The cost of our N-deterrence

In the current nuclear imbroglio, all the three alleged recipients of Pakistan's nuclear technology - Iran, Libya and North Korea - have officially denied the charge. And this has happened after the man accused of leaking technology has publicly confessed to having done so.

The other day, President General Pervez Musharraf told The New York Times (Feb 10) that he did not know "whether Dr. A.Q. was using the underworld or the underworld was using A.Q." The president made this observation after having investigated the charges and following the confession and apology from Dr. A.Q. Khan and granting him a 'conditional' pardon.

In the same interview, the president, in answer to a question about his pledge that he would personally shield Dr Khan from any action that the international community might contemplate against him at some future date, said: "We need to think about it".

The implications of second thoughts on the part of President Musharraf should become somewhat clearer in the light of the Feb 11 speech of US President Bush on nuclear proliferation in which he mainly focused on Dr Khan and his so-called greed.

Many, however, had noticed that in his confession Dr A.Q. Khan had not mentioned anything about taking money for the transfers. He had only said that what he did was in "good faith" and that it was an "error of judgment". And we all know that "good faith" and "greed" do not mix.

The properties and bank accounts Dr. A.Q. Khan is said to own in his name are being presented as evidence of his involvement in the transfer of nuclear technology. By implication it is being established that the money he owns is actually made up of cash payments he is supposed to have received from Iran, Libya and North Korea in return for the nuclear technology transfer. It has not been clorified whether the government intends to retrieve this money from Dr. Khan.

Let us take the matter of Iran first. Notwithstanding what General Aslam Beg did, or did not do, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we had strained relations with Iran throughout the 1990s because of the Taliban. In fact, we fell out in 1988 when Iran kept on opposing Pakistan's efforts to set up a government in Kabul by consensus after the departure of the Soviets. There is ample anecdotal evidence that Tehran and Riyadh were fighting a proxy war on our soil throughout the 1980s and 1990s. At many junctures during these two decades, we had seen how close Iran had come to India.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran was seen as competing with Pakistan for influence in Central Asia, both politically and in the economic field. And the Iranian media never minced words in criticizing Pakistan all through the last 20 years. Does it then appeal to logic that in these circumstances Dr Khan or anybody in Pakistan would have even contemplated transferring such deadly technology to Iran?

North Korea, a highly sanctioned country, needs cash more than nuclear technology to import food for its millions. And that is what perhaps Pakistan paid when we purchased missile technology from them. And that is what the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto is saying she did. The Libyan connection also appears to be highly dubious - as dubious as the CIA's concocted papers on Iraq's WMDs or the earlier evidence that it had produced about a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory making WMDs that was razed to the ground by the US air force.

The BBC's China Ship incident of October 2003 appears to be a hasty and crude sting operation by the CIA to implicate Pakistan. The Malaysian factory from where some items of nuclear hardware were supposed to have been sent to Libya could be a Khan set-up for getting supplies for the Pakistani programme. This facility could have been penetrated by the CIA some time in 2003. What followed after that could well be a CIA trap to lure Pakistan.

But, then, if Dr. AQ did not make his millions by selling nuclear technology, then where did he get the 'loot' from? One story, yet to be substantiated by documentary evidence, has it that when he retired in 2001, he handed over to the KRL management 24 of his 29 properties in and around Islamabad. If this is true, then it is logical to assume that most of his bank accounts and properties had, in fact, belonged to KRL and he was only fronting for the laboratories.

This could seem even more logical when we find no reported trace on the records of our nationalized banks of any L/Cs that the government had opened to import the raw material and the hardware that were needed for our nuclear programme. This is because we could conceivably have been making these purchases from unidentified sources (as everyone does) and paying cash from some secret accounts. Since the entire programme was clandestine, its financing obviously could not have been shown in the budget books.

The money which was going into such accounts and properties was certainly not all legitimate. But it could not also be from the sales proceeds of nuclear transfers, because until about the late 1980s our own programme was still in the experimental stages. So there was nothing 'substantial' to sell until then. And if that were so, then where did we get these resources from to be used for our nuclear programme?According to one background briefing by officials, we spent about Rs. 184 billion in the last 26 years on the nuclear programme.

Most of it must have been spent in the 1980s and early 1990s because it was during this period that we were trying to enrich uranium to weapons grade level and refining our bombs. After that we spent most of our clandestine resources on developing delivery systems and of course on the low-intensity wars in Afghanistan on the side of Taliban and in occupied Kashmir.

These resources (Rs. 184 billion), or about $10 billion at the average exchange rate of the late 1980s and according to the same background briefing, were said to have been siphoned off from legitimate sources, that is the defence budget. But most of our defence budget is made up of salaries. Even conventional weapons are bought from sources other than the overt defence budgets. So, the question remains: Where did we get the clandestine billions to make the bomb from?

(To be concluded)

Campaign for bypolls gears up

Since the government announced the schedule of byelection for vacant seats of local bodies, the aspirants have started electioneering by setting up election offices in the district.

As many as 13 posts of Nazims and one seat of Naib Nazim had fallen vacant when 11 Nazims of the union councils fought the election of MPA after tendering their resignation. Four of them were elected MPAs while seven others were defeated.

The elected MPAs are: Mian Mazhar Javed, Lalla Shakeelur Rahman, Chaudhry Zahid Pervaiz and Chaudhry Shabbir Ahmad. Those who could not succeed are Dr Zafar Chaudhry, Engineer Ashraf Butt, Mian Iqbal Dhariwal, Chaudhry Irshad Ahmad Cheema, Nasir Ahmad Cheema, Rana Asif and Adil Farooq Khan.

Nazims Chaudhry Ataullah Virk (Mari Khurd village of union council) and Rana Muhammad Hussain (Zahid Colony UC) were killed by their rivals. Naib Nazim of Ghakhar union council Hafiz Zafar Yasin Butt died about a month ago.

According to the election commission, the nomination papers would be accepted on March 3 and 4. Objections could be raised on March 6 and 7. Scrutiny of nomination papers would be held on March 8 and 9. The election symbol would be allotted on March 17 after displaying the final list. The byelection would be held on March 28.

The PPP, the PML-N and the PML-J held separate meetings to reviewed the current political situation and nominate the aspirants for Nazims of union councils and five seats of union councils of the city.

The party leaders suggested that strong candidates should be supported in byelection to ensure their success.

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The Pakistan Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union has opposed the privatization of Wapda. The union threatened that power supply would be suspended across the country and all Wapda employees would come on the roads if the decision is not reversed by the government.

Union's regional chairman Iqbal Dar told workers at a recent meeting at Bakhtiar Labour Hall here that privatization of Wapda was not justified.

It was unwise because both the consumers and Wapda employees would suffer because of enhancement of power supply tariff by the multinational companies.

He said that the Benazir Bhutto government handed over various power plants to multinational companies as part of privatization. As a result, the power tariff was enhanced by Wapda and the consumers were suffering uptill now.

Union leaders Ehsanullah, Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor, Rana Umer Draz, Mian Ataur Rahman and others also opposed the privatization of Wapda and demanded that the government should take the decision back immediately.

They extended their cooperation to central labour union about the future line of action.

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The High Commissioner of Kenya, Muhammad Omer Soba, has said that a free trade pact between Pakistan and Kenya was the need of the time which could be helpful in strengthening the economies of the two countries.

He was speaking at a recent meeting of the Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry here. He said that he would constitute Pakistan-Kenya trade promotion association himself for the promotion of import and export between two countries with the coordination of traders and industrialists.

Mr Soba pointed out that many industrialists and traders, settled in Kenya, were playing an active role in the progress and prosperity of the two countries. He said that Pakistan and India were coming close to one another and it was time that Pakistan and Kenya made efforts for a free trade pact.

He hinted that Kenya would export tea and import rice from Pakistan.

Earlier, GCCI president Sheikh Shaukat Javed and other members welcomed Mr Soba and apprised him of the quality of products made in Gujranwala.

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The traders and public transport vehicle owners expressed resentment against the failure to repair the GT Road from Lahore to Gujranwala and demanded that it should be constructed and repaired on priority basis.

At a meeting held here, they pointed out that GT Road between Lahore and Gujranwala has been destroyed and ditches have developed at many places. Vehicles were being damaged and the commuters faced lot of problems.

They said that ditches were causing fatal accidents but the national highway authority did not bother to repair the road. They said that the motorway police imposes fines on the vehicle owners who diverted their vehicles on to safe track to avoid road accidents and compelled them to drive on the second track.

Costly atta making the poor poorer

The atta price fluctuation and its rise has been going on for some weeks now, but there is truly a class of citizens amidst us who have been both uninformed and unaffected. This makes it pertinent to underline that when we complain of the rising prices of essential foodstuffs in particular, we are not referring to them. They are a class unto themselves, shall we say.

Perhaps to focus on the price of something as fundamental as atta is to take notice of the domestic budget of the majority of the people around - urban and rural both. It is to underline vulnerability of the kitchen budget in particular, a theme that does not get underlined in our media in the human terms that it should. And as frequently.

One says this because in all the atta price rise that has been on, eroding the purchasing power of fixed salary groups in particular, thought goes out to the inadequacy of public focus on this atta unavailability. And why there has been no advertisement from the ministry of food and agriculture, for instance, to remind citizens that the 'situation is very much under control'.

Is that standard operating procedure? For in the recent, or rather current, bird flu fear that has depressed the chicken market and its pricing, the ministry of health was very 'prompt' in issuing print media advertisements telling citizens to consume chicken and egg 'as usual'. And in the same newspapers there were stories from sounder sources and more authentic spokesmen who cautioned the public.

Rather funny, said one Karachiite as he referred to the health ministry advertisement. I reminded him about the way in which the Clifton beach pollution was handled by official quarters, while the environmental magnitude steadily escalated into grim, grave proportions.

One has been unable to understand the comforting tone of official voices, over the years in the face of one crisis after another which has almost but destroyed credibility of all assurances and clarifications - not just a reflection on the media operators, but also those whom they have represented. Little wonder though.

Take this atta crisis. While the authorities have announced that atta prices have been fixed per kilo, and that atta sale points have been announced for Karachi, the general response is that those prices are unreal. A number of people I spoke to during the last few days all said that they had bought atta at prices higher than what the newspapers had been saying. One housewife's reaction was like this: "why do newspapers publish these atta rates which never exist in the market? Not just atta but anything most of the time.

In fact the fluctuation in prices which is the outcome of the lack of scruples of the traders and the businessmen, who are in connivance with the authorities." Almost a typical response from a housewife - a class that takes the brunt of price rises and seasonal fluctuation that goes on throughout the year.

Two news reports during the week on the atta prices need mention here. The first said that 'Steps taken to sell flour at Rs 11.5 per kilogram'. Now this was decided by a 'high level meeting' held on Wednesday which decided to form 'inspection teams' to keep a 'strict' check on flour prices throughout the city. It decided to control the prices and ensure effectiveness of the price checking mechanism.

And the other report: "Atta sale points notified" on February 20 (Friday) which said that "in line with the decisions taken at a high level meeting at the Civic Centre on Wednesday, arrangements have been finalized to ensure the availability of wheat flour in adequate quantity at all the 187 Bachat Bazaars as well as in all areas of the metropolis."

So from the look of things there is hope. Atta will be available at cheaper prices than Rs14 per kilogram or Rs16 and Rs17 that consumers have been paying. But the ordinary people are unwilling to believe that this will really happen, and in fact one has heard distrusting individuals who argue that eventually the price is going to settle at higher levels than what has been officially decided. The next few days and the next couple of weeks will tell. Fingers crossed?

An English daily from Karachi reported on Friday that "Atta goes beyond the poor's reach". The owner of a ration depot in Karachi has reportedly feared that "there could be riots due to the non-availability of atta, and its unaffordablility at the prevailing prices." Then he referred to the Nawaz Sharif era.

An interesting aspect of the atta context at the moment is that there are such economists who contend that there is no wheat shortage, even though there are reports of atta shortage from other places in the country also. And bear in mind that the prices of the ordinary Naan and Chapati have gone up.

The common man is baffled while experts and economists (in Islamabad and elsewhere) debate and discuss the issue. Is there a shortage (which there is) caused by recent wheat crop? Or is it because of the reports that there is wheat smuggling that takes place, and/or is it because of the hoarding that has been done by the flour mills which were trying to create an artificial shortage and exploit the situation? We have heard all this before.

Something else comes to mind. In all that has been going on vis-a-vis the atta prices having gone up for quite some time now, there is so far no plausible explanation of what has truly happened. What has gone wrong is something that has not been explained. It surely is not because people have started eating more atta. People have indeed bought Pakistani-assembled cars at exorbitant prices, and paid premiums that have been made to appear as enigmatic. Everyone knew and knows that there are people who made money out of the whole exercise, and continue to do so.

There are others who have been able to afford mutton, beef, chicken and fish at any price, and the high prices in these cases may have been the result of supply and demand, as simple economics makes it out to be.

But as ordinary citizens, one does not understand the atta shortage - if everything is as fine as is being made out to be - is just a management of the shortage facilities, which are inadequate. Or reportedly inadequate.

It is somewhat mysterious as far as the common man goes why atta prices have quietly risen, making one wonder whether any manipulation has been going on. There is a need to look into the situation in depth, and with a view to injecting that accountability process that we have in the country.

Assuming that the prices of atta will decline in the foreseeable future, what this outspoken Karachiite said to me was this: "There is a need to look into the possibility of bringing down the prices of the ordinary Naan and Chapati that have gone up. That is where the poor has been not hit most. His daily bread."

We talked over lunch (and there was no shortage of atta (whatever that means) and a colleague remarked that we live in a society that seeks to make cars cheaper, and which has cheaper chicken (for other reasons). That is the irony. Our Naan and Chapati have become costlier, and as a contrast western food franchises are prospering.