Tackling rural poverty

THERE can be no easy solution to a problem that has been so long in the making and is so deeply entrenched in society. According to a World Bank report on rural growth and poverty reduction, people in rural areas comprise nearly 80 per cent of Pakistan’s poor. Even though the poverty rate as a percentage of the rural population may have declined in recent years, the number of rural poor has actually increased and, going by the World Bank’s calculations, now stands at 35 million. The same is true of the country as a whole. While the poverty rate as determined by the WB declined from 33.3 per cent in 2001 to 28.3 per cent in 2004-5, a burgeoning population meant that the number of those living below the poverty line grew in this five-year period. Indeed, the total number of the poor in Pakistan shows an increase even if one were to accept the government’s questionable poverty rates — 23.9 per cent in 2005, or an implausible 10.56 percentage points less than the 34.46 per cent estimate for 2001.

Agricultural growth alone cannot lift the rural population out of poverty, says the WB report. While investment in irrigation and livestock can help improve the lot of small farmers, the majority of the rural poor do not eke out a living from agriculture. As such, besides the provision by the state of basic public services, there is a pressing need to galvanise the non-agricultural rural economy in order to accelerate job creation. In this connection, lack of infrastructure is a major impediment to industrial investment. Setting up agriculture-related industrial units — ginning and threshing mills, fertiliser plants, canning factories, dairy product plants — is one option in farming areas, but the private sector will not find it viable without sound communication facilities, good roads and access to gas and electricity. This is a question that the government will have to address first and foremost if it is to make any headway in attracting investors to deprived areas. Strong incentives in the form of generous tax holidays will help expedite the process, especially in areas with no agricultural base and where it will be particularly difficult to convince large-scale manufacturers to set up business.

The World Bank also stresses the need for social mobilisation to empower the rural poor, giving villages and communities a voice that can be heard by the private sector and enabling them to have a greater role in the development process. This will be a daunting challenge in a country where even the educated urban middle classes are largely voiceless and enjoy little say in either official policymaking or the conduct of the private sector. At the same time, it is difficult to see how significant progress can be made in some parts of the country, particularly Sindh and southern Punjab, without the land reforms that have eluded the country since its inception. Accepting the reality of feudalism is akin to perpetuating poverty.

Still, what can realistically be done must be done forthwith. Without urgent action, the misery and the numbers of the rural poor will continue to grow, as will the drift to the towns and cities. This understandable escape from poverty creates a whole new set of social and logistical problems in urban areas that are already reeling under the weight of overpopulation. It is time to stem the tide.

Why this obsession?

IT seems President Musharraf is alone in proposing a mediatory role for himself in the Middle East dispute. Neither the Palestinian leadership nor the Israelis have taken up the offer. Yet, the president seems obsessed with the idea that he could bring the two sides closer to an agreement, for the foreign office spokesperson reiterated the offer on Monday even after Israel’s categorical rejection of it the day before. Playing a role in resolving the Middle East conflict seems to have become an uncalled for priority with this regime. The failure earlier this year to reach a breakthrough in forging a common policy on the conflict with seven so-called ‘like-minded’ Muslim nations whose foreign ministers met in

Islamabad and the subsequent lack of support for Gen Musharraf’s proposal at the Riyadh Arab League moot do not seem to have dampened his enthusiasm to mediate in the conflict. These realities make it clear that for any mediatory effort to be productive, at least some Arab countries will have to be part of the effort; Pakistan simply cannot go it alone.

It all began five years ago when an unnecessary debate was started on the possible recognition by Pakistan

of Israel, with President Musharraf arguing that the two countries had “no direct conflict”. Ironically, at home, there remain many long-standing issues as well as new ones of the government’s own creation that have failed to elicit any proactive response from the president. There is the latest threat of extremism posed by the Lal Masjid clerics challenging the government’s writ in the capital, Islamabad; the judicial crisis has the legal community up in protest; the presence of foreign militants along the Durand Line is another challenge; relations with Afghanistan and India remain at an uneasy level; and the political system tailor-made by the general in 2002 is under threat of unravelling because of his insistence on being re-elected in army uniform by the outgoing assemblies for another term. The social sector too is crying out for the government’s attention but none has been forthcoming. All this makes one wonder where this regime’s prio-

rities lie. That, indeed, is a real pity.

Threat to Aaj TV

PEMRA’S notice to Aaj Television belies President Musharraf’s claims about press freedom. At least that is how the issue will now be seen after Pemra has served a show-cause notice on Aaj TV for, among other things, airing shows on the current judicial crisis and threatened it with closure. This move also reinforces the sad truth that the government has learnt nothing from its mistakes, specifically last month’s attacks on the Jang groups’ offices in Islamabad. However, in this case, Pemra seems to have done its homework before zeroing in on Aaj TV. It blames the channel for not obtaining a no-objection certificate (NOC) that allows it to function. But this doesn’t explain why Pemra has allowed Aaj TV to operate since its inception over two years ago. Why bring up the NOC question now? It is clearly an intimidation tactic, especially since all media outlets are covering the judicial crisis and are therefore also in violation of the same rules that Aaj TV is being singled out for. Pemra may be right in faulting Aaj on technical omissions but no one is going to believe that this is the sole motive. To target Aaj for its coverage of the judicial crisis will be a mistake for it runs counter to the mood of the country now eager to know every bit of the conflict between the government and the higher judiciary. This is evidenced from the reactions of the various political and civic groups which have condemned Pemra’s move against Aaj TV.

President Musharraf will likely remind everyone that he is the greatest champion of press freedom — even if there are plenty of incidents to show otherwise. To prove his true commitment, he must ensure that the media is allowed to do its job in an environment of freedom. Pemra, for its part, should ensure that every media organisation conforms to basic rules and regulations.

Keeping Wolfowitz from the door

OUTSIDE neoconservative circles, there won’t be many tears shed when Paul Wolfowitz leaves the World Bank. The unedifying spectacle of his more or less ritual humiliation appears to have rendered untenable his position at the institution’s helm. The veritable insurgency launched by the bank’s staff has once more exposed the former US deputy defence secretary’s lack of an exit strategy.

A less obdurate individual would have had the decency to walk by now, even if he believed he had done no wrong in enriching his girlfriend and a couple of ex-Pentagon cronies through a perverse application of the World Bank’s poverty-reduction philosophy, while claiming to be engaged in a crusade against corruption. But the man affectionately nicknamed Wolfie by George W. Bush is made of sterner stuff.

When he came to the World Bank two years ago, he brought along all the arrogance and zealotry he had demonstrated during his Pentagon assignment, a role in which he was clamouring for an assault on Iraq well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It has been suggested that Wolfowitz’s passion for regime change in Baghdad was inextricably intertwined with his passion for Shaha Ali Riza.That could be an exaggeration: Wolfie’s penchant for violating the sovereignty of foreign lands in order to impregnate them with US-approved versions of democracy may well be unrelated to his libido. Nevertheless, by all accounts theirs was a true meeting of minds. Riza reportedly relishes the prospect of replacing Middle Eastern regimes with Al Qaeda-like fervour.

It is not terribly clear when Wolfowitz and Riza’s mutual admiration, based on perfect ideological compatibility, evolved into intimacy, although some news reports place this development in 2003.

It isn’t hard to imagine the shared excitement of those heady days, when the US-led invaders thought they had the upper hand in Iraq and the neo-cons were oblivious to the possibility of failure, fostering promiscuity at a more personal level. Power, as Henry Kissinger put it, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Prurient speculation, however, is beside the point. The precise nature of the relationship between Wolfowitz and Riza is entirely their business. They might have succeeded in sustaining the initial level of discretion but for the fact that Bush decided to reward Wolfowitz’s abysmal failure as an overseer of the Iraqi occupation by nominating him as president of the World Bank. (The US has enjoyed the privilege of choosing the bank’s head since the institution’s inception; in return, European governments get to pick the chief of the International Monetary Fund.) It wasn’t an offer Wolfie was likely to refuse, given that it afforded him an apparent opportunity to pursue his agenda of global domination by other means.

There was a problem, however: Shaha Ali Riza worked in the bank’s Middle East and North Africa division. A boss-employee relationship between the two of them was incompatible with the bank’s rules. Wolfowitz was prepared to recuse himself from personnel decisions concerning Riza, but insisted on maintaining professional contact with her. To the World Bank executive board’s ethics committee, that seemed like a conflict of interest. It advised the incoming president to work out a relocation and compensation package for her with the personnel department.

He did, but saw no need to run it by the board before it was implemented. The arrangement involved Riza being seconded to the State Department following a promotion and a raise, plus further raises every year for the next five years and the guarantee of another promotion when she returned to the bank.

The prospect of a career disruption for no fault of her own must naturally have been unpalatable to Riza, and it seems Wolfowitz was keen to overcompensate: the $60,000 raise took her annual salary to $193,590, tax free — which is more than what Condoleezza Rice earns before taxes. That salary is still paid by the World Bank, even though Riza works for a State Department-funded concern called the Foundation for the Future, which is supposed to promote democracy in the Middle East, although it hasn’t done much so far and Riza appears to be its only active employee.

The whiff of neo-corruption becomes stronger when you consider the fact that initially her reassignment to the State Department entailed reporting to Liz Cheney, the vice-president’s daughter. Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney go back a long way.

All that, however, is not the only area of concern for the World Bank. When Wolfowitz took office, he brought with him a pair of aides with no development experience, who lost little time in antagonising bank staff and were handsomely rewarded for their insolence. One of them, Kevin Kellems, was dubbed “keeper of the comb” by colleagues who recalled his cameo in Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, where he is seen handing a comb to Wolfowitz, who adds a spot of spittle to the implement before applying it to his hair. Last week Wolfowitz offered to fire Kellems and Robin Cleveland, but if that tactic was aimed at staving off calls for his own resignation, it didn’t work.

There are, meanwhile, also a number of matters that the inquiry instituted late last week by the World Bank’s board probably won’t take into consideration before making its recommendations. In 2003, for instance, while he was still at the Pentagon, Wolfowitz arranged, via his underling and fellow neo-con Doug Feith, for Riza to be hired by a private defence contractor as a consultant on a crucial project: setting up a government in Iraq.

General Jay Garner has no recollection of her input; more pertinently, the bank at the time had a policy of no contact with occupied Iraq. There is a suspicion that Riza’s State Department clearance, which is not easy for foreign nationals to obtain (she was evidently born in Libya, grew up in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, and holds British citizenship), dates back to that assignment.

Besides, in his capacity as World Bank chief, Wolfowitz has been generous in offering lucrative international appointments to right-wing ex-ministers who supported the invasion of Iraq. They include Jordan’s former deputy prime minister Marwan Muasher, who is now the bank’s senior vice-president for external affairs; Ana Palacio, who served as Spain’s foreign minister in the José Maria Aznar government; and Juan José Daboub, a former Salvadoran finance minister, who was last year appointed as one of the bank’s two managing directors. The other MD, New Zealand’s Graeme Wheeler, has added his influential voice to demands that Wolfowitz should depart.

Daboub, reputedly a member of the fundamentalist Catholic sect Opus Dei, was in the news recently for ordering the deletion of all references to family planning and contraception from the bank’s assistance programme document for Madagascar.

Not surprisingly, a considerable proportion of the anger against Wolfowitz relates to the discrepancies between his personal behaviour and his campaign to curb corruption in the Third World, which has involved, inter alia, the temporary suspension of aid to countries such as India, Kenya and Chad without consultations with the executive board. In the case of Uzbekistan, which was subjected to the same treatment in 2005, the suspension followed Tashkent’s decision to expel US troops.

It is hard to believe there was no political motivation involved, given that Wolfowitz is still intellectually wedded to the infamous Project for a New American Century, and his off-the-record briefings to journalists frequently focus on the thoroughly discredited myth of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The pleasure occasioned by Wolfowitz’s predicament has offended his supporters (yes, he still has a few, mainly the usual suspects such as The Wall Street Journal and Christopher Hitchens), who say the Riza infraction isn’t a sacking offence and their hero’s role at the Pentagon ought not to be taken into consideration.

But that’s a ridiculous plea: appointing a war criminal to the helm of what is effectively the largest aid organisation in the world was anyhow a profound folly, quite regardless of the complications relating to Wolfowitz’s love life. It was therefore inevitable that his discomfiture would prompt plenty of schadenfreude.

Even the White House, after a desultory defence of Wolfie’s record, appears to have more or less given up — which may be related to its preoccupation with efforts, not least among the Republican Party, to dislodge attorney-general Alberto Gonzales.

Some European governments, meanwhile have been counting on the White House to persuade Wolfowitz to step aside, in the hope of avoiding further discord with the US. Others — as well as some bank staff — don’t object to a weakened Wolfowitz staying on, lest the US impose on the bank an even more unbearable individual, such as former UN ambassador John Bolton.

The vast majority of the staff, however, are dead set on his departure, and they were joined this week by 40 senior former bank officials, including 18 vice-presidents, who say Wolfowitz has lost the trust and respect of his subordinates. In truth, he never enjoyed it in the first place. No one has said anything about Riza’s prospects, but it’s hard to imagine her resuming her World Bank career.

Of course, neither of them is likely to have any trouble finding a suitable sinecure, and a change of scene — the two of them ensconced, perhaps, in a luxury neo-condominium — might offer an ideal opportunity for her to try and make an honest man out of him. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

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