The paradox of asset boom

Despite all the good news on the economy, including the surge in the stock and real estate markets, there is an air of disbelief regarding its health. Although Pakistan’s economy seems to have defied the normal laws of development and has puzzled even the most analytical mind, the current paradoxical situation of an asset boom amidst growing poverty is truly bewildering.

On the one hand, there is the picture of satisfied stockbrokers, and lucky shareholders and allottees of publicly developed land, the price of which has quadrupled in the last two years. On the other, there are those who are unemployed or have an insufficient income. They are not only unable to afford a proper roof over their heads, but are also victims of a galloping inflation being fuelled by the abnormal rise in asset prices.

The ingredients of the present economic boom are easily discernible, although their dynamics remain a mystery. There is no doubt that the government’s stabilization efforts, aided by generous foreign assistance and debt relief, have created an enabling macroeconomic environment for both domestic and foreign investment over the last few years.

This favourable economic climate has been considerably bolstered by Pakistan’s emergence as a major non-Nato ally and the perquisites that accompany it. This gives credibility to the claims of political stability in the present setup. The fact that the ongoing dialogue with India, which many expected would be prematurely derailed, has survived the initial hiccups has also contributed to business confidence.

Policymakers have taken advantage of the situation to revive the floundering economy, a task that was initially carried out by lowering the interest rate and stimulating consumer expenditure through bank-led consumer financing, particularly of automobiles, consumer durables and house-building. The spurt in the growth rate of the last couple of years has primarily been the result of stimulation of demand in these sectors where there was previously excess capacity as a result of low growth.

However, the ability to finance these expenditures through the banking sector, has not merely been the result of a low interest rate regime pursued by the central bank over the last two years, but also that of a large inflow of private funds from abroad. Although the transfer of these funds have been conducted through banking channels since 9/11, not all have been reflected in the balance of payments statistics. Indeed, according to the latest figures, there has been a 16 per cent decline in official remittances in January 2005, compared to those in January 2004.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a substantial chunk of private capital inflows over the last two years represents a ‘reverse capital flight’ — the liquidation and transfer of hard currency holdings by expatriate Pakistanis, for speculative or investment purposes. This is a result of perceived insecurity in and disenchantment with permanent residence in the West, particularly in the US.

A significant portion of the rupees generated by such inflows is likely to have found its way to the real estate sector and stock markets, igniting and refuelling the current boom. However, while the possibility of some “push” factor favouring return migration from the West is not implausible, there is as yet little evidence of a “pull” factor drawing expatriates or their assets to Pakistan, as is happening to some extent in India.

According to the State Bank’s monetary policy statement for January-June 2005, there was a robust increase in the “private sector’s appetite for bank credit”, despite some increase in nominal (though not in real) interest rates during July-December 2004. Interest rates grew by 19.2 per cent (Rs. 244.4 billion) compared with 16.4 per cent (Rs. 155.3 billion) experienced in the corresponding period last year.

Although the State Bank report calls the distribution of credit among sectors “broad-based”, it was in fact highly unbalanced. The bulk of credit (52.2 per cent or Rs. 127.5 billion) went to the manufacturing sector (of which 75 per cent went towards textiles), followed by consumer financing (15.9 per cent), commerce (11.4 per cent), services (8.3 per cent), transport, storage and communication (5.2 per cent) and agriculture (3.6 per cent). So much for the government’s professed priority to the sector which provides subsistence to the majority of the poor.

Within consumer financing, most of the consumer loans were availed of for the acquisition of automobiles (Rs. 22.1 billion) followed by housing finance (Rs. 8.6 billion) and credit cards (Rs. 3.5 billion). Apart from the credit provided by the banks, the automobile sector has also tapped an ingenious source of credit: customer advances realized in the form of cash down payments, conservatively estimated at Rs. 10 billion to Rs. 15 billion over the last two years.

With the increase in the ceiling for the housing loans to Rs. 10 million, the bank credit to the housing sector is likely to increase and refuel the real estate boom. These monetary developments are disquieting not only because inflation is already reaching double digit levels, but also from the viewpoint of the fragility of the banking system.

The lower interest environment increased the profitability of commercial enterprises and had a healthy effect on their balance sheets besides raising the prices of their stocks, especially of those enterprises that were being privatized. The privatization commission, in an effort to expedite their sale, has set initial prices at a rather low level. This has provided an artificial boost to the stock market.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the bank credit borrowed by industrial enterprises for investment in capacity expansion and modernization is being used for speculation in the stock market. There is also a certain amount of self-reinforcing synergy between the movements in the stock and real estate markets as the short-term profits from one are recycled back to the other. Usually, the two markets move in opposite directions, but in the present paradoxical situation, they are moving in tandem.

The economic strategy adopted to fuel the present boom has been rather disingenuously crafted. While the government talks about making the poverty alleviation programme an integral part — indeed the core — of its development strategy, most of its economic policies are directed towards benefiting a small elite connected with the landed, military and industrial classes and the upper stratum of the urban middle class. The cabinet and other governmental decision-making bodies have these interests at heart, while demonstrating general apathy towards the problems of the common man. The military, in particular, has an overarching say in the fashioning of economic policies.

What makes the situation even more deserving of criticism is the fact that the army is deeply engaged in economic activities as recently pointed out by an influential western diplomat in Islamabad much to the chagrin of our foreign office. While the government has accepted the tenets of Washington Consensus, especially in regard to privatization, the military continues to run industrial and economic enterprises, including sugar mills, cereal processing, bakeries, cement, fertilizer, textiles, transport, banking and financial institutions, universities, oil and gas refineries, etc, besides a prominent role in the real estate sector. What is sauce for the civilian goose is obviously not sauce for the military gander.

The military’s involvement in policymaking at the macro and micro levels, represents an unprecedented conflict of interest which democracies try to avoid by requiring senior members of the government to de-link themselves from their business interests before assuming positions of executive authority. In Pakistan, the conflict of interest is not only at the individual but also at the institutional level. The trouble is that the military is its own prosecutor, judge and jury, and no independent inquiry has ever been held into the many scandals that have surrounded its activities. These activities, even if permitted, have to be transparent or subject to parliamentary surveillance as in most democracies.

The land scam in our country has reached proportions that in any transparent, democratic or just society would have called for an investigation by a high-powered independent commission or by the institution of suo moto inquiry by established institutions of accountability. In the last two years, land prices have suddenly jumped three to four-fold in major metropolitan cities, especially Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. No regulatory framework exists to protect the unwary real estate investor who stakes his/her lifesavings to realize the cherished dream of owning a house. On the other hand, privileged investors belonging to various branches of armed and civil services get multiple allotments in their housing societies at concessional rates which they unload on the market after their prices have escalated beyond the reach of the middle class buyer. In recent years, the Defence Housing Authority, which started the elite housing boom in Karachi three decades ago, has entered the real estate arena in almost all metropolitan centres.

Lately, the cabinet accorded the Defence Housing Scheme in Islamabad the status of an authority, which was solely vested in the CDA by the 1960 Ordinance establishing the new capital. The beneficiaries of these housing schemes are predominantly the officer class of the military. There are no schemes for retired soldiers, along the lines of the GI Bills in the United States, which cater for veterans’ housing and educational needs. Neither is there any attempt to share equitably the gains of the real estate boom with the original owners, including small and marginal farmers dispossessed of their land, owing to the misuse of eminent domain. These farmers are given compensation of a few thousands per kanal while by the time that the land is developed and houses constructed the prices have skyrocketed.

Our economy is in the midst of a massive skin-deep makeover in pursuit of General Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation” paradigm. Pakistan’s leaders have realized that the only way they can keep themselves in saddle is by accelerating the growth rate to generate the ‘feel-good’ factor — just as the BJP tried to before the Indian elections about a year ago. To what extent they will succeed in this gamble, without doing irreparable damage to the economy and inflicting more misery on the poor, remains to be seen.

Email: sm_naseem@hotmail.com

Remembering Sartre

Editorials that appeared on March 23 were predictably weighed down with the barnacles of despair, inspired no doubt by the fact that there has never been a reasonable period of uninterrupted constitutional government in the country, and people at the helm of affairs do not appear to be focused on crime. Mercifully, none of the indictments was gilded with the nostalgia of golden ageism, though some were festooned with the reputations of former military dictators.

However, what struck one as interesting is the fact that the thinking man appears to be slowly disappearing in this country. The conspicuous consumer is rapidly replacing him, accepting everything and questioning nothing. What happened to the spirit of enquiry, the quest for knowledge, the old creativity that surfaced in moments of disinterested contemplation?

The process of dehumanizing started long before Ziaul Haq was hoisted on this country along with his shrill self-righteous piece of rationalizing. In fact, as long ago as 1954 Professor M.M. Sharif of Government College Lahore was alarmed at what he saw, and commented on the total absence of philosophical instruction in one of the five universities then in existence in the country.

In a lecture to students of philosophy, he stated that we owed such acquaintance as we have with our own philosophers mostly to western scholars who bring to bear on their values and judgments grounded in their own intellectual heritage. Originality was sadly lacking. Mr Justice Mian Abdul Rashid added the wry comment: “We do not possess western philosophy. We are possessed by it.” The question that arises is: why have we not been able to produce an original thinker in 58 years, instead of always exhuming and resurrecting the two or three Arab intellectuals who are shown as representing the fountainhead of all wisdom?

It was while pondering this question that I noted with a touch of serendipity that Jean-Paul Sartre’s name had recently popped up twice in this newspaper. The first time was on March 8 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth and the 25th anniversary of the death of one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers, and to announce that the French National Library was launching a new exhibition of his works.

The second time was on March 19, to report that a public opinion poll conducted by a French television channel placed Sartre in the 96th position in a tally of 100. This is not at all surprising for the French have succumbed to the same materialist wave that has swept Europe.

Things have certainly changed from the early 1950s when I visited Paris for the first time. Nobody could have accused the French of being Ohne Weltkentnis Sartre was then the prophet of the Left bank, and it was fashionable to follow the new philosophy of engagement that had captured the imagination of the Parisians.

The city made a terrific impression on me. Who could ever forget her boulevards, trees and pavement restaurants; her naughty shows, neon fluorescence and boat rides; her Montmarte artists and leftist students; her newspaper kiosks, pissoirs and bars; her musical comedy policemen, accordionists in Second World War uniforms dripping with medals, and the songs of Edith Piaf? And there, tucked away in his flat above Cafi Bonaparte in the heart of the Latin Quarter, a stone’s throw from the Metro which always smelled of Gauloise cigarettes, perfume and burnt wire, lived Sartre, the high priest of existentialism.

Though chroniclers trace the origin of this philosophy to the Dane Kierkegaard and the Germans Schelling and Heidegger, it took root in France shortly after the Second World War. After having been militarily humiliated twice by the Germans, many French citizens began to question the very purpose of existence.

The British who had produced Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, and believed philosophy should be simple, straightforward and logical, were suspicious of the verbosity of the continentals and the metaphysical gobbledygook that they came across in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) and Sartre’s L’etre et le Neant (“Being and Nothingness”). In fact, Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1946, gives existentialism a wide berth. He did not include Sartre and Heidegger even in the later editions. Nor did the American philosopher Will Durant, whose popular treatise of 1926 The Story of Philosophy was reissued in 1954.

There was, however, an Englishman by the name of Herbert Read, an eminent art critic and leading exponent of the philosophy of anarchism, who in a comprehensive essay published in 1950 introduced existentialism to readers in England. Curiously, the day he was knighted, he lost all his friends. His little booklet, in which he compares existentialism with anarchism and Marxism, is still a minor classic.

The existentialist begins with an acute attack of self-consciousness, or inwardness, as he prefers to call it. He is suddenly aware of his separate lonely individuality, and he contrasts this, not only with the rest of the human species, but also with the whole goings-on of the universe as they have been revealed by scientific investigation. There he is, a finite and insignificant speck of protoplasm pitched against the infinite extent of the universe.

Now that the scientists have succeeded in proving that the universe is finite, things have become much worse, for now the universe shrinks to littleness and is pitched against the still more mysterious concept of nothingness. This is something humanly inconceivable.

So there we have the little man gaping into the abyss and feeling not only very small but also terrified. That feeling is the original Angst. This is a German word, and its closest equivalent in English would be dread or anguish. If one does not feel Angst, one cannot be an existentialist.

There are two fundamental reactions to this feeling of dread or anguish. The first is a despairful defiance. So what if one is insignificant and his life a useless passion! One can cock a snook at the whole show and prove the independence of one’s mind and consciousness. Life is absurd and obviously does not have a meaning, but let us pretend it has.

This pretence will at least give the individual a sense of responsibility. He can enter into an agreement with his fellowmen about certain lines of conduct. He is free to do this and his freedom thus grows into a sense of responsibility. The possibility of detaching oneself from a situation, in order to take a point of view concerning it, is precisely what Sartre calls freedom.

The second reaction to Angst is the theological one, which can be found in Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Schelling and earlier still in St Augustine. A little research would reveal that Jewish and Muslim philosophers have also attempted an explanation. We have the existential position. Man confronted by the abyss of nothingness. It does not make sense. Why is man here? Why all this complex structure? A simple hypothesis will make sense of it all — the prior existence of God — the Creator responsible for the whole phantasmagoria of existence, responsible for man and his conscience.

Existentialists who followed Sartre opposed any form of materialism that makes human values dependent on economic or social conditions, and idealism that mystifies him in that it binds him by rights and values already given, and conceals from him the power to devise roads of his own. Put simply: existence precedes essence. Man first is, and then he is this or that. This, in a highly simplified form, was Sartre’s reaction to the terrifying nature of our human predicament.

A certain amount of interest was expressed in Karachi in the 1960s, when existentialism and Marxism were popular themes in the coffee houses located on Victoria Road. Longhaired intellectuals would dilate for hours over a cup of the Kenyan brew and swap views on the absurdity of life. The coffee houses disappeared in the 1970s along with serious discussion.

When Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980, some 50,000 people turned out for the funeral. Six years later, his lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir, joined him there in Montparnasse, the burial place of the bourgeoisie. The stream of people coming to pay tribute has never really dried up. Even on cold winter mornings, at least half-a-dozen visitors make their way to the spot where he lies buried. He is the stuff of legend. And the hunger for that legend today is unmistakable. It has been a long time since any thinker left so large a mark on an age as did Sartre.

Is Blair’s time running out?

Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the world’s most successful and accomplished political leaders, often seems as much a fixture of London as Big Ben, Westminster or the red, double-decker buses. But, now, as Blair seeks a third term of office, many Britons wonder if it’s time to change occupants at 10 Downing Street.

Blair is expected to call an election in the first week of May. British campaigns are mercifully short, sparing voters the agonies endured by their fellows in the US and India, where elections drag on for months.

Blair is amazingly eloquent, always on top of his material, and oozing compassion and missionary zeal. He has the knack of always sounding and looking like he really believes in what he is saying.

But Blair’s special magic, with its particular appeal to female voters, is no longer working. As North Africans would say, he has lost his ‘baraka.’ Blair’s once overwhelming popularity has crashed, and with it the fortunes of his own dispirited Labour Party. For the first time in recent memory, Britain’s politicians and voters are pondering life after Blair.

Iraq is the principal cause of Blair’s fall from grace. Blair’s justifications for invading Iraq were exposed as a pack of bare-faced lies. His ludicrous claim that Iraq could attack Britain within 45 minutes with weapons of mass destruction made Blair appear as either a fool, or an arch-schemer in an aggressive war to grab oil and boost the fortunes of Israel.

Interestingly, American voters proved far more forgiving than Britons of their government’s lies and distortions. A majority of Americans didn’t seem to care they were deceived into a war by a president who actually claimed Iraqi ‘drones of death’ massed on lurking steamers in the North Atlantic were about to spray germs across the sleeping United States.

Americans just wanted revenge for the emasculating, humiliating 9/11 attacks. They were not particular about whom they attacked, or why. Just so long as they were coming down hard on Muslims. Iraq, however innocent, was the perfect whipping boy. The US media joined his giant lynch mob, whipping up war fever and anti-Islamic hysteria.

Two years after the invasion of Iraq, Britons, many better educated and more worldly than their American cousins, remain disgusted by Blair’s untruths. His sanctimonious piety has come to haunt him.

Unlike George Bush, Blair’s reputation has been seriously damaged. Why Blair chose to ruin his good name, and perhaps career, by joining an aggression as trumped up as Germany’s 1940 invasion of Poland, remains a deep mystery.

Blair could still win re-election in May. But only because Britain’s squabbling opposition Tories under Michael Howard have put on a pitifully inept performance. Howard continues the tradition of weak, stunted leadership that was Mrs Thatcher’s unfortunate legacy to her party, which dissipates much of its energies on internal civil war over whether no not to truly join the European Union.

Howard failed miserably to capitalize on Blair’s rush to war, and failed to capture the outrage of the 75 per cent of Britons strongly opposed to the conflict. Instead, like John Kerry in the US, Howard jumped on the pro-war bandwagon. The fact that Howard is Jewish, and an ardent supporter of Israel’s expansionist right, no doubt played a key role in his decision to support Blair’s war. But by doing good for Israel, he did bad for his own Tory Party.

Now, however, the feckless Howard is beginning to contemplate what seemed impossible: becoming prime minister. Opinion polls show only a two-point gap between the parties. Had the Tories a stronger leader, Blair would surely be out of a job.

Britain badly needs a new leadership. Its health system is rotten, trains constantly crash, large parts of the north are a dreary slum. Blair has been so busy playing George Bush’s Jeeves that he has neglected Britain’s crumbling infrastructure. His Labour party rival, Gordon Brown, is just waiting to backstab Blair.

That Britain prospers, and its currency remains so strong, is due to Margaret Thatcher’s reforms, not Blair’s Labourites. Britain, in spite of truly outrageous prices, remains a haven in Europe of free enterprise and entrepreneurship.

But the May elections are playing second fiddle right now to the upcoming royal nuptials of Prince Charles and Camilla Bowles. Alas, their wedding will be haunted by the ghost of Princess Diana.

Too many giddy British matrons remain infatuated by the media-hyped ghost of Lady Di. According to palace sources, if ever there was a figure unworthy of being queen it was she. Yet she has become, and remains, a semi-religious cult figure. — Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2005

Kashmir: is a solution in sight?

The turn for the better in Indo-Pakistan relations is proving durable, despite reminders of traditional mistrust and continuing differences. The CBMs have contributed to a relaxation of tensions, and are being maintained despite the halting progress on the agenda of the composite dialogue.

The visit of the Indian foreign minister, first such visit in over a decade, was marked by a landmark decision to open the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, which was seen as a win-win decision that would enable members of divided Kashmiri families to see each other, and possibly restore trade across the LoC.

Serious observers of the South Asian scene feel concerned over the slow pace of progress, but are reassured by the fact that the leadership in both countries is against abandoning the quest for peace and stability, and is disinclined to break off the dialogue process. In a world that is witnessing a further polarization between the rich and the poor countries, the incentives for economic reform and modernization are proving irresistible, though there are certain core issues that will not go away.

After twice going perilously near war, in 1999, and in 2001-02, the two nuclear-armed neighbours have realized the wisdom of seeking a peaceful resolution of their differences, so that the economic resurgence achieved in recent years can be maintained.

The road towards durable peace and mutual trust is proving a bumpy, one, since the issue of Kashmir keeps cropping up and creating an obstacle to meaningful progress. This is because it resurrects the political debate and contention over the largely Muslim state that resulted from the handing over process when the British transferred power to the two successor states.

Though the majority Congress party, that was largely Hindu in its following, adopted the partition plan offered by the British in June 1947, they maintained their opposition to the two-nation theory, that formed the basis of the demand for Pakistan. When India defends its refusal to give up Kashmir on the basis of this rejection, it implies its reversal of a stand on the very principle that was the agreed basis of independence. In other words, the Indian elite does not accept the emergence of Pakistan, and their retention of Kashmir suggests that they might make a bid for reunification (Akhand Bharat), whenever they are powerful enough to achieve that.

It may be recalled that when India carried out its nuclear tests in May 1998, some of the extremist Hindu members of the ruling BJP declared that the time had come to reunite the subcontinent. It was only after Pakistan carried out its own nuclear tests a fortnight later that such talk ended. That is why the solution of the Kashmir issue is described as completing the agenda of partition.

Even as cautious steps are taken to improve communication links, and other forms of economic cooperation, the need to keep plugging away at major issues in the agenda of the composite dialogue, such as Kashmir and peace and security is stressed, notably by Pakistan. Within Pakistan, there is restiveness over failure thus far to address the issue of Kashmir, though some progress has been made on nuclear CBMs. Various political organizations have begun accusing the government of a “sell-out” over Kashmir, and President Musharraf’s display of flexibility is viewed with suspicion.

Apart from political groups, think tanks have also been holding discussions, to enable consideration of available options. The press and independent TV channels have also reflected the concern that is emerging that given India’s military superiority, and growing economic strength, as well as international standing, Pakistan may have to compromise over Kashmir in a manner that favours India.

Among the more important discussions in the capital was an international seminar organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) recently on ‘The Kashmir imbroglio: looking towards the future.’ Specialists from the US, Britain, China, Japan, as well as from the region and diaspora Kashmiris were invited.

Interestingly, though participants from India had accepted the invitation to attend, they absented themselves at the last moment, perhaps to demonstrate that India was not ready for a substantive discussion on the issue at this stage.

In his inaugural address, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri recalled the joint statement issued in New York on September 24, 2004, in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India had joined President Musharraf in pledging to “explore all peaceful solutions of Jammu and Kashmir.” he stated that having started the composite dialogue, the two countries were in a “win-win” position to move forward towards a bright and peaceful future. The government of Pakistan was ready to take decisions to this end through the composite dialogue resumed in January 2004. In the meantime, he called for an improvement in the human rights situation in occupied Kashmir.

The proceedings over the two days of the seminar went over all aspects of the dispute, including its history, role of the UN, and earlier efforts to promote dialogue, at Tashkent and Shimla, following the conflicts of 1965 and 1971. The indigenous struggle launched by the people of Kashmir, in 1989, which was the year of democracy as well as the year that marked the end of the cold war, showed that the people of Kashmir were determined to win freedom from Indian occupation.

During the struggle, over 100,000 Kashmiris had lost their lives. The effort to dub them as “terrorists’ was at variance with the distinction made by the Un between freedom fighters and terrorists.

One key point made as a result of the discussion was that all three parties to the dispute, India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir, had to find a solution acceptable to all of them. The participants from the region and abroad took up the issue of repercussions in South Asia, the Islamic world and the European Union. All of them felt that the prolonged hostility between the two leading powers of South Asia had not only held back the whole region economically, but had also provided a nuclear flashpoint after both became nuclear powers. The path of conflict had to be avoided, and a peaceful settlement found.

Scholars representing the major powers gave useful assessments of the role their countries could play. The US, which attached importance to its relations with both Pakistan and India, was anxious that the two should work out a settlement through their own initiatives, with due regard for the wishes of the people of Kashmir. However, the US did not wish to mediate or “facilitate”, though it had used its influence to reduce tensions, whenever they threatened peace in the region.

China, the only great power having common borders with Pakistan, Kashmir and India, was also keen to see a settlement through peaceful negotiations. The UK, which was the power ruling South Asia before independence, had a responsibility to play a role in finding a solution that would promote peace and progress in the region.

A session was devoted to considering various options. Though the implementation of the UN resolutions was soundly rejected by India, the idea of regional plebiscites suggested by President Musharraf found some support among scholars. The Kashmiri case for autonomy / independence was also presented, as was the one for partition on the same basis as the partition of the subcontinent. India’s refusal to make any territorial adjustments appeared to rule out an immediate solution.

The practical way to proceed would be to lay stress on CBMs, like the opening of the road between the two parts of Kashmir, and other measures to improve life for the people of Kashmir. In the meantime, it is necessary to end violence along the LoC and inside occupied Kashmir, and India has to reduce its forces, and share the prosperity being acquired at the national level with the people of Kashmir. Pakistan should continue to extend moral and political support to the Kashmiris, and maintain the composite dialogue, though there should be faster progress on some tracks, and slower movement on others. There is no need to compromise on the principles, but resort to violence or repression has to be avoided, in order to address the more urgent problems of poverty and deprivation in the region.

At the concluding session, Mr. Hamid Nasir Chathha, chairman of the Kashmir committee of the parliament, expressed confidence that the heroic struggle of the people of Kashmir would succeed. A durable peace and mutually beneficial cooperation between Pakistan and India depended upon finding a solution of the Kashmir dispute that would recognize their democratic and human rights. Such a settlement, that required flexibility from both the countries, was central to regional peace.

An acidic message

When 758 American microbiologists send an open letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health, protesting against the premise of a $1.7 billion research project, everyone should sit up and take notice.

Just such a letter was recently dispatched, complaining that unprecedented increases in NIH funding for biodefence projects not only had diverted funds from more basic and important microbiological research — a claim that NIH disputes — but corrupted the NIH peer-review process. A system that in the past awarded grants to the best scientists, the critics suggested, now awards grants to any scientists, good or bad, who study anthrax.

There are good reasons to criticize NIH for its management of the biodefence money that Congress granted after the 2001 anthrax attacks. NIH had never before funded anything other than basic research and had never involved itself directly in the production of specific vaccines or therapies.

It is doing so because Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, argued that his institute, and not the Defence Department — which has failed to produce vaccines in the past — was the best place for that work to be done. Mr. Fauci believed (and still does) that there would be spinoffs for other areas of science.

But while scientists doing basic research don’t like the change, some in Congress have precisely the opposite set of concerns: namely that the NIAID is wasting money pursuing multiple research projects with unclear goals and hasn’t figured out how to focus on the nation’s more specific biodefence needs.

— The Washington Post

Soldiers and politics

Department of Defence directive No. 1344.10, a torturously detailed regulation that runs to 12 pages of references, responsibilities, requirements, definitions and examples, is the Pentagon’s last word on the subject of “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty.” To summarize and condense: They are prohibited.

Anthony Brown, an army reservist serving in Iraq, recently ran afoul of the directive when he recorded a speech to be delivered in the Maryland House of Delegates, where, in his civilian life, Lt. Col. Brown serves as a delegate from Prince George’s County and as the Democratic whip. The speech was about George Washington and was originally meant to be played at the State House in Annapolis on Presidents’ Day. The Army, once it got word of the plan, vetoed it.

—The Washington Post