Ms Bhutto’s return

BENAZIR Bhutto’s decision to return to Pakistan on Oct 18 is a welcome one. She must however realise that she is returning to a changed country whose people are more aware of their surroundings thanks to a free media and an independent judiciary — which cannot be muzzled any more. It is hoped that by now she has learnt from her past mistakes — which are numerous. She has an opportunity to prove herself as a national leader if she focuses on bringing together all political players on a united platform for the purpose of restoring democracy under a civilian president. She must also make it clear that she is doing so because it best serves the interest of Pakistan rather than that of the current dispensation of western backers. Her parleys with a military dictator, however benign he may be perceived to be, might not have significantly affected her vote bank but they have damaged her reputation and her party’s as a democratic force. She now has the opportunity to undo that damage and restore her credibility. If it later emerges that she has indeed struck a deal with Gen Musharraf, one can only hope that she did so under a national reconciliation process rather than for personal gain as most people believe. Ms Bhutto’s past record is tainted with corruption charges, even if they have not been proved in Pakistan. She will have to work extra hard to convince everyone that she is working for the good of the country.

Many of the critical issues facing the country require a national consensus and Ms Bhutto must pave the way for that to take place. As someone who has plenty of experience in struggling for democracy, she must rise above petty politics and work towards bringing everyone together to tackle the many challenges that threaten the country’s security. Arguably, the main issue is the rise in militancy and extremism which can be attributed to Gen Musharraf’s insistence in the last election on keeping the two national parties (PPP and PML-N) out of the playing field. This created a political vacuum which was quickly filled by right-wing voices preaching hate and violence. The result is now clear for everyone to see and requires the immediate attention of all political parties.

It is important that the government not create hurdles in Ms Bhutto’s return like it did for Nawaz Sharif who also had the right to return and face corruption charges against him. The government must also not be seen as giving Ms Bhutto any preferential treatment for that will give the impression that the playing field for politicians is tilted to favour a few. Ms Bhutto should be allowed to defend herself and the government should allow the courts to do their job. In the same vein, Mrs Nawaz Sharif’s anticipated arrival after Eid should not be thwarted. Even though at this moment it may not appear so, this is an election year. In order for them to be free and fair, justice must be perceived as having been done.

For public good

MORE than two months after the July 3 crackdown, the remnants of the Lal Masjid brigade are still active. They want the mosque to reopen — to re-enact the scenes of rowdyism witnessed on July 27 when the mosque reopened and 15 people were killed? There was a reassertion of militancy when the militants painted the mosque red, hoisted their flag on the top of the building and refused to offer prayers led by a new, government-appointed imam. The result was chaos, with two congregations offering prayers in one mosque on a Muslim Sabbath. There were clashes with the police and a bomb blast — the standard method for the extremists to register a protest. A mosque ceases to be a mosque when it turns into a source of fitna — the Islamic term for public mischief. The Lal Masjid became a family affair when brothers Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi took over its control after their father, Abdullah, was assassinated. But, instead of focusing on the fundamental duties of imams, the two raised a well-armed militia brainwashed into resorting to violence to “spread good and suppress evil”. As the government hesitated, the two brothers virtually established a government of their own and turned the mosque into a centre of rebellion against the state of Pakistan.

The death of over 100 people in the government’s July 3 crackdown is one of the tragedies of Pakistan’s history. Given the stance of the Lal Masjid leadership one can say the government was left with no choice, though its strategy could have been shrewder. The goings-on in the Lal Masjid had been ignored or patronised by previous governments, and the Capital Development Authority’s protests that the extension of the mosque and the construction of the Hafsa building were illegal were ignored by the higher authorities. The truth was that the Aziz-Rashid brothers were not without sympathisers in the administration, especially the intelligence agencies. In fact, it appears highly unlikely that the agencies did not know of the large-scale smuggling of arms into the mosque right under their noses. Reopening the Lal Masjid at this stage will merely give the extremists an opportunity to regroup and misuse the mosque’s holy precincts for political purposes and possibly to re-enact the July 27 drama. To stop the mosque from being turned into a nucleus for another armed rebellion, the Lal Masjid should remain closed in the interest of law and order.

From dull to vibrant city?

ISLAMABAD’s revised master plan envisions a capital city with several distinctly new features. These will transform its very character from the idyllic and scenic abode for bureaucrats and diplomats into a vibrant cultural city bustling with business, commerce, industry and tourism. Some of the prominent features in the new and expanding Islamabad, such as a business district along the Islamabad Highway near Loi Bher, an industrial estate-cum-transport terminal and new tourist spots as well as residential and institutional areas, are to be welcomed. Together with the recently inaugurated National Art Gallery, other planned features like a cine city complete with drive-in cinemas, training academies for arts and culture, film studios and theatres, an education city and a heritage city will all go a long way in shaking off the tags of ‘cultural desert’ and ‘boring city’ from Islamabad.

Although this long overdue development and expansion of Islamabad is being welcomed, concerns have been raised about the negative impact of construction activity on the green environment for which Islamabad has been noted since its birth. Some consideration in this respect seems to have been shown in the revised master plan. For example, the much-criticised earlier proposal of a road tunnel through the protected Margalla Hills has apparently been replaced by the 34 km Margalla Bypass running along the foothills from the Motorway and Grand Trunk Road to the Diplomatic Enclave, which will also be expanded. Allocation in the revised master plan of another full sector in E-14 for a new city park on the pattern of the existing F-9 Fatima Jinnah Park appears to be another effort to address the concerns of environmentalists. These measures notwithstanding, maintaining Islamabad’s green character amidst the fast-growing concrete mass of roads and buildings will continue to be a challenging task for the Capital Development Authority.

How effective is our governance?

WHEN determining the governability or otherwise of Pakistan, one has to see how effective the government is in its day-to-day operations as well as in long-term planning. One invariably comes to the conclusion that either the state fails to deliver or buckles under pressure when its writ is challenged by pressure groups.

We have recently witnessed this phenomenon in the case of madressah registration and the de-weaponisation campaigns, which were launched with great fanfare but abandoned when resisted by powerful groups. To elaborate further we can take up two areas — our inability to perform in the social sectors and our poor disaster management capacity — and see how we fare in each.

Both are important because they touch the lives of millions of people. It is the state’s basic responsibility to provide services like health, primary education, roads, water supply and sanitation to its people, especially to the low-income groups, and to come to their rescue in case of a natural or man-made disaster.

Let us take the social sector first, and see why we continue to be ranked so low — 134th — on the UN Human Development Index. More than poor resource allocation to this sector, it is the lack of vision and poor governance which keep the majority of our population illiterate, malnourished and without any medical cover, even after 60 years of independence.

We have spent billions of rupees on the construction of school buildings, basic health units, rural health centres, community halls, rural water supply schemes, etc, but our social indicators remain as poor as before. What has gone wrong?

It is not difficult to see that because of poor governance and lack of accountability, Pakistan has become a graveyard of incomplete or abandoned schemes. Even if the schemes are completed, most of them remain unutilised or under-utilised for a number of years, while the poor people suffer.

For example, there are around 20,000 ‘ghost’ schools in the country, but the government, with all its power and resources, can neither make them operational, nor dismiss the teachers who draw salaries without doing any work. The same can be said of health facilities.

Even in Karachi, where all the high-ups are located, there are maternity homes and BHUs in low-income areas, which remain non-functional, for one reason or the other. This newspaper keeps on publishing such reports almost every week, but without any visible results.

Perceptive observers point out that the basic reason for this poor performance is our deeply flawed planning and development paradigm. Its focus is on brick and mortar, not on sustainable development or sociological change. It excludes the people from decision-making and works to the benefit of consultants, contractors and engineers, who have developed a powerful nexus that siphons 80 per cent of development funds. Hardly 20 per cent reach the target groups.

Disaster management is another area where the question of governability is tested and people can see first-hand the effectiveness of the government in dealing with emergent situations. In every country, citizens expect that the local, provincial and federal governments would be fully equipped for rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations as soon as any disaster strikes. Here, too, we see that the government (at all three levels) is not geared to meet the challenge — big or small.

First, take the example of the earthquake which hit the northern part of Pakistan in October 2005. Without going into the details, one can recall that before the government could even gauge the enormity of the situation or think of any rescue operations, foreign teams with modern gadgetry and equipment started pouring into Pakistan. They saved precious lives not only in Islamabad but also in remote parts of Azad Kashmir and the NWFP.

At this crucial juncture, we had no proper agency to coordinate relief and rescue operations, nor any equipment to remove the rubble nor laser cutters to rescue people. Heavy machinery had to be borrowed from private contractors. A disaster management cell was created after several weeks. This was later converted into a disaster management authority. But even now this ‘authority’ is without any trained staff or the required equipment.

Take another example. Recently, vast areas of Sindh and Balochistan were devastated by floods. Providing relief to the affected people and rescuing them from dangerous areas is a routine exercise which was previously carried out by the revenue and irrigation staff. But this year, the poor people were left to the mercy of the local waderas and district nazims who failed miserably in providing succour to those in need of immediate aid, leaving them helpless for weeks on end.

The collapse of the Shershah bridge also needs to be studied from a governance point of view. That a bridge which was inaugurated by the president of Pakistan a little over a month ago collapsed is no doubt a major disaster and embarrassment for the government, but the bigger question is how the disaster management agency dealt with this event.

The bridge collapsed around noon but for hours no rescue operations could be initiated by any government agency. Ordinary people who had gathered at the site tried to save precious lives with the help of shovels. Even when the government ministers and functionaries reached the scene, they had no clue as to how to go about rescuing the unfortunate people who were trapped under the rubble.

The City District Government, which should be the prime agency responsible for rescue operations in Karachi, does not even have enough fire tenders and snorkels to rescue people beyond the eighth floor of a high-rise building, as we witnessed in the case of the PNSC building twice in six months. The availability or lack of modern gadgetry can be left to the imagination. The same is true of the government of Sindh.

Pakistan is a land of strange paradoxes. We are a nuclear power with the fifth largest standing army in the world. We have state of the art institutions and quite a few centres of excellence, but are not able to remove filth from our streets or devise a proper drainage system for the most posh areas of Karachi. We can conclude by saying that ungovernability in Pakistan is increasing at all levels.

The examples given in this article — and a previous one on this subject published by this paper earlier this month — show the mere symptoms of the disease that our society is suffering from. It is the absence of appropriate institutions of governance and lack of accountability which is responsible for this decay. Nothing will change unless we focus our attention on structural reforms and institutional development.

How can this be done? What role can different stakeholders play? This is a multi-million dollar question. Perhaps the National Commission on Government Reforms can come up with an answer.

Ban on Imran Khan’s entry in Sindh

Hilal-i-Pakistan

WHATEVER is happening in the country is unimaginable…Although the Constitution guarantees our fundamental rights, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf chief’s entry into Sindh was banned and he was forced to board an Islamabad-bound flight from Karachi airport. Earlier too, he was not allowed to visit Karachi after the incident of May 12.

He was barred from visiting Karachi on the pretext that his arrival and the reception accorded to him would create a traffic jam, causing hardship to the citizens.

It is strange that Imran’s party was considered so big that his arrival and reception would have created a traffic jam on Sharae Faisal. If he had been allowed to come, the skies would not have fallen. At the most, around 200-300 people would have gathered to welcome him.

Just two days after Nawaz Sharif’s deportation, this was the second incident that proved that the citizens do not enjoy the freedom of movement provided by the Constitution.

The reason behind the ban on Imran was a political one. Imran has accused one of the partners of the ruling coalition in Sindh of masterminding the killings of May 12, hence he is being denied entry into Sindh. — (Sept 14)

Suicide attacks and the need for change of mindset

Khabroon

TWENTY persons were killed and many others injured in a suicide bomb attack near Dera Ismail Khan. Reports said that the Eagle squad tried to foil the bid, but before that the bomb had exploded. Similar incidents had occurred in Miramshah, Quetta and other parts of the country, including some high-security areas.

But the terrorist acts have not stopped. Some other countries such as the US, Sri Lanka and Israel have failed to device an effective strategy to prevent acts of terrorism.

One may differ, but this is an ideological war. This cannot be fought with the force of weapons. The security agencies and government authorities know better that despite all their efforts the war is not dying down.An ideological war can only be fought with ideology. If its solution is sought with guns, it only breeds more guns and the situation gets worse. The need is to change the minds of the people.

The suicide bombers and those attacking the security agencies are not outsiders. They are citizens of this country. Earlier, they were the blue-eyed boys of the government, but now they have been declared as the devil. — (Sept 13)

–– Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi