Contents

Questions ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Interview Mohammad Murtaza ............................................................................................................ 24
The Future of Democracy in South Asia........................................................................................... 28
Why Citizens Must Stay Vigilant (CSS Pakistan Affairs) ....................................................... 28
THE SOURCES OF THE CRISIS ............................................................................................ 28
THE DANGERS OF ETHNO-NATIONALISM ..................................................................... 29
SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY ................................................................................................ 30
WARNING SIGNS ..................................................................................................................... 31
India’s Failed Strategy in Kashmir: CSS Pakistan Affairs ............................................................. 32
Why Talking to the Taliban Is the Right Move CSS Current Affairs ........................................... 33
THE PATH TO PEACE ............................................................................................................. 33
HISTORY’S WARNING ........................................................................................................... 35
Why the India-Pakistan Crisis Isn’t Likely to Turn Nuclear (CSS Pakistan Affairs).................. 35
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY ................................................................................................. 36
A comprehensive analysis on War in Afghanistan- CSS Current Affairs ..................................... 37
Will Sino-US Relations Drive Pak-US Relations? CSS International Relations ........................... 45
Addition of Security Component to BRI – CSS Current Affairs ................................................... 48
Partition of India: Gandhi’s Role – CSS Pakistan Affairs .............................................................. 50
Pakistan’s Dual Threat: CSS Pakistan Affairs ................................................................................ 54
Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has insinuated that the Supreme Court’s
decision to disqualify him is a consequence of challenging the military on cross-border
terrorism. Nawaz Sharif’s politics are cynical, but does he have a point? ............................ 54
People who shaped Islamic Civilization- CSS Islamic Studies........................................................ 57
Pashtoon Tahafuz Movement: A rights movement or a new regional agenda .............................. 60
Is Karl Marx more relevant today? CSS General Knowledge ....................................................... 67
Is Indus Water Treaty being Violated by India? CSS Pakistan Affairs ........................................ 69
Highlights of Economic Survey of Pakistan 2017-18 ....................................................................... 70
Highlights of Economic Survey of Pakistan 2017-18 ....................................................................... 70
Pakistan and India must follow North and South Korea: CSS General Knowledge .................... 73
Asian Majorities acting like Insecure Minorities- CSS Pakistan Affairs ....................................... 74
An Alternative to Two-State Solution of Palestine Issue- CSS General Knowledge..................... 76
A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel’s staunchest fighters for the two-state solution, lays out a
proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian partnership ....................................................................... 76
Authoritarianism in world, Will Pakistan follow? CSS Political Science ...................................... 89
Authoritarianism in world, Will Pakistan follow? CSS Political Science ...................................... 89
Is Pakistan loosing battle for its soul? CSS Pakistan Affairs .......................................................... 91
Democracy in Peril: CSS General Knoweldge ................................................................................. 93
Democracy in Peril CSS General Knoweldge................................................................................... 93
Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealed .................................................................................. 99
Agriculture ................................................................................................................................... 101
Industry ......................................................................................................................................... 103
Fibreoptics and surveillance................................................................................................... 104
Tourism and recreation ............................................................................................................ 105
Finance and risk ......................................................................................................................... 106
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 107
CPEC opens avenues for agriculture: FPCCI ...................................................................... 109
The China agenda ...................................................................................................................... 110
Silence and chatter ..................................................................................................................... 111
Why attempts to reform Pakistani education fail ................................................................. 113
Education dysfunction................................................................................................................ 115
Time to localise governance .................................................................................................... 115
The China agenda ...................................................................................................................... 117
Joint solution ................................................................................................................................ 119
Ban all terrorism ....................................................................................................................... 120
Chief justice’s challenges ......................................................................................................... 122
‘Urdu medium’ ........................................................................................................................... 124
Ironies of the Afghan war ...................................................................................................... 125
Unpacking deradicalisation .................................................................................................. 127
Pak-India stand-off ................................................................................................................... 128
Austerity measures .................................................................................................................. 130
Much worse to come ............................................................................................................... 131
A healthy nation ........................................................................................................................ 133
Israel’s destiny ............................................................................................................................. 134
Welcoming tourists ..................................................................................................................... 135
Betting on presidential rule ....................................................................................................... 137
Politics of adjustment ................................................................................................................. 138
The roots of extremism .............................................................................................................. 140
A new strategy ............................................................................................................................. 141
Sowing the seeds........................................................................................................................ 143
Winning the peace ...................................................................................................................... 144
Managing security & economy ................................................................................................. 146
Notre Dame lessons ................................................................................................................... 148
Winning with empathy ................................................................................................................ 149
Untimely rains .............................................................................................................................. 151
Bombs & backlash ...................................................................................................................... 152
A recipe for durable peace ....................................................................................................... 153
Trump’s Middle East plan ......................................................................................................... 155
Keynes in Islamabad .................................................................................................................. 156
Questions
Q. Define Toheed and its impact on individual life and society.
Ans.
Introduction
Tawheed means to believe that Allah is the one and only God worthy of worship. It is
sometimes referred to as
monotheism; however; in the purest sense in that no other entity can in any way have the
attributes or be equivalent or even in competition with Allah. All acts of worship that a
person does should be to Allah or for Allah Alone.
For example, the prayer should only be to Allah etc.
Allah Says in Qur’an
Surah Al Anbiya Chapter #21 Verse #25
"And we did not send any Messenger before you (O Muhammad) but We inspired him
(saying): 'There is none who has the right to be worshipped but I (Allah), so worship
Me (Alone and none else)."
Tawheed is the essence of Islam, it is the core of Islam, it is what Islam stands for, and it is
the reason why Allah created us. All prophets and messengers were sent with the message
of Tawheed, the Quran itself is a book of Tawheed, and those who have a firm and correct
belief in Tawheed will indeed be the saved ones.
The Qur`an declares that “Nothing is like Him” (42:11). Allah is omniscient and all-
powerful.
All of Allah’s attributes belong to Him exclusively. He is the first and there is no last but His
oneness. He is the First without anything before Him. He is the Last without anything after
Him. The end is with Him alone, and He is the End. He is All-Existing: with him there is no
end. Allah is now as He was before. He is Eternal.
Significance of Tawheed
Tawheed is the essence of Islam and the mainspring of its strength. All other laws, beliefs
and commands of Islam stand firm on this foundation. Take it away, and there is nothing left
of Islam. Tawheed is the call of all the prophets to their people, it is mentioned in
Qur’anSurah An Nahl Chapter#16 Verse #36
“And verily, We have sent among every Ummah (community, nation) a Messenger
(proclaiming): "Worship Allah (Alone), and avoid (or keep away from) Taghut (all false
deities i.e. do not worship Taghut besides Allah)."
Tawheed is the only reason for the world's creation as Allah Says in Qu’ran Surah Adh
Dheryat Chapter #51 Verse #56
“And I (Allah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me
(Alone).”
By declaring sincere belief in Tawheed, a disbeliever will become a Muslim. Conversely, a
Muslim will become a disbeliever (kafir) if he rejects any aspect of it. By Tawheed we
achieve salvation from Eternal punishment in the Hereafter, right guidance in this world, and
forgiveness for sins. Tawheed is only belief in Islamic ideology which does not have
forgiveness of its rejection, means Allah will never forgive that person who associate partner
with
Allah. Allah states in the Qur'an:
Surah Nisa Chapter #04 verse #48
“Verily, Allah forgives not that partners should be set up with Him (in worship), but He
forgives except that
(anything else) to whom He wills.”
There is a Sahih Hadith of Prohet Muhammad (pbuh)
Volumn 009, Book 093, Hadith Number 470. Sahih Bukhari Narated By Mu'adh bin Jabal :
The Prophet said,
"O Mu'adh! Do you know what Allah's Right upon His slaves is?"
I said, "Allah and His Apostle know best." The Prophet said,
"To worship Him (Allah) Alone and to join none in worship with Him (Allah).”
Whoever fulfills Tawheed will be admitted to the Garden (Al-Jannah) in the Hereafter. The
Prophet Muhammad has stated: Verily Allah has promised that whosoever does not commit
shirk shall enter Al-Jannah (the Garden in the Heaven) [Al-Bukhari)].
It is the reason for solving peoples' sadness because true happiness will be achieved if
persons realize Tawheed within their heart. They will also never feel psychologically
enslaved even if physically captive. It is the only reason for Allah's pleasure and rewards. In
another aayah (verse) in the Qur'an Allah says:
Surah Az Zumar Chapter#39 verse#7
“If you disbelieve, then verily, Allah is not in need of you; He likes not disbelief for His
slaves.”
Disbelief is nothing but a manifestation of shirk which is the opposite of Tawheed. The
acceptance of all of one's
religious deeds is based upon Tawheed. Allah states:
Surah Al-Imran Chapter #03 Verse #85
"Whoever accepts a religion other than Islam it shall be rejected by Allah
and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers"
Islam is nothing if not an embodiment of the belief in Tawheed. Tawheed prevents man from
eternally remaining in the Hellfire. The Prophet Muhammad stated in an authentic report:
Whoever dies and has so much as a mustard seed of faith in his heart shall enter Al-Jannah.
Effects of Tawheed on Personal Life (Individuals)
When an individual pronounces the testimony: "Ash-hadu allaa ilaaha illAllah wa ash-hadu
anna
Muhammadar- Rasullullaah" (I testify that there is no god worthy of worship except Allah
and
I testify that
Muhammad is His Messenger), believing in it and acting upon it, he experiences a
noticeable change in his life.
By understanding who his Lord is as well as the purpose of his creation, he will be able to
achieve success in this life and the next. This success emanates from the following points:
1- A believer in this testimony can never be narrow in outlook. He believes in Allah, Who is
the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Master of the universe and its Sustainer. After
this belief, he does not regard anything in the world as a stranger to himself. He looks on
everything in the universe as belonging to the same Lord he himself belongs.
2- This belief produces in man the highest degree of self-respect and self esteem. The
believer knows that Allah Alone is the Possessor of all power, and that none besides Him
can benefit or harm a person, or provide for his needs, or give and take away life or wield
authority or influence. This conviction makes him indifferent to, independent on, and fearless
of all powers other than those of Allah. He never bows his head in homage to any of Allah's
creatures, nor does he stretch out his hand before anyone else. He is not overawed by
anybody's greatness.
This attitude of mind cannot be produced by any other belief.
3- Along with self-respect, this belief also generates in man a sense of modesty and
humbleness. It makes him unostentatious and unpretending. A believer never becomes
proud, haughty or arrogant. The boisterous pride of power, wealth and worth can have no
room in his heart, because he knows that whatever he possesses has been given to him by
Allah, and that Allah can take away just as He can give. In contrast to this, an unbeliever,
when he
achieves some worldly merit, becomes proud and conceited because he believes that his
merit is due to his own worth. In the same way, pride and self-conceit are a necessary
outcomes and concomitants of 'Shirk' (association of others with Allah in worship), because
a polytheist believes that he has a particular relation with deities, which does not exist
between them and other people.
4- This belief makes man virtuous and upright. He has the conviction that there is no other
means of success
and salvation for him except purity of soul and righteousness of behavior. He has perfect
faith in Allah Who is Above all needs, is related to none and is absolutely Just. This belief
creates in him the consciousness that unless he lives rightly and acts justly, he cannot
succeed. No influence or underhand activity can save him from ruin.
5- The believer never becomes despondent. He has a firm faith in Allah Who is The Master
of all the treasures of the earth and the heavens, Whose grace and bounty have no limit and
Whose power is infinite. This faith imparts to his heart extraordinary consolation, fills it with
satisfaction and keeps it filled with hope. Although he may be met with rejection from all
sides in this world, faith in and dependence on Allah never leave him, and on that strength
he
goes on struggling. Such profound confidence can result from no other belief than belief in
Allah Alone.
6- This testimony of faith inspires bravery in man. There are two things which make a man
cowardly: (a) fear of death and love of safety, and (b) the idea that there is someone else
besides Allah who can take away life, and that man- by adopting certain devices- can ward
off death. Belief in 'Laa ilaaha illAllah'' blocks and drives away both these ideas. The first
idea goes out of his mind because he knows that his life and his property and everything
else really belong to Allah, and he becomes ready to sacrifice his all for the pleasure of
Allah. He gets rid of the second idea because he knows that no weapon, no man or animal
has the power of taking away his life; Allah alone has the power to do so. A time has been
ordained for him, and all the forces of the world combined cannot take away anyone's life
before that time.
It is for this reason that no one is braver than the one who has faith in Allah. Nothing can
daunt him: not even the strongest tempest of adversity and the mightiest of armies.
7- The belief in 'Laa ilaaha illAllah' creates an attitude of peace and contentment, purges the
mind of jealousy, envy and greed, and keeps away the temptations of resorting to base and
unfair means for achieving success. The believer understands that wealth is in Allah's
hands, and He apportions it out as He Wills; that honor, power, reputation and authority -
everything - is also subjected to His Will, and He bestows them as He Wills; and that man's
duty is only to endeavor and to struggle fairly.
Effects of Tawheed on Collective Life (Social)
Belief in one God has deep impact on the social life of man. This is certain that the basis of
social and collective life is based on justice and equality, and perfect justice and equality is
not possible without the concept of one God and unity of mankind.
Tawheed in Islam is that it implies the equity and unity of all people in their relation with
Allah. Thus, people of different social strata were not created by separate deities with
varying levels of power, since this would violate Tawheed by putting barriers between them.
Instead, social dimension of Tawheed states that the same Allah created everyone, and so
all people have the same fundamental essence. In fact, the noblest person in Allah’s Sight is
the one who is most Allah-conscious. It is mentioned in Quran
Surah Al Hujrat Chapter #49 Verse #13
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made
you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise
(each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the
most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all
things).”
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh )said:
“Your Lord is One. You are from Aadam and Aadam was created from dust. An Arab is not
superior to a non-Arab, nor a white person over a black person, except for his/her piety and
righteousness.”
Final Word
We know that all religions in the world preach peace, but even we witnessed violence,
destruction of civilization and values human society. It is just because of that nations in the
world are not united on one base, they have their own
different religion, different God, that is the most focal point which serve as the basic block of
violence and
destruction. Tawheed is only solution for the whole humanity to bring and maintain peace in
the world.
Q. Cold war is considered as the longest peace in history. What factor and events
contributed to this peace.
Ans.
Introduction
A period in international history (beginning soon after the end of the Second World War and
ending in the early 1990s), as well as a description of the overall relationship between the
United States and the Soviet Union during that period. Although the cold war is fast fading
into history, divergent interpretations of its character continue to shape expectations about
some central features of contemporary international relations. For example, those who
expect a world without extreme ideological conflict to be essentially harmonious tend to see
the period of the cold war as inherently antagonistic.
Through the lens of history.
There are three main views about the cold war. Each of them generates a set of discrete
claims about the causes of the cold war, the nature of the cold war, the end of the cold war,
and its legacy in contemporary international relations. Perhaps the most popular view is that
the cold war
was an intense struggle for power between the superpowers. The word ‘war’ implies tension,
armed conflict, and a zero-sum relationship between
the superpowers. The word ‘cold’ refers to the presence of factors that allegedly restrained
the confrontation and prevented a ‘hot’ war.
Conventional historiography is based on a definition of the cold war that assumes a high
level of East–West tension with the threat of escalation to
nuclear conflict. Of course, there is a great deal of debate among those who share this
overall view about who was to blame for the cold war. A common
distinction is between orthodox and revisionist historians.
According to the orthodox argument, the cold war was a struggle between conflicting
universal values. In the West, the concepts of a market economy
and a multi-party democracy were cherished. In the East, single partystatism and a
command administrative economy were highly valued. The
obvious conflict of ideas and obstinate nature of those who defended them were the driving
forces behind the conflict. Within this broad school of
thought, the behaviour of the Soviet Union during and after the Second World War was a
crucial impetus to the cold war. The policies of
containment followed by the United States were defensive reactions to an inherently
aggressive and expansionist enemy. In the absence of nuclear
weapons and the condition of mutually assured destruction (MAD), the cold war might well
have turned ‘hot’ on a number of occasions. Fortunately,
the Soviet Union was unable to sustain its competition with the United States, and this
inability was the main reason for the collapse of the cold war
system. None the less, the timing of that collapse was due in no small measure to the
preparedness of the United States and its allies to match or
exceed Soviet escalations of the arms race. Now that the cold war is over, the United States
dominates the international system. In light of the benign nature of American hegemony,
such dominance is not a matter of great
concern. Revisionists agree with orthodox scholars about the nature of the cold war, but
reverse the focus of blame. Revisionism became popular in the 1960s during the Vietnam
War, but it remains a marginal school of thought within
the United States. Revisionists emphasize the power of the United States during and after
1945. For example, although the United States lost 400,000
lives during the Second World War, the USSR lost 27 million lives. The American economy
benefited from the war whilst the Soviet economy was
almost destroyed. According to some revisionists, Soviet behavior was merely a defensive
attempt to build a legitimate security zone in Eastern
Europe, whilst the United States was trying to reconstruct the international economic system
for its own national interests.
Forces at play
the cold war was a period of American dominance whose legitimacy was based on a
mythical
Soviet ‘threat’. True, the Soviet Union’s inherent economic weaknesses were crucial in
explaining its collapse in 1991, but the end of the cold war could
have occurred much earlier and without the horrendous expense of the arms race. The
postcold war era is a very dangerous time, since the United
States now has no challenge to its military might, nor any political challenge to its own views
about the most desirable international order.
In contrast to the view that the cold war was inherently antagonistic, regardless of who was
the main instigator, an opposing school of thought
suggests that the cold war was (in retrospect) very useful to both sides. For the United
States, it solved the problem of what to do about Germany and
Japan, both of whom were key states in bringing about the Second World War. For the
Soviet Union and the United States, the cold war permitted a
de facto solution of the German problem by freezing the social/political contours of Europe,
both East and West.
The perpetuation of the cold war was also useful for maintaining a strict nuclear hierarchy
between the superpowers and their allies, as well as between nuclear states and nonnuclear
states. The theoretical possibility of nuclear conflict subordinated actual conflicts
within the respective blocs to
the interests of ‘global stability’ ensured by the superpowers. Finally, powerful domestic
interests on each side sustained the cold war.
For example, within the United States, the arms race strengthened sectors of the
militaryindustrial complex, justified intervention abroad, facilitated the
establishment of the national security state, and elevated the Presidency over other
institutions of the US federal government.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the cold war justified domestic repression,
subordinated the civilian to the military sectors of society, and
maintained an authoritarian system of government predicated on the demands of geopolitical
‘catch-up’. Although there is some truth in the
main claims of all these schools of thought, they share a tendency to exaggerate the degree
of coherence and foresight in the planning and
implementation of foreign policy. The cold war was a period of genuine conflict and
cooperation between the superpowers. It arose out of a long
period of geopolitical turmoil in Europe, whose internal conflicts eventually subordinated that
continent to two extra-European superpowers with very different social systems and little
diplomatic familiarity with each other.
Some conflict between them was inevitable, and was exacerbated by the tendency of each
to suspect the worst of the other. Also, it should be
remembered that as a period of history, the cold war coincided with the onset of the nuclear
era as well as decolonisation, both of which raised the
stakes in the competition. None the less, despite all the factors that kept the superpowers
apart, they did share some important common interests that
moderated their competition, particularly after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when many
feared that a nuclear war would break out. The division of
Europe, arms control, the shared interests in ensuring that real wars in the Third World
would not lead to direct conflict between them; all these factors ensured a degree of
moderation in the cold war.
Final Word
As was demonstrated during the era of détente (relaxation of tensions) in the late 1960s, it
was very difficult for the superpowers explicitly to acknowledge their shared interests in such
a way as to end the confrontation once and for all. In so far as the cold war was a war,
clearly the former Soviet Union as
well as communism were the losers. On the other hand, in an era when the problems of
world order are greater than the capacity of any state to respond to them effectively, and in
light of the evidence suggesting that the cold war relationship could best be described as an
adversarial partnership,
it is important not to exaggerate the fruits of victory for the United States and its allies.
MCQ
1.Who is the Current Federal Minister of State and Frontier Region?
A.Ch. Tariq Bashir Cheema
B. Shehryar Khan Afridi
C. Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar
D. Ghulam Sarwar Khan
2.Who invented the first battery?
A.Alessandro volta
B. Tim Berner
C. Rob Stothard
D. Georges Leclanche
3.Who is the Special Assistant to Prime Minister for Information Broadcasting and
National Heritage?
A.Mr. Pervaiz Rashid
B. Fawad Chaudhry
C. Firdous Ashiq Awan
D. Ms. Marriyum Aurangzeb
4.Who is the Current Interior Minister of Pakistan?

A.Pervez Khattak
B. Shafqat Mahmood
C. Ijaz ahmed shah
D. Shehryar Khan Afridi
5.Who is the Current Federal Minister of Parliamentary Affairs?
A.Noor-ul-Haq Qadri
B. Shafqat Mahmood
C. Muhmmad Azam Swati
D. Ali Muhammad Khan
6.What is Pakistan ranks globally in kidney diseases, say experts at the (SIUT) kidney

diseases causing 20,000 deaths annually?

A.Fifth
B. Sixth
C. Seventh
D. Eighth
7.Recently, the ______ Airways announced that it will be resuming flights to Pakistan from
June 2019, after a 10-year break.
A.British
B. Jet
C. Gulf
D. None of these
8.Which two deadly viruses are reported in Pakistan in March 2019?
A.Gemi and HIV
B. Zika and Small pox
C. Monkeypox and TMV
D. Zika and Monkeypox
9.Whi h ou try’s arpla es akes aerial display o Pakista Day Parade o rd Mar h
2019?
A.Bahrain & Oman
B. Turkish & Chinies
C. Azerbaijan & Srilanka
D. None of these
10.Who is the Current Minister of Home & Tribal Affairs in Balochistan?
A.Zia Ullah langove
B. Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti
C. Mir Faiq Ali jamali
D. Saleem Ahmed
11.Who is the Current Advisor of Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs?
A.Muhammad Ishaq Dar
B. Mr. Asad Umer
C. Miftah Ismail
D. Abdul hafeez Sheikh
12.Who was the guest of honour at Pakistan Day Parade on 23 March 2019?
A.Recep Tayyip Erdoğa
B. Mahathir Bin Mohamad
C. Xi Jinping
D. Muhammad Bin Salman
13.Which country was the largest importer of the weapons in the world during 2014 to
2018 ___________?
A.US
B. China
C. Russia
D. Saudi Arabia
14.How many foreigners among 127 were conferred civil awards on 23rd March 2019?
A.16
B. 17
C. 18
D. None of these
15.Which of the following Pakistani girl wins silver at 2019 Singapore weightlifting
championship in March 2019?
A.Neelam Riaz
B. Rabia Shehzad
C. Shazia Shehzad
D. None Of These
16.Which Country will host Asia cup 2020?
A.UAE
B. INDIA
C. PAKISTAN
D. AUSTRALIA
17.Which team makes highest score (238) in PSL-4?
A.Peshawar zalmi
B. Karachi kings
C. Islamabad united
D. none of these
18.Jinnah of Pakistan by Stanely Wolpert was published in__________?
A.1984
B. 1890
C. 2002
D. 1949
19.Stanley Wolpert wrote the books on______________?
A.Quaid Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
B. Bainzeer Bhutto
C. Z.A. Bhutto
D. A and C both
20.When American president Donald trump out India from GSP Scheme?
A.15 Feb 2019
B. 24 Feb 2019
C. 5 March 2019
D. 1st March 2019
21.Gojra Shorkot Section on National Motorway constructed at the cost of ______?
A.$100 Million
B. $178 Million
C. 178 Million Pakistani Rupees
D. None of the Above
22.Gojra Shorkot Section Motorway is a _________?
A.4 Lane Motorway
B. 6 Lane Motorway
C. 2 Lane Motorway
D. None of the above
23.Gojra Shorkot section Motorway Project under CPEC is of how many Kilometers ?
A.61 Km
B. 81 Km
C. 91 Km
D. None of the Above
24.First Ada Festi al Pakista AFP 9 held i hi h ity of Pakista i Fe 9?
A.Lahore
B. Karachi
C. Islamabad
D. None of the Above
25.Who is the Peshawar-born youngest boy to Win the Storm-2 Abdel Wahed squash
Open 2019 tournament recently, held at Sweden in February 2019?
A.Zeeshan khan
B. Ahsan Ayaz
C. Muhammad Hamza
D. Ruman Ahmed
26.How many radio station are working in the country under the Pakistan Broadcasting
Cooperation?
A.28
B. 30
C. 32
D. 34
27.Which are the only two elements on the periodic table that are liquid at room
temperature?
A.Mercury and Bromine
B. Carbon and helium
C. Nitrogen and Hydrogen
D. Oxygen and Neon
28.What are the three basic units of measurement for the metric system?
A.Metre, liter and gram
B. Centimetre, kilograms and metric
C. Kilogram, mass and energy
D. Kelvin, cd and mole
29.What has o harge, a d is o e of the fu da e tal parti les aki g up a ato ’s
nucleus?
A.Electron
B. Neutron
C. Proton
D. All of Above
30.Who came up with three laws of motion?
A.Galileo
B. Albert Einstein
C. Issac Newton
D. Hubble
31.Diamonds are made up almost entirely of what element?
A.Carbon
B. Helium
C. Methane
D. Nitrogen
32.At what temperature are Celsius and Fahrenheit equal?
A.-40 degree
B. 40 degree
C. -10 degree
D. 10 degree
33.Who is o sidered the father of psychoanalysis?
A.Sigmund Frend
B. Galileo
C. Aristotle
D. Fabrica
34.What is the first element in the periodic table?
A.Hydrogen
B. Helium
C. Nitrogen
D. Carbon
35.Who is the Current IG of Punjab Police?
A.Dr Kaleem Imam
B. Capt. (R) Arif Nawaz Khan
C. Amjad Javed Saleemi
D. Muhammad Tahir
36.Who is the Curre t Chair a of Pakista Ba ks’ Asso iatio ?
A.Muhammad Aurangzaib
B. Aftab Manzoor
C. Arif Habib
D. None of the Above
37.Who is the current Deputy Speaker of the legislative assembly of Azad Jammu and
Kashmir?
A.Sardar Farooq Ahmed Tahir
B. Shah Ghulam Qadir
C. Sardar Amer Altaf
D. None of the Above
38.When the current government assumed the office, Pakistan was ranked at________in
the ease of doing business?
A.137
B. 147
C. 153
D. 165
39.What is current rank of Pakistan in the ease of doing business in 2019?
A.116 among 190
B.125 among 190
C.136 among 190
D.147 among 190
40.Govt Reduces Corporate Taxes From 47 to Just_____________ in January 2019.
A.11
B. 16
C. 21
D. 24
41.on 31st January 2019, Pakistan protests summoning of High commissioner to Delhi
over?
A.Chenab Basin project
B. Quraishi-Mirwaiz phone call
C. I ra Kha ’s speech
D. LOC voilations
42._______ has ee titled the Mou tai Pri es y Pakista ’s ou tai eeri g
community?
A.Samina Baig
B. Selena Khawaja
C. Uzma Shah
D. None of These
43.The Senate Committee on Human Rights passed the draft bill on January-30-2019
raising the minimum age of marriage to_________ years in Pakistan?
A.17
B. 18
C. 20
D. None of these
44.Name the first Sikh Officer who has been assigned charge of Public Relations Officer to
the Punjab Governor first time in history ?
A.Pawan Singh Arora
B. Jagjeet Singh
C. Ajeet Singh
D. None of the Above
45.Saudi Arabia will establish oil refinery at Gawadar at the cost of_____________?

A.$8 Billion
B. $9 Billion
C. $10 Billion
D. $11 Billion
46.Indus water Jeep Race held in January 2019 at which city of Pakistan?
A.Hub
B. Jhal Magsi
C. Swabi
D. None of the Above
47.The lens used in a simple microscope is____________?
A.Concave
B. Convex
C. Cylindrical
D. None
48.The image formed in a compound microscope is_____________?
A.erect
B. inverted
C. sometimes erect, sometimes inverted
D. none
49.He writes ___ ink.
A.WITH
B. IN
C. FOR
D. ON
50.Freetown is the capital of____________?
A.Senegal
B. Guinea
C. Sierra leone
D. Liberia
 CSS SPECIAL

CSS
ICEP Times:
NETWORK
ICEP Please:
NETWORK tell us tell
Please about your-self
us about youryour
your-self education
education
and achievements?
Mohammad Murtaza: Being an only child, I had a lot of time as a kid
which I spent daydreaming or reading. Consequently, I knew a lot of
general things on a range of topics. This has been a defining feature of my life
and has helped me in whatever I've done: schooling at Aitchison, BS
(Hons) at LUMS and now CSS.
(I'm also a trainer and public speaker and have
Worked extensively in the critical thinking
Education and Local Tourism Through The
History Project and my startup
TurrLahore.)
ICEPCSS
ICEP Times: Why: Why
NETWORK
NETWORK did you optopt
did you forfor
'PAS' and to which extent it is unique?
Mohammad Murtaza: To be honest, I
Would have been happy regardless of
The service I got, because wherever you go at the
end of the day it is your contribution and passion
that makes the difference. The fact that I got PAS
was lucky, but honestly, every service has its own
advantages and unique traits.
The good thing about PAS is the variety of tasks
that you are trained to do and the chance to work in
the field as well as behind a desk.
CSS Times:
ICEP What are
NETWORK
ICEP NETWORK the steps
: What are for
the preparation
steps for
for competitive
preparation exams?
for competitive exams?
Mohammad Murtaza: I always advise
my students to divide their preparation into
four steps:
1. Briskly covering the
Syllabus
2 . Consolidating everything
studied (through making notes,
consulting multiple sources, etc.)
3 . Past-paper questions'
practice
4 . R e v i s i o n ( B e t w e e n 1 s t January
and Exams)
In the first step, get some very basic books and
the syllabus and just quickly cover
everything in the syllabus, even if you don't
entirely understand it all. This will help you
see everything that has to be
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5

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 CSS SPECIAL
Covered and make a realistic expectation Preparation regarding books, notes, etc?
of how much time you need. I usually Mohammad Murtaza: Books are now
recommend spending 7 days to cover a old-fashioned and not sufficient alone!
100 mark subject. A good academy can Supplement your study with online resources;
really help you achieve this. Once you're even a simple Google search can help you
done going over the entire syllabus you understand a topic much better than some
can start formalising notes, make one- traditional books. Notes should also be made in
both soft copy and hard copy. I also
pagers for every topic and seek help for
recommend making diagrams, maps and
topics that you don't really understand. flowcharts in your notes to help you
Group study at this stage is also a good memorise them better.
idea. The goal is to There are a large
consolidate your number of
learning. academies for the
Going to a good
guidance of CSS
academy helps
students. Are they
you get a
really helpful for
jumpstart. Make
sure you have a them?
good mentor who Ummm... that's a
can gui de you tough question. I
throughout the can't comment on t h e
process. a c a d e mi e s where I
CSS
ICEP
ICEP Times: What
NETWORK
NETWORK: : Whatisis have not studied, but I
the importance of an think wherever you
academy for t h e go, you should always
students appearing use your own
in CSS? common sense.
Mohammad
Some academies
Murtaza:
E v e r yo n e can h a ve standard
reach the finish notes that they
line, whether they go share with all their
to an academy or not. st udent s. As a
But going to an academy makes the process result, these students d o n 't
much easier. There's a s a yi n g t h a t 'A cr i t i cal l y t hi nk themselves and j ust
smart person learns from his r epr oduce those notes in the exams. This
mistakes, but the smartest person learns leads to low marks as
from other people's mistakes'. Many the examiner can tell that this person is just
people don't go to an academy and then regurgitating what his academy taught him.
have to reappear multiple times in the CSS Whenever you go to an academy, make sure that
exam to crack it. If you go to an academy,
they help you learn how to think and critically
you can learn from the expertise they have
analyse, not just share notes and memories.
gathered over all the years and you can
ICEP ICEP
CSS NETWORK
Times:
NETWORK Did you:join
Did any
youacademy
join any for
academy
CSS
benefit from the mistakes/learnings of
other people. For people who want to ace for CSS preparation? What did you
preparation? What did you prefer between prefer
between
books andbooks
notes?and notes?
the CSS in their first attempt, I strongly
recommend an academy. Mohammad Murtaza: I did join an academy for 6
CSS
ICEP
ICEP Times: What
NETWORK
NETWORK : Whatis is the method
the method for
for CSS months. The biggest advantage I got going to the

(16) 6
CSS 6

(17)
 CSS SPECIAL
academy was that I made a lot of friends who were as optional subjects comes from two things: I. Every
motivated as I am. We were able to channel our energies in optional subject has its advantages and disadvantages,
the same direction and h e l p e a c h o t h e r r e a c h t h e e n d which makes the choice very difficult, for example: IR
g o a l . Consequently, today we are all CSPs and are going
is really short and easy but gives a low score, while
to be in the training together.
Accounting is very long and technical but gives a really
I think, between books and notes I have no preference. One high score; 2. People try to predict the trend, even though it
needs to be pragmatic and see what is more helpful is impossible to say for sure which subject will get good
depending upon the subject, the topic and your style of marks and will subject will suffer or get hit. My advice is
studying. to ignore the trend and set a three step criteria:
CSS
ICEP Times:
NETWORK
ICEP NETWORKMost: Most
candidates failfailEnglish
candidates English Do you have enough time to do justice with
Essay and Précis and Composition papers. the subject? Is the syllabus so alien or
What steps would you suggest to get through lengthy that it will take time away from
these? Mohammad Murtaza: Firstly, work on other subjects? Mohammad Murtaza: Is the
your grammar, spellings and expression. subject score-able? For example: mathematics allows
When you read something good, don't just rush through your you to score 100/100 but Literature and Philosophy can
reading. Pause and reflect on the expressions that you are
never get you very high marks. Try to take subjects that
reading and try to replicate them in your writing.
can score well.
Secondly, we sometimes write very good stuff that only makes
sense to us! We think it is simply written but for a third person, it Sometimes a subject will BE good on one criteria and bad
can be very hard to read. We should always keep the examiner on another criteria. I recommend you balance them out:
in mind when writing for the CSS and make sure that what so one subject that is short, one subject that is scoring,
we write is easy to understand and written so clearly that the one subject that you like, and so on.
examiner doesn't have to struggle to understand it. Sometimes a subject is very scoring but in the
CSS
ICEP
ICEP Times: Students
NETWORK
NETWORK feel
: Students feel confused
confused succeeding years, that particular subject does not yield
while choosing optional subjects but it is good scores. Comment.
This is true. It is a risk factor that we need to be aware of,
the most vital step too. For fresh aspirants,
but there is very little that we can do except pray.
suggest the best method to choose optional Usually new subjects score high or subjects with a lot of
subjects? candidates (like iR) score low. It is a
Mohammad Murtaza: T h e c o n f u s i o n w i t h

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8

(18)
 CSS SPECIAL
personal decision if you want to convey Mohammad
to take a subject which is Murtaza: The world is
risky. Risky subjects really big and has a lot to
usually give either very offer. The best minds
good marks or very low don't have to rely on
scores. I prefer safe subjects
something external to
that don't get ver y high
marks, but also don't get very help them. Every single
low marks. one of the readers of this
interview are precious -
ICEP NETWORK
C S SNETWORK
ICEP : Can
Times: C an
they have an education
cramming be helpful in
and a lot of potential to
passing the CSS exam?
innovate and do
Mohammad Murtaza: something amazing. If
No. Cramming is not
sustainable. If you have two they are successful in
or three subjects and a CSS, that is very good. If
short syllabus, then you can they can't make it in their
cram. But here we have first attempt, they can sit
almost 11 subjects and a very for the exam again, twice.
vast syllabus. It is better to But it's all in the hands of
learn how to think and apply Allah. Don't take a lot of
your knowledge, rather than
pressure because even if
rote learn or cram.
you don't qualify, it is
CSS
ICEPICEP
NETWORKTimes: Sometimes
NETWORK : Sometimes possible that Allah has
extraordinary another, better plan for you.
students cannot qualify CSSNETWORK
ICEP
ICEP Times: : You
NETWORK are
: You are
CSS while an average proud faculty of ICEP
student gets allocation. Network...your views
Comment? about ICEP.
Mohammad Murtaza: Mohammad Murtaza:
Luck plays a huge role, but it Teaching at ICEP has
is also true that been a wonderful
sometimes good experience: it has a good
students are not aware of the faculty, an amazing
nitty-gritty of administration and great
presentation. It is students who are
possible that you are v e r y passionate and eager to
s m a r t b ut a r e unable to learn. ICEP is slowly
convince the examiner emerging as a centre of
because you w r i t e v e r y CSS preparation in
long, complicated Pakistan and I hope that
sentences. Paper the new and competitive
presentation, clarity and methods of teaching that
organisation o f a n s w e r ICEP is using allows it's
are as important as students to stand out and
knowledge and make a mark on the CSSCSS
understanding. exam and this country
7
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country.
CSSNETWORK:
ICEP ICEP
NETWORK: Times: AnyAnymessage
messageyou wouldlike
you would like 7
(19)

The Future of Democracy
in South Asia
Why Citizens Must Stay
Vigilant
(CSS Pakistan Affairs)
On November 14, a fight broke out in the Sri
Lankan Parliament. When the Speaker tried
to call a vote, a group of MPs heckled him
and rushed the podium. A rival faction tried
to push the hecklers back. Men traded
punches. One brandished a knife. A
lawmaker cut himself trying to steal the
Speaker’s microphone and ended up in the
hospital. (CSS Pakistan Affairs)
The chaos was the result of a constitutional
crisis that erupted in October, when the
country’s president, Maithripala Sirisena,
tried to oust the prime minister and replace
him with a former president, Mahinda
Rajapaksa. Lawmakers and citizens
protested; Sirisena dissolved Parliament,
until the Supreme Court ruled this
unconstitutional; and Rajapaksa, rejected by
Parliament, refused to step aside. The
stalemate broke only in December, when
Sirisena reinstated the deposed prime
minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in the face
of concerted opposition from the judiciary
and a majority of Parliament.
Until recently, Sri Lanka, one of Asia’s
oldest democracies, seemed safe from this
kind of instability. The country’s bloody
civil war ended in 2009, and its 2015
election seemed to signal a new phase of
liberalization. But democracy’s gains were
less secure than they appeared.
Sri Lanka is far from unique in South Asia
in this respect. By some measures, the
region is more stable and democratic than it
has been in decades. Violence and unrest
have subsided. Militaries have left the streets
and returned to their barracks. Major
insurgencies have been contained. As a
region, South Asia is experiencing economic
growth at an average rate of nearly seven
percent each year. Today Bangladesh,
Myanmar, and Pakistan—countries
governed by hard-line military dictatorships
in the recent past—are all, at least formally,
democracies.
But this apparent calm masks major sources
of disquiet. Ethnic and religious tensions are
spiking. Politicians are trying to win votes
by attacking independent institutions. And
militaries still lurk in the background. South
Asia’s experience shows that democracy
does not seamlessly advance or uniformly
retreat. Empowerment in some areas can be
accompanied by repression in others.
Reforms can trigger new conflicts. Open
political competition gives the people a
voice, but that voice may be deeply illiberal.
Orderly elections do not preclude political
crises. South Asia’s trajectory shows just
how important it is to seize opportunities to
fortify liberal democracy when they present
themselves and to confront potential dangers
before they metastasize.
THE SOURCES OF THE
CRISIS
Sri Lanka’s crisis has its roots in
Rajapaksa’s presidency, which turned
particularly authoritarian in its second term.
In 2009, Rajapaksa ended Sri Lanka’s 25-
year civil war by inflicting a bloody defeat
on the secessionist Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (also known as the Tamil
Tigers). He was reelected by a landslide in
2010, and together with his family and his
Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), he
proceeded to centralize power, expand the
reach of the presidency, and draw close to
China. Media reports credibly linked
Rajapaksa and his allies to corruption and
human rights violations.
Sirisena had been a member of the SLFP,
but in the 2015 presidential election, he
unexpectedly defected from it in order to
challenge Rajapaksa. With the support of the
United National Party (UNP) and other
opposition parties, Sirisena won a shock
victory. After parliamentary elections later
that year, UNP leader Wickremesinghe
emerged as prime minister. This set up
Sirisena and Wickremesinghe to pursue
what they claimed would be an ambitious
reform agenda aimed at curbing executive
power and addressing the legacies of the
civil war.
The government fulfilled some of this
agenda, most notably limiting the powers of
the presidency that Rajapaksa had expanded.
But Sirisena and Wickremesinghe did not
prove a cohesive team, reform stalled, and
when local elections were held earlier this
year, Rajapaksa’s party, relaunched as the
Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, dominated
the results. With Rajapaksa resurgent, the
relationship between Sirisena and
Wickremesinghe deteriorated. On October
26, Sirisena dismissed Wickremesinghe and
appointed Rajapaksa as the new prime
minister.
Within three weeks, the Supreme Court
suspended Sirisena’s dissolution of
Parliament. Undeterred, Sirisena and
Rajapaksa sought to cobble together a
parliamentary majority to endorse Rajapaksa
as prime minister. But despite concerted
efforts to bribe and entice members of
Parliament to defect, a majority stuck by
Wickremesinghe, who refused to leave the
prime minister’s residence. Citizens massed
in the streets to support Wickremesinghe
against the power grab.
The standoff lasted for more than six weeks.
Rajapaksa was unable to form a majority in
Parliament, so Sirisena called for elections
for 2019 to try to forge a new electoral
majority. Finally, on December 13, the
Supreme Court ruled decisively against
Sirisena, who then grudgingly recognized
Wickremesinghe as prime minister.
Although the immediate crisis has ended, it
has revealed deep vulnerabilities in Sri
Lanka’s democracy that are unlikely to go
away.
THE DANGERS OF
ETHNO-NATIONALISM
Submerged within Sri Lanka’s political
crisis is the ethnic unrest that has plagued
the country since the 1950s. Rajapaksa
represents a powerful strand of Sinhalese
Buddhist ethno-nationalism that has played a
central role in promoting ethnic violence. He
and his supporters played this card when
attacking critics in the most recent crisis.
They argued that Wickremesinghe
represented foreign (mainly Western)
influences and alien cultural values. This
type of problem extends well beyond Sri
Lanka: ethnic and religious tensions threaten
other South Asian democracies, too.
Although elections are now routine across
the subcontinent, and are often broadly free
and fair, ethnic and religious majoritarianism
persists. Majoritarian politics are often
driven by a majority-minority complex:
despite representing large majorities in their
countries, politicians and activists argue that
sinister transnational influences, long-term
demographic changes, and the corruption
and impurity of cosmopolitan elites
undermine their groups’ power. Like
populists in the West, they claim that they
alone can protect majority groups from these
threats—even when those groups are
objectively already dominant.
That strategy has proven an electoral winner.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has
constructed a political machine that followed
its decisive 2014 victory by dramatically
expanding the number of states under its
control. Although it fared poorly in the most
recent state elections, in December, the BJP
remains the favorite in the 2019 national
elections. Hindu majoritarianism has
become a remarkably powerful political
project in India. Although there are still
many Indians who do not subscribe to it, the
quest to give Hindus favored status has
advanced dramatically in recent years. As
the political scientist Kanchan Chandra
has noted, “The idea of India is being
redefined to mean a Hindu polity.”
Even before the recent crisis, Sri Lanka’s
long war with the Tamil Tigers had its roots
in the rise of Sinhalese Buddhist
nationalism, a strain of politics that remains
deeply influential in the island nation. The
country’s two dominant Sinhalese parties
have tried to outbid each other in appealing
to Buddhist nationalism, limiting the Sri
Lankan political system’s ability to
accommodate the country’s Tamil and
Muslim minorities. Sri Lanka’s 2015
election offered a chance to address such
ethnic tensions, but Sinhalese nationalists
doggedly opposed these efforts, contributing
to the gradual collapse of the reformist
agenda.
Perhaps the most dramatic South Asian case
in which ethno-nationalism has set back
genuine liberalization is in Myanmar. De
facto President Aung San Suu Kyi has
proven a bitter disappointment to many
international observers because of her failure
to condemn the military’s brutal crackdown
on the Muslim Rohingya people. But Aung
San Suu Kyi’s stance reflects public
sentiment. Many in Myanmar, even those
who previously opposed the military,
support hard-line anti-Rohingya policies.
Myanmar’s 2020 general election will
probably see both Aung San Suu Kyi’s
National League for Democracy and its main
opposition, the military-linked Union
Solidarity and Development Party, appealing
to heartland Bamar ethno-nationalism. The
rise of electoral democracy in Myanmar has
allowed supporters of majoritarianism, from
politicians to monks to social media users, to
frame the Rohingya as subversive outsiders
who need to be eliminated.
Even when ethnic and religious majoritarian
movements lose elections, they continue to
exert street power. Pakistan’s religious
parties have largely proven electoral failures.
But religious organizations can still tap into
suspicion and bigotry against minority
groups to mobilize their supporters.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has
found this out the hard way. He took a firm
stand in defense of the Pakistani Supreme
Court’s acquittal of a Christian woman on
blasphemy charges, then quickly backed
down, at least symbolically, after days of
protests by a religious movement called the
Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). Khan’s
government has pushed back on the TLP in
recent weeks, but the dangers and
temptations of mobilizing exclusionary
Sunni religious majoritarianism aimed at
Shiites, Christians, Hindus, and, especially,
Ahmadis (a Muslim group viewed by many
in Pakistan as heretics and thus
discriminated against) remains.
SUBVERTING
DEMOCRACY
Electoral democracy in South Asia coexists
uneasily with independent political
institutions, especially justice systems.
Intense political competition can force
politicians to pay attention to their
constituents, ideally making them more
responsive. But this competition also pushes
them to politicize courts, bureaucracies, and
law enforcement. Leading Sri Lankan
politicians showed a remarkably flagrant
disregard for the constitution during the
crisis, offering a shifting array of dubious
justifications for their actions. Sri Lanka’s
judiciary has proven surprisingly robust, but
it endured a stress test that never should
have occurred in the first place.
In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh
Hasina’s Awami League dispensed with
procedural niceties in its quest to break its
rivals ahead of the recent general election.
The Awami League won overwhelmingly,
but the campaign and election day itself
were marred by lethal violence and
allegations of serious electoral irregularities.
The government has passed laws restricting
free speech, arrested journalists and
dissidents, and used police to target political
rivals. Ironically, the Awami League points
to the threat of religious majoritarianism and
intolerance as the reason for its destruction
of the political institutions meant to protect
rights and provide order: its actions are
necessary, the party claims, in order to hold
at bay majoritarian Islamist opposition
parties such as the Bangladesh National
Party and Jamaat-e-Islami.
In India, too, the government has locked
horns with, and allegedly interfered in,
important national institutions, seeking to
shape them to the benefit of Modi’s party.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and
Reserve Bank of India have experienced
dramatic, highly public disputes and internal
feuds. Such manipulation predates the BJP
and has a long history in India. But even
elite state institutions now confront what the
political analyst Milan Vaishnav has called a
“crisis of credibility” as the BJP seeks to
hold the commanding heights of state power.
Several South Asian countries, however,
suffer from the opposite problem: rather than
elected politicians interfering with
independent institutions, autonomous
militaries can interfere in civilian politics.
The military has a stake in political affairs
above all in Pakistan and Myanmar, which
have experienced long spells of military
rule. Both militaries have formally
withdrawn from direct control of national
politics but continue to wield power.
Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, controls
key security ministries and is guaranteed 25
percent of the seats in parliament. Its brutal
campaign against the Rohingya people has
garnered it new support from many in the
Bamar ethnic majority, who see it waging a
war to protect the country from Bengali
intruders and meddling foreigners. The
military has restricted press freedoms and
continues to wage grim counterinsurgency
campaigns on Myanmar’s periphery,
especially in the northeast. After fueling
Bamar nationalism, the army has proceeded
to take advantage of it by reframing itself as
the protector of the nation, rather than a
tyrannical former dictatorship.
In Pakistan, the military does not even need
formal constitutional prerogatives to exert its
influence. During the 2018 election, the
military was widely believed to have thrown
its weight behind Imran Khan. After his
victory, the military mediated Khan’s
negotiations with the TLP in the wake of the
blasphemy verdict. The army continues to
control a wide array of businesses that give
it external influence and serve as a source of
internal cohesion by providing retired
military elites with comfortable positions.
Most important, it is believed to hold a veto
on significant foreign policy decisions,
especially those concerning Afghanistan and
India, that should be the prerogative of
elected civilian leaders.
WARNING SIGNS
These problems—ethnic and religious
majoritarianism, attacks on independent
institutions, and continued military
influence—do not outweigh the many
advantages of liberal democracy. But South
Asia’s experience shows that progress and
backsliding can be difficult to distinguish.
The conflict between Sirisena and
Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka might never
have come about if the two men had not
passed important, badly needed reforms to
the powers of the presidency after the 2015
election. Those reforms proved destructive
in the short term, but in the long run they are
likely to strengthen Sri Lankan democracy.
Myanmar’s opening up has unleashed a
dangerous majoritarianism, but it has also
contributed to a freer press, more open
political competition, and new possibilities
for civil society. Myanmar may yet move—
if only incrementally—toward fuller
democracy. India’s elections remain highly
competitive, and the BJP cannot rest easy in
the face of a reenergized opposition. Even in
Pakistan, under the shadow of military
influence and religious radicalism,
democratic competition still holds out the
possibility of a government that is more
responsive to its citizens.
Democracy is unambiguously in retreat from
some countries, such as Hungary. That is not
the situation in South Asia. There the
contradictory nature of democracy’s advance
shows, above all, the importance of
vigilance. Those who defend liberal
democracy must do so continually, pushing
back against rights-denying ideological
projects, politicians who undermine
institutions, and institutions that seek to
escape accountability.
The willingness to defend democracy proved
essential to resolving Sri Lanka’s
constitutional crisis. Sirisena’s daring power
play could very easily have succeeded. Two
of the key dangers to democracy in South
Asia were present: ethno-nationalism and
contempt for political institutions. Sirisena’s
goal was to quickly establish facts on the
ground that could not be rolled back. But the
concerted mobilization of individuals, civil
society, and politicians has (so far)
preserved the constitutional order. That
hard-fought success stands as both an
inspiration and a warning to democracy’s
defenders elsewhere.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
India’s Failed Strategy in
Kashmir:
CSS Pakistan Affairs
Guns have slipped back into holsters and
diplomats behind their desks; the Samjhauta
or “Concord” Express has resumed its
reassuring bi-weekly chug connecting
Lahore Junction and Old Delhi Station.
Relations between India and Pakistan are
returning to the normal huffy disdain after a
week of military brinkmanship. For the
divided and disputed border region of
Kashmir, there is relief. Yet in the Kashmir
Valley, a fertile and densely populated part
of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir,
this comes tempered with weariness. For its
7m inhabitants, most of them Muslim, a
return to normal means a large and growing
pile of frustrations. Some, such as bad
government services and a deepening
shortage of jobs, are familiar to all Indians.
Others are unique to the valley. (CSS
Pakistan Affairs)
Pakistan views the valley’s Muslims as
sundered citizens; its constitution prescribes
what should happen not if, but “when”,
Kashmiris vote to join Pakistan. And since
independence in 1947, Pakistan has never
ceased trying to hasten this moment by
sending guerrillas over the border to stir up
jihad—although this week it claimed to
rounding up such militants. India, for its
part, says that Kashmir was lucky to fall to a
secular, democratic country at partition and
not to its violent, narrow-minded neighbour.
But Indian governments turn deaf the
moment people in the valley speak of greater
autonomy, let alone azadi (independence).
Their efforts at counter-insurgency have
been disturbingly bloody. The conflict has
claimed 50,000 lives since the 1980s.
The deafness has been especially
pronounced of late. When Narendra Modi
came to power in India in 2014, violence in
the valley was near its lowest level in a
quarter century. Perhaps jihadist action
would have risen again anyway, but
government policies plainly have not helped.
Senior officials have called for the scrapping
of constitutional clauses that grant the
government of Jammu & Kashmir a few
more powers than those of other states.
Security forces have become even more
heavy-handed. They use shotguns to
suppress angry crowds, thereby blinding
many protesters with metal pellets. An army
officer who kidnapped a civilian and
strapped him to a jeep as a human shield was
not punished, but lauded and promoted.
Many Kashmiris were further alienated
when Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party
(bjp), which had swept polls in Jammu, the
largely Hindu part of the state, first joined in
an opportunistic coalition government with a
pro-independence party and then abruptly
quit. This allowed Mr Modi to impose direct
rule from Delhi. Those who had derided
Indian democracy as a sham seemed
vindicated.
Infiltration from Pakistan has been rife. In
the words of Shivshankar Menon, a former
Indian national security adviser, “When they
think you are in trouble in Jammu &
Kashmir, their temptation is to stir up that
trouble.” Violence began to mount, and with
it the intensity of the government’s response.
When guerrillas hole up in villages, the
security services tend to blitz their hideouts.
Bystanders are often injured in the crossfire
and their property destroyed. A growing
proportion of the insurgents are local, even
college-educated Kashmiris, not from across
the border. Huge crowds gather at their
funerals.
It was a local recruit of a group based in
Pakistan who drove a bomb-packed minivan
into a convoy of Indian police in the valley
in mid-February, killing 40 and initiating the
face-off with Pakistan. In response, online
agitators and even bjp officials goaded mobs
around India to attack Kashmiris. Omair
Ahmad, an Indian writer, despairingly
remarks, “The Indian right has always seen
Kashmir as our Kosovo: a land to be loved, a
people to be hated.”
In recent weeks Mr Modi’s government has
escalated the repression in the valley,
bringing in extra troops, rounding up non-
violent activists and banning a moderate
Islamic group that runs scores of schools,
employing some 10,000 teachers. It has cut
government advertising in local newspapers,
their main source of revenue. Curfews and
internet shutdowns have intensified. Senior
officials speak, alarmingly, of the need to
“instil India” in locals.
Why Talking to the
Taliban Is the Right Move
CSS Current Affairs
In 2012, while I was serving as senior
adviser to the State Department special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,
I met in Istanbul with a group of Iranian
scholars and former diplomats. After
listening to the Iranians protest the United
States’ purported plans to establish
permanent bases in Afghanistan, I told them
that they were worrying about the wrong
thing. Their problem was not that U.S.
forces would stay forever; it was that, sooner
or later, they would leave, and the Iranians
and their neighbors would once again be
stuck with a problem that they could not
solve. (CSS Current Affairs)
Sure enough, that time is coming. In
December, The New York Times reported,
“The Trump administration has ordered the
military to start withdrawing roughly 7,000
troops from Afghanistan in the coming
months.” The U.S. government and the
Taliban are reportedly close to agreement on
a partial framework of a peace deal. Now it
is the turn of strategists in Washington to
worry about the wrong thing. They fear that
the Trump administration is repeating the
mistake made by the United States in
Vietnam and the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan: negotiating a troop withdrawal
that leads to the collapse of the U.S.-backed
government or a civil war. Former U.S.
Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker,
for example, described the negotiations as a
“surrender.”
The negotiations do not represent surrender.
Nor are they the reason that the United
States is aiming to withdraw its troops; that
has long been Trump’s
intention. Negotiating in the shadow of a
predetermined decision to withdraw may not
be the best way to run a peace process, but
the real danger is that, regardless of the
negotiations, Trump will order an
unconditional withdrawal and cut the
assistance that sustains the Afghan state.
THE PATH TO PEACE
U.S. President Donald Trump’s current
policy of negotiation constitutes a break with
the South Asia strategy that Trump
announced in August 2017. In the speech
laying out the strategy, he hit all of
Washington’s war-drunk high notes: “the
men and women who serve our nation in
combat deserve a plan for victory,” he said,
warning, “a hasty withdrawal would create a
vacuum for terrorists.” “In the end,” he
promised, “we will win.”
Most important to Trump, as always, was
not to be his predecessor: “Conditions on the
ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide
our strategy from now on,” he said.
“America’s enemies must never know our
plans or believe they can wait us out.”
The strategy was also supposed to change
“how to deal with Pakistan,” which, the
president said, has “sheltered the same
organizations that try every single day to kill
our people.” “That will have to change,” he
said.
There was, however, never any “plan for
victory,” and Pakistan’s behavior did not
change. If Trump’s decision to withdraw
was dictated by “conditions on the ground,”
it was only because his strategy had failed to
alter those conditions. The U.S. military had
defined government control over 80 percent
of the population as the benchmark for
success, but in January, the U.S. Department
of Defense Special Inspector General for
Afghan Reconstruction reported that from
August 2017 to October 2018, the
proportion of the Afghan population living
in areas under government influence or
control remained constant at 64 percent.
“Conditions on the ground” had not
improved since the start of the Trump
administration, when General John
Nicholson, the U.S. commander in
Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that the United States and the
Afghan government were in a “stalemate.”
Two years later, Trump’s South Asia
strategy had not moved the stalemate any
closer to victory. A devastating National
Intelligence Estimate issued in August 2018
reported that, if anything, the Taliban was
gaining ground.
Although Trump is hardly known to accept
intelligence estimates at face value, this one
confirmed that his original instinct to pull
out had been right. Some in the
administration, most likely led by Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, convinced the
president to try negotiations before a
unilateral withdrawal. Pompeo hired Zalmay
Khalilzad, a seasoned Afghan-American
Republican foreign-policy figure who had
worked on Afghanistan in the Reagan and
both Bush administrations. As special
representative for Afghan Reconciliation,
Khalilzad was given a few months to
negotiate a deal before Trump pulled the
plug.
A negotiated solution was always the only
way out of Afghanistan, but the military
insisted that the United States and the
Afghan government should negotiate only
from a “position of strength,” which was
always just over the horizon, defined by a
Soviet witticism as an imaginary line that
recedes as one approaches it. The longer the
United States waited for the position of
strength, the weaker its actual position
became, so when Trump finally accepted the
inevitable, Washington was hardly in a
position to impose terms.
Kabul and Washington had hoped that
military success would force the Taliban into
direct negotiations with the Afghan
government. But there was no such success,
and the Taliban, which reached agreements
with the government in 2001 and 2004 only
to find the United States unwilling to accept
them, had concluded that negotiating with
the Afghan government without an
agreement with the United States was
pointless. The Taliban has not ruled out
talking to the government, but it insists on
first reaching an agreement with the United
States on ending what it calls the
“occupation.” The choice facing Washington
in 2018, therefore, was between direct
negotiations with the Taliban and no
negotiations at all.
Now the two sides are reported to be close to
an agreement under which U.S. forces would
withdraw and the Taliban would guarantee
that any future government in which they
participate would join the fight against
international terrorism. Some critics worry
that the United States will remove its troops
in return for nothing but unenforceable
promises by the Taliban. According to
negotiators, however, the agreement would
rely not on trusting the Taliban’s promises
but on carefully sequencing the components
of the agreement and insisting on monitoring
mechanisms. The best counterterrorism
program would be a political agreement that
stabilizes Afghanistan, puts an end to
incentives to mobilize terrorist support, and
closes ungoverned spaces that terrorists can
exploit. The putative agreement specifies, as
Khalilzad tweeted in January, that “Nothing
is agreed until everything is agreed, and
‘everything’ must include an intra-Afghan
dialogue and comprehensive ceasefire.”
Those internal Afghan talks, Khalilzad
also tweeted, should be conducted by a
“national, inclusive, and
unified #Afghan negotiating team,” and he
met with groups of women and youth to
illustrate what he meant.
That intra-Afghan dialogue is where
Afghans, with international backing, can
defend their rights. The relationship of the
troop withdrawal to the dialogue is yet to be
agreed upon, but the U.S. and Afghan
position is that any timetable for withdrawal
should be linked to the implementation of
the political settlement, not just to a
calendar.
HISTORY’S WARNING
Trump could still upend this framework and
opt for a unilateral withdrawal and aid cuts.
Such a decision could well lead to the
collapse of the Afghan government, a
scenario that recalls the end of the Vietnam
War. The Paris Peace Accords, reached in
January 1973, provided for the complete
withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South
Vietnam within 60 days. Although they
included provisions for a cease-fire and a
political settlement, these were to take place
after U.S. forces left. The United States
failed to make its withdrawal conditional on
either, and so neither happened. The South
Vietnamese government nonetheless
survived for over two years. Only in 1975,
when a war-weary U.S. Congress cut off all
military and financial aid to South Vietnam,
did Saigon finally fall.
A similar story played out after the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Under the Geneva
Accords of 1988—negotiated by
Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and
the United States—all Soviet troops would
withdraw from Afghanistan by February
1989, and Pakistan and the United States
would stop providing aid to the mujahidin
based in Pakistan by May 1988. Yet the
accords made no provision for a political
settlement within Afghanistan. When the
deadline for cutting off aid to the
mujahideen arrived, the United States and
Pakistan asserted that they would continue to
support the mujahideen for as long as the
Soviet Union supported the Afghan state.
The Soviets withdrew on schedule anyway.
Over two years later, in September 1991, the
United States and a collapsing Soviet Union
agreed to stop providing aid to their clients.
The Soviet Union collapsed in December.
Short of money to pay his armed forces and
feed Afghanistan’s urban population,
Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah
resigned and fled in April 1992. According
to a UN peace plan, an interim government
formed abroad was meant to replace him,
but fighters inside Afghanistan had no stake
in that agreement. The country collapsed
into civil war.
Such a scenario could play out again in
Afghanistan. The United States could
catastrophically reduce its military and
financial assistance with or without
negotiations—but the negotiations provide
the only path to stability after the inevitable
withdrawal. Trump must allow his
negotiators and the Afghan government to
take the time they need to reach a deal that
links the implementation of the withdrawal
agreement to an Afghan political settlement,
and he must maintain the flow of aid needed
to keep the Afghan state functioning.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
Why the India-Pakistan
Crisis Isn’t Likely to Turn
Nuclear
(CSS Pakistan Affairs)
In May 1999, an Indian military patrol
stumbled on several groups of Pakistani
soldiers who had set up posts in Kargil, in
the Indian-controlled section of the disputed
state of Jammu and Kashmir. Within weeks,
India and Pakistan plunged into in their
fourth war since 1947. The region’s
mountainous terrain made land operations
difficult, but throughout the fighting the
Indian military exercised a surprising degree
of restraint. Indian pilots scrupulously
refrained from crossing or firing over the
line of control, the de facto border in Jammu
and Kashmir, despite coming under
punishing fire from the Pakistani side. The
Kargil War, as the conflict became known,
ended two months after fighting broke out,
when the Indian military recaptured the
territory it had originally controlled. (CSS
Pakistan Affairs)
Analysts generally point to Pakistan’s
acquisition of nuclear weapons the previous
year as the cause of India’s restraint. Indian
policymakers likely feared that crossing the
line of control would trigger a wider
conflagration, one that could turn nuclear.
That history made it all the more surprising
when last week, on February 26, Indian jets
crossed not merely the line of control but the
international border with Pakistan to strike
an apparent terrorist camp in Balakot. Not
since the war of 1971 had the Indian Air
Force carried out a sortie within undisputed
Pakistani territory. The strikes came in
response to a terrorist attack on an Indian
paramilitary convoy in Jammu and Kashmir
earlier in February claimed by Jaish-e-
Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist
group.
The next day, the Pakistani Air Force hit
back. The particulars remain murky, but it’s
clear that Pakistani jets crossed the line of
control. India scrambled aircraft in response,
and each side lost at least one plane during
the ensuing skirmish. Pakistan then
announced that it had captured a downed
Indian pilot.
Worried analysts now fear that, since India
and Pakistan have breached the informal
norm against using air power across the
border, they will be unable to prevent further
escalation. Hawkish publics in both
countries are calling for retaliation. Can the
politicians exercise restraint?
THE LESSONS OF
HISTORY
No one can say for sure, but history suggests
that there is cause for optimism. During the
Kargil War, India worked to contain the
fighting to the regions around Pakistan’s
original incursions and the war concluded
with no real threat of nuclear escalation.
Less than two years later, the two countries
plunged into crisis once again. In December
2001, five terrorists from the Pakistan-based
groups Lashkar-e-Tabia and Jaish-e-
Mohammed attacked the parliament building
in New Delhi with AK-47s, grenades, and
homemade bombs, killing eight security
guards and a gardener. In response, India
launched a mass military mobilization
designed to induce Pakistan to crack down
on terrorist groups. As Indian troops
deployed to the border, terrorists from
Pakistan struck again. In May 2002, three
men killed 34 people in the residential area
of an Indian army camp in Kaluchak, in
Jammu and Kashmir. Tensions spiked. India
seemed poised to unleash a military assault
on Pakistan. Several embassies in New
Delhi and Islamabad withdrew their
nonessential personnel and issued travel
advisories. The standoff lasted for several
months, but dissipated when it became
apparent that India lacked viable military
options and that the long mobilization was
taking a toll on the Indian military’s men
and materiel. The United States also helped
ease tensions by urging both sides to start
talking. India claimed victory, but it was a
Pyrrhic one, as Pakistan failed to sever its
ties with a range of terrorist organizations.
Now that both sides have gone through the
motions, neither is likely to escalate any
further.
Other nuclear states have also clashed
without resorting to nuclear weapons. In
1969, China, then an incipient nuclear
weapons state, and the Soviet Union, a full-
fledged nuclear power, came to blows over
islands in the Ussuri River, which runs along
the border between the two countries.
Several hundred Chinese and Soviet soldiers
died in the confrontation. Making matters
worse, Chinese leader Mao Zedong had a
tendency to run risks and dismissed the
significance of nuclear weapons, reportedly
telling Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru that even if half of mankind died in a
nuclear war, the other half would survive
and imperialism would have been razed to
the ground. Yet despite Mao’s views, the
crisis ended without going nuclear, thanks in
part to the efforts of Soviet Prime Minister
Alexei Kosygin, who took the first step by
travelling to Beijing for talks.
There’s reason to believe that the current
situation is similar. Pakistan’s overweening
military establishment undoubtedly harbors
an extreme view of India and determines
Pakistan’s policy toward its neighbor. The
military, however, is not irrational. In India,
although Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
a jingoistic disposition, he, too, understands
the risks of escalation, and he has a firm grip
on the Indian military.
Another source of optimism comes from
what political scientists call the “nuclear
revolution,” the idea that the invention of
nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the
nature of war. Many strategists argue that
nuclear weapons’ destructive power is so
great that states understand the awful
consequences that would result from using
them—and avoid doing so at all costs.
Indian and Pakistani strategists are no
different from their counterparts elsewhere.
Even Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan,
a political neophyte, underscored the
dangers of nuclear weapons in his speech
addressing the crisis last week. And Modi,
for all his chauvinism, has scrupulously
avoided referring to India’s nuclear
capabilities.
The decision by India and Pakistan to allow
their jets to cross the border represents a
major break with the past. Yet so far both
countries have taken only limited action.
Their principal aim, it appears, is what the
political scientist Murray Edelman once
referred to as “dramaturgy”—theatrical
gestures designed to please domestic
audiences. Now that both sides have gone
through the motions, neither is likely to
escalate any further. Peering into the nuclear
abyss concentrates the mind remarkably.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
A comprehensive analysis
on War in Afghanistan-
CSS Current Affairs
Afghanistan has stayed less a homogenous
state and more a montage of feuding
ethnicities and warring tribes bound by
strings of self-interest and foreign
subservience. (CSS Current Affairs)
Having written nearly two dozen analyses on
Afghanistan since 2010, I can give you two
good and one not-so-good news today. First
of all, the Afghan war of past 17 years is
coming to an end. President Barack
Obama’s words resonate to recall: “I think
Americans have learned it’s harder to end
wars than it is to begin them.” Secondly,
Daesh (the so-called Islamic State) has no
future in the region. Similar to my prediction
in spring 2017 (Radical Islamism:
Understanding Extremist Narrative and
Mindset) about Daesh’s elimination in Iraq, I
foresee the terrorist group’s total rout in
Afghanistan (though it would first need the
U.S.-led coalition forces to leave).
Read more: Pakistan’s Jihadist cauldron:
From national asset to national millstone
However, one cannot be certain about
Afghanistan’s internal security and stability,
taking into account Afghan nation’s historic
ethnic distrust and tribal discord. ‘Washing
blood with blood’ this time some 17-year-
old ‘scores’ need to be settled too. In An
Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815)
Mountstuart Elphinstone (the East India
Company’s administrator who negotiated
with the Afghan ruler Shah Shuja) had
noted, “To sum up the character of the
Afghans in a few words: their vices are
revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity, and
obstinacy.”
Washington’s Revision of Stance
Taliban have always been insistent on a
direct dialogue with the United States and
the departure of foreign forces from
Afghanistan to end their insurgency. The
two demands are now being met. Amid
reports of President Trump getting
frustrated with stalemate in the ongoing war,
the U.S. has not only showed its willingness
to talk with the Taliban and discuss
withdrawal of foreign troops, but the U.S.
special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Alice Wells, has already reportedly met with
the Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar,
resulting in some “very positive signals.”
However, it’s too early to rejoice.
Washington still seems ambivalent about its
departure, carrying the stigma of another
failed war from the “graveyard of empires.”
Eminent British journalist, Christina Lamb,
records in her book Farewell Kabul: From
Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World:
“Maybe we hadn’t been chased out as in
previous wars, but Afghanistan would
always be remembered as a failure, in the
same breath as Vietnam and Gallipoli.”
The indecision, or reluctance, if your will, is
reflected in NATO’s Brussels summit in
July 2018, pledging to continue to train,
fund and assist Afghan security forces until
2024 – an extension of its earlier
commitment to contribute US1$ billion
annually until 2020 at the Warsaw summit in
2016.
While Taliban stick to their list of demand:
1) Withdrawal of all foreign forces from
Afghanistan; 2) Removal of the names of
their leaders from the UN terror-watch list;
3) Release of prisoners; and 4) Allowing
Afghan people to decide their political issues
per their religion, culture and traditions, the
U.S. remains preoccupied with the: 1)
Survival of its setup created after 2001’s
Bonn agreement, including Afghan
government and a democratic constitution;
2) Country going-down in another civil-war
(similar to that of 1992); and 2) Rise of
global terrorism from Afghan soil once
again (after al-Qaeda).
Read more: Afghanistan’s Managed Chaos:
US Strategic Regional Designs
However, with the U.S. secretary of state,
Mike Pompeo expressing his readiness to
participate and support the peace talks on his
surprise visit to Kabul on 9 July 2018, a
graceful exit seems already being planned.
The Taliban Factor in Changing Thought
A revision of thought in the U.S. mind has
probably occurred after it saw that while a
military strategy against the Taliban
remained unsuccessful, al-Qaeda’s
reincarnation has taken place in the shape of
Daesh in Afghanistan.
While a political settlement with the Taliban
was always encouraged by all and sundry, it
belatedly dawned upon Washington that
“Taliban are part of the social fabric” of the
country, who “believe in the nationhood of
Afghanistan, in contrast to other militant
groups like Islamic State,” as noted by Alice
Wells, the special U.S. envoy.
Taliban’s open letter in February 2018
addressed to the American people further
helped in softening the U.S. stance and
developing a better understanding about the
group.
The Eid-ul-Fitr ceasefire observed by the
Taliban rank and file further demonstrated
its unity of command, putting to rest any
suggestion of (mainstream) Taliban
infighting or factionalization. A BBC
study in January 2018 had found Taliban
openly operating in Afghanistan’s 70
percent districts, fully controlling 4 percent
of the country and demonstrating their overt
presence in another 66 percent territory (see
FDD’s Long War Journal’s interactive map
of Taliban control of districts here).
Foreign Forces’ Disappointing Report
Card in Afghanistan
Amid quite a few American failures in
Afghanistan, the U.S. Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
(SIGAR) gave a poor report card to the U.S.
led coalition forces in April 2018 for acute
deficiencies in the Afghan National Defence
and Security Force (ANDSF). SIGAR noted,
for instance: “Despite US government
expenditures of more than $70 billion in
security sector assistance to design, train,
advise, assist, and equip the ANDSF since
2002, the Afghan security forces are not yet
capable of securing their own nation.”
Afghan territory keeps slipping out of the
hands of Western-trained Afghanistan’s six
field and one commando corps spread
countrywide: 201 Corps, garrisoning Kabul;
203 Corps, Gardez; 205 Corps, Kandahar;
207 Corps, Heart; 209 Corps, Mazar-i-
Sharif; and 215 Corps at Lashkargah.
Moreover the jittery manner in which the
Afghan gunship helicopters killed 36
innocent villagers, including 30 children and
wounded 71 others at Dasht-i-Archi in
Kunduz province on 2 April 2018,
demonstrated the level of training of Afghan
soldiers imparted by the foreign forces.
There had been a rationale behind denying
Afghan security forces the use of gunships
or fighter jets as they then begin settling
their personal scores, tribal disputes and
ethnic feuds themselves.
Lastly, the staggering 1.17 million war crime
claims collected by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague must
have also unnerved the stakeholders in
Afghanistan. Unlawful and illegal atrocities,
including killings of unarmed prisoners by
not only the Taliban and Daesh, but also
involving Afghan security forces and
government-affiliated warlords, the U.S.-led
coalition and foreign and domestic spy
agencies constitute war crimes in
Afghanistan. Under immense international
and domestic pressure, investigations have
already begun in Australia and New
Zealand with the U.S. and U.K., also likely
to come under ICC’s scrutiny.
U.S. Rapprochement with Pakistan
Having threatened Pakistan with dire
consequences – including cross-border
attacks and hot pursuit operations on
Pakistani soil – Washington has since
stepped back from its bully (discussed in my
last two papers entitled: America’s
Waterloo: ‘Scapegoating’ Pakistan for
Failures in Afghanistan and Afghanistan’s
Managed Chaos: US Strategic Regional
Designs).
In February 2018, seventeen U.S.
intelligence agencies had warned the
Congress about a nuclear-armed Pakistan
slipping-out of America’s influence into
China’s sphere, becoming a threat to
Washington’s strategic interests in the South
Asian region. Since an antagonized – and
uncooperative – Islamabad remains
detrimental to Washington’s interests, the
U.S. deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan,
changed his tone during a visit to Kabul the
same month, clearly conveying to the
Afghan leadership that America has no
intentions of severing ties with Pakistan or
launching military strikes inside its territory.
In fact, it had been Pakistan’s army chief,
General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who told the
Americans point-blank at the 54th Munich
Security Conference in February 2018 to
stop blaming Pakistan for its problems in
Afghanistan and instead search for the
reasons for its failures. The Royal United
Services Institute (RUSI), a leading British
security think-tank, found the general’s
confidence in his celebrated “Bajwa
Doctrine” – standing up against the U.S.
intimidation, demanding Pakistan to “do
more.” In his address at the nation’s Defence
Day in September 2017, the army
chief thundered: “[N]ow … the world must
do more.”
Pakistan’s defiance worked. Washington not
only guaranteed to respect Pakistan’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity, but
Alice Wells also acknowledged Pakistan and
Taliban having legitimate grievances,
saying, “Pakistan has an important role to
play in helping stabilise Afghanistan.”
In a related development, President
Trump elevated Washington’s ambassador
to Islamabad, David Hale, to under secretary
of state for political affairs, a position which
grants the diplomat more sway to implement
president’s new Afghan strategy. Mr. Hale,
who has been performing his ambassadorial
responsibilities since 2015, seems to have
the confidence of Pakistan’s Army and its
intelligence establishment as he strongly
supports normalization of ties between India
and Pakistan. The ambassador played a lead
role in bringing-back Washington-Islamabad
relations from a breaking point after
President Trump slammed Pakistan (while
outlining his new Afghan strategy on 21
August 2017) followed by his “lies and
deceit” New Year’s tweet, condemning
Pakistan for supporting the Taliban.
Pakistan’s defiance worked.
Washington not only guaranteed to
respect Pakistan’s sovereignty and
territorial integrity, but Alice Wells with the Taliban granting the militia some
also acknowledged Pakistan and political accommodation in the future setup
Taliban having legitimate grievances, of the country. Pointing out
such reconciliation in the past, through
saying, “Pakistan has an important role
which a former rebel leader was not only
to play in helping stabilise accommodated in the political setup in
Afghanistan.” Kabul but his name was also expunged from
the UN terror list, Pakistan’s former
In a rare coincidence, a U.S. drone targeted
ambassador to the U.S., Aizaz Chaudhry
and killed Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,
stated: “There’s a precedence for this
Mullah Fazlullah, the head of Pakistan’s
[political reconciliation] in the rehabilitation
bête noir, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, in
of Gulbadin Hekmatyar.”
Afghanistan on 15 Jun 2018. Pakistan had
Criticising the disastrous militaristic
long demanded action against the fugitive
approach of Washington and Kabul,
terrorist who had masterminded one of the
Pakistan’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen.
most heart-wrenching terrorist attacks in
(Ret’d) Nasser Janjua also stated at a
Pakistan killing 132 school children in
seminar: “Afghanistan is a story of pains. It
December 2014. Demonstrating a modified
is a story of injuries. It is a wound of the
outlook towards Pakistan – long accused for
world and also of region which should be
harbouring the Afghan Taliban – not only
healed as quickly as possible. Every
President Ashraf Ghani picked up the phone
investment has been made to win Afghan
to announce the news to Pakistan’s army
war but, unfortunately, we have not invested
chief, but in an equally rare admission U.S.
in winning peace.”
defence secretary, James Mattis, took credit
In my view, the revived bonhomie between
for Fazlullah’s elimination.
Kabul and Islamabad – ending a hostile
Afghanistan-Pakistan Bonhomie
rhetoric and blame-game from Afghanistan
With the change in American attitude
– has resulted from ‘Afghanistan-Pakistan
towards Pakistan, surprisingly, the hostile
Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity’
statements coming from Afghan
(APAPPS) signed between the two countries
officials, blaming Pakistan for every terrorist
on 15 May 2018. Ostensibly approved by
attack on Afghan soil, also stopped. It looks
Washington and Beijing, the APAPPS is a
that a flurry of high-level exchanges – with a
Pakistani initiative carrying seven principles:
few shrouded in complete secrecy – along
1) Pakistan’s commitment toward supporting
with the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint
an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and
Committee (PAJC), a Track-II diplomatic
reconciliation process; 2) Undertaking
initiative, played a meaningful role in
actions against fugitives and irreconcilable
warming-up their bilateral relations.
elements posing security threats to either
Pledging to make a “fresh start,” the Afghan
sides; 3) Denying use of their respective
deputy foreign minister, Hekmat Khalil
territory by any country, network, group or
Karzai, visiting Pakistan admitted, “Pakistan
individuals for anti-state activities against
is not part of the problem but solution.”
the other; 4) Placing a joint supervision,
I believe, it has been Pakistan’s army chief,
coordination and confirmation mechanism to
General Bajwa’s astute military diplomacy –
realise agreement pledges; 5) Avoiding
mentioned above as the “Bajwa Doctrine” –
territorial and aerial violations; 6) Refraining
and some of his out of box initiatives that
from public blame game, utilizing instead
brought a much needed thaw in the conflict.
APAPPS platform for the resolution of
The general, beyond doubt, has given some
issues; and 7) Operationalize six working
‘extraordinary assurances’ to the other
groups including the ones on security and
parties to the conflict with regards to the
intelligence cooperation.
Taliban, to ensure its ‘niche’ in mainstream
In all likelihood, APAPPS carries some
Afghan politics.
hidden pledges that have brought a sea-
Having huge stakes in Afghanistan, Pakistan
change in Afghan attitude and behaviour. An
has always pushed for a political settlement
obstinate and fire-breathing President Ghani
immediately softened his stance. Pleading
the Taliban to come forward and “save the
country,” Ghani not only offered
significant concessions to the insurgents
(details here), but also recognized the militia
as a political party at the second round of
‘Kabul Process’ on 28 February 2018. The
president further climbed down through
his Eid-ul-Fitr ceasefire offer – prophesy about the last battle of Islam,
unexpectedly reciprocated by the Taliban for
the first time in the 17-year-old conflict (by
Pakistan’s persuasion or arm-twisting).
Another ceasefire is expected at the Eid-al-
Qurban on 22 August 2018.
A Collective Front against Daesh
As seen in Daesh’s defeat in Iraq and Syria –
and al-Qaeda’s earlier trouncing in
Afghanistan – no terror-group can withstand
the might of a state, carrying monopoly over
violence. Daesh in Afghanistan is a Daesh’s (anti-Shia and anti-minorities)
combination of three elements: 1) Those
militants who retreated from the Middle East
and found sanctuaries in the lawless and
ungoverned areas of Afghanistan; 2) The
left-over elements of al-Qaeda who, after
losing hope in Aiman-al-Zawahiri’s
uncharismatic leadership to advance their
Islamic cause (sic), swore allegiance to Abu-
Bakr-al-Baghdadi; and 3) The local criminal
bands such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP), Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Lashkar-e-Islam,
East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)
and anti-Shia Jaish-ul-Adal and Lashkar-e-
Jhangavi al-Aalmi. Pakistan’s Zarb-e-
Azb military operation in North Waziristan
(tribal area) in June 2014 had uprooted and
pushed these terror-franchises into
Afghanistan, only to come together under
the banner of Daesh.
President Barack Obama had told cadets at
West Point in May 2014: “[T]oday’s
principal threat no longer comes from a
centralized al-Qaeda leadership. Instead, it
comes from decentralized al-Qaeda affiliates
and extremists, many with agendas focused
in countries where they operate.
Not being an apologist for Taliban, I
have always maintained that had the
Taliban given some political
accommodation in Afghanistan, Daesh
could never have established its
foothold in the country.
As highlighted in my
abovementioned paper on Islamic
extremism, these terror-groups not only seek
power and prestige through their acts, but
some of them genuinely aspire to fulfil
Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him)
the Ghazwa-e-Hind, to be fought in
Khorasan – present day Central Asia,
Afghanistan and South Asia. Unsurprisingly,
Daesh in Afghanistan calls itself Wilayat-e-
Khorasan.
Not being an apologist for Taliban, I have
always maintained that had the Taliban
given some political accommodation in
Afghanistan, Daesh could never have
established its foothold in the country.
sectarian overtone had alarmed the Taliban
right from the beginning. As Taliban’s foot-
soldiers began to break ranks to join Daesh,
Mullah Akhtar Mansour, then Taliban’s
deputy chief, had warned al-Baghdadi
through a letter on 16 June 2015 to stay out
of Afghanistan.
However, Alice Wells, the U.S. special
envoy doesn’t seem to concur with Taliban’s
anti-Daesh hypothesis. During a discussion
at the U.S. Institute for Peace she rejected
the notion by saying: The U.S. was
“disturbed by some countries justification of
the Taliban as a fighting force against the
Islamic State – Khorasan. I think we see a
tendency to exaggerate the IS-Khorasan
threat as a pretext to almost justify a hedging
behaviour.”
Former President Hamid Karzai has,
however, raised serious questions about the
rise of Daesh and extremism in Afghanistan,
blaming the U.S. for using Daesh as its
“tool.” In a surprise move, Washington
further blocked a Pakistani request at the UN
Security Council’s sanctions committee to
declare Daesh-linked Jamaat-ul-Ahrar’s
head, Abdul Wali (alias Umer Khalid
Khurasani) a globally designated terrorist in
May 2018.
Worried about Daesh’s spillover in its
backyard, the Central Asian Republics,
Russia also keeps warning about the
northern Afghanistan becoming a “resting
base” of international terrorism and a
“bridgehead” for establishing its
“destructive” caliphate in the region.”
Russian envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya,
told the Security Council in June 2018 that
“[Daesh] has up to 10,000 fighters in its
ranks, and is already active in at least nine
out of [Afghanistan’s] 34 provinces …
constantly consolidating its position in the
north of the country, turning it into a
springboard for the expansion into Central
Asia.”
In fact, in its naivety and indecent haste to
crush the Taliban militarily, Washington
largely ignored the threat of Daesh spreading
its tentacles in Afghanistan and becoming a
global threat since 2014. United Nations
Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) has totaled-up a record number
of 1,692 fatalities in the first six months of
2018, attributing 52 percent of civilian
casualties in Afghanistan to Daesh’s suicide
and complex attacks.
However, fortunately, the regional countries
like Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan
have woken-up to the threat of Daesh to
their internal and regional stability. The
extraordinary secret meeting of heads of the
intelligence agencies of the four countries in
Pakistan on 11 July 2018 demonstrated their
collective resolve to eliminate Daesh in
Afghanistan. The huddle took place as a
follow-up of an earlier meeting between
Pakistan’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen
(Ret’d) Nasser Janjua, secretary of Iran’s
Supreme National Security Council, Rear
Admiral Shamkhani and secretary of the
Security Council of Russian Federation,
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev in Russia in
April 2018.
Afghanistan’s Internal Squabbling
Three elements remain fundamental for any
insurgency to sustain and find its
justification: 1) A grassroots support among
the people; 2) Alienation of masses towards
the sitting government, and, 3)
Foreign/outside support. Therefore, even if
we cross-out the alleged support of Pakistan,
Iran and Russia to the Taliban, there has
been abundant proof of disillusionment
among Afghan people towards their
‘constitutionally-incongruous’ – and corrupt
to boot – Afghan ‘national unity
government.’
Lauding Taliban’s code of conduct –
La’iha – Shadi Hamid, Vanda Felbab-
Brown and Harold Trinkunas find in their
book Militants, Criminals, and Warlords:
The Challenge of Local Governance in an
Age of Disorder, that “conflicts over land
and water and tribal feuds have escalated
after the end of the Taliban regime as a
result of weak and institutional rule and
power usurpation. The post-Taliban formal
courts have not been able to stop or resolve
such conflicts. Worse, the courts became
corrupt and themselves a tool of land
expropriation.” The authors keep noting:
“The Taliban has moved to fill the gap by
providing free mediation of tribal, criminal,
and personal disputes. Afghans report a
great degree of satisfaction with Taliban
verdicts, unlike those of the official justice
system, where petitioners often have to pay
considerable bribes.”
Despite President Ghani’s peace overtures,
an intra-Afghan dialogue under his
government remains an impossible
proposition. Calling the Afghan officials as
foreign “puppets,” Taliban’s spokesman
Zabihullah Mujahid has already rejected the
High Peace Council’s talks offer. The reason
behind Taliban’s reluctance to join
mainstream politics and accept the
constitution is its undemocratic credentials.
Despite Taliban’s grassroots support base in
the rural areas, the militia knows full well it
has no chance of winning at the ballot in the
cities. Thus, until the Afghan Loya Jirga
figures out an alternate arrangement for
Taliban’s political representation and power,
Afghanistan will stay in turmoil.
‘Washing blood with blood’ this time
some 17-year-old ‘scores’ need to be
settled too
Another hindrance is factionalization among
the insurgent groups. With too many
tongues, you don’t know whom to speak, or
how many to please. Though the small
splinter group led by Mullah Mohammad
Rasool backs peace talks, the Fidai Mahaz
led by Mullah Najeebullah keeps rejecting a
dialogue. Even Mullah Haibatullah
Akhundzada, the head of Taliban’s
mainstream group stays in two minds under
pressure from younger fighters who keep
consolidating their hold over new districts
every day.
However, fortunately, the regional
countries like Russia, China, Iran and
Pakistan have woken-up to the threat of
Daesh to their internal and regional
stability.
Furthermore, in his vain effort to establish
Kabul’s central control and to cleanse the
Afghan democratic system and improve
governance, Mr. Ghani, of late, has been
sidelining powerful Afghan warlords
accused of human rights abuses and
narcotics trade. However, demonstrating
lack of political acumen and proper
familiarity with Afghanistan’s history and
culture, a technocrat president has
exacerbated ethnic fault-lines.
First of all, having denied his Uzbek vice-
president, General Abdul Rasheed Dostum
to return to Afghanistan from his self-exile
in Turkey for 14 months – after allegations
surfaced of Dostum torturing his political
opponent – Ghani had antagonized the
powerful Junbish-i-Milli (political party) and
almost four million Uzbek voters in the
northern Afghanistan. Despite Sarwar
Danish, the second vice president,
negotiating Dostum’s return on 22 July
2018, the political fate of the warlord of
yesteryears harbouring presidential
ambitions, who, Mr. Ghani had branded a
“remorseless killer” in 2009, is still not
clear.
Ghani further stoked ethno-nationalism by
impulsively sacking his non-Pashtun
governors and other senior officials:
First, as the president dismissed the
governor of the Balkh province, Atta
Mohammad Noor, in December 2017, the
so-called “King of the north” eyeing to be
the next Afghan president, refused to oblige.
Despite handing over the province to an ally
in March 2018, Noor’s insubordination
demonstrated limits to Ghani’s powers.
Secondly, kicking up a constitutional crisis,
a second provincial governor, Abdulkarim
Khaddam of the northern Samangan
province also defied a whimsical president
by refusing to step down in February 2018.
Third, a competent administrator and a
person of high repute, Governor Mohammad
Gulab Mangal, was also sent packing on
corruption charges and security deterioration
in the Nangarhar province in May 2018.
Fourth, sparking violent protests Ghani’s
Shaheen 209 Corps
further arrested Nezamuddin Qaisari, a
powerful militia commander and district
police chief of the Faryab province on
flimsy grounds.
Finally, the president unsuccessfully tried to
remove the popular and influential police
chief of Kandahar, a so-called general
named Abdul Raziq Achakzai, only to
be retorted back: Ghani’s government
“cannot fire me.” Condemned by the Human
Rights Watch as “Kandahar’s torture-in-
chief” and a notorious drug smuggler, Raziq
had been an unknown foot-soldier trained by
the U.S. contractors only to rise as a local
hero against Taliban.
Among many of Afghanistan’s misfortunes
the Ghani-Abdullah national unity
government will find prominence in history
chronicles. Such an anomaly did not allow
necessary checks and balances to be
instituted, making the governance fail on all
accounts. Under lack of proper oversight of
US$10 billion by 34 donor nations and
agencies, SIGAR’s head, John
Sopko, found Afghanistan flooded with
more money than it could absorb,
exacerbating corruption and fuelling a
drawn-out conflict.
Conclusion
As the Afghan war soon enters its 18th year,
U.S. must be reckoning how laborious it is
to fight someone else’s war with alien
culture, history and geography. In the fog of
insurgencies and civil-wars the collateral
damage cannot be avoided. Yet it brings a
bad name to the liberators when immense
international pressure comes for mistaken-
identity attacks. While SIGAR’s May 2018’s
report highlighted U.S. forces dropping
1,186 munitions in Afghanistan between
January and March 2018, it
also cited UNAMA’s collected figures of
2017 attributing 6,768 civilian casualties
(2,303 deaths) to anti-government forces and
2,108 civilian casualties (745 deaths) to pro-
government forces.
The shrinking of Afghan security forces by
nearly 11 percent is another indicator of loss
of people’s faith in a futile war. The loss of
numerical strength of the Afghan National
Defence and Security forces (ANDSF) and
the territory held by them had panicked the
Pentagon to the extent that the department of
defence classified the public data, instructing
SIGAR not to release the information. Left
with no choice, SIGAR complainedto the
U.S. Congress on 30 April 2018 about
receiving inaccurate data from the U.S.
forces in Afghanistan.
As the Afghan war soon enters its
18th year, U.S. must be reckoning how
laborious it is to fight someone else’s
war with alien culture, history and
geography.
In my last paper on Afghanistan (mentioned
above), I had concluded that probably it is
America’s long-term strategic interests that
do not allow it to take leave from the region.
However, the time for the U.S. forces to
depart Afghanistan has arrived, letting the
regional countries to tackle – and eliminate –
Daesh. China seems to be seeking a military
base at Wakhan border in Afghanistan for
the same purpose.
Notwithstanding, U.S. secretary of state,
Mike Pompeo describing American footprint
in Afghanistan as a “humble mission” with
objective to leave after “greatly diminishing
the threat to [U.S.] homeland that may
emanate from there,” Senator Rand Paul,
argued at the secretary’s congressional
confirmation hearing that now was the time
to leave as “all those terrorists in
Afghanistan and Pakistan” who had
participated in the 9/11 attacks, had been
eliminated and some of the soldiers fighting
there were not even born when 9/11
happened.
The scenes of conviviality and affection seen
during the last ceasefire between the Taliban
fighters and government security officials
show a kind of war-fatigue on both sides.
While the Afghan government remains
adamant not to budge for power sharing, the
ordinary Afghans are fed up with the
prolonged conflict –
as demonstrated through the 700km long
march by dozens of peace protesters from
Helmand to Kabul chanting slogans such as
“We want peace” and “stop fighting” during
the fasting month of Ramadan (June 2018).
Despite more than 100 Muslim scholars
from around the world pleading “mutual
understanding and direct peaceful
negotiations” among “Muslim Afghan[s]” at
the Saudi city of Mecca on 11 July 2018, the
‘Islamic diplomacy’ is unlikely to convince
the Afghan government or the insurgents.
On 7 March 1993, Saudi King Fahd had also
sponsored a peace accord between the
warring Afghan Mujahedeen leaders, who
all swore at the Holy Ka’ba to end their
fighting, only to break their vow upon
returning to Afghanistan. Similarly,
the Trilateral Ulema Conference, a conclave
of Islamic scholars from Indonesia,
Afghanistan and Pakistan, denouncing
violent extremism, terrorism, and suicide
attacks as against the Islamic principles on
11 May 2018 may also fail to pacify the
historic vengeance in Afghan blood.
The killing of 15 Taliban fighters by Daesh
rivals means intensified fighting among the
militant groups in the coming days.
Considering Daesh a major threat to global
security, effort should be made to reconcile
with the Taliban at priority – who have
publicly pledged not to house al-Qaeda
again or pursue any global agenda – and
eradicate the menace of terrorism and
Islamic extremism once and for all from the
region.
With elections for Wolsei Jirga (lower
house) – oft postponed since 2015 –
scheduled for 20 October 2018 and a new
presidential election next year, the anomaly
of ‘national unity government’ is going to be
thankfully over. However, the elections are
not panacea of Afghanistan’s peace and
stability until the country’s political
fundamentals are first corrected.
The problem is that historically the
‘differences’ among various Afghan
ethnicities have been treated as ‘disputes’ –
not resolved through ‘discussions.’ While
worries abound about Afghanistan
descending into another ethnic conflict or a
civil-war after the withdrawal of U.S. and
NATO forces, the security ownership taken
by the regional countries should be
satisfying. The collective resolve shown by
Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran
means Daesh will not be allowed to fester
further or spillover into those countries.
Period.
However, it is the Afghans who have to sort
out their internal issues themselves. At
another place in her book Farewell Kabul,
Christina Lamb quotes an elderly Afghan
observing pensively, “War never leaves this
land.” However, it is time the Afghans bring
an end to the four-decade long conflict and
open a new chapter towards mutual
understanding and harmony, progress and
prosperity. For once, Afghans must prove
Alexander Cockburn wrong for reinforcing
the myth that Afghanistan is “nothing but
mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with
views as medieval as their muskets.”
It was for such redefining moments in the
history of nations that T.S. Eliot had said:
“What we call the beginning is often the
end. And to make an end is to make a
beginning. The end is where we start from.”
Will Sino-US Relations
Drive Pak-US Relations?
CSS International
Relations
A Brief History
Since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, it
has had a mixed relationship with the United
States, encompassing several ups and downs
over the decades. Pakistan came into being
as a sovereign state, like many former
colonial territories, during the early Cold
War. The U.S. Cold War grand strategy of
containment of communism and Soviet
influence shaped its early interactions with
Pakistan. (CSS International relations)
It is conceivable the U.S.-Pakistan
relationship will continue to
deteriorate, but the question then is
whether it would result in a hard or soft
landing.
For its part, Pakistan was eager to ally itself
with the leading superpower as a means to
boost its defense capabilities. In exchange of
military aid, advanced technology, and an
informal security umbrella, Pakistan gave
the United States access to bases, shared
intelligence, and was formally in the anti-
Soviet bloc as a member of both the Central
Treaty Organization (CENTO) and
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO).
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ever in US-China tug of war
Due to concerns about the Soviet influence
on India and efforts to normalize relations
with China, the United States backed
Pakistan in its conflicts with India, even
providing material and moral support to
Pakistan during the 1971 India-Pakistan War
that led to the independence of Bangladesh.
At the end of the decade, when the Soviets
invaded Afghanistan, the United States and
Pakistan collaborated closely to push them
back. Their covert strategy was to encourage
a ‘jihad’ against the Soviets and to arm and
train militants – the mujahideen – to liberate
Afghanistan.
While this approach was successful in
defeating the Soviets, it did not prepare
Afghanistan for the civil war and chaos that
would follow, as some elements of the U.S.-
and Pakistan – backed mujahideen’s
morphed into the Taliban, who took over
and imposed harsh, regressive laws.
During the 1980s, Pakistan also made
significant strides towards developing
nuclear weapons capabilities. Research
suggests that the United States was fully
aware of the program’s developments but
unwilling to sanction Pakistan for its nuclear
program due to the prioritization of
containing communism and cooperating in
Afghanistan. As the Cold War ended,
however, the U.S. incentives to ignore
growing evidence of Pakistani nuclearization
declined, causing a significant downturn in
relations.
The United States invoked a piece of
legislation known as the Pressler
Amendment in 1990 to sanction Pakistan
and further sanctioned it under the Glenn
and Symington Amendments in 1998 after it
conducted nuclear tests. These punitive
measures dealt a significant blow to
Pakistan’s economy and fostered public
distrust, and even hostility, towards the
United States.
The United States will continue to take
interest in Pakistan’s stability, and the
two countries will still have to
cooperate on certain issues such as
counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and
the security and reconstruction of
Afghanistan.
Post-9/11 Relations
Following the devastating terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, an opportunity for
rapprochement between the United States
and Pakistan emerged. The United States
invaded Afghanistan within a month in order
to eliminate Al Qaeda and its Taliban
patrons. Like an echo of the anti-Soviet
jihad, the United States again sought the
cooperation of Pakistan in fulfilling U.S.
objectives in Afghanistan.
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dominates IMF gathering
It, therefore, waived the nuclear-related
sanctions against Pakistan in 2001 and
formally designated Pakistan a major non-
NATO ally in 2004, proceeding to
give billions of dollarsin assistance to the
country for support in the War on Terror.
Yet, the two countries’ different visions for
what stable peace in Afghanistan and the
broader region should look like hindered full
strategic cooperation. Although Pakistan did
support U.S. efforts in several ways, its
ongoing support for the Taliban and other
related militant groups (whether tacit or
active) – what some U.S. analysts have
termed a “double game” – continues to be a
major source of tension.
Many in the United States believe that its
failures in Afghanistan stem from Taliban
sanctuaries in Pakistan. On the other hand,
many Pakistanis attribute this failure to an
over-militarized U.S. strategy without
genuine efforts at a negotiated settlement.
They also blame the United States for
employing a reckless level of force,
including drone strikes on Pakistani soil, that
has intensified, if not triggered, Pakistan’s
domestic terrorism problem.
The discovery and assassination of Osama
Bin Laden in May 2011 in Abbottabad – a
city home to Pakistan’s military academy –
caused further damage to U.S.-Pakistan ties.
To many Americans, both of the possibilities
that the Pakistani state was either harboring
Bin Laden or ignorant of his presence were
grounds for a rupture in relations. The
Pakistani government denied that it had prior
knowledge of Bin Laden’s whereabouts,
while many Pakistanis were outraged by the
raid because they felt it was a violation of
Pakistani sovereignty.
As the Cold War ended, however, the
U.S. incentives to ignore growing
evidence of Pakistani nuclearization
declined, causing a significant
downturn in relations.
From the U.S. standpoint, Pakistan had
engaged in reckless nuclear proliferation
(discovered with the disruption of the A.Q.
Khan network in 2003), worked against U.S.
efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, and backed
international terrorist networks that
conducted horrific attacks like the one on
Mumbai in November 2008. Abbottabad
was the final straw and bilateral relations
have struggled to recover ever since.
From Pakistan’s standpoint, the United
States had also contributed to the
deterioration of the relationship. The U.S.
appeared to renege on three assurances it
had made to the Musharraf government after
9/11 on Kabul, Kashmir, and Pakistan’s
strategic assets. The U.S. did not prevent
Northern Alliance forces from taking Kabul
after the Taliban fell, and it was never able
to reverse their influence on the Afghan
state, which Pakistan saw as opening space
for Indian influence.
The United States also failed to invest
significant effort in resolving the decades-
long Kashmir dispute between India and
Pakistan. And while it did not seek to harm
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and delivery
systems, it provided a significant boost to
Indian capabilities with the Indo-U.S. civil
nuclear deal signed in 2005 and
implemented as legislation in 2008.
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over ‘provocative military movement’ in
the…
The Future
For better or worse, U.S.-Pakistan relations
going forward in the twenty-first century
may increasingly be shaped by the role of
China. China’s rise on the global stage has
been a major driver of U.S. foreign policy
considerations in recent years. To balance
against China in the Asia-Pacific region, the
United States has actively courted India as a
strategic partner since the early 2000s. U.S.
strategists believe that India’s favorable
geography, population size, rising economy,
similarity in institutions and values, and
formidable military enable and motivate it to
be an effective guardian of the status quo
international order and a geopolitical
counterweight to China.
As part of this strengthening of U.S.-India
ties, the United States has treated India and
Pakistan differently than in the past, much to
Pakistan’s frustration. Most notably, the
Indo-U.S. civil nuclear deal that was
finalized in 2008 removed significant
obstacles to U.S.-India strategic cooperation
and gave India access to international
nuclear commerce despite it not being party
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). Because this exception was only
made for India, Pakistan felt (and China
concurred) that the United States
was discriminating against it.
At the end of the decade, when the
Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the
United States and Pakistan collaborated
closely to push them back.
Parallel to the Indo-U.S. alignment, Pakistan
has been growing closer to China, already its
longtime supporter. Diminishing U.S. aid
has been replaced by the huge influx of
investment and loans from China for the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a series
of energy and transportation infrastructure
projects to upgrade Pakistan’s economic
productivity. It remains to be seen to what
extent China can fully replace the United
States in Pakistan, but it seems unlikely that
the U.S.-Pakistan relationship will
completely lapse. The United States will
continue to take interest in Pakistan’s
stability, and the two countries will still have
to cooperate on certain issues such as
counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and the
security and reconstruction of Afghanistan.
The South Asian “Trilemma” for U.S.
Strategy
At some level, there is a fundamental tension
or trilemma between the three U.S. strategic
objectives of balancing China, ensuring
nuclear security and strategic stability, and
preventing international terrorist safe
havens. The means to these ends require
aligning closely with India to balance a
rising China, cooperating closely with
Pakistan, and building up the Afghan state to
eliminate ungoverned spaces, but pursuing
one can undermine another.
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for trade talks: White House
Aligning with India induces insecurity in
Pakistan, resulting in less cooperation and
greater reliance on asymmetric assets to
counterbalance a rising India on both its
borders. Cooperation with Pakistan to
enhance its stability foments distrust in both
U.S.-India and U.S.-Afghan relations,
slowing both those efforts. And nation-
building in Afghanistan diverts increasingly
scarce U.S. attention and resources away
from the challenge of balancing China.
How the United States seeks to juggle or
resolve these tensions will have a significant
impact on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship in
the long run. Some refuse to acknowledge
the tradeoff and are loath to think that the
United States, as the sole superpower,
should have to give anything up. Other
strategic thinkers seem to suggest that the
United States should privilege its relations
with India and Afghanistan and abandon
Pakistan, which may be forming a bloc with
China.
By contrast, an alternative strategy might try
to order U.S. objectives and work to still
achieve them based on the relative priority
level. For instance, the United States could
continue to build the U.S.-India relationship
to balance (though not contain) a rising
China, principally through naval
cooperation to ensure stability and access to
the Indian Ocean commons. At the same
time, the United States could continue to
cooperate with Pakistan to help it develop
into a stable, middle-income country
contributing to regional security.
No doubt, abetting India’s rise with material
support will make it harder for the United
States to cooperate with Pakistan, but not
impossible if it deftly manages second-order
consequences with diplomatic tact and
commits to ensuring Pakistan’s minimum-
security needs of regional strategic stability.
Because balancing China is the priority, the
United States will not be able to dictate or
get everything it wants with Pakistan, so it
will have to prioritize what it most values.
For instance, it could prioritize supporting
Pakistan’s own stability and preventing a
nuclear arms race while downgrading its
position on Afghanistan and yielding space
to a negotiated settlement closer to what
Pakistan seeks.
The U.S. did not prevent Northern
Alliance forces from taking Kabul after
the Taliban fell, and it was never able
to reverse their influence on the Afghan
state, which Pakistan saw as opening
space for Indian influence.
History provides a useful lesson for skeptics.
Despite conventional wisdom, even while
the United States was cooperating with
Pakistan in the Afghan jihad to bleed the
Soviets, it did not completely foreclose on
its nonproliferation agenda, and in fact was
actually partially successful given its
objectives. As Miller and Rabinowitz argue
in a 2015 article in ‘International Security’,
the United States was successfully able to
set constraints on states with nascent nuclear
capabilities, including Pakistan.
Addition of Security
Component to BRI –
CSS Current Affairs
China appears to be shifting gears in its
multi-billion dollar Belt and Road initiative
(BRI). Long projected as driven by
economics and the benefit of infrastructure
linkages, China appears to be increasingly
adding a security component to the initiative
against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping
positioning of his country as a superpower
rather than a developing nation. The
emergence of a security component is not
only highlighted by the establishment last
year of China’s first foreign military base in
Djibouti, but also in its stepped-up security
cooperation with Afghanistan and other
Central Asian nations that border on its
north-western province of Xinjiang. (CSS
Current Affairs)
China’s security focus is driven by concerns
about national and religious aspirations in
Xinjiang of Uyghurs, an ethnic Turkic
Muslim group that has long looked
westward toward Central Asia and Turkey
rather than eastward towards Beijing. China
has sought to radically alter Uyghur identity
by introducing a 21st-century repressive
surveillance state that invades the privacy of
Uyghurs and sends tens, if not hundreds of
thousands to re-education camps where
indoctrination is designed to install Chinese
rather than Uyghur nationalist or Islamic
values.
Chinese defense minister Chang
Wanquan vowed to “firmly maintain
Xinjiang’s stability” and “build an iron
wall to enhance border defense.”
President Xi Jinping reiterated the need
for a “great wall of iron” in March.
China’s security focus on Afghanistan and
Central Asia is intended to counter Uyghur
militants who have moved to the region after
the defeats suffered by the Islamic State in
Syria and Iraq and the group’s establishment
of a base in Afghanistan and the Pakistani
province of Balochistan. It also aims,
together with efforts to cut off contact
between Uyghurs and their Central Asian
brethren, to fend off the influence of non-
violent Uyghur Diaspora groups who have
been resident in Central Asia for decades.
Read more: Pakistan’s financial crisis puts
OBOR in jeopardy
Uyghur fighters speaking in videos
distributed by the Islamic State have vowed
to return home to “plant their flag in China.”
One fighter, addressing evil Chinese
Communist infidel lackeys,” threatened that
“in retaliation for the tears that flow from the
eyes of the oppressed, we will make your
blood flow in rivers, by the will of God.”
The Islamic State threats and migration of
East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)
fighters from Syria and Iraq to the Afghan
province of Badakhshan raises in China’s
mind the spectre of a return to the 1990s, a
period of protests and attacks in Xinjiang,
when the Taliban government allowed
Uyghur militants to operate from its
territory.
China’s security focus is driven by
concerns about national and religious
aspirations in Xinjiang of Uyghurs, an
ethnic Turkic Muslim group that has
long looked westward toward Central
Asia and Turkey rather than eastward
towards Beijing.
Some analysts argue nonetheless that China
is more worried that Uyghur militants
operating from Afghanistan may pose a
greater threat to the China Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC), at US$50
billion plus a Belt and Road crown jewel and
its single largest investment, than to
Xinjiang.
China also fears that the militants could
expand from Afghanistan into Central Asia
and particularly Tajikistan. The Afghan-
Tajik border is 1,357 kilometres long, two
thirds of which is in Badakhshan, while the
Tajik-Chinese borders runs for 414
kilometres compared to only 76 kilometres
along the Afghan-Chinese frontier. The
analysts note that Chinese scholars
participating in March in a European
Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
conference doubted whether militants would
be able to infiltrate Xinjiang from
Afghanistan.
Read more: Belt and Road Initiative
attracting car manufacturers in Pakistan
Militants have repeatedly targeted Chinese
assets and personnel in Pakistan. At least
one Uyghur was involved in a 2016 suicide
bombing of the Chinese embassy in the
Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek while a Uyghur
gunman killed 39 people in an attack on an
Istanbul nightclub in January of last year.
Chinese security cooperation has so far
concentrated on joint counter-terrorism
operations with Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
It first became apparent with reports that
Chinese troops were joining their Afghan
counterparts in patrolling the Wakhan
Corridor, a tiny strip of Afghanistan
bordering the on Xinjiang.
China earlier pledged US$ 70 million in aid
for Afghan counter-terrorism efforts. The
Chinese scholars participating in the ECFR
conference said Chinese border control
assistance extended beyond the Wakhan
Corridor to the Badakshan-Tajik border.
One fighter, addressing evil Chinese
Communist infidel lackeys,” threatened
that “in retaliation for the tears that
flow from the eyes of the oppressed,
we will make your blood flow in rivers,
by the will of God.”
China agreed two years ago to fund and
build 11 military outposts and a training
facility to beef up Tajikistan’s defense
capabilities along its border with
Afghanistan that hosts a large part of the
main highway connecting Tajikistan’s most
populous regions to China. China has since
stepped up the sharing of intelligence with
Tajikistan on issues related to political
violence, religious extremism and drug
trafficking.
The Chinese defense ministry announced in
April that China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and
Tajikistan would perform joint
counterterrorism and training and exercises
that focus on real combat experiences. China
and Afghanistan agreed last year to lay a
cross-border fibre-optic cable that like in the
case of Pakistan could pave the way to
export China’s model of a surveillance state
to Afghanistan.
Read more: China uses Belt and Road
investment to shape Pakistan’s political
climate
“China will strengthen military exchanges
and anti-terrorism cooperation with
Afghanistan to ensure security between the
two nations and the region,” said Xu
Qiliang, deputy chairman of China’s Central
Military Commission. Mr. Xu was speaking
in December on the sidelines of a meeting of
the Chinese, Afghan and Pakistani foreign
ministers designed to ease tensions between
Kabul and Islamabad and integrate
Afghanistan into CPEC. Pakistan has so far
resisted sharing CPEC glory with
Afghanistan.
China hopes that a resolution of Pakistani-
Afghan disputes would pave the road to a
Chinese mediated resolution of the Afghan
war that would allow the Taliban to share
power. On a visit to Xinjiang in January,
Chinese defense minister Chang Wanquan
vowed to “firmly maintain Xinjiang’s
stability” and “build an iron wall to enhance
border defense.” President Xi Jinping
reiterated the need for a “great wall of iron”
in March.
China earlier pledged US$ 70 million
in aid for Afghan counter-terrorism
efforts. The Chinese scholars
participating in the ECFR conference
said Chinese border control assistance
extended beyond the Wakhan Corridor
to the Badakshan-Tajik border.
Pan Zhiping, head of the Central Asian
Studies Institute at the Xinjiang Academy of
Social Science, argued that “China’s
approach is always to stabilise bordering
countries. If the CPEC links up to
Afghanistan, it can ultimately be a gateway
to Iran and the Indian Ocean.”
Read more: What is China’s main motive
behind Belt and Road Initiative?
Afghanistan and Central Asia, regions that
most immediately impact the security of
Xinjiang, are likely to be first steps in what
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
described as China’s intent of “resolving
hotspot issues with Chinese characteristics.”
Greater emphasis on the Belt and Road’s
security component would also be in line
with Mr. Xi’s assertion last month that
China was ready to “lead in the reform of
global governance.”
China scholar Elizabeth Economy said Mr.
Xi’s “ambition is most evident close to
home.” Ms. Economy was referring to
policy in the South China Sea, Hong Kong
and with regard to Taiwan. It is becoming
equally evident in China’s other near abroad:
Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Partition of India:
Gandhi’s Role –
CSS Pakistan Affairs
When the All-India Muslim League was
established in Dhaka in 1906 by leading
Muslim figures from around the
country, India had just begun to slowly
transition to self-rule from the British Raj.
From the outset, the political party’s primary
goal was to protect the interests of India’s
large Muslim minority, especially its elite.
Its initial strategy was to use the
demographic weight of the Muslim-majority
provinces in northwestern and eastern India,
particularly the two large provinces of
Punjab and Bengal, to secure larger Muslim
representation in the legislature, in the
executive branch, and in public services in
minority provinces, where Muslims were
most in need of protection. (CSS Pakistan
Affairs)
In the end, the 1947 partition of India, which
the Muslim League later advocated,
accomplished exactly the opposite. The
separation cut away the Muslim-majority
provinces from the rest of India, leaving
Muslims in the minority provinces far more
vulnerable to the will of the Hindu majority.
The division of the
subcontinent reduced Muslims’ share of the
population from over a quarter in British
India to just ten percent in independent
India, allowing Hindu chauvinists to openly
equate Indian nationalism with Hindu
nationalism.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of
Pakistan and the leader of the Muslim
League in its final phase, is often assumed to
have been the one who brought about
partition. But some leading scholars, such as
Ayesha Jalal, contend that Jinnah never
wanted it. According to Jalal, the demand
for Pakistan was a bargaining chip for
Jinnah that unfortunately took on a
momentum of its own, leading not only to
the division of India but also to the partition
of its largest Muslim-majority provinces,
Punjab and Bengal, into two parts. Partition
left Jinnah, in his own words, with a
“truncated or mutilated moth-eaten”
Pakistan.
Partition, however, cannot be blamed on the
Muslim League and Jinnah alone. There had
always been an explicitly Hindu majoritarian
streak in Indian nationalism that equated
Indian identity with Hinduism and defined
India in Hindu terms, for example as a
mother goddess akin to Kali and Durga. The
literature that this strand of thinking
produced was explicitly anti-Muslim in
character. Organizationally it took the form
of the Hindu Mahasabha, an exclusivist
Hindu party set up to defend the rights and
privileges of the Hindu majority, and the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a
proto-fascist paramilitary group that
spawned a number of other organizations,
including the Bharatiya Janata Party in
power in India today. The RSS propagated a
militant Hindu supremacist ideology that
defined the Muslim Indian as the other. M.
S. Golwalkar, the leader of the RSS from
1940 to 1973, openly declared that “in this
land Hindus have been the owners, Parsis
and Jews the guests, and Muslims and
Christians the dacoits [band of armed
robbers].”
Explicit Hindu chauvinism was only of
secondary importance during the
independence movement. The predominant
strand of Hindu nationalism, in contrast,
blended Hindu nationalism with Indian
nationalism far more subtly—by adopting
Hindu symbols, for example—but without
explicitly denouncing Muslims as outsiders.
This predominant strand of Hindu
nationalism was always a part of the
mainstream Indian National Congress
(known simply as the Congress) and was
exemplified by nationalist stalwarts such as
the activists Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Lala
Lajpat Rai in the earlier phase and Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first deputy prime
minister, at the time of independence.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the leading
figure of the nationalist movement from
1920 until independence, professed that
above all his mission was to bridge the gap
between Hindus and Muslims; yet large
segments of the Muslim elite consistently
considered him to belong to the implicit
Hindu nationalist tradition. In their view,
Gandhi imperceptibly equated Hinduness
with Indianness by his dress, vocabulary,
and demeanor and his obsession with the
protection of cows, considered sacred by
Hindus. Consequently, the Muslim elite felt
their identity under greater threat with
Gandhi at the helm of the Congress than
they had before he became the undisputed
leader of the party.
HINDU NATIONALISM AND THE
MUSLIM ELITE
The politics of Indian independence was
above all elite politics; the masses had only
instrumental value. Even in the last elections
held in India under the Raj in 1946, only 13
percent of the adult population had the right
to vote based on property and income
criteria. In the run-up to Indian
independence, the Muslim elite harbored a
sense of great insecurity connected to
history, demography, lack of progress in
English education, and other factors. Before
the Raj, the center of gravity of Indian
politics was the heartland of northern and
central India, where much of the Muslim
elite was concentrated. When control began
to shift to the hands of the East India
Company, power shifted as well to the
coastal cities of Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay, where the trading company had
established its bases. These coastal cities and
their hinterlands were dominated by an
emerging English-educated, predominantly
Hindu elite who made up the bulk of Indian
administrators in subordinate positions in the
Raj as well as spokespersons for self-
government in India.
Whether Muslims’ insecurities at the time of
independence were warranted is beside the
point. They pervaded the psyche of the
Muslim elite and had to be addressed in a
manner acceptable to community leaders if
India was to remain united. As Gandhi’s
grandson and leading public intellectual
Rajmohan Gandhi has succinctly stated, “A
journey towards independence that did not
remove Muslim anxieties was bound to lead
to Partition.”
Gandhi’s appearance on the scene changed
the character of the national movement from
a constitutionalist to a populist one. As a
leader interested in mobilizing the masses,
Gandhi couched part of his political
terminology in Hindu religious idioms. He
used the term ram rajya (governance by the
Hindu deity Ram), for example, to signify
that a just order would prevail after
independence. But that alienated much of
the Muslim elite because it alluded to a
mythical Hindu golden age before the advent
of Islam in India. Gandhi’s deliberate
adoption of the attire of a Hindu holy man,
or sant, also repelled large segments of
Muslims. The use of the term mahatma—
great soul—by Gandhi’s acolytes as his title
introduced Hindu spiritual terminology into
the political arena and further increased
Muslim alienation.
In 1920, Jinnah, then a senior and
thoroughly secular leader of the Congress,
strongly opposed Gandhi’s use of religious
idioms in politics and warned that “it was a
crime to mix up politics and religion the way
he had done.” Jinnah believed that doing so
contributed to communal polarization. He
was also staunchly against Gandhi’s support
for the antediluvian Khilafat movement,
which sought a restoration of the Ottoman
caliphate after its defeat in World War I.
Gandhi joined the Khilafat movement to
draw the support of the Muslim masses for
his noncooperation movement, aimed at
boycotting all British-created institutions in
India in an effort to gain independence for
the country.
For Jinnah, reference to a backward-looking
golden age specific to the Hindu or Muslim
communities from which the other was
excluded was a recipe for division. Jinnah
had been the principal architect of the
Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the
Congress and the Muslim League, for which
he was called the “ambassador of Hindu-
Muslim unity.” He left the Congress in 1920
in disgust after he was hooted down at the
Nagpur session of the party for not referring
to Gandhi as “Mahatma” and for refusing to
endorse the noncooperation policy because
of his commitment to constitutionalist means
for gaining independence.
Muslim suspicion of Gandhi increased in
1932 after his stubborn opposition to the
Communal Award of British Prime Minister
Ramsay MacDonald. The award granted
separate electorates, or reserved legislative
seats, to India’s depressed classes, a
euphemism for the untouchables of the
Hindu caste system, now known as Dalits.
The Dalits were given the same privilege the
Muslims had enjoyed of choosing their own
representatives to the legislature in future
elections. The Muslim League accepted the
award, but the Congress rejected it. Gandhi
considered the award a device meant to
divide Hindu society and pledged a fast unto
death to persuade the British to repeal it.
This hunger strike forced B. R. Ambedkar,
the leader of the Dalits, to drop his demand
for separate electorates for his people, a
decision he publicly regretted in an
interview to the BBC in 1955. In the same
interview, Ambedkar disparaged Gandhi for
his unwavering commitment to the caste
system, implying that his concern for the
untouchables was a sham.
Gandhi’s rejection of the Communal Award
seemed to send a message to the Muslim
leaders that he and the Congress were more
interested in promoting a monolithic Hindu
bloc under upper-caste control than in
nurturing Hindu-Muslim unity and allowing
Muslims their fair share of power in
independent India. The logic was simple: if
implemented, the award would have led to
parity between Muslim and upper-caste
Hindu representatives in the legislatures;
Dalit representatives elected through
separate Dalit electorates would have held
the balance. The Muslim elite did not find
the Dalits threatening. In fact, they saw them
as potential allies against upper-caste Hindus
who had mistreated the Dalits for centuries
and, according to many Muslims, were now
bent on dominating the Muslims in a similar
manner.
THE PATH TO PARTITION
Soon after Gandhi’s rejection of the
Communal Award in 1932, Jinnah returned
from self-imposed exile in London in 1934
to take over the leadership of the Muslim
League. The leader who returned, however,
was very different from the Jinnah who
warned Gandhi about the dangers of mixing
religion with politics in 1920. He now
decided to emulate Gandhi. The Qaid-e-
Azam (Great Leader), as he came to be
known among his followers, eventually
outdid the Mahatma in his use of religion for
political purposes. He argued that Hindus
and Muslims were not just a majority and a
minority community but two distinct
nations. This formula became the
steppingstone for the demand for Pakistan
first put forward, although in rather vague
terms, at the Lahore session of the Muslim
League in 1940.
Simultaneously, the Congress, which
claimed to represent all Indians, became
increasingly Hindu in its composition under
Gandhi’s leadership, which continued
unofficially even after he resigned from
party membership in 1934. Although the
Muslim vote at the time was divided among
the Muslim League and numerous regional
Muslim parties, the Muslim League
nevertheless won four times the number of
seats reserved for Muslims—106 to 25—as
did the Congress in the 1937 provincial
elections.
The Congress, which claimed to represent
all Indians, became increasingly Hindu in its
composition under Gandhi’s leadership.
The December 1945 election to the Central
Assembly was a major victory for the
Muslim League, which won all 30 seats
allocated to the Muslims. In the subsequent
provincial elections held in 1946, it won an
overwhelming majority of 425 out of 476
seats reserved for the Muslim community,
thus demonstrating that it was well on its
way to becoming the sole representative of
the Muslims of India, or at least of its elite.
A partial explanation for this shift is that in
Muslim perceptions, the Congress
governments in power in most provinces
between 1937 and 1939 treated the
community unfairly. Congress President
Jawaharlal Nehru’s disdain for Jinnah and
the Muslim League and his refusal to
accommodate the league in the provincial
government in the United Provinces after the
1937 elections, for example, contributed to
the Muslim disenchantment with the
Congress. Gandhi, with his immense
influence over the Congress leadership,
could have overruled Nehru but decided not
to do so. That he had the power to override
the Congress leadership was demonstrated
two years later when he forced Subhas
Chandra Bose out of his elected position as
president of the Congress because Gandhi
found him insufficiently pliable and too
radical for his taste.
Throughout this period, Gandhi remained
the unofficial but undisputed leader of the
Congress. He attended all Congress Working
Committee meetings; no member could be
appointed to the CWC and no decisions
could be taken by the Congress High
Command without his approval. This
continued until the spring of 1947, when
Nehru and Patel broke with him, for
different reasons, on the question of
accepting the idea of partition.
Gandhi opposed partition to the very end.
Despite his opposition, Gandhi’s earlier
alienation of the Muslim elite through his
deliberate adoption of Hindu garb and
vocabulary as well as through some of his
political decisions that they considered pro-
Hindu and anti-Muslim means that he cannot
be absolved from at least partial
responsibility for what came to pass.
In the light of historical evidence, only some
of which has been presented here with
specific reference to Gandhi, it would be a
mistake to attribute partition solely to the
machinations of Jinnah and the Muslim
League. From the late nineteenth century
onward, one cannot deny the existence of a
strong streak among the Muslim elite that
emphasized the distinct identity of Indian
Muslims. This streak of thought resisted
unconditional amalgamation into the
national mainstream, which the Muslim elite
perceived could become a vehicle for Hindu
domination because the latter composed
about 65 percent of the population in
preindependence India. (The Aligarh
Movement founded by Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan bears testimony to this fact.)
This feeling among the Muslim elite was
augmented, however, by a similarly strong
streak of Hindu nationalism evident from the
same period both within and outside the
Congress. The difference between the two
was that emphasis on Muslim identity,
because it was a minority phenomenon,
could be easily labeled separatism, while
Hindu nationalism—especially of the
implicit and subtle variety—could easily
pass off as Indian nationalism because it
represented the nationalism of the majority.
Unfortunately, this was a conundrum that
the Indian national movement and its
leaders, including Gandhi, could not resolve.
Partition was the result of the cumulative
failure of the Hindu and Muslim elites to
find a satisfactory solution to this dilemma.
Pakistan’s Dual Threat:
CSS Pakistan Affairs
Pakistan’s former prime
minister Nawaz Sharif has
insinuated that the
Supreme Court’s decision
to disqualify him is a
consequence of
challenging the military on
cross-border terrorism.
Nawaz Sharif’s politics are
cynical, but does he have a
point?
At the end of May, Pakistan’s elected
assemblies will complete their scheduled
five-year tenure and the country will embark
on a 60-day campaign to democratically
elect its next empowered national leader.
(CSS Pakistan Affairs)
The alternative story, as narrated by three-
time former prime minister Sharif, is that the
forthcoming general election will decide
whether Pakistan’s democracy will survive
an Orwellian conspiracy by a domineering
military to install puppets in his stead.
Since his disqualification, 68-year-old Sharif
has sought to reinvent himself. The distant,
regal prime minister has been replaced by a
populist guardian of the sanctity of the
democratic vote.
His rallying cry – “why was I ousted?” – has
resonated among supporters of his Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz in populous eastern
Punjab province, home to more than half of
the constituencies of the National Assembly.
Recent by-elections and public opinion polls
suggest the party would comfortably retain
its parliamentary majority, assuming the
electoral process is not subjected to rigorous
manipulation.
But Sharif and his supporters insist the fix is
underway by a military-judiciary nexus.
Asked to enunciate his claims, however,
Sharif steered the interview towards
Pakistan’s growing diplomatic isolation over
its failure to prevent cross terrorist attacks
on neighbouring Afghanistan and India.
Despite the enormous human and economic
cost of its successful decade-long war
against Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan insurgents,
“we have isolated ourselves…Afghanistan’s
narrative is being accepted, but ours is not.
We must look into it,” he said.
“Militant organisations are active. Call them
non-state actors, should we allow them to
cross the border and kill 150 people in
Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we
complete the trial? It’s absolutely
unacceptable,” he said, referring to the
stalled trial of Jamaat ud Dawa (accused of
being a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba) activists
accused of masterminding a three-day
terrorist assault on India’s commercial
centre in November 2008.
Sharif did not mention the military, but his
insinuation could not have been clearer. He
was adding his weighty voice to the US-led
chorus which is demanding that Pakistan’s
generals end their alleged support for
terrorist groups like Jamaat ud Dawa and the
so-called Haqqani Network.
Cynically, Sharif has sought to portray his
power struggle with the military as a battle
between Pakistani democracy and terrorism
– indeed, his interview reads like an appeal
for foreign intervention.
Nonetheless, Sharif has made a powerful
point.
In the aftermath of the massacre of 140
children and staff at an army-run school in
Peshawar in December 2014, the military
publicly committed to no longer differentiate
between so-called “good and bad” Taliban.
On the basis of that solemn promise,
parliament warily granted the military
extraordinary powers to expand
counterterrorism operations under
the National Action Plan.
Pakistan’s international partners, the US in
particular, also temporarily eased pressure
on the cross border terrorism issue to give
the military one last chance to fulfil that
promise.
In truth, neither Pakistan’s politicians nor its
international partners believed the military
would live up to its commitment.
Sharif hoped its failure would empower him
to restart the process of dialogue he had
initiated upon assuming power in June 2013.
Within months, it had been scuttled by
the sudden resurgence of militant activity in
disputed Kashmir, as fighting between
Pakistani and Indian forces flared there for
the first time in a decade.
The US, too, was biding its time, eager to
recast the intransigence of the Pakistani
military in the context of China’s expanding
role in continental Asia through President Xi
Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
It killed two birds with one stone in May
2016 by staging the drone-borne
assassination of the Afghan Taliban chief,
Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, as he drove
through Pakistan’s western Balochistan
province, the focal area of the China-
Pakistan Economic Corridor linking Kashgar
to the Arabian Sea.
As an active partner in a US-led
quadrilateral alliance against the China,
India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister,
Narendra Modi, also sought to exploit the
situation by covertly fueling a low-
key insurgency in Balochistan.
With its competitors circling, China
had nothing to gain from being seen to
support a Pakistani geopolitical policy with a
shelf-life which expired on September 11,
2001. In February, it dropped its opposition
to a US-led, India-backed move to place
Pakistan back on an international terror
financing watch list. Last month, Xi and
Modi agreed to explore joint development
projects in Afghanistan.
However duplicitous their tactics and
objectives, the US and India have
completely outmanoeuvred the authors of
Pakistan’s foreign policy narrative. By
persisting with it, Pakistan’s military would
be as responsible for inviting foreign
intervention as Sharif is with his cynical
misrepresentation of their domestic power
struggle.
President Donald Trump has made no secret
of his intention to punish Pakistan for
America’s complete mishandling of the war
in Afghanistan, and he is being egged on by
the warlords of Afghanistan’s manufactured
government.
Like Orwell’s characters in “Animal Farm”,
if Napoleon and Snowball don’t stop
bickering over the supremacy of two legs or
four, Pakistan’s sovereign interests will end
up like Boxer – in the knacker’s yard.

People who shaped Islamic
Civilization-
CSS Islamic Studies
Coverage of violence and Islam often go
hand in hand. So it comes as a relief to be
reminded that historically, culturally and
intellectually, Islam is less a nihilistic creed
than a global civilisation. A new book by
Chase Robinson, which includes 30 pen-
portraits of significant figures in Islamic
history, is an elegant digest of the many
colourful, creative and technologically
innovative manifestations that the Prophet
Muhammad inspired from his seventh-
century oases in the Arabian peninsula.
(CSS Islamic studies)
Majestic The Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem
The warriors and potentates are there, of
course. Starting with Muhammad and ending
with Shah Ismail 900 years later, they
bookend the narrative. But in Robinson’s
telling their martial arts are secondary to
their aesthetic ones. Muhammad is
celebrated not for his battlefield victories but
his verse. Abd al-Malik, the caliph who took
Cyprus, was better known to Islamic
chroniclers for building Jerusalem’s majestic
Dome of the Rock and, less appealingly,
halitosis so severe it could kill a fly.
Mahmoud of Ghazni, the jihadist who
conquered the Hindu kingdoms of north-
western India, was admired for decorating
Islam’s eastern periphery with gardens.
(“You have strung the wild rose with
patterns of pearls,” oozed a court poet.)
Timur, the Mongol “sheep-rustler and
world-conqueror”, built towers of skulls but
also the soaring, sublime mosques of
Samarkand. Sultan Mehmed II, the Ottoman
conqueror of Constantinople, was “a
renaissance man”.
As fascinating as the fighters are the
characters in the courts they patronised.
Robinson’s cast includes free-thinking
physicians and biologists, calligraphers,
cartographers (including Muhammad al-
Idrisi, below), historians and poets. Though
Muhammad himself was illiterate, his
tradition was steeped in letters. One of his
Suras, or Koranic chapters, was called “the
Pen”. By tradition, the first man, Adam,
fashioned the first pen, and Ali, the
prophet’s son-in-law and successor, coined
his own Arabic script.
Tycoons and businessmen are present, too:
in the ninth century, as now, manufacturers
were complaining of the Chinese dumping
mass-produced kitchenware on their
markets. Women also make an appearance,
as mystics, courtesans and scholars. Beneath
the arches of Mecca’s mosques, Karima al-
Marwiziyya led Koranic study circles for
both sexes. After all, she might have noted,
many of the Prophet’s companions and
preservers of Islamic traditions were
themselves women.
What emerges is a civilisation that was a
marketplace of ideas as well as goods.
“Urbanisation and literacy was said to be a
distinctly modern phenomenon,” says
Robinson, “but that is wrong”. Rather the
Islamic world, he says, epitomised
“globalisation before its time”, “cultural
cosmopolitanism”, “a world of cross-
pollination” and capitalism. Rich from trade,
its cities were the world’s finest. In the ninth
century, Baghdad mushroomed as rapidly as
Manhattan a millennium later, with intrigue,
sex and irreverence no less a part of its
makeup. Thirty thousand gondolas plied the
Tigris. Another Islamic capital, Cordoba,
was the greatest city in Europe and produced
some of the greatest minds: without the
12th-century rationalist, Ibn Rushd
(Averroes), whose defence of Aristotelian
philosophy against orthodox theologians
influenced people like Thomas Aquinas, the
Enlightenment might never have happened.
Through his portraits, Robinson debunks
two modern myths about Islam. Salafists, the
puritans who dominate 21st-century Islamic
discourse, champion the Prophet
Muhammad as the founder of a pristine,
uniform faith which every Muslim should
aspire to replicate. In Robinson’s rendition,
the Islam the Prophet bequeathed was
amorphous, inchoate and confused. Bereft of
their founder, the Muslim community
squabbled over not just the niceties of law,
but who should rule and how. Muhammad’s
favourite wife and his son-in-law fought
pitched battles over his succession. The faith
was also deeply syncretic: it expanded by
absorbing the traditions of the peoples who
fell under its rule. Its first rulers saw nothing
incompatible between an upright Islamic
existence and wine-drinking. Too often the
source material was too skimpy to answer
basic questions. The literalist Andalusian
politician and scholar, Ibn Hazm, for
instance, argued against the biblical death
penalty for homosexuality, saying that
nowhere was it prescribed in the Koran.
(Ten lashes, he suggested, might be more
fitting.) Only centuries later did the faith
congeal into something akin to today’s
orthodoxy.
The second myth Robinson punctures is one
often propounded by orientalists: that the
tightening grip of orthodoxy led to Islam’s
supposed inexorable decline. In the tenth
century, Abu Bakr al-Razi, a Persian
alchemist and physician, wrote a tractate,
“On the fraudulence of prophets”, asserting
the primacy of reason over revelation and
deriding the prophets as imposters and
storytellers. Only his defence that reason
was a gift of God spared him charges of
blasphemy. The following century, Al-
Biruni published perhaps the greatest
classical account of comparative religion,
citing Greek, Persian and Sanskrit aphorisms
alongside the sayings of the Prophet. Five
centuries before Daniel Defoe, Ibn Tufayl
wrote a story about a boy who grew up on a
desert island. Without revelation, his
metaphor shows, humans develop as rational
beings.
Three centuries before Columbus A world map in the Book of Roger (1154)
reproduction of Muhammad al-Idrisi’s By the 14th century, Islam’s centre of
gravity had shifted to Istanbul, but its courts
continued to attract the world’s leading
scientists and artists and remained at the
cutting-edge of medical advances and
military technology. After a familiar bout of
devastation, Mongol rule ushered in fresh
investments in science, particularly its 13th-
century observatory at Maragheh, whose
findings underpinned Copernicus’s models
of the universe. Multiculturalism, perhaps
even trans-confessionalism, remained a
familiar trope of Islamic rule. Alternating
between Sunni and Shiite rites, the Mongols’
faith felt remarkably fluid. Uljeitu’s vizier
was Rashid al-Din, an Iranian-born Jewish
convert to Islam, who assembled a
warehouse of global researchers near Tabriz
in the 14th century and set them to work on
“an industrial-sized” history of the world,
the “Compendium of Chronicles”. Its
encyclopaedic breadth is a composite of
texts drawn from Hebrew scholars
(apparently translated by Rashid al-Din
himself), Kashmiri monks, Chinese envoys
and perhaps the most sympathetic account of
Buddha in a non-Buddhist text. More than
2,000 miles away in Tunis, Ibn Khaldoun
penned a social history which for the first
time ditched the composition of court
chronicles to examine the causes behind
historical events.
There are, of course, characters closer to the
caricatures of modern-day Muslim
fundamentalists. Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya,
a 14th-century judge in Damascus and
Alexandria, railed against the Mongols for
favouring Shiism and applying their own
yassa law, not Sharia – a sin which, he
declared, rendered them apostates. When the
Sunni Mamluk authorities he favoured
overlooked a Christian’s insults against the
Prophet, he agitated the mob to demand his
beheading. A bit-player in his time, the
Salafists have elevated him to centre-stage
today, ranking his teachings alongside the
Prophet’s in Saudi Arabia’s core curriculum.
Islam’s most zealous detractors and
practitioners alike could do worse than to
recall Robinson’s other 29 characters too.
Pashtoon Tahafuz
Movement: A rights
movement or a new
regional agenda
Ahmed Khan, (not his original name) waits
in his car behind a long line of other
vehicles, for his turn to be checked. He can
spot army soldiers with smart tablets putting
in CNIC numbers of motorists for
verifications. They are probably connected
with NADRA records, he thinks. After more
than 30 minutes, of increasing frustration, he
reaches the point and was asked to get out
for a physical body search. He finally
managed to cross the check post in about 45
minutes. Ahmed, originally from a rich
SWAT landed family and traveling from
Islamabad was furious. He was not alone,
many others described similar scenes.
(Pashtoon Tahafuz Movement)
This was a few days after a suicide bomber
blew himself at Army’s sports unit, in
Sharifabad, in Kabal Tehsil of Swat killing
13 soldiers including a Captain. The attack
in the first week of February was worst since
2013 and brought back memories of TTP’s
reign of terror. It also brought back those
check posts that dotted the landscape of
SWAT after the army operation of 2009.
Ahmed, the traveler from Islamabad, was
not alone, for feeling the way he felt.
Hundreds of others soon took to protesting, a
tribal Jirga threatened a strike and local
MNA, PTI’s firebrand, Murad Saeed, took
up the issue in the parliament. Check posts
disappeared – replaced in many instances by
Aerial Drones that silently hover over the
heads.
Manzoor Pashteen in Swat, Why?
On Sunday, 29 April, Pashtun Tahafuz
Movement (PTM) supporters, lead by
Manzoor Pashteen, staged a rally in a Kabal
ground attracting almost 5000 people. Local
sources describe Pashteen speaking only in
Pashto, to a crowd that had less than 500
locals (from within 15 Km radius); he
thanked all those who have traveled, on his
call, from Kohat, Zhob, Qila Saif Ullah, DI
Khan, Swabi, Bannu, South Waziristan and
even Quetta. Pashteen’s supporters traveled
in at least 270 vehicles, mostly coasters,
counted at Dargai check post located near
the Dargai fort. Local politicians claimed
that they had told the administration to not
let outsiders enter Swat (enjoying peace and
tourism) in such large numbers from outside
but their protests were turned down.
Pashteen and others including Mohsin
Dawar spoke about extrajudicial killings,
missing persons and mistreatment of
Pashtoons in Pakistan. Strong words were
uttered against army which itself has a huge
component of Pashtoons. Rally was mostly a
function of the support it had from
Mehmood Khan Achakzai’s “Pakhtoon
Khwa Milli Awami Party” (PkMap) whose
local leader, Khurshid Kakajee, Senator
Usman Kakar and KP President, Mukhtar
Yousafzai also addressed the crowds. One
day earlier, on Saturday, another large rally
was organized, in the Grassy ground
(Cricket Stadium) by a local movement
which calls itself, “Pakistan Zindabad
Movement” supported by local MPA, Abdul
Hakim, and Abdu Rahim, leader of the
Traders Association Mingora. Local
politicians with representation in parliaments
of KP and Islamabad see Pashteen’s PTM as
trouble makers working on foreign agenda.
Local elite vividly remember TTP’s reign of
terror and are grateful for peace in Swat, that
has brought increasing investments and
tourism and are worried that this disruptive
political activity in the name of “Rights
movement” may drive away tourists that
flock Swat and its several adjacent areas in
three months of summer starting from June.
The attack in the first week of February
was worst since 2013 and brought back
memories of TTP’s reign of terror. It
also brought back those check posts
that dotted the landscape of SWAT
after the army operation of 2009.
A PTM supporter claimed that local elite
who organized “Pakistan Zindabad
Movement” and its rally are stooges of
establishment and Saturday rally was
financed. Criticism is valid, since holding
political rallies is expensive. But this raises
the question: who financed Manzoor
Pashteen’s rally and why? This question
becomes even more important because its
apparent that Pashteen had no local support,
in Swat; he brought his followers from far
flung areas – as he admitted himself – at
great expense. Why? This 27-year old’s
grievances – admittedly genuine – are
centered on issues inside the war battered
South Waziristan, where he belongs to one
of the tribes (Mehsud); why is he turning
that into a generalized Pashtun victimhood
all across the country?
Issues in Swat, as locals point out, are very
different from South Waziristan. TTP’s
reign of terror, of public executions and
floggings, of Khooni Chowk, was quickly
routed by Army action in summer of 2009
which saw one of the biggest heliborne
operations, through attack helicopters, in
recent history, around Peochar, a hill resort
near Mingora. Several hundred young
Taliban fighters were killed, unaccounted
dead bodies kept floating in river Swat –
many still counted as “missing” by their
families. There were reports, and even
unconfirmed videos, of extra-judicial
killings especially after some SSG
commandos were beheaded by TTP after
abductions – but the issue died then in 2009.
Army check posts were troublesome to the
local population but were gradually
removed. Life returned to normal with
civilian administration, police, judiciary and
investments.
Read more: What is Pashtun Tahafuz
Movement and what are its objectives?
In recent years’ tourists have thronged Swat,
with such vengeance that it often creates
road blockages. However, Swat Expressway
kick started in September 2016, with an
estimated capital investment of Rs. 40
billion, is about to be completed; 81 km
long, 80 meters wide, the highway will
connect areas in Swat with Islamabad-
Peshawar motorway and increase
connectivity all over as it stretches from M1
motorway to Chakdara; passing through
Nowshera, Swabi, Mardan and Malakand. It
will reduce the three-hour travel time to just
45 minutes. The road will be 80 meters wide
and will reduce a three-hour travel time to
just 45 minutes – giving a huge boost to
trade and economy in the region all around
Swat.
What bothers Swat’s intellectual elite is lack
of effective criminal justice system; those
who still remember Swat of pre-1969 merger
with central legal authority, point out that
local western style courts fail to deliver.
Under Wali of Swat, a quarter million
population spread over 8000 sq. Km area,
had access to 32 Tehsil Courts headed by
Qazis that provided for swift, inexpensive
justice that was rapidly implemented by the
state authorities. Currently, an expanded
population, two million strong, is being
served by 12 police jurisdictions and modern
courts that are often marred by inefficiency,
lethargy and corruption delaying justice.
A PTM supporter claimed that local
elite who organized “Pakistan
Zindabad Movement” and its rally are
stooges of establishment and Saturday
rally was financed. Criticism is valid,
since holding political rallies is
expensive. But this raises the question:
who financed Manzoor Pashteen’s rally
and why?
Local elites point out that failure of criminal
justice system and inability to resolve
property and personal disputes is what had
created the space for Taliban to enter with
their promises of quick justice – and those
issues still exist. But all this is very different
from the hot molten lava of a wounded
Pashtun nationalism which PTM is trying to
sell to disaffected communities of Pashtuns
wherever they may exist from Waziristan to
Lahore to Karachi. Swat has obviously not
been a success in this endeavor but its
struggle continues and much has to come.
Read more: Pakistan Zindabad Movement:
Turning tide against the new wave of sub-
nationalism
Pashteen’s Little Heard Meeting with
DG ISPR?
DG ISPR (Inter Services Public Relations)
office located in Pindi, not far from British
Era Hotel Flash man, received an unusual
call on Feb 8. It was from Manzoor
Pashteen’s supporters, then doing a protest
in Islamabad, requesting a meeting with DG.
A surprised ISPR team – that had heard little
of this “Pashteen” questioned: why Pashteen
wants to meet DG ISPR? How can ISPR
help him? PTM supporters – many of whom
had previously met ISPR as part of FATA
Youth Jirga- requested that he wants to
come and discuss his demands in person and
this may lead to the end of their ongoing
protest in Islamabad – centered around the
arrest of SSP Rao Anwar of Karachi who
allegedly killed Naqeeb ullah Mehsud.
Consequently, Pashsten and Mohsin Dawar,
along with a total of 15 PTM workers or
supporters (including many from SWA,
verified through their CNIC cards) met DG
ISPR. In a meeting that lasted more than 4
hours, they complained of problems in South
Waziristan and presented five demands
related to: Arrest of the murderer of Naqeeb
Ullah Mehsud, Watan Card & harsh
treatment at Check Posts, land mines,
missing persons and compensations for loss
of property. During this meeting, they were
shown videos of development works across
FATA and inter-dependent regions of KP
(including: SWA, NWA, Khyber Agency,
Malakand & Swat) and were connected on
phone with Garrison Commanders (GOC)
South Waziristan and North Waziristan and
meetings were fixed with them. PTM leaders
including Mohsin Dawar subsequently had
those meetings, by around 15thof February,
and text messages of thanks were duly
received in ISPR. It was a result of those
meetings that Watan Card checking was
suspended, check posts were reduced,
measures were taken to reduce waiting time
at check posts, separate check posts for
women were promised and efforts are being
done to expedite removal of landmines.
The records of this 4 hours long meeting –
and the positions Manzoor Pashteen adopted
subsequently – helps us to understand that,
27 year old, Manzoor Pashteen’s movement
is less about issues inside South Waziristan
and more about shaping a larger agenda –
relying upon different changing causes to
use them as excuses from time to time. From
the first moment, it has been acknowledged,
by almost everyone in Pakistan, that these
demands are genuine and they make sense
and all issues should be addressed step by
step. But when, in the third week of April,
Corps. Commander Peshawar, Gen. Nazir
Butt, commented, while talking to media,
that he thinks that demands of PTM are
genuine – and he wants a Jirga to meet PTM
leaders to resolve these issues – many in the
international media and think tanks
misconstrued that as a great achievement of
PTM protests, or rallies, that they are now
being listened – ignoring the basic fact that
they were being listened even before.
Reality is that overall political and
administrative system of Pakistan, a poor
developing country, is under tremendous
pressure because of its 15-year-old war
against terrorism – ever since it decided to
side with the US lead war in Afghanistan
after 9/11. Pakistan is the only country that
has regained its stability and maintained its
center of gravity after the developments of
9/11 – it could have also followed the path
of Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Read more: Is the ‘Pashtun Tahafuzz
Movement’ being exploited?
It is therefore understood that many new
challenges have appeared while winning a
difficult war. For instance, land mines were
not laid by Pakistan Army but were
deployed by TTP and its various affiliates to
check the mechanized movement of a
regular army that moves with armored
personnel carriers, trucks jeeps and
paraphernalia. Hundreds of soldiers and
officers succumbed to these land mines often
referred to as IED (Improvised Explosive
devices) in media. Maj. Gen. Sanaullah
Khan Niazi was a famous case that
generated global headlines. Locals, however,
point out, that when Army allowed residents
of South Waziristan to return, in 2015, it
failed its responsibility in fully clearing the
areas of these IEDs and several children and
adults lost their lives. Army sources assert
that removal of land liens is tedious and
100% success is not possible since IED’s
drift from actual locations due to rain and
winds. But locals have a point and its
Army’s responsibility to expedite removal of
land mines. Also, the compensations of Rs.
400,000/house for repair or reconstructions
offered by federal government through
Political Agents (PA) were insufficient – and
this needs a better and more generous
solution.
Having said this, one cannot ignore the
context; normalcy and the local residents are
returning to these areas after more than 10
years, thousands have died anonymously in
these areas in hundreds of battles and
skirmishes; Taliban always took away their
dead bodies and buried them on their own
and many went on to fight in Afghanistan –
so there might not be as many “missing
persons” or in custody as being claimed. But
all these issues can be addressed
professionally one by one – as it happens
after the end of protracted wars. Pashteen’s
continuing rallies, creating the impression
that he is not being heard – despite being in
touch with Army establishment on his own
request – represent clearly a different set of
ambitions. It has also given rise to
suspicions that he and his young crowd
don’t have a mind of their own but are mere
pawns in a larger scheme of things.
It was a result of those meetings that
Watan Card checking was suspended,
check posts were reduced, measures
were taken to reduce waiting time at
check posts, separate check posts for
women were promised and efforts are
being done to expedite removal of
landmines.
Watan Card has also been misrepresented to
media or perhaps misunderstood. Official
records reveal that Watan Card was initiated
to help the Temporarily Displaced Persons
(TDPs) after the 2009/10 operations against
TTP in the agencies on the request of the
locals of South Waziristan who were
displaced from heights and were relocated to
low lying areas in Tank, Bannu, Laki
Marwat and DI Khan and so on. Displaced
persons were given money (Rs.
12,500/card/month) food and rations and
these locals insisted that cards be issued to
them to distinguish those who have
voluntarily displaced, to facilitate
operations, from those who have been living
outside the agency on their own. Later, after
2015, army and FC at their posts started
using ‘Watan Card’ as an additional ID card
to distinguish locals from those who may
come from outside. Though, these cards
have been suspended now on PTM’s
insistence but it is interesting to point out
that most Afghan refugees in these areas
have Pakistan’s NIC cards but they don’t
have ‘Watan Cards” and this may have led
to issues in the area. It is believed by the
locals that Afghan refugees constitute a
significant support for Mr. Pashteen.
Pashtun Nationalism: Rise & Fall?
Pashtun nationalism in itself is not a new
thing. Most areas that today constitute north
and north west of Pakistan made the corridor
through which Central Asian, Turkish and
Persian warriors – and whatever then
constituted modernity – entered the vast low
lying plains of Indus and headed south and
east down towards Lahore or Delhi. For
greater part of history, these areas, inhabited
by Pashtuns or related tribes, at least up to
Indus at Attock, have remained with
undefined borders; kingdoms were identified
with the cities they held. Afghan rulers of
Kabul finally lost Peshawar valley to Sikh
rulers of Punjab in earlier 19thcentury. Once
Sikhs lost to British, in 1849 – India’s new
rulers moving upwards from South –
Afghans tried their level best, through war
and pleadings, to regain control of Peshawar
valley – but lost more territory in every
effort. Most of what constitutes today’s
Baluchistan was lost by Kabul in last quarter
of 19thcentury. This is how Baluchistan has
large Pashtun population and Mahmood
Khan Achakzai represents a certain
sentiment – but mostly misunderstood and
against the tides of history. Britain
developed a modern commercial enterprise
in South of Lahore leading to the rise of
large metropolises like Bombay, Calcutta
and Madras; areas upwards of Lahore were
mostly frontier of the British empire.
By 1870’s Rawalpindi emerged as the
largest military garrison in British India;
objective was to contain threat from north
and north west, present day KP had no name
in British minds except calling it: North
West Frontier Province (NWFP); a term that
irked Pashtun nationalists. After British
withdrawal, rulers in Kabul thought of
renewing the old claims. Afghanistan
objected to Pakistan’s membership of United
Nations in 1947/48 and encouraged
tribesmen in FATA to rise against Peshawar
and Karachi. Tribes guaranteed their
freedoms by Jinnah never sided with Kabul.
In 1960’s when Sardar Mohmmad Daud
became Zahir’ Shah’s Prime Minister he
sent troops across the Durand line into
Bajaur Agency to stir an insurgency but
tribes stood with Pakistan and routed the
Afghan forces. Dauod was confronted by
another Pashtun, in Pakistan: Ayub Khan.
Field Marshal came down hard against rulers
in Kabul, he shut down Afghan transit trade
indefinitely creating a crisis for land locked
Afghanistan. Issues were somewhat resolved
by interventions of Britain and Saudi Arabia
but Daud lost his hold on power mostly for
this crisis – and had to resign in March
1963; Pakistan only then resumed normal
trade routes for Afghanistan, in May 1963.
Irrespective of these set backs, NAP (now
ANP) of Bacha Khan and later Abul Wali
Khan continued feeding on to the dream of a
Pakhtunistan; whatever Pakistani
establishment did from Karachi or
Islamabad it could not suppress the idea. But
strange things happen in history.
Pakhtunistan died its death in the Afghan
war of 1979-87; confronted by the cultural
differences of millions of Afghan refugees,
now in their midst, the natives of the then
NWFP (now KP) realized that they – in their
outlook on life – are not the same people.
Pakistani Pashtuns had moved on in the
process of history deep into Pakistani
identity, whereas Afghans due to their own
peculiar experiences had moved in a
different direction.
Read more: US Interest: Kiss of Death for
PTM?
Pashtuns: An Integral Component of
Pakistani Identity
Recently a naïve American writer defined
Pashtuns as a “suppressed minority in
Pakistan”. This is hilarious. Field Marshal
Ayub Khan, shaped modern Pakistan from
1955 onwards laying the basis of its
industrial structure. Yahya Khan, his
successor in power, presided over the end of
united Pakistan; Ghulam Ishaq Khan,
respected civil servant turned President
sacked first PM Benazir Bhutto and then PM
Nawaz Sharif and when Nawaz insisted that
he will take President along, it was the third
member of the troika, Gen. Waheed Kakar,
himself a proud Pashtun who fired them
both. Gen. Naseerullah Babar, often
credited, though erroneously, for the
creation of Taliban was a Pashtun who
headed Pakistan’s first civilian lead
operation against MQM in early 1990’s
under Benazir Bhutto. From Hashim Khan,
to Jehangir Khan to Jansher Khan to Younas
Khan to Umar Gul to “Boom Boom Afridi”
Pashtun faces have defined Pakistani sports;
from Capt. Karnal Sher Khan, Nishan-e-
Haider, in Kargil, to Gen. Tariq Khan who
fought in tribal areas, as IGFC, and headed
Pakistan’s first Strike Corps at Mangla, from
Ahmed Faraz to Jamal Shah, from ageless
Zeba Bakhtiar to unforgettable Marina Khan
Pashtuns are an integral, proud and assertive
component of Pakistani mosaic. From Army,
Airforce, Central Superior Services,
Corporate Board Rooms to roadside
businesses and from talk shows to film and
tv dramas, Pashtuns of all accents are a force
inside Pakistan. Imran Khan, the most well-
known face of Pakistan across the globe,
often not referred to as Pashtun, had his
mother from Waziristan and father from
Mianwali. And it was the tragedy of Army
Public School in December 2014, in
Peshawar, that defined the national moment
towards action against Taliban changing
Pakistani laws and politics.
Lar o Bar Yo Afghan?
Is this interlocking embedded identity of
“Pakistani Pashtun” now under threat by the
antics of Manzoor Pashteen and his mentor
Mehmood Khan Achakzai – shouting “Lar o
Bar Yo Afghan” (Up and down, we are one
Afghan nation; an old ANP era slogan
meaning that from up in Afghanistan down
in Pakistani territory we are one nation) in
rallies and ably supported by US led media
and think tanks?
While they may not succeed against the
force of history and the strength of Pakistani
nationhood, there is much to suggest that
something like that is being conceived or
promoted under the garb of a “rights
movement”. Read Manzoor Pashteen’s
twitter handle, connected with his Facebook
page, fortunately in Urdu, and you can see
that he is far less interested in finding
solutions to the local problems and far more
interested in inciting strong emotions of
victimhood around an ethnicity and thus hate
towards perceived aggressors.
But, no record exists of his taking any
position against the hundreds of drone
strikes that targeted FATA; this is a
surprising disconnect, because for most
Pashtuns the elephant in the room has been
US presence in the region and attacks
against Pashtun identity after 9/11. US
media and think tank persons have suddenly
started to present Pashtuns as an aggrieved
helpless minority in Pakistan who are
somehow dependent upon PTM to regain
their confidence or win rights.
A Kashmiri writer from Srinagar, analyzing
the situation, recently wondered if a
“Pashtun Spring” is being manufactured;
and we know that “Spring Revolutions”
originate and evolve less on ground and
more on media and cyberspace and sudden
interest of publications from New York
Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy to
Asia Times Online and many many others
points towards systematic efforts to create a
“narrative”. BBC Pashto, VOA –Deeva and
France 24 all have been overactive – and all
are state funded broadcasters. This is being
reinforced by plethora of newer western web
sites that are all using different words but
more or less the same substance, a consistent
message moving from different directions to
create and reinforce a mental reality. This is
further reinforced by teams of activists
connected with NGO’s and international
media inside Pakistan.
Most in Pakistani media and the
strategic community had seen that
video – thanks to WhatsApp traffic;
however, it was dismissed as too
ambitious and far too diabolical an
accusation against the American
friends. Tarpley is believed to be a
conspiracy theorist. But then anyone
who disagrees with the mainstream US
narrative is declared conspiracy theorist
– and has a funny post against him in
Wikipedia.
All those, so-called “liberals” inside
Pakistan, who had vociferously demanded
army action against Islamist or religious
Pashtuns and supported drone strikes and
“army action” are now shedding crocodile
tears for ethnic Pashtuns. So a full-fledged
effort is going on to add muscle, fiber and
fabric to the narrative of Manzur Pashteen –
it had taken Gandhi and Jinnah several years
of struggle before getting this kind of
attention. The serious US think tanker has
even suggested that Pakistan Army may use
force against this movement. This is
shocking and, apart from unusual interest,
represents a “forward development of
narrative” – totally disconnected from
ground reality. Analyzing this propaganda,
Pakistani authorities should instead be
worried that any third force may harm any
PTM rally or leader to manufacture a crisis
inside and around Pakistan.
Read more: Pakistan Army ready to
negotiate with Manzoor Pashteen; Corps.
Commander calls…
Short-Term and long-term Implications
of PTM?
What can PTM achieve in near future? PTI –
sounds different from PTM only for one
letter- had won in KP, in 2013 elections,
riding on a wave of popularity, a kind of
definite shift in politics. While widespread
stories of ANP/PPP corruption did help, but
it was mostly a Pashtun feeling – in a war-
torn province hard hit because of post 9/11
events – for Imran Khan who had taken a
strident position against US drone strikes.
ANP and PPP were seen as pro-American
and thus not nationalist enough. Both parties
were also hamstrung for being in the
government and did not have that free hand
to take positon on regional and international
issues.
Now PTM, that sounds very similar to PTI
(just like TTP sounded similar to TTA;
though very different in motivations) is
trying to shape a new kind of “wounded
Pashtun nationalism”. And it is merely using
“localized grievances in South Waziristan”
disguised under a “Rights Movement” to
create a bigger political capital; if it
succeeds it can be in a positon to affect the
overall direction of politics before the
general elections that are scheduled in end
July 2018. PTI having serious prospects of
getting around 45-50 seats in Punjab, is now
hamstrung and cannot fully identify with a
“wounded Pashtun nationalism” – and if it
failed to counter the movement, it may
suffer in polls in KP. PTM can throw its
“political capital” with any player – perhaps
decision will lie with Mehmood Achakzai
whose main constituency lies in Baluchistan,
and had hitherto no serious presence in
FATA or KP.
Long-term implications?
In 2014, Webster Tarpley, a controversial
American historian, author and analyst,
appearing on Russian TV (RT) – Putin’s
nemesis for CNN – argued that while
President Obama is talking of special
relationship with Pakistan, his agencies are
planning to create secessionist movements in
Pakistani Baluchistan and FATA – to disrupt
the possibility of a new energy corridor that
can connect China with the Middle East.
(CPEC was little heard then). A bemused,
Anchorwoman asked how is it even
possible? And Tarpley explained that by
agitating Pashtuns living on both sides the
Pak-Afghan border and forcing an
autonomous area between Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
Most in Pakistani media and the strategic
community had seen that video – thanks to
WhatsApp traffic; however, it was dismissed
as too ambitious and far too diabolical an
accusation against the American friends.
Tarpley is believed to be a conspiracy
theorist. But then anyone who disagrees with
the mainstream US narrative is declared
conspiracy theorist – and has a funny post
against him in Wikipedia. Tarpley also
claimed, several years ago, that US and
Israel are encouraging insurgent groups to
split Syria in several parts. Today, almost all
world, outside the transatlantic mental
corridor, can readily understand that US,
Israel, and Saudi Arabia tried using
insurgent groups to dismantle Syrian state
and have failed due to the Putin’s unusually
muscular intervention. Tarpley’s forgotten
video clip, from RT, is now again in
circulation, on WhatsApp, focusing minds
from Peshawar to Karachi.
Read more: Manzoor Pashteen spoke up in
Lahore; what’s the solution to their…
The real solution for grievances in FATA
lies in its mainstreaming and the best way
forward remains its earlier integration with
KP. A govt. The commission headed by
Sartaj Aziz, adviser to PM, had submitted a
detailed report recommending the same.
However, despite having a massive demand
from all political parties, FATA members
and KP government and support from Army
establishment, Nawaz Sharif kept dragging
his feet. His argument was that “not without
Maulana on board”. So Maulana Fazal ur
Rehman and Mehmood Achakzai
singlehandedly did not allow FATA merger
into KP – thus setting a stage on which now
PTM is dancing. And now both Maulana and
Achakzai are supporting PTM. Nawaz –
whose daughter recently joined PTM
bandwagon – had thus not failed Pakistan on
one or two counts but on many fronts. But,
then this is what happens when someone
suited to be a Mayor of Dina or Kamonkey
becomes prime minister of a 200 million
strong, strategically important, nation.
Is Karl Marx more
relevant today? CSS
General Knowledge
The other day I stood at the grave of Karl
Marx in Highgate cemetery in north London,
wondering if he has anything say to us
today, 200 years after his birth, on 5 May
1818. “Workers of all lands unite,” reads the
tombstone. But they haven’t – the solidarity
of the exploited, which Marx took to be
necessary to end capitalism, scarcely exists.
(CSS General Knowledge)
“What the bourgeoisie produces, above all,
are its own gravediggers,” he and Friedrich
Engels wrote 170 years ago in The
Communist Manifesto. “Its fall and the
victory of the proletariat are equally
inevitable.” Not really: capitalism today is
rampant. In the kind of historical irony that
the philosopher Hegel called the cunning of
reason, capitalism has even co-opted its
gravediggers to keep it alive: China, the
world’s biggest socialist society (if only
ostensibly) supplies capitalist enterprises
with cheap labour that undercuts other
workers around the world.
So is Marx finished? Not at all. For me,
what makes Marx worth reading now is not
his Panglossian prognoses, but his still
resonant diagnoses. For instance, he and
Engels foresaw how globalisation would
work. “In place of the old wants,” they
wrote, “satisfied by the production of the
country, we find new wants, requiring for
their satisfaction the products of distant
lands and climes.” That’s why Chinese
workers make products we never conceived
would exist, let alone that we would covet,
and that would convert us into politically
quiescent, borderline sociopathic,
sleepwalking narcissists. That’s right – I’m
talking about iPhones.
I find it hard to read the first few pages of
The Communist Manifesto without thinking
that I live in the world he and Engels
described. “Constant revolutionising of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones.” We inhabit a
world just like that, only more intensely than
Marx and Engels dared imagine. For me,
these words don’t just capture how Uber,
Deliveroo and the other virtuosos of the gig
economy chip away at values and standards
to make a fast buck, but also how the planet
is relentlessly despoiled in order to satisfy
tax-avoiding shareholders.
Consider, as the Marxist professor David
Harvey did recently, São Paulo: a city whose
economic base is a car industry that
produces vehicles that spend hours in traffic
jams, polluting streets and isolating
individuals from each other – a potent
emblem of how free-market economies are
inimical to the real needs of real people.
Marx didn’t foresee Facebook, but he
grasped the essentials of Mark Zuckerberg’s
business model, certainly better than
American senators did at last month’s
congressional hearings. “The bourgeoisie,”
Marx and Engels wrote, beautifully, “has left
remaining no other nexus between man and
man than naked self- interest, than callous
‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most
heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of
chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of
egotistical calculation.”
Facebook, not to mention Amazon and
Google, have made humans into exploitable
assets. Which is some kind of genius.
But it’s what Marx wrote in Das Kapital in
1867 on commodity fetishism that, I think, is
most painfully relevant to us today. By that
term he meant how the ordinary things that
workers produce – iPads, cars, even the
spate of new books commemorating Marx’s
200th birthday – become, under capitalism,
bewitchingly strange. Just as in some
religions an object invested with
supernatural powers becomes a fetish for
those who worship it, so commodities under
capitalism are accorded magical powers.
Marx didn’t foresee Facebook, but he
grasped the essentials of Mark Zuckerberg’s
business model
When an iPhone is sold, it is exchanged for
another commodity (generally money). The
exchange takes no account of the labour that
went into the iPhone’s making, still less the
fact that some of Apple’s underpaid workers
have contemplated suicide in order to escape
their lives manufacturing purportedly must-
have gizmos for you and me. “A
commodity, therefore, is a mysterious thing
simply because in it the social character of
men’s labour appears to them as an objective
character stamped upon the product of that
labour,” wrote Marx.
György Lukács, who profoundly influenced
the Frankfurt School of thinkers, argued that
a new kind of human arises in a world where
commodity fetishism is rampant. Those new
humans are so degraded that buying and
selling is their essence: I shop therefore I
am. Instead of uniting to end capitalism, we
buy more shoes. When JD Sports announced
a 24% rise in profits last month, for me it
felt less like good news for the ailing British
high street than footwear fetishism propping
up the degrading system that Lukács
described. We’ve been took, as Malcolm X
put it, in another context. We’ve been had.
In such a world it’s easy to collapse, as
many of the Frankfurt School did, into the
philosophical quietism that drove Marx nuts.
“The philosophers,” he wrote in words also
emblazoned on his tombstone, “have only
interpreted the world in various ways; the
point, however, is to change it.”
That remains the challenge. We need Marx
to help us understand the state we’re in,
though that is only a prelude to the bigger
struggle, for which his writings are less
helpful: namely, how to get out of it.
Is Indus Water Treaty
being Violated by India?
CSS Pakistan Affairs
The government of Pakistan has asked the
World Bank for a meeting in Washington,
DC for talks on the country’s ongoing water
dispute with India. This latest demand is an
addition to the critical affair of water sharing
in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent. (CSS Pakistan
Affairs)
Miftah Ismail, Adviser to Pakistan’s Prime
Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic
Affairs, conveyed Pakistan’s concerns to
World Bank Managing Director Kristalina
Georgieva in Washington, and drew her
attention to particular concerns over 2 major
Indian hydropower projects, Kishanganga
and Ratle, which Pakistan believes violate
the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty which governs
water-share of the Indus River and its
tributaries.
While the root cause of this calamity is
not the shortage of this natural
endowment but the poor water policy,
rapid urbanization, corruption and
management, the situation has not been
helped by the belligerent attitude of
New Delhi.
According to media reports, a World Bank
spokesman has confirmed receipt of
Pakistan’s complaint and saying that the
World Bank is working with both Islamabad
and New Delhi for an amicable resolution to
the dispute.
Earlier, Miftah Ismail, Adviser to Prime
Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic
Affairs, on Saturday conveyed Pakistan’s
concerns to the World Bank over India’s
non-adherence to the Indus Waters Treaty
(IWT). Miftah met with Managing Director
World Bank Kristalina Georgieva in
Washington and drew her attention to
disputes between Pakistan and India over the
construction of hydropower projects
requesting the World Bank to play its role
under the IWT.
Read more: World Bank concerned over the
macroeconomic stability of Pakistan
The Pakistani delegation, led by Miftah
Ismail and comprising State Bank governor
and Economic Affairs Division secretary,
participated in the World Bank spring
meetings 2018 and attended a number of
bilateral meetings on the sidelines, the
Finance Division said in a statement.
The government of Pakistan has asked
the World Bank for a meeting in
Washington, DC for talks on the
country’s ongoing water dispute with
India. This latest demand is an addition
to the critical affair of water sharing in
the Indo-Pak Subcontinent.
The finance advisor also drew her attention
to improvement in the country’s exports
resulting from various policy initiatives
implemented by the government.
Georgieva appreciated reforms implemented
by Pakistan and assured the bank’s support
in carrying forward the country’s
development agenda with a focus on SMEs,
new business start-ups, agribusiness and
greater regional connectivity, the statement
added.
The advisor along with the Chairman BOI
met with the World Bank’s Ease of Doing
Business team led by the Acting Chief
Economist and apprised them of seventy-
five reforms implemented by the
government to improve business and
investment environment in Pakistan.
Read more: World Bank approves $825
million loan to Pakistan
He also met with a large delegation of the
US multinationals, members of the US-
Pakistan Business Council, at the US
Chamber and invited them to take advantage
of investment opportunities available in
Pakistan. The Indus Waters Treaty is
showcased often as a major success story in
the history of river disputes, not least by the
World Bank, which brokered the original
document. The World Bank has a specific
arbitration role in the treaty to keep the
dispute settlement process moving when a
party/country is not cooperating to follow
treaty procedures in cases of dispute.
Pakistan complained that India has violated
a World Bank-mandated pause, placed in
2016, by completing the controversial
Kishanganga project. Pakistan states that
both Kishanganga (330 megawatts) and
Ratle (850 megawatts) contravene the Indus
Water Treaty’s restrictions on the
construction of run-of-the-river plants. The
plants are respectively on a tributary of the
Jhelum and the Chenab rivers.
Miftah met with Managing Director
World Bank Kristalina Georgieva in
Washington and drew her attention to
disputes between Pakistan and India
over the construction of hydropower
projects requesting the World Bank to
play its role under the IWT.
Pakistan believes that India was able to
construct projects with “faulty design” due
to the inaction over resolving the dispute.
According to the World Bank, its role in
relation to “disputes” is limited to the
“designation of people to fulfill certain roles
when requested by either or both of the
parties”.
Analysts believe that the case could be
resolved through the appointment of neutral
experts. Experts believe that the stance
adopted by Pakistan is justified, but feel
there is a lack of seriousness on the Pakistani
side.
Read more: World Bank grants $300 million
to improve Punjab’s agriculture
According to the World Resource Institute,
the country is among the leading five nations
that face extremely high water scarcity and
low access to safe drinking water and
sanitation. Similarly, the UN has categorized
Pakistan amongst those few unfortunate
countries where water shortage will
destabilize and jeopardize its existence in the
next few decades.
While the root cause of this calamity is not
the shortage of this natural endowment but
the poor water policy, rapid urbanization,
corruption and management, the situation
has not been helped by the belligerent
attitude of New Delhi. Indian Prime Minister
Modi has openly talked of abrogating the
Indus Water treaty in order to woo voters.
Highlights of
Economic Survey of
Pakistan 2017-18
 Posted byADMIN
 CategoriesECONOMY, IMPORTANT FOR
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
 DateAPRIL 29, 2018
 Comments0 COMMENT
Highlights of Economic
Survey of Pakistan 2017-
18
Following are the highlights of the Pakistan
Economic Survey for the year 2017-18
unveiled by Advisor to Prime Minister on
Finance Miftah Ismail here on Thursday.
– The country’s Gross Domestic Product
recorded 13-year highest growth of 5.8 %.
– Revenues from telecom sector reached
an estimated Rs 235.5 billion during the first
two quarters of FY 2017-18.
– The commercial launch of 3G and 4G
Long Term Evolution (LTE) services
opened new opportunities for revenue
generation for the mobile operators.
– The broadband penetration jumped from
3.7 million to 52 million.
– During the first two quarters of the FY
2017-18 telecom sector contributed
estimated Rs 78.62 billion to national
exchequer in terms of taxes, regulatory fees,
initial and annual license fees, activation tax,
and other charges.
– The agriculture, industrial and service
sectors of Pakistan grew by 3.8 percent.
– Economy continued to benefit from
growth oriented initiatives, including higher
development spending, low inflation,
vigilant monetary policy, and CPEC related
investment thus providing impetus for
economic recovery.
– High and broad based growth in
agriculture sector in last 13 years was
achieved on the back of initiatives such as
expansion in credit to agriculture sector,
better quality seeds and timely availability of
agriculture inputs.
– Large Scale Manufacturing recorded a
growth of 6.13 %, highest in ten years.
– Industrial sector growth improved by
5.80 %, highest in ten years.
– Manufacturing grew by 6.24 percent,
highest in 11 years.
– Services sector witnessed a growth of
6.43 percent in last two years.
– Growth of forestry is 7.17 percent due
to high timber production reported by
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK).
– Fishing registered a growth of 1.6
percent compared to 1.23 percent last year.
– Households’ average propensity to
consume remained fairly constant at around
85.5 percent at constant prices and around
82.0 percent in current prices.
– Export growth is improving and the
extension of the GSP plus status for next two
years by the EU is a positive development.
The exports growth during nine months of
current year continued unbroken.
– National income remained less than
expenditures during FY 2018 when
compared with FY 2017 which resulted
increase in Saving-Investment gap.
– Net factor income from abroad
increased by 4.17 percent in FY 2018
compared to FY 2017.
– Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF),
considered as fixed investment stood at Rs
5,099.1 billion in FY 2018 compared to Rs
4,632.8 billion last year posting a growth of
10.1 percent.
– Agriculture sector recorded a
remarkable growth of 3.81 percent during
2017-18 and surpassed its targeted growth of
3.5 percent and last year’s growth of 2.07
percent.
– Cotton production stood at 11.935
million bales as compared to 10.671 million
bales in 2016-17 and recorded growth of
11.8 percent.
– During 2017-18, rice production
reached historically high level of 7,442
thousand tonnes and recorded an increase of
8.7 percent over the production of 6,849
thousand tonnes last year.
– Sugarcane production witnessed
another record production season as its
production reached to 81.102 million tonnes
by showing an increase of 7.4 percent over
the last year’s production of 75.482 million
tonnes.
– Maize crop production stood at 5.702
million tonnes compared to the last year’s
production of 6.134 million tonnes and
witnessed a decline of 7.0 percent.
– Livestock having share of 58.92
percent in the agriculture and 11.11 percent
in GDP, recorded a growth of 3.76 percent
compared to 2.99 percent during
corresponding period last year.
– Fishing sector having share of 2.10
percent in agriculture value addition and
0.40 percent in GDP, grew at 1.63 percent
compared to growth 1.23 percent of same
period last year.
– Forestry sector having share of 2.09
percent in the agriculture and 0.39 percent in
GDP posted a positive growth of 7.17
percent against the negative growth of
2.37 percent of same period last year due to
higher timber production reported by
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
– Fiscal deficit registered decline from
8.2 percent in FY 2013 to 5.8 percent of
GDP in FY 2017.
– Current expenditure stood at Rs
2,5445.2 billion during July-December FY
2018 against Rs2,241.6 billion in the same
period of FY 2017 thus posted a growth of
13.5 percent.
– Expenditure under PSDP has posted a
growth of 25.4 percent and reached to Rs
558.8 billion during July-December, FY
2018 against Rs 445.7 billion in the same
period of FY2-17.
– During FY2017, FBR tax collection
grew by 8.2 percent and stood at Rs 3,367.9
billion against Rs 3,112.5 billion recorded in
FY 2016.
– Headline inflation CPI, averaged at
3,8 percent during July- March FY 2018
against 4.0 percent in the comparable period
last year.
– Food inflation during July March
FY2018, is recorded at 2 percent and not
food 5 percent as against 308 percent and
4.2 percent respectively in the corresponding
period of last year.
– Core inflation during July-March FY
2018 increased by 2-7 percent against the
3.8 percent last year.
– Pakistan exports had started increasing
as the negative effect has bottoming out.
– Foreign Investment picked up the pace
from last year’s level, with both direct and
portfolio investment to the gains. Net FDI
inflows rose 4.4 percent to 2.1 billion
dollars in July-March against 2 billion
dollars during same period last year.
– Total number of enrolments at
national level during 2016-17 stood at
48.062 million as compared to 46.223
million during 2015-16 This shows a growth
of 3.97 percent and it is estimated to further
rise to 5..426 million during 2017-18
– The total number of institutes stood at
260.8 thousands during 2016-17 as
compared to 252.8 thousands during last
year and the number of institutes is
estimated to increase to 267.7 thousands
during 2017-18.
– The number of doctors has increased
to 208.007 thousand, dentists 20463, nurses
103,777 and hospital beds 126.019 in the
country during 2017-18 compared to
195,896 doctors 18,333 dentists, 99,228
nurses and 122,769 hospital beds last year.
– Since the inception Prime Minister’s
youth Skill Development program a total
number of 100,000 youth has benefited from
this program.
– During July December 2017-18 gross
earning of Pakistan Railways number of
passenger carried, freight carried and freight
tones earning has improved by 26.7 percent.
– During 2013 to 2018 39 projects with
cumulative capacity of 12,230 MW have
been added.
– Up till February 2018 installed
capacity of electricity reached 29,573 MW
which was 22,812 MW in 2012-13 thus
posting a growth of 30 percent.
– The number of Benazir Income
Support Program beneficiaries have
increased from 3.73 million in 2012 to 5.6
million as on December 31 2017.
Pakistan and India must
follow North and South
Korea:
CSS General Knowledge
Dressed in a black safari suit, The North
Korean leader, Kim Jong-un garnered media
spotlight as he detached from his fellows
and walked, with his traditional grace, to
shake hands with Moon Jae-in, the South
Korean President, The two leaders met on
Friday, on the South Korean side, to make
history. The North Korean leader invited
Moon Jae-in to cross the demarcation line
into North Korea, posing for pictures as a
symbol of future peace. (CSS General
Knowledge)
The smiles and handshakes were unusual for
the political observers, as both sides of the
borders have been harboring a grudge
against each other for over six decades. Mr.
Kim marched back to his country after the
first session but his short interaction was
pleasant, noting, in the Peace House
guestbook, that ‘a new history starts now,
An age of peace, from the starting point of
history’. Besides the emotion-laden smiles,
the two leaders signed a historic accord
committing them to the complete
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,
and pledging to bring a formal end to the
Korean War, which broke out 65 years ago.
The historic accord, also called the
‘Panmunjom Declaration for Peace,
Prosperity and Unification’, reveals much
about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, but
falls short of announcing and recognizing
the role of the United States and China in
this mission.. It should be noted that
improving the relationship between North
and South Korea cannot just be achieved by
an agreement between the two countries, and
requires the fulfillment of a denuclearization
agreement between the U.S and North
Korea.
Even if they don’t sign a new accord
for peace, the implementation of
agreements already signed i.e the
Ceasefire Agreement and Indus Water
Treaty can boost the confidence of over
1.6 billion people.
Although Kim categorically clarified that
both, North and South Korea, will be
reunited as one country, there remain some
administrative flaws, obstructing the
execution of the dreams, which are
explained below. The Korean War, which
became the core point of Friday’s accord,
happened in 1950 when North Korean troops
invaded the South. The conflict lingered on
for three years before an armistice
agreement was inked.
However, the absence of a formal peace
treaty was tantamount to an ongoing war in
the peninsula. Kim and Moon have vowed to
end the war but, with this in mind, there are
other players in the peninsula equation
including, as stated above, the United
States, led by Donald Trump, and Xi
Jinping, ruled by China. The viability of the
promises made in South Korea will be
implemented only if the negotiations
between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un
prove successful.
Read more: Actress kidnapped by North
Korea dies at 91
Although, Mike Pomoe, the CIA director-
turned-secretary of state met Kim earlier in
April, confirming the thaw in the ties ruled
by firebrand leaders, the fruit of months-
long engagements will only appear after
Trump shakes hands with Kim in May or
June. Recently, Kim announced the
suspension of the nuclear program along
with the closure of test sites. However, with
this in mind, the North Korean hawks can
still cast aspirations over the ambitions of
U.S., especially considering Trump’s
behavior towards the Iran nuclear deal.
The ongoing situation of the Iran nuclear
deal shows Trump hinting to walk out of the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), just two years after the signing of
the pact. This is raising concerns in
Pyongyang, that North Korea can also be
subjected to the same duality. The people
from both sides of the 38th parallel line still
carry the scars of violence, as over 1 million
individuals lost their lives, yet, eagerly
hoping for a positive outcome from
President Trump.
Besides the emotion-laden smiles, the
two leaders signed a historic accord
committing them to the complete
denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula, and pledging to bring a
formal end to the Korean War, which
broke out 65 years ago.
Whether the much-awaited, the interaction
between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un
goes for or against expectations, the Kim-
Moon meeting is a much-needed lesson for
the Asia Pacific, especially India and
Pakistan. The two South Asian neighbors
have fought a devastating war, of the same
intensity, as the Korean one, and are still
being bogged down in a plethora of conflicts
ranging from Kashmir to Kargil, Siachin to
water problems as well as cross-border
terrorism to aggression on the Line of
Control.
India and Pakistan have fought multiple
wars in 1948, 1965, 1971 and the Kargil
conflict, with emotions running high in
every battle. However, the casualty scale
falls much lower than the Korean War. The
nuclear-armed neighbors are, on their
respective sides, facing challenges from
poverty to lawlessness and corruption, but
still, refuse to sit down and draw a line of
action for peace in future. The North-South
Korea détente should be seen as peace
objectives for India and Pakistan, who are
carrying the baggage of history to this day.
Read more: North Korea says historic
summit opens ‘new era for peace’
Although North and South Korea did not
face issues concerning terrorism, the accord
is hailed as a visible sign of grace and sanity
on the international foray. On the same
pattern, Pakistan and India can set aside
contentious issues, for a while, to agree on
some key issues, in a bid to reduce their
military spending and look for long-standing
peace in the region. Even if they don’t sign a
new accord for peace, the implementation of
agreements already signed i.e the Ceasefire
Agreement and Indus Water Treaty can
boost the confidence of over 1.6 billion
people.
Whether or not the accord materializes,
North and South Korean have laid a
ceremonial groundwork for many neighbors
across the globe.
Asian Majorities acting
like Insecure Minorities-
CSS Pakistan Affairs
IT IS an unlikely weapon: a scuffed but
sturdy Samsonite briefcase, sitting on a desk
in a big house in a spacious garden in a
prosperous suburb of Colombo, the capital
of Sri Lanka. Its owner, shaven-headed,
bare-shouldered, in bright orange robes and
closely resembling Shrek, an adorably
grumpy cartoon ogre, looks an equally
unlikely warrior. Galagoda Aththe
Gnanasara says he never travels without the
case. Smiling, he pats the black plastic lid
and opens it to reveal a heap of well-
fingered papers. “This”, he says, “is my
evidence.” (CSS Pakistan Affairs)
Mr Gnanasara is a founder of the Bodu Bala
Sena (BBS) or Buddhist Power Force, one of
several extreme nationalist groups that
champion the rights of the three-quarters of
Sri Lankans who happen to be Sinhala-
speaking Buddhists. Sinhalese have
historically dominated the island, a fact
forcefully reasserted in 2009 when the Sri
Lankan army brought to a bloody end a 26-
year-long insurgency by mostly Hindu
ethnic Tamils, the largest minority group.
See more
Mr Gnanasara counts on his fingers the
different threats his people now face:
Wahhabist Islam, evangelical Christianity,
international cultural invasion. Then he
reaches for the briefcase. Here, for instance,
is a six-year-old clipping from an Indian
newspaper, claiming that Islamist terrorists
undergo training in secret Sri Lankan camps.
He waves another fading snippet, which
alleges that 33 Sri Lankan Muslims have
joined Islamic State. And there is more
evidence: photos of an ancient Buddhist
shrine that he says was destroyed by
Muslims.
Paranoid parking
In “their” areas, says Mr Gnanasara, streets
flow with the blood of slaughtered animals.
Motorcyclists never wear helmets because
Muslims do not respect national laws. They
park haphazardly, so that when you scratch
their cars they have an excuse to attack you.
Mr Gnanasara fishes for an even more
incriminating document. He finds a stapled
report, with names of a dozen people who
have converted to Islam in one village. In
the past five years, he exclaims
triumphantly, they have converted no fewer
than 8,000 people!
When it is pointed out that Sri Lanka has, in
fact, never experienced an act of violence
attributable to Islamists, and that at this rate
of conversion it will take the island’s
Muslims about 10,000 years to convert the
rest of its 21m inhabitants, Mr Gnanasara
simply shrugs. His hoard of evidence does
not really need to add up. In Sri Lanka, as
across most of South Asia, surprisingly large
numbers of people among groups that enjoy
overwhelming numerical superiority seem
eager to convince themselves that their
identity is somehow in mortal danger.
Muslims have borne the brunt of such
convictions in several countries. The most
egregious recent example is Myanmar,
whose 90% Buddhist majority felt so
threatened by a Rohingya Muslim minority
of barely 1% that it sanctioned burning,
pillage, murder, rape and enforced exile.
Targeted in occasional riots and ugly local
disturbances, Sri Lankan Muslims have
witnessed nothing of this scale or intensity.
The hateful underlying rhetoric is not so
different, however. Many of the instigators,
as in Myanmar, also happen to be Buddhist
monks. Indeed, the BBS has hosted Ashin
Wirathu, a Burmese monk notorious for his
inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Chauvinists in both countries borrow from
the anti-Muslim tirades of Hindu nationalists
in India, whose constant drumbeat of
incitement gives rise to an equally constant
stream of ugly sectarian incidents.
Muslim majorities, too, often resort to
similar abuses. Bangladesh chased non-
Muslim tribes into India, and its once large
and prosperous Hindu minority has
dwindled alarmingly in the face of constant
pressure. In the name of orthodoxy,
extremists in Pakistan, the original “Islamic”
state, have viciously hounded not only
Christians and Hindus but also Shia
Muslims, Ahmadis and allegedly
unorthodox Sufis.
Mukul Kesavan, a perceptive Indian
historian, sees this region-wide propensity
for majoritarian nationalism as a sad if
natural outcome of the awkward struggle to
build new nation-states. “Every post-
colonial state in South Asia paid lip service
to secular principle in the first decade of its
existence before reconstituting itself as a
kind of sole proprietorship run by its
dominant community,” he laments. This, he
suggests, has partly been a result of the
failure by the region’s mother-ship, India, to
live up fully to its own secular ideals, and to
the moral counter-example it seemed to
promise against the less inclusive premise
underpinning the creation of Pakistan. Since
independence India has wobbled between
two poles: an attempt to build a
constitutionally bound state founded on
equal citizenship and pluralism, and what
Mr Kesavan calls “a second-hand
nationalism derived not from the experience
of the anti-colonial struggle but the
majoritarian logic of ethnic nationalism”.
While this struggle has played out violently
in all India’s neighbours—even tiny Bhutan,
the country that invented “gross national
happiness”, forcibly expelled a big,
ethnically Nepalese minority in the 1990s—
India’s large, messy democracy has
managed to contain most of the passion,
most of the time. These days many Indians
despair at what often appears to be a rising
tide of majoritarian nastiness. Imperfect as
they are, however, the country’s pluralist
institutions still find ways of pushing back.
In a recent ruling, the supreme court
thunderingly rejected a lower court’s
decision to separate a 24-year-old woman
from her Muslim husband on the ground that
he had enticed her to convert to Islam. “The
constitution protects personal liberty from
disapproving audiences,” the judgment
declared. “Courts are duty bound not to
swerve from the path of upholding our
pluralism and diversity as a nation.”
An Alternative to Two-
State Solution of Palestine
Issue-
CSS General Knowledge
A.B. Yehoshua, one of
Israel’s staunchest fighters
for the two-state solution,
lays out a proposal for an
Israeli-Palestinian
partnership
On the third day of the Six-Day War, when
the conquest of East Jerusalem, the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip had been
accomplished, I remember myself saying in
a celebratory tone, “Now a state has to be
established for the residents of the
territories.” (CSS General Knowledge)
Initially, it was customary to say “residents
of the territories,” not “Palestinians,” and the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip were called
“territories,” which gradually morphed into
“administered territories,” and in the past 20
years into “occupied territories.” The peace
camp slowly introduced the term
“Palestinians,” in place of “Land of Israel
Arabs,” into the public dialogue. The
national camp, as it’s known, which attached
the adjective “liberated” to the territories,
gradually insinuated the names “Judea and
Samaria” into the national discourse, as
natural and legitimate parts of Israel itself,
like East Jerusalem, which joined the
western section, creating one city.
In this piece, I will try to avoid the terms
“left” and “right,” using instead “peace
camp” and “national camp.” Some left-
leaning people, driven by a concern for
social justice, have always been active in the
“national camp,” while many “peace camp”
activists espouse a liberal capitalist approach
that is completely at odds with left-wing
ideology. Still, beyond the mutual insults in
the polemics, it’s widely agreed that the
majority of those who identify with the
“peace camp” are driven also by saliently
national motivations, and on the other hand,
some in the “national camp” seek equitable
coexistence, according to their lights, with
the Palestinians.
That said, it’s noteworthy that in recent
years, despite the virulent tones and the
heated, personal language used by both
sides, the truly substantive arguments about
the “two-state solution” are becoming more
acerbic – because of the chaotic situation in
the Middle East, the lessons of the unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza, the passivity of the
Palestinian Authority and the despair of the
Israeli peace camp, which has begun to
devote energy to other civil struggles.
But above all, the two-state solution is
fading because of the constantly expanding
settlements in Judea and Samaria. Indeed,
according to many experts who are familiar
with the demographic and geographic
reality, it is no longer possible to divide the
Land of Israel into two separate sovereign
states. Similarly, the possible partition of
Jerusalem into two separate capitals with an
international border between them is
becoming increasingly untenable.
For 50 years – during most of my adult life –
I worked tirelessly for the two-state solution.
In the mid-1970s, I added my voice to those
recognizing the Palestine Liberation
Organization as the representative of the
Palestinian people for negotiations, and I
was a signatory to the Geneva Agreement in
the early 2000s. Together with most of the
nation, I supported Israel’s unilateral
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and during
the various intifadas and the expansion of
the settlements, I never stopped putting
forward possible ideas for the border
crossings and the status of Israeli minorities
in the future Palestinian state, in an effort to
give life to the receding two-state vision.
In the face of countless frustrations,
generated by both the Israeli government
and the PA, I too, along with the entire
peace camp, hoped that the international
community, and particularly the United
States and Europe, would exert economic
and diplomatic pressure on both sides so as
to force them to find the way to a historic
compromise to one of the most persistent
and complex disputes in the world since the
start of the 20th century.
And in fact, the anticipated moment
ostensibly arrived when the official
Palestinian leadership, and also two right-
wing prime ministers – Ehud Olmert and
Benjamin Netanyahu – formally announced
their desire to work for the two-state
solution. Before his resignation, in 2009,
Olmert initiated a detailed and extremely
generous plan for dividing the Land of Israel
into two states. However, according to
Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas evaded most of the meetings that
were intended to discuss the plan. As for
Netanyahu, there’s no knowing what he was
actually thinking in his occasional references
to the two-state idea.
Yes, there are people in the right-wing
parties who stammer “two states” – among
them a few in Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu,
Kulanu and even Shas (the ultra-Orthodox
Ashkenazi parties don’t deal with such petty
matters). And, of course, the two-state
principle is posited at the center of the
political solution proposed by parties such as
Yesh Atid, Zionist Union and certainly
Meretz and the Joint List of Arab parties.
The PA and most of the moderate Arab
states also advocate the two-state solution,
which is also the official position of the
majority of the international community.
A solution to the conflict in the form of the
establishment of a Palestinian state
alongside Israel – which seemed fantastical
and unrealistic 50 years ago – has thus
become the cornerstone of the entire
political arena. In the 1970s, Prime Minister
Golda Meir ridiculed the term “Palestinian”
as both a political and identity concept,
claiming with irony that she, too, was
actually an authentic Palestinian. (Indeed,
with her self-righteousness, stubbornness
and shortsightedness, she resembled many
Palestinian leaders.) Today, though, right-
wing prime ministers employ the term
naturally and meet openly with PLO
representatives.
Yet, just when the term “Palestinian state” is
becoming a staple fixture in the international
sphere, I and some of my good friends who
fought for it for 50 years feel – and I hope I
am proved wrong – that this vision is no
longer viable in practice. Indeed, it has
become only a deceptive and crafty cover
for a slow but ever-deepening slide into a
condition of vicious occupation and legal
and social apartheid with which we in the
peace camp – Israelis and Palestinians alike
– have come to terms out of weariness and
fatalism.
Accordingly, we must try to examine the
situation with intellectual honesty and think
about other solutions that can stop this
process and reverse it. What’s in danger now
is not Israel’s Jewish and Zionist identity but
its humanity – and the humanity of the
Palestinians who are under our rule.
Lengthy and stubborn
If we date the genesis of Zionism to the end
of the 19th century, and if the first new
Jewish settlements in Palestine were being
built by the Lovers of Zion movement as
early as in the 1870s and 1880s, this means
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost 150
years old. One’s amazement at the length
and obduracy of the conflict is only
heightened by the fact that it is one of the
best known and most deliberated conflicts in
the world, especially during the past 50
years. High-ranking envoys come and go,
and presidents, foreign ministers and prime
ministers in both the present and past have
tried to resolve it. In 2000, U.S. President
Bill Clinton set aside everything else to
spend days discussing the intricacies of the
border between a future Palestinian state and
Israel. John Kerry noted that more than 60
percent of his foreign trips as Barack
Obama’s secretary of state were aimed at
resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
conflict is a regular subject at the United
Nations and in many other international
organizations. The current American
president speaks of Israeli-Palestinian peace
as a “deal.” It’ll be a long time before that
“deal” is cut, but in the meantime a great
many people have made handsome “deals”
out of this conflict.
The deep reason for this state of affairs is, I
believe, the singularity of this conflict. To
the best of my knowledge, there is no other
example in human history of a nation that
abandoned its land at least 2,000 years
earlier and wandered across the globe, and
then, after millennia, sought (as it became
the target of intensifying hostility) to return
to that historic homeland, with which it
maintained a spiritual and religious
connection but to which it had stubbornly
avoided returning for centuries. Thus, at the
beginning of the 19th century, only 10,000
of the world’s 2.5 million Jews lived in
Palestine (there were 40,000 Jews in
Afghanistan, 80,000 in Yemen and already a
million in Poland). A hundred years later, at
the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration,
even with the momentum of Zionism, there
were 550,000 Palestinians in Palestine but
only 50,000 Jews out of a worldwide
population of almost 14.5 million (data from
the Encyclopedia Hebraica).
But it’s not only the late and amazing return
to Zion – which we take pride in and which
the Palestinians and the Arabs reject – but
the fact that the two peoples are effectively
claiming sovereignty over the same territory.
It’s not only a dispute over a particular
region, of the kind history is familiar with; at
bottom, this is a dispute over full ownership.
That the Palestinians rejected the Balfour
Declaration is perfectly understandable, and
not only because Britain did not possess the
moral authority to promise Palestine to the
Jews. By the same token, the League of
Nations and its successor, the United
Nations, lacked moral or legal authority to
divide a country between its inhabitants and
a people coming from the outside.
Both the Palestinians and the Jews rebelled
against the British presence in Palestine in
the 1930s and ‘40s. For this land does not
belong to Britain but to its inhabitants, both
Jews and Palestinians asserted, in
accordance with the universal moral
imperative by which a land belongs to its
occupants and not to the army that conquers
it.
But the conflict also grew fiercer because of
the demographic relations between the two
peoples, which even today continue to rule
out compromise and partition. The
Palestinians rightfully rejected compromise
and a partition with the Jews in both 1917
and 1947. In 1917, if only a quarter of the
world’s Jewish population – meaning around
4 million Jews – had come to Palestine, the
Palestinians would not have had a square
centimeter on which to hoist their flag. By
1947, there were 1.3 million Palestinians and
600,000 Jews in the country, but once more,
some 12 million Jews were elsewhere, some
of them homeless Holocaust refugees, others
distraught by the intensity and cruelty of the
hostility they had endured in the war. Thus
the Palestinians’ opposition to the UN
resolution was clear and natural, as it
demanded that they turn over half of their
homeland to a people that had resided in it
2,000 years earlier but that since then had
been scattered across the globe.
Indeed, in 1948, the Palestinians had every
chance, with the aid of seven Arab states, to
crush the small, nascent, objectively weak weakening the homeland element in the
Jewish community. The deputy chief of staff Jewish-Israeli identity. Abraham, the first
of the army at the time, Yigael Yadin, told Hebrew, was enjoined to leave his father’s
the Jewish community’s leadership that house and his homeland and go to a new
Israel had a barely 50 percent prospect of land, which was defined as a holy land, a
surviving what evolved into the War of designated land given to him in a covenant
Independence. by God. Thus it was not akin to a homeland
Yet even if the roots of this distinctive that was granted to the Jewish people
conflict are understood, we still need to ask naturally, as with every other people.
why it is that after 70 years of Israeli
independence, and particularly after the
vanquishing of the Palestinians and the Arab
states – both in the War of Independence,
the wars of 1967 and 1973 and in the second
intifada – it remains impossible to conclude
this conflict in the way that the entire world
is suggesting: by partition and compromise.

Double defect
Homeland is the first and most important
element in every national identity, whose
other components are built on its foundation:
language, religion, history, culture and in
some cases common origin. Religion and
language can be shared by a number of
peoples, but it’s territory that creates the
distinctive basis of nationality.

Seeking to understand the reasons for the

depth and obduracy of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, we discover that it is the defective
character of both the Jewish and the
Palestinian national identities that is causing
the conflict’s exacerbation. And not least,
because the defects are mutual opposites.
Before proceeding, I must point out, in all
fairness, that the singular defect in the
homeland element of the Jewish people’s
national identity is far more serious and
disaster-ridden than the comparable defect in
the Palestinians’ homeland component.

From the dawn of the Jewish people’s

emergence – and it is immaterial whether it
actually took place this way historically or is
only a mythological-religious foundation
that was embedded deep in the national
consciousness – the homeland component of
the Jewish-Israeli national identity has lost
its primary and key role to the religious-
divine component. Certain facts can be
enumerated in the deliberate process of
 generated and did not spring up naturally in
its homeland, the Land of Israel, but in
Egyptian exile.

Likewise the Torah, as a primary element of

the national identity, was not given in the
homeland, in the Land of Israel, but in the
Sinai desert, which is no one’s homeland.
Hence, the promised territory, which is
meant to be a natural foundation for the
nationhood of the people that came out of
Egypt, was not bestowed to it thanks to
conquest or natural growth, but only by dint
of loyalty to God’s laws.

Abandonment or violation of those laws will

bring calamities on the people, of which the
most egregious will be their expulsion from
the Land of Israel and their dispersal among
the nations.

However, because homeland as such is only

a secondary component in Jewish identity,
its loss need not erase and annul the national
identity. The nation that was born in exile
will return to exile and continue to exist
there. The homeland, the territory, is
conditional, and only God is the ultimate
decider. There is no other people in the
world that, after losing – more precisely,
abandoning – its homeland and dispersing
for many centuries to foreign territories
across the world, succeeded, or at least part
of it did so, in preserving its national
identity.

Exile is an immanent and legitimate part of

Jewish identity. For almost 2,000 years, the
vast majority of the Jewish people did not
live in the “homeland” given it by God but
in the homelands of other peoples. The ratio
between the number of Jews who preferred
of their own volition to live outside the Land
of Israel and those who lived there until
Israel’s establishment is astounding and
shocking. For centuries, as much as Jews
around the world vowed to seek redemption
Illustration: Marina Grechanik.
and return to the Land of Israel, and
According to the biblical myth – the
reiterated the verse “If I forget thee, O
formative myth in the Jewish national
Jerusalem” – the Jewish presence in the
consciousness, both religious and secular –
Land of Israel was minuscule, if not
the Israeli-Jewish national identity was not
negligible.
The Jews’ obdurate avoidance of settling in
the Land of Israel is especially blatant
among the Jews of the East in the 400 years
in which Palestine was under Ottoman rule.
Numerous Jewish communities thrived
across the vast Ottoman Empire, from which
many could easily have settled in the Land
of Israel. But the Eastern Jews who moved
about between the many communities did
not go there. In 1839, according to the
records of the British consul in Palestine,
there were only 10,000 Jews in the country,
among them Ashkenazim from Eastern
Europe.
The Jews’ tendency to recoil from their true
historic and religious homeland was
indicative of a disastrous flaw in their
identity. Because the homeland element is
essentially secondary in the Jews’ national
consciousness, they also project this feeling
on others, and as such diminish the identity
value of homeland in other peoples. They
don’t understand that each case of their
dwelling among other peoples constitutes a
deep, danger-fraught infiltration into an
identity that does not belong to them.
Resorting to an image, we can say that the
majority of the Jews treated and continue to
treat the homelands of other people like a
hotel chain, and so, together with the
“Jewish bookshelf,” move from hotel to
hotel according to the changing conditions
of accommodation. “The Jew [is]
everywhere and nowhere,” Hannah Arendt
observed of Jewish existence, and in her
private life also manifested that assertion.
Even though the Jews tried throughout
history to behave like good, polite customers
in these “hotels,” their very presence
fomented harsh reactions. These took the
form of expulsions, bans on their entry and
attempts to change their identity by making
them convert or even effectively
imprisoning them – that is, by preventing
them from leaving the “hotel” when
conditions changed there, as was the case,
for example in the Soviet Union and in
Syria. As a result, the wandering between
places of exile also brought about a dramatic
reduction in the number of Jews. From a
population of up to 4 million at the end of
the Second Temple period, their number had
declined to 1 million by the beginning of the
18th century.
The most horrific reaction, however, was
annihilation, and precisely in places where
the Jews’ infiltration into the local national
identity was extremely deep. From this
perspective, the Holocaust was the hardest
and cruelest catastrophe endured by any
people in human history. In the course of
five years, a third of the Jewish people was
destroyed – not over territory, not because of
their religion and faith, not for their material
possessions and also not because of some
ideology they espoused uniquely. That
terrible debacle, which some of the fathers
of Zionism foresaw (“If you do not liquidate
the Diaspora, the Diaspora will liquidate
you,” the founder of Revisionist Zionism,
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, wrote), was caused not
only by the unimportance of territory as the
primary, firm basis in their national identity,
but also because of insufficient recognition
by them of its importance in the identity of
other peoples.
Double barrier
Parallel to the Jews’ historic disdain for
territory as the primary basis of national
identity, both of themselves and hence of
other peoples as well, we find an opposite
Palestinian flaw. For the Palestinian, the
house, or the village, and not the entire
territory of Palestine, symbolizes the
primary and principal basis for his identity.
The result is that the clash between these
two flaws actually aggravates and sustains
the conflict between the two peoples.
I cannot pretend to be highly knowledgeable
about the intricacies of Palestinian
nationalism. Still, a perusal of its emergence
turns up a process that began during the long
rule of the Ottoman Empire. Because the
empire was essentially Muslim, and the
Arabs within it belonged in their perception
to one nation that spoke a single language
(despite the richness of its different dialects),
naturally it could not develop and
consolidate a singular territorial nationality
within clear and defined borders. But after
the empire disintegrated, in the wake of its
defeat in World War I, and consolidated into
more clearly defined ethnic borders, the
Arab states gradually began to coalesce in
the Middle East, under the patronage and
with the encouragement of the colonial
powers Britain and France. In this way, the
national identities of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,
the Hashemite Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and
Yemen began to develop.
But in Palestine the development of the
Palestinian nationality remained stuck in the
face of a double barrier, namely, Britain’s
military and administrative rule, which was
supposed to guarantee the implementation of
the mandate of the Balfour Declaration, and
the increasing arrival of Jews.
Instead of an autonomous national
administration, like those the Iraqis, Syrians
and Lebanese gradually began to develop
when they gained independent states, the
Palestinians remained at a level of extremely
limited self-rule, which was managed within
a framework of clans and village dignitaries,
without concrete power of enforcement. The
political leadership, too, headed by the
Higher Arab Committee under the grand
mufti, lacked truer legitimacy among the
Palestinians, besides which the population
also included Christian Palestinians and
Druze.
Of course, if the central national government
is feeble and limited, and lacks a tradition of
concrete national authority, as existed in the
past, the smaller units – villages and families
– become the focal points of national
identity. The national consciousness that
expresses itself in a sense of belonging to the
whole homeland is diminished and
weakened. The situation was further
compounded after 1948, when the
Palestinian nation was split among five
countries at least: Israel, Jordan, Egypt,
Lebanon and Syria.
Following the British departure, the village-
clan structure was one of the factors that led
to the Palestinians’ failure in their war
against the Jews, who were fighting for their
lives with their back to the sea. The
Palestinians’ basic loyalty was to village and
home, not to homeland in the broad sense.
Even though the Palestinians outnumbered
the Jews two to one and were bolstered by
military aid from Arab countries, not only
were they unable to eradicate the fledgling
Jewish state, they also ended up losing part
of their allotted territory under the UN
partition plan.
In his excellent new book “The Battle on the
Qastel: 24 Hours that Changed the Course of
the 1948 War between Palestinians and
Israelis” (in Hebrew), veteran journalist
Danny Rubinstein describes an illuminating
episode that gives vivid expression to the
connection to village and home that
overrides the national interest. During an
attack by the Palmach, the Jewish shock
troops – an operation that went partly wrong
– Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, the legendary,
revered Palestinian commander, lost his way
between positions, and was killed by Jewish
troops. Not realizing whom they had killed,
they left Husseini’s body where it lay. The
Palestinians, thinking he had only been
wounded and taken prisoner by the Israelis,
summoned help from the local villages to
rescue him. A thousand fighters responded
immediately to the call and recaptured the
village of Qastel and its fortress, inflicting
severe casualties on the Jewish forces.
Hussein’s body was found and taken to
Jerusalem for a magnificent burial. The
Palestinian fighters who remained in the
newly liberated village were ordered not to
leave Qastel until new troops had arrived to
replace them. However, the Arab villagers,
who with great effort captured the strategic
outpost that was to determine the fate of the
siege of Jerusalem, ignored the order and
within a few hours returned to their villages
and homes, just a few kilometers from the
site of the battle. Effectively, they handed
over Qastel to their enemies without a fight.
Their loyalty and attachment to their villages
trumped their overall national identity.
To this day, Rubinstein writes, 70 years after
the 1948 war, the Palestinians define
themselves in the alleys of the refugee
camps according to their villages of origin,
which remain the heart of their identity. Yet
the Palestinians who inhabit the refugee
camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are
not actually refugees, but only displaced
persons still living in their homeland.
Whereas the Israelis – who were in any case
relatively small in number – who in the 1948
war were forced by the Palestinians to leave
their homes in the Etzion Bloc, Atarot,
Neveh Yaakov, Beit Ha’arava and the Old
City of Jerusalem never considered
themselves refugees, only displaced persons
who remained in the homeland, and they
immediately integrated into other locales.
Even the Palestinians who left or were
expelled from Palestine to Lebanon, Jordan,
Syria or Egypt in 1948 could have
theoretically returned to the areas of the
homeland that were ruled for the next 19
years by Jordan and Egypt. It wasn’t until
after the 1967 war, when Israel closed the
borders to them definitively, that they
became true refugees.
The insistence on seeing one’s home or
village as the primary and almost exclusive
source of national identity – through the
refugee’s “personal right” to return to his
original home – exacerbates and sustains the
conflict. On top of which, the United
Nations, through its UNRWA relief agency
(perhaps because of repressed guilt at the
partition plan), granted refugee status to the
Palestinian refugees’ offspring, too, even
today, to members of the fifth generation.
Yes, a Palestinian has the right to long for
the moment of Israel’s destruction, when he
will be able to return to his village or to the
home of his forefathers, just as the displaced
(not refugee) settlers from Gush Katif in the
Gaza Strip can dream of the moment when
that area will be reconquered and they can
rebuild their homes, which were demolished
by the Israel Defense Forces in 2005. But
the question must be asked: What happens in
the meantime?
The fact that refugees have lived for 70
years in miserable, difficult camps in Gaza,
which is after all part of the Palestinian
homeland, and insist on condemning
themselves to a shameful life of refugeehood
within 10 or 20 kilometers of their original
homes in Ashdod or Ashkelon, from which
they fled or were expelled, transforms the
rusting keys of their lost homes into basic
symbols of Palestinian nationhood, which
for its part needs to confront Jewish
nationhood. The latter people, in the
meantime, after 2,000 years of drifting
around the world, was seized by biblical
longing, and, not satisfied with controlling
the 78 percent of Palestine that was
recognized as the State of Israel after the
War of Independence, also needed to gnaw
away at the remaining 22 percent – the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip – that had remained
in Palestinian hands.
The combination of these two substantive
defects – expressed through the degrading
penetration of the Palestinian identity
through the settlements established in the
territories, counterpoised to the sacred
Palestinian principle of the return of the
refugees to their homes within Israel proper
– is what makes compromise and
conciliation so difficult to achieve. The
cruelty and absurdity of both sides are well
illustrated in the Israeli settlement project in
the Gaza Strip, which ended – and not by
chance – with a total Israeli defeat on the
one hand, and with an absurd and destructive
response of the defeated, who instead of
building and rehabilitating Gaza following
its liberation from the cruel occupation,
started to fire missiles and dig tunnels.
Reverse demography
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat noted in his
memoirs that he arrived at the decision to
launch the 1973 war when Israel started to
settle civilians in Sinai, in the area known as
the Rafah salient or the Yamit district, which
was meant to act as a kind of civilian buffer
(totally untenable) between Sinai and the
Gaza Strip. Given that the expropriation of
conquered territory for the purpose of
settling foreign citizens is the deepest
possible infringement of national
sovereignty, it’s clear that the only
legitimate response to this can be war. The
decision to establish the Rafah salient was
made in 1972 by the Labor Party secretariat,
in what’s known as the “Galili document”
(drawn up by cabinet minister Israel Galili),
which was approved unanimously by
ministers, MKs and others, some of them
ardent socialists who were members of
kibbutzim and moshavim. Ten years later,
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon carried out
the evacuation and demolition of Yamit for
the sake of the peace agreement with Egypt,
which was signed with the Likud
government.
It’s true that in 1977, when Labor transferred
power to Likud, there were only 3,000
settlers in the West Bank, in contrast to the
nearly 400,000 Israelis who now live in the
settlements of Judea and Samaria. Still, it
was Labor that imparted the moral and
political legitimacy to the settlements,
though that legitimacy was accompanied by
a sly principle of “settlement only in areas
not dense with Arabs.” That principle was
easy enough to implement in the Rafah
salient because the 10,000 Bedouin who had
lived there were forcibly evicted from their
homes, their crops uprooted and their fields
transformed into construction sites for the
new Israeli settlements – which were thereby
not established in an area “dense with
Arabs.”
But in the Gaza Strip, where the Gush Katif
settlements were built (also by a decision of
the Labor Party), it was more difficult to
maintain the sanctimonious principle of
settlement in places not “dense with Arabs.”
Accordingly, when Likud, and particularly
its active religious-Zionist wing, came to
power, the principle of the prohibition of
settlements in such locations was dropped.
After all, the Gush Emunim movement
noted, for 2,000 years Jews had lived in
places that were “dense with goyim” without
losing their Jewishness. Then why, in the
Land of Israel of all places, would they shun
such places when the IDF was safeguarding
and protecting them from the “denseness”?
The trouble was that the “denseness” only
intensified.
The demographic balance of forces that
existed between the two peoples at the time
of the Balfour Declaration – half-a-million
Palestinians in the face of the almost 15-
million-strong Jewish people – slowly began
to change. This was due not only to the
Holocaust, which annihilated one-third of
the world’s Jews, but also to natural growth,
and to the benefits derived by the
Palestinians by virtue of their shared life
with the Israelis. What still seemed natural
and possible (though not moral) about
realizing the concept of Greater Israel in
1967 was increasingly difficult a hundred
years after the Balfour Declaration and 70
years after the UN partition resolution.
The demography began to reverse itself, or
more accurately to swing like a pendulum.
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians’ chaotic
leader, with his deceptive and self-righteous
talk of Palestine as a “secular, pluralistic and
democratic state” – after the return of the
refugees to their homes within Israel, of
course – was seized by dread following the
waves of immigration to Israel from the
Soviet Union starting in the late 1980s and
the multiplication of settlements in the
territories. He agreed, then, to sign the Oslo
Accords, which recognized Israel as a
distinct state. But he began to trample the
agreement through terrorist attacks, which
intensified in the second intifada, besides
which Israel also still hesitated about leaving
the territories, and the settlements not only
failed to stop expanding, but grew more
deeply rooted.
The Gush Katif settlers, who waited in 2005
for soldiers to evacuate them while the
laundry tumbled in the machine and the
chicken roasted in the oven, taught the
Jewish people a lesson for the future: how
arduous and terrible it will be to try to
evacuate settlements in Judea and Samaria.
The evacuation of the 8,000 Gush Katif
settlers cost the state about 10 billion shekels
($2.85 billion in current terms). On top of
which, the Palestinians in Gaza explained to
the world, via missiles and underground
tunnels, that for them the evacuation of
Gaza, far from being an end to occupation,
did not contain even a hint of the start of
separation and conciliation.
But we still have the relatively successful
story of coexistence in Israel between the
Jews and the Israeli Palestinians, despite all
the harsh vicissitudes experienced by both
sides over 70 years: the wars, the occupation
after the Six-Day War, the intifadas, the
military government and the land
expropriations. Still, it appears that the
citizenship that was forced on or granted to
the Palestinians in Israel upon the conclusion
of the War of Independence in 1949 created
a stable, concrete base for relations between
the majority and the minority in the Jewish
state, with its large national and non-
territorial minority of 20 percent.
Even an outside observer with a lofty sense
of human morality would give both sides –
Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians – high
marks for the wisdom of coexistence they’ve
developed during the state’s 70 years of
existence. There’s the Palestinian-Israeli
judge who sentenced a former president of
Israel to a prison term, and in so doing
helped establish an Israeli moral standard;
the Palestinian director of the Nahariya
hospital, who in that capacity helps set
Israeli medical codes; the Druze commander
of a combat brigade during the 2014 Gaza
war; the Palestinian-Israeli ambassadors and
consuls-general around the world; the
Palestinian intellectuals, scientists and high-
tech people, and the talented Palestinian-
Israeli artists of all kinds who amazingly
steer a course between the codes of the two
peoples. All these people show that despite
the difficulties and injustices, the Jewish
majority has succeeded, vis-a-vis a fairly
large population group, in maintaining
cooperation and life together amid the
Middle Eastern chaos. With all the
grievances and allegations of both sides, and
in particular on the part of the Palestinian
minority, there is still a foundation that’s
right for the shared fate to which we brought
ourselves with the late and partial return of
the Jews to their historic homeland.
Partnership, not peace
In 2016, on the first anniversary of the death
of former minister and MK Yossi Sarid, his
widow, Dorit, asked me to speak at a
memorial event for him at the Tel Aviv
Museum of Art. This was a few weeks after
the publication of my proposal to grant
residency status to 100,000 Palestinians
living in Area C, in order to reduce
somewhat the malignancy of the occupation
in at least 60 percent of the West Bank –
namely, in the area in which all the Israeli
settlements lie. A few people in the peace
camp were panic-stricken by this idea, for it
was inconceivable that a veteran of that
camp should put forward a suggestion whose
hidden implications could be interpreted as a
prelude to Israeli annexation of Area C. The
principle of two states within the post-1967
borders is sacrosanct to the peace camp, and
anyone who engages in heretical reflections
is taking his dovish life in his hands.
Nevertheless, in my remarks to a hall packed
with activists – whose camp I have belonged
to since 1967 – I called for an attempt to be
made to examine other modes of thought as
well. It is in fact becoming clear to many
who are well informed about both the
situation on the ground and the official
contacts with the Palestinian governing
authorities that separation into two sovereign
states is becoming increasingly difficult and
complicated. Indeed, some already view the
idea as little more than an illusion designed
to quell the conscience, while making do
with plays, films and novels about the
Israeli-Palestinian problem.
The fact is that recently, ideas have been
raised in both the national camp and the
peace camp about various sorts of
federations and confederations, along with
plans for “two states in one homeland” and
other notions. I consider all these to be
highly positive efforts amid the conceptual
stagnation that has seized large segments of
the Israeli public, and certainly many
political circles. It’s true that wherever a
new idea leads, a land mine, real or possible,
will immediately go off beneath you, but the
apartheid process that is striking deep roots
in our life is far more dangerous, and
uprooting it will soon be impossible.
 Palestinians in our midst. We are not
Americans in Vietnam, the French in
Algeria or the Soviets in Afghanistan, who
one day get up and leave. We will live with
the Palestinians for eternity, and every
wound and bruise in relations between the
two peoples will be engraved in the memory
and passed on from one generation to the
next.

In order not to leave things at the level of

reproof alone, I will take my life in my
hands and set forth a draft proposal that,
though replete with countless problems and
obstacles, is still a capable of being realized,
in my opinion. I will stress that I am not
offering a blueprint for a peace plan with the
Palestinians, still less for a “historic
reconciliation” or a “declaration of the
termination of claims.” It’s not my intention
to propose something that is impossible and
is used, by both sides, as a kind of excuse to
torpedo any possibility of an agreement. I
am proposing lines for thought about how to
stop the apartheid process in principle, and
at a certain stage to reverse it. Accordingly,
this is a unilateral plan intended for Israel
that perhaps anticipates the possibility of a
modicum of cooperation on the part of the
Palestinians, who have also despaired of the
two-state solution.

Therefore, instead of talking about peace or

a settlement or conciliation, I suggest that
we use the term “de facto partnership.”
That’s a less ambitious but more practical
term, and the amazing fact is that there has
long been security cooperation between
Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The lines of thought that follow are intended

also to serve as a challenge and to encourage
other initiatives, different but welcome, if
they are indeed intended to fight or diminish
the “cancer of the occupation,” which has
long since begun metastasizing to other parts
of the body politic.
Illustration: Marina Grechanik.
As I emphasized at the start of this essay, it
First, the plan relates only to the West Bank,
is not the Jewish or Zionist identity that I
or Judea and Samaria. It is not intended for
fear for, but something more important: our
the Gaza Strip, which is now effectively a
humanity and the humanity of the
sovereign Palestinian territory, properly
armed, administered by an independent
government, and with an open passage to
Egypt and from there to the world.
The plan requires an absolute halt to the
building of new settlements and to the
expansion of existing ones, but does not
require the evacuation of any, apart from the
dismantlement of unauthorized outposts,
which are illegal even by Israeli law.
The eastern border of the Land of
Israel/Palestine would remain under full
Israeli control. The security checks at the
crossing points to Jordan would continue to
operate as they do today.
Residency status would be offered to all
residents of the West Bank, and in its wake,
within five years, also Israeli citizenship,
including all the attendant rights and
obligations.
Proper compensation of land or money
would be arranged for private Palestinian
land in the West Bank that has been
expropriated by Israel since 1967.
In Jerusalem, citizenship would be offered
immediately to all Palestinians already
possessing residency status, which was
granted in the wake of the annexation of the
eastern part of the city and its surrounding
villages in 1967.
The security measures and checkpoints
would remain in place as needed, but in
principle, free movement of Palestinians into
and around Israel would be permitted, as it is
permitted today to the Palestinian residents
of Jerusalem and to a significant portion of
the Palestinians residing in Judea and
Samaria.
A sincere option, active and generous, would
be proposed for the rehabilitation of the
refugees, whether in new communities or by
expanding existing Palestinian locales.
The holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem
would be administered jointly by the three
great religions.
Israel’s form of government would be
changed from a parliamentary to a
presidential regime. The president will be
elected in a general election, similar to what
exists today in the United States and other
countries. The intention here is to reduce the
deceptive and manipulative dependence of
the executive branch on the legislative
branch.
The country would be divided into districts,
each of which would send two
representatives to an upper legislative
chamber, without connection to the size of
its population (like the U.S. Senate).
The districts would be granted more
autonomy in the realm of municipal laws,
and of course in all matters related to
education, culture and especially religion.
The electoral system for a lower chamber
would be changed from proportional
elections to regional elections, in order to
enhance the efficacy of the districts (like the
electoral system in Britain and other
countries).
 The ID card of the new Palestinian citizens
would state “The Israeli Palestinian
Federation,” but in terms of rights and
obligations would be identical to the Israeli
ID card.

The (Jewish) Law of Return would remain

intact, but with more stringent examination.

The return of Palestinian refugees from

outside Israel-Palestine would not be
allowed, other than within a strict
framework of family unification.

A request would be made to the members of

the European Union and to the world’s other
countries for a generous loan/grant for the
welcome process of annulling apartheid and
for rehabilitating the refugee camps in new
cities.

The Israeli-Palestinian federation would ask

to join the existing European community as
an associate member bearing a special
status.

Nonviolent partnership
These are all general lines of very
preliminary thought, filled with tough
problems and complicated to implement, and
which would invite no end of opposition
from both the Palestinian and the Israeli
sides. But at heart, they are thoughts that
grope toward the possibility of creating a
nonviolent partnership between Israelis and
Palestinians.

Jewish identity (however it is interpreted)

existed for thousands of years as a small
minority within large, powerful nations, so
there is no reason for it not to exist also in an
Israeli state even though it contains a
Palestinian minority so large that it can be
termed a binational state. Consider the fact
that in 1967 there was not even one
Palestinian in Jerusalem the capital of Israel,
Illustration: Marina Grechanik. whereas now, 50 years later, 300,000
The security forces of the Palestinian Palestinians live there. Has Jerusalem’s
Authority, with which reasonable Jewish identity declined or grown? Many
cooperation now exists, would be united would say that the Jewish identity of
with those of Israel in a joint police force.
 Jerusalem has only increased, and certainly
has not diminished.

Similarly, Israel within its pre-1967 borders

is a country containing a large Palestinian
minority, which possesses some distinctive
merits of its own. The Palestinians have
been natives of this homeland for
generations, most of them also know
Hebrew and are familiar with the Israeli
codes and share them. It would be possible
to create a reasonable partnership with them
for the benefit of both sides – a human status
quo that grants civil status to every person.

The proposal put forward here, and many

other proposals that are now under
consideration and discussion by people from
across the political spectrum, raise serious
problems, but there is always hope that
partnerships will be able to moderate the
obstacles in attempts to cope with them.
Let’s not forget that all these plans are, after
all, attempts to extricate ourselves from the
Authoritarianism
principal moral quagmire into which we are
relentlessly sinking.
in world, Will
At the same time, in spite of everything I’ve Pakistan follow?
written here, if a political force can prove to
me, in words and in deeds, that it would still CSS Political
be possible to achieve a separation into two
states, of a sort that both sides would accept
officially, I will follow it through fire and
Science
The twenty first century has seen the rise of
water.
authoritarian governments throughout the
Authoritarianism in world. Western countries and West
dominated International organizations have
world, Will Pakistan always emphasized on the virtues of liberal
democracy but the world doesn’t seem to be
follow? CSS Political buying it. The preachers of liberalism were
stunned when the USA elected a right wing
Science isolationist candidate as their president. US
is considered to be the champion of
 Posted byADMIN democracy throughout the world but the
 CategoriesCURRENT AFFAIRS, LOCAL election of President Donald Trump
ISSUES, SOMETHING NEW highlighted the changing mindset of not only
 DateAPRIL 10, 2018 the American, but of the world. (CSS
 Comments0 COMMENT Political Science)

Nationalism is on the rise throughout the

world. While it was already present to some
extent in the rest of the world, the western
examples are the most prominent ones since
the west has already been considered as an
ideal example of countries living and
working in harmony. The United Nations
(UN) was formed by the western countries
to promote harmony among nations after the
World War 2. European Countries united
with each other to form the European Union
(EU) and some countries in the EU adopted
a common currency the Euro, forming the
Eurozone.
Read more: Democrats: We are Defined by
what we Defend
However, the whole concept of liberalism,
international harmony and peace is under
threat as right wing parties are on the rise in
almost every European Country. The
departure of England from European Union,
movement in Catalonia for separation from
Spain and Greece’s movement for
withdrawal from Eurozone all hint that the
idea of liberalism is crumbling . The rise of
nationalism can be observed from BJP’s
ascend to power in India, Putin’s
authoritarian regime in Russia and
Erdogan’s government in Turkey.
Recently, Pakistan’s neighbor China passed
an amendment to remove the term limits for
the President and Vice President, allowing
President Xi Jinping to stay in power for
life. He is considered to be the most
powerful Chinese leader since its founding
father Mao Zedong. China is apparently a
‘democracy’ but with its one party system, it
cannot be considered a democracy by any
definition. China is also Pakistan’s partner in
the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC).
External Situation of Pakistan
The 71 year old history of Pakistan has seen
four dictators who ruled for a combined 31
years, almost half of the history of Pakistan.
The changing political landscape of the
world is bound to affect the internal politics
of the country. Pakistan has long been under
the patronage of US and US dominated
monetary institutes but Trump’s presidency
has changed the situation. US military aid to
Pakistan was banned earlier this year,
followed by Pakistan’s placement in FATF
grey list.
Fewer stakeholders mean fewer people
to negotiate with and quicker decisions.
US is also putting a great amount of pressure
on Pakistan to act against the Afghan
Taliban, a move that Pakistan’s current
economic condition cannot afford. On the
other hand, India has increased ceasefire
violations along the Pak-India Line of
Control (LoC), mounting even more
pressure on Pakistan. Right wing politics is
also on the rise in neighboring India which
has consequently provoked the rightist
sentiments within Pakistan and in turn gave
rise to further nationalism.
In the present situation of international
pressure and isolation, Pakistan has only one
way forward to look towards for support and
that is China, which is investing more than
62 billion dollars in Pakistan in the form of
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The
rightist, nationalistic and authoritarian
government is bound to influence Pakistan
and its ideologies. China will also support
the right of an autocratic government in
Pakistan because it would make the dealings
with China smoother since democracy
requires pleasing of all stakeholders for any
decision. Fewer stakeholders mean fewer
people to negotiate with and quicker
decisions.
Internal Situation of Pakistan
The internal political situation in Pakistan is
equally volatile, the founder and former
chief of the ruling party PML-N was ousted
by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on
28th July 2017. This move triggered a clash
between the state institutes with each
claiming to be the supreme and hurling
accusations at each other of transgressing
their powers. There is a popular notion in the
country that if the ruling PML-N comes into
power in both houses of the Parliament, they
will enact legislature to curb the powers of
the judiciary.
Read more: CPEC: Is the sovereignty of
Pakistan being compromised?
If such a situation arises, the whole
democratic process would come under threat
in the country. Either the PML-N will enjoy
absolute power in the center without any
question and accountability, or the military
will be asked to intervene to prevent any
chaos within the country. In either case,
democracy will not survive and an autocratic
regime will be formed.
What the future holds in store for
Pakistan?
The current political situation is very
different from the past where pressure of
foreign powers prevented the intervention of
military on numerous occasions. The US is
no longer giving any aid to Pakistan so it is
unlikely that the country will come under
their pressure. The International Monetary
Fund (IMF) also puts a condition that the
country should have a democratic
government but Pakistan might be able to
evade it too. US president Donald Trump is
also known to have a soft side for military
regimes so they might not oppose any
military intervention vehemently.
Read more: World’s Top Financier on Trial:
Conviction for Lagarde Would Jeopardize
IMF…
Even though the situation in Pakistan is ripe
for an authoritarian regime to takeover, it
might not happen. If the politicians prove
responsible enough to avoid any internal
political crisis, the external situation can be
handled by the democratic leaders. But the
question that is being asked in the rest of the
world is also being asked in Pakistan, is a
liberal democracy the best form of
government in the world? Only time will
tell.
Is Pakistan loosing
battle for its soul?
CSS Pakistan
Affairs
This story perhaps describes best what’s
happening in Pakistan today
A grandfather tells his grandson there are
two wolves inside us, always at war with
each other. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness, bravery,
love, honesty and good. The other is a bad
wolf, which represents things like
dishonesty, evil, greed, hatred and fear. The
grandson thinks for a second and then asks
his grandfather, “Grandfather, which one
wins?” (CSS Pakistan Affairs)
“The one we feed!” says the grandfather,
gently!
One couldn’t help but think of this story, as
the reaction, both for and against The
Supreme Court decision, disqualifying
Nawaz from holding party office, set social
media ablaze.
Many who represent the so-called thinking
intelligentsia poured scorn on the judgment.
Some calling it a judicial coup. Others
sarcastically and highy inflammably,
questioning if Nawaz’s appointment of the
Army Chief was also null and void. Many
said this would further strengthen Nawaz.
Some went as far as to say that that this
handed Nawaz the 2018 election on a platter.
Whatever perverted logic they may
espouse to support this evil man, their
inability to stand for good against evil,
for truth against dishonesty is
inexcusable!! We must reflect deeply
before this evil wolf devouring others,
devours Pakistan!
But none of these good people of Pakistan
for a second reflected and said that it was the
absolutely right legal decision and it was the
only morally correct decision. None of these
good people said. Bravo! Thank God, for
once our courts had the spine and the guts
and the chutzpah and the courage to stand up
to the highest and the mightiest in our land,
and say enough is enough and no more!
They did not say that thank God, even the
most powerful in the land are finally getting
their comeuppance. They did not say that
being elected to public office is not a license
to loot and plunder at will, for over 35 years.
Read more: Nawaz Sharif disqualified once
again!
They did not say that a person who willfully,
consciously and deliberately, destroyed
every institution in this country, except the
Army and the Supreme Court, was finally
being held accountable! They did not say,
thank God this man is being put away and
we will be spared the possibility of his
daughter being foisted on us.
They did not say that we are happy that the
evil committed by our spineless, prostituted
parliament to save a crook and a criminal,
has been overturned. They did not say that
our high and mighty cannot get away scot
free, as they have done in the past. They did
not say that finally Nawaz will be held
accountable even if he was legally elected.
One doesn’t blame the poor and the
helpless. For to them all that matters is
sheer survival. But those who stand
with Nawaz and against the Supreme
Court, with full stomachs and
education and awareness, they are the
real evil that has prostituted the soul of
Pakistan.
But what they did say embarrasses,
humiliates and insults not just them or their
so called intellect and their families and the
names they carry and the legacies they will
leave, they also tarnish the name of other
people of good sense.
But more importantly they blacken the soul
of Pakistanis by feeding their wolf of evil,
dishonesty and greed.
In their mindless, irrational insanity and
anger for the Army, who they think is
behind Nawaz’s ouster, they will support a
criminal and a looter and a plunderer. And
they will tarnish the Army, the Supreme
Court and attempt to destroy Imran. His
third marriage becomes a nuclear option. His
Lodhran loss the devil’s dance around a
sacrifice.
Read more: Lodhran elections result was
revenge by the public: Nawaz Sharif
How low have they fallen?
What has happened to this society? What
has happened to our sense of right and
wrong? What has happened to our ability to
differentiate good from evil? By what value
system can the good thinking people of this
country support the loot and plunder of
Nawaz and his rampant and whole scale
destruction of all our institutions?
By what logic can people question the
decision of the Supreme Court in
disqualifying a person to hold party office if
he or she is disqualified to hold public
office?
While I admired Salman Akram Raja’s
masterful defence beautifully articulating
Nawaz’s fundamental rights, it was
appalling to see how the whole moral edifice
was being destroyed by this man! How
Western concepts of fundamental rights
were being offered to upend the highest
moral code of all times. Truth and honesty!
They did not say that thank God, even
the most powerful in the land are
finally getting their comeuppance.
They did not say that being elected to
public office is not a license to loot and
plunder at will, for over 35 years.
Pakistan’s battle for it’s soul is as much a
moral one as it is a legal one. If the law
subverts morality, integrity, ethics, then
throw that law into the garbage heap. Burn
the building and the people who enact laws Democracy in Peril:
that honour crooks and imprisons morality.
CSS General
Burn them who will legislate to defend a
thief and make it easier for other criminals to
Knoweldge
be elected to public office, but are deaf and
 Posted byADMIN
blind to the tens of millions of our poor and
 CategoriesIMPORTANT FOR GENERAL
exploited and hungry, bereft of health care,
KNOWLEDGE, SOMETHING NEW
education, employment opportunities and
even hope!

Burn those who exploit the helplessness of

these poor wretched people, held ransom to
a system of patronage, to get elected again
and again.

Read more: Nawaz Sharif hoping to

transform Sindh “if given the chance”
One doesn’t blame the poor and the helpless.
For to them all that matters is sheer survival.
But those who stand with Nawaz and against
the Supreme Court, with full stomachs and
education and awareness, they are the real
evil that has prostituted the soul of Pakistan.
Whatever perverted logic they may espouse
to support this evil man, their inability to
stand for good against evil, for truth against
dishonesty is inexcusable!!
We must reflect deeply before this evil wolf
devouring others, devours Pakistan!
Democracy in Peril
CSS General
Knoweldge
The inestimable E.J. Dionne Jr.
describesHow Democracies Die as an
“urgent book” that offers “a brilliant
diagnosis of the most important issue facing
our world.” Certainly, the topic is an urgent
one, in this age of Trump, and the book is
definitely interesting and provocative. But it
is also deeply disappointing. It might be
compared to picking up a recommended
book on Alzheimer’s disease in anticipation
of reading about an announcement of a
genuine cure and finding instead a checklist
of symptoms and some hortatory advice on
how to stave off further decline. (CSS
General Knowledge)
Levitsky and Ziblatt teach at Harvard, where
Levitsky specializes in Latin American
politics and Ziblatt in European. That
explains why they draw their central
examples of democratic decline (or even
death) from that region. We read a great deal
about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and
Alberto Fujimori in Peru, both of whom
created havoc in what had been reasonably
democratic countries. Juan Peron’s
Argentina also comes in for some
discussion, as do current leaders in Ecuador
and Bolivia; there is relatively little
discussion of Brazil, perhaps the most
important country in South America, which
is certainly undergoing its own turmoil. The
central point, though, is to offer lessons that
can be drawn from looking at these (and
some other) countries. They concentrate not
on autocrats who come to power through
military coups or revolutionary takeovers of
existing governments, but, rather, on leaders
who successfully navigated the existing
political system in order to achieve the
highest offices available via democratic
means. Subsequent to election, the autocratic
leaders in question consolidated their power
and fundamentally changed the tenor of the
constitutional order, distinctly for the worse.
The most important lesson, perhaps, is that
“institutions alone are not enough to rein in
elected autocrats.”
Lurking beneath their argument, though
unfortunately undeveloped, is the possibility
that presidentialism itself, in contrast to
parliamentary systems, generates a tendency
toward autocracy. This theory is associated
with Juan Linz, the distinguished Yale
political scientist who died in 2013. Linz
compared prime ministers to presidents.
Prime ministers, however powerful, are
always vulnerable to the discontent of the
coalition that put them into power. Think
only of the unceremonious firing of
Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the most
important peacetime British Prime Minister
of the past century, by members of her own
party in 1990 when they decided she was no
longer an electoral asset.
Presidents, however, are on an entirely
separate track. With fixed terms, they are
relatively invulnerable to legislative
unhappiness, save for the prospect of
impeachment, which, at least in the United
States, has been resorted to very rarely.
Moreover, presidents across the world are
often able to take advantage of modern
communications techniques to make
themselves the center of political attention.
If coupled with inchoate “charisma,” every
president thus becomes a potential autocrat
in a way that is far less true even of powerful
prime ministers.
If one accepts Linz’s view, the answer might
require quite drastic changes in the
American constitutional system and not, for
example, simply the election of a “better”
President in 2020. Trump’s own autocratic
tendencies can be shown to build on many of
his predecessors, both Democratic and
Republican. Levitsky and Ziblatt, for
example, are generally quite critical of
Franklin Roosevelt on the occasions they
mention him, for violating the unwritten
norm of the two-term limit and then for
engaging in highly controversial uses of
presidential authority in the realm of both
domestic and foreign affairs. It has become a
notorious truth that recent presidents
especially, in often justified frustration about
an ever more dysfunctional Congress, have
pushed the envelope (and then some) of
executive power. But the “autocracy” that so
worries Levitsky and Ziblatt is more than the
simple pushing of envelopes and consequent
potential overreach. Presidential character
and psychology count for a great deal.
Early on the authors present a checklist of
actions that should serve as “behavioral
warning signs” of autocratic tendencies: “1)
rejecting, in words or action, the democratic
rules of the game, 2) denying the legitimacy
of opponents, 3) tolerating or encouraging
violence, and 4) indicating a willingness to
curtail civil liberties of opponents, including
the media.” What makes their book so
important—and widely discussed—is the
question of whether these warning signs are
present with regard to the current President
of the United States. Their answer, as one
can easily imagine, is “yes.” “A politician
who meets even one of these criteria is cause
for concern,” they assert, but Donald Trump
in fact meets all four. We should therefore
be very concerned. But their critique goes
well beyond personalities. Like Thomas
Mann and Norman Ornstein in their 2012
book It’s Even Worse than It Looks,
Levitsky and Ziblatt are scathing in their
description of an accommodationist
Republican Party that has basically rejected
what they describe as the two most
fundamental requirements of a functioning
democratic political order: first, a genuine
willingness to tolerateoppositional views
and their proponents and second and
crucially, an equal willingness
to forbear from using all of one’s legal
power when that would predictably generate
widespread opposition and resentment.
Every practicing lawyer knows that
insistence on exercising all of one’s legal
rights is almost a sure sign of a precarious
relationship, whether one is thinking of a
marriage, a business partnership, or, in fact,
governments in two- or multi-party states.
For example, as a constitutional lawyer, I
think that the Republican majority in the
Senate had the legal authority to behave like
louts and refuse even a hearing to President
Obama’s nominee to succeed Antonin Scalia
on the Supreme Court. But I equally believe
that it was one more sign of the decay of the
American constitutional order, which does,
as Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, depend on
compromise and accommodation even if, by
stipulation, one would have a right to do
otherwise. Yale Law School professor Jack
Balkin has coined the term “constitutional
rot” to refer to a number of recent
developments in American politics. He is
referring most basically to the willingness to
shatter long-established norms of what
Levitsky and Ziblatt call the “unwritten rules
of American politics” in order to achieve
what James Madison would have denounced
as the narrow and selfish goals of one’s own
“faction.” The GOP treatment of Judge
Merrick Garland—independent of whether
they had a duty to vote for his confirmation
after holding traditional hearings and
listening to his supporters—exemplifies such
rot, even if was not illegal or
“unconstitutional.”
There are valuable things to be learned
in How Democracies Die. Yet I came away
feeling disappointed. Some of it derives, no
doubt, from the fact that this is a relatively
slim book, only 231 pages of text before
footnotes. Although written by academics
drawing on their deep expertise in
comparative politics, it has a tendency
toward the superficial, leaving a significant
number of unanswered questions in its wake.
Consider a basic problem presented by the
title itself. What exactly constitutes a
“democracy”? Every President from
Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama has
committed the United States to some version
of a worldwide “democracy project.” That is
after all why, roughly a century ago, the
United States entered the catastrophic war in
Europe under the rubric of making “the
world safe for democracy.” But what is
entailed in supporting “democracy” and,
therefore, being able to describe a given
country as becoming more, or less,
“democratic”? Consider Winston Churchill’s
oft-cited quote that “democracy is the worst
form of government except for all those
other forms that have been tried from time to
time.” The problem is not that Churchill is
necessarily wrong, but, rather, that there are
so many different forms of government that
can, under one plausible theory or another,
be described as “democratic.” This means
that they can be compared with one another,
favorably or unfavorably, depending on the
metrics that one focuses on.
There are 51 constitutions within the United
States, and
it is easily possible to describe the national
Constitution as the least democratic of them
all.
Is the United States a democracy? Yes,
we’re taught; but as a matter of fact,
democracy was not a word favored by those
who framed our own Constitution in 1787;
many were explicitly critical of the term,
which for them represented rule by the mob.
Benjamin Franklin famously wondered if we
could keep the “republic” that had been
envisioned in Philadelphia, and Article IV of
the Constitution purports to guarantee every
state within the Union a “Republican Form
of Government.” A “republic,” argued
Madison, would ultimately trace its
provenance back to “We the People,” but,
crucially, they (or we) would play an
astonishingly small role in actual
governance, which would be done by
“representatives.” As he wrote in Federalist
63, “The true distinction” of the new system
of government created in Philadelphia “lies
IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE
PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE
CAPACITY, from any share” in actually
making specific decisions of policy. (The
capitalization, incidentally, is Madison’s.)
The Constitution, though “ordained” in the
name of “We the People,” unlike almost all
subsequent state constitutions written in
America (and many new constitutions
written abroad), deprives the people of the
ability to engage in even a scintilla of what
is often called “direct democracy.” Consider
only the initiative and referendum found in
many countries and in at least 26 of the
states within the United States (the most
famous, or infamous, being California). Or
think of what American politics might be
like at this very moment if, as in California
or Wisconsin, the electorate could initiate a
recall election of the President. There are 51
constitutions within the United States alone,
and it is easily possible to describe the
United States Constitution as the least
democratic of all of them. Does this matter?
Obviously, there is a vast academic literature
on this question, though one gets no hint of
its existence—and of the controversies
embedded in the literature—in How
Democracies Die (or, perhaps, transform
themselves). What we get, instead, is an
almost treacly concluding encomium to
“democracy” written by the essayist E.B.
White. I have my own dog in this hunt
inasmuch as I published a book in 2006, Our
Undemocratic Constitution, that set out the
significant deviations of the U.S.
Constitution from any plausible twenty-first
century notion of democracy. Similarly,
Robert Dahl, the greatest political scientist
of the late twentieth century, published an
important book in 2001, How Democratic is
the American Constitution? His answer was
not very; Dahl especially stressed the almost
bizarre Electoral College and, just as
importantly, the totally indefensible United
States Senate, the most malapportioned
legislative chamber in the entire world.
Moreover, and more importantly, one can
argue that these are not only offenses against
democratic political theory, but also at least
partial explanations of the widespread
alienation that most Americans, of all
political persuasions, feel from the national
government.
We have Trump, just as we got George W.
Bush, because of the Electoral College. And
one cannot possibly understand the recent
tax bill without grasping the importance of
the fact that the majority of Americans, who
live in the largest nine states, have a total of
18 senators, while the minority that live in
the 41 remaining states have 82 senators.
Some of the features in the tax bill can be
explained in terms of standard plutocracy,
support for constituency interests, or even,
possibly, sensible revisions of tax policy.
But the decision to go after deductibility of
state income and property taxes, for
example, has nothing to do with protecting
constituents or even lining the pockets of
contributors. Instead, it represents a new
twist in the American culture wars and
polarization, in which those who basically
hate the cosmopolitan states where most
Americans live actually seek to cripple their
ability to fund important social services.
This return to a raw form of sectionalism is
yet another way in which one can see
similarities between our contemporary polity
and that of the 1850s. But the main point is
that the Senate, unlike the House, whatever
its own problems, provides no real
protection for the majority of Americans
who live in a small number of states. The
House obviously has its own problems, most
often analyzed in terms of partisan
gerrymandering, but in fact derived from the
requirement, thanks to a congressional
statute of 1842 (and not the Constitution),
that representatives be elected in single-
member districts. This often ensures that
millions of Americans simply feel
unrepresented because the winners in these
single-member districts are concerned only
with their fellow political partisans—their
“base”—and not at all the opponents who
may well present no serious electoral threat.
We would be far better off adopting some
form of multi-member districts with
proportional representation.
Perhaps most Americans can ignore the
indefensible Senate, the consequences of our
electoral system for the composition of the
House, the Electoral College, or the near
impossibility of amending the Constitution
and be indifferent to the fact that the
constitution of the state within which they
live is considerably more democratic. Most
defenders of what we think of as “American
democracy” would focus on the fact that we
conduct regular elections and enjoy the
peaceful transfer of leadership. Some would
point to the surmounting of the Great
Depression in the 1930s and then the
successful prosecution of World War II as
added reasons simply to celebrate the
Constitution. Those are no small matters, but
do they suffice in the twenty-first century?
Trump and his Republican minions are not
threatening to cancel the upcoming midterm
elections, about which Democrats feel a
considerable optimism. In fact, one can
argue that the GOP zeal to pass some of
their most reactionary programs is triggered
by justified fear that they will return to the
state of a minority party in 2019. For most of
us, though, that is scarcely enough to
overcome our foreboding.
Is it possible, for example, that one reason
for the rise of Trumpismo is the justified
belief by millions of Americans that the
national Constitution designed in 1787
creates so many veto points—which we
admiringly and often unthinkingly label as
“checks and balances”—that it regularly
generates legislative gridlock with regard to
addressing any of what one might believe to
be our most challenging problems?
Wherever one is located on the political
spectrum—left, right, or center—one cannot
possibly believe that Congress will
adequately meet the challenges we face
today. There is a good reason, for example,
that the overwhelming majority of
Americans have little regard for Congress
and believe that the country is headed in the
wrong direction. And a Democratic victory
in 2018 will guarantee only the ability to
block the worst GOP programs; in no way
will it portend the ability of even a
Democratic House and Senate to pass their
own legislation and surmount a Trump (or
Pence) veto.
Want to read more articles regarding CSS?
The authors state that the real protection of
American democracy, such as it is, lies not
in “Americans’ firm commitment to
democracy, but, rather, the gatekeepers—our
political parties.” It is the “normalization” of
political conflict between two large-tent
parties that has allowed our history—with
the obvious and all-important exception of
1861—to feature the peaceful transfers of
power among those who would govern us.
But, as already suggested, something is now
rotten in the state of our party system,
particularly within the Republican Party. I
write this review on the first day of the first
government shutdown in American history
to occur when the same political party
notionally controls both Houses of Congress
and the presidency. Perhaps one wishes to
blame the Democrats for the failure to
compromise, but that failure gains purchase
only because the Senate operates under the
rule that the votes of 60 senators are, with
few exceptions, necessary to move a bill
forward to a vote. Levitsky and Ziblatt
discuss this and take note of the fact that
recourse to filibusters has now become a
standard part of the way the Senate operates,
but what they don’t do is offer a systematic
discussion of whether we are overall well or
ill served by this particular aspect of
“American exceptionalism” that disallows
majorities in the Senate from actually
governing. Of course, one has to recognize
that there may often be no correlation
between majorities in the Senate and
majorities in the national population, given
the fact that Wyoming counts the same as
California and Vermont is the equal of
Texas.
Moreover, one would like considerably more
discussion of the limits of “toleration and
forbearance.” The authors admirably
recognize that the victims of such
“forbearance” in the past have often been
vulnerable minorities, most notably African
Americans, who were asked to do a lot of
forebearing for a very long time. One reason with some valuable analysis. The idea of
for contemporary “polarization,” in contrast what might be termed “autocratic character”
with the 1950s and even ’60s, is the fact that is important, and other countries offer
the electorate is now remarkably more cautionary warnings about the ability of
inclusive than was the case then, prior to the skilled demagogues to be transformative in
Voting Rights Act of 1965. But we are also almost entirely negative ways. I have no
living with the consequences of the 1965 doubt that they are correct in their basic
repeal of the 1924 immigration legislation. diagnosis of the dangers facing the United
That earlier legislation was designed to States as a democratic society.
preserve America along what we might But I think they end up all too American, as
today describe as “Trumpian” lines; northern it were, by a refusal to address the
Europeans received far more favorable possibility that at least part of our dilemma
treatment than other potential immigrants. is traceable to what might be called “fault
Thankfully, that is no longer the case, but it lines in the Constitution” that, just as their
is foolhardy to deny that one reason for our geological analogs, can wreak havoc. Even
increasing polarization is the consequences if we do not yet have effective ways of
of having become far more heterogeneous predicting earthquakes, we are aware of their
along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and possibility and can engage in a variety of
language. important preventive measure designed to
limit their consequences. But that requires
We have always operated under a regime of becoming aware of the potential dangers.
“identity politics,” but in the past there was Our reverence for the Constitution,
thought to be a single hegemonic identity, unfortunately, works to infantilize our
summarized in the language of my youth political dialogue and therefore to limit the
under the acronym WASP. As we have contribution even of such a heartfelt warning
become more truly pluralistic and diverse, as How Democracies Die.
the nature of American identity is a subject
of increasing contention, revealed most
dramatically, perhaps, in the sometimes
violent disputes about public monuments
and what they represent. To their credit,
Levitsky and Ziblatt caution against a
critique, like that identified with Mark Lilla,
that would reject “identity politics” in the
name of bread-and-butter economics
inasmuch as this would often have the
practical consequence of averting one’s gaze
from continuing discrimination, injustice,
and indignity. But the recognition that
“forbearance” might have its limits is
fleeting. One awful possibility, left
undiscussed, is that the United States, which
now reaches from Maine to Hawaii and
contains 320 million people, is just too large
and multi-faceted to be effectively governed
by any reasonably democratic political
system.
Levitsky and Ziblatt certainly capture very
well the mood of the moment, especially
among those likely to identify with Dionne
and the general politics of this journal (as I
do). How Democracies Die is a quick read
 Exclusive: CPEC
master plan revealed
Details from original documents laying
out the CPEC long term plan are
publicly disclosed for the first time.
Khurram HusainUpdated Jun 21, 2017
02:17pm
LONG TERM PLAN 2017-2030
 Plan eyes agriculture
 Large surveillance system for
cities
 Visa-free entry for Chinese
nationals
T he floodgates are about to open.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in
Beijing over the weekend to participate
in the One Belt, One Road summit,
and the top item on his agenda is to
finalise the Long Term Plan (LTP) for
the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
[See next tab for details on how the
plan was made].
Dawn has acquired exclusive access
to the original document, and for the
first time its details are being publicly
disclosed here. The plan lays out in
detail what Chinese intentions and
priorities are in Pakistan for the next
decade and a half, details that have
not been discussed in public thus far.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and
Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan at the One Belt One Road
summit in Beijing. — APP
Two versions of the Long Term Plan
are with the government. The full
version is the one that was drawn up
by the China Development Bank and
the National Development Reform
Commission of the People’s Republic
of China. It is 231 pages long.
The shortened version is dated
February 2017. It contains only broad
brushstroke descriptions of the various
“areas of cooperation” and none of the
details. It was drawn up for circulation
to the provincial governments to obtain
their assent. It is 30 pages long. The
only provincial government that
received the full version of the plan is
the Punjab government.
For instance, thousands of acres of
agricultural land will be leased out to
Chinese enterprises to set up
“demonstration projects” in areas
ranging from seed varieties to irrigation
technology. A full system of monitoring
and surveillance will be built in cities
from Peshawar to Karachi, with 24
hour video recordings on roads and
busy marketplaces for law and order.
A national fibreoptic backbone will be
built for the country not only for
internet traffic, but also terrestrial
distribution of broadcast TV, which will
cooperate with Chinese media in the
“dissemination of Chinese culture”.
The plan envisages a deep and broad-
based penetration of most sectors of
Pakistan’s economy as well as its
society by Chinese enterprises and
culture. Its scope has no precedent in
Pakistan’s history in terms of how far it
opens up the domestic economy to
participation by foreign enterprises. In
some areas the plan seeks to build on
a market presence already established
by Chinese enterprises, eg Haier in
household appliances, ChinaMobile
and Huawei in telecommunications
and China Metallurgical Group
Corporation (MCC) in mining and
minerals.
In other cases, such as textiles and
garments, cement and building
materials, fertiliser and agricultural
technologies (among others) it calls for
building the infrastructure and a
supporting policy environment to
facilitate fresh entry. A key element in
this is the creation of industrial parks,
or special economic zones, which
“must meet specified conditions,
including availability of water…perfect
infrastructure, sufficient supply of
energy and the capacity of self-service
power”, according to the plan.
But the main thrust of the plan actually
lies in agriculture, contrary to the
image of CPEC as a massive industrial
and transport undertaking, involving
power plants and highways. The plan
acquires its greatest specificity, and
lays out the largest number of projects
and plans for their facilitation, in
agriculture.
The plan states at the outset that the
corridor “spans Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region and whole
Pakistan in spatial range”. It’s main
aim is to connect South Xinjiang with
Pakistan. It is divided into a “core area”
and what they call the “radiation
zones”, those territories that will feel
the knock on effects of the work being
done in the core area. The core area
includes “Kashgar, Tumshuq, Atushi
and Akto of Kizilsu Kirghiz of Xinjiang”
from China, and “most of Islamabad’s
Capital territory, Punjab, and Sindh,
and some areas of Gilgit-Baltistan,
Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, and
Balochistan” from Pakistan. It has “one
belt, three passages,

and two axes and five functional
zones”, where the belt is “the strip area
formed by important arterial traffic in
China and Pakistan".
Header photo courtesy Reuters.
Agriculture
F
or agriculture, the plan outlines
an engagement that runs from one end
of the supply chain all the way to the
other. From provision of seeds and
other inputs, like fertiliser, credit and
pesticides, Chinese enterprises will
also operate their own farms,
processing facilities for fruits and
vegetables and grain. Logistics
companies will operate a large storage
and transportation system for agrarian
produce.
It identifies opportunities for entry by
Chinese enterprises in the myriad
dysfunctions that afflict Pakistan’s
agriculture sector. For instance, “due
to lack of cold-chain logistics and
processing facilities, 50% of
agricultural products go bad during
harvesting and transport”, it notes.
A full system of monitoring
and surveillance will be built in
cities from Peshawar to
Karachi, with 24 hour video
recordings on roads and busy
marketplaces for law and
order.
Enterprises entering agriculture will be
offered extraordinary levels of
assistance from the Chinese
government. They are encouraged to
“[m]ake the most of the free capital
and loans” from various ministries of
the Chinese government as well as the
China Development Bank. The plan
also offers to maintain a mechanism
that will “help Chinese agricultural
enterprises to contact the senior
representatives of the Government of
Pakistan and China”.
The government of China will “actively
strive to utilize the national special
funds as the discount interest for the
loans of agricultural foreign
investment”. In the longer term the
financial risk will be spread out,
through “new types of financing such
as consortium loans, joint private
equity and joint debt issuance, raise
funds via multiple channels and
decentralise financing risks”.
— Reuters photo
The plan proposes to harness the work
of the Xinjiang Production and
Construction Corps to bring
mechanization as well as scientific
technique in livestock breeding,
development of hybrid varieties and
precision irrigation to Pakistan. It sees
its main opportunity as helping the
Kashgar Prefecture, a territory within
the larger Xinjiang Autonomous Zone,
which suffers from a poverty incidence
of 50 per cent, and large distances that
make it difficult to connect to larger
markets in order to promote
development. The prefecture’s total
output in agriculture, forestry, animal
husbandry and fishery amounted to
just over $5 billion in 2012, and its
population was less than 4 million in
2010, hardly a market with windfall
gains for Pakistan.
However, for the Chinese, this is the
main driving force behind investing in
Pakistan’s agriculture, in addition to
the many profitable opportunities that
can open up for their enterprises from
operating in the local market. The plan
makes some reference to export of
agriculture goods from the ports, but
the bulk of its emphasis is focused on
the opportunities for the Kashgar
Prefecture and Xinjiang Production
Corps, coupled with the opportunities
for profitable engagement in the
domestic market.
The plan discusses those
engagements in considerable detail.
Ten key areas for engagement are
identified along with seventeen specific
projects. They include the construction
of one NPK fertilizer plant as a starting
point “with an annual output of 800,000
tons”. Enterprises will be inducted to
lease farm implements, like tractors,
“efficient plant protection machinery,
efficient energy saving pump
equipment, precision fertilization drip
irrigation equipment” and planting and
harvesting machinery.
The plan shows great interest
in the textiles industry in
particular, but the interest is
focused largely on yarn and
coarse cloth.
Meat processing plants in Sukkur are
planned with annual output of 200,000
tons per year, and two demonstration
plants processing 200,000 tons of milk
per year. In crops, demonstration
projects of more than 6,500 acres will
be set up for high yield seeds and
irrigation, mostly in Punjab. In
transport and storage, the plan aims to
build “a nationwide logistics network,
and enlarge the warehousing and
distribution network between major
cities of Pakistan” with a focus on
grains, vegetables and fruits. Storage
bases will be built first in Islamabad
and Gwadar in the first phase, then
Karachi, Lahore and another in
Gwadar in the second phase, and
between 2026-2030, Karachi, Lahore
and Peshawar will each see another
storage base.
Asadabad, Islamabad, Lahore and
Gwadar will see a vegetable
processing plant, with annual output of
20,000 tons, fruit juice and jam plant of
10,000 tons and grain processing of 1
million tons. A cotton processing plant
is also planned initially, with output of
100,000 tons per year.
“We will impart advanced planting and
breeding techniques to peasant
households or farmers by means of
land acquisition by the government,
renting to China-invested enterprises
and building planting and breeding
bases” it says about the plan to source
superior seeds.
In each field, Chinese enterprises will
play the lead role. “China-invested
enterprises will establish factories to
produce fertilizers, pesticides,
vaccines and feedstuffs” it says about
the production of agricultural materials.
“China-invested enterprises will, in the
form of joint ventures, shareholding or
acquisition, cooperate with local
enterprises of Pakistan to build a
three-level warehousing system
(purchase & storage warehouse,
transit warehouse and port
warehouse)” it says about
warehousing.
One of the most intriguing
chapters in the plan speaks of
a long belt of coastal
enjoyment industry that
includes yacht wharfs, cruise
homeports, nightlife, city
parks, public squares,
theaters, golf courses and
spas, hot spring hotels and
water sports.
Then it talks about trade. “We will
actively embark on cultivating
surrounding countries in order to
improve import and export potential of
Pakistani agricultural products and
accelerate the trade of agricultural
products. In the early stages, we will
gradually create a favorable industry
image and reputation for Pakistan by
relying on domestic demand.”
In places the plan appears to be
addressing investors in China. It says
Chinese enterprises should seek
“coordinated cooperation with
Pakistani enterprises” and “maintain
orderly competition and mutual
coordination.” It advises them to make
an effort “seeking for powerful strategic
partners for bundling interest in
Pakistan.”
As security measures, enterprises will
be advised “to respect the religions
and customs of the local people, treat
people as equals and live in harmony”.
They will also be advised to “increase
local employment and contribute to
local society by means of
subcontracting and consortiums.” In
the final sentence of the chapter on
agriculture, the plan says the
government of China will “[s]trengthen
the safety cooperation with key
countries, regions and international
organizations, jointly prevent and crack
down on terrorist acts that endanger
the safety of Chinese overseas
enterprises and their staff.”
Industry
For industry, the plan trifurcates the
country into three zones: western and
northwestern, central and southern.
Each zone is marked to receive
specific industries in designated
industrial parks, of which only a few
are actually mentioned. The western
and northwestern zone, covering most
of Balochistan and KP province, is
marked for mineral extraction, with
potential in chrome ore, “gold reserves
hold a considerable potential, but are
still at the exploration stage”, and
diamonds. One big mineral product
that the plan discusses is marble.
Already, China is Pakistan’s largest
buyer of processed marble, at almost
80,000 tons per year. The plan looks
to set up 12 marble and granite
processing sites in locations ranging
from Gilgit and Kohistan in the north,
to Khuzdar in the south.
The central zone is marked for textiles,
household appliances and cement.
Four separate locations are pointed
out for future cement clusters:
Daudkhel, Khushab, Esakhel and
Mianwali. The case of cement is
interesting, because the plan notes
that Pakistan is surplus in cement
capacity, then goes on to say that “in
the future, there is a larger space of
cooperation for China to invest in the
cement process transformation”.
“There is a plan to build a pilot
safe city in Peshawar, which
faces a fairly severe security
situation in northwestern
Pakistan”.
For the southern zone, the plan
recommends that “Pakistan develop
petrochemical, iron and steel, harbor
industry, engineering machinery, trade
processing and auto and auto parts
(assembly)” due to the proximity of
Karachi and its ports. This is the only
part in the report where the auto
industry is mentioned in any
substantive way, which is a little
surprising because the industry is one
of the fastest growing in the country.
The silence could be due to lack of
interest on the part of the Chinese to
acquire stakes, or to diplomatic
prudence since the sector is, at the
moment, entirely dominated by
Japanese companies (Toyota, Honda
and Suzuki).
One of the CPEC transport routes. —
AFP
Gwadar, also in the southern zone, “is
positioned as the direct hinterland
connecting Balochistan and
Afghanistan.” As a CPEC entreport,
the plan recommends that it be built
into “a base of heavy and chemical
industries, such as iron and
steel/petrochemical”. It notes that
“some Chinese enterprises have
started investment and construction in
Gwadar” taking advantage of its
“superior geographical position and
cheap shipping costs to import crude
oil from the Middle East, iron ore and
coking coal resources from South
Africa and New Zealand” for onward
supply to the local market “as well as
South Asia and Middle East after
processing at port.”
The plan shows great interest in the
textiles industry in particular, but the
interest is focused largely on yarn and
coarse cloth. The reason, as the plan
lays out, is that in Xinjiang the textile
industry has already attained higher
levels of productivity. Therefore,
“China can make the most of the
Pakistani market in cheap raw
materials to develop the textiles &
garments industry and help soak up
surplus labor forces in Kashgar”. The
ensuing strategy is described
cryptically as the principle of
“introducing foreign capital and
establishing domestic connections as
a crossover of West and East".
Preferential policies will be necessary
to attract enterprises to come to the
newly built industrial parks envisioned
under the plan. The areas where such
preferences need to be extended are
listed in the plan as “land, tax, logistics
and services” as well as land price,
“enterprise income tax, tariff reduction
and exemption and sales tax rate.”
Chinese troops march as they take
part in Pakistan Day military parade. ─
AFP
Fibreoptics and
surveillance
One of the oldest priorities for the
Chinese government since talks on
CPEC began is fibreoptic connectivity
between China and Pakistan. An MoU
for such a link was signed in July
2013, at a time when CPEC appeared
to be little more than a road link
between Kashgar and Gwadar. But the
plan reveals that the link goes far
beyond a simple fibreoptic set up.
China has various reasons for wanting
a terrestrial fibreoptic link with
Pakistan, including its own limited
number of submarine landing stations
and international gateway exchanges
which can serve as a bottleneck to
future growth of internet traffic. This is
especially true for the western
provinces. “Moreover, China’s telecom
services to Africa need to be
transferred in Europe, so there is
certain hidden danger of the overall
security” says the plan. Pakistan has
four submarine cables to handle its
internet traffic, but only one landing
station, which raises security risks as
well.
— AFP photo
So the plan envisages a terrestrial
cable across the Khunjerab pass to
Islamabad, and a submarine landing
station in Gwadar, linked to Sukkur.
From there, the backbone will link the
two in Islamabad, as well as all major
cities in Pakistan.
The expanded bandwidth that will
open up will enable terrestrial
broadcast of digital HD television,
called Digital Television Terrestrial
Multimedia Broadcasting (DTMB). This
is envisioned as more than just a
technological contribution. It is a
“cultural transmission carrier. The
future cooperation between Chinese
and Pakistani media will be beneficial
to disseminating Chinese culture in
Pakistan, further enhancing mutual
understanding between the two
peoples and the traditional friendship
between the two countries.” The plan
says nothing about how the system will
be used to control the content of
broadcast media, nor does it say
anything more about “the future
cooperation between Chinese and
Pakistani media”.
Judging from their
conversations with the
government, it appears that
the Pakistanis are pushing the
Chinese to begin work on the
Gwadar International Airport,
whereas the Chinese are
pushing for early completion
of the Eastbay Expressway.
It also seeks to create an electronic
monitoring and control system for the
border in Khunjerab, as well as run a
“safe cities” project. The safe city
project will deploy explosive detectors
and scanners to “cover major roads,
case-prone areas and crowded
places…in urban areas to conduct
real-time monitoring and 24 hour video
recording.” Signals gathered from the
surveillance system will be transmitted
to a command centre, but the plan
says nothing about who will staff the
command centre, what sort of signs
they will look for, and who will provide
the response.
“There is a plan to build a pilot safe
city in Peshawar, which faces a fairly
severe security situation in
northwestern Pakistan” the plan says,
following which the program will be
extended to major cities such as
Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi,
hinting that the feeds will be shared
eventually, and perhaps even
recorded.
Tourism and recreation
One of the most intriguing chapters in
the plan is the one that talks about the
development of a “coastal tourism”
industry. It speaks of a long belt of
coastal enjoyment industry that
includes yacht wharfs, cruise
homeports, nightlife, city parks, public
squares, theaters, golf courses and
spas, hot spring hotels and water
sports. The belt will run from Keti
Bunder to Jiwani, the last habitation
before the Iranian border. Then,
somewhat disappointingly, it adds that
“more work needs to be done” before
this vision can be realized.
The plans are laid out in surprising
detail. For instance, Gwadar will
feature international cruise clubs that
“provide marine tourists private rooms
that would feel as though they were
‘living in the ocean’”. And just as the
feeling sinks in, it goes on to say that
“[f]or the development of coastal
vacation products, Islamic culture,
historical culture, folk culture and
marine culture shall all be integrated.”
Apparently more work needs to be
done here too.
— AFP photo
For Ormara, the plan recommends
building “unique recreational activities”
that would also encourage “the natural,
exciting, participatory, sultry, and
tempting characteristics” to come
through. For Keti Bunder it
recommends wildlife sanctuaries, an
aquarium and a botanical garden. For
Sonmiani, on the eastern edge of
Karachi, “projects like a coastal beach,
extended greenway, coastal villa, car
camp, SPA, beach playground and a
seafood street can be developed.”
It is an expansive vision that the plan
lays out, and towards the end, it asks
for the following: “Make the visa-free
tourism possible with China to provide
more convenient policy support for
Chinese tourists to Pakistan.” There is
no mention of a reciprocal
arrangement for Pakistani nationals
visiting China.
Finance and risk
In any plan, the question of financial
resources is always crucial. The long
term plan drawn up by the China
Development Bank is at its sharpest
when discussing Pakistan’s financial
sector, government debt market, depth
of commercial banking and the overall
health of the financial system. It is at
its most unsentimental when drawing
up the risks faced by long term
investments in Pakistan’s economy.
The chief risk the plan identifies is
politics and security. “There are
various factors affecting Pakistani
politics, such as competing parties,
religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western
intervention” the authors write. “The
security situation is the worst in recent
years”. The next big risk, surprisingly,
is inflation, which the plan says has
averaged 11.6 per cent over the past 6
years. “A high inflation rate means a
rise of project-related costs and a
decline in profits.”
Efforts will be made, says the plan, to
furnish “free and low interest loans to
Pakistan” once the costs of the
corridor begin to come in. But this is no
free ride, it emphasizes. “Pakistan’s
federal and involved local
governments should also bear part of
the responsibility for financing through
issuing sovereign guarantee bonds,
meanwhile protecting and improving
the proportion and scale of the
government funds invested in corridor
construction in the financial budget.”
Illustration by Sana Nasir/Herald
It asks for financial guarantees “to
provide credit enhancement support
for the financing of major infrastructure
projects, enhance the financing
capacity, and protect the interests of
creditors.” Relying on the assessments
of the IMF, World Bank and the ADB, it
notes that Pakistan’s economy cannot
absorb FDI much above $2 billion per
year without giving rise to stresses in
its economy. “It is recommended that
China’s maximum annual direct
investment in Pakistan should be
around US$1 billion.” Likewise, it
concludes that Pakistan’s ceiling for
preferential loans should be $1 billion,
and for non preferential loans no more
than $1.5 billion per year.
It advises its own enterprises to take
precautions to protect their own
investments. “International business
cooperation with Pakistan should be
conducted mainly with the government
as a support, the banks as
intermediary agents and enterprises as
the mainstay.” Nor is the growing
engagement some sort of brotherly
involvement. “The cooperation with
Pakistan in the monetary and financial
areas aims to serve China’s diplomatic
strategy.”
The other big risk the plan refers to is
exchange rate risk, after noting the
severe weakness in Pakistan’s ability
to earn foreign exchange. To mitigate
this, the plan proposes tripling the size
of the swap mechanism between the
RMB and the Pakistani rupee to 30
billion Yuan, diversifying power
purchase payments beyond the dollar
into RMB and rupee basket, tapping
the Hong Kong market for RMB bonds,
and diversifying enterprise loans from
a wide array of sources. The growing
role of the RMB in Pakistan’s economy
is a clearly stated objective of the
measures proposed.
Conclusion
It is not clear how much of the plan will
be earnestly followed up and how
much is there simply to evince interest
from the Pakistani side. In the areas of
interest contained in the plan, it
appears access to the full supply chain
of the agrarian economy is a top
priority for the Chinese. After that the
capacity of the textile spinning sector
to serve the raw material needs of
Xinjiang, and the garment and value
added sector to absorb Chinese
technology is another priority.
Next is the growing domestic market,
particularly in cement and household
appliances, which receive detailed
treatment in the plan. And lastly,
through greater financial integration,
the plan seeks to advance the
internationalization of the RMB, as well
as diversify the risks faced by Chinese
enterprises entering Pakistan.
In some areas the plan seeks
to build on a market presence
already established by
Chinese enterprises, eg Haier
in household appliances,
China Mobile and Huawei in
telecommunications and China
Metallurgical Group
Corporation (MCC) in mining
and minerals.
Gwadar receives passing mention as
an economic prospect, mainly for its
capacity to serve as a port of exit for
minerals from Balochistan and
Afghanistan, and as an entreport for
wider trade in the greater Indian
Ocean zone from South Africa to New
Zealand. There is no mention of
China’s external trade being routed
through Gwadar. Judging from their
conversations with the government, it
appears that the Pakistanis are
pushing the Chinese to begin work on
the Gwadar International Airport,
whereas the Chinese are pushing for
early completion of the Eastbay
Expressway.
But the entry of Chinese firms will not
be limited to the CPEC framework
alone, as the recent acquisition of the
Pakistan Stock Exchange, and the
impending acquisition of K Electric
demonstrate. In fact, CPEC is only the
opening of the door. What comes
through once that door has been
opened is difficult to forecast.
Addendum: Apropos a story titled
“CPEC master plan revealed”
appearing in Dawn on May 15,
Minister for Planning, Development
and Reform Ahsan Iqbal has said that
CPEC’s Long Term Plan is not a
project document, rather it “delineates
the aspirations of both sides”.
“It is a live document and both sides
[China and Pakistan] have an
understanding to modify it as per the
need besides reviewing it periodically,”
Mr Iqbal claimed on Monday.
HOW THE PLAN WAS MADE
The LTP was begun in November
2013 (see detailed timeline in
previous tab), when the National
Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC) of the
Government of China asked the
China Development Bank (CDB) to
compile a detailed roadmap to
guide the engagement with Pakistan
that had begun in May of that same
year. For the next two years, till
December 2015, the CDB worked
with teams from the NDRC, as well
the ministries of Transport, National
Energy Administration and China
Tourism Planning Institute to
develop a detailed plan to be
implemented over the next 15 years,
till the year 2030, that will open the
doors for Chinese enterprises –
private and public – to enter every
area of Pakistan’s economy.
President Xi Jinping and Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif overlook the
signing of agreements between the
two countries. — AFP
Chinese expert teams made
multiple visits to Pakistan and
Xinjiang during this period, drawing
up a detailed picture of the situation
in every area, prioritizing those that
will come first, and identifying
“hidden dangers”, bottlenecks and
risks that should be anticipated
along the way.
The report was first transmitted to
the Government of Pakistan in June
2015, where it gathered dust for a
few months. Under prodding from
the Chinese government, a team
from Pakistan met their
counterparts in Beijing on
November 12th, 2015 and gave their
feedback. A “special bilateral
meeting” was held on Dec 2nd, and
the plan finalized on Dec 29th. It
was then agreed by both sides that
final signatures of the highest
authorities, in Pakistan’s case the
Prime Minister, would be obtained
by March 31st. That deadline was
missed, and the signatures are
expected to be placed now that the
PM is in Beijing.
In the meantime, a small formality
asserted itself. For the plan to be
finalized, the assent of the
provincial governments was
required. For that purpose, a
second draft was prepared that
could be shared with the provincial
authorities. That draft is 31 pages
long and significantly watered down
with all details removed, containing
only broad brushstroke
descriptions of the “areas of
cooperation” that both countries
have identified.
The original plan drawn up by the
CDB is 231 pages long, and is an
astonishingly detailed roadmap of
the pitfalls and opportunities that
Chinese enterprises can expect as
they venture into every area of the
economy and society. It contains
specifics of what is going to be built
by the Chinese over the next
decade and a half, and its detailed
description of Pakistan’s economy
and its attendant risks shows
clearly that the Chinese are fully
aware of what they are getting
involved in.

CPEC opens
avenues for
agriculture: FPCCI
Bureau ReportUpdated September 02, 2017
PESHAWAR: The Federation of Pakistan
Chambers of Commerce and Industry
(FPCCI) Regional Chairman on
Horticulture Exports, Ahmad Jawad has
said that the China–Pakistan Economic
Corridor (CPEC) provides Pakistan a
godsend to increase its agriculture
exports to China.
China is the world’s largest importer of
agricultural products, and Pakistan has to
grab its due share through revisiting the
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the
two countries.
In a statement issued on Friday, Mr Jawad
said that “in 2015 China imported $160
billion worth of agricultural products.
However, Pakistan’s share in these exports
was minuscule - less than half a percentage
point - despite having a large agrarian base
and a shared border with China.”
With a population of 1.3 billion people,
China consumes almost $1 trillion worth of
food every year. With increased
urbanisation and rising incomes, Chinese
consumption patterns are also changing,
and demand for high quality imported food
items is growing at a pace much faster than
population growth. Domestic consumption is
expected to grow by another $500 billion in
the next 10 years.
According to a FPCCI official, it takes about
one acre of arable land to feed an average
US consumer. With the present population,
China only has about 0.2 acre per citizen,
which is going to be far short of future
requirements, considering the evolving
demand.
He also said the world is therefore keenly
focusing on China, with international
conglomerates and food giants making long-
term China plans. They expect the country
is going to be the biggest growth driver in
future.
Similarly China, the world’s largest importer
of vegetables, gets 50 of these imports from
the US and Brazil. “In the world of
international trade, shorter distances can
provide a strategic advantage through lower
transportation costs. But for perishable
items like food, such proximity can translate
into yet another edge.
The official also added that during transit
over long distances, food items faced higher
risk of spoilage and contamination. Because
of this, not only additional cost is incurred for
preservation and packaging but often
exporters have to make use of extra
pesticides to increase shelf-life of food.
“Pakistan, being China’s neighbour,
therefore enjoys a unique advantage and
CPEC provides an unprecedented
opportunity to capitalise on that,” he said.
Mr Jawad further mentioned that agricultural
development is one of the seven areas of
cooperation under CPEC, wherein China is
specifically interested to explore areas like
cotton productivity, efficient irrigation and
post-harvest infrastructure along the CPEC
route. However, Pakistan’s agriculture
sector priorities vis-à-vis CPEC would
remain unclear.
The government’s primary role should be to
remove tariff and non-tariff barriers for
agricultural trade with China. “CPEC has set
the stage to renegotiate Pak-China Free
Trade Agreement and Ministry of Commerce
should demand better tariffs for its
agricultural exports,” said Mr Jawad.
Furthermore, he said there was a need to
rationalise sanitary and phytosanitary
restrictions, food and safety inspection
requirements and standards.
The private sector and agri-entrepreneurs
should become the trailblazers and start
exploring viable market opportunities in the
Chinese market and forge partnerships with
international firms to get a foothold.
The China agenda
Munir AkramOctober 28, 2018
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador
to the UN.
NEXT week, Prime Minister Imran Khan
will visit China, Pakistan’s primary
strategic partner.
The visit will take place at a critical moment
in global politics. A new Cold War has been
declared by the US against China and
Russia. The world order established after
the Second World War is being dismantled
by the Trump administration. The US and
other major countries no longer feel
constrained by international law from the
unilateral use of force, pressure and
intervention against smaller states. The
global trade regime is being torn apart. The
financial system is under stress.
In these turbulent times, Pakistan’s
relationship with China provides an essential
anchor for its security and foreign policy and
the foundation for its socioeconomic
development. China meets Pakistan’s
defence requirements; it is building
Pakistan’s infrastructure; it is a bulwark
against aggression by India and bullying by
the US.
There is need for more
vocal Chinese support to
Pakistan on its core
security challenges.
Although Pakistan-China relations are rock
solid, in the current geopolitical
circumstances, when both Pakistan and
China confront threats and pressure from
their adversaries, it appears essential to
elevate their strategic partnership to an even
higher level.
The prime minister’s visit to China was
preceded a few weeks ago by that of
Pakistan’s army chief who is reported to
have discussed the further development of
defence and security cooperation between
the two countries at very high levels in
Beijing. The decisions for intensified security
cooperation will no doubt be affirmed by the
prime minister and Chinese leaders.
The two countries need each other’s support
on the political challenges they face at
present. China will expect Pakistan’s
support on its maritime disputes in the South
China Sea, on the One China Policy and
Taiwan, and on the separatist threat from
Uighur extremists in Xinjiang.
Given the concerted Indian and US pressure
and threats against Pakistan, there is need
for more vocal Chinese support to Pakistan
on its core security challenges. China
should condemn the threats of force and
economic pressure on Pakistan; call for a
peaceful resolution of the Jammu and
Kashmir dispute in accordance with
international law; and oppose all threats to
disrupt the CPEC project. China’s
contribution is also essential to promote a
political settlement in Afghanistan including
by support for its development and
incorporation into the CPEC and Belt and
Road network.
The prime minister’s agenda in China is
likely to be focused on economic issues.
Despite the most welcome Saudi financial
support secured during the prime minister’s
tactically smart participation in the Saudi
investment conference last week, Pakistan
still requires a generous financial injection
from China. This may come in various
forms: dollar deposits, soft loans,
commercial credit, currency swaps and
enlarged CPEC commitments. China can
also positively influence the negotiation and
approval of the IMF package sought by
Pakistan.
The prime minister has been invited to
China’s trade expo in Shanghai as a ‘guest
of honour’ and will lead efforts to showcase
Pakistan’s export and production
capabilities.
Unfortunately, these capabilities are
currently limited and must be enlarged
through appropriate trade and industrial
policies. China can play a crucial role in this
process, for instance, through a conscious
endeavour to relocate some of its non-
competitive manufacturing capabilities and
those facing new Western trade barriers to
Pakistan. The joint development of
Pakistan’s agricultural sector and export of
agricultural commodities and processed
goods to China also offer potential for
expanding bilateral trade and accelerating
growth and employment in Pakistan.
It appears essential for the prime minister to
set at rest any doubts regarding Pakistan’s
commitment to the CPEC. This is the
‘flagship’ of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI). If the US and its
friends, including India, are successful in
sabotaging CPEC, it will constitute a major
foreign policy setback for China and its
leader as well as for Pakistan.
The BRI is vital not so much for China as for
the developing countries. The World Bank
has estimated that developing countries
need an investment of over $100 billion in
infrastructure annually. The US and the
West are unwilling or unable to finance this;
China is doing so. Western opposition to
BRI is essentially a ‘dog-in-the-manger’
approach. Criticism of BRI as ‘debt
diplomacy’ is a misplaced extrapolation of
the West’s century-old strategy to ‘capture’
the resources and compromise the leaders
of poorer nations. Chinese lending for
government projects is provided on
extremely soft terms.
All the projects under CPEC were selected
by successive Pakistani governments. The
Gwadar port, road and rail links, oil and gas
pipelines, were identified during the
Musharraf government. The power projects
were added by the PML-N government.
Most of these projects will help advance
Pakistan’s industrialisation and economic
expansion.
As already agreed, CPEC’s scope will be
broadened in future. The Special Economic
Zones can provide the avenue for rapid
industrialisation and export expansion.
CPEC can also incorporate ‘social
infrastructure’: education institutions,
healthcare facilities, garbage and sewage
treatment plants, public amenities, housing
projects, environmental protection projects.
Both Pakistan and China have expressed
openness to third country participation in
CPEC. Saudi investments in Gwadar will
come alongside the CPEC projects. Some
Western companies are already
participating in and profiting from CPEC
projects. General Electric has supplied
turbines for three gas-fired power plants in
the Punjab (whose ‘teething problems’ have
delayed their start by almost a year). Four
Thar Coal projects will also use GE turbines,
hopefully, with better results.
It would be useful for Pakistan and China to
establish a transparent and inclusive
mechanism to accelerate CPEC
implementation eg by prioritising CPEC
projects, agreeing on terms of financing,
overseeing timely execution and keeping the
public and parliament informed.
The anticipated strengthening of the
strategic partnership is not designed as an
alliance against any third country (unlike the
US-India relationship explicitly meant to
‘contain’ China). But the reinforced
Pakistan-China partnership will enable both
countries to more confidently confront the
multiple challenges they face in an
increasingly turbulent world. The Chinese
pictogram for ‘challenge’ also means
‘opportunity’. It is thus that Chairman Mao
declared: “There is great disorder under the
heavens; the situation is excellent!”
Silence and
chatter
Afiya S. ZiaOctober 28, 2018
The writer is author of Faith and Feminism
in Pakistan.
WHAT is it with PTI ministers and their
fixation with pop music? Is it an attempt
to pose as trendy, or have they been
cranking up the music to drown out the
growing criticism?
The informalisation of governance was
obvious when the new government was
sworn in and an outlandish guided tour was
televised by a journalist who embedded
himself in the bathtub of the Prime Minister
House. The biscuit austerity drive, selling off
of the family buffaloes, and the first lady’s
account of a simple old-Mother-Hubbard-
living-in-a-cupboard life, have all been props
of a new optics policy that is befitting of
reality TV rather than political purpose. Such
informality has encouraged the casualisation
of political chatter.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a select and
inept accountability process has undermined
judicial authority which, in turn, is wielding
unrestrained power. The legacy of the
lawyers movement is officially buried.
Incessant talk about rolling back the NFC
and (treasonous?) TV talk shows attacking
the 18th Amendment are in stark contrast to
the blackout of people’s resistance
movements in the tribal areas and a media
that has decided to observe voluntary
silence.
Social media is guided
more by randomness
than democratic norms.
This causes anxiety in those who see things
through a longer lens. In these strange
times, satire, memes and tweets have
become more than supplementary political
commentary — they have become parallel
drawing room chatter, too. While
entertaining, this does not bode well for
journalism, activism or democratic norms.
The recent Twitter exchange between
Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari
and singer Momina Mustehsan signifies
new-age politics in Pakistan. The minister
tweeted her dislike for the “horrendous”
Coke Studio remake of a popular old song,
which led to the singer’s defensive objection
which included a quote from Spiderman. It
doesn’t matter if you have no idea what it
was about. The point is that this
‘conversation’ itself flags a new mode of
constituency engagement with its own
specialised references and jargon.
Mustehsan’s objection to the minister’s
harsh judgement as a form of ‘bullying’ and
‘hate speech’ reflects the millennials’ sense
of quick injury. Any criticism about their
choice of clothes, belief system and lifestyle
causes offence. However, the singer has a
point about whether it is appropriate for a
minister to use Twitter to broadcast both her
casual opinion and official stances at the
same time. Let’s not be lulled by the falsity
that social media is some great equaliser —
there is a big power differential between
ISPR tweets and those of children of a
lesser god.
Social media is guided less by journalistic or
democratic norms and more by
randomness. Responsive politics means
that officials tweet that notice has been
taken, which leads keyboard warriors to
applaud their watchdog role or take
satisfaction in venting their daily outrage.
The sheer speed of things means there is
no patience or interest in following up —
either by way of reporting or investigation.
Can any of us recall or has anyone followed
up on the multiple cases we have tweeted
about over the last year?
It is not the efficacy of social media that is
suspect, but the wisdom and depth of its
politics. Most often, a trail of uncollected
debris follows crusaders as they move on to
new cases and causes with high-speed
clicks. When political crises peak, social
media activism becomes akin to armchair
chatter or actually silences dissent due to
deflection.
Humanising rights in Pakistan is serious
work. There is a dire need to rethink the UN-
template approach. Fata is at a postcolonial
crossroads. All human and women’s rights
commissions should be holding mass
consultations, drafting policies to maximise
legal and economic benefits for women,
minorities and the marginalised in the
merger. There is a need in all provinces for
centres for violence against women like the
one in Multan. Special courts or special
rapporteurs on sex crimes are desperately
needed in an abyss that is the justice
system for women.
The judiciary needs specialised training on
cybercrimes and how to adjudicate in a way
that balances freedoms and protection. The
cost benefit of a specialised human rights
police requires calculation. Expanding the
force rather than burdening a limited one by
constant donor-driven ‘capacity training’ is
not going to cut it.
Slugging out accusations and online chatter
gets attention (just like large ceremonial
human rights seminars), but they do not
engage or challenge the state directly. It’s
time to let the free market take care of
consumer products and retain informal
chatter in the drawing rooms. Public office
should be exclusively and urgently tackling
the horrendous record of human rights
abuses and rigorously implementing policies
at state levels and across real, rather than
virtual communities.
Why attempts to
reform Pakistani
education fail
Pervez HoodbhoyUpdated October 27, 2018
The writer teaches physics in Lahore and
Islamabad.
ONE hears that there’s now yet another
government task force, this one for
“improving education standards”. How
many such bodies have we seen over the
decades? So many, in fact, that
Islamabad’s bored education
bureaucracy hasn’t even bothered to
keep all the records.
None — including the ones I was once part
of 20-30 years ago — has led to even
slightly improved reading, writing,
comprehension and arithmetic skills. Faced
with dismal statistics, the typical reaction is:
Pakistan must spend more on education.
Well, who doubts that?
But countries spending less per student
have better educational outcomes than
Pakistan. Reducing corruption, eliminating
ghost schools, and ensuring teachers come
to class would be welcome developments.
But this too is insufficient.
Creating well-functioning educational
institutions suitable for the modern age
requires more than just money and good
governance. Unlike hospitals or airports,
they are the result of particular cultural and
ideological choices. So far every attempt to
modernise education has run into an
invisible brick wall. Understanding this is
crucial.
Education is a confusing term because it
has a broad range of meanings. But at the
extremes lie two fundamentally different
types — traditional education and modern
education. Like oil and water, they do not
mix together however vigorously shaken.
This is not to say that one is superior to the
other, but they have different teaching
methods, exemplars, and sources. Most
importantly, they have totally different goals.
Traditional education — Christian, Jewish,
Muslim, and Hindu — seeks to prepare the
student for a better afterlife. Its epistemology
begins with the appropriate holy texts, the
primary source of knowledge. Knowledge
comes by revelation and thus
unchangeable; the content is fixed until
eternity.
Modern education, on the other hand, is 100
per cent secular and this-worldly. It
shamelessly changes content according to
need and circumstance, caring only about
the here and now.
So, for example, a school student is taught
about global warming today but 20 years
ago this was not so. Entire new disciplines
keep popping up; for example, computer
science and biotechnology were born just a
few years ago.
Every attempt to modernise
education has run into an
invisible brick wall of culture
and conservatism.
Teaching methods and the student-teacher
relationship also differ sharply between
traditional and modern. The traditional
teacher is an authoritarian who may not be
questioned and is socially authorised to
inflict physical punishment when needed.
Critical thinking — vital for modern learning
— is discouraged. Obedience is rewarded. It
is considered a prime virtue in our schools,
colleges and universities.
Pakistanis overwhelmingly prefer traditional
education. A survey in 2003 conducted
around the Rawalpindi area by Matthew
Nelson, professor at the University of
London, discovered a whopping 41pc
preference for the statement: “A good
school is a school that creates good
Muslims. In other words, good schools
provide students with strong values and
strong religious beliefs.” A mere 10pc
approved the case for evidence-based
modern education.
Less affluent sections of Pakistani
immigrants in Britain have similar
preferences. British public schooling is free,
buildings are adequate, corruption is not a
problem, a single language of instruction
(English) dominates, and other immigrants
use the system successfully to improve their
skills and economic status.
But Pakistan-origin British children have
math and reading skills lower than those of
whites or Indians. In fact, they are at the low
end of all ethnic minorities in Britain. That’s
because many Pakistanis fear their children
will lose their religious moorings and
therefore choose to home-school their
children or send them to faith-based
schools.
This mirrors the situation back home.
Pakistan has countless madressah and
home-educated hafizes. Their commitment
to memory of the holiest of texts is entirely
laudable, and is socially rewarded.
Unfortunately the notion that memorisation
equals education carries over from the
religious domain into the secular.
This creates absurdities of the highest order.
Although parroting buys little elsewhere in
the world, Pakistan’s math and science
hafizes are richly rewarded. They top the
exams of local examination boards, all
without achieving any understanding of their
study material. Many eventually finagle their
way to top administrative positions while
others become highly paid university
professors who reinforce the ratta system.
Which kind of education should a Muslim
society encourage? Traditional or modern?
This question created friction between the
traditional ulema and Muslim modernisers
during the colonial period. Nineteenth-
century Egypt seethed with such debates.
On the Indian subcontinent, Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan saw lack of modern education as the
primary reason for the misery and poverty of
Muslims after the failed 1857 uprising.
Braving conservative backlash, he was
successful in encouraging a section of
Muslims to learn science and English.
Since those times, things have changed
somewhat. Today’s religiously conservative
middle-class Pakistanis do recognise the
connection between modern education and
worldly success. Hence most do not send
their children to madressahs. Instead, they
seek out hybrid schools, which resemble the
old system but with patches grafted from the
new.
Although a step forward, hybridisation is
often awkward. Old and new are put through
a meat grinder; that which emerges is in
mangled form. For example, local biology
textbooks published under state supervision
typically have a chapter on Darwinian
evolution. But that same book’s introductory
chapter ridicules evolution as anti-religious
and not to be taken seriously. Where does
that leave the poor student?
The state, in seeking to establish its
legitimacy, uses education as a tool for
indoctrination. This has turned Pakistan into
a more conservative country than most
other Muslim countries. Even as it abdicates
its basic responsibility by outsourcing
education to private hands, the state
nevertheless remains vigilant against the
penetration of secular ideas into the system.
Western intellectual products, particularly
critical thinking and the scientific method,
are considered dangerous. Therefore even
science subjects, sprinkled onto a substrate
of belief, are taught without using the
scientific method.
The middle ground between traditional and
modern education is still being sought. Until
such time that there is a clear separation of
religious and secular educational content,
and unless fear of being overwhelmed by
secular ideas is consciously overcome,
education outcomes in Pakistan will stay just
as they are. More task forces won’t help
unless they specifically address this issue.
Education
dysfunction
EditorialOctober 28, 2018
AS first visits go, particularly for a
government that has been at the helm for
only a few months, it should come as
reason for grave concern. A few days
ago, the federal education minister,
Shafqat Mahmood, made his inaugural
visit to the Federal Directorate of
Education. The latter oversees the
operations of 423 public-sector
educational institutions in Islamabad.
FDE directors informed him that some
30,000 children are out of school in the
capital. The dysfunctions do not end
here. Control of the FDE was transferred
to the education ministry only recently;
earlier, it had been under the Capital
Administration and Development
Division that has now been abolished. It
seems that the education oversight body
lacks a permanent — or even temporary
— director general given that its interim
head was asked to relinquish charge. In
addition, there are challenges such as
the ongoing litigation between Piera, the
regulatory body for private educational
institutes, and the latter themselves, over
fee hikes. There is also the concern that
a large number of private schools are not
even registered with Piera.
The state of disrepair that is evident in the
educational sector in the capital is far worse
in the provinces with their larger populations
of school-age children. The provinces have
not stepped up to the responsibilities of the
autonomy they won via the 18th
Amendment. Earlier this year, for example,
the KP education department revealed after
a comprehensive, year-long survey that
more than 1.8m children were out of school
— 23 per cent of them aged between five
and 17 years. And earlier, Unicef reported
that in Punjab some 9.2m children were
detached from the school network.
Meanwhile, the situation remains abysmal in
both Sindh and Balochistan. This is a
shocking situation. Reforms are necessary
and must be carried out urgently — both in
the capital territory and the provinces. And
yet, while good intentions may be there, it is
difficult to detect the will to do the work
required.
Time to localise
governance
Faizaan QayyumOctober 29, 2018
The writer is a PhD student in
urban/regional planning at the University of
Illinois.
URBAN governance and local
governments (LGs) are the new
buzzwords in policy circles. Indeed,
devolution of power has long been
ignored as a constitutional principle, and
this conversation is long overdue.
Any discussion on LGs must include several
components. Critical elements include
structure and powers of various agencies
and the role of the civil service. A third,
albeit ancillary, component is property taxes
to finance LGs. It is important to remember
that these are not separate problems. They
are intricately connected to one another,
and success can only be achieved by
reforming LG and governance in the same
vein.
An insistence on treating LG, civil service,
and property tax together is easy to
conceptualise. We have seen at least two
separate committees on LG and civil service
reform. Both are heavily staffed by civil
servants — and, indeed, bureaucrats will be
instrumental in the performance of new
systems that may be formulated. The third
component — taxes — is a little trickier. For
now, think of it like this: if elected LGs have
to rely on local property taxes for most of
their expenses, long-standing problems of
underreported property values can be
solved politically.
If done well, LGs can help
improve governance,
transform the civil service

and solve lacunae with
property valuations.
LGs must truly localise governance through
the following basic principles: maximum
devolution, public representation,
continuous technical capacity building and
reasonable financial independence. The
debate today largely concerns the levels at
which these governments will operate and
the responsibilities they will bear.
Neighbourhood councils, smaller even than
urban union councils, represent a good start
by devolving political decision making to the
smallest possible scale.
This brings us to the second principle, which
requires more thought. Where final
decisions are made will directly determine
the political culture of our cities. Executive
bodies that are too small-scale run the risk
of never accomplishing anything of national
or regional significance. At the same time,
centralised decision-making at the city or
provincial level can tarnish the democratic
character of these governments by drowning
out local voices and introducing
inefficiencies.
In our context, then, we should look at
localities in addition to neighbourhoods as
more reasonable units for governance.
Consider Chicago, for example. The
contiguous metropolitan area extends over
at least two dozen cities and towns, each
with a population greater than 50,000 and its
own elected government. An overarching
body — the Chicago Metropolitan Agency
for Planning — plans for the whole
metropolitan area. Executive decision-
making power, however, stays with
individual cities or towns, and CMAP
encourages compliance by extending
financial, technical and other incentives to
individual LGs. All of these bodies operate
within a larger framework formulated by the
state of Illinois.
Chicago is the largest contiguous
metropolitan area in North America, but it is
not an exception. Boston is in reality more
than 50 individual cities and towns, each
with its own government, all coordinating
with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council
and operating within a framework developed
by the state of Massachusetts. The broader
mechanism has useful lessons for us.
The most important takeaway is this: a
metropolitan area does not have to be a
centrally managed, monolithic entity. Such
sprawls are impossible to manage centrally
and cause our cities to miss out on the
advantages of large, connected markets
even as challenges of megacities continue
to mount. Lahore’s and Karachi’s tehsils, for
example, can be independent town
governments. Regional planning bodies can
coordinate between and incentivise
individual governments to adopt plans and
projects that benefit the whole region, and
also manage common services like urban
transit (note that these tehsils are just an
example and can be redrawn).
The third principle — that of technical
capacity building — ties back to the original
proposition of looking at LG and civil service
reform together. Decision-making power
must rest with elected representatives. The
job of bureaucrats should be to advise these
representatives with technical knowledge,
not to make executive decisions. This shift
in role would necessarily require constant
training and updating of technical
knowledge, alongside in-depth knowledge of
the locality and region that they are
assigned to serve. When tied with
performance-based incentives and constant
oversight by governments locally or at the
centre, bureaucracy can transform from a
colonial extractive project to one of
democratic service provision.
Property and local taxes form the last link in
this chain of reforms. LGs around the world
rely on a mix of property tax, local sales tax
and directed funding from the centre to
function. Once taxes become a determinant
of performance, local bodies would be
heavily incentivised to reassess property
values. Increase assessed values to collect
more revenue and perform for the average
voter, or risk annoying the rich voter — this
would be the political question that local
bodies would face and sort out on their own.
Any suggestion for reform must be
contextualised, and its exact parameters
determined before it can be enforced. Rural
areas may present unique challenges, for
example, and thus require completely
different strategies. We are in no hurry to
revamp the system in half-baked ways —
any political government would do well to
think long and hard before committing to
specific measures. If done well, LGs can
help improve governance, transform the civil
service and solve lacunae with property
valuations. Such reforms will also lead us
away from MPA-/MNA-led development
models that contribute to patronage, bribery,
and political point-scoring across the
country.
We can discuss and thrash out exact
operational details as we move forward. But,
in the meantime, one thing is certain: our
people have been deprived of the power to
decide for themselves for too long, and they
deserve better.
The China agenda
Munir AkramOctober 28, 2018
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador
to the UN.
NEXT week, Prime Minister Imran Khan
will visit China, Pakistan’s primary
strategic partner.
The visit will take place at a critical moment
in global politics. A new Cold War has been
declared by the US against China and
Russia. The world order established after
the Second World War is being dismantled
by the Trump administration. The US and
other major countries no longer feel
constrained by international law from the
unilateral use of force, pressure and
intervention against smaller states. The
global trade regime is being torn apart. The
financial system is under stress.
In these turbulent times, Pakistan’s
relationship with China provides an essential
anchor for its security and foreign policy and
the foundation for its socioeconomic
development. China meets Pakistan’s
defence requirements; it is building
Pakistan’s infrastructure; it is a bulwark
against aggression by India and bullying by
the US.
There is need for more
vocal Chinese support to
Pakistan on its core
security challenges.
Although Pakistan-China relations are rock
solid, in the current geopolitical
circumstances, when both Pakistan and
China confront threats and pressure from
their adversaries, it appears essential to
elevate their strategic partnership to an even
higher level.
The prime minister’s visit to China was
preceded a few weeks ago by that of
Pakistan’s army chief who is reported to
have discussed the further development of
defence and security cooperation between
the two countries at very high levels in
Beijing. The decisions for intensified security
cooperation will no doubt be affirmed by the
prime minister and Chinese leaders.
The two countries need each other’s support
on the political challenges they face at
present. China will expect Pakistan’s
support on its maritime disputes in the South
China Sea, on the One China Policy and
Taiwan, and on the separatist threat from
Uighur extremists in Xinjiang.
Given the concerted Indian and US pressure
and threats against Pakistan, there is need
for more vocal Chinese support to Pakistan
on its core security challenges. China
should condemn the threats of force and
economic pressure on Pakistan; call for a
peaceful resolution of the Jammu and
Kashmir dispute in accordance with
international law; and oppose all threats to
disrupt the CPEC project. China’s
contribution is also essential to promote a
political settlement in Afghanistan including
by support for its development and
incorporation into the CPEC and Belt and
Road network.
The prime minister’s agenda in China is
likely to be focused on economic issues.
Despite the most welcome Saudi financial
support secured during the prime minister’s
tactically smart participation in the Saudi
investment conference last week, Pakistan
still requires a generous financial injection
from China. This may come in various
forms: dollar deposits, soft loans,
commercial credit, currency swaps and
enlarged CPEC commitments. China can
also positively influence the negotiation and
approval of the IMF package sought by
Pakistan.
The prime minister has been invited to
China’s trade expo in Shanghai as a ‘guest
of honour’ and will lead efforts to showcase
Pakistan’s export and production
capabilities.
Unfortunately, these capabilities are
currently limited and must be enlarged
through appropriate trade and industrial
policies. China can play a crucial role in this
process, for instance, through a conscious
endeavour to relocate some of its non-
competitive manufacturing capabilities and
those facing new Western trade barriers to
Pakistan. The joint development of
Pakistan’s agricultural sector and export of
agricultural commodities and processed
goods to China also offer potential for
expanding bilateral trade and accelerating
growth and employment in Pakistan.
It appears essential for the prime minister to
set at rest any doubts regarding Pakistan’s
commitment to the CPEC. This is the
‘flagship’ of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI). If the US and its
friends, including India, are successful in
sabotaging CPEC, it will constitute a major
foreign policy setback for China and its
leader as well as for Pakistan.
The BRI is vital not so much for China as for
the developing countries. The World Bank
has estimated that developing countries
need an investment of over $100 billion in
infrastructure annually. The US and the
West are unwilling or unable to finance this;
China is doing so. Western opposition to
BRI is essentially a ‘dog-in-the-manger’
approach. Criticism of BRI as ‘debt
diplomacy’ is a misplaced extrapolation of
the West’s century-old strategy to ‘capture’
the resources and compromise the leaders
of poorer nations. Chinese lending for
government projects is provided on
extremely soft terms.
All the projects under CPEC were selected
by successive Pakistani governments. The
Gwadar port, road and rail links, oil and gas
pipelines, were identified during the
Musharraf government. The power projects
were added by the PML-N government.
Most of these projects will help advance
Pakistan’s industrialisation and economic
expansion.
As already agreed, CPEC’s scope will be
broadened in future. The Special Economic
Zones can provide the avenue for rapid
industrialisation and export expansion.
CPEC can also incorporate ‘social
infrastructure’: education institutions,
healthcare facilities, garbage and sewage
treatment plants, public amenities, housing
projects, environmental protection projects.
Both Pakistan and China have expressed
openness to third country participation in
CPEC. Saudi investments in Gwadar will
come alongside the CPEC projects. Some
Western companies are already
participating in and profiting from CPEC
projects. General Electric has supplied
turbines for three gas-fired power plants in
the Punjab (whose ‘teething problems’ have
delayed their start by almost a year). Four
Thar Coal projects will also use GE turbines,
hopefully, with better results.
It would be useful for Pakistan and China to
establish a transparent and inclusive
mechanism to accelerate CPEC
implementation eg by prioritising CPEC
projects, agreeing on terms of financing,
overseeing timely execution and keeping the
public and parliament informed.
The anticipated strengthening of the
strategic partnership is not designed as an
alliance against any third country (unlike the
US-India relationship explicitly meant to
‘contain’ China). But the reinforced
Pakistan-China partnership will enable both
countries to more confidently confront the
multiple challenges they face in an
increasingly turbulent world. The Chinese
pictogram for ‘challenge’ also means
‘opportunity’. It is thus that Chairman Mao
declared: “There is great disorder under the
heavens; the situation is excellent!”

Joint solution
Moeed YusufUpdated October 30, 2018
The writer is the author of Brokering Peace
in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis
Management in South Asia.
IT’S crunch time in Afghanistan. The US
has made its intent to push for a political
settlement that includes the Afghan
Taliban clear. The US and Pakistani
positions seem to be converging for real.
In recent contacts, both sides have
tended to agree that there is a genuine
window of opportunity to try and get a
peace process in Afghanistan going and
that they’ll have to work together to make
it happen.
But how do they translate this belief into
complementary actions when the US-
Pakistan relationship is jaundiced to the
core? For too long, both sides have
remained suspicious of each other’s agenda
in Afghanistan. Their policies have operated
at cross purposes even as they have
professed the opposite.
To reverse this, they need to immediately
overhaul the way they have conducted
business with each other.
First, both sides have to start giving the
other the benefit of the doubt. The baggage
of the post-9/11 period colours their
interaction. Both analyse each other’s every
move threadbare, with a guilty-until-proven-
innocent approach. Mindsets are
entrenched — it is impossible to discuss
Pakistan-US ties in either Washington or
Islamabad without the conversation turning
accusatory. The loudest voices specialise in
bashing the other and calling out anyone
who seeks to counsel introspection.
Pakistan and the US
must cooperate on
Afghanistan.
Both sides may pretend they can work
together constructively regardless of their
public blame game, but they can’t. The aura
of negativity this creates has squeezed the
space to find common ground even where it
has existed; officials have been consumed
by litigating the past and issuing demarche
after demarche to their counterparts, to no
avail. What they need is the opposite: park
the negativity; stop revisiting the past; and
judge future actions objectively, with a spirit
of working jointly to help the various factions
in the Afghan war to reconcile with each
other. This requires a conscious decision on
both sides not to encourage or to feed off
those who champion narratives that
demonise the other. Easier said than done.
Second, US and Pakistani officials need to
figure out the practical mode of engagement
on the Afghan political settlement issue. The
time between now and the Afghan
presidential elections in April 2019 is critical.
Given how bad the security situation in
Afghanistan is and how factionalised Afghan
politics is becoming, you’d need tangible
progress in setting up a peace process to
prevent a meltdown. If so, the US, Pakistan,
the Afghan government and other regional
stakeholders need to be working on this
issue daily.
The problem is that the US and Pakistan
have no existing channel to do so. For the
better part of two years, virtually all their
interaction has been through shuttle
diplomacy and almost all of it has been
consumed by mutual complaints and
overcoming the ensuing deadlocks. This has
to be replaced by a dedicated mechanism
where civilian, military and intelligence
counterparts from both sides engage at the
working level to deal with the specifics of
cooperation.
We have a start on the US side with the
appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as special
representative for the peace bid in
Afghanistan. He is empowered as the
designated lead and has a team from across
the US government backing him. We need a
counterpart on the Pakistani side whose job
will be to coordinate the various parts of
government to negotiate and strategise with
the US otherwise, we risk a disjointed
approach that lacks coordination of
message and effort — a perfect way to hand
the initiative back to naysayers in
Washington who’ll distract everyone from
the task at hand by focusing on the
perceived civil-military disconnect and the
futility of dealing with the civilians.
Finally, and most importantly, both sides
must agree on what they can to do for each
other. Two points of disconnect need
highlighting. First, the US feels that Pakistan
can not only bring the Taliban to the table
but also squeeze them to talk to Kabul
directly and nudge them to agree to a
compromise deal. Pakistan appears
unwilling, unable, or both. As of now, it
wants to facilitate talks but prefers that the
US thrash out the rest directly with the
Taliban.
Second, the US says that any move to
normalise the broader Pakistan-US ties can
only be entertained once Pakistan delivers
on Afghanistan. Pakistan, however, wants to
get back to a broader relationship now,
fearing the US will dump it once Afghanistan
is settled. Common ground on both aspects
is necessary to avoid creating perverse
incentives for one or both sides that’ll hold
them back from cooperating to find a
solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.
The good news is that I sense real interest
and urgency on both sides to make
something happen. The bad news is that I
have thus far not picked up evidence the
issues highlighted are being taken head on.
The sooner they are, the better.
Ban all terrorism
Munir AkramUpdated
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador
to the UN.
FOREIGN ministers of the Organisation
of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in
Istanbul after the “savage terrorist attack
which took the lives of 51 Muslim
worshippers in Christchurch”. Notably,
while the New Zealand prime minister
unequivocally condemned this act as
terrorism, many Western capitals
refrained from branding it as such.
India’s reaction did not mention either
Muslims or mosques.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 against
the US, the ‘war on terrorism’ has been
largely a war against ‘Islamic terrorism’
The UN Security Council outlawed Al Qaeda
and all organisations ‘associated’ with it. A
Security Council committee formed to
‘monitor’ counter-terrorist actions,
established a list of ‘terrorist’ groups and
individuals who are exclusively ‘Islamic’.
Apart from Al Qaeda and its associates,
such as the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan and the East Turkmenistan
Islamic Movement, the pro-Kashmiri Jaish-
e-Mohammed was ‘listed’ after the 2007
assassination attempt against president
Musharraf and the Lashkar-e-Taiba after the
2008 Mumbai attack.
Under the cover of
countering terrorism,
state suppression of the
rights of Muslims has
intensified.
Under Security Council resolutions,
extensive obligations were imposed on
states to prevent financing and support for
the listed ‘terrorist’ organisations and to
cooperate against them.
In the US and most Western countries, any
act of violence perpetrated by a Muslim,
whether or not associated with a terrorist
organisation, is described as an act of
terrorism. Moreover, not only violence, but
even involvement in raising finance for a
‘terrorist’ organisation or a violent action, or
an expression of support for a terrorist
organisation or a violent action, is diligently
prosecuted, even if the act is the
consequence of a ‘sting’ operation. Similar
crimes committed by non-Muslims rarely
evoke the terrorist label.
Pakistan and some OIC countries made
early attempts to counter such
discrimination. At the 2005 UN summit, they
secured a declaration which condemned
“terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,
committed by whomsoever, wherever and
for whatever purposes...”. The summit
furthermore called for the adoption of a
‘Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism’.
Encouraging progress was made in the UN
General Assembly’s Legal Committee in
2006/07 on drafting the convention. Its
approval was, however, prevented by the
refusal of some major powers and India to
address ‘state terrorism’ and the root causes
of terrorism.
The Trump administration has given up all
pretence of objectivity and declared ‘war’ on
‘radical Islamic terrorism’. This anti-Muslim
focus has been eagerly embraced by India
and several other states which face internal
Muslim insurgencies.
The global counterterrorism campaign has
had mixed success. Al Qaeda is greatly
diminished and the militant Islamic State
group has been territorially defeated. But
insurgent Muslim groups have sprouted and
spread across the Middle East, North Africa
and beyond.
Unfortunately, under the cover of countering
terrorism, the state suppression of the
legitimate rights and freedom struggles of
Muslim peoples, as in occupied Kashmir
and Palestine, has intensified. Some Muslim
communities, like the Rohingya, have
suffered genocide. Some, like the
Kashmiris, face the prospect of a Pakistan-
India war or genocide if the Hindu
fundamentalists in India persist in their plans
to colonise them. Meanwhile, the continued
occupation and oppression of the
Palestinian people, and even the Israeli
usurpation of holy Jerusalem, no longer
moves the world’s conscience.
Crass discrimination against the Muslims
has been made ‘acceptable’. Muslim
refugees and migrants are turned away from
Western borders in violation of international
law and humanitarian norms. The
defamation of Islam and other
manifestations of Islamophobia have
become socially and politically acceptable in
the West and elsewhere. This has
generated widespread hate against Muslims
that was so vividly and tragically manifested
in the slaughter of the 51 Muslims in the
Christchurch mosques.
This global denigration and demonisation of
the Muslim faith can be halted and reversed
only if the OIC countries act with
determination, unity and clarity.
Reviving the call for a ‘Comprehensive
Convention on Terrorism’ may be a good
place to start.
From the perspective of OIC countries, the
convention should firstly agree on a legal
definition of terrorism. One formulation could
be ‘the use of force and violence against
persons or property to coerce a government,
the civilian population, or any segment
thereof, committed by whomsoever,
wherever and for whatever social or political
purposes, except in the exercise, in
accordance with the principles of the UN
Charter, of the legitimate right of self-
defence and self-determination or resistance
to foreign occupation’.
This definition should not exclude ‘state
terrorism’. If some major powers seek to
exclude ‘armed forces’ from the purview of
the convention, ways would have to be
found to limit this exclusion, for instance, by
defining the conditions under which such an
exclusion is possible and by affirming that
this does not in any way compromise or
constrain the legitimate right of peoples to
struggle for their right to self-determination
and against foreign occupation.
The convention, or at least its
accompanying resolutions, should explicitly
condemn as terrorism the violence
perpetrated or propagated by white
supremacist, neo-Nazi and fascist groups in
Europe, the US and other countries. Their
actions should be prohibited equally with
those of the Islamist groups listed as
‘terrorists’ and equal constraints should be
placed on the propagation of their
Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, racist and violent
ideologies.
Similarly, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh and other violent extremist Hindu
organisations in India deserve to be
classified as terrorists. Their ideology is one
of religious supremacy, hate and violence.
Starting from the assassination of Gandhi,
the list of their crimes is long and manifest:
the Gujarat massacre of Muslims; the
Samjhauta Express slaughter of Pakistanis;
the ongoing violence against the Kashmiris;
the cow-lynching of poor Indian Muslims; the
suppression of Dalits, Adivasis, Naxalites,
and other disadvantaged communities; the
murder of journalists and political
opponents.
A UN Security Council or General Assembly
Committee should be established to list and
monitor these additional ‘terrorist
organisations’.
Pakistan is well placed to assume the lead
in evolving a common and unified OIC
strategy and collectively convincing the
major powers that failure to adopt an
equitable approach on terrorism will intensify
crimes against Muslims, exacerbate the
terrorist threats in and from the Islamic world
and beyond and precipitate in dangerous
regional and global conflicts.
Chief justice’s
challenges
Faisal SiddiqiMarch
“Great judges succeed most when
they are praised not so much for the
legal soundness of their work, but
for the sit-up-and-take-notice
boldness of their interventions”. —
Allan Hutchinson, author
“ASIF, right from his early childhood,
has always made his own independent
decisions … The family would call him
a philosopher child,” is how Sardar
Faiz Muhammad Khan Khosa, father
of the present chief justice of Pakistan,
Asif Saeed Khosa, described his son’s
desire for independence and
excellence. Even before he assumed
his present office, it is these two
qualities which made Justice Khosa a
success story: Law from Cambridge,
barrister, author and teacher, leading
to a judicial career marked by
devotion, creativity and, importantly,
remarkable courage. Examples of the
latter include, imposing constitutional
limits on Musharraf’s dictatorship,
holding to account then prime
ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani’s and
(later) Nawaz Sharif’s betrayal of the
public trust, passing a verdict against
the religious fanaticism of Mumtaz
Qadri and other unknown fanatics and
fighting the evil of delay by disposing
of nearly 55,000 cases.
But great judges do not necessarily
make great chief justices. Like Afzal
Zullah, Ajmal Mian, Iftikhar Chaudhry
and Saqib Nisar, great chief justices
should also have a judicial vision, and
more importantly, the will and strategy
to implement it.
The criminal apathy of the
government imperils
judicial reform.
Khosa’s vision: In his address at the
full-court reference for former chief
justice Saqib Nisar in January, CJP
Khosa identified three key goals as he
formulated his judicial vision. First, he
said, he would “like to avail every
moment of my remaining time on the
bench to attend to the causes that
contribute towards delay in the
disposition of cases” or build a “dam
against undue and unnecessary
delays”. Tackling judicial delay is his
passion. The main cause for delay is
also clearly identified by him — “3,000
judges and magistrates cannot handle
1.9 million cases even if they work for
36 hours a day”, especially considering
the increase in cases every day. As
Justice Munib Akhtar once pointed out
“there are too few judges chasing too
many cases”.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
CJP Khosa’s observations have
brought into focus some key measures
to tackle judicial delay:
a) “Successive governments have
failed to suitably increase the number
of judges and magistrates,” he said —
meaning a substantial increase in
judges is required and, according to
him, 25 per cent of the current vacant
posts to be filled.
(b) He also noted that the “Time has …
come when the judicial system as a
whole needs to be redesigned or
restructured and made simple and
effective”. This means a simple three-
tier, as opposed to the current four-tier,
judicial system, eliminating an extra
tier of judicial delay. It also means a
single appellate system, with the high
courts being the final forum for facts,
and the Supreme Court entertaining
only matters of legal interpretation.
Special courts would be abolished, as
these lead to delay because of
jurisdictional disputes.
(c) He also observed that there should
be no adjournments for lawyers and no
delay in writing judgments, which
should be short.
Second, contrary to the elite and
liberal propaganda against the Iftikhar
Chaudhry and Saqib Nisar courts, suo
motu and human rights cases under
Article 184(3) constitute less than 1pc
of the total number of Supreme Court
cases. CJP Khosa is right that this
jurisdiction should “be exercised very
sparingly” and has suggested two
critical reforms: (a) laying down the
parameters of this jurisdiction; and (b)
introducing an intra-court appeal (as in
contempt matters) or enlarging the
review jurisdiction in Article 184(3)
cases.
Third, unless we intend to “keep
drifting or floating aimlessly”, he
proposes “an inter-institutional
dialogue” chaired by the president of
Pakistan and attended by the judicial,
parliamentary, executive and military
leadership (including the intelligence
agencies). Such a proposal recognises
both the institutional deadlock and
Pakistan’s power realities. This out-of-
the-box thinking can save us unless
we want to be consumed by the fires
of institutional conflicts.
Revenge of the status quo: Opposition
to this vision will come from group
mindsets that sustain the status quo.
Firstly, most of the suggested reforms
regarding judicial delay, Article 184(3)
powers and inter-institutional dialogue
also involve legislative and executive
actions by the government. But
nothing has happened despite the
passage of over two months since CJP
Khosa took office. The criminal apathy
of the government imperils judicial
reform.
Secondly, as recent examples of
violence by lawyers against judges
and bar council strikes against judicial
reforms have demonstrated, the
lawyers’ community is being
transformed — from a reform
movement which restored judicial
independence against Musharraf’s
military rule to an anti-reform
movement which safeguards its own
narrow interests.
Thirdly, most Pakistani judges want to
do effective justice but require both the
singular determination to reduce
judicial delay and coming up with a
court management strategy in this
regard. Only creative, reform-oriented
high court chief justices (eg former
LHC CJ Mansoor Ali Shah) can rectify
the evils of delay.
Fourthly, any creative and post-
colonial suggestion like an inter-
institutional dialogue will be opposed
by groups benefiting from institutional
infighting as well as by legal
fundamentalists who naively believe
that Pakistan must follow a
constitutional path exactly like the
West’s.
Cambridge vs Baloch blood: “With
Baloch blood running in my veins
honour is the most precious thing in
my life after my faith,” declared CJP
Khosa. Dealing with judicial delay and
reforming the jurisdiction under Article
184(3) may satisfy his desire for
judicial excellence imbibed through his
Cambridge training, but his Baloch
conscience based on honour can
provide a solid basis for dealing with
evils like enforced disappearances and
extrajudicial killings.
Building on the judicial contributions
and courage shown on this issue by
former chief justices Chaudhry and
Jawwad Khawaja and current
Islamabad Chief Justice Athar
Minallah, the honour of the Pakistani
people and their faith in fundamental
rights can never be restored unless the
missing persons issue is solved.
Moreover, this may be the last
opportunity of saving Balochistan from
becoming another Bangladesh.
Thus, both formidable challenges and
unparalleled opportunities await CJP
Khosa.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2019
‘Urdu medium’
Irfan HusainUpdated
IF you eat at one of Karachi’s upscale
restaurants, chances are that the
conversations you overhear from nearby
tables will be in English.
This is equally true of ice cream parlours
and cafés in the high-end Defence and
Clifton areas where kids chatter on with
varying degrees of fluency in English. Ditto
high-rise corporate offices where executives
are almost banned from speaking in Urdu by
an unwritten edict.
So what’s going on in Pakistan, a country
that gained its freedom from British rule 72
years ago? Why this growing use of the
language of our erstwhile colonial masters
decades after their departure? This trend
has marginalised our national and regional
languages, and weakened creativity.
Also read: The case for Urdu as Pakistan's
official language
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
When speaking to friends, we unconsciously
switch from Urdu to English and back when
we don’t find the right word in one language.
And let me confess that I am very much part
of this syndrome. I recall that years ago, we
were fined four annas (or 25 paisa) at St
Patrick’s, my missionary school, for
speaking in Urdu to our friends during the
break.
There is widespread
recognition that English is
the language of power.
The other day, while picking up some
sourdough bread off Karachi’s Zamzama
Road, I was accosted by a young boy of
around 10, asking me to buy a children’s
book. This was hardly unusual. What was
unusual, however, was his insistence in
speaking to me in good English, although he
was clearly from a working-class family, and
thus unlikely to be educated in a private
school.
Clearly, there is a widespread recognition
that English is the language of power.
Among the children of well-to-do parents,
‘Urdu medium’ is almost an insult. Kids
understand early on that Urdu is the
language you use to order servants in, while
English is used by their parents to
communicate to friends and family.
Take a look: The imperialism of language
Poorer parents also get this message, and
sacrifice much of their meagre resources to
pay for their children to study in so-called
‘English-medium’ schools. However, there
are only a handful of institutions that impart
instruction in correct English, and charge
very high fees that are way beyond the
means of most parents.
But if you are lucky enough to graduate with
a relatively sound command of spoken
English, many doors are open to you.
Intelligence counts for little as it is assumed
that if you can speak English fluently, you
must not just be bright, but from a well-
connected family as well. So you start life
with a distinct advantage, looking down on
those less fortunate people whose accent
identifies them as ‘Urdu medium’.
And if these lesser beings presume to
address you in English, chances are that
you will respond in Urdu, thus putting them
in their place. This kind of linguistic
arrogance divides our society in a way not
dissimilar to the division in British society.
Here, attendance at expensive private
boarding schools like Eton and Harrow gives
you not just the right accent, but a certain
attitude that immediately identifies you as
the product of an elite school. To pay for this
privilege, parents will mortgage their homes
to ensure their kids have an edge.
Despite the clear advantages fluency in
English endows, there is much confusion
and hypocrisy surrounding its teaching and
use. Our policymakers and public
representatives extol the use of Urdu and
pay lip service to its propagation. But guess
where their children are educated? Even our
senior clerics have been known to send their
kids to America for higher education,
forgetting the anti-America slogans they
chant so fervently.
Admission to schools like Lahore’s Aitchison
College and Karachi’s Grammar School is
like gold dust. There are scores of
applicants for each place, and tiny five-year
olds are examined for suitability, though
what such a young child is expected to know
is beyond me. But just to make sure his or
her parents are the ‘right’ sort, they are
summoned for an interview as well.
Once admitted, the child’s path in life is
more or less charted. Graduation is often
followed by a university in America; then
comes a job in a sound corporation —
preferably a multinational — or daddy’s
company; marriage to somebody with a
similar background is next; and then comes
the struggle to ensure admission for the
children in an elite school.
But in the midst of this programmed life
cycle of a tiny elite is the huge loss we suffer
due to the exclusion of many gifted children
born without the privileges our elites take for
granted. These marginalised individuals
remain stuck in the grooves etched by our
adherence to English.
Thus, we have not only excluded women
and minorities from important positions, but
have shrunk our talent pool by focusing
almost exclusively on English. This has led
to a situation where most kids today leave
school without a sound grasp of either
English or Urdu. And inevitably, we lose an
important part of our cultural heritage.
Ironies of the Afghan
war
Zahid HussainUpdated
The writer is an author and journalist.
HE was captured on Feb 8, 2010, in a
joint CIA-ISI raid outside Karachi. The
Obama administration described the
arrest of the Afghan Taliban’s second-in-
command as a “turning point” in its war
in Afghanistan. He remained in
confinement as the Taliban insurgency
swept across the country.
In what could be termed as an irony of
history, nine years later, Mullah Baradar sat
across the negotiation table with American
officials to discuss the timeline for the
withdrawal of the occupation forces from his
homeland. He had been released by
Pakistani security agencies last year on
America’s request.
A co-founder of the Afghan Taliban
movement, his role is seen as critical to the
effort to end the 18-year war. The long
confinement seems to have increased
Baradar’s respect among the Taliban
commanders. After the death of Mullah
Omar, he is the de facto leader of the
movement. His presence in the negotiations
has given greater authority to the Taliban
delegation. Though it is not going to be
easy, progress in talks had raised hopes of
the two sides reaching some kind of an
agreement on ending the war.
Among others, there are five former
inmates of Guantanamo who are also part of
the Taliban delegation now engaged in
peace talks in Doha with those who were
their tormentors. They were released in
2014 in exchange for an American soldier
held by the Taliban. Since then, they have
been living in Doha. All of them had been
close to Mullah Omar. They came out of the
shadows to join the negotiating team when
the Trump administration decided to directly
talk to the Taliban.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Mullah Baradar has been
credited for rebuilding the
Afghan Taliban into an
effective fighting force.
Their inclusion in the team was also meant
to send a message to Washington. Zalmay
Khalilzad, the chief American negotiator,
has described their presence in the talks as
“more authoritative”, and tweeted that this
could be “a significant moment” in the talks.
Thirteen years of imprisonment and torture
do not seem to have diminished their
resolve. And, there is no sign of bitterness
about what they had gone through. “It’s
been a long war, with lots of casualties and
destruction and loss. What gives me hope is
that both teams are taking the issue
seriously,” Mullah Khairkhwa, one of the
Guantanamo returnees, told the New York
Times. “The two sides shared a common
interest, at least, in ending the war.”
Take a look: Endgame in Afghanistan
The very fact that the Americans are now
negotiating their withdrawal plan with the
group their forces had ousted from power
almost 18 years ago tells the story of a war
gone wrong. Even if the world’s greatest
military power believes that it has not lost
the war, it has not won it either. The
Americans are now sitting across the table
with the same men who they incarcerated
and declared terrorists.
Surely, each one of those representing the
Taliban in the negotiations has a story of
struggle, of being in power and a life in
detention. But Baradar has played a much
greater role in building the insurgency,
notwithstanding his long period in detention.
His elevation to the top rung of the Taliban
leadership indicates the influence he wields,
particularly among the fighters.
Known as a brilliant and charismatic military
commander, Baradar has been credited for
rebuilding the Taliban into an effective
fighting force and running the group’s day-
to-day affairs after the fall of the so-called
Islamic emirate. Besides heading the
Taliban’s military operations, he ran the
group’s leadership council, also known as
the Quetta Shura.
As a young man, he participated in the
Afghan ‘jihad’ against the Soviet forces. It
was during the war that he came to know of
Mullah Omar. They fought side by side
against the communist forces. After the
withdrawal of the Soviet forces and the
collapse of the communist regime in Kabul
in 1992, Baradar settled down in the
southern district of Maiwand where he and
Mullah Omar ran their own madressah.
When Mullah Omar started a campaign in
1994 against local warlords with a force of
some 30 men, Baradar was among the first
recruits. That was also the beginning of the
Taliban movement which in 1996 swept
Kabul and established the Islamic emirate.
He first served as the Taliban’s corps
commander for western Afghanistan and
later as the garrison commander of Kabul
where he directed the fight against the rival
Mujahideen commanders in the north.
Described as the most skilled military leader
who spearheaded the fighting in southern
Afghanistan, he also conducted the
Taliban’s financial operations, allocated
Taliban funds, appointed military
commanders, and designed military tactics.
His arrest had dealt a serious blow to the
Taliban insurgency. American officials were
quick to declare a “significant win”. But his
detention did not change the course of war.
By the time he was released, the Taliban
had expanded their influence to more than
50 per cent of Afghanistan. Following his
release, Baradar had circulated an
audiotape promising Taliban fighters he
would have a greater presence within the
movement.
Baradar’s release shows the Trump
administration’s desperation to find a
political solution to the Afghan crisis.
Although he seldom participates in the
larger meetings between the two sides, his
presence there helps to clear a roadblock.
Whenever there was an indication of talks
breaking down, Khalilzad would call on him
and the problem would be mostly sorted out.
But his health seems to have been sapped
by nearly a decade of detention.
The US-Taliban talks have made significant
progress. But there is still a long way to go
before peace can return to the war-torn
country. Decades of conflict that have
exacted a severe toll on the lives of millions
of Afghans and wrought destruction cannot
be ended easily even if the two sides reach
an agreement.
Certainly, the war has intensified while they
have been engaged in serious negotiations.
It is going to be a classic war-war, talk-talk
situation. There are still sticking points that
could cause the negotiations to go on for
much longer. The differences over the
definition of ‘terrorism’ and the time frame of
the withdrawal of the American forces have
remained unresolved. Then there is also the
issue of the intra-Afghan dialogue. All those
needed to be resolved before one can hope
for peace to return to Afghanistan.
Unpacking
deradicalisation
Arifa NoorApril 09, 2019
The writer is a journalist.
ONCE again, as the state rolls up its
sleeves to rid society of militancy, plans
beyond the conventional security
operations are under the spotlight. And
this includes figuring out how to deal
with militants.
In this regard, words such as
‘deradicalisation’ are being bandied about;
but it is hard to figure out what the specific
plans or strategies are. The information
minister, Fawad Chaudhry, is one of the few
to provide any details — he has said that it
is to be a three-step strategy. The first will
be to disarm the groups; the second to help
them get jobs and interest-free loans; and
the third will be to integrate them into
society.
Other news reports quote unnamed officials
as saying the militants could be
accommodated in the paramilitary forces.
There has been criticism of this idea of
integration, instead of punishment, as it is
argued that militants should be punished for
crimes, instead of being facilitated into
society. But while this has its merits,
punishment cannot be the only solution.
The problem in Pakistan
is the absence of details
about the government’s
deradicalisation plans.
Simply put, not every militant will be found
guilty of such crimes that he can be given
the death sentence or life imprisonment.
There are many lower-level operatives who
cannot be put away forever, even if they can
be convicted.
And this is why the state has to think more
broadly. It is in this context that
deradicalisation has to be considered for
those who are not beyond redemption. The
‘strategy’ has been adopted by a number of
states, even though its success is far from
evident. But the debate over the efficacy is
for another time.
At the moment, the problem in Pakistan is
the absence of details available about the
government’s deradicalisation plans.
If the deradicalisation programmes in other
Muslim countries are to provide any hints of
what the stakeholders in Pakistan may be
considering, then such projects tend to
focus on inmates or convicted criminals.
Be it Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, the
programmes run by these governments aim
to ‘reform’ or deradicalise imprisoned
militants. Clerics or former militants are
brought in to talk to them, mentor them in a
bid to turn them away from extremist views
and radical ideologies. At a later stage, they
can be facilitated economically by being
offered employment to help them integrate
into their families and society.
For example, in Indonesia (which initiated
such efforts after the Bali bombings), the
programme is based on the idea that
radicals will only listen to other radicals. As
a result, reformed extremists were recruited
to talk to and engage with convicted
militants. And the second aspect was to
offer them financial assistance — paying the
school fees of their children; providing their
wives with money to raise the family.
Eventually, the released prisoners were
provided with some money. (In fact, there
were some who argued that the
programme’s ideological component was
not too effective and that militants opted for
it only because of the financial incentives.)
Despite the Indonesian authorities touting
this as a success, not everyone agrees.
However, other Southeast Asian states have
implemented similar programmes.
Apart from Muslim countries, the European
countries, too, have such programmes,
though these tend to be divided into
counter-radicalisation (which are preventive
in nature) and deradicalisation categories.
An example of a deradicalisation
programme was the Violence Prevention
Network run in Germany which targeted
prisoners from the far right as well as
religious extremists. The prisoners were
offered a programme in prison, followed by
support for a year after being released. In
addition, their families were provided
financial help. But instead of the
engagement being based on religion, the
dialogue was more focused on delving into
the perpetrators’ sense of anger, their
crimes and re-educating them about
democracy and handling conflict.
On the other hand, the prevention
programmes work entirely differently — they
aim to identify those at risk or those who
may be involved or engaged with extremist
organisations and working to disengage
them.
For instance, a programme in the
Netherlands, which was run by the
government in collaboration with the local
authorities, reached out to young people in
right-wing groups. These youths were
offered support in withdrawing from groups;
this support could be in the form of help in
returning to school or getting a job and
accommodation.
But Muslim states have tended to mostly
focus on deradicalisation. The Saudi and
Yemeni programmes and the
deradicalisation centres in Swat — like the
Indonesian efforts (and to some extent the
German example) — have been aimed at
convicted extremists.
To return now to Pakistan, one can assume,
in the absence of details, that the
deradicalisation the government is now
promising will be akin to the Indonesian
model discussed here; especially as this is
what the Swat centres also did.
If so, this means that only convicted
prisoners will be targeted.
But this raises a few questions. How
successful will this be in settled areas where
without reforms the capacity of our judicial
system to ensure convictions may remain
rather limited?
Second, how will this work in the case of
militants linked to organisations that so far
have not carried out attacks on Pakistani
soil? How will they be convicted or
imprisoned and then made part of such
programmes?
Third, will the deradicalisation programme,
like the Indonesian model, aim to use former
militants to engage with these convicted
militants, or will it use traditional ulema
(which the Indonesians did not use as they
felt they were too discredited in the eyes of
the militants)?
Fourth, is the government planning to set
aside funds for the financial rehabilitation of
these militants once they have served their
sentence?
Raising these questions is not about
questioning the government’s sincerity.
Instead, it is to highlight the absence of a
debate on the various aspects of a policy
before it is given final shape and
implemented. Indeed, the government
needs to hold a more open dialogue on the
issue, which the opposition must also
engage in, if the state is serious about
putting an end to the militancy that plagues
Pakistan and consequently also endangers
its place in the international community.
Pak-India stand-off
Najmuddin A. ShaikhUpdated April 09, 2019
The writer is a former foreign secretary.
THE revelation by Foreign Minister Shah
Mahmood Qureshi in a press conference
in Multan that Pakistan had credible
intelligence about Indian plans to attack
Pakistan between April 16 and 20 was
followed, within hours, by an Indian
Foreign Office spokesperson’s shrill
dismissal of the claim as “preposterous”
and “clearly aimed at whipping up war
hysteria in the region”.
The spokesman went on to add: “This public
gimmick appears to be a call to Pakistan-
based terrorists to undertake a terror attack
in India.”
One can be certain that the foreign
minister’s assertion was based on what he
had been told by military intelligence. What
is less certain is whether this intelligence
was based entirely on solid information. It is
far more likely that their claim was based on
their assessment of Ajit Doval — recognised
as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s point
man for handling relations with Pakistan —
and his proclaimed doctrine of offensive
defence. This, in their assessment, would
include Doval planning attacks that would
keep Pakistan off balance.
In both countries, these public statements
suggest that the ground realities do not
figure in the calculations of the two sides in
this period of heightened tensions. On the
Pakistan side, the Indian capacity rather
than what the Modi government would find
most beneficial would have determined the
military assessment. On the Indian side, the
fear that this was a call for a terrorist attack
on India ignored the ground reality that
Pakistan’s new government is intent on
curbing and eliminating such groups.
We can retaliate in kind
but keep it confined to a
verbal battle.
The truth of the matter is that for Prime
Minister Modi the ‘decisive’ action he took
after Pulwama has given him all the political
benefits he could garner, despite the clear
evidence that the so-called pre-emptive
strike was an utter failure. A civilian
evaluation, therefore, would have been that
Modi is too careful a politician to risk
damaging the image now created of ‘a 56-
inch- chested daring leader’ by another
strike that would invite retaliation and
possibly the loss of some further military
assets.
On Pakistan’s side, the Indians know that,
beset by economic problems and working
frantically on resolving issues with the
Financial Action Task Force and the IMF,
the last thing Pakistan needs is another
episode of physical confrontation with India.
This is the reality the Indians recognise even
while continuing to denounce Pakistan as
the country from which terrorists are
fomenting trouble in India-occupied
Kashmir.
No Indian policymaker can argue after
Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statesmanlike
gesture of releasing the captured Indian
pilot that Pakistan wants to maintain a
hostile posture or that it will not take two
steps for each step that moves India forward
towards resuming a dialogue.
It is, of course, important for Pakistan to
ensure that its armed forces maintain
vigilance, but should that mean the costly
deployment of forces on the border and the
closure of 11 of the 12 air routes through
Pakistani airspace, which presumably are
regarded as necessary for security? The
estimates of the extra cost imposed on
travellers from Pakistan to such diverse
places as Sri Lanka and Thailand run as
high as one billion dollars — a cost that our
perilously low foreign exchange reserves
find difficult to meet.
Realistically, perhaps, one can accept that
even when Modi sends a relatively
conciliatory message on Pakistan Day, his
party cohorts may find it useful to denounce
Pakistan in their media and social media
message linking it to the harsh message
that is being delivered to Indian Muslims.
We can retaliate in kind but keep it confined
to a verbal battle and hope that, once the
Indian elections are out of the way, the Modi
government — which is likely to return to
power albeit with a reduced majority — will
see the need to talk to Pakistan to resolve
the issues that have beset the relationship
and acquired a sharp edge since Pulwama.
It is perhaps naïve to expect that Prime
Minister Modi and the hardliners in his party
will modify their stance towards Pakistan,
but there are good reasons for such a
change. While the Indian economy is still
doing well, it has not delivered the 10 million
jobs that Modi had promised to create, nor
has it fully recovered from the adverse
impact of the demonetisation that he carried
out in his bid to digitise the economy.
The World Bank report titled Half a
Glassful has talked of the immense potential
for intra-regional trade within Saarc. Clearly,
as the largest country of the region, India
will be the principal beneficiary, but the
others too would be much better off. It would
perhaps be going a step too far to envisage
India as one of the regional countries that
can benefit from CPEC, but that too is a
very real possibility as some Indian
industrialists have recognised.
Austerity measures
Hajrah MumtazApril 08, 2019
The writer is a member of staff.
THE news wires that major organisations
subscribe to are full of curious and
sometimes wonderful things that may
never make the cut in a newspaper’s
limited space — and have the additional
benefit of providing perspective. A
colleague recently came across a little
gem that she was kind enough to share
with me.
As reported by AFP, it seems that in 2007,
Tajikistan passed a law aiming to
discourage lavish spending on wedding and
other celebratory events, with the scope
extending not just to public but also private
venues. As a consequence, last week a pop
star — Firuza Hafizova — was fined the
equivalent of $530 for hosting a birthday
party at her home, with her friends. The
Tajik authorities got wind of the affair after a
video emerged on the internet that showed
her dancing with friends, with state
prosecutors issuing a statement on Tuesday
that as Ms Hafizova “celebrated her birthday
at her home on Dec 12 from eight to 11pm,
her girlfriends and acquaintances arrived to
congratulate her. […]”. Birthdays should be
celebrated “in the family circle only”, it
specified.
To put that into perspective, the fine she is
faced with is worth more than two months’
wages for the average Tajik. Critics of the
applicable law say that instead of curbing
ostentation, what it has in practice achieved
is helping corrupt officials extort money from
the public.
Does the state have the
right to regulate the
private lives of citizens?
This is not the first time, of course, that the
law has been trotted out. In 2015, a man
was fined a similarly hefty sum for
celebrating his birthday in a bar with friends,
after being caught out online when he
posted a picture on Facebook. As reported,
Tajik authorities “regularly upbraid pop stars
for petty misdemeanours and state control
over the local scene ensures that many
artists stick to pro-government and patriotic
themes” — so much so that Tajikistan
President Emomali Rakhmon in February
called on them to stop being so slavishly
loyal in their songs to the long-reigning ruler.
We in Pakistan are, of course, no stranger
to ‘austerity drives’ aimed at reducing the
distance between the rich and the poor, and
curbing ostentation and private and public
spending.
From the PML-N government’s decision in
the late ’90s that only one dish may be
served at wedding celebrations to schemes
such as those the current PTI government
has come up with — eg opening up Prime
Minister House to the public and converting
it into a university premises (until the Saudi
crown prince arrived, when the building was
miraculously resurrected to receive him and
the doors thrown open to receive a royal
donor) — there are numerous examples.
Some have been partially effective, others
not so much, because perhaps it is a part of
human nature to try and escape the long
arm of the law. This is especially true if, as
in a country such as Pakistan, that long arm
is often ineffectual, the state has limited
prosecution and evidence-collecting
capacities, and it is the wealthy and the well
connected that are both framing law or
policy, and then being guilty of bypassing it,
aware that they are hardly likely to be called
out, let alone face the wrath of the courts.
The interesting question all this throws up is,
does a state have the right (or can it
appropriate the ‘right’) to regulate even the
private lives of citizens? Part of the answer
can be found in the hackneyed theory of
social contract, where the state (and by
extension the government that represents it)
and citizens tacitly mutually agree for one to
provide basics such as security or right (to
an extent), while the other party submits to a
certain level of control and oversight,
agreeing, for example, to follow the law or
pay tax, etc.
That is all fitting and proper, yet in the
context of austerity measures such as the
case in Tajikistan, there are a couple of
basics to bring into consideration over the
debate. First, it is fact that in every society
on the planet, there is a disparity between
the rich and the poor or not so well off, with
regulatory rules often being faced
disproportionately by the latter — the former
get by often on the basis of their privilege.
Second, what if a state is not holding up its
end of the bargain of the social contract? In
Pakistan, security and economic
opportunity, or access to affordable and
decent healthcare or education, are
amongst the issues that are foremost on the
citizenry’s mind. The state of these sectors,
and several others, is clear for all to see.
What then?
Some academics present an argument that,
paraphrased, basically says that hope
springs eternal. With each election, people
have a chance to choose whom they believe
may deliver best on the contract, the PTI’s
victory last year being a case in point. Even
so, there are no guarantees to be found
anywhere.
Much worse to come
S. Akbar ZaidiUpdated April 08, 2019
The writer is a Karachi-based political
economist.
ALL those who had hoped that
Pakistan’s economy may have finally hit
rock-bottom and may just have turned a
corner, and that the wreck created by the
finance minister and his team might have
stabilised, are in for a rude shock. We are
still at the beginning of the huge damage
relentlessly being done to Pakistan’s
economy by an irresponsible and
incompetent management and leadership
which has destroyed the economy over
the last eight months.
It certainly did not add to anyone’s
confidence when the finance minister
himself was recently reported to have said
that “Pakistan may be going through an
economic crisis”, or that we are “near
bankruptcy”, a view shared by the adviser to
the prime minister on commerce, textile,
industry and production and investment who
also said that the economy was in a “bad
shape”. The governor of the State Bank,
agreed, adding his sombre and dire
statement about where we are today,
warning about dismal prospects in the
future, politely saying that growth will
‘moderate significantly”. However, be
warned, things are about to get much worse.
Two things need to be pointed out. One, that
while the current government did certainly
inherit an economy which was desperately
seeking reform, after eight months it can’t
blame previous governments and has to
take responsibility for its own mishandling.
After two failed mini-budgets, some
introspection is necessary. Second, a look
at a few key indicators will only emphasise
the point of how bad things have become.
With inflation at its highest in five-and-a-half
years, we are only seeing the beginnings of
a period of double-digit inflation. The rupee
is losing value every other day, adding to
this inflation, and will depreciate a great deal
more, whether, or especially when, the
government gives in to yet another IMF
programme.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
The rupee is losing value
every other day, adding
to inflation, and will
depreciate a great deal
more.
The fiscal deficit is about to hit more than six
per cent of GDP, and even a cut in
development expenditure will not stop this
rot, as defence spending and interest
payments continue to rise. Our exports,
despite the 35pc devaluation, have barely
budged, the circular debt continues to
increase, interest rates are also going up
making the cost of business even more
uncompetitive. One can go on and show a
vast array of statistics which unambiguously
show that this government has ruined the
economy. With the State Bank
lowering GDP growth to an eight-year low of
around 3.5pc, those begging for money
(most of which has already been spent in
one way or another) from the four friends we
have left, need to think of better alternatives.
And tax amnesty schemes are certainly no
solution.
There is nothing which represents the
complete disarray and disconnect in
understanding and thinking about Pakistan’s
social and economic issues by this
government, and their attempted solution
than the two announcements made recently.
The first was made by the prime minister of
Pakistan on March 28, followed by one
made by his finance minister reported the
next day.
Prime Minister Imran Khan announced “the
biggest and the boldest” poverty alleviation
programme of Pakistan called Ehsas, with a
number of measures supposedly to address
many of the country’s persistent economic
problems. This, at a time, when poverty
numbers have fallen and poverty has
ceased to be Pakistan’s biggest problem,
now replaced by huge and visible disparities
in income and wealth.
The apparent determination and importance
of these measures to the government, were
emphasised by the prime minister’s
announcement, that he would ask for a
constitutional amendment to move Article
38(d) from the ‘Principles of Policy” section
into the ‘Fundamental Rights’ section,
making the “provision of food, clothing,
housing, education and medical relief for
citizens who cannot earn a livelihood due to
infirmity, sickness or unemployment, a state
responsibility”.
Undoubtedly, these are admirable intentions
and a part of his Riasat-i-Madina project.
But where the money for such grandiose
schemes will come from, given the state of
the economy, is a complete mystery. A far
more robust taxation policy, taxing the very
rich and transferring this money to those
who deserve it, would address Pakistan’s
growing inequality, and might allow social
welfare spending as well, but the
government fails at such structural
measures of reform.
The very next day after the prime minister’s
announcement, it was reported that the
finance minister had stated that Pakistan
was finally about to secure a bailout
package from the IMF of between $6 billion
and $12bn in late April or early May. These
two statements represent a huge disconnect
between what the prime minister envisages
and how his finance minister thinks the
economy ought to be managed.
There is a basic contradiction here between
both these aims and positions, and both
have diametrically opposite consequences.
This should be fairly obvious to anyone, no
matter how well intentioned, if they have
even a miniscule understanding of how a
country’s social and economic policy is
managed, and what the consequences of an
IMF programme will entail.
The anticipated IMF programme, which is
almost a certainty now, is going to make
things far worse for all Pakistanis, and
especially for the working people already
dealing with prospects of a marked
economic slowdown and far higher prices.
The IMF will further cut the miniscule
development expenditure we have left,
although defence spending will remain a
matter of ‘national security’, hence, not to be
touched.
The IMF brings about austerity, stabilisation
and cuts the growth rate, it insists on
devaluation, and will cause greater inflation
by raising utility prices. The fundamental
rights in the Constitution, regarding the
“provision of food, clothing, housing,
education and medical relief for citizens”,
are inconsistent with any IMF programme. In
fact, at the end of the anticipated IMF
programme, we will add many more to the
ranks of those who “cannot earn a livelihood
due to infirmity, sickness or unemployment”.
Perhaps it is best to remind ourselves, there
was no IMF in the state of Madina.

A healthy nation
Muhammad Umair ArshadApril 07, 2019
The writer is director of the Institute of Home
and Food Sciences, Government College
University, Faisalabad.
IT is estimated that over three billion
people around the globe are affected by
micronutrient deficiencies, with its more
aggressive impact being felt in the
developing countries. Pakistan is
amongst the countries with an extremely
poor nutritional status for children under
and above five years of age.
According to the National Nutrition Survey
2011, stunting (the failure to reach linear
growth potential), wasting (acute weight
loss) and micronutrient malnutrition (hidden
hunger) is endemic in the country.
Nearly half of the children under five years
of age are stunted and one in three is
underweight. Hidden hunger, ie
micronutrient deficiencies, has severe health
consequences and is particularly harmful if
experienced in early childhood. It irreversibly
impairs the child’s physical and cognitive
development and increases the risk of
mortality, with reduced productivity at later
stages.
The causes of these morbidities are
numerous, and include dietary deficiencies,
poor maternal and child health, poor
nutrition, a high burden of morbidity, low
micronutrient content in the soil, and an
extremely poor knowledge of nutrition
amongst the general masses.
Stunting, wasting, and
malnutrition are endemic
in this country.
Currently, many strategies are being
adopted to combat these nutritional
challenges. However, food-related
strategies often fail to address the problem
of micronutrient deficiency as budgets often
do not allow micronutrient-rich foods to be
included in meals. Efforts to overcome the
menace include both awareness and food-
intervention programmes. In particular,
nutritional-awareness programmes through
the media are considered to be among the
best solutions.
Schools, especially elementary schools, are
where children are exposed to many
influences outside the family. Parents as
well as teachers need to “help the children
build healthy foundations by encouraging a
habit of consuming healthy foods and
maintaining good nutrition throughout these
formative and impressionable years”.
It is worth mentioning that there are multiple
factors that discourage healthy lifestyles at
this age, including the easy availability of
unhygienic restaurant and street food items,
the busy lifestyles of parents, and marketing
pressures in a globalised world. These
distractions may push children towards the
reduced intake of the nutritious meals that
they need at their age.
This could result in compromised nutrition
and could have unfortunate implications for
the national economic growth, the
healthcare infrastructure and the overall
mental, physical and social well-being of the
citizenry. In this context, sufficient nutritional
awareness, within school boundaries, could
create an environment of health and well-
being for both the parents and their children.
In the past, the Punjab government, through
the efforts of the Punjab Food Authority, had
launched a number of nutritional-awareness
as well as curricula-development
programmes in schools to combat these
problems.
In Pakistan, elementary school education
appears to be shifting towards the private
sector, with an increasing burden of tuition
fees being put on the parents. Private
schools are adopting different strategies in
the education of children, and are
attempting to come up with better results
through the hiring of specialist teachers
including those who can teach music,
oversee physical fitness, and motivate
students.
However, health and growth are not
prioritised. It is a disturbing that the
nutritional part of education and training has
remained neglected. Unfortunately, many
parents are also not too concerned.
The encouraging aspect of this story is that
a large number of graduates, who have
specialised in nutrition, are now emerging
from higher educational institutes. These
graduates are well educated and trained to
address nutritional issues. However, many
are still looking for job placement in the
healthcare system.
I believe they would be best employed in
elementary schools. Having such graduates
in the school system could help improve the
nutritional status of our citizenry in the long
run and lead to a stronger, healthier nation.
Therefore, public- and private-sector
elementary schools must hire professional
nutrition teachers. They would formulate
effective ways of encouraging children to
develop their awareness and opt for healthy
food.
The idea ought to be conveyed to the
education ministry as well as the food
regulatory authorities that schools must hire
at least one nutrition teacher; it is unlikely
that it would entail a huge cost. Normally,
these schools pay their teachers Rs30,000
to Rs40,000 per month on average.
Therefore, employing nutritional specialists
would not add too much to their budgets,
especially when we envision the long-lasting
impact of this policy on the overall well-
being of the Pakistani nation. Healthy
children and a healthy nation will
automatically lead to an economically strong
Pakistan. This must be the goal.
Israel’s destiny
Mahir AliUpdated April 17, 2019
IT probably wasn’t necessary for
Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve of the
April 9 election, to declare that it was his
intention to annex large chunks of the
West Bank. He evidently did not wish to
take any chances, though, despite the
last-minute assistance from Donald
Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Was it bluster? Probably not, especially if
the far-right allies he needs to form his fifth
coalition insist on that as the price for
granting him immunity against pending
corruption charges.
It is often said that the ability to indict a
sitting prime minister elevates Israel above
other semi-democracies in the Middle East,
such as Egypt or Turkey. At the same time,
there are not many democracies of any
shade that would have re-elected a leader
facing accusations of criminal misconduct.
On the other hand, the status quo would
hardly have been upended had the new
Blue and White coalition led by former
military chief Benny Gantz been elevated to
a position where it could have had the first
go at forming the next government.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
The two-state solution
has been dead for years.
Ultimately, Blue and White fell just one seat
short of Netanyahu’s Likud. Even with fewer
seats, though, Likud may still have had a
better chance of leading a fourth successive
administration, given its willingness to form
alliances with even the most retrograde
elements on the political spectrum, including
Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power),
representing the overtly racist heirs of
assassinated rabbi Meir Kahane. His Kach
party was outlawed by Israel in 1994 after a
supporter killed 29 worshippers in a Hebron
mosque; it was subsequently declared a
terrorist outfit by the US.
Even the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) felt obliged to distance
itself from Netanyahu on this count, but
more broadly remains a devout admirer,
devoting its energies to denigrating
American critics of Israel such as Rep. Ilhan
Omar and Senator Bernie Sanders. It is
quite amusing how AIPAC, shortly after
Omar called it out for devoting its resources
to encouraging blind faith in Israel and
was slammed as anti-Semitic for doing so,
the lobby group began funding
advertisements against Sanders, who
happens to be Jewish and leads the
preliminary tussle among Democrats for
next year’s presidential nomination.
That, generally, is how most lobbying
organisations operate, but it’s apparently
anti-Semitic to associate Jews with money,
even though some of them — such as
Sheldon Adelson, a leading far-right
fundraiser, who didn’t blanch or blink when
Trump recently referred, at a gathering of
Republican Jews, to Netanyahu as “your
prime minister”, implying dual loyalty, a
suggestion that would immediately have
been slammed as anti-Semitic had it been
made by a critic of Israel or Likud.
Having earlier technically shifted the US
embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, on the
eve of the Israeli election Trump
recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan
Heights, taken over from Syria in 1967, and
furthermore declared Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard to be a terrorist organisation.
Netanyahu was quick to thank him, and
promptly announced his intention to annex
the West Bank, or at least substantial parts
thereof.
The US president has for two years
trumpeted some kind of a peace plan for the
Middle East, masterminded by his son-in-
law Jared Kushner and, to boot, the US
ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who
is inclined to go even further than
Netanyahu in his support of the settlements
— illegal under international law, but mostly
not under Israeli rules.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who
has previously expressed the opinion that
God possibly made Trump president to save
the Jews (never mind that some of the most
deplorable components of Trump’s ‘base’
are unabashedly anti-Semitic, even if they
are rather impressed by Netanyahu in
particular and Zionism in general), recently
noted that the annexation plans would not
interfere with the White House-sponsored
plan.
Small wonder, then, that the Palestinians
have preemptively rejected it, and that
rejection may well be used as an excuse for
annexing Palestinian territories.
Netanyahu’s declaration on this front
prompted a great deal of commentary along
the lines that he was effectively killing any
hope for a two-state solution. But that is
nonsense. The two-state solution has been
dead for years, even if it has not received a
decent burial. The Israeli prime minister
could certainly be accused of hammering
the last nails into its coffin, but the gesture
does not realistically mean much.
The question is, what is the alternative?
Logic points to a one-state solution leading
to a binational democracy. But even that
suggestion is deemed anti-Semitic because
it would erode the possibility of an
exclusively Jewish state. The likeliest
prospect is an indefinite extension of the
status quo alongside a slow but steady
diminution of the occupied territories. The
vague flicker of hope at the end of the tunnel
has dimmed further since last week. But
who will rage against the dying of the light?
Welcoming tourists
Rafia ZakariaApril 17, 2019
The writer is an attorney teaching
constitutional law and political philosophy.
“THE diversity and beauty with a
combination of deserts, beaches and
mountains bestowed by the Almighty
upon Pakistan is unmatchable in the
world.” So said Prime Minister Imran
Khan at the recently held Pakistan
Tourism Summit. The “diversity and
beauty” of which he spoke is ostensibly
being developed by the government of
Pakistan into a means of attracting
tourists to Pakistan to boost the
economy and to reduce the crippling
poverty that afflicts millions of citizens. If
Malaysia and Turkey can have billion-
dollar tourism industries, then Pakistan
can, too. Arriving tourists, particularly
those from Western countries, will come
to trek and climb and see the incredible
untouched beauty that describes so
many parts of Pakistan.
That, at least, is the dream. Like most just-
launched ideas incubated amongst the
people who control policy in the country, this
one is believed to be a panacea to
Pakistan’s dwindling means of attracting
investment. To show how serious the whole
idea is, an e-visa scheme has also been
launched. In a separate speech, President
Alvi reminded everyone that Pakistan is “a
paradise for tourists” and that the
government would be doing everything it
could to make it easy for them to come over.
In addition to the e-visa scheme, which
allows the visa process to be initiated online,
a visa-on-arrival scheme has also been
launched for China, Turkey, the United
Kingdom and the UAE. All, it would seem, is
in place for Pakistan to be, as an article in
The Telegraph hopefully wondered, “the
next big thing in tourism”.
All of this posturing and pandering, which
included a line-up of white and Western
social media influencers, naturally ended up
causing a bit of commotion. Pakistan’s
bloggers complained first, sulky and petulant
at the fact that they were left out of the cast
of characters to be deployed to bring all the
tourists to Pakistan. Of the ones that the
government had collected, one was done
away with when it was learned that she was
setting up to be quite critical of the project.
Quite predictably, she took to social media
(Facebook, in this case) to set out her
qualms about the whole affair (and of being
cut out of it). It was unclear how the ones
that were allowed to speak were selected
(other than the fact that they have blogs and
are white and want to travel).
Beyond the squabble over the citizenship
and the colour of the people selected to sell
Pakistan, the tourism summit poses some
interesting questions most Pakistanis and
most people involved with the summit may
not have considered. The premise is that the
natural beauty and high mountains and
verdant valleys are quite enough to attract
the cash-laden traveller. It has not yet
occurred to anyone that this premise may in
fact be false, or at least flawed. The reason
has to do with the basic question of why
people engage in leisure travel. For most,
the answer to this has to do with having fun,
relaxing and having novel experiences.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Like most just-launched
ideas, this one is believed
to be a panacea to
Pakistan’s dwindling
means of attracting
investment.
At the moment, Pakistan can offer only one
of the three: the potential for novel
experiences. Indeed, the large doses of
chaos that douse everything from roads to
electricity supply to water availability are
likely to produce new experiences for those
who come from more predictable and
orderly places. Pakistan can undoubtedly
offer up new experiences, but whether these
experiences are actually enjoyable is not a
guarantee that any Pakistani can offer.
Then there is the problem of fun and
relaxation. Even with an e-visa system and
visa-on-arrival schemes and better deals for
tour companies and travel-related
businesses, Pakistan will likely lag behind
other countries in the region. This is
because a tourism-friendly country is
ultimately one that is flexible enough to
accommodate the visitor’s idea of fun and
leisure. Tourism economies are generally
those that are secure enough about their
own values that they do not find it necessary
to impose them on visitors.
This last aspect is almost impossible in
Pakistan. A country where women are
routinely harassed and everyone simply
ignores the problem, for instance, cannot
accommodate female travellers. The latter
group may want to wear shorts or tank tops
because their definition of fun does not
include accommodating someone else’s
dress code. Similarly, others may want to
consume alcoholic drinks as part of their fun
and relaxation, without having to worry
about being victimised by religious hard-
liners. Neither of the two — women walking
around in what they want to wear, or tourists
consuming alcohol — would likely be
tolerable to most Pakistanis.
In this last fact lies the truth of the situation,
why the untouched natural beauty of the
country cannot be the cash cow that
everyone wants it to be. Pakistan, with its
tense and insistent imposition of constraints
on people’s behaviour in public, is not
flexible enough to accommodate visitors
who want to experience the country’s beauty
but not follow the strict codes of how to be
and what to say that govern Pakistanis. All
the visas and social media influencers and
bloggers cannot alter the fact that Pakistanis
cannot live and let live among themselves
and are probably incapable of
accommodating the tourist’s definition of fun
and freedom without imposing their own
moral judgements.
Promoting tourism in Pakistan, then, likely
has more to do with setting aside the moral
intransigence that so smugly judges and
demands that everyone align with its mores;
it must graduate from its own version of fun
and enjoyment and hospitality to those of
the tourists it wishes to attract. If this is not
possible, then all the high mountains and
green valleys and delicious food cannot
attract the world’s travellers to what the
travel guide Lonely Planet calls “South
Asia’s difficult child”. Before tourist dollars
can be expected to transform the country
and rid it of poverty, the country and its
citizens must transform themselves.
Betting on presidential
rule
Zahid HussainApril 17, 2019
The writer is an author and journalist.
WHETHER Pakistan will be better off with
a presidential system of government or
not — the debate is perennial. But the
proposition now seems to have assumed
a more serious connotation. There is a
growing scepticism within the ruling PTI
and the establishment over the viability
of the existing parliamentary democracy.
In a recent media interview, President Arif
Alvi revealed that the PTI has seriously
been discussing whether to switch to a
presidential rule. For many in the party, only
a centralised power structure could ensure
political and economic stability in the
country. Such arguments are not new. They
manifest an increasing tendency towards
authoritarianism. It’s more about the crisis of
governance rather than failure of
parliamentary democracy.
It is apparent that Imran Khan is not
comfortable working within the confines of
the parliamentary system. He has been
voicing his frustration at various forums. He
feels constrained without absolute power.
He would not even attend parliamentary
sessions because of a vociferous
opposition. He would not interact with the
opposition leaders even on issues that
require consultation according to the law
and the Constitution.
Lacking a clear majority in parliament, the
prime minister needs the support of the
opposition to legislate, but he would not
seek it. As a result, the government has
failed to do any legislation in the last eight
months. Can this be described as a failure
of the system or as Imran Khan’s own
egotism? In a parliamentary democracy one
needs to learn to make compromises where
they are needed. One cannot blame the
opposition for one’s own ineptitude and
mistakes.
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An attempt to return to a
centralised state will have
very serious political
repercussions.
Over the last 70 years, the country has
alternated between authoritarian military
regimes and ineffectual elected civilian rule.
For most of its history, the country has been
ruled by the powerful military with short
spans of elected civilian democracy in
between. Consequently, democratic
institutions and values that are necessary to
sustain parliamentary democracy have
remained weak.
Still, we have seen three democratic
transitions in a row. While there may be
questions about the credibility of the
elections, democracy has taken root, though
it is still very fragile. Surely, the
parliamentary system has its flaws and does
not have an enviable record when it comes
to performance. But a unitary form of
government doesn’t provide a solution to the
problems. In fact, an attempt to return to a
centralised state will have very serious
political repercussions. The controversy
over the 18th Amendment is also a part of
the move to weaken the federal structure.
Such attempts could widen various political
and ethnic fault lines.
What is needed is to reform the existing
system rather than move toward a more
centralised power structure. A major
problem hindering the democratic process is
that there has been no fundamental change
in Pakistan’s political power structure. A
small power elite has dominated the
country’s political scene under both civilian
and military rule. The extractive nature of
the state’s institutions has prevented the
country from embarking on a path of
economic and political progress.
Despite the economic and social changes
that have occurred over the past 70 years,
the stranglehold of family-oriented politics
has been perpetuated. A limited number of
influential families continue to control
Pakistani legislatures. A sense of dynastic
entitlement dominates the country’s political
culture, impeding the development of
institutional democracy.
With few exceptions, almost all the political
parties are an extension of powerful families
with hereditary leadership. This decadent
power structure has been strengthened by
authoritarian military regimes that have ruled
the country for the larger part of its history.
The control exercised by a narrow oligarchy
has impeded the critical structural reforms
needed for sustainable economic
development and for strengthening
democratic and economic institutions.
Another challenge hindering the democratic
process is that Pakistani politics has
increasingly become region-based, with
even the mainstream national political
parties now focusing on their provincial
strongholds. This regionalisation of politics
has also been a factor in the country’s
failure to build a national narrative on critical
issues. While the 18th Amendment has
turned Pakistan into a truly federal
democracy by giving the provinces greater
autonomy, the failure to further devolve
power remains a major problem.
Some promoters of the presidential form of
government contend that the economy
performs much better under authoritarian
regimes. This is a completely flawed
argument. The relatively high economic
growth achieved under military rule had
mainly been driven by massive foreign aid
as payback for the military’s services in
various American wars.
The increasing dependence on foreign
financial support had also been a major
factor in our failure to carry out any
structural reform that could put the country
on the path to sustained economic progress.
There had been very little investment in the
development of human infrastructure.
Education, health and population planning
remained on the lowest rung of priorities.
That has been one of the major reasons for
our backwardness. Imran Khan does not
hide his admiration for Ayub Khan and other
military rulers for their development work.
But he forgets to mention much else. Thirty
years of direct military rule has also been
responsible for the country falling behind in
all social indicators. Interestingly, all the
military governments in Pakistan had tried to
civilianise themselves, thus strengthening
the power structure that remains the basic
obstacle in the way of the development of
democratic culture and economic progress.
Whether the presidential order suits the
country more is a futile debate. It will not be
possible for the PTI government or for the
establishment to change the Constitution.
Imran Khan is neither Recep Erdoğan, nor is
Pakistan Turkey. A unitary form of
government cannot keep a multinational
country united. A presidential form of
government does not provide the solution to
our complex political and financial problems.
Instead of trying to change the system, the
government must focus on removing the
shortcomings in the existing political order
by working with other political forces. The
country cannot afford to experiment with a
system that has long been thrown into the
dustbin of history.
Politics of adjustment
Khurram HusainUpdated April 18, 2019
The writer is a member of staff.
THE finance minister and his cohorts are
now repeatedly claiming that the size of
the economic adjustment that they are
being made to undertake is “the largest
ever” and that the size of the
macroeconomic imbalances they have
inherited are also “unprecedented.” Is
this really the case?
It is important to explore and verify this claim
of the government, because it is central to
how well they are in a position to navigate
the politics of adjustment. The real game of
politics will begin for this government after
the IMF programme is signed, since thus far
they have made a go of things by pushing
the difficult choices down the road. The real
game begins once they have to start telling
powerful constituencies that they cannot
have all that they wish for. When the finance
minister has to turn away supplementary
grant requests, and enhance taxes on items
of daily use and those that increase the
burden on the common man, that is when
the politics of adjustment kicks in properly.
At the moment, this government is having a
difficult time managing the very beginnings
of the adjustment process. Once in an IMF
programme, they will have to wade deep
into it, own the adjustment, and submit to a
review every three months. Fail one review
and disbursement of the tranche could be
delayed, which sends a terribly disruptive
signal to the state’s creditors and all
investors.
It takes a great deal of political skill to
manage the adjustment process and keep it
on track. A government can afford to lose its
voter base for a brief period, and plan to
return with large spending packages in its
final year to regain the affections of its key
constituencies among the masses. But
losing the support of the elites of its society,
with whose permission any government
remains in power, is far more costly and
difficult to navigate. This is true in practically
all countries where there is an electoral
franchise. All societies have elites, and no
ruler can afford to alienate them.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Once in an IMF
programme, the
government will have to
wade deep into it, and
own the process.
The process of adjustment is a little
complicated, but it’s not exactly rocket
science. At its simplest, it involves raising
taxes and cutting expenditures. After that, it
involves building foreign exchange reserves,
in a sustainable way, which means
increasing exports and remittances
and decreasing imports and foreign debt
service obligations. Let’s consider the first of
these: the fiscal adjustment.
At the moment, the government is being
asked by the IMF to cut expenditures and
increase revenues in quantity equal to
almost 4.5 per cent of GDP over the three
years of the programme. Of this, something
like 1.7pc of GDP worth of revenue
generation has to come upfront, while the
deficit has to be cut by 0.8pc of GDP in the
first year, followed by another 0.8pc in the
second. Of course, these numbers could
change by the time a programme is signed,
but will still be in the same sort of ballpark.
Is the size of this adjustment bigger than
any other undertaken by any government in
the past? Here is what the document
containing the terms of the 2013 facility said
about the size of the fiscal adjustment that
the newly elected PML-N government had to
undertake:
“The initial fiscal adjustment effort includes
permanent deficit reduction measures of 2pc
of GDP, coming mainly from revenue
increases and lower energy subsidies. Tax
measures included in the 2013/14 budget —
including a one point hike in the GST rate —
are expected to yield [0.75pc] of GDP
annually. Reduced energy subsidies will
produce another [0.75pc] of GDP in savings.
The remainder will come from lower current
expenditures (0.15pc of GDP), savings of
the PSDP budget, and (in the second half of
the fiscal year) a new levy on natural gas
expected to yield about 0.4pc of GDP on an
annualised basis. As a contingent strategy,
the government will bring forward the
measures identified for years two and three
of the programme.”
Notice upfront that the initial size of the
adjustment in the first year of the
programme is larger than what is being
demanded now, when expressed as a
percentage of GDP. This puts the figure in
the right proportion to make it comparable
over time.
The military regime of Pervez Musharraf
implemented a very tough one-year standby
facility in the first year after the general
seized power. That programme envisaged a
budget deficit reduction equal to 1.3pc of
GDP in half a year (the letter of intent was
submitted in November 2000, the target was
to be achieved by June 2001). They
committed to increase tax revenue by 1.1pc
of GDP — no small feat for a government
just one year in — and to be achieved in half
a year. How did they propose to do this? Not
by base broadening, but by raising the GST
and extending its coverage into areas like
fuel, gas and electricity. In short, by
significantly raising the burden on the
common man — something a military
regime does not have to worry about too
much.
The story is the same with the PPP
government of 2008. Their programme
began in November 2008 while the real
macroeconomic targets were worked out by
March 2009. So their targets also had to be
met starting midway through the fiscal year.
The budget deficit had to be reduced by
0.9pc in half of a fiscal year, as per their
letter of intent (compared to 0.8pc being
demanded from the present government).
The bulk of this had to be achieved from the
elimination of fuel and power subsidies,
which significantly raised prices at the pump
and in the power bills, boosting inflation and
spreading widespread disaffection.
The story is a simple one: the path of
adjustment is tough, but the PTI government
is not the first to have to walk it. The others
managed and dealt with the fallout. It is time
for Imran Khan to do the same.
The roots of extremism
I.A. RehmanApril 18, 2019
I. A. Rehman
EXTREMIST militants receive
considerable support from their
apologists who take exception to
criticism of religious extremism and
claim this is not the only form of
extremism. The point is valid though
there can be no bar to examining faith-
based intolerance alone. A brief inquiry
will show that the various forms of
extremism have common roots.
For want of a standard definition in the
context of Pakistan’s environment,
extremism may be defined as irreconcilable
hostility to other people’s religion or sect,
their culture and customs, rejection of the
rights of minority communities and women,
and determination to convert them through
inducement or intimidation or eliminate them
through physical violence, including terrorist
acts.
Women constitute the largest single group
of people in Pakistan that are victims of
extremists’ violence. A recently released
report of a survey conducted by the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in
cooperation with the Bureau of Statistics
and the Punjab Commission on the Status
of Women, shows that one-third of women
in Punjab, aged 15 to 64, have suffered
violence. The situation elsewhere in the
country could be only marginally different.
Almost every day, the media reports a
woman being burnt alive or killed otherwise.
The practice of killing women for men’s
honour has spread to cities where it was
unknown till recently. Women are attacked
for choosing their spouses, for failing to
meet intermittent dowry demands, and for
venturing out wearing clothes and sporting
hairstyles tabooed by orthodox priests of
morality. There are areas where girls are not
allowed to go to school.
Women and girls belonging to bonded
labour families, working in agriculture or at
brick kilns and in various other sectors,
suffer extremists’ excesses in several forms:
their labour is exploited, they are denied
freedom of movement, they cannot seek
alternative employment, and they have no
defence against abduction and sexual
abuse. Non-Muslim women and girls suffer
greater violence than their Muslim
counterparts, and those still identified by the
state as the scheduled castes suffer much
more than upper caste Hindus and other
non-Muslim groups.
Can the state be
absolved of crime by
negligence?
Children outside the category mentioned
above constitute another large group that
suffers extremists’ violence. A large number
of street children suffer economic
exploitation and physical and sexual abuse.
The number of domestic servants that are
subjected to various forms of abuse has
been rising for quite some time. The state
has failed to eradicate corporal punishment
in schools. Only the other day a small girl
died after falling (or jumping) from a rooftop.
She dreaded going to school where she was
mercilessly thrashed for lagging behind in
her studies. Her mother added to her misery
by tying up her hands and feet and throwing
her in a dark room. Enforced
disappearances are one of the ugliest forms
of extremism.
Now we may take a look at the incidence of
faith- related violence. The Hazara Shias
are mowed down for their beliefs. Many hate
preachers openly instigate murder. The
Ahmadis continue to be victims of target
killing. The anti-minorities knights are not
content with instituting cases under the
blasphemy law; they try to exterminate their
quarry in police custody or in the street.
Anyone acquitted of blasphemy charges
cannot find a safe place to live in the
country. And there is no doubt that the killing
of non-Muslims in prayer houses and
Muslims in mosques and schools is done in
the name of religion.
Even a cursory reading of the evidence of
violence committed by extremists will bring
out the fact that use of extremist violence
due to completely non-religious factors,
such as exploitation of bonded labour and
street children, and corporal punishment in
schools and even in madressahs, is not
unknown in Pakistan. The causes of
violence against women include patriarchal
excesses, feudal culture and misogynous
tendencies, but do not exclude
misinterpretation of religious injunctions. As
regards the extremists’ and militants’
narrative of terrorism in the name of religion,
it has been attributed to a wrong
interpretation of Islam by no less an
internationally recognised Islamic scholar
than Dr Khalid Masud, formerly chairman of
the Council of Islamic Ideology and at
present a judge of the Shariat Appellate
Court.
Unfortunately, the roots of all forms of
extremist violence lie in the state’s acts of
omission or commission. If women’s
suffering due to the curses of patriarchy,
misogyny or feudal culture has increased,
the state is responsible for having failed to
liberate the Pakistani society of
anachronistic social mores which are,
among other things, one of the major
obstacles to the growth of a democratic
system and a democratic culture. If children
at schools and madressahs are at the mercy
of sadists in the garb of teachers, and if
savages at institutions of higher learning can
kill a student like Mashal Khan and a
teacher like Khalid Hameed, can the state
be absolved of crime by negligence? The
bonded workers, their women folk and their
children continue to suffer because their
tormentors enjoy political clout. Has the
state taken any action to eliminate the worst
forms of child labour despite having signed
the relevant ILO convention? Can the state
wash away the ignominy of allowing
enforced disappearances, the ultimate form
of extremist violence?
As regards extremist violence in the name of
religion, the state has been inviting censure
for acts of both omission and commission.
On the one hand, it has done practically
nothing to save the people from what is
described as wrong interpretation of their
faith and, on the other hand, it continues to
associate with the religious elements that
openly denounce democracy, human rights
and pluralism. All past governments
increased their and the people’s tribulations
by appeasing the quasi-religious lobby. It is
time the present government asked itself
whether it is surpassing its predecessors in
pandering to the orthodoxy that has done
incalculable harm to Islam and Muslims over
many centuries.
A new strategy
Sikander ShahApril 20, 2019
The writer is former legal adviser to
Pakistan’s foreign ministry, and faculty,
Lums Law School.
THE BJP government has unequivocally
stated that it will repeal Articles 35-A and
370 of the Indian constitution if it is voted
back into power. Article 370 provides an
autonomous status to Jammu and
Kashmir and Article 35-A prevents
settlements or the acquisition of
immovable property by non-Kashmiris in
the occupied territory. These articles
solely authorise the [occupied Kashmir]
legislature to define “the classes of
persons who are, or shall be, permanent
residents of … Jammu and Kashmir”.
India’s constitutional absorption of occupied
Jammu and Kashmir in the 1950s remains
illegal under international law because the
princely state (that includes Azad Kashmir
and Gilgit-Baltistan) was to decide its own
fate through a plebiscite carried out, as
outlined under UN Security Council
Resolution 47, under the auspices of the
United Nations Commission for India and
Pakistan (UNCIP) formed under UN Security
Council Resolution 39. Nevertheless, today,
any protections taken away from the
Kashmiri people or attempts to change the
demographics of occupied Kashmir by India
would seriously compromise the right to self-
determination and human rights of the
Kashmiri people; it would also alter the
status quo over Kashmir, violating
Pakistan’s due process and international
legal rights as a recognised state party to
the Kashmir dispute.
Through these measures, such as its
endeavour to define (or redefine) the
permanent residency of India-occupied
Jammu and Kashmir, India is openly
violating numerous UN resolutions on
Kashmir. Under UNCIP’s resolution of Jan
5, 1949, “all persons (other than citizens of
the State) … shall be required to leave the
State” and “[a]ll citizens of the State who
have left … will be invited and be free to
return”. It is clear from this language that
pending a plebiscite, any attempts to
change the demographics of Kashmir or
effect a transfer of its population would be
illegal.
Permanently altering the
ethnic-makeup of
occupied Kashmir would
be a violation of
international law.
Apart from the relevant UN resolutions,
Pakistan can also rely on the Shimla
Agreement, a bilateral treaty between
Pakistan and India, to highlight the latter’s
violations of international law. This treaty
was entered into in 1972, after the
promulgation of Article 370 and 35-A, and
prohibits all changes to the status quo over
Kashmir effected by either nation without
mutual resolution. The treaty states that
“pending the final settlement of any of the
problems between the two countries, neither
side shall unilaterally alter the situation and
both shall prevent the organisation,
assistance or encouragement of any acts
detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful
and harmonious relations”. By repealing
Articles 35-A and 370, India would be
violating the Shimla Agreement both in spirit
and practice.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Furthermore, India’s attempt to change the
demographics of India-occupied Kashmir is
a grave violation of international
humanitarian law and can amount to serious
war crimes, crimes against humanity and
ethnic cleansing. Under Article 49 of the
Geneva Convention IV (1949), “the
occupying power shall not deport or transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies.”
The same principle is reaffirmed in the more
recent 1977 Additional Protocol I to the
Geneva Conventions, which largely reflects
customary international law, and which
terms such acts a grave breach of the
protocol. Moreover, under Article 20(c)(i) of
the 1996 International Law Commission
Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and
Security of Mankind, such transfers are
considered war crimes; while under Article
8(2)(b)(viii) of the International Criminal
Court statute (1998) such transfers, directly
or indirectly, constitute war crimes in
international armed conflicts.
That the Kashmir dispute could trigger an
international armed conflict has been
indubitably confirmed via the recent military
conflagration between India and Pakistan,
when Indian warplanes crossed over Azad
Kashmir and unsuccessfully conducted air
strikes around Balakot in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa.
Altering demographics through state policy
and repression can result in forcible
transfers of the indigenous population,
qualifying as crimes against humanity when
they are part of a widespread or systematic
attack (which need not be armed) directed
against any civilian population, as
determined by the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda. The government of
India, by attempting to repeal Articles 35-A
and 370, is signalling its intentions to realise
this repression.
Permanently altering the ethnic-makeup of
India-occupied Kashmir, which could
eventually result in ethnic cleansing, would
also be a serious violation of international
law and the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, a UN treaty which India
ratified in 1968 without any reservations.
Such violations were confirmed by the
ICERD Committee in its 1995 decision on
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the last few years, the BJP government
has attempted to change the demographics
of the occupied territory using targeting
measures such as through the setting up of
Israeli-style settlements or townships for
Kashmiri Pandits or via the establishment of
Sainik colonies to permanently settle Indian
soldiers displacing local Kashmiri residents.
Repealing Articles 35-A and 370 is,
however, a more serious and insidious
attempt to destroy the culture and identity of
the Kashmiri people, and Pakistan must
actively raise India’s violation at all
international levels, legally and
diplomatically, including with the
International Committee of the Red Cross
and the ICERD treaty body and at the UN
Security Council, the General Assembly and
the Human Rights Council.
The BJP is, in the run-up to the elections,
going to extreme measures in order to stir
up nationalist and racial tensions within the
country in an attempt to mobilise its right-
wing power base. Tinkering with the Indian
constitution in this way, however, not only
dilutes the sanctity of the constitutional
document itself, but would have grave
consequences for the people of Kashmir.
With the two articles omitted from the
constitution, there would be little to stop an
Israeli-style settlement programme being
instituted in the valley of Kashmir, leaving
the Kashmiri — much like the Palestinians
— foreigners in their ancestral lands.
Sowing the seeds
Neda MuljiApril 21, 2019
The writer is a lecturer of communication
skills at Amity University, Dubai.
IT is Report Day for Grade 9 students. A
group of friends is huddled together
reading their teacher’s comments. One
has a series of positive remarks while
another has “can do better” and “needs
improvement” screaming out of the
paper. What if those words were to be
directed towards their teachers instead?
When students fail, how many teachers
look within themselves and ask what
they ‘can do better’ to help those
students who have not met their targets?
When students are instructed to do
better, perhaps it should be
accompanied by constructive advice on
identifying ways to change their learning
strategies and a structured plan to apply
them, rather than generic comments.
Self-directed learning has its underpinnings
in constructivist learning theory which
distinguishes between surface and deep
learning. When learners recognise the value
and relevance of what is being taught, they
are more receptive to engaging in classroom
discussions, activities and take greater
responsibility for their work. Some students
do better than others at self-directed
learning.
They ‘own’ their learning journey, participate
in lessons actively, follow a study schedule
and steadily acquire the tools for success in
achieving the set learning outcomes. Others
who have not developed intrinsic motivation,
struggle with superficial learning, get quickly
accustomed to ‘helicopter’ parents prodding
them to work, resign themselves to
mediocrity and set the ball rolling in a
direction that is almost destined to fail them.
Fast forward to their adult life and the
distinction between these different sets of
learners is clear as crystal. One group relies
on external factors such as approvals and
rewards and cannot find much motivation
within themselves. The other group relies on
their unique resources to find value within
themselves — they do not require
leadership going forward.
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When students fail, how
many teachers look within
themselves?
As adult learners in higher education, they
do not need hand-holding through their
journey. They are able to show resilience
when faced with challenges, and chart out a
path through life. They seem to have
internalised the value of learning earlier on,
and along with that comes a feeling of
empowerment that will continue to help
them through a maze of choices and
challenges.
Children are not born with the tools for self-
direction; intrinsic motivation is not deep-
seated within their personalities. The tools
for learning, engagement and empowerment
are carefully constructed through years of
encouragement, guidance and inspiration.
Often, it is the result of watching and
learning.
Most children do not develop a love of
reading by being told to read — they get
inspired by watching the adults around
them. Intrinsic motivation may also be the
natural consequence of exposure and
experience. Those who grow up playing a
sport develop an affinity with it, which may
translate into a competitive drive through
exposure to others who are excelling at it.
As they grow up with that inspiration,
guidance and experience, they tend to make
a personal choice to work harder.
The secondary classroom is the fertile soil
where teachers can grow these seeds. It is
in the secondary school phase that students
become self-aware and can rationalise,
appraise and vocalise what they wish to
work hard at, and this is a crucial stage for
strategies that can hone their skills. It is at
this stage that interactive classrooms can be
used for the benefit of high-achievers as
well as the previously disengaged ‘back-
benchers’.
Engaging activities in the classroom can
spark enthusiasm through a variety of
techniques to help the ‘invisible’ back-
benchers gain influence, and the high-
achievers shine brighter. The student-
centred classroom gives students a chance
to play an active role in their own learning —
analyse, criticise, debate and evolve through
the experience.
Engagement activities such as groupwork,
peer feedback, an ongoing dialogue with the
teacher, self-reflection at the end of lessons
and ‘flipping the classroom’ where students
sometimes get to teach the class are some
of the ways of increasing engagement and
building motivation.
Children in this digital age cannot be
passive learners — they want an immersive
experience in the classroom, much like the
kind that they get online. Whilst it may be
tricky for many schools to introduce digital
learning in their classrooms, there are
hundreds of different ways of replicating the
digital experience. Interactive games such
as ‘hangman’, ‘scatter-gories’, and ‘bingo’
for maths are fun and engaging. Often,
students who do not speak up in class might
get involved in games. Ultimately, it is the
focus on developing and rewarding effort
rather than chasing results that enables
students to direct their own learning through
intrinsic motivation.
Winning the peace
Nazish BrohiApril 21, 2019
The writer is a researcher and consultant in
the social sector.
IMAGINE an outraged, emotional
introductory paragraph to the Pashtun
Tahaffuz Movement, validating whichever
side of the divide the reader chooses to
identify with. Imagine that this article
starts with that. And then let’s put that
out of the way. Let’s see what that leaves
us with.
On one side, a generation that has grown up
in conflict and destruction, whose
bildungsroman was the ‘war on terror’,
whose only pre-war memories are what
they’ve been told by elder generations. The
history they know verbatim is that they were
used in 1948 for Kashmir, in the 1980s to
support the Mujahideen, in the 1990s to
support the Taliban and then 2000 onwards,
all of which they’ve sewn together into a
narrative of perpetual victimhood. According
to this script, everything was externally
imposed, there was no local war
profiteering, ideological convergences,
dovetailing local power structures; everyone
who participated was either a planted agent
or forced into it and people had no volition.
On the other side is the security apparatus
in panic mode. The rallies of tens of
thousands of people cannot be broadcast on
TV channels because of gag orders,
journalists who cover these get
reprimanded, the organisers get detained,
arrested or expelled, the parliamentarians
who represent them are sidelined. The PTM
phenomenon is explained as being Afghan
funded or Indian funded or American
funded, and in either case, out to destroy
Pakistan.
This piece doesn’t use the ‘there are two
sides to every story, the fault lies with both’
template. Instead, it tries to make the point
that both sides are speaking to different
problems.
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The demands for
accountability are not a
rejection of the state but
the trajectory to its
acceptance.
The security studies’ lot may say that the
principles of war are not applicable in
irregular warfare like ours, but I’ll borrow
anyway. There are historical debates about
what justifies war in general or the reasons
why particular wars must be waged (jus ad
bellum). These are separate from disputes
over and assessments of the way in which
warfare is conducted (jus in bello). The ‘why
war/whose war’ is distinct from its ‘how’. It is
entirely possible to have supported the need
for military intervention against the Tehreek-
i-Taliban Pakistan while also pointing out
problems with its execution, including
vacillation on the part of the security
apparatus.
The current PTM demands are focused on
how the war was conducted. In the tribal
areas, this spanned internment centres,
disappearances, large-scale destruction,
displacement, earlier agreements with
militants, and bizarre eight-page-long social
contracts with 18 main clauses for citizens.
Thousands across erstwhile Fata are
protesting, most recently in North
Waziristan, partly because people’s ire at
different things has converged: tedious
security checkpoints every 2,000 yards
increasing commute time by hours,
inadequate compensation policies and their
inefficient payment systems, the scale of
destruction and slow pace of reconstruction,
Watan cards, contract allocations to
favourites, awarding of bids to the Frontier
Works Organisation and lack of
employment.
Outrage over these governance and
administrative functions has merged with
anger against how military operations were
conducted. And that is because the army
took over both sets of functions in Fata. Any
politician in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can attest
that once you are in a position to govern,
anti-incumbency comes into play more often
than not. Governance comes with its built-in
costs; the wholesale rejection of those in
power is one of them. Had this anger been
directed against civil political authorities, we
would probably have shrugged it off as
routine dysfunction. This also illustrates the
importance of maintaining the separation of
powers.
In conflict zones, people’s perspectives
change according to the stages of conflict.
In the build-up stage, contributing factors
are easier to isolate since they have not fully
lapsed into a larger narrative. Once violence
breaks out, people express righteousness
and take sides. After the corresponding
violence occurs, outrage and laments kick in
as losses pile up — displacement, out-
migration, security operations, the profiling
of identity groups.
The immediate aftermath usually includes
condemnation of all violence generally
including deflection and the externalising of
all blame. As life for the people resumes
some semblance of normality, they try to
block out what happened and tend to see
that period as a time of insanity they want to
forget about.
Processing and the ability to reflect comes
later when the violence is over, and it leads
to demands for accountability. All over the
world, truth and reconciliation commissions,
mediation programmes, reparations, trials
and tribunals on human rights violations and
pushback against impunity are post-conflict
accountability mechanisms.
Demands for accountability are not a
rejection of the state but in fact the trajectory
to its acceptance. Engagement with this
process will open up critical reflection on not
just the state apparatus but also on the role
of local communities and leadership,
including colluding with militants. At the
moment, the interface has become so
bitterly divisive that those who collaborate
with the state are called ‘samsaray’,
referring to giant lizards which latch on to
surfaces and were reputedly used to scale
walls for robberies by tying a rope around
them — signalling infiltration and hence a
local incarnation of the Trojan horse
metaphor.
To an extent, Pakistan is defined by its
geography. Foreign interest in destabilising
Balochistan or KP and border districts is a
present danger but vested interests can
exploit existing grievances, not create them.
Addressing impunity is vital to
demonstrating that the state can provide
justice.
Patriotism cannot require people to be
unhappy with elected governments and
happy with unelected state institutions. As
long as demands and dissent do not
override the Constitution, patriotism and
civic freedoms should not be positioned as
opposites. Throughout history, discontent
with current conditions has been the motor
for growth and change. It is a basic human
impulse to want things to be different and
strive for it. Why hold it against the people?
Managing security &
economy
Muhammad Amir RanaUpdated April 21, 2019
The writer is a security analyst.
MANY interpret the government’s recent
reshuffle of the federal cabinet as a way
of venting its frustration over a
seemingly intractable economic
challenge. The reshuffle came days
before Prime Minister Imran Khan’s
scheduled visits to Iran and China, where
economic and security cooperation will
be among the major points of
discussion. In particular, Pakistan
anticipates more relief from Beijing,
mainly in terms of an early launch of the
Special Economic Zones under the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC).
China is considerate of Pakistan’s economic
woes. However, Chinese investors demand
the award of projects on softer terms and on
a fast track. They also consider investment
in the country risky. Their main concern is
the prevailing insecurity in Balochistan
where a multitude of separatist and
religiously inspired militant groups are
creating an environment detrimental to the
implementation of CPEC projects and the
functioning of the Gwadar port.
The recent attack on security officials
travelling on the Makran coastal highway,
which is considered a safe highway in the
province, will certainly add to Chinese
concerns. The Baloch insurgents have
perpetrated some high-impact attacks in
recent times, including a few suicide blasts,
which have started to defy the oft-told tale
that the Baloch insurgency is a low-scale
conflict. Secondly, Baloch separatist groups
have started to launch joint attacks; the
latest one, hitting security personnel on the
coastal highway, was also claimed by an
alliance of three separatist groups.
The timing of the attack will not help Prime
Minister Khan convince the Chinese and
Iranian leaders of an improving security
situation in Balochistan. His visit to Tehran
was long due and overshadowed by the
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Salman’s visit to Pakistan. Border security
will be the high point of the Iranian
diplomatic call during the prime minister’s
visit to Tehran. China, too, is concerned
about insecurity at the Pakistani-Iranian
border, which has become a hub of
separatist and religiously motivated as well
as criminal groups. This is not only causing
geostrategic complications, it is also
impeding progress on CPEC-related
projects in coastal areas of the province.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Chinese investors
and the BLA are left-leaning secular
separatist groups that also advocate the
liberation of Sistan-Baluchestan in Iran.
In December 2018, an attack was claimed
by the BLA that killed six Pakistani soldiers
in Kech near the Pakistan-Iran border,
implying BLA militants’ cross-border
movement for shelter. The attack occurred a
day after the two countries signed a
memorandum of understanding for
“improving border security and stopping the
smuggling of petroleum products, drugs and
arms, and human trafficking”.

demand the award of Despite complicated border security issues,

both sides can still develop an effective
projects on softer terms bilateral mechanism to check cross-border
and on a fast track. incursions by all shades of separatist and
Islamist militants. The agendas and
objectives of different brands of militants
Iran alleges that a Saudi-backed separatist
operating along the Pakistan-Iran border are
group, Jaishul Adl, is operating from
known to both countries, which they can
Pakistan and attacking Iranian security
counter by working jointly. In retrospect, Iran
forces. The group launched an attack in
and Pakistan have done that in past, during
February, killing 27 members of the elite
the regimes of Raza Shah and Zulfikar Ali
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and
Bhutto in the mid-1970s, by launching an
provoked tensions between the two
extensive security operation against the
countries. Iran’s intelligence minister,
militants.
Mahmoud Alavi, spoke of taking revenge on
those responsible for the crime. This country
However, one cannot ignore the Saudi
sent a high-level delegation to Tehran to
factor. Though Pakistan is in dire need of
give assurances of a thorough investigation
economic assistance, it should not close its
and cooperation in finding the culprits. As
eyes to militant proxies that can complicate
with Afghanistan, the Pakistan government
Pakistan’s core economic interest linked
has decided to fence its border with Iran too,
with CPEC, and a conducive security
but that is a comparatively more complex
environment in Pakistan, particularly in
task.
Balochistan.
Pakistan also has concerns about recurrent
Prime Minister Khan can get a positive
border violations by Iranian border security
response on security cooperation from
forces. In 2018, Iranian border security
Tehran before his visit to Beijing where such
forces carried out six cross-border attacks in
a commitment will have a positive impact on
Balochistan’s Chagai, Gwadar and Panjgur
bilateral deliberations. The removal of
districts, compared to 12 such attacks in
federal finance minister Asad Umar will also
2017. Shelling by the Iranian security guards
be read positively by Beijing; not only did he
causes much physical damage, affecting
fail to run the economy of the country but
residents living along the border; sometimes
was also responsible for the slowing down
it leads to the complete suspension of daily
of the execution of CPEC projects.
activities.
Pakistan needs CPEC to sustain its
Local residents suspect that Iran has gone
economy; unfortunately, the vague and
soft on anti-Pakistan separatist groups,
sluggish policy responses of the current
especially the Balochistan Liberation Front
government, as well as its overconfidence in
(BLF) and the Baloch Liberation Army
attracting foreign investment by mobilising
(BLA), whose militants are evidently
the Pakistani diaspora, has damaged not
sheltering on Iranian soil. This is conceived
only CPEC but also the overall economy of
as a counter-move by Iran though the BLF
the country. The worsening economic
condition is forcing the country to put the
economic focus back on CPEC. However,
the direction will become clearer only after
the new adviser on finance and his team lay
out the government’s revised economic
roadmap — if there is any.
China wants to make the Belt and Road
Initiative a success story, and CPEC is an
integral part of that. China realises that
Pakistan has the potential to put CPEC back
on the fast track. It will boost the confidence
of the BRI’s potential stakeholders who are
reluctant at the moment to become partners
in the initiative.
Still, security will remain at the heart of any
potential outcome of renewed economic
cooperation between Pakistan and China.
Notre Dame lessons
Huma YusufUpdated April 22, 2019
The writer is a freelance journalist.
IT burned. Its spire crashed through a
centuries-old roof. It was devastated, but
not razed. Some termed it a miracle.
Though embers still glowed, the belfries,
rose windows, organ, sacred relics, and
much art had been saved or spared.
The fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in
Paris is already lost to last week’s news
cycle. Within hours of the fire being
extinguished, hundreds of millions of euros
were pledged for its restoration. French
President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to
complete the works within five years. The
tragic fire has conveniently transformed into
a story of resilience, hope and rebirth. Many
are ready to move on.
Read: Investigators probe Notre-Dame fire
as billionaires, private donors mobilise to
rebuild cathedral
But let us dwell in the moment of the fire a
little longer. Though far removed from the
political turmoil and regional machinations
that have Pakistan in their grip, the burning
cathedral offers us some important insights.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
The first is that a nation’s cultural heritage
will get the respect it demands, not
deserves. As the world came together to
watch the flaming spire and pray for the
cathedral, resentful voices from the Global
South (rightfully) asked why such tears had
not been shed for IS-ravaged Palmyra, the
Bamiyan Buddhas demolished by the
Taliban, or the Timbuktu manuscripts
destroyed by Ansar Dine.
The French unite in their
regard for it, they see
their identity in it.
Part of the answer lies in post-colonial and
economic dynamics; the fact that more
people visit Paris than other locations with
comparable treasures. But the main reason
is that the cathedral is valued by the French
themselves. They unite in their regard for it,
they revere it, they see their history and
identity in it, they celebrate it. Conversely,
countries and cultures that are divided, that
deny their histories, that recast their cultural
heritage to suit shifting political dynamics,
will struggle to muster universal esteem for
their artefacts.
Pakistan constantly moans about its image
problem. It seeks to revive tourism, and
huffs when the international community is
sceptical. But how can we expect others to
embrace our culture and history when we
ourselves are seeking to ignore, negate and
rewrite these? From Mehrgarh to Takht-i-
Bahi, our national treasures are crumbling,
subject to vandalism, looting and attacks. If
there is no national outrage now, we cannot
expect global mourning later.
Another lesson is about accountability. The
fire was an accident. But that did not prevent
French people from pointing fingers — at
the French government, for implementing an
austerity programme that limited public
works spending, including for timely
renovations of the cathedral; at the architect;
at the project manager. Such a blame game
could imply arrogance, the sense that the
French consider themselves immune to
mishap. But it can also be a demonstration
of a society that expects accountability.
Pakistanis are too quick to assume that
tragic incidents are mistakes, the vagaries of
fate, God’s will. The failure to question may
stem in part from humility, but it also reveals
a people who do not expect answers, who
have no precedent for holding the powerful
to account. Perhaps it’s time we emulated
the French practice, apparent post-Notre
Dame, of refusing to accept an accident as
such.
Yet another insight is that there’s nothing to
be done about conspiracy theories, but
these are inevitably political and sow more
discord in already difficult times. Even while
Notre Dame was burning, re-edited audio
footage implying that Muslims were
celebrating the fire was circulating online.
There were tweets linking the cathedral fire
with the 9/11 attacks, other terrorist attacks
in France, and an alleged plot to bomb the
church in 2016.
Though we may rail against the
Islamophobia evident, similar conspiracy
theories are Pakistan’s default response to
any event, whether a terrorist attack or a
cabinet reshuffle. Such conspiracy
theorising is a natural response to a
nontransparent environment in which those
with power act with impunity, without being
answerable to the public. But we should not
forget that conjecture and paranoia stoke
fear and breed hatred. And the antidote is
the same everywhere: more openness,
more facts, more responsible media.
The Notre Dame fire’s most poignant lesson
is that it’s getting harder to be hypocritical.
Although people across the country chanted
Ave Marias, hoping the cathedral would be
saved, they did not shy from critiquing the
big donations that poured in from France’s
richest individuals and companies. Why
didn’t they donate before? What tax relief
may they claim through the donations? Why
not question the source of this immense
wealth? The contrast between generous
donors and the working class gilets jaunes
who have been protesting nationwide for
several months has not been lost on the
domestic and international media. Our
leaders should take note: grand gestures no
longer compensate for venality,
incompetence, or dissemblance. Public
naiveté has long smouldered away.
Winning with empathy
Rafia ZakariaUpdated April 24, 2019
The writer is an attorney teaching
constitutional law and political philosophy.
IT has been called the world’s largest
election. Next door in India, a seven-
phase vote to elect the Lok Sabha got
under way on April 19. It will go on for
many more weeks, not culminating until
May 19, when the long process of
counting the votes cast will begin.
As has been visible in the days leading up to
the election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have
deployed every flavour of divisive rhetoric to
whet the appetite of their Hindu nationalist
base. Such has been the vile desperation
that even a near war with Pakistan was
brought into the mix, the attendant claims of
the killing of militants and the downing of
Pakistani F-16 planes all to be admitted as
fabrications, as perceived.
While crossing over into Pakistani territory
and attempting to ‘bomb’ an area was a
tactic that was seen in the weeks preceding
the election, the crackdown on Muslims
living in India itself has been a fixture of the
Modi administration. Leaders in Modi’s party
have made it a point to demonise Muslims
at every opportunity they get.
Entire movements in
India have been
constructed on the policy
of Muslim exclusion.
Those who plan and execute attacks against
non-Muslims have not simply been tolerated
but, on the contrary, anointed. Sadhvi
Pragya, a known Hindutva extremist, has
been given a party ticket for these elections.
Entire movements have, in fact, been
constructed on the policy of Muslim
exclusion. According to a recent article
in Scroll India, studies have shown that even
upper-middle-class Muslims are not safe. A
high percentage of their children report
being harassed in school, with questions like
‘Do you support Al Qaeda?’ and ‘Are your
parents Taliban?’
Read: Modi defends extremist woman
candidate
The practice of denying rental housing to
Muslims, which came to light years ago,
used to be an embarrassment for most
Indians. Not anymore. Such denials, along
with exclusion from public spaces in schools
and colleges and universities, have created
an extremely restrictive environment in
which the powerful appear to be proud of
excluding Muslims and would likely welcome
thoroughly strong-arm tactics that would
restrict Muslims to certain living spaces in
certain areas of Indian cities and towns. The
narrowing of the Indian mind, the
evisceration of Indian democracy, it seems,
is here to stay, regardless of what the
outcome of the ongoing elections may be.
The BJP is still worried about the outcome
of the elections, however. One new proposal
that again delivers hatred and exclusion in
yet another way is a system that would
expedite citizenship proceedings of
persecuted minorities living in other
countries but it pointedly and particularly
leaves out Muslims.
Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and other
minorities who have fled their homelands
owing to persecution and violence, and have
taken refuge in India, will all be eligible for
this sort of fast-track citizenship; everyone,
that is, except the Muslims.
In his article on the issue, scholar Sadanand
Dhume honed in on the law as being
particularly indicative of the unquenchable
hatred of Muslims that festers in the country.
The Muslim community in India, it seems, is
looked upon by extremist minds with such
hate that it can never be identified as
persecuted — on the contrary, the hard-
liners living in the Modi era, look upon the
Muslims as persecutors. The image of India
as a Hindu nation in the eyes of Modi and
his supporters cannot include Muslims, and
discrimination and persecution may well be
geared to eventually driving out India’s
Muslims.
Pakistan has not been able to do much to
stop the march of hatred right across the
border. The recent episode that left India
and Pakistan teetering on the brink of war,
averted by happenstance, fortunately,
revealed just how far the Islamophobia has
progressed. Even the Indian media, once
insurance against fascist takeovers, has
kowtowed to the Modi government, with
recent reports showing dissenting journalists
confronted with reprisals and revenge if they
do not toe the BJP party line.
With this sort of toxic atmosphere hanging
over the subcontinent, Pakistan has an
opportunity to show leadership on the issue
of persecuted Muslims. Not only should the
government finally resolve the issue of
stateless Muslims who still languish in
camps in Bangladesh, it should consider
policies that can offer Pakistani citizenship
to persecuted Muslims in the region. This
would likely include Rohingya Muslims and
others who have been fleeing violence.
It could also possibly include Sri Lankan
Muslims who are at risk of violence at the
hands of Sinhalese Buddhists following
Sunday’s Easter attacks (and the fact that
they are being blamed on hard-line Islamist
groups, despite the absence of concrete
evidence).
Pakistan has taken in thousands of Afghan
refugees before, but now it can show its
respect and empathy for the suffering by
taking in these other Muslims.
Arms races between India and Pakistan are
common, both countries having always been
eager to stockpile weapons and aircraft and
all sorts of military technology. It may be
time for a new competition. If India has
turned cruel and exclusionary, made hatred
a staple and coercion its practice, Pakistan
can rise above the fray and show the world
and especially the region its respect and
commitment to providing assistance and
refuge to the world’s persecuted.
Just as Pakistan followed the dictates of the
Geneva Conventions and released captured
Indian pilot Abhinandan, so too should it
open its arms and its borders to those who
have suffered injustice and now exclusion at
the hands of states that are fuelled by
hatred and who have elevated the exclusion
of Muslims as a primary tenet of their
governing platform. In a world pivoted on
hatred, Pakistan can be different; Pakistan
is different and it is time to show the world
just how different.

Untimely rains
Marwah Maqbool MalikApril 23, 2019
THE worthy climate change minister
must be eating her words right now.
Quick to claim credit for untimely rainfall,
she has since disappeared after the
same rainfall became tragic. The
statement did not suit a public office
holder, much less of the climate change
portfolio, and her absence after
devastating floods only makes it worse.
Recent thunder and hail storms have
claimed dozens of lives and left many more
injured. The agricultural impact is huge:
some estimates are that at least 150,000
tonnes of wheat crop have been destroyed.
Other crops affected include mustard,
cotton, tomatoes, mango and citrus. Will the
minister now come forward and claim ‘credit’
for what now looks like God’s wrath?
What we witnessed recently is not new, and
will happen again. We have had early rains,
often called ‘pre-monsoon’ rains, for at least
four consecutive years now. Floods have
been a regular occurrence, close to or
during monsoon, for over a decade now. On
average, our summers are now warmer, and
droughts more frequent. These changing
weather patterns are local manifestations of
a warming planet that is causing a global
change of climate.
Our urban citizens remain largely immune to
any observable changes in climate, barring
the occasional outcry about increasingly hot
summers. Talk to farmers instead, and they
will describe in lucid detail how shifting
weather patterns have brought on new
challenges including diseases, untimely and
erratic rains, lower yields, change of
cropping cycles, and droughts.
Can our farming practices
survive changing weather
systems?
In the face of recent crop losses, the
economy must now prepare for shortages
and the associated rise in prices. An
impending shortage of our staple, wheat,
means food security for the poorest will be
negatively impacted, further adding to the
burdens inflicted by an already ailing
economy. Farmers are demanding
compensation for their losses, which the
government should reasonably provide.
What next though? Must we wait for another
year, only to repeat the cycle of weathering
crises without preparation, followed only by
cash-based remedies?
Our weather systems are already changing
and will continue to do so, arguably with
greater severity, affecting agriculture in the
country (among many other sectors) and
bringing forth new challenges for food
security. To address these challenges, we
need to shift from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’
approaches that try to predict and prepare
for impacts, reduce risks, and allocate
required resources to respond when crises
strike.
To begin with, it is important to understand
the full breadth and scope of climatic
change impacts to agriculture. We know that
rain patterns have shifted, as have seasonal
temperatures. Is the conventional rice-
cotton-sugarcane-wheat mix still viable?
Can our agricultural practices survive
changes to type and availability of inputs
such as water?
While farmers across the country have
already started adapting their agricultural
practices to changing weather patterns,
decisions about what crops to grow and how
to grow them are still driven by government
policies that incentivise (or disincentivise)
certain crops and technologies. We need to
conduct research on climate-resilient crop
varieties, and subsequently encourage their
uptake among farmers. For small farmers,
such adoption requires a push that only the
government can provide.
While natural phenomena like storms cannot
be averted, preparing for them in advance
can help reduce losses to the farmer, as
well as the government. Innovations like
parametric insurance, that indemnifies
farmers against certain events, are being
tested around the world (with mixed
success). This is not to say a solution that
has worked for farmers in India or Mexico
will work for farmers in Pakistan. But we
need to start thinking of innovative solutions,
contextualised to Pakistan, which can help
us prepare better for climatic impacts.
Knowing better (predicting) helps to prepare
better, which eventually helps deliver
effective responses. Warnings issued before
disasters must be accurate and effective in
what they communicate, and also able to
reach the people they are meant for. It is
also not enough to warn people and
prescribe actions without having adequate
facilities for those preventive actions to take
place — eg advising farmers to shift crops to
safe storage when such storage spaces
have not been created or facilitated for small
farmers beforehand.
Ultimately, we should realise that untimely
rains and storms are not ‘divine blessings’
for unprepared politicians to claim.
Responding to one of the biggest challenges
of our time requires recognition of what we
haven’t been doing and preparations for
what, going ahead, we can and absolutely
must do. Most importantly, it requires that
our leaders, especially those tasked with
handling climate change affairs, are
educated on what climate change actually
is.
Bombs & backlash
Irfan HusainApril 27, 2019
irfan.husain@gmail.com
WHENEVER there’s a terrorist attack
anywhere, I pray that Muslims weren’t
involved. And if they are, I cross my
fingers and wish none of them were
Pakistanis. In the horror stories
emerging from Sri Lanka, I seem to have
got my second wish. However, this is
scant consolation for the mayhem
unleashed by a little-known Islamist
group, the National Towheed Jamaath
(NTJ), backed by the militant Islamic
State (IS) group.
On Sunday morning in the UK, I received a
string of text and WhatsApp messages
enquiring about my safety. Friends knew
that as I do every year, I had spent the
winter at our beach house in Sri Lanka, but
were unsure about my whereabouts. I
immediately went on Twitter to discover the
bloodbath that had occurred in Colombo,
Negombo and Batticaloa. The rest of the
morning was spent in trying to find out if our
Sri Lankan friends and their families were
safe. As the magnitude of the atrocity
emerged, I knew that only an experienced
and highly trained group could have pulled it
off.
In their long, brutal civil war, the Tamil
Tigers had never deliberately targeted
Christians and foreigners. In any case, the
defeated remnants of the ethnic Tamil group
are too demoralised to attempt such a
complex operation. That left Al Qaeda and
IS as possible backers of the NTJ. The
former has given up launching
indiscriminate attacks, so that left IS. So I
was not surprised when it claimed
responsibility for the multiple attacks. What
did surprise me, however, was the
revelation that information about the
impending suicide bombings had been
passed on to Sri Lankan security officials by
Indian intelligence a fortnight earlier. Both
the prime minister and president claimed
they had not been informed.
There is no history of
discord between Sri
Lankan Muslims and
Christians.
Given the rocky relations between the two
ambitious politicians, such a lack of
communication is understandable. Under
the 19th amendment to the constitution
(drafted by Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremsinghe), President Sirisena has the
defence portfolio, and thus responsibility for
security. There are reports he did not invite
the prime minister to meetings of the
National Security Council.
Last October, he attempted to remove Mr
Wickremsinghe, but was thwarted by the
supreme court. Since then, their power-
sharing arrangement has become
dysfunctional. Mahinda Rajapaksa, ex-
president and the other claimant to power,
has cashed in on this criminal intelligence
failure, and called on the prime minister to
resign. As the next presidential election
looms, expect him to ramp up the rhetoric.
And as his track record shows, he is not
above playing the extreme
Buddhist/nationalist card to further his
agenda.
Perhaps more serious than this squabbling
is the backlash against Muslims that I had
feared. Although the government has tried
to cover up the ongoing attacks against
Muslim families and businesses, there have
been multiple reports of anti-Muslim actions,
especially from Negombo, a largely
Christian area.
Sri Lankan civil society has been appalled
by this mindless (though understandable)
backlash. One friend has announced her
intention to stand guard outside Colombo’s
Jumaa Masjid at Friday prayers. People
remember how monks of the Bodu Bala
Sena (BBS) led mobs who killed several
Muslims following a petty altercation near
Kandy a couple of years ago.
There is a deep undercurrent of nationalism
among elements of the majority Sinhalese
who basically say that Sri Lanka is for
Buddhists, and the minorities live there on
sufferance. This is despite the fact that
Muslims constitute only nine per cent of the
population; many of them have descended
from Arab traders who came to the island
centuries ago.
There has never been a history of discord
between Muslims and Christians in Sri
Lanka. So if the aim of the NTJ and IS was
to create conflict between the two minority
communities, they have succeeded beyond
their wildest expectations.
In the small town in the south a few
kilometres from our beach house, there are
a couple of mosques, three churches and
several temples. While the Muslims largely
keep to themselves, I have never heard of
any attacks on their peaceful community.
But now, there is palpable fear of a
backlash.
One warning sign I have observed with
increasing (and depressing) frequency is the
way younger Muslims now dress: women
often wear the full burqa, while even
teenage boys sport long, Saudi-style
dishdashas and straggling beards.
Sinhalese also complain about the lack of
cleanliness in Muslim neighbourhoods and
the consumption of beef in a country that
largely avoids cow slaughter. All this is grist
to the BBS mill. After Sunday’s slaughter,
these memes are likely to be magnified.
Another aim of the attacks was probably to
cripple the economy. Tourism, after the
setback of last October’s constitutional
crisis, was just recovering when the
bombers struck. It will be a long time before
the country can calculate the full cost of a
colossal intelligence failure.
A recipe for durable
peace
Rafiullah KakarApril 27, 2019
The writer is a public policy and
development specialist from Balochistan.
THE recent wave of violence in
Balochistan has once again turned a
spotlight on the long-running conflict in
Balochistan. Two important lessons can
be drawn from this wave of violence:
First, it marks the growing complexity of the
conflict landscape in the province. A low-
level ethnic insurgency concentrated mainly
in southern Balochistan on the one hand
and sectarian and religious militancy in
northern and central Balochistan on the
other continues to pose a threat to peace
and stability. Over the past few years, the
militant Islamic State group has also
established a footprint in the province and
built alliances with sectarian groups and
splinter groups of the Tehreek-i-Taliban
Pakistan. The latter is responsible for some
of the most deadly attacks carried out in the
province in the last few years.
Second, the persistence of violence proves
that the security-centric approach has failed
to deliver peace and prosperity in
Balochistan. There is no denying that hard
and kinetic measures have succeeded in
curbing terrorism partially and temporarily.
However, the long-term threat of terrorism is
far from over. Despite partial successes,
sectarian and militant groups continue to
launch brutal attacks every now and then.
Similarly, a low-level Baloch insurgency
lingers on, despite military operations,
increased presence of security personnel,
enforced disappearances and political
engineering.
The aforementioned trends suggest that
restoration of durable peace in the province
requires a holistic but differentiated strategy.
Recent violence proves
that the security-centric
approach has failed to
deliver peace in
Balochistan.
To begin with, tackling religious and
sectarian militancy requires a fundamental
shift in our national security policy and
Afghan policy. There is a widely held
perception in the province that the state
doesn’t have a zero-tolerance policy for
violence perpetrated by certain non-state
actors. In addition, we have repeatedly been
accused of becoming a party to the Saudi-
Iran proxy war. The recently announced
Saudi investments in Gwadar and Reko Diq,
local analysts fear, may turn the province
into a battleground for a regional proxy war.
Our security thinkers need to appreciate that
durable peace in Balochistan or Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa cannot be established without
peace in Afghanistan. Therefore, a policy of
zero tolerance and indiscriminate action
against terrorist groups should be adopted.
Furthermore, we need to play a balancing
act in our relationship with Iran and Saudi
Arabia rather than tilting in favour of the
latter.
The Baloch ethnic conflict is different in
nature and merits a different strategy.
Developments of the past decade suggest
that only political engagement and
reconciliation can ensure long-term peace
and prosperity in the province. Repressive
measures and cosmetic development
packages both have failed to bring the
disaffected Baloch into the political
mainstream.
Here is what the government needs to do to
find a sustainable solution to the Baloch
conflict:
First, the government should prepare a
comprehensive strategy for reaching out to
the Baloch insurgents. This strategy should
entail credible guarantees, substantial
concessions and confidence-building
measures such as ceasing of all military
operations, withdrawal of the Frontier Corps
from certain areas, release of Baloch
missing persons and compensation for
families of those killed in an extrajudicial
manner. In the absence of confidence-
building measures and substantial
concessions, negotiations are unlikely to
succeed. Mere offers of amnesty won’t
convince insurgent leaders to abandon
violence and return home. Key reasons why
previous efforts to reconcile the Baloch
insurgents failed were: a) repression went
hand in hand with reconciliation efforts, and
b) those leading the process had little
leeway and freedom to negotiate and make
meaningful offers.
The military’s support is a must for the
proposed reconciliation efforts to make any
headway. The military needs to realise and
appreciate that a hard approach alone can
ensure only partial and temporary peace at
best and that a low-level insurgency could
continue almost indefinitely no matter what
security measures are taken. Complete
suppression and defeat of the insurgency is
impossible. And the low-level violence is
enough to put the state on the defensive,
draw international attention and unsettle
foreign investors.
Second, Baloch concerns regarding control
over their natural and coastal resources
should be addressed. For example: control
of the multibillion Saindak copper-gold
mining project was supposed to be
transferred to the Balochistan government in
2012 under the Aghaz-i-Haqooq-i-
Balochistan package. The federal
government refused to transfer the
ownership of the project to the province,
claiming outstanding dues of Rs27 billion
that it had invested in the project. The lease
agreement of the project has since been
extended twice by the federal government
without the genuine consent of the provincial
government.
Similarly, Baloch people have serious
grievances regarding the China Pakistan
Economic Corridor. They have concerns
about the influx of human labour and threats
to demographic balance, displacement,
share of local people in jobs and financial
and administrative control over Gwadar port.
Moreover, they fear that CPEC will increase
oppression and intensify isolation of the
Baloch people rather than bringing
socioeconomic development and
integration.
Third, in the long term, a constitutional
amendment shall be introduced to enhance
the powers of Senate and replace the
current method of indirect election with
direct elections. Pakistan’s current
majoritarian federal design makes
Balochistan the least rewarding political
constituency for political parties seeking to
come to power at the federal level. It offers
little or no incentive to these parties to care
about the province. This primarily explains
why successive governments in Islamabad
have tended to remain indifferent about
Balochistan. Moreover, the Senate has been
ineffective in enabling smaller provinces like
Balochistan to block policies or legislations
that may impinge upon their rights.
A directly elected and powerful Senate is
likely to incentivise state-wide parties to take
a serious interest in Balochistan. This will, in
turn, induce more political competition and
bring technical expertise and experience to
the province. Besides, enhanced powers will
give provinces like Balochistan more say in
decision-making at the federal level.
Trump’s Middle East
plan
Najmuddin A. ShaikhUpdated April 26, 2019
The writer is a former foreign secretary. He
is currently head of the IoBM’s Global and
Regional Studies Centre.
ON April 22 it was announced that the
Significant Reduction Exception
President Trump had granted to eight
countries would not be extended and
that purchases of Iranian oil by these
countries would be subject to sanctions
after May 2. This was another step to
isolate Iran, deprive it of revenue and
make it more amenable to fulfilling the 12
conditions Secretary Pompeo had laid
out for resumption of US-Iran dialogue.
A lot of material was made available
regarding America’s increased production
and export capacity and of the Gulf
countries’ commitment to increase
production and ensure there was no
shortage on account of the withdrawal of
Iranian oil from the international market.
(Essentially, the fact sheet the State
Department put out said that the US crude
oil production was 12 million barrels a day
and would increase by 1.4m within the next
year; Iran oil production had been reduced
by 1.5m barrels; other countries including
Saudi Arabia and the UAE had promised to
increase their production; the inventory of
crude oil globally was seasonally strong.)
This followed the unprecedented and
perhaps legally dubious step of designating
Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps a foreign terrorist organisation. Iran
retaliated by naming all US armed forces as
terrorist organisations.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
What will be the costs as
America continues to
tighten the noose around
Iran’s neck?
If one looks at other actions the Trump
administration has or is taking or is likely to
take around the world, it appears that apart
from the ‘America first’ mantra, securing a
victory against Iran is the driving force.
Support for Israel has been part of Trump’s
creed. This could explain the abandonment
of the long-settled US policy on Palestine
and Syria, formal recognition of Israel’s
annexation of the Golan Heights and formal
endorsement of Israel’s intent of annexing
illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
However, there is in my mind the vision that
partnering with Israel in confronting Iran
would help create conditions in which the
Arabs would join Israel formally in the
Middle East Security Alliance that seems to
be part of the plan that Trump’s point man
for the Middle East, Jared Kushner, would
present for a regional settlement.
In Libya, Gen Haftar, a commander from
Qadhafi’s days, has a base in the east and
is receiving weapons from Russia, political
support from France and political and
material support from Saudi Arabia and the
UAE. The latter two are reportedly
supporting Haftar because they think that
Libya has become a centre for the Muslim
Brotherhood that these countries and Egypt
want eliminated.
In Libya, it had been long-standing US
policy to recognise the Government of
National Accord and support the efforts of
the UN special representative to help
negotiate a power-sharing agreement
between various Libyan factions to maintain
essential Libyan unity.
When Haftar started his assault on the GNA,
the State Department asked him to stop.
Trump, however, after a conversation with
the Abu Dhabi crown prince, spoke to
Haftar, in which he “recognised Field
Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting
terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources,
and the two discussed a shared vision for
Libya’s transition to a stable, democratic
political system”. The GNA saw this as a
betrayal. One could assume that Trump’s
reversal of State Department policy owed to
his willingness to defer to the views of his
allies and thus strengthen their support for
his Iran policy.
The Sudan uprising, the overthrow of
president Omar Al-Bashir’s regime or more
accurately his ouster after 30 years or rule
owed to demonstrations mounted by the
Sudanese Professional Association. The
uprising was successful because the armed
forces, that have participated in the Yemen
war as part of the Saudi/UAE effort and thus
have strong connections there, saw their
own soldiers joining the rebels. The air force
chief’s son joined the protesters. The
Military Council said it would hold elections
in two years because it would take that long
to ensure security and make other
arrangements. This is being resisted but this
is what Sisi’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE would want because Omar al-Bashir
had provided shelter to Muslim Brotherhood
followers.
To cement ties with the Military Council,
Saudi Arabia and UAE said they would
provide $3 billion in assistance to Sudan
with $500m being deposited for balance-of-
payment support and the rest for
humanitarian aid for Sudan’s people.
Sudan is under US sanctions which can be
lifted only if a civilian government comes to
power. The Military Council has announced
it will send a delegation to Washington to
discuss the situation. It is my conjecture that
helping them find their way in Washington
will be a task undertaken not just by the
Sudanese embassy but by the other friends
I have identified.
It is again my conjecture that they will
receive a sympathetic hearing. Their
promise to hold elections within two years
may not be accepted and a shorter time
frame proposed, but sanctions will be lifted
as a favour by Trump for his supporters in
the anti-Iran campaign.
Iran’s economy is suffering as a result of the
sanctions; the ill effects have been
compounded by floods and earthquakes.
There is no sign the regime is collapsing.
For Pakistan, it is important that what Prime
Minister Imran Khan and President Hassan
Rouhani agreed upon is implemented.
Trade that was agreed upon is all food and
humanitarian relief related and will not be
affected. Border security is important to
both, not only because of Iran’s need but
also because those who trouble this border
are likely working with those across the
border who want a Balochistan independent
of both Iran and Pakistan. Oil prices will rise
perhaps to $80 a barrel and we may need to
get further concessional oil supplies from
our friends.
Keynes in Islamabad
Aqdas AfzalUpdated April 25, 2019
The writer is a Fulbright Scholar and has a
doctorate. He teaches economics and public
policy at Habib University, Karachi.
THE story of modern economic policies
starts in 1929 during the Great
Depression, an economic crisis like no
other. Its most severe impact was in the
US where the economy contracted by
almost 30 per cent, leaving one in four
Americans without employment.
This crisis created an existential challenge
for the liberal order — capitalism and
democracy — with people wondering what
good was a system if they could not put food
on the table. Some scholars even connect
the rise of Nazism in Germany to the
ravages of the Great Depression.
John Maynard Keynes was the first
economist to identify that capitalist
economies had a tendency to remain stuck
in a recession, unless shocked by the
infusion of more money. Keynes showed
that once someone’s income went up after
obtaining a job, they increased
consumption, which, in turn, increased the
income of firms that sold whatever these
newly employed people were consuming,
enabling the firms to create still more jobs.
In other words, the final impact of an extra
unit of money would be far greater than the
initial amount injected into the economy.
This ‘multiplier effect’, argued Keynes,
would increase the overall demand in the
economy, thereby pulling it out of an
economic recession. Keynes believed that
monetary policy would fail to stimulate the
economy. Thus, Keynes singled out fiscal
policy — public or government expenditure
— as the most effective policy tool for
stimulating stagnant capitalist economies.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD
Had Keynes been our
finance minister, he
would have serious
reservations.
Taking a cue from Keynes, President
Franklin Roosevelt implemented a massive
fiscal stimulus called the New Deal.
Hundreds of public projects entailing huge
government spending were set into motion
with the government injecting money by
employing almost eight million previously
unemployed Americans, at times even
employing out-of-work artists to paint
elaborate murals. By the time the New Deal
ended in 1938, massive government
spending had brought an end to the Great
Depression.
A recent World Bank report points out that
Pakistan’s economic growth will average
only around 3pc in the next two years. Given
this anaemic growth, the economy cannot
generate jobs to absorb millions of people
entering the labour force each year. At the
same time, the government’s austerity
programme aimed at reducing the fiscal
deficit through cutting expenditure is
alarming. Evidence from Britain’s austerity
experiment since 2010 (Big Society
initiative) shows that curtailing expenditure
has led to entrenching poverty.
Had Keynes been Pakistan’s finance
minister today, he would have serious
reservations about present economic
policies and would have offered a different
prescription for taking Pakistan out of the
economic impasse.
Keynes would have made the case that this
government has taken an incorrect
approach by focusing on reducing fiscal
deficit by cutting expenditure as the
multiplier effect also works in reverse. When
the government cuts spending on
infrastructure projects, like new roads,
construction firms do not hire labour. This
not only leads to job losses but those
without jobs cut back on consumption,
thereby forcing other firms to reduce
production, which leads to further job losses.
Instead of curtailing expenditure and trying
to squeeze more revenue, Keynes would
have the government provide a fiscal
stimulus for increasing the size of Pakistan’s
economy or GDP. This would involve putting
more money in the pockets of people
belonging to the lower socioeconomic
groups since they end up re-spending a big
portion of their income. Doubling the size of
the Benazir Income Support Programme
would thus be an ideal policy for the short
term. A higher GDP not only creates more
jobs, it also leads to still higher tax
revenues, which can then be used towards
reducing the fiscal deficit.
Keynesian policies have made a comeback
in the shape of Job Guarantee programmes.
Argentina introduced the JG programme
after the economic crisis of 2001 in which
heads of households were provided
employment for at least four hours per day.
India has the National Rural Employment
Guarantee which gives guaranteed
employment of 100 days per year to rural
workers — it increased the incomes of low-
income households by 13pc.

The severe economic crisis facing Pakistan

demands out-of-the-box thinking and agile
leadership. Keynes has shown how nations
can come out of economic recession by
injecting — not withdrawing — money from
the economy. JG programmes have been
tried successfully in a number of countries
where they have created jobs, raised
incomes and provided economic fillips. The
best brains in the nation need to get
together in order to conceive, design and
implement effective JG programmes that will
not only reduce poverty in Pakistan but will
also take us out of these economic
doldrums.