Stalemate at Bonn

INITIAL optimism about the Bonn conference now seems to be waning following reports that the talks have hit snags. Paradoxically, differences have cropped up less between the Northern Alliance and the other three groups and more within the Alliance itself. Younis Qanooni, who is leading the Northern delegation, seems to be having differences with Burhanuddin Rabbani, the UN-recognized president at Kabul. The talks have run into trouble basically over power sharing, especially over who should be part of the interim parliament and of the interim government. The other three delegates, according to reports coming out of the conference hall, are said to be ready with their names and willing to clinch a deal. However, Qanooni wants a ten-day break in the talks so that he could consult Rabbani, who seems to be having ideas of his own.

It may be recalled that Rabbani was the man whose refusal to broaden the base of his government in 1996 led to the civil war. Now Rabbani seems to differ with the three groups at Bonn and with his own delegation on two points: first, he believes people should not be nominated to the interim parliament. Unrealistically, he believes elections can be held within two months. Two, he does not want more than 100 to 200 foreign peacekeepers — enough for the security of some non-Northern leaders. This runs counter to the stand taken by Qanooni, who seems to agree with the other delegations that there is need for a substantial number of foreign peacekeepers. Qanooni also gave an indication that his delegation was willing to accept Zahir Shah as the figurehead of an interim set-up. However, Rabbani came out very strongly against Zahir Shah at a news conference in Kabul on Friday. The former monarch, he said, could return as an individual, but not as a government head, because monarchy has become extinct like the dinosaurs. The interim parliament and the interim government, he said, must be elected bodies. No wonder, a member of the Rome group should have identified the Northern Alliance as the main hindrance.

One hopes the Alliance leadership realizes that the very future of Afghanistan is at stake, for the consequences of a failure at Bonn are too horrific to contemplate. Already, the war against the Taliban is not fully over yet. Should the talks fail, there may be a new round of civil war, with local warlords taking up arms for no higher purpose than that of personal or factional power. The ultimate sufferers will be the Afghan people, already devastated by the two decades of a cruel civil war. The goal of Afghanistan’s reconstruction would then become a distant prospect. Rabbani should realize that in the given context, election within two months is wholly unrealistic. The foremost need of the moment is to give the country some kind of government acceptable to all sides. Once an interim government is in place, it can then pave the way for an elected set-up. In the larger interest of the Afghan people, Rabbani should show a sense of realism so that the immediate task of giving Afghanistan an acceptable government is accomplished.

Still a pipedream?

IN an attempt perhaps to accord some kind of tangible contours to their new found interest in each other, Islamabad and Tehran have once again revived a ten-year old on-again, off-again proposal to lay a trans-Pakistan gas pipeline between Iran and India, costing an estimated five billion dollars. Also, mindful perhaps of the possibility of the Central Asian oil and gas flowing towards the South Asian region once peace is established in Afghanistan, Iran wants its own pipeline to be put in place as early as possible. In the mid-1990s US companies had already made considerable progress on a project to lay a pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan costing about two billion dollars. Pakistan would like to see it revived once peace returned to Afghanistan. The Iranian foreign minister, Dr. Kamal Kharrazi, told a news conference in Islamabad on Friday that a joint technical committee would prepare the feasibility study for the Iranian pipeline and suggest to both governments how to move ahead on the project.

When this proposal was first mooted in the late 1980s, Islamabad rejected it out of hand on the plea that it would benefit India as well. Pakistan itself stood to earn about 14 billion dollars in 30 years from the project, including eight billion dollars in transit fee, one billion dollars in taxes and five billion dollars in saving. When finally in the late 1990s, cornered by its ever mounting debt problems, Pakistan came around to seeing the economic logic of the project, India started dragging its feet on the equally illogical ground that it would not be in the security interest of India to put in Pakistan’s hand the tap that controlled the supply of such a strategic commodity. Additionally, the Indians were not convinced that Pakistan could secure the pipeline against possible sabotage by its jihadi elements hostile to India. Meanwhile, Pakistan had taken the position that unless India agreed to talk about Kashmir, there was no point in discussing any other matter of mutual interest, especially economic matters, with New Delhi.

India disagreed with this position. Therefore, as of now, one sees only a slim possibility of the gas pipeline project taking off in the near future because for Iran it would not make much economic sense if the pipeline was not extended to India. Iran stands to make 3.06 dollar per MMBTU of gas sold to India while it would fetch only 1.48 dollars if the commodity did not go beyond Pakistan.

Punishing the corrupt

HOPEFULLY, the conviction of four officials of the Islamabad Electricity Supply Company (Iesco) by an accountability court on Wednesday will serve as a deterrent to corruption in this public corporation. An Iesco line superintendent was sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined two lakh rupees for misappropriating material from the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) meant for village electrification. Also sentenced to two years in jail and fined one lakh each in the same case were an executive engineer, a subdivisional officer and a resident engineer. All four men have also been disqualified from holding any public office and barred from acquiring loans from any bank or financial institutions for a period of ten years. The line superintendent had requisitioned more material than required and in connivance with the other three officials, did not get the appropriate work done at the sites. Their action had caused Wapda a loss of four lakh rupees.

Such misappropriation of funds has been a major cause of inefficiency in public corporations, especially Iesco. The ultimate losers are the people, in this case the villagers who could not get the electricity connections they were promised. In addition to misappropriation, corruption in the form of line losses is also a huge financial drain on Iesco. The Iesco chairman has claimed that his corporation has recovered Rs 21.5 billion from major power tariff defaulters in the Rawalpindi-Islamabad region and said that hundreds of Wapda officials are under investigation for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau. Fair investigation and conviction of those responsible for all such corruption should not be a one-off campaign but a continuing, on-going process.