Progress on IPI pipeline

GIVEN the pressure that America has traditionally brought to bear on the workings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the WB’s verbal offer to “seriously consider” funding for the IPI gas pipeline comes as a pleasant surprise. America’s 30-year-old adversarial inimical relationship with Iran has nosedived in recent years, with Tehran refusing to abandon its uranium-enrichment programme and Washington threatening to let loose the dogs of war. A military attack on Iran was always going to be unfeasible given how troubled US forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Washington’s failure to rally international support for such action. However, the US did succeed in arm-twisting the UN Security Council into imposing tougher military and nuclear sanctions on Iran in March this year. Seen against this backdrop, it is intriguing that the World Bank has chosen to focus on the IPI project’s financial viability instead of being guided to by the geopolitical interests of the United States. Coming at a time when the WB is headed by a diehard neoconservative like Paul Wolfowitz, the views expressed on Tuesday by the bank’s vice-president for South Asia are indeed heartening. Pakistan is yet to request financial assistance for the IPI pipeline, he said, but stressed that such a request was likely to be viewed favourably.

Mr Praful Patel, the visiting World Bank VP, accurately summed up the country’s energy woes when he said that Pakistan was standing on the deck of a burning ship. Both industrial and domestic users have already been hit hard by the electricity shortage, and there are fears that productivity in the manufacturing sector may shortly suffer a crippling body blow if generation capacity is not increased substantially. The IPI project is of vital importance in this context. Indigenous gas supplies are overstretched as it is and are clearly insufficient to meet the need of additional power plants that are so urgently required. Oil-fired units will have to meet the need in the short term but this is not a prescription that Pakistan can afford to follow indefinitely. If all goes according to plan from this point onwards, the $7.4 billion, 2,600-kilometre IPI project will take between three and five years to materialise. The tariff issue has already been sorted out by the three countries involved, and Pakistan and India are also in agreement over the gas-sharing formula. At the same time, progress is being made on the transit charges that New Delhi must pay Islamabad. Both Pakistan and India need the IPI pipeline if they are to sustain their economic growth of recent years. Islamabad also stands to make substantial monetary gains from the annual transit fee.

Besides the economic benefits accruing to all concerned, the IPI pipeline offers a golden opportunity to strengthen regional bonds in a unipolar world. Both Pakistan and India need their strategic and economic ties with the US but that does not mean that Pakistan should be subservient to Washington and fail to stand by its neighbours. Moscow has also shown keen interest in the IPI pipeline and the involvement of an energy giant like Russia bodes well not just for the project’s financial viability but also for its sustainability in the event of US or western European opposition. Pakistan and India must stand firm and look to their own interests first and foremost.

Elusive health goals

DESPITE Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s optimism on the subject, Pakistan’s progress on the UN millennium development goals has been far from satisfactory and it is unlikely that the country will achieve its health-related targets by 2015. It would not be accurate to say that health indicators have actually worsened over the years, but improvement has been slow, indicating the government’s apathy towards even those programmes to which it is internationally committed. Take for example the goal to halt the spread of diseases like malaria by 2015. Although Pakistan is part of the global Roll Back Malaria initiative, it is estimated that more than a million cases of the vector-borne disease occur in the country every year, while preventive measures, including a strong public awareness campaign, are not being given due importance. Meanwhile, another MDG target is proving elusive -- that of reducing by two-thirds the number of cases of under-five mortality by 2015. Pakistan’s among the worst figures in the region for child mortality. It is unlikely that this will be improved anytime soon, especially as the problem is linked to another millennium target on which there has been slow progress — halving the number of people without access to proper sanitation and potable water.

It is a pity that the government has not been able to form a cohesive strategy taking into account all factors that contribute to negative health statistics in the country. It may have formulated action plans for tackling various health problems but implementation of these has been held back by shortage of funds, internal rifts and poor logistical support. There has hardly been any attempt to correct these shortcomings by intelligently planning out finances and ensuring that funds are used judiciously and that corruption among health officials is rooted out. Moreover, conservatism in certain parts of the country has given rise to people suspecting the motives of health teams. In these areas, lady health visitors are intimidated and parents are asked by clerics not to administer polio drops to their children because these are meant to render them impotent. Removing the people’s mistrust is as crucial to attaining health goals as is taking care of logistical requirements.

Re-opening the Indian consulate

IT is hard not to view with some scepticism the Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad’s recent statement that the Indian consulate will open soon. This has been said several times since 2003 when both countries decided to re-open consulates in Karachi and Mumbai as part of a confidence-building measure but there has been no progress in this regard. It is safe to assume that Dr Ibad is aware of the fact that concern on this score is widespread because of the hardships and expenses involved in obtaining a visa. Despite a train service that revived recently to facilitate travel for those living in Sindh, the visa process remains cumbersome. Intending visitors still have to go to Islamabad to get an Indian visa which is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, especially for those who can only afford travelling by train. The Pakistani mission’s inability to find a place for its consulate in Mumbai is always cited as the reason for the delay in opening the Indian consulate in Karachi.

A solution to this problem must be found on an urgent basis. The government can press the Indian government for assisting them in this regard. It can also explore temporary solutions whereby until a consulate is made fully functional, its visa offices can be opened. This will alleviate much of the hardships intending visitors are experiencing at the moment. The same can be done in Mumbai where the Pakistani mission can work out of a suitable location solely for issuing visa. Another option is for both countries to send their embassy representatives to Karachi and Mumbai, at suitable locations and hold visa camps every fortnight. This too will be convenient for those who cannot travel to Islamabad or Delhi. Both governments have a responsibility towards its citizens and must work towards removing the problems that prevent them from travelling.

Meeting the challenge of the MDGs

PRIME MINISTER Shaukat Aziz has reaffirmed that Pakistan would achieve the eight UN millennium development goals (MDGs) by the end of 2015 -- almost 9 years from now. Out of these eight, we have problems with five or six, although some progress has been made in each of these sectors, but compared to the need, the progress achieved has been small. Many countries have done better than Pakistan.

“We have a long way to go and undertake reforms in every sector of society”, he told a two-day conference last week in Islamabad. He wants every sector of society to own up these goals and participate in making them a success. But the problem in a country like ours is that in the rural areas it is the feudal lord or the tribal chief who matters -- and now, in addition to that, in some areas it is the religious extremists whose word carries weight. Danial Aziz, chairman of the national reconstruction bureau, says the local bodies are ideally suited to implement the MDGs and he is right. But will the feudal lords and tribal chiefs allow the local bodies which control, promote the cause of universal primary education, gender equality and girls education.

The people should own these schemes and make a success of them as they are for the betterment of the have-nots, says the prime minister. It is an issue of political leadership to pass on the management of such schemes to the people who are to benefit by them.

It is an issue of governance – governance for what and by whom? And who will decide if the governance is in the right mode and moving in the right direction. Almost everywhere we hit the rock of the feudal lords and tribal chiefs, and not only in the feudal areas. Such obstruction has to be overcome if the millennium goals are to be owned up by its beneficiaries and made a success of.

Despite the challenge to his data, Shaukat Aziz has reaffirmed that acute poverty in Pakistan has come down from 34.5 per cent in 7 years to 24 percent. He asserts that urban poverty has come down from 20 to 15 per cent and rural poverty from 39 to 28 per cent. He maintains that as a whole 13 million of the 160 million people have come out of acute poverty.

The disagreement between him and his critics springs from the different yardsticks they use for determining the extent of acute poverty. While the prime minister uses the low yardstick of income in rupees, the others go by the international standard of a dollar a day. Hence the gap between them is wide. In fact, the whole argument has become less relevant as the new scale of measuring poverty is two dollars a day according to which 75 per cent of the people are poor.

But he has good news for the better income groups. Per capita income in Pakistan will reach next year 1,000 dollars, having crossed 950 dollars this year, he says. That is the average of the income of the richest man and the poorest put together. Anyway he admits 25 per cent of the 160 million of the people are acutely poor and that comes to about 40 million people as 25 per cent of the population and they are not amused by the projection of a sustained 10 per cent annual growth soon.

He says while the rich countries are facing the problem of an increasing number of old age people, we have a hundred million of the young throbbing with life, ready to enter jobs and make all the difference to our economy. So our future is very bright if we continue with the current policies.

Out of the hundred million young people, 50 per cent are women who have a low participation in the economy as we do not give them enough opportunities. Some of the brightest among the young migrate to other countries or seek employment elsewhere and make those countries richer.

The fact is the young in Pakistan have always been much more than the old people whose number is increasing now as they live longer. But much of the youth have not been well educated or technically trained, hence their overall production has been small and the value added in their output has been insignificant. Not much is being done in that direction now except in a limited number of institutions. There ought to be a tremendous increase in the training facilities and vast improvement in the quality of training provided.

And we have to make good use of our women’s potential, particularly the educated ones, and impart technical training to a large number of them. But gender equality which is one of the UN development goals faces greater challenge than before. The religious extremists oppose that and want to confine women to limited areas. In some areas they do not want them to go to schools, and certainly not for co-education. They do not want women to take up office jobs or seek employment where they come across men at work.

We need more lady doctors, nurses, women in the medical field. We must discover ways to get them in such a restricted environment which forces them to waste their costly training and education and our investment in training them. Universal primary education, gender equality and reduction in child mortality which the UN goals seek will make small headway in such a sterile environment.

While we talk of gender equality, Karo-kari murders are on the rise and not all of them are reported in the newspapers. If the police cannot prevent such murders they are not able to arrest them after their crime. The courts are often helpless in such a sterile environment.

To encourage parents to send their daughters to schools in the tribal areas, the foreign aid agency offered 200 rupees to parents as an incentive so that they send their daughters to school. But now that is being objected to and extremists take to violence to enforce their will. Making a law to protect women or ensure their rights is one thing and enforcing it quite another. Women are always at a disadvantage when they are victims of crimes and the offender is an influential local person.

When it comes to environmental protection the ideal institution to ensure that are the local bodies beginning with the municipalities in towns. But the municipalities are in a mess in most places and politically divided and splintered. They have failed in their primary tasks in towns and cities and so are no example to others. Hence, much of the country has become more or less a slum. Most cities have little water and yet the cities have scant facilities.

If the old slums cannot be easily eradicated, there must be a way to resist formation of new slums. Instead new slums are springing up all the time as people take care of their posh homes and not their surroundings.

Creating Kachi Abadis has been a big money game for long. The land mafia has made a phenomenal amount of money through its illegalities. Building a good drainage system though very challenging, is only half the game. Protecting and preserving it is the other, more difficult half. It is time we give maintenance and sustainability as much importance as building a good water distribution or drainage system. Four per cent of the GDP is to be spent on education. That includes the private sector’s share. How much is that share has not been specified. But what really matters is how well and purposefully that is spent.

More of ghost schools and more ghost teachers will not promote education as the results of the ambitious SAP-1 and SAP-2 have demonstrated. Nor bedroom schools in the private sector and its utterly commercial approach to education can give us good education. The education system and the education budget should be open and transparent and the teachers should have an effective voice in the system.

The same goes for public health system on which at least two to three per cent of the GDP should be spent initially. Too much should not be spent on the absentee doctors and too little on the patients and medicines. The institution of ghost doctors and ghost medical personnel should be brought to an end firmly. Good laws as the one for the protection of women’s rights are not enough. Far more important is their enforcement and the punishment of the corrupt and criminals.

Guantanamo prisoners

THE BUSH administration is ruthlessly exploiting the perverted system of justice approved by Congress last year for foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

By stripping the detainees of the ancient right of habeas corpus, Congress drastically limited their ability to challenge their detentions in US courts. Now the administration is citing that limitation as an excuse to curtail the prisoners’ access to the civilian lawyers who have been representing them.

As first reported last week by the New York Times, the Justice Department has asked the federal appeals court charged with handling all appeals of the detentions to limit lawyers to three visits with their clients; allow their correspondence with prisoners to be opened and read; and give government officials the power to deny the lawyers access to evidence. If accepted by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit following a hearing next month, the rules would make it all but impossible for the hundreds of lawyers working on Guantanamo cases, many of them without compensation, to continue defending prisoners.

The government’s argument is that there is not much need for such representation. Under the scheme approved by Congress, review panels set up by the Pentagon are empowered to judge whether Guantanamo detainees are “enemy combatants” subject to detention and to review their status periodically. The prisoners are not allowed lawyers at those hearings, and their only appeal can be to the D.C. Circuit—which, in turn, is limited to reviewing whether the Pentagon correctly followed its own procedures. That leaves a defence lawyer little to do, claims the Justice Department.

The administration’s real concern, of course, is not about wasting the attorney’s time. The military authorities at Guantanamo have developed a deep antagonism, tinged with paranoia, toward the lawyers—an attitude exemplified by the comments of former detention chief Cully Stimson, who suggested that the law firms sponsoring the pro bono work should be punished by their corporate clients. The Pentagon insinuates that the lawyers are inspiring protests by the prisoners or passing their messages to the outside world.

In fact, civilian lawyers have provided an invaluable service at Guantanamo. Their lawsuits have forced the few reforms that have taken place at the prison. They have rightly reported publicly on hunger strikes, suicide attempts and abusive treatment. Their investigations have made clear that many of those held at Guantanamo are not dangerous terrorists but Afghans forced into cannon-fodder service by the Taliban, or Arabs who were swept up and sold by Pakistani bounty hunters to the CIA.

The administration’s latest manoeuvre demonstrates anew why the legal system that Congress approved is shamefully inadequate. Its logic is that Guantanamo prisoners do not need the right of habeas corpus because they are able to make their cases before review panels and appeal to a federal court. Yet now the administration itself is arguing that that system of review and appeal is so attenuated that prisoners hardly need lawyers. Democrats in Congress promised to correct this travesty by restoring habeas corpus to Guantanamo; so far they have done nothing. That leaves it to the appeals court to reject the administration’s proposed restrictions and prevent the injustice at Guantanamo from growing still worse.

— The Washington Post