakistan has not prepared itself for the day when it will have to stand on its own feet.

The economy has done well in the last three years for the simple reason that it has received large amounts of external capital flows to produce savings for investment. These flows have come from five sources: American assistance, assistance provided by other donors, remittances by the members of the Pakistani diaspora, investments by foreigners and foreign entities and capital raised in international financial markets.

Four out of these five sources are likely to reduce the amounts they are prepared to direct towards Pakistan if political instability returns to the country and if Islamic radicals gain further ground. If that were to happen, even the fifth source — the Pakistani diaspora — may have serious misgivings about its continuing involvement.

While the large amount of American assistance to Pakistan since 9/11 was the product of that country’s preoccupation with terrorism, other donors, and foreign investors were putting money into the country out of a conviction that Pakistan needed to be helped or had some attractive opportunities available for making a reasonable amount of profit for the willing investor.

These perceptions have also begun to change. Islamic militants are becoming more assertive in the country lending to the increasing belief that Pakistan is not a safe place to do business in. The western press has also begun to project its belief that Pakistan is getting involved in activities that are deeply resented by its neighbours. On two days, February 19 and 20, 2007, The New York Times published three stories that portrayed Pakistan in an unfavourable light. In one, the paper detailed how North Waziristan had become the new base for Al Qaeda’s operations.

Then there was the accusation by a senior Iranian official according to which a Sunni group was using western Balochistan as a sanctuary and training ground for mounting attacks on the country’s Revolutionary Guards. And, finally, there was a story that militants operating out of Pakistan may be responsible for blowing up a Pakistan bound train north of New Delhi. Nearly 70 people were killed in that incident.

With likely reduction in American assistance, with the shying away of foreign investors and with exports not increasing at the rate at which they can adequately finance critical imports, Pakistan will have to rely almost totally on the amounts sent from abroad by the members of the expatriate community. There are two parts to this particular flow. One part constitutes the money sent in to support families and friends. The other part represents investments made in the homeland by the members of the diaspora. The second part will be in jeopardy if the international community loses confidence in Pakistan’s economic future.

It is unfortunate — and it is a consequence of the failure of public policy — that Pakistan is once again heading towards difficult times. It has made little effort to provide a domestic base for the growth of the economy. Without such an effort in place, Pakistan seems poised to take another plunge down the economic roller-coaster.

A needless, immoral war

NOW that everyone apart from Dick Cheney recognises that the Iraq war has been an appalling failure, and now that all the original justifications for the war have long since collapsed, where do those who originally supported it turn? Some just pretend it never happened, or that they really never approved of it.

There is a deafening patter of paws as sundry politicians and pundits rush to the side of this sinking ship, and there have been many displays of selective amnesia worthy of Tony Blair himself. Why, not far from this very page angry voices can be heard condemning as criminal folly a war they once praised enthusiastically. A cynic might even speculate that if the operation had turned into anything that could plausibly be represented as a success, some of these latter-day peaceniks would now be trumpeting victory and denouncing those who always opposed the invasion as fainthearts or traitors.

But such about-turns are not so easy for the MPs who voted for the war four years ago, and especially for members of the government. As Peter Hain says, with apparent honesty: "No Labour minister, as I was at the time, can shirk responsibility for it." So what to do, given the scale of disaster and the collapse of those original justifications?

The answer is a rewriting of history just as dishonest in its way as the original dossiers, or Blair's claim that Saddam was a "serious and current" threat to this country. Look closely at the answers given last week to the Guardian by the cabinet ministers who now aspire to the deputy Labour leadership, or perhaps something higher.

These really boil down to two points. One is that "the intelligence was plain wrong" (Hain) or that "although we now know the intelligence was wrong I think the case for war was made in good faith" (Hilary Benn). The other is that the war has at least had one beneficial outcome: "Removing Saddam Hussein from power was essential for the peace of the region, for the protection of the Iraqi people, and for our own security" (Hazel Blears), or "I don't regret that Saddam is no longer in power" (Benn).

His words are echoed by Blair's diminished and beleaguered band of apologists in the press, the most eminent of whom is perhaps Philip Stephens of the Financial Times. When, he writes, he supports Tony Blair to his friends for sincerely believing the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein, the reactions have been such that "I could have been defending a child molester".

No, not a child molester, just someone with a psychopathic ability to forget what he has previously done and said, which he seems to have passed on to others. Blair himself is now far beyond reason, but Benn and Blears should begin each day by saying 10 times:

We did not go to war to depose Saddam Hussein. That was indeed the object of those in Washington who dreamed up the war: destroying Saddam, or regime change for the sake of regime change.

But it was specifically not the purpose of British participation. Blair had been told by his own attorney general -- in a moment of lucidity and candour before Lord Goldsmith mysteriously changed his mind -- that regime change as such was an insufficient legal basis for war. And he knew that even his most servile and corrupt MPs would hesitate to support a war on that basis alone.

After all, Blair himself had originally said that we were not fighting to remove Saddam. On October 13, 2004, he abused Charles Kennedy and the Lib Dems for their opposition to the war. If they had had their way, "Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be running Iraq ... And that is why I took the stand I did." Then how, the Labour backbencher Bob Wareing asked, could the prime minister "explain his statement to this House on February 25 2003 when he said, 'Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntarily disarmament through the UN. I detest his regime but even now he could save it by complying with the UN's demand'?"

As for Benn's "the intelligence was wrong", it is wearisome to point out that the intelligence was not wrong at all, since it was concocted to justify a decision for war which had already been taken. For all the foolish phrases we hear, there were no "intelligence failures" before the war: it was a success. Malign critics of Blair "insist he tricked, lied and cheated Britain into war", Stephens laments, "no matter how many objective inquiries say otherwise".

Oh, come on. Even if we hadn't guessed at the time just how specious the dossiers were, and even if we didn't suspect that Lord Hutton's report was a bizarre whitewash consistently at odds with the evidence he had heard, we know what Robin Cook thought about the intelligence when he first saw it: "I was taken aback at how thin the dossier was. There was a striking absence of any recent and alarming firm intelligence." (For all the proper admiration Cook earned, he would have done more good if he had said this before the war began, rather than after he had resigned.)

Above all we have the evidence, as John Humphrys reminded Blair last Thursday, of the devastating "Downing Street memo" of July 23 2002. It was written in strictest secrecy for the eyes of Blair and a few close colleagues, summarising the latest meetings in Washington between the heads of British intelligence and their American counterparts.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude," the memo says in completely unambiguous words. "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." When they read that last sentence, how on earth can these ministers continue to maintain - how dare they still pretend - that the "intelligence was wholly wrong", as though this was an innocent error?

When I write about this now I feel like a pub bore. "Have I said this before? Or maybe you knew that already." But of course I've said it, as many others have, and of course you know. We know that we were taken into a needless, foolish, illegal, immoral and ultimately catastrophic war.

We know that Blair committed the country to war long before he ever has admitted, or can admit. We know that parliament and people were deceived by the prime minister and his cabal, wilfully but not accidentally, since it would have been politically impossible for this country to have participated in the war if the full truth had been told. We know that claims about "WMD" were not some unhappy accident, but a necessity forced upon Blair after he had persuaded himself that he must at all costs support George Bush, right or wrong. We know that the case for war was not made in good faith.

The only people who appear not to know this are our rulers. They cannot acknowledge it, and are obliged to stick to a false account of events. It's anyone's guess how long it will be before Iraq recovers from the last four years. Another question is how long it will be before political life in this country recovers from the damage inflicted on it.

—Dawn/Guardian Service

Making compassion a way of life

MY definition of civilisation is “the rise of compassion at a personal and institutional level.” Surely, this will appear to be a very idiosyncratic definition to all those who have been equating civilisation with military might, technological sophistication, the amassing of wealth and living a post-modern, selfish, consumerist lifestyle which depletes the earth’s resources to the point of danger.

Our rulers, the movers and shakers of the world, and even learned people have combined to give definitions of civilisations which have favoured size, power, wealth and the ability to dominate others, and not kindness and gentleness which can be called compassion. The rulers see the world as a chessboard in which the rise of a civilisational unit is synonymous with its acquiring an empire and dominating others.

Historians, generally paid by the rulers to glorify conquest, have waxed lyrical about empire-making. They have brought up children to regard Napoleon, Alexander, Changez Khan and Ceasar as great men though all they did was to leave a puddle of blood wherever they went. They have talked about the rise of empire in glowing terms and its decline and fall in lachrymose tones. But it is the time of the “rise” when people are attacked and killed and dominated while “decline” is the time when they are set free.

The empires of the West withdrew from Asia and Africa in the middle of the 20th century and we, the people of South Asia, gained our independence. The last empire to withdraw was the Soviet empire when the Central Asian states gained autonomy.

If empire, conquest, and military size are to be celebrated then all these attempts at independence should be regretted. But if, like me, someone believes that empire is to be regretted and the rise of movements, including that of sensitivity to the rights of the subject people, is to be welcomed then we must not glorify conquest. Instead, we must glorify the rise of compassion. For what is consciousness of the rights of the conquered people? It is a form of compassion.

Economists also celebrate things other than compassion. They talk in terms of accumulating wealth and ever-increasing growth rates. The process becomes insensitive to the rights of the workers of less developed countries.

Even within the rich countries money comes in the form of a lifetime of indebtedness and hard work which makes compassion impossible. For how is one to look after one’s aged parents and little children if one is a busy executive or even an ordinary nine-to-five worker?

But economists worship the mystique of money not that of compassion. So, the mere making of wealth is celebrated — and not the way it is distributed and spent.

In Pakistan, former chief economist Dr Pervez Tahir told me he was sidelined because he did not agree with the figures which suggested that poverty had been reduced in the country.

Economists can, and have, evolved compassionate indicators of measuring economic success but these are hardly used.

Scholars of international relations classify the world in terms of developed, developing and undeveloped countries. The last category is subsumed by the second one for reasons of politeness but in private conversations scholars call some people savages just as their 19th century Orientalist predecessors did. This classification depends on military and technological sophistication, per capita income and how much a country identifies with a western lifestyle. The fact that such developed countries play havoc with the lives of millions of innocent people is ignored.

Anthropologists have written detailed accounts of small tribes whose way of life has been full of real compassion. They have made their lives happy, fulfilled and crime-free. But such people have not been called civilised. At best they are dismissed as childlike savages.

Disappointed by rulers and scholars one turns to men of religion for their definition of civilisation. Here one finds great contradictions. There are compassionate interpretations of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. There are Muslim sufis and Christian saints. But there is no dearth of those who outlaw compassion and preach hatred and intolerance.

The views of the latter are gaining ground in Pakistan although this was an area where religion came from sufi saints who adopted “sulh-i-ku” (peace to all) as their value.

Luckily there are concrete steps which may be taken to increase compassion in a society. First, the system of rule should reduce the possibility of tyranny and cruelty.

All systems of rule rest upon coercion in some form but democracy is the least cruel of them all. Kingship, dictatorship and military rule are as good and bad as the most powerful decision-maker in these systems allows them to be.

If the ruler is cruel there is no way that the people can get rid of him. In a democracy it is possible to get rid of him. It is also possible for a minority to withstand a majority for the minority has rights to its way of life and belief system. This makes democracy more compassionate than other forms of government.

We inherited this from the British but have not valued it and are in danger of losing it. Those who value democracy for its compassion should talk more about it and oppose other forms of rule.Second, the justice system should be compassionate. This means that we should be able to get justice early, easily and at an affordable cost.

The best thing in a compassionate legal system is the habeas corpus provision. This means that the state is duty-bound to produce an accused within a certain period before a court of law.

The idea is to prevent the police or the intelligence agencies from holding him captive without his case being decided in a court of law. Pakistan possessed this but its rulers are now throwing it away.

The rise of intelligence agencies ends a compassionate legal system. Not just Pakistan, the entire world is sliding into an era of lack of compassion.

Man graduated from savagery to compassion when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948. Now there are prisons like the one in Guatanamo Bay, and the CIA can imprison people without a legal process. Unless people make an effort to go back to compassion and strengthen institutions to keep it alive we will descend into a new, more lethal form of barbarism because our societies are more powerful, more technologically advanced and more organised than before.

Compassion is personal as well as institutional. Values endorsing compassion can be taught. At the moment, we teach children lack of compassion for women, the working classes and people of different races and religious beliefs. If we teach them that one’s honour does not lie in women’s bodies we can inculcate values in them that are more compassionate than our present male-dominating ones.

Similarly, if we teach the desirability of peace and respect for minorities and others, especially the common people of India, Israel and western countries, we may make our younger people less insensitive than we tend to be ourselves.

The most important thing, however, is creating institutions for the growth of compassion. These are a just economic order, a just legal system, free healthcare, free schooling, a caring bureaucracy which acts as the servant of the public rather than its master.

To ensure that rulers do not become tyrannical there must be regular elections and a free press to put pressure on the rulers and functionaries of the state as well as on groups of citizens to behave justly and within legal boundaries. Laws to protect women are part of creating compassionate institutions.

Our new role models must be people who create compassionate institutions: the Mazhar Ali Khans, the Zamir Niazis, the Razia Bhattis and the I.H. Burneys of this world among journalists; the Asma Jahangirs and I.A. Rehmans of our land when it comes to human rights; the Edhis when it comes to caring for the disadvantaged. These are people who promote compassion and make us civilised.

Let us give a new vocabulary to our children: we are “advanced” if we are compassionate and have institutions to ensure that compassion becomes a way of life.

We are “backward” if we are discriminatory, insensitive, intolerant and pro-war. The possession of machines, money and large chunks of land as well as the power to blow up the earth is not an indicator of civilisation. The possession of compassionate values and institutions is the only real indicator of civilisation.