PAKISTAN loses Rs200 billion annually due to lasting shortage of power, says Dr Salman Shah, advisor to the prime minister on finance. KESC’s line losses, primarily theft of power, is 45 per cent while that of the Wapda is 25 per cent inclusive of line loss and theft. In spite of its privatisation, KESC has not been able to reduce its staggering loss of power produced at a high cost.

So the government is giving the power companies a subsidy of hundred billion rupees, he says. Initially the subsidy is given as a loan. Hence, the consumers are being forced to pay for the stolen power through high electricity rates and compelled further to pay higher taxes to meet the demands of the hefty subsidy.

Dr. Salman Shah also says that if the problems of infrastructure were solved and the five mega dams built, an average economic growth of 10 per cent can be sustained by Pakistan. This is what the government has to do –– prioritise the projects and take firm decisions and build the projects one after another or several of them simultaneously. The public which is a victim of the power shortage, theft and waste can only support the government if it takes the right decision and moves fast.

An enraged National Assembly was told last week that 32 power plants were awaiting implementation during the next three years to produce 3, 500 MW. The implementation is to be done on a fast track basis. The power they can produce will more than meet the current shortage.

Minister for water and power Liaqat Jatoi told the house that 28 proposals for thermal stations in the private sector were being processed by the private power and infrastructure board. They will generate 7,679 MW of power and sell to the Wapda for distribution. At a time when the country is in a desperate need of power and there have been power riots in Karachi and elsewhere, why are these proposals being bunched up for collective decision is not comprehensible. In fact, such official smugness or a leisurely approach to the problem is provocative.

If the officials concerned with taking the decisions were not living in air-conditioned homes, driving air-conditioned cars and going to air-conditioned offices –– all at public expense, there would not have been such a leisurely approach in solving a critical problem. We are now told the country will have 1,000 MW of power within a year through energy conservation, additional power production and private sector output. Already the Attock Gen Limited with a capacity of 164 MW has been commissioned by President Musharraf.

The National Energy Conservation plan promised by the prime minister earlier is out and it consists of a number of conservation measures, none of which is unfamiliar or hasn’t been tried before. Yet, they promise good results and ought to be tried again. Hospitals, medical stores, bakeries ought to be given exemption, while the shops will close down at 9pm instead of 8 pm as announced earlier. Marriage halls are to shut by 10 pm unless they arrange for their own power supply. Advertising neon-signs are to be shut off as the shops close.

Minister Jatoi would prefer if the people scheduled their wedding ceremonies in day time as was done in the past. That may not be possible in the long, hot and sizzling summer, but they can be shifted to the evenings which can mean doing without the meals. Even if people are allowed to have their own illuminations at weddings, the fact remains they use a great deal of diesel oil which is imported and sold at subsidised rates. But the authorities may not always know whether a wedding party is using diesel or main line electricity.

The amount of power saved through such measures may not be much compared to the hassle the officials and the public have to go through. Yet some austerity measures are essential in place of the gross waste of power seen at wedding parties, often using stolen power.

Staggering the weekend holidays by making Fridays and Saturdays weekly holidays instead of Sundays is possible if the chamber of commerce comes to some understanding. There are reports that 1,000 watts of power is to be imported from Tajikistan and Iran separately. We have been hearing of this since the days when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister. But it did not come off perhaps because of the Afghan war which is getting worse. Similarly, the import of power from Iran for use in the Gwadar port area has not been arranged so far.

We have been promised for long that power would soon be coming out of Thar coal, described as the largest coal mine in the world. It was finally said that coal would be imported from abroad to be mixed with the Thar coal to produce the best results initially. But now after years of negotiations, the Chinese company Sheng Hu which was negotiating the deal for power production has pulled out.

President Musharraf has said recently that Chinese and European companies were working on the project. But the Chinese are now out as they do not agree to the price for the coal based power offered by Pakistan. The Chinese find the rates too low while the Pakistani negotiators argue they offered the best terms. It is surprising the two sides could not come to an agreement despite the excellent relations between the two and the protracted negotiations. The Chinese are convinced they are on the right track and will lose heavily if they accepted Pakistan’s terms.

The government is now looking towards Pakistani companies to work on the Thar coal for power production. It has issued a letter of interest to Hassan Associates to produce 1000 MW of power. The Sindh government issued a letter of intent to it to set up four power plants of 210 MW each. The company had to make detailed studies before finally undertaking the project.

The Economic coordination committee of the cabinet has allowed gas companies with low BTU gas to set up their own power plants. How many of them will come forward for this pupose remains to be seen. But why was not this step taken earlier when it was one of the obvious remedies of our problem.

While the government wants the cooperation of the oil companies, it is not paying the dues of the oil companies promptly. The three oil majors PSO, Shell oil and Caltex have been clamouring for the payment of their dues of 14 billion rupees which is the difference between the import price of diesel oil and the sale price. The payment situation is much better now than when the government owed Rs40 billion to the oil companies.

The government is also urging the alternate energy enterprises to speed up their efforts which are not fast enough. Hydel power is the cheapest source of power but the government took its own time in deciding on the five dams because of the top priority it gave to the highly controversial Kalabagh dam. The World Bank had been reminding Pakistan to take early decision on the dams and indicate the external funds needed as loan.

When it comes to KESC, no development project has been undertaken during the last two or three years, nor were the new owners of KESC bound to make sizable investments to create additional capacity. A state of drift was permitted to prevail and the situation in Karachi went from bad to worse as the demand for power consumption rose from eight per cent to 12 per cent a year. Meanwhile, the massive theft of power continues which has made the situation far worse. The result is periodic power riots which can become more violent unless early remedial measures are undertaken.

THE recent visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Moscow ended in a virtual deadlock as President Vladimir Putin voiced his unhappiness with the US decision to proceed with a missile defence system in two former Warsaw Pact countries, Poland and the Czech Republic.

The whole issue of Ballistic Missile Defence, announced by President George Bush in May 2001, as a manifestation of his unilateral foreign policy, is becoming an embarrassment. A feeling is growing even in US academic circles that what amounts to the militarisation of outer space in contravention of UN resolutions adopted in the 1960s is queering the pitch for emerging global priorities.

China, that has been critical of the idea from the beginning, and which has been identified as the main target of the BMD by western analysts, demonstrated its ability to counter the US move by using a newly developed missile to destroy one of its satellites late last year.

Vice President Dick Cheney had protested this action, calling it a violation of China’s commitment to peaceful development. However, the US ambition to acquire the capability to destroy incoming ballistic missiles, though ostensibly aimed at “rogue” states, is clearly seen as part of the neo-con agenda for global hegemony.

Pakistan has been obliged to maintain its nuclear and missile defence in view of India’s growing capability. While clearly eschewing any plans for an arms race, Pakistan has been developing missiles capable of defence against ballistic missiles. At the same time, Pakistan remains supportive of bilateral and multilateral moves for arms limitation and disarmament so that the world’s finite resources can be utilised for fighting poverty, disease and malnutrition. Indeed, even the spread of terrorism is related in part to economic injustice in the world.

The futility of relying on armed force for domination in Iraq and Afghanistan is being realised by the dominant West, accompanied by that of the need to improve the life of the common people through development and reconstruction.

Ahead of the meeting of G-8 that consists of the world’s richest countries, it has been pointed out that the majority of them failed to honour specific commitments made at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2006. Considering the challenges emerging from global warming that is already affecting one billion people in poor countries, any diversion of resources for military rivalries would be criminal and self-defeating.It is during Republican administrations, usually dominated by the affluent, that expensive military projects are initiated. The Reagan administration saw the launching of a Star Wars programme. In the last year of the administration of the elder Bush, 1992, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby authored the project of the New American Century that propounded the concept of US domination of the world by developing military technology to a point where it had virtual monopoly of power.

The period of the Democratic Bill Clinton presidency saw the US economy revive with deficits of the Republican years succeeded by surpluses. Greater attention was paid to the social sector. However, the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1995, and the influence of the military industrial complex expanded. This resulted in the revival of interest in the Star Wars scheme, including provision of additional resources for research and development for a quantum increase in US military capability.

The victory of George W. Bush in 2000, without real popular mandate, brought to power a person who had adopted the neo-con philosophy of US global domination. His unilateral approach was reflected in the repudiation of major global accords accepted by Clinton, including the Kyoto Protocol on the environment and the International Criminal Court to punish war crimes.

Bush’s Ballistic Missile Defence initiative was launched in May 2001 in an address to the National Defence University without advance consultation with allies, or even the formal approval of Congress.

The then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, announced a many layered BMD system at an estimated cost of $100 billion which would become operational by the year 2008.

In actual fact, the failure of several tests proved that it would take much longer for an effective BMD system to be established. China, apart from moves within the UN Conference on Disarmament to formally oppose the weaponisation of space, which the US blocked, also organised an international seminar in Beijing in October 2001 which this writer attended.

Ambassador Jonathan Dean, who had represented the US in US-USSR arms control talks, not only called the US decision a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, but appealed for action by international civil society to oppose the weaponisation of space.

The rogue states identified by the US in what Bush called the “axis of evil” were Iraq, Iran and North Korea. However, the European Union differed from the US view and considered the ABM treaty, which the US repudiated, as one of continuing relevance to peace and stability.

Indeed, the international reaction to the BMD initiative was highly significant. India, under a BJP government, was quick to endorse it with the then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh issuing a statement in support of it. The only other major country to support it was Japan. President Putin of Russia opposed it as did China. Pakistan’s attitude was close to that of China.

The 9/11 events that led the US to declare war on terror and to call for a global coalition to join it forced significant changes in global diplomacy. Many analysts call it a watershed in world history. Virtually the whole world, including Russia and China, joined in this war.

The US proclaimed what has been called the Bush Doctrine in September 2002.Though the 9/11 attack required a global response, the Bush Doctrine’s objectives almost sanctified US unilateralism. It looked to removing governments considered repugnant by the US and pre-emptive action against governments and terrorists as well as the right to initiate unilateral action if the allies were not supportive. This was invoked specifically to launch the war in Iraq, despite the absence of UN endorsement.

Four years of war in Iraq and six in Afghanistan have demonstrated that though the US has the means to occupy any country, it cannot sustain that occupation or achieve democratisation by force alone. Public opinion in the US favours recourse to diplomacy and dialogue, with the UN and other multilateral organisations playing a more active role.

In the remaining period of his term, the continuing importance being attached by Bush to missile defence appears to be anachronistic. The stand taken by President Putin of Russia during the visit of Secretary Condoleezza Rice harked back to the assurances given to Russia following the 9/11 events that the US would show sensitivity to Moscow’s interests in former Warsaw Pact countries. In actual fact, the relentless expansion of Nato as well as the European Union have reduced the space available to Russia, and led Putin to re-assert Moscow’s primacy in the “near-abroad”.

The next US administration will have to carefully re-examine the neocon agenda. China, Russia and other emerging powers will remain opposed to measures proposed to perpetuate US hegemony. The Muslim world also favours efforts to address the real problems facing the world, rather than divert resources to an arms race related to rivalries for hegemony.

Apart from the likelihood that even military planners in the US may have to re-examine the concept of BMD, the peaceful use of outer space has expanded dramatically. It is estimated that the growing number of communication satellites going round the world is generating business that may soon exceed six trillion dollars.

With India and Pakistan making significant progress in nuclear risk reduction, there is realisation that this globe must adjust its priorities, now that the impact of global climate change may affect most of the world’s population.

The writer is a former ambassador.