Drones in Pakistan

IN the wake of US Senator Dianne Feinstein’s amazing revelation that drones are flown from a base in Pakistan, the unmanned vehicles have been used to strike in the Kurram Agency for the first time on Monday. Taken together, the two events indicate at least one thing: the drones are here to stay. This makes it necessary to assess the military and political implications of an expanded, prolonged presence of drones in the skies above Pakistan. Start with the military aspect. Drones are a commander’s dream: they are quite accurate, save soldiers’ lives by keeping boots off the ground and are low-cost. On the ground, evidence suggests the drones are increasingly successful in targeting militants. Collateral damage remains an issue, especially since the militants live and hide among the ordinary locals, but also appears to be diminishing.

Yet, for all their military potential, the drone strikes are victims of a horribly ill-advised game of cover-up. Through her spokesman Senator Feinstein has denied she had indicated where the drones are based at the congressional hearing. On their part, Pakistani officials have flatly rejected the senator’s claim. But the retraction and denials are scarcely credible. When the chairperson of the US Senate Intelligence Committee says, “As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” and the person she is addressing is the national intelligence director, who does not deny the statement, one can assume that drones are in fact being flown from Pakistani soil. What isn’t clear is what the Americans and Pakistanis were thinking all along. Given the immense scrutiny that every strike attracts, it was always likely the location of the drones would eventually become public. What then? We are seeing that scenario unfold right now: a deeply embarrassed government reduced to denials nobody believes and a potent stick handed to the government’s opponents to beat it with and damage its credibility in the public eye.

Fact is, while drone strikes may be militarily beneficial, they also have to be politically palatable. American operated drones are unequivocally bad (few states could sell the unilateral bombing of their territory by an ally to their public); Pakistani operated drones would be the best-case scenario; while jointly operated drones would be politically nettlesome but likely manageable. The Americans must realise that the local political fallout isn’t just the Pakistan government’s or army’s problem; unless the two centres of power here are stable, the Americans will not have an effective partner in fighting militancy. Now that the secret is out, the best course would be to grant Pakistan some public ownership of the drone-strike programme and expand the targets to include militants fighting the state here. That way the state can make the argument that the drones are targeting a common enemy, and not just the militants that worry America.

A genuine thaw?

THERE is hardly anything permanent about politics. There are no ideological constants in political arguments, no permanent foes and no friends forever. More so in Pakistan where enemies of yore become friends of today and friends of the past do not see eye to eye with each other in a new dispensation. It is not difficult to recall the time when the MQM sent trains full of its supporters from Karachi to Lahore in 1991. The Punjab government of the PML had inaugurated a monument to commemorate the mass migration of 1947. So much for their camaraderie: since then the MQM and what is now the PML-N have only drifted apart.

In this context and coming as it does after a long period of mutual acrimony, Monday’s meeting between Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ibad should be seen as further proof of the fickleness of politics. Until recently, Mr Sharif’s party saw the MQM as its worst enemy. In fact, the bloody incidents of May 12, 2007 had led the Sharif brothers, their party men and allies to set in stone their aversion to the MQM at a London meeting. That the PML-N has apparently swallowed its abhorrence for the MQM can be interpreted in only one way: the Sharifs are realising that they cannot go further than their citadel in and around Lahore by antagonising everyone who is anyone in the rest of the country.

They, however, have a lot of explaining to do to their supporters and associates, especially the lawyers who may see the meeting as a setback for their forthcoming long march. The PPP may be another political player likely to feel uneasy because of unhappy memories from the benighted 1990s. The party may have reason to be sus-picious: After all, the political situation has hardly changed recently to warrant the Sharif-Ibad handshake so suddenly. But there are equally valid grounds for seeing the meeting as a sign of maturity emerging across the political spectrum, with politicians realising that differences do not necessarily mean hostility and dialogue is not always synonymous with co-option. The thaw between the PML-N and the MQM should, therefore, be seen as a step towards achieving the political peace and amity that Pakistan so badly needs during these troubled times.

Corrupt Karzai regime

THE world is getting to know the truth about President Hamid Karzai. For years, the Afghan president has been receiving plentiful doses of western military and economic aid to crush the Taliban but so far has nothing to show for it. Imposed by the Bonn conference on Afghanistan, even though he has no representative character, Mr Karzai has disappointed the world by failing on the two counts that mattered — he has not crippled militancy and Afghanistan’s reconstruction remains a mirage. The 2002 Tokyo conference pledged $4.5bn for the country’s reconstruction, but because of the continuing insurgency and corruption in the Karzai administration the donors have held back much of the money, thus adding to the population’s woes. As a US congressional report released to the media points out, Mr Karzai “is deliberately tolerating” corruption for political reasons. Under him, Afghanistan has once again become the world’s biggest producer of narcotics, and among those involved in drug peddling is allegedly his brother, whom he has appointed Kandahar’s provincial chief. Warlords are a law unto themselves, and this means, as the report correctly points out, the Karzai government’s writ remains confined to Kabul.

For years, Mr Karzai has tried to find a scapegoat in Pakistan for his own corruption and incompetence. With an election due this year, Mr Karzai has often spoken out against the Americans to gain public sympathy. But that is hardly going to endear him to his people, who are angry with him over the civilian casualties caused by American air action. The congressional report says that American and Afghan officials are now focusing on local government institutions to help the central government’s efforts. This is good only in theory, for the local bodies cannot turn into an efficient and functional instrument of reconstruction when the central government itself is weak and corrupt. America should also take into account the mistakes made by the Bush administration. President Barack Obama now plans to send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, but this surge is unlikely to help in a country which many Americans call ‘tougher than Iraq’.

Education policy: will it work?

ON Pakistan Day, the nation will be presented with a gift from the government — a new education policy. The education minister told the media the other day that the draft policy had been sent to the provincial governments for their feedback.

The assurances Mir Hazar Khan Bajarani held out amounted to offering the people the moon. Hence disappointment may be in store.

The policy is emphatic about the stakeholders having a sense of ownership if the draft is to be implemented. But having been witness to a train of education policies that have been announced only to flop, the people have given up hope. How does the government plan to create this sense of ownership? We do not know. But were it to be placed before the provincial assemblies to be debated and adopted by the representatives of the people, it would at least have some credibility. Much will be heard about the NEP in the days to come, one hopes.

Just as the taste of the pudding is in the eating, the test of a policy is in its implementation. Unfortunately, failure to implement policies has been the hallmark of our system of governance over and over again. The NEP itself takes note of this “implementation gap”, as it is described. This, in the view of the authors, is partly to be attributed to a lack of commitment. They are very kind or simplistic in their approach to the power barons in this country when they say this lack of commitment is not due to “a lack of belief in education’s true worth” but their disagreeing with the policy goals.

We know that the real reason for the lack of commitment is that the elites who rule Pakistan want to keep the masses away from the power centres and the most effective way of achieving that goal is by keeping the people shrouded in the darkness of ignorance.

The policy is dismissive of the assessment by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which it quotes, that “Pakistan’s education system is among the most deficient and backward in Asia, reflecting the traditional determination of [the] feudal ruling elite to preserve its hegemony”. It is not just the “feudal elite” but also the “economic haves” who want to preserve their monopoly by preventing the have-nots from acquiring a bigger share of the cake by denying them good education.

That would explain why implementation has always been such a problem when policies are designed to improve the education sector. But one should not overlook other factors, many of which are in-built in the policies themselves, which also contribute towards the failure of implementation. The NEP envisages phenomenal expenditure — phenomenal by current standards — of Rs12.9 trillion in 2005-2030. In 2005 the expenditure on education was Rs132.9bn. By some calculation which has not been very clearly explained, the policy expects this expenditure to be affordable.

There are three caveats in this approach. First, as Javed Hasan Aly, the author of the 2007 education policy white paper, the best produced so far, points out there is a disconnect between the identified financial resources needed for implementation and the goals and targets set. He asks, “Has the education ministry consulted the finance ministry and the Planning Commission and obtained some commitment from them if such a huge amount will be made available for education in the years to come?”

In the past many policies have floundered because the policymakers discovered soon after they had embarked on their ambitious mission that money was not available. There is also the big factor of corruption that is gnawing away at the core of society. If excessive money is somehow generated, it will either remain unutilised or will be embezzled if capacity-building has not been undertaken concurrently. Aly, a strong advocate of good governance through efficient processes, believes that the task undertaken immediately should be to build capacity for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

The NEP draft does not have much to say about monitoring at the micro level which is an important feature in any policy especially in Pakistan where the education sector is one of the biggest employers with a reach that is widespread and that goes into remote areas. Efficient and effective monitoring would introduce a measure of accountability in the education department. It would be difficult to monitor the implementation at the macro level in the face of vague and ambitious targets with no benchmarks having been set in terms of quality that embodies good teaching, good assessment and good curricula and textbooks.

For instance, the policy aims at 100 per cent primary enrolment by 2015, 100 per cent middle enrolment by 2015 and 100 per cent secondary enrolment by 2020. Can these goals be met? According to Unesco data, in 2006 Pakistan’s net primary enrolment was 66 per cent while secondary enrolment rate was 30 per cent.

A third factor that is bound to affect implementation is the failure of the policy to address unequivocally the core issue of governance and management. Who is to oversee the implementation of the policy? Javed Hasan Aly points out that informally enhancing the oversight role of the inter-provincial education ministers’ conference without changing the rules of business will not make the process effective.

Under the existing arrangement six ministries deal with education matters, namely, the education ministry, the Higher Education Commission, the labour and manpower ministry, the special education, ministry, the science and technology ministry and the national technical and vocational education commission. These are sometimes working at cross purposes. How their working will be streamlined is not clear at all. And what will be the function of the “newly formed ministry for human resource development” about which we have not been given any clue?One hopes that these obvious obstacles in the path of implementation will not be glossed over.

Policymakers concede that Pakistan has been overtaken by many countries that were previously way behind it. Since without implementation, all else has no meaning I have taken up this aspect first. How the policy seeks to rectify the flaws in our education system also call for some rethinking. But more about that later.

zubeidam@gmail.com

Culture, not politics

IN the absence of serious, viable, sustained political opposition to the militants’ pogrom in the Frontier province, the current agreement for Sharia enforcement was inevitable.

The absence of secular political resistance to the militants’ violent religious agenda meant that a compromise, brokered by Islamists, was the only resort for the government.

Meanwhile, liberal antipathy towards the systematic and misogynistic decimation of social and cultural expression in the province could only elicit a few scattered protests.

This state of inertia, apathy and tacit conservative complicity has worried social liberals too; those who had, during the Musharraf era, become used to a lifestyle of high cultural activity. In the messy democratic year that has passed, the rapid fear of what is popularly being called ‘Talibanisation’, has become a part of urban vocabulary as well.

In essence, Talibanisation is often used euphemistically to describe any form of uber-conservatism or chauvinism — even if it is non-militant. It is interesting though that it is not used as a label to describe acts of communalism or sectarianism. So one is Talibanesque if he condones honour killings, or considers music to be forbidden, or is a philistine — but not if he considers some sects as non-Muslims, or believes in banking that is made to appear as Islamic.

It is a matter of degrees and boundaries and whether you base your definition on a material, structuralist perspective or merely on perception. Therefore, it should not be surprising that for some people, in the current situation of growing militancy, even Valentine’s Day is being touted as an act of political resistance to ‘Talibanisation’.

It is this reasoning that encourages suggestions that the recently held Kara Film Festival has transformed cinema viewing from a cultural activity into a political one. In a country where CD shops are being torched by anti-culturalists, it is tempting to see the continuation of film viewing in the public as a force de resistance. However, this is both an apolitical, ahistorical and perhaps also unfair rendering of responsibilities and qualities attached to a cultural activity, that is really just that — a cultural activity.

This is not to divorce cultural expression from politics or indeed from political resistance. When dance and theatre were banned during the Gen Zia years, women and male dancers performed as acts of resistance against the state when their very lives were in danger; theatre troupes staged plays on streets as acts of political subversion and singers sang anti-government anthems. In other words, the context is very important when we define something as an act of political resistance.

Over the last eight years, high culture, or that which is patronised essentially by a liberal elite, was not just tolerated, in fact, encouraged, it was directly patronised by Gen Musharraf. The KaraFilm Festival organisers would remember this well, for they were not just accommodated by the military dictator’s government but in fact, in return for his patronage, they invited him to grace the festival ceremonies.For those who praise the importance of symbolic gestures, quite rightly, this is an equally big one for the history books. Of course, given how society changes quickly under globalisation, yesterday’s accommodative politics could be considered today’s resistance politics but one should keep historical perspective alive in one’s analysis as well as the context. If the festival was held in Swat, I would be willing to absolve the festival of its historical expediency and consider it in the light of the piece de resistance. Also, if the anti-culturalist militants should descend on Karachi, I seriously doubt their target would be the Kara festival.

One needs to acknowledge that the militants have a political vision that is grounded in a culture that is connected to the masses. Therefore, they necessarily target tainted mass culture as the evil, not an esoteric one. Of course there’s no guarantee the militants will necessarily make this distinction in the ultimate analysis — but does that really matter? After all, militants want to close down CD shops for ideological violations while the film industry itself wants to shut down CD shops for intellectual property violations. It’s just a matter of whose regulatory method you prefer.

The suggestion here is not to disparage cultural efforts including film festivals and puppet shows. Instead, it is important to distinguish that political resistance certainly does not have to be limited in form to street activism, writings or study groups. Yet, in terms of both content and alliances, the politics and the purpose of activism needs to go beyond symbolism, image, good intent, accidental timing or availability of funds.

At some point, the potential of a symbol gets lost if it’s left to be interpreted by changing social contexts rather than its own politics. Otherwise, we will end up with a generation that considers hanging out at coffee shops as an act of resistance — and I personally think in many sociological ways, this may well be an important cultural activity. In some contexts, such as during the emergency in 2007, one such venue even became a centre for consciousness-raising and political education of sorts. However, resistance implies action that is against the grain and to match the kind of political challenges we are facing today, it is going to need much more than symbolic gestures to qualify as a meaningful, political act of resistance.

If we keep pulling down the bar of political activity to meet some desperate standard, then like in Afghanistan, a fashion show will also be considered an act of political resistance. But we aren’t there yet so it’s perhaps premature to relegate all cultural activity to the realm of political resistance, thereby blunting the edge of political activism. If anything, seemingly, the festival attempts to veer away from the idea that art and culture have to always be about politics by its inclusion of Hollywood and Bollywood popular films. Perhaps we should respect the festival for its contribution as an event which attempts to normalise cultural activity regardless of the political context, patron, sponsor or government of the day.

afiyaszia@yahoo.com

Dubai in crisis

A SIX-YEAR boom that turned sand dunes into a glittering metropolis, creating the world’s tallest building, its biggest shopping mall and, some say, a shrine to unbridled capitalism, is grinding to a halt. Dubai, one of seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates, is in crisis.

So too are the western expatriates. Many came here expecting to make millions in property, and to soak up a lavish lifestyle living alongside footballers, actors and supermodels. But the real estate bubble that propelled the frenetic expansion of Dubai on the back of borrowed cash and speculative investment has burst.

Many westerners are being made redundant, or absconding before the Sharia legal system catches up with them. Half of all the UAE’s construction projects, totalling $582bn, have either been put on hold or cancelled, leaving a trail of half-built towers on the outskirts of the city stretching into the desert. Among the casualties is the tower Donald Trump promised would be the ultimate in luxury, a $100bn resort complex by the beach, and four huge theme parks and an artificial island developed by the state company Nakheel.

It is not all bad news for Dubai: the building projects still in play are almost the equivalent of the US stimulus package. And the city remains a haven for super-rich sheikhs, billionaire hedge fund managers and Russian oligarchs. But banks have stopped lending and the stock market has plunged 70 per cent. Scrape beneath the surface of the fashion parades and VIP parties, and the evidence of economic slowdown is obvious. Luxury hotels are three-quarters empty.

Shopkeepers in newly built malls are reporting a drop in sales. In Dubai you expect to see a Ferrari parked beside a Rolls-Royce. But not, as is the case now, with scruffy For Sale signs taped to the windows. Nowhere sums up the fortunes of expatriates in Dubai quite like Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island fanning out into the Persian Gulf, populated by residents including the likes of David Beckham, Michael Schumacher and even, it is said, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.

At the top of the island stands the Atlantis, a garish $1.5bn hotel complex with 1,539 rooms and a whale shark swimming in a million-litre fish tank. The Atlantis’s $20m inauguration celebration, where the world’s A-list celebrities were treated to 1.7 tonnes of lobster and 1,000 bottles of Veuve Clicquot, was promoted as the world’s biggest party. For Palm residents, it was followed by an equally impressive hangover. The value of their villas and apartments on the Palm fell by as much as 60 per cent in just a few months.

The exact number of unemployed is not known. The Dubai government does not release figures, and prevents the press from running stories that damage the economy, such as articles about mass redundancies. But there were sacked expatriates — bankers, lawyers and architects — in all but one of the hotel bars visited in Dubai this week.

Employees who lose work in the UAE automatically have their visa rescinded, generally giving them 30 days to leave. Under Dubai’s strict legal code defaulting on debt or bouncing a cheque is punishable with jail. Any expatriate in financial difficulty knows the safest bet is to take the next outbound flight.

At the airport, hundreds of cars have apparently been abandoned in recent weeks. Keys are left in the ignition, with maxed-out credit cards and apology letters in the glove compartment.

Expatriates from the developing world maintained Dubai’s orgy of consumption during the boom years. Now they too are being forced to leave. Perhaps those who suffer most are the construction workers from South Asia who have carried out perilous work on building sites earning as little as £70 a month.

The Indian embassy is reportedly anticipating an exodus with 20,000 seats on flights to India already “bulk-booked” for next month. Buses come to pick up 250 workers every night from one dusty street on the edge of Sonapur, a labour camp on the edge of the desert.

Dubai’s future will actually be decided well away from the shimmering skyscrapers. To find out why, you need to drive along 90 miles south along the Gulf coastline, past tiny Bedouin enclaves and shimmering desert mosques.

Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital of the UAE and the richest emirate, has opted for a more conservative and, some say, prudent approach to growth that contrasts with Dubai’s giddy expansion. But it boasts 95 per cent of the UAE’s oil reserves and more than half of its GDP, and regional experts predict it will overtake Dubai as the destination of choice for westerners in the Middle East.

Dubai, which has barely a trickle of oil in comparison, is projecting a 42 per cent increase in public spending on infrastructure projects, to compensate for vanishing private investment.

But it cannot go it alone. Abu Dhabi is increasingly expected to bail out its poorer neighbour, and the two ruling families are meeting regularly to decide how to transfer cash into Dubai’s ailing economy.

— The Guardian, London