KARACHI: Karachi’s power supply a casualty of politics

KARACHI: Residents of Nazimabad and Liaquatabad came out rioting on the streets on last Tuesday after another extended power breakdown which began in the middle of the night. Having already spent the previous day without electricity, the termination of power in the middle of their sleep was obviously the last straw to snap their patience. On Thursday again angry residents in Shah Faisal Colony took to the streets and set a KESC van on fire.

Road fires, stoning and angry slogans are becoming people’s last resort against power failures which have almost incapacitated the residents of Karachi. While violence as a form of protest against power breakdowns is for the time being confined to certain localities, it won’t be long when the majority joins in this agitation, as the near catastrophic situation created by the electricity supply failure in Karachi is affecting the entire city.

And while the misery continues, nay, escalates daily for millions in Karachi, our respected prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, after a detailed meeting with the officials of the power kingdom offers pearls of wisdom for the ‘sufferers’ in an official handout stating “loadshedding should be according to a schedule!”

Playing to the galleries the PM’s meeting on ‘KESC matters’ with Minister for Privatization Zahid Hamid, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Dr Salman Shah, the chairman of the CBR, the deputy chairman of Planning Commission, the secretary for Petroleum, the secretary for Finance, the MD of Siemens and other government officials, was summed up in a few words which included appreciation of the KESC’s plans to add power generation capacity and improve its distribution network. What was the point of gathering these officials to state the obvious?

At present, insiders say that if the highest authorities such as the president or the PM truly wished the situation to change in Karachi, it could be done by issuing a strict directive to Wapda to increase supply of power to the KESC.

Especially since the Federal Minister for Water and Power is already on record having said that there is a lot of power available with Wapda.

The government has a 27 per cent shares in the KESC and has three representatives on its board of directors. These include Anwar Khalid, member of Wapda; Ashfaque Mahmood, Secretary for Water and Power Development, and Asif Bajwa, additional secretary to the Ministry of Finance.

These members have decision-making powers and it is their responsibility to look out for public interests and come up with solutions in times of crises such as the present one. But information shows that beyond attending occasional meetings and availing airfare and board and lodging facilities, there has been no input by these members.

The other unexplained anomaly lies in Wapda’s sudden termination of power from one of its two links at Jamshoro. Till the Hubco-Baldia link was switched on a week ago, the KESC was receiving up to 600 MW of power from the two circuits/links at Jamshoro which have about 300 MW capacity each for transferring electricity to the KESC. But as soon as the Hubco-Baldia link was switched on, one of the Jamshoro links was arbitrarily switched off and the reason stated was repair work. It brings the electricity situation in Karachi back to square one with a continued shortage of 200 MW which has been a status quo for over two years.

What was the point of this urgent repair work and subsequent termination of the crucial Jamshoro link right at the peak of summer?

Further probe and study into the matter reveals a deliberate play of politics, primarily by Wapda. Since the KESC’s privatization was outlined as the first step in the layered plan including eventual privatization of the distribution companies -– one in each megacity around the country which supply power in their respective zones -– a lot depends (and many stakes would be affected) on the KESC’s success under private management.

And once the distribution companies start supplying power through their own IPPs, they would become independent of Wapda. But on the other hand if the KESC’s privatization fails to take off or its success is delayed, the subsequent plan of other corporations going independent and Wapda’s imminent privatization, will also be delayed or held in abeyance. And as such Wapda will remain under the present bureaucratic setup.

Karachi has perhaps the largest media attention and its press is the most vociferous. And so, the attention remains fixed to the poor job done by the utility, a situation which inadvertently caters to the negative elements whose aim appears to be to allow the status quo of poor electricity distribution to continue under public focus despite the grand change of management.

If the interest of the 14 million Karachiites was truly a matter of concern for the prime minister, instead of mere lip service, he would have directed Wapda to immediately increase power supply to Karachi through all its links, which, insiders say, is a totally ‘doable’ possibility within days.

If nothing else, at least repair works on the second Jamshoro link can (and must be) postponed right away at least for the scorching summer months.

The shortage which now amounts to 200MW and more, on a minute to minute basis, amounts to the suffering of 10 per cent of Karachi which is a large area considering the size of the city. This adds up to a large portion remaining without electricity all the time during the entire summer.

The back-channel efforts to defuse Iran-US standoff

ISLAMABAD: While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s surprise 18-page letter to US President George W. Bush last month may have been the turning point in US-Iran relations, certain moves away from the public eye also appear to have helped break the ice between the two estranged countries that severed diplomatic ties some 26 years ago. The public antagonism between Tehran and Washington notwithstanding, there are indications now that they have been working at multiple levels behind-the-scenes to defuse the on-going crisis over the nuclear issue.

In Tehran there exist two views on what should be Iran’s US policy. One led by the pro-engagement pragmatists like Hashemi Rafsanjani and the Foreign Ministry; and the other led by Islamic Revolutionary Guards whose views are articulated by Mr Ahmedinejad. Contacts between Iranian and American bureaucracies have been under way at even the most confrontational times when publicly the relationship between Tehran and Washington seemed, to put it mildly, on the rocks. For example in summer of 2001 when Iran-US relations reached new lows over Afghanistan and regional affairs, senior officials from both sides met in Europe to discuss the Afghanistan crisis.

And in 2006 the same pattern is repeated. While the Iranian President has been extremely critical of the US and Americans have been publicly talking about ‘regime change’ in Iran and doling out millions of dollars to support Iranian dissidents based in the US, there has been indirect behind-the-scenes engagement between of the two bureaucracies.

However, the most significant yet the least noticed development has been the presence of Abbas Maleki, a former deputy foreign minister of Iran and head of Iranian think-tank International Institute for Caspian Studies (IICS), at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Maleki has been a resident senior scholar at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs since early this year. Maleki who is currently working on energy security has since 1997 been the director-general of IICS, which is funded by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and hence the Iranian government. He could, therefore, qualify as an indirect backchannel between Washington and Tehran. Scholars at Kennedy School are known for contacts with policymakers in Washington.

Interestingly before the Iranian President dispatched a letter to President Bush, Abbas Maleki co-authored a paper with an American Harvard researcher Matthew Bunn, a former non-proliferation adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, proposing a plan to resolve Iranian Nuclear Crisis. The paper, published by the Belfer Centre in March (2006), titled: Finding a Way Out of the Iranian Nuclear Crisis, offered concrete steps towards an agreement that could make peace between Iran and the United States. Maleki and Bunn assert in the paper that “any viable solution needs to meet all sides’ bottom lines,” and they lay out specific steps to do that.

The paper begins with this note of caution: “As the UN Security Council debates Iran’s nuclear programme, a whiff of confrontation is in the air. Iran is a proud country with a tradition of resistance to foreign pressure and is likely to respond better to serious offers than to what it sees as blackmail. In response to Security Council sanctions, Iran might carry out its threat to pull out of Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Military strikes, and the inevitable Iranian response, pose incalculable risks for all concerned. All sides need to look hard for new proposals to resolve the crisis before confrontation becomes inevitable.”

Pointing to the fact that Iran had already offered to sign mutual non-aggression pacts with its neighbours, it argues: “If the United States can have such talks and pledges with North Korea, why not with Iran?” Maleki and Bunn conclude their piece with this counsel to all parties involved: “Rather than rushing toward confrontation with all its risks, all sides must put historic antipathies aside and find face-saving solutions. To give the Iranian advocates of compromise a chance to succeed, the United States and the other major powers need to put offers on the table that will show the people of Iran that nuclear restraint and compliance will put their nation on a path toward peace and prosperity.”

There are clear signs now of all sides moving in this particular direction. The package of incentives agreed upon by the five UNSC members and Germany on Thursday that the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would soon be carrying to Tehran has raised optimism about a breakthrough on Iran’s lingering nuclear standoff.

Iranian President’s dramatic diplomatic initiative of reaching out to the US President was largely seen as a tactical move to ward off the mounting pressure on Tehran’s nuclear programme but it has also demonstrated a desire to be reasonable and wanting a way out of the impending crisis.

Notably throughout this crisis the top Iranian leadership has kept in close contact with Islamabad, specifically to President Musharraf for advice. Apparently the top Iranian diplomats had told Pakistan on the sidelines of the ECO summit in Baku that Iran would be willing to consider any “reasonable formula” to end the confrontation over the nuclear issue. They also indicated that Tehran would be dispatching letters to important world capitals. However, there was no direct indication that President Bush would be one of the recipients of the letters. But then that’s how the Iranians are. A senior diplomat in Islamabad summed it up rather well: “Iranians keep their cards very close to their chest and no one can guess till the very last moment which way they will go.”

However, for now one thing is certain. Both Iran and US do want to give diplomacy and negotiations a fair chance. Perhaps they are mindful of the fact that both sides have too much to lose if they do not engage.

Zafar Samdani — a versatile writer

ZAFAR Samdani, the Dawn columnist who died on Sunday, and several of us went back a long time —— to the mid-60s and The Pakistan Times of Lahore. Samdani was a reporter on the paper’s staff, and he can best be described as the most laconic journalist around. He had a bemused, healthy scepticism of everyone and was a comfortably laid-back journalist whom you never found unduly worried about anything.

The chief reporter then was Amjad Husain, who is one of the few survivors of the Pakistan Times old guard although now largely immobilised and unable to drive his lovingly-kept 60s Beetle. There was also Shamim Rizvi till he decided to become the paper’s circulation manager and Safiuruddin, “Nawab Sahib”, who would ring up the chief reporter when he ran out of money and tell him that he wouldn’t be coming to work that day because he was broke. Rizvi is now in Islamabad and also perhaps Safiruddin. There was the late Maqbul Sharif, known as “judge sahib” because he covered the higher courts, and Nasim, who went into public relations and died young. Khalid Hasan joined the team a little later and brought a touch of wit and humour with him.

The whole team gelled well, and despite the fact that the paper was owned by the government’s National Press Trust, there was a good deal of independent reporting. Samdani was not very tall, but he had the loose-limbed gait of a tall man. He never had any inhibitions about reporting on anything or writing about anyone. Where he picked up his penchant for economic reporting is unclear. But he was part of a catholic group of students who had studied at the Government College, Lahore, and was well-connected.

He wasn’t with The Pakistan Times for long, leaving to head the PTV news team when television began from Lahore in 1964. He held various positions with the organisation, and those who worked with him remember him as always ready with appreciation where it was merited. PTV after its earlier, creative days soon slid into political infighting and Samdani perhaps fell somewhere on the wayside.

As a free-lancer, he was absolutely versatile, including an informed insight into the cinema industry, and was saved from hack writing only because of his innate good taste. Whenever someone in Dawn wanted a piece from Lahore on short notice, the call went out: Ask Zafar Samdani. Our paths didn’t cross often enough after the PT crowd dispersed, except in Lahore when he would regularly drop in at the Dawn offices for a cup of tea, a smoke and to fax or email his articles to the head office in Karachi. Samdani once came to Dubai and spent most of his time in shopping for his family, for whom he cared so much. One day he had landed up in Washington and there was a small reunion at a bay-front restaurant with Khalid Hasan and Akmal Aleemi of Imroze, the PT’s sister paper, who is now with the Voice of America.

Not many of us knew till later that Samdani was also a poet, and was part of Lahore’s literary circle and the Tea House crowd before he wandered into journalism. He was a civilised, gentlemanly journalist, but will also be remembered as the quintessential Lahori.— Tahir Mirza