Spending on the military

AT a time when the political role of the military has become a hotly debated subject, comes the news that in 2006, Pakistan spent more than any other developing country on acquiring new weaponry from abroad. According to a report released to the press on Oct 1 by the United States Congressional Research Service, Pakistan spent $5.1bn on arms purchases last year.

The report titled ‘Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations’ also revealed that the United States, with sales of $10.3bn, was the largest single supplier of arms to the developing world, followed by Russia with $8.1bn and Britain with $3.2bn. The total sales to developing countries amounted to $28.8bn, a bit less than those concluded in 2005. In 2005, the developed world sold $31.8bn worth of arms to developing countries.

Arms sales to developing countries have averaged at about $25bn a year since 1999. The study uses the 2006 dollar as the measure of these sales. The largest amount ever registered was in 2005; the least in 2003 when total sales amounted to a bit more than $15bn. These sales turn a neat profit for arms manufacturers in developed countries, including Russia. They also reflect the political priorities of the sellers.

Pakistan, for instance, was frozen out of the United States market for a number of years. American sales resumed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on the United States. Russia has tended to sell weapons to countries not in favour with the United States. In 2006, for instance, Venezuela bought $3.2bn worth of weapons, mostly aircraft from Moscow.

Nearly two-thirds of the total sales went to just seven countries: Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Israel and Brazil. These countries accounted for $20.2bn of purchases, or 63.5 per cent of the total sales by the developed world. The list of large purchasers is interesting in that it includes some of the dominant players in the regions in which they are located. India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia belong to this category.

Of the seven, four — India, Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — have uneasy relations with their neighbours. The same four are also engaged in fighting terrorism in their areas. Algeria is the only country among the large buyers that does not easily fit into any category.

There is even greater concentration among the major suppliers of weapons to the developing countries. Only five exporters account for 84 per cent of sales. They are the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany and China. Of these, three — the United States, Russia and China with 65 per cent of the total — dominate the field. Access to the American market is an important consideration for the role played by other exporters of arms.

For instance, recently Saudi Arabia placed a very large order on Britain for the purchase of fighter aircraft after determining that it would not have access to the US suppliers on political grounds. All US sales must have the approval of the Congress and that was not likely to be available given the enormous influence of the Jewish lobby on that body.

China plays an interesting role in the arms market. It is both a purchaser of advanced air and naval weapons from Russia as well as a supplier of less advanced equipment to the developing world. In recent years, much to the consternation of the United States, Beijing has bought aircraft carriers from Russia. Washington sees this purchase as an attempt to challenge its presence in the waters close to the Chinese shores.

At the same time, it has entered into long-term arrangements with several countries to develop advanced weaponry. The most important of these arrangements is with Pakistan.

The two countries are developing a fighter aircraft that will be deployed by the air forces of the two countries and may be made available for sale to other developing countries. Brazil, India and Israel also have large defence industries that are becoming important suppliers of arms to the developing world.

In 2006, Pakistan was a large customer of American arms. It spent $1.4bn on the purchase of 36 new F-16C/D fighter aircraft and another $890m on upgrading the fleet of the same aircraft operated by the air force. The country also spent $640m on the purchase of bombs and missiles from the United States.

What will be the impact of these large purchases on Pakistan’s military preparedness and its ability to deal with the challenges it currently faces? How will such large outlays influence the country’s economy? Both are important questions that need to be openly debated since they will have long-term consequences.

Given Pakistan’s geographical location, it must be fully prepared to meet all the challenges it faces at this time. While it makes a great deal of sense to cultivate better relations with New Delhi, Pakistan cannot afford to lower its guard. India has proven to be an expansionist power. and has also hegemonic ambitions.

Pakistan cannot, therefore, afford not to be fully prepared to deal with the possible threats to its integrity from India. After all, it was New Delhi that made possible the breakup of Pakistan in 1971. Its warm relations with both Afghanistan and Iran are motivated by the way it views Islamabad. In other words, Pakistan cannot be what Canada and Mexico are for the United States or what Argentina is for Brazil.

It takes many years of living in peace before a small country situated in the neighbourhood of a large one can lower its military expenditure. The rule that small countries generally have lower defence expenditures as a proportion of the national product does not as yet apply to Pakistan. That can only happen after years of good relations between India and Pakistan have demonstrated that Islamabad can lower its defences.

The other threat is the rise of Islamic extremism. That would entail a different type of military preparedness than the one offered by the purchase of very expensive weaponry. As America is learning from its involvement in Iraq, sophisticated weapons do little to shock and awe those who are happy to sacrifice their lives for political objectives.

As General David Petraeus, America’s current favourite army general, wrote in his treatise on counter-insurgency, politics is the most important weapon against those who are prepared to sacrifice everything they have to achieve their goals. F16s will not bring peace to the troubled areas in Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan.

In so far as the economic cost of large purchases is concerned, the calculations that can be made in terms of proportions of military expenditure in total national output, or the proportion of export earnings that is committed to military imports, or the proportion of government expenditure that goes into maintaining a large military establishment, have to be subjected to long-term strategic considerations. What are the right amounts can be determined after all costs and benefits are carefully measured and debated.

Reconciliation by fiat

SOME years ago, one of the information wallahs of the junta that continues to lord it over us, fawningly said that Pakistan had become a unique country under the able command of General Musharraf. ‘Yes,’ I immediately said, and wrote several articles over several months on the many ‘uniquenesses’ (I deliberately manufacture the word to connote the multifarious fields in which we are truly unique) that our country had acquired under the Commando’s reign.

Here’s more: in other countries if an elected head of government wishes to sack a department head, he does it and that is that. Indeed, some years ago, the American secretary of the air force (not the defence secretary, mark, not the president) sacked the C-in-C Pacific, a full general of the USAF inside of 24 hours of the general stepping out of line by making a political statement.

There are tens of such examples, even in India. Not so in the quite unique Land of the Pure, where the department head can sack the prime minister instead, carrying out in new Pakistani lexicon, a ‘counter-coup’.

Of course, the department head was General Pervez Musharraf and the department was, fatally, the Pakistan Army which, given the cash it devours every year, could have been the best army in the world had it been half as good in professional matters as it is in coup-making. And of course in running bakeries and mills and factories and banks and tikka joints and real estate organisations and construction firms.

This is not all. Pakistan is so unique that with not a thought for propriety or good sense or shame or embarrassment, the goal posts are shifted every time the establishment gets it into its pretty little head to shift them. It matters little that an inch can become 100 miles the next day, and the 100 miles two millimetres the very next.

Consider: one of the main justifications of General Musharraf’s ‘counter-coup’ was that the politicians were bad boys and girls who indulged in, for one, horse-trading. Inside of a little over a year, there he was himself, gathering lotas and lotees by the dozen and clasping them to his bosom.

All done with a straight face and when asked why, himself saying, ‘It was the pragmatic thing to do!’ Meaning of course, that what the politicians did was dishonest, what the dictator did was pragmatic.

In which non-unique country would an election commission first leave out millions of voters from the voting lists, and then inside of a month find 27 million of them?

According to a recent report, ‘The Election Commission told the Supreme Court on Thursday (last) that (pursuant to its orders) 27 million voters had been added to the electoral rolls, bringing the tally of registered voters to 80 million.’ I ask you!

In which country which is not very, very unique, would the appointment of the chief of army staff and chief of joint staff be headline news in all the newspapers and TV channels, complete with pictures in living colour? I have Indian and Brit and American friends who don’t even know the names of theirs.

The pictures remind me: it is a sign of the times in which we live (in which almost everyday, regular army soldiers are being taken hostage by ragtag tribals without the former even firing a shot) that both the generals were wearing headgear which was either not in accord with the standard laid down in the Army Dress Regulations, or was worn in a rather unique way.

This is not all. In which other country would the chief of army staff/president himself announce that the chief of army staff was one of the three pillars (of state), the other two being the president and the prime minister?

And here we were thinking that the three pillars of the state were the legislature, the judiciary and the executive. The COAS can only be a pillar of state in truly unique countries such as the Fatherland, and ... yes, other beauties such as Myanmar.

In which country that is not truly unique will the sitting president have five years to canvas support for his next election and his opposition just 10 days; where else but in a country that is unique will the sitting government shamelessly use billions (I kid you not) in state funds to advertise the great leaps the country has taken, most of them imaginary, during its tenure?

And last but not least, where else in this universe would reconciliation be ‘ordinanced’ by an army dictator? What were the drafters of the National Reconciliation Ordinance thinking when they sat down at their desks to blindly follow the junta’s orders? That we, the ordinary, lay people of Pakistan, were cattle that just did not have the sense to make a distinction between a true reconciliation among all Pakistanis and a sham concocted merely to make the sham of a so-called presidential election seem less of a sham?

Did they not have the sense, at the very least, to be mindful of the grave hurt we would cause the great South African people who went through a true and heartrending and sad and profound and, finally, beautiful reconciliation to make peace between the beastly practitioners of Apartheid and their victims?

Let us recall some of the pain that we read about, even saw on TV. The white oppressors and their black victims, or the victim’s loved ones where the poor things had passed on, embraced and cried on each other’s shoulders.

We saw the moving spectacle of grizzled old men weeping like children and asking forgiveness. There were times when the oppressor was ordered to wash the victimised person’s feet and then apologise. This is reconciliation, not the shamelessness contained within the NRO.

P.S. And why, pray, is the American government congratulating us? For being the only country in the world where a uniformed general, a sitting chief of army staff, can bludgeon his way to a “win” in so-called “presidential elections” through a so-called vote by rigged assemblies that will soon die their own miserable deaths? Like its “tight” buddy, the Pakistani junta, does the Dubya junta take us for cattle too? Of course it does. — (To be concluded)

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

The return of ‘She’

THEIR romantic obsession with their Sindhi identity notwithstanding, the Sindhis at once raise their eyebrows at the mention of the Sindh card. It is a sinister term coined by the opponents of the Pakistan People’s Party in a bid to belittle it and undermine its influence by labelling it as a regional party.

Of late, Sindh has ironically started playing the Punjab card. This term made its first appearance when Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, at that time suspended, paid a visit to Sukkur and received a rousing welcome there. This, according to his chief lawyer who has emerged as the hero of the lawyers’ struggle, Aitzaz Ahsan, proved to be a turning point in the nascent agitation and encouraged the lawyers to take the bull by the horns.

At the Sukkur Bar Association’s grand reception for the Chief Justice, local lawyer Shabbir Shar said in his speech that the people of the smaller provinces did not like the word Chaudhry as they had bitter memories of the big brother — Punjab. But the Chief Justice had restored respect for the word.

Reciprocating the leftist leader-turned-lawyer’s sentiments, Justice Chaudhry amazed many by beginning his speech with informal remarks in Sindhi, while regretting his loss of command over the language due to his decades-long absence from the province. He recalled the good old days when he studied law and later started practice in Hyderabad.

When Nawaz Sharif announced his plan to end his exile and return home, diehard Sindhi nationalists Rasool Bux Palijo of the Awami Tehrik and Dr Qadir Magsi of the Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party threw their weight behind him. Dr Qadir Magsi, who had earlier attended an all-parties conference hosted by the Sharifs in London, went to Islamabad to welcome Nawaz Sharif and was detained with other leaders.

When Mr Sharif was deported from Islamabad Airport, a strike was observed in several cities and towns of Sindh, including Larkana, which is the hometown of the Bhutto family. It is a stronghold of the PPP and the component parties of the All Parties Democratic Movement have little or no following there.

This speaks volume about how the PPP supporters in the party’s home base view the present bizarre situation. Here is a party, whose founder was hanged by a military dictator and which has since been regularly persecuted by the men in uniform, coming to the rescue of a seemingly crumbling dictatorship.

Again, there is the other party, which was created by a martial law regime, and that has now emerged as the flag bearer of the democratic struggle against the man in uniform. Many PPP workers, particularly those who have not forgotten their party’s valiant struggle against Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial law regime, are not happy with the deal their leader has struck with his successor.

According to a PPP leader from Larkana, who sent a very strongly-worded and sarcastic SMS against the deal to his like-minded colleagues, most PPP activists severely criticise and even taunt Ms Bhutto’s change of heart. They prefer to articulate these sentiments in informal gatherings though. They do not have the courage to register their resentment at party meetings.

But they are publicly embarrassed at the indemnity offered by Gen Musharraf to their leaders. They recall that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had refused to submit a mercy petition to the then president while facing the death sentence in a murder case and had gone to the gallows with his head held high.

The sceptics doubt that the PPP leadership would derive the benefit it hopes to get from the support it is extending to President Musharraf. Referring to the PPP role in the presidential election, one party worker said on condition of anonymity, ‘The party has played the role of a midwife. Now that the baby has been delivered, the heirs (meaning the Chaudhry Shujaat-led Pakistan Muslim League) would take care of him, and not the PPP. Gen Ziaul Haq succeeded in physically eliminating Zulfikar Ali Bhutto but failed to eliminate his party. Gen Musharraf has eliminated the PPP as well.’

This dejected PPP activist continued, ‘People like me have already become an endangered specie within the PPP which has become another Muslim League.’

There are rumours that several PPP turncoats are preparing to rejoin the party. But will the party accept them? This is yet to be seen. But one thing is clear: most of its candidates in the upcoming general elections will be from the feudal class which has become a stumbling block in the development of Sindhi society, unlike the 1970s PPP which had pitted middle class men against heavyweights and made the latter bite the dust. So the PPP has lost not only its political image but also its social character.

However, everybody knows well that with the return of Ms Bhutto from London these sour feelings will melt away and her presence among the masses will help mobilise her party and regain its lost ground to a great extent.

‘The Sindhis have become hostage to the PPP and Benazir Bhutto,’ said the disgruntled activist. ‘It is a suicidal tendency as they are already facing political obliteration on their soil as a punishment for continuously supporting the PPP.’

Discrimination in disaster relief

The Asian tsunami and Kashmir earthquake clearly demonstrated that while the hazards themselves do not discriminate between the various cleavages in society, the severity of impacts, and the speed of recovery of various individuals and groups differs vastly. These variations in impact and recovery are easily traced back to existing vulnerabilities and capacities. –– ‘Tackling the Tides and Tremors’, South Asia Disaster Report 2005’

INDEED, discrimination has its seeds in the structures and systems of our society. However, it becomes more pronounced and visible in times of calamities and emergencies. A closer look at the processes and procedures of earthquake relief, recovery and reconstruction would suggest that existing patterns of discrimination were accentuated by the October 2005 earthquake.

In hindsight, these lessons can be taken as a baseline for the future to avoid or minimise rampant discrimination in post-disaster deliveries.

In the first place, local power relationships at the community level played a crucial role in cultivating discrimination in the wake of earthquake disaster. In tribal and semi-tribal localities in the NWFP, local khans (lords) were reported to be influencing the decision-making process of relief distribution.

For example, the water and sanitation team working with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was not allowed to talk to communities in Allai without the presence and permission of the local khan.

Elected representatives and the non-elected local ‘elite’ became self-appointed interlocutors between affected communities and the government and non-government relief administration. Nazims and other local influentials were reported to have intercepted relief trucks and hoarded relief supplies for their own kith, kin and constituencies.

Widows, the elderly, the disabled and tenant women had to undergo multiple discrimination in terms of access to information, relief assistance and reconstruction subsidies. A majority of such women could not pursue their claims for different reasons.At the procedural level, particularly in the cases of tenant women, they could not provide documentary evidence to confirm their identity and ‘eligibility’ to prove their claims. Mukhtar Bibi known in the community as Taro Masi of Garhi Habibullah is one such case. Her parents bought the land from the local khan (lord), but the Property Transfer Order (PTO) was not handed over to her parents.

After the earthquake, she was asked to pay 50 per cent of the reconstruction subsidy to the khan if she wanted a PTO to register her claim with the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra). However, she could not manage the required money to pay.

In the Pashtun-dominated areas of Mansehra, Abbottabad, Battagram, Kohistan and Shangla districts of the NWFP, women were strictly not allowed to articulate their demands or negotiate with the relief and recovery administration.

On the contrary, in the Hindko-speaking areas of the NWFP and Azad Kashmir, women were found to be relatively assertive and mobile in accessing resources and subsidies provided by the Pakistani government and other organisations.

Ghulzar Khan of Kaghan valley asserted that ‘a woman cannot be the head of the family; the security of a woman is the responsibility of her family’. This attitude discriminated against women-headed households in the quake-hit areas where male members of the family had been killed in the earthquake.

The relief machinery was led by men, and the access to relief and recovery packages was denied or made difficult for such women who could not participate in the public sphere because of religious and ethnic customs. Therefore, the elderly and single women were forced to undergo multiple discrimination owing to their inability to assert their rightful demands for relief and reconstruction.

Fatima Jan, a widow whose husband was injured in the earthquake and died after 10 months of medical treatment, is now living in a camp in Hafizabad near Balakot. Her damaged house was not assessed as she was attending to her wounded husband in Abbottabad hospital during the survey process. ‘We got only one tent and a cheque of Rs25,000. Most of the money was spent on the medical treatment of my husband who died later,’ Fatima said.

Geographical location was another factor contributing to discrimination. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the base camps of medical services and other relief assistance were largely established in urban centres down the valley. It was difficult for the people living in high-altitude areas to carry patients down for emergency medical treatment. To address this problem, mobile medical units were established in high-altitude areas by some organisations.

In another example, the cost of carrying material to the high-altitude areas went up by double the price of the commodity itself.

Communities located in areas above 5,000 feet in the Kahorhi Union Council of Neelum Valley said that bajri (crushed stones) worth Rs200 incurred a cost of Rs800 because of transportation while sand worth Rs700 incurred a cost of Rs1,800, being transported from the nearest construction material hub established by Erra.

The areas close to the Line of Control suffered on account of their ‘strategic disadvantage’. Union Council Khalana was one such case. It is located about 64 kilometres from Muzaffarabad on the Muzaffarabad-Chakothi-Srinagar road. Because of its location in a high-security zone to which normal access is restricted, the Khalana Union Council remained neglected by government organisations and NGOs

In some cases, the caste issue also influenced the distribution of aid. This was noted by a joint research report launched in March 2007 by ActionAid and Shirkatgah stating that the Sawati castes were discriminated against by the Sayeds, who received the bulk of relief material in the Charan Gada village of Muzaffarabad district.

A group discussion with residents of Ratta Chanja of Kaghan valley revealed that about 66 households were not given corrugated galvanised iron sheets because of their political affiliations. Syed Qasim Shah, an IFRC field officer in Chakothi sector, observed that sectarian affiliations also played a discriminatory role in the relief distribution at Shot and Meera villages of the Chakothi sector in Azad Kashmir.A report jointly conducted by the Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan and Duryog Nivaran observed the case of religion-based discrimination in the wake of the earthquake. It reported that about 37 Christian families were living in Muzaffarabad. During the relief and recovery phase, these families were discriminated against as they were not allowed to share their shelters with Muslim survivors.

Despite the fact that these families had been living there for 25 years, they had not been registered as citizens and voters or issued national identity cards. They faced problems in burying their dead as no place had been specified as a graveyard for the Christian communities. The earthquake, in this case, compounded the discrimination suffered by the religious minority.