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| July 22, 2008 | Tuesday | Rajab 18, 1429 |
Too little too late
Lyari on the mend?
Time for donors to assist
Unbelievable denials
OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press
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.
BRITAIN can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, a report by British members of parliament claims. They also call for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government has itself ‘outsourced’ the torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.
THE call by representatives of the world’s three monotheistic religions for an international agreement to combat terrorism deserves to be welcomed without reservation. Inaugurated by Saudi King Abdullah, the Madrid conference was attended by some leading personalities of the three Abrahamic faiths, including the secretary
general of the World Jewish Congress, Michael Schneider, and Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who is responsible for the Vatican’s dialogue with the Muslim world. The conference condemned terrorism and called for a special UN session to promote inter-faith understanding and avoid “a clash of civilisations”. The conference could not have been more timely, coming as it does when the scourge of terrorism haunts the world. In fact it has acquired global dimensions.
Today individuals and groups that have no qualms about resorting to terrorism do so as a means for achieving political goals. Some of them find a religious justification for shedding innocent blood. Pakistanis, to their sorrow, are familiar with fanatics who have resorted to terrorism and killed, maimed and injured thousands of innocent men, women and children. They use religion to mobilise their followers. Others in different regions of the world have done the same although no religion condones violence against non-combatants. The conference correctly termed terrorism “a universal phenomenon” and called for an international response in “a serious, responsible and just way”. The fact is that this globalised world of ours is coming to be divided between those who uphold and resort to terrorism and those who do not. Faith is not at the root of this confrontation. This point needs to be taken note of by the sole super-power, which has used the war on terror to advance its national interests and pursue a unilateralist course in international affairs. In Iraq and Afghanistan, its indiscriminate use of force has killed more civilians than terrorists, and there is no sign yet of peace coming to these countries.
The Madrid conference also called for addressing “the root causes” of terrorism. There is no doubt that unresolved issues such as Palestine and Kashmir have been a major factor in spawning terrorism. Unfortunately those having recourse to suicide bombings and terrorism to solve political problems have hurt rather than advanced the cause of freedom. Governments the world over must unite against terrorism. Since terrorists have used religion as a tool to promote their cause, it is the duty of all religious leaders of all faiths to stand up to terrorists in every country and challenge their approach. The terrorists are a minority but they have succeeded in cowing down civil society because they are armed.
IN an open market, buyers and sellers should not be faulted for trying to strike the best bargain. When there are multiple buyers around, the one offering the highest price will invariably attract most sellers. That private buyers
in Punjab have amassed wheat stocks as big as 900,000 tons while the government has missed its procurement target by 1.082 million tons explains why. The government-announced wheat price came too late and offered no incentives to the growers to sell their produce to official buyers. But what private buyers gained by offering higher than official price may be lost to an impending official crackdown. Seeing a window of opportunity as big as the huge quantity of wheat that private traders have, the Punjab government is all set to confiscate their stocks through a concerted administrative campaign in order to plug gaps in its official procurement. When this crackdown is launched in the coming weeks it will be the second such drive in less than two months. In late May and early June — immediately after the official procurement had ended and the shortfall had become known — the government had embarked on a similar drive to force private stockholders to relinquish the wheat they had purchased or else face the music.
The kind of wheat crisis that Pakistan experienced last year suggests that the coming crackdown on private stockists might be all that is required to avoid a repeat of what in 2007 was the hottest political issue. But, despite making political sense, the crackdown will be counterproductive on at least two counts. First, it involves an element of coercion that smothers private enterprise and competition, both necessary conditions for agricultural markets to grow and mature. Second, it sends wrong price signals to wheat growers who may not be enthused to grow more in the coming years fearing suppressed prices due to the government’s ever-imminent heavy-handed presence in the market a la the intended official crackdown. But inadequacy and incompetence of administrative structures means that even a well-intended and targeted official crackdown may miss its stated objectives. A better strategy could have been to set right procurement price at the right time and to ensure that official intervention stabilised rather than disrupted market mechanisms. What the government now hopes — and may yet fail — to get done by cracking its fractured whip, it could have easily achieved by offering the right price to growers and sellers at the right time.
THE Lyari saga that continued unabated for years is reaching a turning point. Picture an area where the residents are held hostage to the activities of warring gangs not only getting caught in the crossfire time and again but being victimised by the dictatorial fiats of the criminal groups in their daily lives. Lyari was essentially a place where every move made by its residents was being determined by the whims of gang leaders and workers. The gang war between the groups led by Rehman ‘Dakait’ and Arshad Pappu went on in the area for years and cost hundreds of lives. With a population of over 600,000, Lyari was considered one of the most backward localities in terms of infrastructure and social development. The gang members permeated every aspect of the activities in the area and engaged in selling drugs, extorting money, street crime, theft and murder. Then came the operation that was launched against the gangs by the police and rangers early this month.
Since then Lyari appears to have undergone a transformation. What had been reduced to a chaos-ridden zone became a virtual ghost town as people vacated the area due to the operation. Mercifully, a revival is now taking place. Signs of change are manifesting themselves in all parts of Lyari as residents return to their homes. Although their homes have been significantly affected by the operation and their valuables are gone which were left behind in haste, a sense of normality prevails in the town. The ongoing work in the area is serving as a beacon of hope for the residents who have seen years of instability. It is common knowledge, at least among the law enforcement circles, that Abdul Rehman Baloch has already escaped to Balochistan, while Ghaffar Zikri has taken refuge somewhere in Baldia Town. The gang members have also left the area. This in fact offers an opportunity for a new beginning which the government seems to be facilitating. This trend should be actively encouraged. It is a good sign that shops are reopening and a fast-paced resumption of gas, water and electricity supply is taking place. Once life is normalised and the pace of the on-going development work picks up, Lyari should be a changed place. It is however important that efforts should be made to ensure that it does not lapse into the criminal state from which it is recovering.
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. I would propose a two-step strategy the donor community may wish to follow.
The first step should be directed towards devising a stabilisation and development strategy that would address the structural fault lines that exist in the economy, and have existed ever since the country’s birth. This strategy should focus on a number of structural problems that have prevented the country from achieving its potential, which is substantial. The problems include a low domestic savings rate which perpetuates the economy’s dependence on external flows.
The country should focus a significant proportion of government’s finances and gross domestic product on human development, in particular on education, health and skill development. There is a need to build the capacity to produce exportable surpluses that have a growing demand in international markets. In that context the state needs to focus a great deal of its attention on agriculture and development of small and medium enterprises that can produce for both international and domestic markets.
In this way Pakistan may be able to take advantage of the opportunities that still exist in the global market place. These are some of the structural problems that have figured in a number of donor-assisted programmes in the past. These programmes did not have much lasting impact since the donors did not persevere with them once the immediate crisis they were addressing had dissipated.
In addition, a comprehensive development programme needs to focus on some additional issues that don’t normally find their way into traditional economic thinking. They include giving greater autonomy to the provinces and empowering them to raise and spend their own resources. Fiscal decentralisation will not only bring governance closer to the people but will also contribute to raising the domestic savings rate.
Another area that needs to be added to a comprehensive programme concerns political development. The country needs to develop the institutions that support democratic progress in politically backward societies. Pakistan needs to develop both the legislative and judicial branches of government. Some international financial institutions — in particular the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank — have included these aspects of development in their programmes. The ADB has a large project in place in Pakistan to reform the legal and judicial systems.
Similar efforts need to be made on the legislative side. Some donors, both bilateral and multilateral, are supporting an NGO — the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) — to provide training and expertise to legislators. It is interesting to note that Pildat’s initial support came from overseas Pakistanis who were conscious of the need to build the capacity of the legislative branch to improve the quality of governance.
These efforts need to expand and be brought within a broad framework aimed at the country’s overall development. Efforts aimed at increasing the capacity of the legislative branch should include providing training and staff support to parliamentarians.
My suggestion that the first move in the two-step programme of donor support should involve the formulation of a development strategy to be supported by the government raises the obvious question: why shouldn’t this exercise be undertaken by the government in Pakistan. The answer is that Pakistan, at this critical time in its history, does not have the capacity to do this kind of work. The country has always been weak in public policy analysis; it became even weaker during the period of President Pervez Musharraf.
During that time economic policymaking got concentrated in the Ministry of Finance. This resulted in the weakening of the Planning Commission in Islamabad. It will take time to rebuild the commission’s capacity to undertake the kind of strategic work proposed here. Reactivating the commission can be a part of the donor-assisted programme.
The second step in the exercise suggested here is to determine the extent of the donor support Pakistan should be provided. I suggest a programme of structural reform to cost $40bn over a period of five years, half of which should come from Pakistan. The Pakistani government should spell out in detail how this amount would be mobilised from within the country.
It would take additional taxation which should be aimed at segments of the population which contribute a smaller proportion to government revenues than their share in national income. Provided the government develops an acceptable plan for resource mobilisation, the donors should be prepared to front-load their assistance, giving the bulk of their $20bn contribution during the first three years, leaving the Pakistani effort for the tail end of the programme.
A $40bn effort spread over five years means an expenditure of $8bn a year. This is equivalent to five per cent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product. Deployed efficiently, it should lead to an increase of 1.25 to 1.75 per cent a year in GDP, bringing the rate of growth back to that achieved in 2002-08 but with a greater balance in its impact. Structured on the lines indicated above, it should have a significant impact on the alleviation of poverty and reducing income disparities.
The programme proposed here may not be an easy sell in Pakistan. There may be objections that the country is allowing itself to be dictated to from abroad; that only it can define the priorities it should follow to develop its economy, to reform its society and improve its political system; and that accepting the approach spelled out here would mean some loss of sovereignty. These are valid objections but history is not in Pakistan’s favour. The country has been rescued time and again by its friends but the funding that was provided was not used to repair the fault lines on which the economic structure rests.
There is now too much at stake in Pakistan’s development not only for its people but also for the international community to take another chance and rescue the country from its economic difficulties without ensuring that long-term results would be obtained for the help that is provided. There may be other ways of ensuring the objectives presented in this article but at least a dialogue can begin.
In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used ‘waterboarding’. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.
A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured. During waterboarding, a person is tied to a board with their feet raised and cellophane wrapped around the head. Water is then poured on to the face, causing the victim to start to drown.
Sunday’s committee report said there were ‘serious implications’ of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. ‘The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,’ said the committee.
The MPs also urged the Foreign Office to investigate a Guardian report that six British nationals claimed to have been detained and tortured by the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, where they were also interrogated by British intelligence officers. Foreign Minister Lord Malloch-Brown told the committee: ‘We absolutely deny the charge that we have in any way outsourced torture to Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] as a way of extracting information, either for court use or for use in counter-terrorism.’
The report also called on the Foreign Office to seek consular access to all British citizens, including those of dual nationality, detained in Pakistan and asked for an explanation from ministers why one of those detained was apparently denied consular access but was visited by a British official, who may have been an intelligence officer.
—The Guardian, London
Sindh’s share in Thar coal
Kawish
The government’s decision to use the Thar coal reserves for power generation is a positive move. According to the plan, 1,000 megawatts of power will be generated and within six years the figure will rise to 6,000 megawatts. An international conference is to be held in Washington to seek foreign investment in this endeavour. This will surely help overcome obstacles which have so far hindered progress on this project. Foreign companies have expressed interest in the project time and again but these moves have been jeopardised by certain hidden forces.
However, there is no gain for the people of the province whenever Sindh’s resources are utilised. It is evident from the Badin oil and Ghotki gas [projects] that Sindh is the richest region in terms of natural resources. It is unfortunate that despite these resources abject poverty is widespread and the poor are compelled to commit suicide. A number of such incidents have been reported in the press. Sindh did not benefit from the oil exploration and similarly it got nothing when it came to gas.
Now when coal is being exploited, authority and power have been transferred to the centre. Constitutionally and in accordance with fundamental human rights, the first right of utilisation of natural resources goes to the local indigenous people. Regrettably neither the constitution nor human rights are adhered to, hence the local population gets no benefit whatsoever from its own resources.
Leave aside a share in the income from these resources, local people are not even given jobs in the companies which extract oil from their lands. Media reports provide ample evidence of protests by local people demanding jobs in these companies.
It is universally recognised that wherever companies explore or exploit oil or gas, priority vis-à-vis jobs is given to the local people. As neither the political parties nor civil society organisations have properly represented these people and played a positive and effective role, this universally recognised principle does not get implemented here. It should be noted that the issue is not of jobs alone but the also the fact that locals are deprived of even this small part in the overall gains made by exploitation.
The people of Sindh have been demanding exploitation of Thar coal but not at this cost. It is imperative that any agency that is involved in the exploitation of black gold should work under the Sindh government. This is purely a provincial matter and its administration and implementation should come under the Sindh government. If power over provincial resources continues to be transferred to the federal government, it will create more doubts and misunderstandings. When the PPP came to power, it announced that provincial autonomy is among its top priorities. This begs the question: how does the transfer of natural resources to the federal government make provinces autonomous? — (July 18)
— Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi.
