Toward an East Asian security system

WHEN, in a signal achievement for American diplomacy, North Korea abandoned its insistence on bilateral talks with the United States and agreed to a new forum composed of North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, an opportunity emerged to do away with the threat of the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a sinister regime and, in the process, to design a system of political restraints.

China’s role in this process is crucial. It is North Korea’s ally and principal trading partner. The two countries share a long frontier and much common history. Beijing knows that a North Korean nuclear military capability would bring near its nightmare of a Japanese military nuclear programme. It also understands that a permanent Korean crisis would complicate its own domestic reform and political consolidation at a most sensitive time.

China’s conduct has left little doubt that it seeks a resolution, and urgently. It has declared a North Korean nuclear military programme unacceptable and has been the driving force in assembling the new forum. But it can help produce such an outcome only within a political framework that ends Pyongyang’s nuclear programme without a political collapse. At a minimum, China seeks some control over the political evolution in North Korea.

Cooperation with China — and the other major powers of Asia — is crucial to ensure a common stand with America’s ally in South Korea, without whose support it will be very difficult to assemble the pressures needed to break a deadlock. Objectively South Korea is the country most threatened by nuclear weapons in North Korea. And Pyongyang’s ultimate goal undoubtedly is to separate South Korea from its allies and to undermine Seoul’s domestic politics.

But a new generation has grown up in South Korea with no memory of America’s role in liberating Korea, of the Korean War that prevented a new subjugation, or of the arduous process by which the country built itself, with the strong support of the United States, into a modern industrial state and a functioning democracy. Combining some of the European radicalism of the 1960s with a heavy dose of South Korean nationalism, this new generation is agitating for a new definition of South Korea’s international role, substantially modifying its traditional alliance with the United States. It provided the impetus for the so-called Sunshine Policy of the last two South Korean presidents, which seeks to bring about the unification of Korea by the conciliation of Pyongyang.

An ally of the United States with respect to the protection of its territory, South Korea sees itself as a mediator in political relations with the North. In Seoul’s view, nuclear weapons in North Korea do not add significantly to South Korea’s peril, which is defined by some 10,000 artillery pieces located along the Demilitarized Zone within range of the capital.

Hence many Koreans — including important elements of the government — even when they pay lip service to the American view of the emerging North Korean nuclear military capacity are loath to support the active diplomacy that it implies and even more to accept a last resort to force if diplomacy fails (there may even be a feeling of national pride involved with respect to North Korea’s nuclear achievement). But South Korea would be reluctant to leave itself at the mercy of North Korea by challenging China, Japan, Russia and America if they are united on Korean policy.

North Korea’s truculence exaggerates the real options faced by that brutal and isolated regime. It has tried to blackmail the United States into a bilateral negotiation in which it would demand a non-aggression treaty and economic aid in return for meeting some American concerns about its nuclear weapons. Its purpose is to appear as the national spokesman for all of Korea in the field of security, to stigmatize the United States as the potential aggressor and to achieve a platform for permanent blackmail by alleging that America is violating its non-aggression pledge.

Of the other countries participating in the six-power forum, Japan is in the process of evolving a more assertive national policy, for the time being still closely tied to the United States. But great care is needed to maintain the present compatibility of foreign policies. Russia has a general interest in preventing proliferation, and it seeks a seat at the table to emphasize its great power status. It has actively promoted bilateral consultations with the parties prior to the six-power forum. And Russian President Vladimir Putin is too astute a student of international politics not to understand that a repetition of Russia’s confrontational policy on Iraq would strain its political and personal relationship with the United States.

Korean policy thus merges with America’s ability to weave its relations with all the great powers into a long-term design in which Chinese domestic and strategic necessities, Japanese security concerns and Russian geopolitical aims merge to overcome Seoul’s hesitations in developing the pressures needed to bring about the necessary outcome. Such a policy must avoid the mistakes of the failed Framework Agreement of 1994, which overlooked the political imperatives. It needs to reflect the following principles:

— The bilateral route urged by North Korea is a trap and the demand for a non-aggression pact a canard. The proposition that the most Stalinist regime in the world would be reassured by promises from what it regularly vilifies as “capitalist scum” defies belief. Bilateral negotiations after a brief period of relief would strain America’s relations with Seoul; South Korean nationalists would attack American diplomacy as making either too few concessions or too many.

A bilateral agreement cannot engage the interests of other countries whose help is needed to sustain Northeast Asian stability. Of course, negotiators in any forum are free to exchange views with their colleagues. But the United States must resist the siren song of using the six-power forum as a facade for bilateral U.S.-North Korea talks as the key element or of luring Pyongyang to a conference with that prospect.

— Containment is not a desirable diplomatic option though it may in the end become a strategic necessity. Some believe that negotiations are unlikely to bring about the denuclearization of North Korea under acceptable conditions and that therefore the best course is to contain its consequences while concentrating on regime change. And the United States does have technological options to support such a course: It is building a missile defence that should be able to defeat at least the early stages of a North Korean nuclear and missile programme.

We are in a position to accelerate missile defences and missile deployments in Japan and other allied countries around the periphery of Asia. At the same time, a policy that acquiesces in a North Korean nuclear capability in the name of containment would lead to a Japanese military nuclear programme and major changes in Chinese and Japanese foreign policy. Containment might become a last resort after all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted; it should not be the preferred American option.

— No regime deserves extirpation more than the brutal totalitarians in Pyongyang. But to state this as the objective of short-term American policy will lose the cooperation of China and Japan and drive South Korea into open opposition. China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have a stake in avoiding turmoil on the Korean peninsula. They seem prepared to work for an outcome that prevents an immediate nuclear crisis, but only at the price of safeguarding the prospect of political evolution in North Korea (if not necessarily the Kim Jong Il regime).

— A crucial decision concerns the amount of time available for meaningful negotiations. President Bush has declared a North Korean nuclear military programme unacceptable to the United States.

Such sober observers as former Secretary of Defence William Perry have warned that once North Korea has completed reprocessing the fuel rods it withdrew from international control in 2002, war will become close to inevitable. The negotiations must not permit Pyongyang to turn it into a delaying action to enable North Korea to complete this process.

A negotiation that links the nuclear concerns of other countries with legitimate security and political concerns of North Korea would have the following components:

(a) a denuclearization of North Korea that is complete, verifiable and irreversible;

(b) a commitment by the non-nuclear members of the six-power forum not to engage in military nuclear programmes (to maintain the non-nuclear status of Japan and South Korea);

(c) giving North Korea an opportunity to enter the international political system with the provisos described below;

(d) a commitment by all the parties not to use force in relation to each other provided that the nuclear provisions of the agreement are observed (a multilateral rather than a bilateral non-aggression pledge). Most Americans will gag at the prospect of North Korean reform under the current leadership. And, in fact, the United States cannot go further than to desist from active measures to destabilize or overthrow the North Korean regime together with a continuation of humanitarian aid.

The current Pyongyang regime must reform — or it will erode — whatever American policy. All the six-power forum can do is to allow time for either process. —Dawn/Tribune Media Services International

How the world views the US

BY reading the coverage in the American press of some of the recent events in the Muslim world — in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan — one gets the impression that many people are surprised by what is happening. On May 1, President George W. Bush had declared that major combat in Iraq had ended but since then some 65 American soldiers have been killed in what General John Abizaid, the new leader of the US central command, describes as urban guerilla war.

On august 19, the guerillas destroyed the UN office in Baghdad, killing the chief of the mission. In Afghanistan, the forces opposed to the regime of President Hamid Karzai are gathering strength. Over 200 people were killed in the last four weeks in the various operations launched by those who oppose the Kabul government. What has gone wrong? The image the administration of President Bush presents of itself is that of supreme self-confidence. The president — and some of his key advisers even more so — are persuaded that the course they are following is the right one. They believe that America’s values, its system of governance and its economy are models for the rest of the world. The Bush administration also says it has the right to protect its citizens even if it means striking at its enemies, real or perceived, pre-emptively. These two points of view guide Washington’s current approach to world affairs.

How is the world reacting to these sets of beliefs and these approaches to foreign policy and international affairs? Will this way of doing business bring peace to the world and buy security for the citizens of the United States?

The answer to the first question came from the surveys conducted recently by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, a Washington-based privately funded organization. Several months ago, the centre launched a project under the direction of Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the second administration of President Bill Clinton, to study global attitudes towards the United States.

The Pew Centre surveyed 38,000 people in 44 nations during the summer and fall of 2002. The results, published in a report, presented an unflattering picture of the United States as painted by the people interviewed. This was particularly the case in the Muslim world, including Pakistan. The centre then followed up on its initial survey by another set of interviews of 16,000 people in 20 nations and in the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.

Between 500 and 1,000 adults were interviewed in each of the countries surveyed. The polling was done by telephone and face to face interviews were conducted in late April and May, 2003 after the fall of Baghdad to the American troops. In most countries the survey involved national population samples but in some only urban areas were surveyed. The results were published in a study titled “Views of Changing World, 2003.”

According to Andrew Kahut, the Pew Centre’s Director, “The [Iraq] war has widened the rift between Americans and western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era — the UN and the North Atlantic alliance.”

The survey’s conclusions are obviously of considerable concern for the policy-makers in Washington and other world capitals. It is clear — uncomfortably so for Washington — that large majorities of Europeans have serious misgivings about the way the US is approaching the rest of the world. The unease with Washington is to be found not only in the countries US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called “old Europe.” They are felt all over the continent. These misgivings are even more pronounced in the Islamic world. However, while looking at the US with considerable apprehension, the survey found that the world’s citizenry does not have any problems with the values espoused by America and its political and economic systems, a point I will pick up later.

Let us first look at the public opinion in Western Europe, America’s natural ally until very recently. Some of the sharpest decline in the esteem in which the US policy-makers are held took place in this part of the world. Last summer, when the first survey was undertaken, more than 60 per cent of the French, the Germans and the Russians held a favourable view of the United States. After the war in Iraq and the opposition by these three European countries to the position adopted by Washington, positive views of the United States dwindled sharply in all of them.

They declined to only 45 per cent in Germany, 43 per cent in France and 36 per cent in Russia. Spain, which supported Washington, saw an even more precipitous decline with favourable view of America reduced from 50 to 14 per cent. It is only in the UK that the majority of the population — 70 per cent to be precise — continued to have a favourable view of the United States. However, even in that country, there was a decline of five per centage points.

Most worrying, of course, is the low standing in which America is now held by the world of Islam. Of the seven Muslim countries surveyed — Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Pakistan and Turkey — the highest rating was only 27 per cent. These were in Morocco and Lebanon. In Indonesia, favourable rating dropped sharply, from 61 per cent in the mid-2002 survey to only 15 per cent. In Turkey there was also a sharp decline from 30 to 15 per cent.

The lowest score in the 20-country survey were in Jordan and Palestine. In the case of the former, favourable ratings declined from 25 per cent in mid-2002 to only one per cent in the later survey. The survey did not canvas the opinions of the people governed by the Palestinian Authority in 2002. It did that in the follow-up survey and found that, like Jordan, only one per cent of the population had a favourable view.

There was a small increase in the case of the approval for the United States in Pakistan with the proportion of the population looking favourably at that country increasing slightly from 10 per cent to 13 per cent. Even with this increase, only one in eight Pakistanis approve the policies being pursued by Washington. The Pew Survey suggests many Muslims feel threatened by America. In Pakistan whose government has fully supported President Bush’s war on terrorism, 73 per cent of the population is “very” or “somewhat” worried about a military threat from the US.

One other aspect of the opinions gathered by the survey is worth noting. There is a widespread disappointment among the Muslims around the globe that Iraq did not put up more of a fight against the US and its allies. Overwhelming majorities in the Arab world — Morocco (93 per cent), Jordan (91 per cent) and Lebanon (82 per cent) — expressed disappointment with the Iraqi resolve and resistance. Even in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world the same sentiment was expressed by large majorities — 82 per cent in Turkey and Indonesia and 74 per cent in Pakistan. “Still, even in countries that staunchly opposed the war many people believe that the Iraqis will be better off now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power,” wrote the authors of the report.

At the same time, the survey found that most Muslims also support a prominent — and in some cases expanding — role for Islam and that of the religious leaders in the political life of their countries. Yet this disposition does not diminish their support for systems of governance that ensure the type of civil liberties and political rights enjoyed by democracies. Although, the survey did not question how the people in the Muslim world were reacting as their religion and their co-religionists were coming under pressure in Europe and North America, it was clear from their responses to some other questions that they would turn to Islam and its more radical exponents if these pressures did not ease. The survey revealed a strong support for Osama bin Laden, particularly in those countries whose citizens have been directly affected by the US-led war against international terrorism.

The problems President Bush and his team must contend with were the consequence of two policies they have pursued: unquestioned support for Israel in that country’s struggle for territory with the Palestinians and the American administration’s tendency to act alone on matters of deep concern for many countries in the world. In 20 of 21 countries surveyed — America was the only exception — pluralities and majorities believe the United States favoured Israel over the Palestinians. It should be of considerable interest that even the people of Israel hold the same view. In other words, the pro-Israel stance of America’s view of the Middle East troubles not only the Muslim countries but also the countries in Western Europe.

The Europeans showed considerable unhappiness with America’s go-it-alone approach towards issues such as global warming, degradation of the environment, war crimes and controls over the use of land mines. The Europeans were also concerned with the American attitude towards the poor — the poor in the less developed parts of the world as well as the poor living within the United States. According to the report, the Americans are more individualistic and favour a less compassionate government than do the Europeans and others. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 per cent) believe success is not beyond their control.

Among 44 nations surveyed for the first report the US had one of the highest per centage of people who think that those who fail in life have themselves to blame, rather than society or the country in which they live. This represents a considerable shift in approach towards public policy. The American people after all were behind the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson. America now seems committed to a different set of values.

Some senior people in the Bush administration, including the president himself, have suggested that the anger directed by terrorist groups at the United States is because of the values that the country now pursues. Groups such as Al Qaeda are prepared to mount suicide attacks on the US, its people and its economic assets because they deeply resent all that America stands for. That, the Pew survey tells us, is not the case. According to its report, “while the post-war poll paints a mostly negative picture of the image of America, its people and policies, the broader Pew Global Attitude survey shows wide support for the fundamental economic and political values that the US has long promoted. Globalization, the free market model and democratic ideals are accepted in all corners of the world.

“Most notably the 44-nation survey found strong democratic aspirations in most of the Muslim public surveyed. The post-war update confirms that these aspirations remain intact despite the war and its attendant controversies.”

An unholy mess

WHEN one gets to be as old as I am, the loss of mobility is offset by a gain in perspective. The bomb blasts in Mumbai were barbaric acts, worse, they were entirely senseless unless the intention was to torpedo even the small steps that have been taken to get a people-to-people dialogue going.

There is a certain rhythm to Indo-Pakistan relations, the rout-rally-rout that Arnold Toynbee identified as a pattern of history. Our mindset is so fixed that India sees a Pakistan hand and Pakistan sees an India hand when something untoward happens in either country. Pakistan lost no time in condemning the Mumbai bomb blasts and Mr. L. K. Advani lost no time in pointing a finger at Pakistan.

If pressed hard enough, Mr. Advani will see a Pakistan connection in the Kumbh Mela stampede in Nasik. Every country has its share of fanatics, dedicated hate-mongers. But Mr. Advani is no nut-case. He happens to be deputy prime minister. That gives his ranting a legality. It makes him a very dangerous man.

An investigation is seriously compromised when a pre-judgment is imposed on it from the start. No one asks the most basic question and the most obvious: who benefits? There has to be some method even in acts of madness. And then, Mumbai of all places? The starting premise of any investigation has to be the strategic or symbolic importance of the venue. The Gateway of India is a monument that celebrates the British Raj. It has nothing to do with Indian nationalism or sentiments. If anything, it was, at one time, an anathema and one can’t look at it without remembering that it was built to commemorate the visit of their royal highnesses King George V and Mary to the “ brightest jewel in the British Crown. “

When our family first moved to Mumbai (it was called Bombay) we lived at Dhanraj Mahal, a block of flats and we had as our ‘neighbour’ the Gateway of India. If one walked at a leisurely pace, it took five minutes to get to it, a brisker pace would get you there in less. Also in the same proximity was the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Royal Bombay Yacht Club which was obstinately for “Europeans Only” and one could not pass it without some loathing of the British Raj.

People did go to the Gateway of India, as an outing and mainly in the cool of the evenings but I would not describe it as a ‘tourist attraction’. May be it has become one now. But it would not be the sort of place that would attract the mischief of terrorists. Given that terrorists struck at the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta, the Taj Mahal Hotel would have the more likely target. But Gateway of India makes no sense but then, neither do acts of terrorism of any kind because no higher purpose is served in killing innocent men, women and children and injuring countless others.

The Mumbai police has been wrong-footed by both insinuations and thinly-veiled accusations that the terrorists were Islamic militants who got some kind of patronage from Pakistan. This to politicise a criminal act. The city of Mumbai is held hostage by Shiv Sena on one hand and by Mumbai’s notorious but formidable underworld, on the other. Each has its own axe to grind, the Shiv Sena to keep the pot boiling certain in the knowledge that the suspicion would fall on some Muslim-connected group and the underworld to demonstrate that it has the power to create mayhem.

But one thing is clear. Those who carried out the bombing were not friends of India or Pakistan. Mr Advani is being reckless. That he has a pathological hatred of Pakistan is well known. He is no friend of Pakistan. But is he a friend of India? That is for the Indian people to decide.

But terrorism has become a global enemy. Most of it real, some of it imagined, a smoke-screen to pursue other agendas or ambitions. There are still no signs of the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussain had and which he could launch in 45 minutes and which, therefore, posed a current threat. Far more than 45 minutes have gone by, days, months and the search is still on.

Tony Blair sounds confident that they will be found. Bush doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. Fox News, which seems to be the megaphone of the neo-conservatives, is now suggesting that these weapons of mass destruction have been stashed away in Lebanon and Syria which are, therefore, accomplices.

There is a wholly predictable scenario. Having told the world that Saddam Hussain’s regime had been taken out and the resistance being offered was by remnants of Saddam loyalists, there is now talk of ‘foreign’ elements who have infiltrated into Iraq and implicit in this is some benign complicity of Iraq’s neighbours.

There is a sturdy refusal to admit that the coalition forces find themselves in a quagmire and there is no exit-strategy in sight. Mercifully, we are hearing less and less about the ‘liberation’ of Iraq. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is reverting to its old ways and the fighting has renewed with ominous hints that the Taliban is re-grouping. In other words, the unholy mess is getting messier.

Waging war was the easy part, managing the peace is proving to be hard. This is because no technology has yet been invented that can pacify a conquered people merely by pressing a button. Why was it assumed that nationalism was the monopoly of the ‘good guys’? Why was it not factored in? Probably because the Iraqi exiles had convinced the coalition of the willing that Saddam Hussain was so hated and his removal would be so welcome that Iraqi national pride would disappear once Saddam was taken prisoner or killed. This was an intelligence failure. This was also a worst case of wishful thinking.

The resignation of Blair’s spin-doctor Alistair Campbell is a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Polls show that trust in Blair’s government has plummeted. Will we see a regime change? It’s a bad time for spin. Look at the troubles of Shane Warne.

Why the big fall in HDI ranking?

EVERY year the UNDP publishes the Human Development Report (HDR) measuring the performance of nations. The HDR 2003 based on the data of 2001 has been released a few days ago. The relative performance of nations is judged in terms of Human Development Index (HDI).

This Index is a composite measure of three indicators. The first is per capita income reflecting economic growth. The second is literacy indicating educational attainment. The third is life expectancy at birth showing achievement in the field of health. The nations are subsequently ranked according to their HDI. The HDI varies from 0.944 for Norway which is ranked as number one to 0.275 for Sierra Leone which is ranked at number 175.

The HDI is a summary measure of three dimensions of human development — living a long and healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living. The countries are divided into three groups — high development with the HDI above 800, middle development with HDI above 500 and low development with HDI below 500.

In the HDR 1991 Pakistan was ranked at 120, India at 123 and Bangladesh at 136. In the HDR 2003 Pakistan is ranked at 144, India at 127 and Bangladesh at 139. During the last year our ranking has fallen from 138 to 144. Pakistan and Nepal are the only two non-African countries in the low human development group. In fact Pakistan is the only one which is not least developed according to UN classification but bracketed with all least developed countries in this group as Nepal is also least developed.

The HDR 2003 shows that Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth is 60.4 years, Bangladesh’s 60.5 years and India’s 63.3 years. The World Development Report 2003 of World Bank shows Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth 63 years, India has also 63 years and Bangladesh 61 years. In all UN publications life expectancy at birth of India and Pakistan is estimated at the same level and Bangladesh about 2 to 3 years less.

The World Development Report 2003 correctly reflects the situation. It is surprising that the World Bank and the UNDP give different figures for vital national statistics. If Pakistan’s life expectancy is shown three years higher at the same level as India then our ranking will be higher than Bangladesh and Sudan, which are at 139 and 138 and we will move into middle human development group with an HDI of more than 0.500.

It seems that the UNDP statistical office does not like to see Pakistan in the middle human development group. Another interesting aspect of the HDI calculation by the UNDP is that our HDI in 1995 was 0.472 and in 2003 it is 0.499. It means that during these six years there was insignificant improvement in per capita income, literacy and life expectancy at birth in Pakistan . Our relative progress may be less than that of other nations but there has been some progress in all these fields during the last six years. The Bangladesh HDI during the six years has gone up by .059 whereas we have moved up by .027 only. Our improvement was definitely higher than half of Bangladesh.

Human development, primarily education and health, have never been the priority of our planners and policy-makers. Pakistan’s failure to realize the importance of human capital formed through education is reflected in low allocations for education in the Five-Year Plans. Up to the Sixth Plan it was less than two per cent, 3 per cent in the Seventh Plan and jumped to eight per cent in the Eighth Plan a result of incorporation of Social Action Programme which tripled the allocation for social sectors. The neglect of human development did not stem from feudal conspiracy.

Dr Mehboobul Haq had, when he was finance minister in the 1980s, introduced Iqra surcharge at the rate of five per cent on the value of all imported goods. The annual collection of Iqra surcharge was Rs 8 billion, more than one per cent of The GDP. If lqra surcharge was genuinely meant for increasing public expenditure on education, he should have set up a separate Iqra Fund whose proceeds could be used exclusively for education and the expenditure on education could have increased by 60 per cent.

However, Iqra surcharge was deposited into Federal Consolidated Fund into which all tax receipts are pooled. Thus Iqra surcharge was used for building more cantonments and police stations. Why did a brilliant son of Pakistan, like Dr Haq, hailing from the middle class, use a Quranic injunction to confuse the nation. There were many others who neglected education but he was the only one to conceive Iqra surcharge.

A multi-sectoral (education, health, family planning and rural water supply and sanitation) Social Action Programme was launched in 1993-94 for synergizing progress in social sectors. SAP-I was a three-year programme with an outlay of Rs 127 billion of which 83 per cent was utilized. SAP-II was launched from January 1997 to June 2002 with a planned outlay of about Rs 500 billion. More physical infrastructure was built under the SAP programmes but allocating more money is not a sufficient condition for improving the quality of implementation.

The problem of teacher absenteeism, high dropout rates in schools, inadequate availability of female teachers, poor supervision, lack of accountability, delays in procurement and pilferage of funds prevented the SAP from achieving its goals and Pakistan from making rapid progress in human development. During the implementation of the SAP, it was found that out of 166,000 teachers drawing salary in Punjab 50,000 were fake. About 10 per cent were ghost schools and 13 per cent of the amount allocated to education was embezzled.

The decade of 1990s was very bad for Pakistan. Politically and economically there was a more rapid deterioration in governance and institutions. In 1980s our GDP growth rate was more than 6 per cent and India’s was less than 4 per cent. In 1990s Pakistan’s GDP growth was 4.6 whereas India grew by more than 6 per cent.

Pakistan’s population growth is more than two per cent whereas population growth during 2002-15 is shown in HDR 2003 at 1.3. India’s literacy rate has always been better than Pakistan even in 1980s when their per capita income was lower than Pakistan. Hence India has overtaken Pakistan in HDI ranking because their per capita income is higher stemming from higher rate of GDP growth and lower rate of population growth. Moreover India’s literacy rate is 58 per cent and Pakistan’s 44 per cent. Our life expectancy at birth is at the same level.

Nineteen-nineties was also the decade when Pakistan was under the tutelage of the IMF. Six arrangements were signed with the IMF but the irony is that none of them was completed. We were able to draw only $818 million against the agreed amount of $2,366 million. But as a result of dictation from the IMF, Public Sector Development Programme was reduced from 7 to 3 per cent of the GDP. It is further distressing to note that Pakistan’s public expenditure on education fell from 2.6 per cent of the GDP in 1990 to 1.8 per cent in 2000.

The allocations may not be all important but one-third decrease in public sector allocation for education in an environment when per capita income is growing by less than 2 per cent is bound to lead to a slide in HDI ranking. IMF’s advice not only led to falling growth rates and soaring poverty and unemployment, but also in sliding the HDI.

The HDR 2003 indicated that Pakistan’s HDI ranking has slipped from 138 in 2002 to 144 in 2003 and Nepal, Sudan and Bangladesh which were below Pakistan in 2002 are now all above . This sharp fall seems to be due to some statistical error. However to be a notch above or below Bangladesh, Nepal and Sudan hardly matters. What we need to realize is that human development has been and continues to be neglected in Pakistan. Being in league with Sudan and Nepal should arouse our national spirit to perform better as human development is both the means and the end of economic growth.

The writer is a former secretary, planning department.

Mexico detours on rights

VICENTE FOX made human rights a centrepiece of his presidential campaign three years ago, signalling its importance in Mexico’s foreign policy and that abuses would not be tolerated at home.

Jorge Castaneda, Fox’s then-foreign minister, followed up and made Mariclaire Acosta, a respected, longtime advocate, his vaunted deputy for human rights. The three then undertook steps that were unprecedented for Mexico, including correctly criticizing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for his wrongs on human rights.

So what is the world to think now that Castaneda is gone and his successor, Luis Ernesto Derbez, last week not only fired Acosta but also abolished her post?

Acosta will continue her good works with a public or private group lucky enough to have her services. But Fox and Derbez need to labour to lift the shadow they have cast over Mexico’s reputation as a country that champions human rights.

The loss of Acosta is unfortunate for a nation that recently was making history signing international human rights accords, opening itself to scrutiny by human rights groups and denouncing human rights violations in foreign countries.

Acosta’s dismissal is especially ill timed considering that two respected monitoring groups have just issued separate scathing reports on human rights woes in Mexico.

Last month, Human Rights Watch detailed the failures of the special prosecutor’s office, set up in November 2001 to investigate and prosecute past abuses in Mexico.

—Los Angeles Times