One-way responsibility?

NEARLY seven years after America attacked the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the security situation there shows no signs of improvement. On Sunday, the militants launched the deadliest attack on American forces in Afghanistan in three years. The three prolonged attacks on an American base in Kunar province left nine Americans dead and 15 wounded. What was surprising was that it was not a ‘hit and run’ attack typical of guerrillas. The Taliban not only attacked the US base, the battle with the American forces lasted the whole day. The weapons used by the Taliban ranged from machine guns and mortars to rocket-propelled grenades. This makes us wonder what the American and Nato-led security forces have achieved in that country since October 2001. The Taliban not only exist in strength in Afghanistan, they have their command and control structure intact, they continue to find new recruits, and their sources of arms supplies remain unbroken. What is more, the battle theatre is not the entire country but selected pockets — like Helmand and Kunar — which border Pakistan. This geographical proximity to Fata provides the American and Nato forces’ high command with a ready-made pretext for blaming Islamabad for all their ills.

There is no doubt that Fata has become one big base of operation for the militants, including Uzbek and Arab. Pakistan has failed to crush them, because — let us admit — this is not a job that can be accomplished by force alone, as the British learnt to their cost. Of late, the American complaints against Pakistan on this score have increased in frequency. The Centcom chief’s sudden visit to Pakistan was an indication of Washington’s impatience with what it believes to be Islamabad’s failure to ‘do more’. However, the US-Nato forces must know that it is not Pakistan’s responsibility alone to prevent militants from crossing over into Afghanistan; it is also their responsibility to prevent this movement across the Durand Line. If Pakistani security forces fail to control the Taliban’s movement, what keeps the US, Nato and Afghan forces from stopping them?

The truth is that European forces are there in Afghanistan only grudgingly. They want to avoid casualties, and they have a long list of caveats for doing their job. Many Nato commanders do not send their boys on night patrol, many insist that they are there on ‘security duty’, and others say their job is to protect development projects and aid personnel. This has worked to the Taliban’s advantage, for as statistics show, American and Nato casualties for May and June in Afghanistan are higher than those in Iraq. If Pakistan must ‘do more’ it is time the US-led forces in Afghanistan re-assessed their performance and tried to determine why the seven-year war with the Taliban has failed to produce results.

Our population woes

WORLD Population Day last week came as a reminder that the population issue continues to be a major problem in this country. The occasion also provided an opportunity to bring to the fore issues springing out of the demographic phenomenon. This is what happened at the ‘National Population Day Convention’ presided over by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani when US Ambassador Anne Patterson and the National Institute for Population Studies presented to him the findings of the 2006-2007 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS). The PDHS presents a current picture of the state of women’s and children’s health in Pakistan which has a direct correlation with the high rate of population growth. The population time bomb is ticking and the urgency of the threat requires immediate action. The outcry is not unfounded. With Pakistan being the sixth most populous country in the world, overpopulation has caused burgeoning levels of unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, health issues, crime and environmental degradation in Pakistan.

The solution lies in the empowerment of women. The low status of women is reflected in the findings of the survey. For instance it found the current maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to be 276 per 100,000 births nationwide, with a higher ratio in rural areas. The ground reality may however be different; as the Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) puts the adjusted MMR at 320 per 100,000 births. This is significantly higher than Pakistan’s Millennium Development MMR goal of less than 140 by the year 2015. The gap in the current and intended target illustrates the extent of work that needs to be done in order to deal with these issues. Education is another area where we are lagging behind though it can empower generations of women and help them make better choices. Centres for imparting knowledge about the benefits of family planning, provision of contraception and proper healthcare are measures which will mitigate the problem. The belief is that given the choice, women will have fewer children. Let women exercise their right to plan their families along with their partners and make more informed decisions. An elevation in the status of women will enable them to determine not only the course of their lives but that of their families and ultimately the country. Education and better healthcare facilities will bring down the birth rate and MMR paving the way for a smaller, healthier population.

Downpour in Lahore

WHEN it rains in Lahore, officials of Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) duck for cover. Their hearts sinking with rising downpour, they hope that the rainwater will not stay in certain localities longer than it should. Otherwise they are sure to be dragged over coals by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif who has made a habit of having Wasa men suspended and arrested soon after he wades through inundated roads and streets. Where they end up is the least of his problems.

Last weekend, Sharif was at it once again, walking in Lahore’s flooded streets and showing little mercy towards Wasa officials. Critics say his toughness is informed by the political benefits that accrue to him, his party and his government as a result of such populist measures. But somehow Sharif’s latest performance lacked the vigour it had in the 1990s. A thing or two might have changed during all those years that he was away from power. First, Wasa is no longer under the direct control of the chief minister after becoming a part of the elected city district government. Second, the electronic media has become so ubiquitous that reports of rainwater flooding roads, streets and houses do not just come from a single metropolis or some select localities in it. They come thick and fast from all neighbourhoods in Lahore as well as from all other cities and towns in Punjab. So the images of the chief executive of the province visiting only a handful of flooded areas leaves many others he cannot visit complaining and even angry.

Sharif must understand that his personalised approach to governance — no matter how well meaning and charitable — will fall much short of what is needed in a province inhabited by 85 million or so people. He cannot be everywhere and cannot address and resolve all the problems afflicting Punjab through impromptu holdings of his court that he is so used to. As rains in Punjab have shown, only by planning well and making institutions work effectively can a leader ensure that the job gets done. Planting fear in officials’ heart certainly cannot.

A Pakistani call to the donors

FOR a variety of reasons, Pakistan’s policymakers have either not fully realised where the potential of the economy lies or were forced into taking decisions that were not in the economy’s long-term interest.

They did not make use of the impressive endowments of the country to develop an economy that would have grown rapidly without interruptions and could have become a vibrant part of the global system.

Had they promoted the development of agriculture, in particular high value-added crops; encouraged the growth of small and medium-sized industries using the skills traditionally available to the economy; invested in educating and training the country’s large and young population; focused on using trade to better integrate the economy with the global system; and created a political structure that provided a voice to the diverse segments of the population, the country today would be in a happier economic, political and social situation. Instead it faces perhaps the worse economic crisis in its history.

While a number of structural weaknesses — low level of domestic savings, poorly developed human resources, inefficient attention given to the country’s endowments, and a system of governance that did not give a voice to the people — have been present since the country’s birth more than six decades ago, another structural fault line developed gradually over time. I am referring here to the system of economic governance.

Even under the British who ruled for 99 years — from 1848 to 1947 — there was much greater autonomy available to the provinces than is the case in modern Pakistan. Since Pakistan was managed most of the time by bureaucracies with strong command and control traditions, power has shifted to the centre. For the first 11 years, members of the civil services (in particular the Civil Service of Pakistan, the CSP) were important policymakers; since 1958, the military has governed for 32 years.

Both institutions believe in highly centralised systems of economic and political management. That approach left little room to the provinces even when — as was the case with the Constitution of 1973 — the political structure was built on two pillars, the central and provincial administrations.

The model of economic development followed in the past, particularly during the period of President Pervez Musharraf, had one other consequence. Since there was a high level of dependence on external flows, the economy plunged and went into a crisis whenever external support was reduced or withdrawn. This happened in the late 1960s and in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when the United States reduced its support for the country.

The crisis that now engulfs the economy is not the result of withdrawal of official flows. It has been produced by a combination of external developments over which Pakistan’s policymakers have no influence and because of the serious failures of public policy, especially over the last decade. The situation has been exacerbated by the process of transition from military rule that is currently under way. As several observers have noted, policymaking in Islamabad is adrift with nobody really in charge.

An analysis of the flow of official assistance to Pakistan reveals not only large transfers during the periods Pakistan was needed by the United States for strategic reasons. Also apparent from the data is a seeming association between economic stress and official capital flows. This correspondence remains even if we factor out the resources provided by the International Monetary Fund, an institution that provides assistance to countries in economic difficulties. What the capital flow data therefore suggests is that Pakistan was able to tap friendly countries during critical periods.

I can testify that this is the case from my own experience as finance minister in 1996-97 when I took leave of absence from the World Bank to join the caretaker administration that took office following the dismissal of the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. After I assumed office it was revealed to me that foreign reserves had declined to well below $100 million.

The State Bank of Pakistan, the country’s central bank, did not have enough in its reserves to pay the bills that were due to such preferred creditors as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Pakistan faced default. I travelled to Beijing (where I met the prime minister) and to Abu Dhabi (where I met the governor of the UAE central bank) and was able to raise close to a billion dollars, enough to pay the bills during my brief tenure in office.

I was able to do this not because I had any special negotiating skills. It was clear to me that several friendly governments would not allow Pakistan to go under. The Chinese and UAE decisions were similar in a way to the rescue operation launched in March 2008 by the US Federal Reserve Bank, the Fed, to rescue Bear Stearns, the investment bank, from collapsing under the weight of the debts it had built up.

The Fed acted to prevent contagion in the financial markets. Similar logic applies to countries in Pakistan’s situation where serious economic problems could produce unpleasant social and political effects in sensitive areas such as those in which the country is located.

This experience of the donors launching rescue operations during periods of extreme distress has created a situation of moral hazard for Pakistan: the belief that even if the policymakers don’t take corrective measures and change the structure of the economy, the country will be saved by its friends across the globe. If Pakistan is to be helped out of its present predicament, as it should be, the donors should attach some conditions to the help they are providing.

Given the way the situation is evolving in and around Pakistan, this may be a good moment for the community of international donors to step in vigorously with the aim of guiding the country and its citizenry towards a better and a more certain economic and political future. The donor response should be well developed, based on a strategy of economic reform and political development along with the promise of a large infusion of funds. But the donors will step in as a group only if Pakistan appeals to them for help. At the moment it seems to be approaching individual countries for assistance.

Such an approach is neither good for Pakistan nor for those in the world who would be willing to help the country out of a difficult situation. What is needed is a concerted, collective action based on a promise of reform by Islamabad.

Knife crime in Britain

TEENAGERS caught with knives will be forced to tour casualty units and meet the relatives of stabbing victims, under British government plans to combat the glorification of weapons within gangs.

The move to confront those on the verge of more serious offending with the horrific consequences of knife culture comes as new figures show the number of convictions for carrying a knife in schools rose sixfold in a decade, with the vast majority of offenders not jailed. Last week alone saw at least eight knife killings nationwide.

Under plans to be unveiled by Gordon Brown on Tuesday, young offenders convicted of all crimes will be forced to carry out community service on Friday and Saturday nights, to keep them out of trouble, while pubs and clubs will be fast-tracked for closure if searches reveal their customers routinely carry knives.

Parents will face tougher intervention, including being made to attend their children’s court cases, and teenagers on the streets late at night will be taken home by police if they are considered in danger.

But the prime minister’s office on Downing Street has shelved plans championed by the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, for the running of young offender institutions to be transferred to children’s trusts – partnerships of local councils and other agencies that would prioritise children’s welfare over punitive regimes – and watered down plans for a radical shift away from prison.

One cabinet minister said Gordon Brown had made a serious mistake in dropping Tony Blair’s anti-yob ‘respect’ campaign and was now belatedly reviving it. The shift suggests that Balls, Brown’s protege in Cabinet, who had pushed hard for a more liberal approach, is losing influence as cabinet rivals jockey for position around the beleaguered prime minister.

Official figures from the British Crime Survey for the first three months of 2008, to be published later this week, will show that, while crime has fallen again overall, some categories of violent crime rose. For the first time, the survey will separate out knife.

Home Office (interior ministry) figures obtained last week by Jeremy Browne, the opposition Liberal Democrat frontbencher, show that the number sentenced for possessing an offensive weapon in school rose from only 15 to 90 per year between 1996 and 2006 - although it peaked at 139 in 2004. Brown has pledged to introduce new laws if needed, but the figures suggest some existing legislation is barely even being used.

In nine years, only 12 people have ever been convicted of the offence of encouraging violence using knives, introduced to stop marketing which glorifies weapons or suggests their use in combat.

— The Guardian, London

OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press

Regime’s survival

Awami Awaz

THE present political situation is not acceptable. Groups with vested interests and imperialist forces are amplifying the uncertainty that has prevailed in the country. This is part of the recurring cycle of the last 60 years in which democratic governments have not been allowed to function. Once again there has been an attempt to raise perceptions of ineptitude and the incapability of the government. The real antagonism lies between the forces of democracy and dictatorship. Undemocratic forces are dominating the system of the country and are not allowing the democratic government to flourish.

It is regrettable that the undemocratic forces have joined hands with each other and are engaged in weakening the democratic process, paving the way for dictatorship.

Here democratic forces should come forward and play their part. A hue and cry has been raised in the short span of three months of the present government. It is strange that judgment is being passed on these three months in office as if the mandate was for only three months. Lapses in implementation of the ‘100 days plan’ are being perceived as a total failure of the government, notwithstanding the fact that the government has given a plan for improving its performance. The need of the hour is that the people’s mandate should be respected and this government and the democratic process should be allowed to work. — (July 12)

Bhutto’s murder

Sindh

FOREIGN Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s visit to the UN headquarters has resulted in an announcement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office that a broad understanding has been reached between the UN and the Pakistan government on the nature of the proposed commission [that will probe Benazir Bhutto’s murder], the composition of the commission, unhindered access to all sources of relevant information, and the commission’s impartiality and independence.

People are raising questions about the death of their leader which has been shrouded in mystery. They want the culprits to be tried and the hands behind this conspiracy to be exposed. This is the demand not only of the PPP but also the people of all four provinces.

The PPP is in power and there should be no hurdles in conducting an impartial investigation. There might be some elements that do not want such an investigation but while the PPP is in power these quarters should not be in a position to influence the investigation. The other coalition partners are also supporting this move, which has further strengthened the position of the government. The UN commission to investigate this murder case is a welcome development and it is now incumbent on the government to provide facilities to the investigators. — (July 13)

— Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi.