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Past Paper MCQs Compilation

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History in Colors

Recommended Books’ Review & much more!

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

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Content

Monthly round up: June at a glance 11

International 15
1. A comparative Analysis of US Foreign Policy Under Trump and 16
Biden
2. Globalization’s Golden Age: Lessons from the Past for the 20
Future
3. Is the South China Sea Next Global Conflict? 24
4. Palestine Crisis: What does the History Say? 27

National 32
1. Violence against Women in Pakistani Society 33
2. Post-Budget Economy of Pakistan 36
3. Is There a Need for a New Charter of Democracy in Pakistan? 40
4. The 3RD Wave of COVID-19: The Government’s Response and 43
Vaccination

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

Meet our CSP 46

1. Instructor of the Month 46

Monthly Press Review 49

Essay Special 68
1. Great Nations Win Without Fighting 69

Recommended Books' Review 73

1. Pakistan A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven 74

History in Colors 76

MCQs Compilation 80

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 It’s been a

Great Year
with your love and support.

Chronicles completed it’s 1st volumn officially 6

 “Enjoy the little things,
for one day you may look back and
realize they were the big things.”
~ Robert Brault

7
 365 Days of Chronicles

Nearpeer’s Vision for Chronicles :

CSS Chronicles – A Monthly Magazine by Nearpeer- is an initiative by Pakistan’s first and largest
Digital Platform, Nearpeer, to help aspirants in maximum possible manners to ace competitive
examination. A huge number of aspirants remain deprived of quality articles, opinions and readings
from various sources due to affordability and accessibility constraints and we stive to cater to the
needs of such underprivileged aspirants so that nobody remains left out just because of affordability
and accessibility issues. Inclusive education and knowledge via technological means is our broader
aim and we’ll continue to facilitate aspirants via such tools.
After the huge success in CSS 2020-2021 session where we provided content for international and
national topics, Essay of the Month, Past Paper MCQs Compilation, Quick facts etc., we have decided
to take one step further. Our latest editions contain segments like History in Colors, Recommended
Books’ Review, Philosophy Corner to help aspirants build strong grip on historical and intellectual
debates. To sum it up, Nearpeer CSS Chronicles would become a ONE STOP SOLUTION for aspirants
who actually want to compliment their studies with distinguished value additions.

How Nearpeer has helped aspirants in the last Session:

Through CSS Chronicles, Nearpeer provides well-articulated readings on international and national
debates, conflicts and events which ultimately help aspirants develop critical thinking, analytical
insights and argumentation. It not only helps aspirants develop critical thinking but also provides
valuable content for various compulsory and optional subjects of Competitive Examination. For
instance, a lot of questions from CSS 2021 Papers (Current Affairs, Pak Affairs, International Relations,
English Essay) overlapped with the content of CSS Chronicles. Thus, the magazine provided valuable
content for such topics and questions which a lot of aspirants find really daunting to cover.

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

MONTHLY ROUND UP:

JUNE AT A GLANCE

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Dates Events

1 The Civil Aviation Authority revised guidelines regarding air travel to Gilgit-Baltistan
(GB), making the Covid-19 vaccination certificate mandatory for passengers over the
age of 30 years.

2 Tajikistan agreed to buy weapons from Pakistan as the two countries vowed to
upgrade their strategic cooperation.Prime Minister Imran Khan, while speaking along-
side visiting Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon after witnessing the signing of
bilateral memorandums of understanding, said defence cooperation was an import-
ant element of bilateral ties and Tajikistan`s requirement of weapons made in Pakistan
was discussed in their meeting and an MoU for their sale was signed.

3 Testing for the evacuation, transmission, dispatch and distribution of 2,200MW of

electricity by the country`s first high voltage direct current (HVDC) Matiari-Lahore
transmission line was successfully carried out, paving the way for the launch of the
line`s formal operation on 1st September, a revised date for the commercial operation
of the mega project being completed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC).

4 The Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering improved Pakistan`s rating on 21 of
the 40 technical recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) against
money laundering and terror financing, but retained it on `Enhanced Follow-up` for
sufficient outstanding requirements.

5 Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmad inaugurated the country`s first commercial
court here at Lahore Judicial Complex. Commercial courts are crucial for progress of
the country`s economy, said the chief justice in his address.

6 An Australian ship carrying 21,000 tonnes of urea under the Afghan transit trade was
anchored at Gwadar deep seaport.

7 At least 55 people were killed and over 150 others injured in twin accidents between
Reti and Daharki railway stations where eight carriages of Millat Express derailed just
before Sir Syed Express rammed into them in the wee hours of June 7, 2021 morning.

8 Government officials privately begun confirming a secret visit to Islamabad of CIA

Director William Burns and are suggesting that he was firmly told that Pakistan would
not host the spy agency`s drone bases on its territory.

9 The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) made it mandatory for all
public and private sector employees to get inoculated, setting June 30 deadline for the
government employees to be vaccinated.

10 The government literally bulldozed legislation in the National Assembly by getting 21

laws approved, including the controversial Elections (Amendment) Bill 2020 and the bill

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Dates Events

to provide right of appeal to Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, after suspending the rules
of business amid the opposition`s strong protest and boycott.

11 With certain limitations imposed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, the government announced its third budget
with an expansionary and feel-good approach, significantly increasing subsidies and
incentives for big business, manufacturing, corporate market and agriculture sectors
and proposing about 24 per cent hike in revenues, including Rs506bn worth of addi-
tional measures.

12 Saudi Arabia announced that it would allow 60,000 residents vaccinated against
Covid-19 to perform this year`s Haj, but Muslims from abroad would be barred for a
second straight year.

13 Just a day before his first face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden, Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey will be the `only reliable` country left to
stabilise Afghanistan after the United States pulls out its troops from the landlocked
country, indicating Washington can rely on its NATO ally.

14 Nato leaders declared that China poses a constant security challenge and is working
to undermine global order, and they said they`re worried about how fast the Chinese
are developing nuclear missiles.

15 Keeping in view the inconvenience being faced by people intending to travel abroad,
the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) amended its guidelines on the
use of AstraZeneca vaccine to facilitate them. Under the new guidelines, people over
the age of 18 years can now be administered AstraZeneca.

16 Russian President Vladimir Putin said he and US President Joe Biden agreed in a con-
structive summit to return their nations` ambassadors to their posts and begin negoti-
ations to replace the last remaining treaty between the two countries limiting nuclear
weapons.

17 The number of active cases of Covid-19 in the country declined by 65 per cent in about
two months and positivity rate continues to hover around 3pc for the last two weeks,
according to data shared by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

18 Pakistan reaffirmed its pledge to fully implement 27 international conventions as part

of its commitment to the European Union`s preferential trade arrangement, the Gener-
alised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+).

19 The World Bank approved $442 million to help improve access to water and sanitation
services for the most vulnerable rural communities in Punjab.

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Dates Events

20 Niger`s Minister for Commerce and Trade Gabo Sabo Moctar said his government was
planning to establish special economic zones (SEZs) for Pakistan as it looked to attract
investment in the infrastructural sector in Africa.

21 The government announced the availability of $1.5 billion Saudi oil facility per annum
and approval of the principles for national electricity policy with consensus by the
Council of Common Interests (CCI).

22 The Taliban captured Afghanistan`s main border crossing with Tajikistan.

23 A powerful blast near the residence of Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed killed three
people and injured 24 others, including a police constable.

24 Pakistan secured a $4.5 billion worth of three-year trade financing facility from Jed-
dah-based Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) to cover import cost of crude,
petroleum products and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

25 Even after `largely completing` 26 of the 27 targets, Pakistan will remain in the grey list
of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for at least another year and deliver on seven
new parallel action points to address deficiencies in its Anti-Money Laundering/Com-
bating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.

26 The government signed a loan agreement worth $442.4 million with World Bank to
provide equitable and sustainable access to clean drinking water, improve sanitation
and reduce child stunting in Punjab.

27 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched the start of construction on a contro-
versial canal aimed at easing congestion on the Bosphorus but which critics say courts
environmental disaster.

28 Suspected drone attack at Jammu air base upset Indian military. Investigators began
probing a suspected drone strike on an air base in India-occupied Jammu with experts
saying such an attack would be a first such test for New Delhi and raise concerns
about security at military installations.

29 The federal government decided to review and ease its foreign travel policy following
decrease in the Covid-19 cases in the county and the ongoing mass vaccination of
general public.

30 Five soldiers were martyred and another five sustained injuries in two attacks. One of
the attacks was carried out by terrorists based in Afghanistan.

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CSS Magazine edition 12

INTERNATIONAL

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A comparative Abdul Samad Khan

Analysis of US The discussion about the US foreign policy

cannot spare the static and dynamic nature of

Foreign Policy
US foreign policy untouched. The analysts
usually ascribe the changing nature of US
foreign policy to the White House whereas the

Under Trump long-standing nature of US foreign policy is

driven by the Pentagon. The change or shift in
administration in the White House usually brings

and Biden about a plethora of reversed and contradictory

policies to the previously adopted ones. Howev-
er, there seems to be some areas in the US
foreign policy which are kept unchangeable.
The recent study encompasses a comparative
study of the Trump and Biden administration viz
-a-viz their foreign policies.

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Trump and Biden take on Climate

Change
The global temperature has been raising rapidly
by virtue of the augmentation in the quantity of
CO2 in the atmosphere affecting the ozone layer
and causing green house gases emission over
the past one and a half centuries. A plethora of
measures—both internal and external—have
been adopted to counter the growing menace
of climate change for the past few decades. The
leading carbon emitters were presented with a
volunteer plan of action- Paris Agreement
viz-a-viz cutting off the carbon emission. The
United States of America was one of the signa-
tories of the deal; but later on, pulled out of it
under the Trump administration. The Trump
administration considered it apt to withdraw
from the accord, which it perceived to be use-
less as the US had not been the sole carbon
emitter rather one among others. Therefore, the
rest must follow the cut-off plan. Moreover,
Trump was overwhelmed by the lobby of the
leading oil and gas cos inside the US in order to
avoid adopting the cut-off plan which will bring
their revenue down. Donald Trump called the
climate change a propaganda of China to
curtail the economic growth of US. The Biden
administration is going to reverse it. Biden
signed to rejoin the Paris Accord. He has subsi- Biden and the P5+1 Deal
dized the green industry of US and has imposed The G5 plus Germany entered an agreement
ban on the drilling of oil and gas. He highlighted with Iran in 2015 under the pen name of Joint
the issue in the recently held meeting of G7 at Comprehensive Plan of Acton or P5+1 in order to
the Southwestern England. The Biden adminis- curtail the uranium enrichment by Tehran and
tration seems to be committed over the issue of prevent it from being nuclearized. The deal
global warming to tackle it down. urged for a considerable cut-off in Iran uranium

US Foreign Policy under Trump and

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enrichment capability gradually in return of
which Iran would be allowed to trade with rest of
the world. However, the United States of America
under the Trump administration pulled out of
the accord while calling it a blunder deal as it
empowered Iran economically and enhanced its
military power and strengthened its defense
thereby posing an existential threat to the US
interests in Middle East especially its allies, e.g.,
Israel. Biden seems to be not following Trump
completely here as the P5+1 deal came to
conclusion under his Democrat Predecessor
Obama under whose administration he served
as a voice President. He may rethink the deal
while putting forward a new comprehensive
deal covering all the areas of concern to the US,
such as militarization of Middle east, the pene-
tration of Iran in the Middle East, and the grow-
ing ballistic missile capability of Iran among
others. He may also deprive Iran from exploiting
the article 26 of the deal which empowers Iran
to enrich its Uranium capability upto 20% in case
the deal is violated via asking some of its allies
like India, Japan and ASEAN among others to
resume trade with Iran partially. Biden seems to
be a little bit different from his two predecessors
over Iran nuclear dilemma.
US Foreign policy towards Middle East
under Trump and Biden
The US foreign Policy towards Middle East is
devised as per the determined interests of
Washington in the region such as providing
protection to its allies and exploiting the extract-
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ed hydrocarbon from the region. An estimate
unveils that 25% of the total energy requirement
of Europe is met by the Middle East. This is the
reason why Middle Eastern politics has been on
scene for a long time. The demilitarization and
security of the region secure an irremovable
position in Washington policy towards Middle
East. Trump pulled out of the P5+1 deal initiated
by his predecessor Obama to ensure security of
the Middle East thereby providing a safe ground
to its regional allies especially Israel which
perceives Iran an existential threat to it. Trump
failed in leaving the region demilitarized behind
as he was seen bringing an acceleration in the
US arms exports to its regional allies, such as
KSA using them in Yemen and providing the
rebels with the logistic and diplomatic support in
Syria against Asad's regime among others.
The Biden administration seems to be adopting
a mature approach towards Iran nuclear saga
to adopt a middle way between the Obama's
second term policy towards Iran and that of the
Trump's one. Moving towards Israel, the US
foreign policy is reported to be a Pentagon
oriented which seems to be static. Israel is
deemed to be a geo-strategic liability for the US.
The United States of America has been providing
a strong diplomatic support to the cause of
Israel in the Middle East for decades. The sole
purpose of US foreign policy towards the Middle
East is to ensure a safe ground in the Middle
Eastern socioeconomic, diplomatic and political
arena for Israel. Moreover, Biden vehemently
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CSS Magazine Edition 12

desires the region to be demilitarized as he signed an official file ending the US military back-up for
KSA and its allies in Yemen and across the region. However, he would persistently be overwhelmed by
the Petro dollar agreement and diplomacy of Washington. Similarly, Biden may either adopt a new
comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran or asking its allies like, inter alia, Japan, India and ASEAN to
resume trade with Tehran partially.

De-globalization vs Re- globalization

The Trump administration will always be remembered for promoting a narrow nationalism. Trump
adopted a plethora of harsh measures to protect and promote nationalism. His era was the era of
globalization wherein there was a free movement of goods, people, ideas and information. Trump
adopted tariff game with harsh consequences not only on the economy of US but also on that of the
whole world. The imposition of tariff on goods of China, India and European countries invited a retali-
ation in the same way bringing the economy of US down. By this dangerous game of tariff imposition,
Trump aimed at protecting and promoting the local industry in addition to the reduction in the trade
deficit of US. Biden may not repeat this vary game being inimical to the economy of US because the
Trump's tariff war brought the US exports to the countries on the goods of which he imposed high
tariff down. Biden seems to be cooperating and getting cooperated by its EU allies, Japan and ASEAN
among others. This is where Biden is going to revise the Trump's anti-internationalism approach to
internationalism. He joined the Paris agreement; desires to go back into P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran;
he is trying to restore the lost confidence of its western allies in US. Also, he is very much vigilant on his
Asia pacific policy. Likewise, he uplifted the ban on the travel of five to six different Muslim countries to
US which had come into force in the era of Trump.

The above account unveils the dynamic and static nature of US foreign policy in general and a com-
parative analysis of US foreign policy under Trump and Biden in particular. Biden seems to be static
on US foreign policy towards Israel; he may go back into the JCPOA with a new approach. Moreover,
he may shift the battleground with China from enmity to competition. Similarly, he joins the interna-
tionalism; he has been a staunch advocate for countering the menace of climate change and would
be harsh on gross human rights violation. Biden must be cooperative with its counterparts in order to
counter the growing international menace of the climate change and revolutionize the health infra-
structure. He must hold to the internationalism in letter and spirit.

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Globalization’s Umme Abeeha Haider

Golden Age: Before COVID-19 struck us, 2020 seemed to be

the pinnacle of globalization, multilateralism,

Lessons from
and trade. However, as the tremors of COVID-19
leave huge cracks on the world, it seems that a
small virus is on a mission to complete the work

the Past for of the 2008 financial crisis. Just as the Great
Recession resulted in trade protectionism,
hostility to migration, and decreased pace of

the Future globalization (“slobalization”), the pandemic is

also leading to a form of deglobalization. Vac-
cine nationalism has driven countries like the
USA, UK, Russia, and China into open conflict. As
Harold James calls it, this might lead us into a
future of “nobalization.” It seems that globaliza-
tion might disappear in a viral haze.

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A close analysis of history shows that crisis, such

as the Great Depression, lead to more globaliza-
tion as the world comes closer to find innovative
solutions to challenges. For example, modern
globalization started as a result of the financial
and social disasters of the 1840s. The economic
disruptions of the 1970s resulted in the most
recent wave of globalization. In both cases, the
crises laid the foundation for accelerated
globalization. From such a viewpoint of history, it
seems that a new wave of globalization will
come roaring back once the pandemic is over.
Let’s take a closer look at history to dissect
exactly how globalization follows times of crisis.

The 1840s
The 1840s was a huge crisis as financial markets
collapsed, diseases spread and famine struck
the world. The Irish potato famine is quite
well-known to the world when malnutrition killed
more than a million people. Fungal rot of the
potatoes also spread across Europe. Karl Marx
and Fredrich Engels, in The Communist Manifes-
to, discussed how global integration was help-
ing the world with social and political upheaval.
They argued that the bourgeoisies’ production is
what leads to the development of modern
industry. The economic destruction of the 1840s
helped expand trade as governments reduced show off the benefits of peaceful commerce.
tariff barriers and people could move across Germany was also home to many new inven-
continents. Historians believe that this was the tions such as the steel cannon.
first age of globalization in the world.
This wave of international trade helped coun-
As the countries generate new global links, new tries enhance their own national performance. It
problems arose. Imports seemed to be failing, was a journey from despair and catastrophism
resulting in trade deficits, currency shortages, to optimism. International trade and finance
and higher interest rates. This leads people to spread. It was the golden age.
demand more competent governments who
could handle these issues effectively. Over time, However, eventually, this golden period of opti-
governments started to respond to these issues. mism gave way to doubts about the benefits of
For example, the UK enacted many civil service globalization. Those who were left behind, such
reforms to bring in more competent people. In as the European farmers, were disillusioned. This
France too, many policies were adopted for mood set the stage for World War I, the rise of
public work projects. The creation of new fascism and eventually World War II.
nation-states, such as Italy and Germany,
created administrative reform to push econom- The Second Wave of Globalization
ic growth. The abolition of slavery in the US and After the World War settlement, international
feudalism in Japan also lead to significant institutions were built to avoid the mistakes of
economic and social benefits. Even before 1860, the past. Thus, World War II did not create the
improved communication and transportation same shocks as the nineteenth-century
lead to increased global trade. catastrophes did. However, nearly three
decades later, issues due to shortages and
In 1851, the UK celebrated its industrial strength scarcity set the stage for the current era of
with the Great Exhibition, an international fair to globalization.
display the British mechanical superiority and
In the 1970s, the industrialized world was threat-

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ened due to huge oil price hikes. It seemed that the producers could exploit control over the world’s
most essential commodity and threaten the very existence of many industrial giants. Countries had
to spend a considerable amount on oil along with harvest and other commodities that they found
their balance of payments squeezed considerably.

The immediate and most obvious response to this scarcity was protectionism and economic nation-
alism. However, such responses made way for more globalization. International banks were lending
funds that pushed development and growth all over the world.

It seems that such historical forces will help to pave the way for re-globalization once the pandemic
is over. The crises of the 1840s and 1970s taught the same lesson – openness leads to resilience.

As discussed earlier, protectionism led the popular opinion to shift towards a discussion of whether
governments could even handle the crisis competently. The governments by Robert Nixon and Jimmy
Carter in the US, Edward Heath and Harold Wilson in the UK, Georges Pompidou in France, among
others lead the political theorist, Jean-François Revel to conclude that democracies were perishing
and that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War. It seemed that autocracies, such as Iran and
Chile, were better suited to handle modern global challenges.

This spurred a discussion of ‘neoliberalism’: the notion that if governments focused on micro-deci-
sions, such as wage and price levels, they risked their reputation for competence. A major example of
such micro-decisions can be seen in both Nixon and the British governments bids to contain inflation
which seemed to be the ultimate cure to shortages, both in the 1840s and 1970s. It seemed that
inflation could help to mitigate the ripples of shocks. With the beginning of bank credits, it seemed
that people could buy everything they need. It seemed that high inflation was stabilizing the society,
even if paradoxically. However, only with time, they realized that the prices are rising and their money
buys less. Thus, people soon realized that the scarcity issue and the resulting inflation was primarily
due to government incompetence. The misery index (simply adding the inflation and unemployment
rates) was used as a political weapon against governments. In this way, inflation became a destabi-
lizing force for both the economy and political landscape of the countries.

To end the monetary disorder and inflation spread over the world, central banks focused on low
inflation rates and governments cooperated to achieve this objective – they created the G5, and then

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G7 ad G20 forums to discuss such global economic challenges. Therefore, it seems that the need for
stability was also aided by the spread of globalization. With greater global integration, production
costs lowered, resulting in reduced inflation. To summarize, the same inflation that had first fueled the
spread of globalization in the 1850s was tamed by it by the end of the 1900s.

A Lesson from the Past

Albeit different from the past, the COVID-19 pandemic has also created many economic challenges
for the world. It is not driven by demand as it was in the Great Depression or the 2008 economic
recession. It is the opposite; lockdowns have interrupted supply while there is no shortage of demand
in most cases. Rich countries have prepared financial packages for the public to guard against the
shocks of this economic crisis. It is estimated that the US piled up $1.6 trillion in excess savings. This is
equivalent to 7 per cent of the GDP.

Despite these apparent differences, the current crises do bear resemblance to the crises of the 1840s
and 1970s. Scarcity is a main common characteristic in both instances. Similarly, the pandemic has
also raised questions on the governments’ competence, just like the cases of the 1840s and 1970s
discussed above.

At first, China seemed to be dealing with the crises much better than some of the Western giants. For
example, the issues of Donald Trump’s government, Indian PM Narendra Modi’s mismanagement and
British PM Boris Johnson’s crises in the Parliament are hardly hidden. The European Commission also
seemed to have lost its credibility due to the poor management of vaccine purchases.

Some countries seemed to have fared much better than others. China, for example, though blamed
for unleashing the virus on the world has handled it effectively. Now, many countries look towards
China for leadership. Other countries should also try to consider how they can utilize Beijing’s model
and replicate it in their own country, just as the UK in the 1850s realized that it could learn from foreign
producers.

The Way Forward

The real challenge in the upcoming post-pandemic wave of globalization will be to find the best ways
to learn and adapt. In the pandemic world, creative and innovative solutions are global public goods,
whether it is combating climate change or the challenge of vaccine availability.

Just as the makers of the post-war settlement in 1945 realized that peace and prosperity could not be
achieved in a single nation, today’s states need to realize that health and happiness cannot be
enjoyed alone by individual states. Isolationism is far from the solution. Success can only be the result
of intense international collaboration.

Technology is another tool that is transforming today’s world just as rapidly as it did in the past. Just
as there was a shortage of supplies in the past (foodstuffs in the 1840s and oil in the 1970s), today
there is a shortage of medical supplies, data chips and rare-earth commodities. For the world to
become resilient and prepared for new shocks, these commodities must be produced and traded
internationally.

Furthermore, businesses and governments cannot work without innovating. Whether it is the arena of
science or the political landscape, innovation is a must. If we take tips from Germany’s impressive
testing record and UK’s fast vaccine rollout, we will realize that innovative policy is what wins.

The US might find this a hard pill to swallow. With automated translation technology, a new language
might become the next international standard. Similarly, a new currency might replace the US dollar.
As we can see from a deep analysis of history, crises push countries and governments forward. States
will adapt in 2021 as they did before. The only challenge is to find effective ways to learn and adapt to
the new wave of globalization without compromising on fundamental values.

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Is the South Bakhtawar Narejo

China Sea Saga of the South China Sea is deep-rooted in

conflicting territorial and jurisdictional claims

Next Global
over islands, maritime and other rock forma-
tions by different sovereign states. They are
Brunei, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia,

Conflict?
Philippines and Vietnam. Claimants want to
acquire and retain their rights over natural
resources; crude oil, natural gas that are
embedded in the sea beds of different parts of
South China Sea. South China Sea being identi-
fied as ‘Busiest Waterways’ is subjected to great
importance for the U.S. as well. Borning estimat-
ed $100 billion trades for it through the sea. The
United States and China also share a combative
issue concerning freedom of navigation, the
right of U.S. military vessels to carry out opera-
tions in China’s two hundred mile economically
exclusive zone.

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One-third part of the world’s maritime shipping
passes through it, carrying over trillions USD in
trade each year, a fishing ground considered
crucial for food security. Huge natural gas and
oil reserves lie beneath its seabed.

Geography
The South China Sea is of great economic and
geo-strategic significance covering 3,500,000
square kilometers of surface area. It is identified
as an western arm of the Pacific Ocean in
Southeast Asia. Encompassed by China's south
region, West of the Philippines, North of the
Island of Borneo and Vietnam’s east and south.
The South China Sea's ‘Heart of Islands’, the
water’s body, is confined by the Gulf of Thai-
land’s southern part and by the Malay Peninsu-
la’s east coast. Both marginal seas of the pacif-
ic-ocean connect the South China Sea, Philip-
pine Sea with Luzon Strait and East China Sea
with Taiwan Strait. Moreover, it is collectively
composed of several archipelagos clusters of
small inhabited islands, cays and shoals (Islets),
reefs and seamounts numbering in the hun-
dreds.

Territorial Claims
-China and Taiwan’s Claim on Pratas Islands
which are located south of Hong Kong.
-Vietnam, China and Taiwan claim over the
was also introduced by Chinese state but it
Paracel Islands located in the northern part of
faced destructive criticism and non-accep-
the sea. In 1974, China by the use of force took
tance widely considering it China’s strategy to
Paracel Islands from Vietnam.
extend its power and rights over more territories.
-The Scarborough Reef is located 130 miles from
the Philippine island claimed by Philippines,
China and Taiwan.
What does the U.S have to do with the
-The Spratly Islands are found in the center of
South China Sea?
The position of the U.S. on maritime claims in the
the sea, claimed entirely by China, Taiwan and
South China Sea is to have a free and open
Vietnam and also partially by Philippines, Brunei
Indo-Pacific Ocean without anyone being its
and Malaysia.
master. It addresses China’s claim over the sea
and its resources which are completely unlawful
China and It’s Nine-dash-line Philoso-
in international law according to the UN conven-
phy
tion on the Law of the Sea. They are committed
China claims almost 80-90% of South China Sea
to having free seas not interrupting flow of
based on historic claims using the
commerce worldwide without any disputes,
nine-dash-line, U shaped reference, which was
conflicts, and its maritime not being any state’s
etched on map in 1940’s by Chinese scholars
empire. The U.S. extends international friendship
and cartographers. According to them, it shows
to countries that also want to protect freedom
China’s maximum extent of sovereignty over the
of the South China Sea and are in favor of
South China Sea. Many countries including
rightful law.
Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, U.S. and others have
rejected this dotted line geography by China
The Philippines took China to court as their last
stating that there is no legal basis to draw
option to protect coastal communities and their
straight lines on the map connecting the outer-
survival dependent on it. Food security being the
most features of the maritime in the South
epicenter of the South China Sea dispute is the
China Sea. Recently its extension, Ten-dash-line

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main concern and subjected to human rights

preservation. In 2013, Philippines argued that China
has no legal claim over the Scarborough shoal. The
court gave results in favor of the Philippines. China
losing one of the arbitrary landmarks became
conscious of what to do next to stand firm and not
to fall completely.

China to avoid diplomatic blowback started show-

ing interest in the Code of Conduct by ASEAN which
was developed a long time ago in order to protect
rights and negotiations between states to avoid
disputes. China was questioned about its motives
as the code of conduct is all about managing
disputes and not announcing who claims right over
what, who owns the rock and who not. However, the
interests of a few members does not hurt powerful
economies like China. Apart from it, Vietnam has
always been hot-headed with China. Recently,
there were arguments over China harassing oil and
gas operations. Things have not been working out
for them.

Pakistan’s Stance
Pakistan participating in 27th ASEAN regional forum
addressed their support towards the Beijing on
South China Sea talks and negotiations through
code of conduct by ASEAN.

The conflict about the South China Sea involves

high stakes and complexities as many powerful countries having claims over it. There are a lot of
heavily armed countries protecting and defending their interests. China is also safeguarding its
interests and striving to extend its empire. The South China Sea is vast and so insidious. China has
stayed here for a long time and is known for its long time. There is always the threat of war between
countries and their allies internationally under the radar. This dispute has the potential of the next war
involving mass destruction and exploitation of world’s largest maritime resources if not handled well
by negotiations and management of the dispute.

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Palestine Dawood Khan

Crisis: Conflicts arise among civilizations, continue for

some time, and end after resolutions. Among

What does
many conflicts, one of them in today’s world is
the Israel-Palestine conflict. On November 2,
1947, the then British General gave a declaration

the History
in the form of a separate state for the Jewish
people. Hence, the Jews began migrating to the
territory known as Palestine. Resultantly, they

Say? declared independence on May 14, 1948. Since

that day, the Palestinians are living in unrest.
The UN passed a resolution to eradicate the
conflict. Some countries raised their voices, but
no solution has favored the oppressed Palestin-
ians. Although, various solutions have been
formulated but none of them seemed practical,
the best solution is the ground implementation
of the ‘two-state policy’ which should resolve
the long-going conflict.

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As Israel declared independence, war broke out
between the Arab countries and Israel in 1949.
The latter was backed by powerful countries. In
1967, a six-day war took place between the Arab
coalition forces and Israel. The Arab countries
such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria miserably
failed. Israel expanded its territory and occupied
the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza strip. The UN
devised maps of Palestine and Israel, however,
Israel didn’t stick to it.

Israel continued the war of attrition in 1968. They

kept on occupying novel regions. They occupied
Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in 1973.
During the wars, no stone was left unturned in
oppressing the Palestinians. All the
humanitarian rules and international laws were
violated. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan was
the only non-Arab country supporting Syria and
Egypt in the wars of 1967 and 1973. Ten (10)
Israeli jets were shot down by Pakistani pilots
amidst those wars.
The atrocities of Israel didn’t stop. The United
Nations devised maps that defined the
territories of the two countries. Nevertheless,
Israel with the support of strong countries
continued violating the UN resolution. “Greater
Israel Policy” seemed Israel’s aim. Along with
invasions, they tried their best in building
diplomatic and economic ties with the rest of
the world.

Guron, the founding Prime Minister of Israel, sent

a telegram message to the founder of Pakistan,
Quaid-e-Azam. The intentions were diplomatic
and economic ties. However, no response was
made to the received text. Regarding the other
Muslim States, Turkey was the first Muslim
country to accept Israel back in the year 1949.

Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan would have got

full economic and diplomatic support from the
US if he had accepted and built relations with
Israel. But he rejected this offer.

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With every passing year, there arose changes in the stances of Muslim countries towards Israel. In
fact, the rigidity is diluting every next day. In this context, Egypt entered into an agreement with Israel
in 1979.

Similarly, Jordan came into an agreement with Israel in 1994. She was the second Muslim country in a
row that began relations with Israel. The US extended ammunition support to Jordan. This agreement
was signed in the reign of King Hussein.

Different Muslim countries did not find the agreements acceptable. The countries
perceived that such agreements would lead to the implementation of the
policy “Greater Israel” in the middle east. The support of the US to Israel was
considerable on every occasion. On Aug 13, 2020, the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) became the third Muslim country by normalizing relations with
Israel after signing Abraham Accord. She realized that it would be
the only way to prove its strength in the middle east. Moreover,
the growing tensions between the UAE and Iran vis-a-vis the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia cemented the changing stance of
the UAE. Along with UAE, Bahrain also announced about
beginning its relations with Israel. Notably, the
Trump-led US Government played a key role
on all the aforementioned occasions.

With

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The establishment of these relations, Israel never stopped oppressing the Palestinians. Numerous
examples advocate the muting of voices and actions of Palestinians. From a historical perspective,
the first intifada (1987) and second intifada (2000) were the registered responses from Palestinians.
These uprisings were merely supported by the Muslim countries and the Organization of Islamic
Countries. The Gaza blockade has been an open-air prison since 2007. People are deprived of using
aerial, naval, and road routes. More than 70 % of residents of Gaza are unemployed with blur futures
in front of them.

The immediate need of the hour is that the OIC must take action. It is the second largest organization
after the UN. Disturbingly, they have not even shown a little progress on the Palestine issue. Side by
side, it is important that Muslim countries keep all internal conflicts aside e.g. KSA-Iran rivalry. In
comparison to the points of view of the governments of Islamic countries, their public possesses
entirely different views. According to a recent survey (Nov-2019 – Sep 2020) by Qatar-run Arab
Center of Research and Policy Studies, 88% of people disapprove of Israel’s recognition.

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The recent brutal Israeli attacks during the Holy month of Ramadhan have raised concerns of the
Palestine residents. The eviction in Sheikh Jarrah at East Jerusalem jolted all those countries who were
planning to resume their relations with Israel. Hamas fired more than 4.000 rockets, but their effects
were eradicated as Israel possesses Iron-Dome defense technology. Ironically, the US President
termed the brutalities of Israel as a right to self-defense. The US delayed the ceasefire intentionally for
more than seven days. Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel’s Prime Minister for more than 10 years) has been
replaced by Naftali Bennett. The latter is the strongest opponent of the two states. He has firm belief
that the land belongs to Israel and Israel only. Hence, it is prudent to deduce that with such intentions
the “Two-State” solution is being buried.

Moreover, the UN already devised maps of the two countries in 1967. It is primarily important to follow-
ing those sketched borders and territories. Nevertheless, with such attitudes of the Muslim states, it is
unwise to think of the maps of the pre-1967 era. It is a golden rule to put your own house in order
before poking your nose into matters of other people. The same rule is applicable in the case of
crying Palestine. Hence, the Muslim countries need to reduce the internal rifts. Particularly, the proxy
wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia prove the mentioned case. The OIC should urge the adage
“United we stand, Divided we fall”. Instead of spending resources in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq for hege-
monic purposes, the Muslims should act as one unit.
Countries like Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia must lead all other developing Muslim
countries. Joint strategies should be developed that define every aspect of Muslim states with other
states generally and with Israel particularly. For example, economic, diplomatic, and naval relations
with other countries.

Keeping in view the current situation of Palestine, the world should resolve it without any further delay.
The solution does not take everything from Israel. However, a two-state policy according to the terri-
tories defined by the US should be implemented. In the case of Jerusalem, a joint decision is more
helpful as it is a holy place in three religions. Israel would be reluctant both in going back to the maps
devised in 1967 and vacating occupied regions. Therefore, the Muslims are compelled and supposed
to give their plan that provides justice to Palestinian brothers. If they fail to do, Greater Israel policies
will be evident and injustice will be prevalent. “Justice delayed is justice denied”.

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NATIONAL

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Violence Atika Khalid

against Violence against women perpetrates in Pakistan

as patriarchal mindset has not been uprooted

Women in
even in 21st century. The regressive cultural
practices, domestic violence, gaslighting,
workplace harassment and many other gender

Pakistani
crimes marginalize women and create
hindrances in their struggle for an equal status
of personhood as men. The UN Declaration on

Society the Elimination of Violence against Women

defines violence against women as ‘any act of
gender-based violence that results in, or is likely
to result in, physical, sexual or psychological
harm or suffering to women, including threats of
such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of
liberty, whether occurring in public or in private
life’. Prior to these new normal times, they were
already in a desperate plight but the pandemic
has disproportionately affected them. However,
their march towards gaining autonomy over
their life will surely pave way for breaking of the
chokehold of patriarchy on them.

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Escalating Violence Against Women

In the words of Mohammed Hanif, ‘life’s most
arguments, it seemed, got settled by doing
various things to a woman’s body.’ Sometimes
it is the patriarch of her family or at other
times a jilted lover that kills her for daring to
be autonomous. When a woman undergoes
such violence, a progressive society helps her
heal. But herein calling her names,
victim-blaming and ostracizing her instead of
the perpetrator of the crime is usually the
norm. After the motorway rape case,
discussion over ways of preventing such
incidents started. Upsettingly, however, the
very first call was to question the victim but
soon many people suggested public hanging
of criminals and yet others backed the idea of
chemical castration. But high rates of
recidivism cannot be reduced in this fashion;
unfortunately, there exists deeply rooted
misogynistic attitude towards women in
Pakistani society. Journalist Sabahat Zakariya
rightly refers Delhi rape as a case in point
wherein the culprits not only showed their
physical force against the victim but also used
all objects handy to them to inflict pain on her.
It is the sickening drive of imposing oneself on
the weak. Society would have to wage a war
against this pervading toxic mentality and
gender-related violence. It is beyond common sense as to why in spite of
their usefulness they would be tormented to an
inhumane level. Elizabeth Montagu writes along
Blurring Lines Between Public and those lines, “The men are very imprudent to
Private Patriarchy: Infringement of endeavor to make fools of those to whom they
Women’s Civil Liberties so much trust their honor, happiness, and
According to “Progress of the World’s Women fortune.” Women’s contribution to society will
2019-2020” report, an average Pakistani remain muted and the gender gap will widen
woman spends 11 hours on household chores unless these two policy initiatives are
and reproductive work for every hour that a taken-better childcare system and
man dedicates to similar work at home. In ‘family-friendly’ workplaces. Gradually all forms
addition, she has to be available for the triple of violence will end when egalitarianism is
shift- paid employment, domestic labor, and imbibed in society.
emotion work for their families.
The Shadow Pandemic
With coronavirus pandemic atrocities against
women multiplied creating the shadow
pandemic as termed by the WHO. It is reported
by Aurat Foundation that the domestic violence
spiked by 45% during lockdown. The state
women in Pakistan was already not that rosy
before the pandemic but the recent Global
Gender Gap Report 2021 places the country at
153 out of 156 countries and estimates show that
it will take 136.5 years to bridge the gender gap.
For any meaningful change to happen, overhaul

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of society at large is needed. Sociologist Sylvia
Walby calls patriarchy “a system of social
structures and practices in which men
dominate, oppress, and exploit women.” She
mentions six interacting structures at play: the
family household, paid work, the state, male
violence, sexuality, and cultural institutions. Thus,
only structural change can end gendered
discrimination and violence of all sorts.
Vertical Segregation and Horizontal
Segregation--Gender Ghettos
There are many forms of violence against
women. It is very difficult for them to venture out
in public and claim their space. Despite that
those who do take steps in this direction are
scorned and face segregation on vertical level
such as glass-ceiling from reaching top
positions and horizontal one at labor market.
Even female political personalities have to face
misogyny every now and then. Anna Suvorova
the author of “Widows and Daughters: Gender,
Kinship, and Power in South Asia” describes that
the first generation of women leaders of South
Asia inherited their political career from their
forefathers. Their social mobility is an uphill task
even then if some of them do become the
top-notch performers at their craft, there have
been many critics belittling and discrediting
their rise as ‘Asian nepotism’ ever since. For
making its mark in the world, Pakistan must
ensure ‘occupational safety’ for women folk as
the World Bank calls the lack of it as the most
devastated occupational hazard of 21st century.
Since sexism too is a violence that women
weather in this society.
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Not Reverse Discrimination but
Equality--The Way Forward
Bad marketing of women’s demands of equality
and their calls for a complete end of violence
has damaged their rightful cause. All they want
is a level playing field but it is wrongfully
perceived as a call for reverse discrimination.
They have been marching for gender equity and
equality that has been denied to them in both
private and public spheres.
Cornering half of their population on the basis of
gender is costing Pakistan dearly, it is education
and freedom that comes with it which will
empower women and bring what Charles
Fourier calls a cooperative autonomy that will
eventually make the society more productive. As
of now, women are at the base of social
pyramid that makes their work invisible in more
than one way. As per some estimates, Pakistan
will be fifth populous country in the world by the
end of century. Countries that give women
access to education and health care have
changed their status. Take the example of
Bangladesh which is expected to graduate from
the category of “least developed countries” to
the status of a “developing economy” by 2024.
Pakistani society also needs an
across-the-board acceptance of women as an
equal to men to fight tooth and nail to gender
violence.
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Post-Budget Qaiser Rizwan Abbasi

Economy of In what appears to be a growth-centric budget

aimed at ‘sustainable and inclusive' economic

Pakistan
growth, the PTI-led federal government unveiled
its Rs. 8.48 trillion federal budgets for the fiscal
year 2021-22 (FY22). This is, undeniably, in sharp
contrast to what International Monetary Fund
(IMF) negotiated with economic policymakers in
2019.
In order to comply with IMF’s dictations—cutting
down both fiscal deficit and trade deficit—the
government implemented tight-budgetary
policies measures over the last three years,
which contain business activity leading to
shrinking GDP, lower incomes, and higher
lay-offs.

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While the economy was already performing

poorly, what has added salt to injury is the
Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 that turned out to be
a disaster to Pakistan’s economic structure.
Keeping in view of the worrisome effects of the
pandemic-induced slump on Pakistan’s
economy, a growth-friendly budget by the PTI
government has been presented which
comprises a package having the potential to
beef up the economic foundation of the county.
It is pertinent to note that the growth target of
4.8% has been set. Though ambitious it may
seem, is likely to be achieved with the
government providing much-needed stimulus
and economic boost to all and sundry.

In an attempt to carve a path towards the

economic upturn needed to generate
employment opportunities, the government
revealed its budgetary allocation of Rs 2,134
billion towards the Public Sector Development
Programme (PSDP)—a great instrument for a
government to provide budgetary support
directed at developmental activities in an
economy.

Not only this but special development packages

have also been presented under the umbrella of
‘Regional Equalization Programme’ consisting of
Karachi Transformation Plan (KTP), Development
plan for Southern Balochistan, and adding-up
budgetary allocation for newly merged districts
of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), among others.
These steps are taken in the right direction to
fight poverty and spur growth in
under-developed regions.
Simultaneously, a series of incentives have been
budgeted in FY22 to keep the wheel of the
economy moving. In taking pro-poor steps, the
minimum wage rate has been added up to Rs
20,000 while salaries and pensions of
government employees would witness a rise of
10 percent.
Following the bottom-up approach, the
government has announced several loans: Rs
500,000 (business loans), Rs250, 000 and Rs
200,000 (farming loan and tractors/machinery
respectively), and most importantly, Rs 2000,000
worth (house building). This will enable people
to have more money in hand so people will tend
to increase spending contributing massively to
the GDP.
In a bid to revitalize the agricultural sector, the
government has announced National
Agriculture Emergency Programme costing Rs

For the purpose of backing up Small-Medium

Enterprises (SMEs), the annual turnover tax
ceiling has been enhanced from Rs 10 million to
Rs 100 million with a reduction in sales tax. Also,
there has been a reduction in tax liability by 25%
for women entrepreneurs which is a welcome
development. This way, entrepreneurs owning
little investment would be able to gain the
benefits of greater ease of doing business,
leading to job creation and rising incomes.

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277 billion. Considering the wheat shortage issue plaguing last year, the government has increased
the minimum support price of wheat from Rs 1400 to Rs 1800 per kg so that wheat cultivation can be
encouraged. To add, the Agriculture credit disbursement target for FY22 has been Rs 1500 billion
which will certainly go a long way to incentivize crop production.

Over the last 2 years, it has been seen that the manufacturing sector has marked a tremendous
turnaround due to a variety of targeted, consistent, and coordinated policy measures adopted by the
government. The measures include Relief to export-oriented industries, Industrial support packages,
tax exemptions for electric vehicles manufacturers, and duty exemptions under China-Pak Free Trade
Agreement-II.

Significantly, the government has provided great incentives to the construction and housing sector in
the shape of the ‘Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme’. The next year’s budget entails major concessions
to the manufacturing sector, including automobile, textiles, pharmaceutical industry, mobile phone,
and information technology through a reduction in import duties on raw material along with lower
general sales.

On a fiscal front, the government has set the target of Rs5, 829 billion for FY22 for the Federal Board of
Revenue (FBR). Since the revenue target for FBR is more than 5.5 trillion, it is considered to be an uphill
task for the tax authority to raise and collect taxes to a level where sustainable 4.5 percent GDP
growth in FY22 can be achieved.

Undoubtedly, putting in place major fiscal reforms coupled with the consistent political will to
restructure tax administration is the need of the hour. It is, disturbingly, important to mention that
FBR’s target for this year was achieved by relying heavily on indirect taxes—regressive taxation—that
have been, increasingly, making it difficult for low-income earners to make ends meet. Instead, the
government needs to make efforts to encourage direct taxes—progressive taxes—which will place a
burden on the higher income groups.

One of the undeniable factors responsible for inadequate revenue collection in Pakistan has been a
fragmented taxation system where various tax collecting authorities working at both federal and
provincial levels end up increasing compliance costs for the taxpayers. This not only discourages
genuine taxpayers but also negatively influences business firms in particular, and people, in general,
to come under a tax regime. Therefore, the harmonization of a taxation system is critical to the
effective collection of set revenue targets.

Furthermore, an unprecedented increase in e-commerce transactions particularly during the

Covid-19 lockdowns has made the government propose to bring online trading into the sales tax net.
Whether this will increase tax revenues is what remains to be seen.

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On the other hand, the stock market has been given greater relief with the reduction in capital gain
tax from 15 pc to 12.5 pc while a number of withholding taxes have been done away with, such as
taxes on banking transactions, stock exchange transactions and air-travel services and others. All
these efforts can act as a catalyst for enhancing GDP, thereby leading to economic development.

On an external side, the government has introduced wide-ranging major reforms that will help in
promoting export-based industry. Reducing import duties on raw materials required for export
production will likely make Pakistan’s exports highly competitive to be able to compete in an
international marketplace. Providing fuel subsidies and refund of import duties will offer greater
incentives to the export community to accelerate production aiding to earn valuable foreign
exchange reserves. There has been a significant rise in remittances as Roshan Digital Account proved
to be playing an instrumental role in facilitating workers working abroad to send remittances to their
homeland.

To shake off the ever-growing trade deficit, the competitiveness of Pakistan’s export industry paired
with valuable remittances pouring into the country will be needed. Overregulation, bureaucratic
obstacles, and complicated tax laws hindering potential start-ups should be replaced with a
business-friendly regulatory framework.

As the government seeks to use expansionary fiscal policy while maintaining a low-interest rate
regime, it will be a real challenge to ensure fiscal stability in a highly effective manner. It must be
maintained that after assuming the power, an incumbent government negotiated a bailout package
of $6 billion with IMF, though on strict conditions, in 2019 to put a country on the path of recovery.
Consequently, this has curtailed the fiscal space required to promote economic development.

It remains to be seen how the budget will assist in paving the way towards economic growth, job
creation, rising incomes while overcoming major economic ills—inflation, trade deficit, and most
significantly, fiscal deficit. Achieving all this amidst IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) offers a great
window of opportunity for economic scientists of Pakistan to set this country onto the path of
sustainable growth.

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Is There a Fatima Hassan

Need for a Pakistan at present is facing numerous

challenges at home and at international level.

New Charter
Weak economy, political instability,
deteriorating law and order situation, and poor
standards of life, health, and happiness in the

of Democracy
country seem to be endless issues. Pakistan
also loses international support and solidarity

in Pakistan?
with increasing intolerance and violation of
human rights in the homeland. The regional
conflicting nations add more to the problems by
attempts to sabotage the country’s image.
Pakistan has long tried to fight the negative
forces which hinder the progress and
development of the country, but they are
becoming more powerful with each passing
day and putting the country in additional
turmoil.

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The constitution of Pakistan protects the rights of

citizens which are guaranteed to be provided by
the ruling leaders, state departments, and all
concerned. Yet, in the country’s long history with
different leaderships, it could not get on any
long-lasting development track. The root cause
of failure lies in administrative discrepancies. No
party or leader takes the responsibility and put
the blame on the rivals. Civilian leadership is
held accountable on charges of misconduct
and corruption at various times. Consequently, it
has had its clashes with military powers which
took charge of the country by dismissing
political democratic governments through
military coups. To secure the country from
military coups and considering democracy the
real path towards the nation’s progress, two
political leaders of Pakistan, Mian Muhammad
Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, met in London
on May,2006, and drafted a charter of
democracy.

The charter suggested amendments in the

constitution, provided a framework of a code of
conduct, and recommendation for free and fair
elections. Much of which has been implemented
by Pakisan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim
League (Nawaz) governments in the years
followed. However, some areas were ignored by
the charter making parties which could truly
restore democracy, such as holding local
government elections without delays and
devolving power to the lowest tiers effectively by
providing appropriate funding. Despite that, for
the first time in the history of Pakistan, two
democratic
governments completed their five years turn.
Currently, Pakistan is currently being ruled by
another political party, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf,
which won 2018 elections.
Democracy in Pakistan has been on a smooth
ride for more than a decade. The people have
supported their political leaderships in hope of a
better Pakistan where the leaders represent their
people. Today’s Pakistan is ruled democratically
but is not completely free from other influences.
The solution to our current dilemma does not lie
in creating more such documents which
promise change but fail to do so when applied. It
is high time that the people understood that
their chosen representatives ought to remain
true to the promises they made to their people. If
they fail to do so, then call them home by
holding them accountable. The fair and
transparent accountability of political
leaderships can bring real change than giving
them more chances on word of mouth. If our
ruling party and all its members implement the
rules set in the constitution honestly and
enthusiastically, then they won’t require any
other charter to save the nation.
The constitution of Pakistan is the most
respectful charter which, if followed religiously,
will take the country on the road to success and
free the people from all political gambling and
manipulation of political parties. It will be
enough to safeguard the rights of citizens and
protect them against any forces which are
harmful for the development of our homeland.
All political parties have to act responsibly in the
face of challenges because there is a mutual
interest of keeping democratically elected
governments run freely. If a political party
coming to power has to face challenges of
survival, the attention diverts from bringing
change to tackling opposing forces. It results in
a very defensive and fearful leadership which is
moving around in a circle of condemning
previous governments for all the current

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problems instead of focusing on solving those

problems.

The people of Pakistan also have to play their

role in establishing a strong setup by remaining
aware about their rights and not getting used by
political parties for their interests. Protests are a
great way to pressurize the ruling powers to
accept the demands of the people. Hence, when
public choose to protest against the policies of
the government, the agenda must be clear to
resolve the issue and not to put undue pressure
on the government. Coming on the roads on the
call of opposition parties for their vested
interests is not a wise move as it has long term
effects on the very people of the country.
Understanding and realizing that the
representatives are responsible for their acts
and should not try to take support of public to
sabotage the rule of their rivals will empower us
and make the political leaders know that they
have to work for the benefit of the public by
following the rules set in the constitution. Only
then, the country will be a true democracy.

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The 3RD Wave of Rabia Khan Kalhoro

COVID-19: The More than a year into the pandemic, Pakistan is

incessantly fighting against the fast-spreading

Government’s
disease. This time, the capacity of
hospitalization has been diversified in
comparison to earlier two waves. According to

Response and the official data, the positivity rate of corona

virus touched the highest rate of daily infections
to 11.62% and a high mortality rate in the month

Vaccination of April as the 3rd wave grasps the country. With

the advent of British and South African variants
of the virus and ease of restrictions, Pakistan
has seen spike in number of deaths in third
wave, specifically, in the months of April and
May. It is heartening to see that Pakistan has
been able to control the pandemic much better
than most of countries -- as acknowledged by
Bill Gates, World Health Organization (WHO) and
World Economic Forum (WEF). Nonetheless,
there is no room for complacency nor it is a
good time to relax restrictions, not unless the
70% of population is inoculated against the
Corona Virus.

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I. Lockdown Policy
Whilst, resources and capacity are limited,
authorities cannot afford to go for a complete
lockdown. Therefore, they opted to implement
a smart-lockdown policy. As per decision of
NCOC, the government in the 3rd wave has
started to impose micro lockdowns in hotspot
areas where the positivity ratio may surpass 10
per cent. Commercial activities, especially all
the markets and shops of less essential
services are to be closed by 8.pm, but the
medical stores and pharmacies will remain
open. All indoor and outdoor dining are pro-
hibited. Also, the public transport in intra-city,
inter-city and inter-province has been limited.
Whereas, public and private offices are
ordered to function under normal working
hours.
II. Economic Measures
Our Prime minister has always ensured to
follow two-Pronged strategy, keeping the
concern for economic downturn while fighting
with covid-19. Pakistan has formally launched
innumerable schemes to tackle economic
plight being faced by people of Pakistan
owing to the pandemic crisis. The government
of Pakistan has provided various financial
stimulus packages and relief programmes.
According to World Bank, “Ehsaas Emergency
Cash Programme has been listed among top
global social protection measures. Pakistan’s
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strategy to tackle pandemic and keep the
economy afloat, not only protected masses
from worst fall-outs of Covid-19 which are felt
globally but also garnered worldwide recogni-
tion”.
III. Implementation of SOPs
In 3rd wave of Covid-19, during lockdown Paki-
stan army has been deployed in different parts
of the country to ensure the stern implementa-
tion of SOPs in the marketplaces and elsewhere.
Patrolling by police is ongoing to make sure all
the less essential shops are being closed by 10
PM. According to dawn sources, authorities have
raided several different markets and also
imposed fines on shops, especially in Murree
and Rawalpindi, who were defying the SOPs.
Though nearly 300 men were arrested in Karachi
for allegedly breaching the Covid-19 SOPs, they
were released by Karachi court on the basis of
humanitarian grounds.
IV. Media and Production of
Educational Materials
In month of Ramdhan, different advertisements,
shows, and informative programmes encour-
aged healthy practices, emphasized adherence
to SOPs and emboldened people to get vacci-
nated. Religious leaders and influential people
are being used to provide information with key
preventive messages on the Covid-19 and need
for vaccination.
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CSS Magazine Edition 12

V. Regular Testing
According to the NCOC, headed by Minister for Planning Development Reforms and special Initiatives
Asad Umar shared a data which exhibits that regular testing capacity witnessed over 30 times surge
during last wave. Not only this, but many new labs are being established in order to conduct more
tests.

Vaccination
Pakistan has received millions of vaccines which are: Sinopharm, Sinovac, Oxford-AstraZeneca,
Sputnik V or Pfizer-BioNTech. In May 2021, around 100,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine through
COVAX reached Islamabad. According to Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal
Sultan, an agreement has been signed between Pfizer and National Disaster management authority
(NDMA) on June 2021 to supply 13 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Besides, in the current
budget, the government has allocated around $1bn for procurement of vaccinations. Recently, Paki-
stan signed a deal with CanSino Bio to import vaccine in bulk to process and package vaccine locally
and branding it as PakVac as well. Pakistan has approached their creditors, such as World Bank and
Asian Development Bank (ADB), to lend credit so that timely payments can be made to vendors for a
smooth supply of vaccines. Moreover, the government has allocated Rs100 billion for Covid-19 Emer-
gency Fund.

According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), around 300,000 individuals are
fully vaccinated and 250,000 have received their first dose in 24 hours. Moreover, a total of 14.8 million
doses have been administered by June 29th 2021, of which 2.8 million are fully vaccinated.

Data: National Command and Operation Centre, 29 June 2021.

Furthermore, the response to vaccine in Pakistan is quite slow because people are reluctant to get
vaccinated owing to the widely circulated conspiracy theories. The main reason behind the slow
vaccination drive is due to ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ caused by lack of awareness among masses and the
government’s inability to educate them properly. These rumors and misinformation have created a
chaos in the society regarding the vaccination drive.

SUGGESTIONS
Although the country has taken very prudent steps to counter the pandemic, there are still some
areas of concerns, particularly administration of vaccines. The population of Pakistan is 220 million
and only an insignificant number of people has been vaccinated. A report published in an American
Publication has said that it will take a decade to vaccinate 75 pc Pakistani population at the current
rate. Compare this to India, where it will take 1.6 years only to get its adult population fully vaccinated.
Therefore, some of the much-needed measures are enumerated below to address the issue:

a) Procure and manufacture more Covid-19 vaccinations.

b) Keep the conspiracies at bay by creating mass awareness through social media and other media
outlets.
c) Promote vaccination administration through prominent social and political figures and religious
scholars.
d) Grant incentives to people like Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine who announced five US
$1 million lottery prizes for those who are vaccinated.
e) Award some tax exemptions to people who are fully vaccinated.

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

First, please tell us about yourself.

My name is Awaid Irshad. I am from Lahore. I also studied abroad. I topped the CSS examination
in 2017 and got allocated to the Pakistan Administrative Service.

2. What is CSS?
It is an examination through which the government hires bureaucrats for 12 occupational groups
based on merit. There are three phases of this examination: written, psychological, and interview.
After passing all three phases, you are allocated to any of the 12 groups according to your
standing on the merit list.
3. Why should one opt for CSS and who should attempt CSS?
One should opt for CSS to create a social impact, for his social respect, and your
self-actualization. Every single graduate must attempt CSS because it is the only examination in
Pakistan that can change your entire life. You learn so many things during its preparation that
you end becoming a socially conscious citizen of Pakistan.
4. How much time is required to prepare for CSS?
I spent 9 months for the preparation of CSS. People do it in 6 months as well with targeted
preparation.

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

5. How difficult is CSS?

CSS is not difficult at all. I am not saying this because I pass it, rather I am saying this because
there isn’t any rocket science in it. CSS is not a very difficult exam but it requires some habits
which help to sail through it: self-discipline, practice, flawless writing, and analytical skills.

6. How to choose optional subjects?

There are six optional subjects in CSS. It has structured criteria which include:
a. Academic Background
b. The subjects which you want to study
c. Length syllabus
d. The scoring trend (Not very much important)

7. How to start preparing for CSS?

Start with easy subjects. Those subjects which you can easily absorb. Move from easy towards
different subjects. Also start with reading Dawn newspaper to get the know-how to the current
national and international issues. Along with these two things, work on your English writing
expression. My recommendation is that you must start from my course of Pakistan Affairs
because it is very easy to absorb. We have studied this subject throughout our academic careers.
Then, go towards other subjects. This is, in my opinion, a prudent approach.

8. How many hours per day should I give to CSS?

According to my opinion, hours per day do not matter at all. Make your schedule according to
deadlines. You should know how much you are going to cover in a single day. If you can cover it
in 5-6 hours, you are good to go. Conversely, if it takes 9-10 hours, you must study 10 hours per
day. Thus, hours per day are not important but deadlines are.

9. What skill level of English is required to attempt CSS?

Remember, very difficult English is not required in CSS. It is a myth that you must write flowery
English. The required skill level is correct English. Correct English can be simple. However, sentence
structure and grammar must be flawless. This level of English is required in CSS.

10. How should I improve my English?

The more you listen to English, the more you speak English. On the other hand, the more you read
English, the more you write English. This is a psychological phenomenon. To proliferate English,
speak, listen, read, and write English as much as you can. This is the best way to be proficient in
English.

11. Why is there such a high failing ratio in CSS?

Mostly, people fail in the English Essay. The reason is that people don’t have flawless English.
Moreover, a majority of aspirants fail to comprehend the essay statement. Further, a holistic
strategy is not followed to cover the CSS course. These factors, along with others, are responsible
for such a high failing ratio in CSS.

12. What is your message for CSS aspirants?

Attempt this exam but with complete preparation. You are that segment of our society that will
determine the future of Pakistan. If you work hard, you will take part in the success of Pakistan.
Help others as well during or after your preparation. This chain will help to induct the best minds
into the bureaucracy of the country. So, work hard. The sky is the limit!

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48
CSS Magazine Edition 12

CSS Magazine edition 12

MONTHLY
PRESS REVIEW

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CSS Magazine Edition 12
The long
goodbye to
covid-19
Published in the Economist
WHEN WILL it end? For a year
and a half, covid-19 has
gripped one country after
another. Just when you think
the virus is beaten, a new
variant comes storming back,
more infectious than the last.
And yet, as the number of
vaccinations passes 3bn,
glimpses of post-covid life are
emerging. Already, two things
are clear: that the last phase of
the pandemic will be
drawn-out and painful; and
that covid-19 will leave behind a
different world.
This week The Economist
publishes a normalcy index,
which reflects both these
realities. Taking the
pre-pandemic average as 100,
it tracks such things as flights,
traffic and retailing across 50
countries comprising 76% of
Earth’s population. Today it
stands at 66, almost double the
level in April 2020.
Yet the ravages of covid-19 are
still apparent in many countries.
Consider our index’s worst
performer, Malaysia, which is
suffering a wave of infections
six times more deadly than the
surge in January and scores
just 27. The main reason for this
is that vaccination remains
incomplete.
In sub-Saharan Africa, suffering
a lethal outbreak, just 2.4% of
the population aged over 12 has
had a single dose. Even in
America, where vaccines are
plentiful, only around 30% of
Mississippians and Alabamans
are fully protected. Although the
world is set to produce around
11bn doses of vaccine this year,
it will be months before all
those jabs find arms, and
longer if rich countries hog
doses on the off-chance that
they may need them.
The lack of vaccination is
aggravated by new variants.
Delta, first spotted in India, is
two to three times more
infectious than the virus that
came out of Wuhan. Cases
spread so fast that hospitals
can rapidly run out of beds and
medical staff (and sometimes
oxygen), even in places where
30% of people have had jabs.
Today’s variants are spreading
even among the vaccinated. No
mutation has yet put a dent in
the vaccines’ ability to prevent
almost all severe disease and
death. But the next one might.
None of this alters the fact that
the pandemic will eventually
abate, even though the virus
itself is likely to survive. For
those fortunate enough to have
been fully vaccinated and to
have access to new treatments,
covid-19 is already fast
becoming a non-lethal disease.
In Britain, where Delta is
dominant, the fatality rate if you
become infected is now about
0.1%, similar to seasonal flu: a
danger, but a manageable one.
If a variant required a
reformulated vaccine, it would
not take long to create.
However, as vaccines and
treatments become more
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plentiful in rich countries, so will
anger at seeing people in poor
ones die for want of supplies.
That will cause friction between
rich countries and the rest.
Travel bans will keep the two
worlds apart.
Eventually flights will resume,
but other changes in behaviour
will last. Some will be profound.
Take America, where the
booming economy surged past
its pre-pandemic level back in
March, but which still scores
only 73 on our index—partly
because big cities are quieter,
and more people work from
home.
So far it looks as if the legacy of
covid-19 will follow the pattern
set by past pandemics.
Nicholas Christakis of Yale
University identifies three shifts:
the collective threat prompts a
growth in state power; the
overturning of everyday life
leads to a search for meaning;
and the closeness of death
which brings caution while the
disease rages, spurs audacity
when it has passed. Each will
mark society in its own way.
When people in rich countries
retreated into their houses
during lockdowns, the state
barricaded itself in with them.
During the pandemic
July Edition’21
50
CSS Magazine Edition 12
governments have been the
main channel for information,
the setters of rules, a source of
cash and, ultimately, providers
of vaccines. Very roughly,
rich-country governments paid
out 90 cents for every dollar of
lost output. Slightly to their own
amazement, politicians who
restricted civil liberties found
that most of their citizens
applauded.
There is a vigorous academic
debate about whether
lockdowns were “worth it”. But
the big-government legacy of
the pandemic is already on
display. Just look at the
spending plans of the Biden
administration. Whatever the
problem—inequality, sluggish
economic growth, the security
of supply chains—a bigger,
more activist government
seems to be the preferred
solution.
There is also evidence of a
renewed search for meaning.
This is reinforcing the shift
towards identity politics on both
the right and the left, but it goes
deeper than that. Roughly one
in five people in Italy and the
Netherlands told Pew, a pollster,
that the pandemic had made
their countries more religious. In
Spain and Canada about two in
five said family ties had
become stronger.
Leisure has been affected, too.
People say they have had 15%
more time on their hands. In
Britain young women spent 50%
longer with their nose in a book.
Literary agents have been
swamped with first novels.
Some of this will fade: media
firms fear an “attention
recession”. But some changes
will stick.
For example, people may
decide they want to escape
pre-pandemic drudgery at
work, and tight labour markets
may help them. In Britain
applications to medical school
were up by 21% in 2020. In
America business creation has
been its highest since records
began in 2004. One in three
Americans who can work from
home wants to do so five days
a week, according to surveys.
Some bosses are ordering
people into the office; others
are trying to entice them in.
Those who don’t die
roll the dice
It is still unclear whether the
appetite for risk is about to
rebound. In principle, if you
survive a life-threatening
disease, you may count
yourself as one of the lucky
ones and the devil may care. In
the years after the Spanish flu a
century ago, a hunger for
excitement burst onto the
scene in every sphere, from
sexual licence to the arts to the
craze for speed. This time the
new frontiers could range from
space travel to genetic
engineering, artificial
intelligence and enhanced
reality.
Even before the coronavirus
came along, the digital
revolution, climate change and
China’s rise seemed to be
bringing the
post-second-world-war,
Western-led order to an end.
The pandemic will hasten the
transformation.
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After US
Withdrawal
From
Afghanistan,
What Role Will
Kazakhstan
Play?
Published in The Diplomat
The greater Central Asia region
is preparing for the departure of
U.S. troops from Afghanistan by
September. While Washington’s
“forever war” is coming to an
end, regional governments are
concerned about a potential
spillover of the violence that is
(once again) brewing in
Afghanistan. One of those
nations, Kazakhstan, has
several initiatives, including
promoting the education of
Afghan women and defense
cooperation with Afghan forces,
to help Afghanistan with the
rough times ahead.
Washington and Nur-Sultan
discussed the future of
Afghanistan in mid-June, when
President Kassym-Jomart
Tokayev and U.S. Special
Representative for Afghanistan
Zalmay Khalilzad met in the
Kazakh capital. During a June 13
press conference Khalilzad
vowed that Washington and
Nur-Sultan would continue
working “together to promote
peace, a specialty of
Kazakhstan, and at the same
time to work together to provide
for better economic future and
to help the people of
Afghanistan.”
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CSS Magazine Edition 12
Khalilzad was asked about
ongoing speculation regarding
potential U.S. military bases in
Central Asia, which could
conduct counterterrorism
operations in Afghanistan.
(Such bases are not without
precedent). He did not directly
deny it as an option, though he
clarified that “I am not here to
announce anything or to say
we have reached [a] particular
agreement with [a] particular
country on particular military
steps at this time.” The two
governments discussed “peace
efforts, economic development
efforts, humanitarian efforts
and security needs … to help
Afghan security forces maintain
and sustain themselves and
also to respond to potential
terrorist threats together,” he
added. In any case, it is unlikely
that Nur-Sultan would agree to
host a U.S. military facility on a
permanent basis, give its close
relations with both Moscow and
Beijing.
Apart from working with
Washington, Nur-Sultan is
carrying out its own initiatives
vis-à-vis Afghanistan. One
noteworthy cause is the
education of Afghan women.
Thanks to a 2 million euro
program launched in 2019 by
the European Union, United
Nations Development Program,
and Kazakhstan, some 50
Afghan women are studying in
Kazakh (and Uzbek) universities.
The first group of 20 is
scheduled to graduate this
summer. This number includes
10 women who are currently
studying at AlmaU language
school; afterward “they will
continue their education at the
Kazakh-British Technical
University (KBTU) and study
technical and vocational
education and training (TVET)
programs in mining,” according
to Kazakh authorities. Many
other Afghan nationals have
also moved to Kazakhstan to
pursue studies.
As for the defense sector, a
cooperation agreement
between the two governments
was signed this month between
Afghan National Security
Advisor Hamdullah Mohib and
Kazakh Defense Minister Nurlan
Yermekbayev in Nur-Sultan. The
document will pave “the way for
military-to-military mutual
support across various
domains,” according to a June
18 statement by Afghanistan’s
Office of the National Security
Council (NSC), and involves the
possibility of “joint exercises,
military medicine cooperation,
equipment modernization,
logistical and technical support,
battle training and military
intelligence collaboration
between the two nations,”
reports the news and analysis
company Janes.
The significance of this defense
agreement should not be
exaggerated. While Kazakh
troops currently participate in
U.N. peace operations, most
notably in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and
previously participated in
Tajikistan during the 1990s civil
war and in Iraq in non-combat
operations, it is highly unlikely
that Nur-Sultan would authorize
troops to be deployed to a
high-risk conflict area like
Afghanistan and to participate
in combat operations. Training
and equipping Afghan troops is
a more likely scenario.
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Kazakhstan and Afghanistan
have forged close ties since the
fall of the Taliban in 2001 and
the rise of a somewhat
democratic government in
Kabul. Prior to the signing of the
aforementioned defense
cooperation agreement, in
February Tokayev and Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani had a
telephone conversation. The
chat addressed issues like “the
Afghan peace process [and]
regional issues. Both sides also
discussed [the] immediate
solution to the problem of
Afghan students in Kazakhstan,”
according to the Afghan
government. It is unclear what
exactly is the problem Kabul
refers to; it may have to do with
payments of their tuition, or
issues with the studies
themselves.
For the past two decades, much
has been discussed about the
role of Central Asian nations in
post-Taliban Afghanistan. Now,
with U.S. military presence
coming to an end, but with the
Taliban gaining once again
territory, regional initiatives will
become even more important
to support the Afghan
government and the
improvements achieved since
the war began. Without a doubt,
Kazakhstan and other regional
states cannot replace the U.S. in
Afghanistan, particularly in
military affairs. However, any
support for Afghanistan, the
government, and the general
population alike – like Afghan
women studying in Kazakh
universities – is significant.
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CSS Magazine Edition 12

Peace is possible the foundation of a true

democracy — that the majority,
today’s relationship with the
Palestinians. The latter live
in a not extremist violent fanatics, under a brutal occupation and

Palestine-Israel rules. apartheid system that denies

them basic rights, but most
confederation Equality is the real issue that is Israelis don’t care.
absent from the relationship
between Palestinians and Levy and others have
Published in Arab News
Israelis. As a consequence, the acknowledged that the push for
idea of a confederation — in a two-state solution is really
osef Avesar has proved one
which the two sides come just a means of stalling,
thing with his experimental
together with their individual preserving the status quo.
Israeli Palestinian
identities and narratives intact, Israelis hope to strengthen their
Confederation (IPC) plan, which
while agreeing to recognize apartheid separation policies
he came up with several years
each other and work together that deny non-Jews equal
ago: If you leave it up to the
with one voice to bring about rights, while Palestinian
people, and remove the
peaceful change — is very extremists, who have
politicians, the chances of
attractive. succeeded in undermining
achieving peace will be so
hopes of genuine peace, aim to
much greater.
In other words, the two-state one day defeat Israel and
solution, in the IPC’s mind, is impose their tyranny.
Avesar has shown that, when
dead. That was hammered
you bring Israelis and
home by Israeli journalist The encouraging aspect of the
Palestinians together on an
Gideon Levy, who was a guest IPC gathering of Jews and
equal platform of mutual
speaker during this week’s Palestinians was that most of
respect, peace is very possible.
meeting. Levy noted that the them were so hopeful and
You will still have divisions in a
two-state solution is a dream respectful. A few voices
confederation, but it makes it
that was destroyed by representing the old and failed
far easier to bring the majority
extremists on both sides and activism joined and continued
of moderate voices together
that Israel’s government never to challenge and undermine
and neutralize the extremists,
intended to implement it or their efforts, but it didn’t work.
who counter their small
even support it. The Israeli Moderates have to forge ahead
numbers with violence and
government “never meant to and see peace in its true terms.
hate.
go for the two-state solution,” Both sides need to respect each
he said. other. They need to see the
I watched this week as 75
other side as being equal. They
members of the IPC achieved
The IPC believes that, once you need to compromise and not
more in a 90-minute video
achieve equality, you begin a insist on rigid, hard-line
conference than all of the failed
process — a chain reaction — dictates.
Israeli-Palestinian peace
that leads to justice, which then
negotiations since Anwar
leads to peace. It was The one-state solution that the
Sadat’s 1979 surrender — a total
refreshing to listen to the IPC’s IPC advocates is not the same
of 42 years of tragic turmoil and
members, who have elected as that often advocated by
heightened frustration.
their own separate (Israeli and anti-Israeli extremists who want
Palestinian) “confederated” to take control. What the IPC
The IPC has summarized the
presidents and parliament. advocates is one state in which
entire conflict into one primary
both the Israelis and the
goal: To focus on the principle
The current so-called peace Palestinians have equal voices.
of equal rights. From there,
process is a deception that
Israelis and Palestinians can
doesn’t exist. The Israelis live in It would not be easy to
disagree on the issues without
total denial of the reality of implement a one person, one
violence and work together on

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CSS Magazine Edition 12
vote system and include not
only all the people in Israel but
also all those in Palestine (both
within Israel and in the
Occupied Territories). But Levy
was quick to point out that, in
the 1980s, no one believed that
the people of South Africa
would ever achieve one person,
one vote — an equality that
ended apartheid and opened
the door to true democracy.
The other nice thing about the
IPC is that the dialogue is
respectful. While there are
divisions, people disagree
without being disagreeable.
In compromise, not all injustice
will be mitigated and
Palestinians and Israelis will
have to live with the fact that
history has imposed some
realities that cannot change.
Realism means resetting and
restarting everything, looking
forward rather than always
looking back at the ugly, painful
past.
Drone Strike
Blasts Open a
New Front in the
Kashmir Dispute
Published in Foreign Policy
Late last week, in the small
hours of the morning on
Sunday, two unmanned aerial
vehicles successfully detonated
two improvised explosive
devices at an Indian Air Force
base in Jammu in the disputed
territory of Jammu and
Kashmir. No deaths, as of yet,
have been reported. But some
Indian Air Force personnel were
apparently injured as a
consequence of these attacks.
And not surprisingly, given that
the base is a mere handful of
miles from the border with
Pakistan, most observers
believe Islamabad was
involved—a suspicion that does
seem justified given the recent
development of Pakistan’s
drone program.
The recent drone attacks were
the first of their kind, even
though Pakistani surveillance
drones have, in the past,
hovered around the border and
even intruded into
Indian-controlled territory in
Jammu and Kashmir. The
attacks represent both a
continuation and a new form of
escalation—namely, more
direct confrontation rather than
through proxies—in a conflict
that has spanned decades.
Late last week, in the small
hours of the morning on
Sunday, two unmanned aerial
vehicles successfully detonated
two improvised explosive
devices at an Indian Air Force
base in Jammu in the disputed
territory of Jammu and
Kashmir. No deaths, as of yet,
have been reported. But some
Indian Air Force personnel were
apparently injured as a
consequence of these attacks.
And not surprisingly, given that
the base is a mere handful of
miles from the border with
Pakistan, most observers
believe Islamabad was
involved—a suspicion that does
seem justified given the recent
development of Pakistan’s
drone program.
The recent drone attacks were
the first of their kind, even
though Pakistani surveillance
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drones have, in the past,
hovered around the border and
even intruded into
Indian-controlled territory in
Jammu and Kashmir. The
attacks represent both a
continuation and a new form of
escalation—namely, more
direct confrontation rather than
through proxies—in a conflict
that has spanned decades.
Since the outbreak of an
indigenous insurgency in
Indian-controlled Kashmir in
1989, Pakistan has pursued a
proxy war against India using a
range of jihadi militants who
have wreaked havoc in the
region. As recently as 2019, a
Pakistan-based terrorist group,
Jaish-e-Mohammed, launched
a brazen strike on an Indian
paramilitary convoy in
Pulwama, killing more than 40
personnel. In the wake of the
attack, India carried out its first
airstrike across the
India-Pakistan border since the
1971 war. Pakistan responded
with an air attack of its own.
Despite understandable fears
of escalation, including to the
nuclear level, both sides
managed to step away from
the precipice. While a wider
conflict was avoided, low-level
attacks carried out by their
respective armed forces rather
than proxies across the volatile
Line of Control, the de facto
international border between
India and Pakistan in Kashmir,
continued apace. Then, in late
February of this year, most likely
as a consequence of
back-channel prodding by the
United States, the two sides had
agreed to a cease-fire there.
There have been no reports of
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CSS Magazine Edition 12
any significant cease-fire
violations, but if the drone
attacks can be traced back to
Pakistan, all bets are off.
For one, the drones pose a new,
lethal threat to both Indian
forward bases as well as Indian
military forces deployed along
the troubled border. Unless
Indian forces manage to
successfully intercept one or
more of these intruding drones
and can thereby demonstrate
that they originated in Pakistan,
Islamabad will be able to
maintain some semblance of
plausible deniability. At best,
New Delhi, though aggrieved,
will only be able to wag an
accusing finger at its
nettlesome adversary.
The drone strikes have also
revealed an important gap in
India’s defensive capabilities. At
the moment, other than simply
using small arms to shoot down
the drones, India has no viable
tactics at its command to stop
these potentially deadly
attacks. It could, of course,
adopt an aggressive stance to
punish and deter future attacks.
However, to adopt such a
strategy it would need to
acquire new capabilities
allowing it to offer a punitive
response to any drone
incursions, especially if they
inflict fatalities, and without
necessarily waiting for
confirmation of a drone’s origin.
The object of such an approach
would be to inflict such high
costs on the adversary that any
benefits from the initial foray
would be vastly outmatched.
This particular strategy, while
tempting, is hardly free of
potentially risky consequences.
It could very easily lead to a
spiraling escalation. Pakistani
military commanders, fearing
that the retaliatory attacks may
be a prelude to a wider conflict,
may have less incentive for
restraint. Consequently, what
may have begun as a limited
probe designed to test India’s
military readiness and
capabilities could potentially
lead to much broader conflict.
To avoid such an escalation,
India might wish to avoid
deterrence by punishment and
pursue deterrence by denial
instead. To that end, it would
need to make significant
investments in new air defense
capabilities designed to shoot
down drones the moment they
intrude into Indian territory.
Unfortunately, even though
both India’s more powerful
adversary, China, and Pakistan
have been investing in military
drone technology (and
Islamabad has received a fair
amount of drone tech from
China), New Delhi has lagged in
acquiring the requisite
capabilities to tackle this
emergent threat.
The drone attacks on the
Jammu air base strongly
suggest that, even though
Pakistan may have reined in its
proxy forces, a new front may
be opening up in the conflict
over Kashmir. To ensure that
the recent cease-fire
agreement, which opened the
prospect of renewed
negotiations to end the Kashmir
dispute, does not vanish, India
will need to devise an
imaginative strategy to cope
with what appears to be a
looming threat.
nearpeer.org
Iran under a
conservative
president still
needs the JCPOA
Published in Al Jazeera
The low turnout in the recent
Iranian presidential election is
sounding alarm bells for Iranian
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, who repeatedly
asked the electorate to go to
polling stations as a show of
defiance against foreign
powers, especially the United
States, which is often dubbed
the Great Satan in Iranian
political vocabulary.
But with a participation rate of
less than 50 percent, the lowest
in the history of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, no such
heroics can be claimed.
Instead, President-elect
Ebrahim Raisi will hold the
unenviable record of receiving
the lowest popular vote for any
president in Iran since 1979. His
is a hollow victory that does not
generate political legitimacy for
the Iranian regime.
For more than 50 percent of the
electorate, the Islamic regime
has been a failure and a source
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of entrenched misery. High
inflation, economic stagnation,
unemployment, nepotism and
the absence of avenues for
cultural and political expression
have driven the population to
the brink. The mismanagement
of the COVID-19 pandemic,
which made Iran a regional
source of infection in 2020, was
the last straw.
The Iranian leadership is well
aware of the extent of popular
alienation and the potential for
political unrest. In recent years,
Iran has been rocked by a
series of spontaneous protests
over economic woes; in late
2017, even a spike in the price of
eggs triggered popular
discontent.
That is why Raisi’s predecessor,
President Hassan Rouhani, was
determined to address
underlying economic
challenges. He had Khamenei’s
support to find a compromise
with the West on the hot issue
of Iran’s nuclear programme. By
the time Rouhani took office in
2013, the programme was a
matter of national pride but
also of increasing tension with
Western governments,
especially the US.
In 2015, he had a popular
mandate and the approval of
the Supreme Leader to show
“heroic flexibility” and sign the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA) in return for the
removal of sanctions that were
crippling the Iranian economy.
Unfortunately for Rouhani and
the Iranian economy, sanctions
were never fully lifted and in
2018 then-US President Donald
Trump formally withdrew from
the nuclear deal.
This was a humiliating
experience for Rouhani and
other pragmatists who had
risked their political future on
the JCPOA and sanctions relief.
The hardliners, including
Ebrahim Raisi, felt vindicated
when Trump withdrew from the
deal, ridiculing Rouhani’s team
for their naivety.
But the issue has not gone
away. The JCPOA is under
renewed negotiation since
President Joe Biden took office
in Washington, with the
prospects of its revival. Raisi,
who will take office in August,
will inherit unfinished business.
Despite Raisi’s attacks on
Rouhani for being weak in
international talks and
proclamations of entering the
international stage from a
position of strength, he
subscribes to the unspoken
consensus in the leadership
that Iran’s economy is in
desperate need of
resuscitation. Ahead of the
elections, he expressed
commitment to the JCPOA,
despite having criticised it in
previous years.
Therefore, he is likely to follow
through with the deal when he
assumes the mantle of the
presidency. More importantly,
the Supreme Leader. whose
decisions set the agenda, has
already endorsed the deal and
is keen to see the benefits flow
through to the economy and
calm the pent-up popular fury
with Iran’s economic decline.
While it is not clear how the
incoming president will
manage JCPOA negotiations,
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that he is generally open to its
revival gives the Biden
administration an opening to
make an offer to the Iranian
leadership they cannot afford
to miss. By pushing through
talks in Vienna, the US can offer
meaningful sanctions relief,
including access to global
finance, which Iran desperately
needs. In return, the JCPOA will
set in place a strict inspection
regime and limits on uranium
enrichment to ensure Iran does
not pursue a nuclear weapons
programme.
The deal was negotiated in 2015
as the best mechanism to
monitor Iran’s nuclear
programme and as an early
warning system against
weaponisation. If renegotiated,
Raisi will likely abide by it.
The decline of the political
fortune of Iranian pragmatists
should not distract Washington.
Offering real economic benefits
in a revived JCPOA is the best
way to ensure Iran’s
compliance, especially if
accompanied by a unilateral US
gesture of goodwill. Raisi is not
in a position to reject realistic
prospects for economic
recovery, a topic so central to
the Iranian leadership’s own
survival.
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The real risk to Instead the real threat comes

after votes have been cast. In
win November’s election and
just short of half think the result
America’s Arizona, for example, the should have been overturned.

democracy legislature wants to limit the

independence of the chief That leaves Trump-sceptics
elections officer; a state among the Republican elite in a
Published in The Economist
representative introduced a law familiar dilemma. Caught
letting the legislature overturn between their primary voters
HAVING CAMPAIGNED for the
the results of a presidential and loyalty to the constitution,
presidency on a promise to
election, and then started most have concluded that,
rejuvenate democracy around
campaigning to oversee unless the Capitol is under
the world, Joe Biden finds
elections herself. In Georgia the siege, the best course of action
himself in a battle to defend it
state legislature can now is simply to stay silent.
at home. In June, 200
replace the leadership of
prominent American scholars
county election boards. Texas is Yet the threats from Mr Trump
of democracy signed a letter
considering a bill that makes it and the threat to the
warning that changes to state
easier to prosecute election constitution operate on
laws are “transforming several
officials. Across the country, the different time-scales. Mr Trump
states into political systems
officials who administer may or may not run again. By
that no longer meet the
elections in states where contrast, the changes to state
minimum conditions for free
Republicans hold sway have election machinery being made
and fair elections”. Another
been attacked for upholding by Republican legislators will be
longtime student of American
the election results. Many are at in place in 2024 and beyond for
democracy, the Republican
risk of being replaced. a candidate of either party to
leader in the Senate, Mitch
exploit. To understand why this
McConnell, said in January that
These might seem like distant, is so troubling, consider three
if an election could be
bureaucratic changes. In fact, fail-safe mechanisms built into
overturned by fact-free
they raise the chances of a American elections.
allegations from the losing side,
contested election that the
“Our democracy would enter a
courts cannot sort out. They The first is the principle that the
death spiral.” Yet that is just
weaken America’s voting loser concedes. Mr Trump
what his party is facilitating.
system in ways that will outlast ditched that one in 2020. The
the hysteria over the 2020 second is the integrity of local
For Democrats the threat to
result. election officials, no matter
elections is about who can cast
what their partisan allegiances.
votes. They decry changes to
The inspiration behind this is Despite coming under great
laws on identification, postal
Donald Trump, who continues pressure to do otherwise last
ballots and so on, which they
to use every chance he has to year, they stood firm. As a
call “the new Jim Crow”.
insist that the election was reward, their powers have been
Although there is no excuse for
stolen. Though it is hard to know stripped away or new felonies
restricting such things as
how seriously to take him, Mr created that may be used to
Sunday voting, which is popular
Trump is already holding browbeat them. Many
with African-American
campaign rallies for 2024 (to Republican officials who
churches, their fears are
win the White House for the certified the election results
overblown. Under the old Jim
third time in a row, naturally). have been censured by their
Crow, only 2% of
local party committees and
African-Americans were
Claiming to be winning while have also received death
registered to vote in some
actually losing might seem a threats. Brad Raffensperger,
southern states. By contrast,
joke. Yet most Republican Georgia’s Republican secretary
political scientists are unsure
voters take it literally. Two in of state, was notable in 2020 for
whether today’s schemes will
three think that Mr Biden did not his willingness to stand up to Mr
affect turnout at all.

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Trump when he was directly
asked to “find” the votes
needed to overturn the results.
Georgia’s state legislature has
responded by taking away
some of his authority.
That leaves the third
fail-safe—the courts. These too
performed well under stress,
and they probably would do so
the next time round. Yet to put
the primary responsibility for
making elections legitimate
onto the judicial branch in
election after election risks
overloading it and, ultimately,
breaking it. How long would it
be before a Supreme Court
decision were ignored?
Catastrophising about
democracy in America has
been common on parts of the
right: remember “the Flight 93
Election” in 2016, which called
on patriots to storm the cockpit
to deny Hillary Clinton the
presidency? It has since spread
to the left and centre, too. Talk
of democracy in peril raises the
spectre of a country under an
autocrat of the type renounced
on the Fourth of July 1776. The
greater risk is that the chaos
following the 2020 election
becomes normal. By recent
standards 2020 was not that
close. Imagine a contest so
tight that no national
consensus could settle on who
was ahead. America would be,
to quote Mr McConnell again,
on “a poisonous path where
only the winners of an election
actually accept the result”.
My party, right or wrong
Republican Party elites are in a
bind of their own making. Under
pressure from Mr Trump and his
allies, state legislatures are
making changes that will
weaken American democracy.
The solution is for leaders to
uphold the norm that election
administrators are above party.
However, they have indulged
the lie of a stolen election to
such an extent that affirming
the fraud has become an
essential qualification for
administering the next vote.
The silent non-Trump faction of
the Republican Party may hope
that all this will blow over and
that those sounding the alarm
about democracy are
exaggerating. They may believe
they can play a greater role in
safeguarding America so long
as they stay on good terms with
their base. Yet that logic has
proved faulty since Mr Trump’s
inauguration in 2016.
Meanwhile, the composition of
their party is changing around
them. It would be safer for the
constitution, and more in
keeping with the flag-waving
spirit of the Fourth of July, for
Republicans to speak out now
before speaking out becomes
even harder.
The climate
crisis is a crime
story
Published in The Guardian
Every person on Earth today is
living in a crime scene.
This crime has been going on
for decades. We see its effects
in the horrific heat and wildfires
unfolding this summer in the
American West; in the
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megastorms that were so
numerous in 2020 that
scientists ran out of names for
them; in the global projections
that sea levels are set to rise by
at least 20 feet (6 metres). Our
only hope is to slow this
inexorable ascent so our
children may figure out some
way to cope.
This crime has displaced or
killed untold numbers of people
around the world, caused
billions of dollars in economic
damage and ravaged vital
ecosystems and wildlife. It has
disproportionately affected
already marginalised
communities around the world,
from farmers in coastal
Bangladesh, where the
fast-rising seas are salting the
soil and slashing rice yields, to
low-income residents of
Houston, Chicago and other
cities, whose neighbourhoods
suffer higher temperatures than
prosperous areas across town.
This crime threatens today’s
young people most of all and
calls into question the very
survival of the human
civilisation. And yet, the
criminals responsible for this
devastation are still at large.
Indeed, they continue to
perpetrate their crime, and
even make money from it, not
least because their crime
remains unknown to most of
the public.
This is enough to make your
blood boil, especially if you are
a parent. My daughter just
turned 16, and I have been
thinking about the safest place
she can spend her adult life
since she was a baby and I first
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started writing about adapting
to climate change. The orange
skies blanketing her hometown
of San Francisco after last
summer’s record wildfires were
a heartbreaking, infuriating sign
that California will not be that
safe haven.
The crime in question is the
fossil fuel industry’s 40 years of
lying about climate change.
Arguably the most
consequential corporate
deception in history, the
industry’s lies have had the
effect of blunting public
awareness and governmental
action against what scientists
say is now a full-fledged
climate emergency. As a
candidate in the 2020 US
presidential elections, Joe Biden
said he would support efforts to
prosecute the oil giants for their
lies. It remains to be seen
whether he will keep that
promise.
Journalists have dedicated
years to documenting the
crime scene evidence. In 2015,
an investigation by the
Columbia Journalism School
and the Los Angeles Times blew
the case open by tracing the
crime link to ExxonMobil, then
the world’s largest oil company.
Internal records showed that by
the late 1970s, Exxon’s own
scientists were briefing its top
executives that man-made
global warming was real,
potentially catastrophic, and
caused mainly by burning fossil
fuels. Climate activists seized
on the revelations, launching
the hashtag #ExxonKnew.
Further investigations found
that Chevron, Shell, and other
oil giants likewise knew that
their products threatened to
render the earth’s climate
uninhabitable. In short, it was
not just Exxon that knew. They
all knew.
And they all chose to lie
about it.
Beginning in the 1990s, oil
companies spent millions upon
millions of dollars on public
relations campaigns to confuse
the press, the public, and
policymakers about the
dangers posed by burning fossil
fuels. Their aim was “to
reposition global warming as
theory, not fact”, one planning
document stated. Front groups
and friendly politicians spread
the companies’ lies. News
outlets, especially in the United
States, swallowed and
regurgitated those lies to an
unsuspecting public.
Humanity ultimately wasted
precious decades arguing
about whether global warming
was real rather than defusing
the threat. Instead of launching
a transition to renewable
energy, the consumption of
fossil fuels increased. More than
half of the total greenhouse
gases now overheating the
planet were emitted after 1990
– after Exxon and other fossil
fuel giants privately knew what
havoc they were seeding.
Exxon “could have ended the
pretend debate over climate
change as early as the 1980s”,
author and activist Bill
McKibben later wrote. “When
scientists like NASA’s Jim
Hansen first raised public
awareness of climate change
[in 1988], think of what would
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have happened if Exxon’s chief
executive had gone to
Congress, too, and said that
their internal scientific efforts
show[ed] precisely the same
thing.”
While pockets of the American
public may already know about
big oil’s crime, the vast majority
of its victims almost certainly
do not. How could they? Big Oil’s
record of lying never became
part of the public narrative
about climate change, largely
because most news outlets did
not incorporate it into their
continuing coverage of climate
change.
The initial “Exxon knew”
revelations in 2015 received
relatively little follow-up
coverage beyond the outlets
that published them. Television,
which even in the internet era
remains the primary source of
news for most people, ignored
the revelations entirely. There
were a few stories in the
business press and
independent media, especially
years later when New York state
and other local governments
began suing oil companies for
damages. But the media as a
whole seems to have forgotten
that Big Oil’s climate lies ever
happened.
It is long past time to right these
wrongs. To date, the oil
companies, the executives in
charge of them, the
propagandists they have
employed and the politicians
they have funded have largely
escaped blame, much less had
to pay – whether through
financial penalties or prison
time – for the immense
damage they have done. News
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outlets also owe the public an
apology for mishandling this
story, along with a commitment
to doing much sharper
coverage in the future.
Humanity cannot get back the
40 years lost to Big Oil’s climate
lies. It is now beyond urgent
that rich and poor countries
alike quit fossil fuels in favour of
renewable energy and other
climate-smart practices.
Equally crucial is that we fortify
our communities against the
fearsome climate impacts that,
because of our decades of
delay, can no longer be
avoided.
All this will cost money – lots of
it. The world’s governments will
be arguing from now through
the make-or-break UN climate
summit in November about
who pays how much. Restoring
Big Oil’s lies to their rightful
place at the heart of the
climate story would offer an
answer to that riddle, one that
Biden should be pressed on: Big
Oil knew – shouldn’t Big Oil pay?
Hong Kong’s
regulator rightly
resists the bad
habits of
mainland
finance
Published in The Economist
IN HONG KONG these days few
dare challenge China.
Communist Party functionaries
have told the city’s judges to
advance China’s interests or
hang up their robes. Rights of
assembly to protest against
such infringements have been
suppressed. Yet, even as Beijing
bulldozes Hong Kong’s liberal
traditions, its kings of capitalism
are thriving. Investment banks
have cashed in as Chinese
companies have turned the city
into one of the world’s top
destinations for initial public
offerings (IPOs). Companies
have raised $88bn in share
sales in Hong Kong this year
alone, second only to America,
thanks to several large Chinese
IPOs. Over the past decade
Chinese property and tech
groups have kept Asia’s
US-dollar debt market
booming.
Look more closely, however, and
Hong Kong’s financial centre is
changing, too. Global banks say
that practices from mainland
China are seeping into the city.
These include a shift in the way
IPOs and bonds are
underwritten. Where banks’
roles were once clearly defined
early in the process, now a
handful of institutions, many of
them mainland-Chinese, fight
for top spots in transactions.
Many are accused of inflating
their orders for the securities in
order to impress clients. This
has reduced the transparency
of the process and disrupted
price discovery.
It may sound like a technicality,
but bankers fear that Hong
Kong’s standing as a global
financial centre will suffer.
Moreover, the situation mirrors
the city’s greater dilemma. A
cosmopolitan society with
globally recognised norms is
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rapidly losing ground to a
Chinese way of life.
Hong Kongers have struggled
to counter incursions from an
authoritarian system. By
contrast, the Securities and
Futures Commission (SFC), the
city’s independent market
regulator, may have found a
way to resist the bad habits of
mainland banks. It has
proposed a new code that
would set out the best practices
for underwriting shares and
bonds, such as declaring the
roles of banks and their fees
early in the process. It would
discourage the spread of
intentionally misleading
information on the demand for
the securities. These
safeguards, if the SFC is
powerful enough to enact and
enforce them, would stand as a
rare form of protection against
mainland influence.
Regulating mainland-Chinese
companies from Hong Kong is
not easy. The SFC has worked
hard to uphold its reputation as
an independent regulator. Yet
at times it has appeared to
come under pressure. In 2014 it
took action against a
short-seller for publishing a
negative research report about
a powerful property developer
from the mainland. It also fined
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Moody’s, a credit-rating
agency, for a report that listed
concerns about a number of
mainland groups. Critics said
the cases unfairly favoured
mainland companies and that
they had a chilling effect on
research that was critical of
them.
The regulator has, to its credit,
tried to crack down on the worst
offenders. The SFC has recently
sought to prosecute mainland
companies that lied in their
prospectuses. It has also gone
after their banks. In 2018 it
stripped one global investment
bank of its sponsor licence and
launched an investigation into
15 underwriters, most of them
Western banks, that had done
substandard due-diligence
work on IPOs.
Trust in Hong Kong is built
around its many independent
regulators. The Monetary
Authority, for instance, backs
the integrity of the Hong Kong
dollar. It has carefully
monitored local banks’
exposure to mainland
companies as China’s
economic growth has cooled.
The Companies Registry has
upheld a number of auditing
requirements for locally
registered companies—though
it recently reduced public
access to information on
companies’ beneficial owners, a
move that was seen as a step
backwards for corporate
transparency in the city.
The proposed code is a test of
whether the regulator can
uphold and improve standards
in politically fraught times.
Many international lenders,
investment bankers and fund
managers support the
measures. Not all mainland
institutions will resist. The
country’s largest investment
banks, such as Citic Securities
and CICC, have tended to
adopt global best practices as
they have done more business
overseas. The China Securities
Regulatory Commission is also
keen to clean up its own
system.
If the SFC can add best
practices to its code, the city’s
status as a financial hub will
stand a better chance of
surviving. Ordinary Hong
Kongers have less hope of
preserving their way of life.
Dangerous
ground
Published in Dawn
IT was evident a long time ago
that the hybrid experiment
came to us with a
manufacturing defect, and this
would cause it to be locked in
permanent firefighting mode. It
was evident to most who are
used to taking a dispassionate
view of political developments
in Pakistan, perhaps not to
those who were either invested
in the experiment, or otherwise
bought into its rhetorical
packaging.
The defect is a simple one.
Executive powers are vested in
one office (that of the prime
minister) but discharged from
multiple offices. Something very
similar was the case in the
Junejo government in the
mid-1980s, and the inability to
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reconcile this led to a near
record accumulation of public
debt at the time. The same
thing is happening today. The
split between who owns
executive powers and who
exercises them means there is
weak ownership over the
outcomes, with all sides telling
each other to restrain their
expenditures first before any
discipline can be brought
about. As a result, public debt
climbs as the government
resorts to borrowing to pay for
its indiscipline.
Bridging this divide was
originally Hafeez Shaikh’s job.
This is the function he had
performed in his last stint as
finance minister a decade ago,
when the split in executive
powers was also present, but
the PPP government found a
crafty way to move a large
chunk of the state’s resources
permanently into civilian hands
via the NFC award. Once this
was accomplished, the
government was happy to
bring in Shaikh and let him run
the finance ministry according
to the dictates of the IMF, which
is what his specialty is.
Much of what is happening
today has happened in the past
already, in bits and pieces. In
some cases even the names
are the same (Hafeez Shaikh
and Shaukat Tarin have both
seen this movie already). Just
like Junejo, Imran Khan is now
at the moment where he is
trying to claw back some space
for himself after having ceded
far too much ground back in
the summer of 2019, when Asad
Umar was removed and Shaikh
brought in and the country
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launched onto a vigorous
adjustment drive.
It began with the ouster of
Hafeez Shaikh, the attempt to
replace him with Hammad
Azhar, and the eventual
compromise on Shaukat Tarin.
A quick look at the budget helps
us see how this tug of war is
playing itself out. In the medium
term outlook (the so-called
‘green book) released last year,
for example, defence spending
was programmed to rise by
almost 18pc, or Rs230 billion
between FY21 and FY22. This
was to be followed by another
11pc increase in FY23, or
Rs182bn.
But by April of this year, when
the new green book was
released by Hafeez Shaikh,
these figures were brought
down significantly. Where last
year these projections showed
the defence budget at Rs1.53
trillion and Rs1.71tr for the next
two fiscal years, by April these
were brought down to Rs1.44tr
and Rs 1.64tr, down by more
than Rs100bn in each year.
Once Shaikh was out and
Hammad Azhar came in, a new
green book was released and
these allocations were
downgraded further to Rs1.33tr
and Rs1.5tr respectively, down
by Rs200bn from last year’s
programmed allocations. And
then Azhar was out and Tarin
was in, and defence allocations
showed a six per cent increase
for next year. Compare that to
the 18pc that they were seeking
in the green book released last
year and you’ll get a sense of
how far the military authorities
have had to scale back their
expectations.
Of course, these figures don’t
include military pensions, costs
of ongoing operations,
weapons procurement or
salaries of some special
divisions like the CPEC force
that are funded through
supplementary grants. But by
themselves they give us a
sense of the increases in
remuneration that uniformed
personnel were expecting, and
what they actually got. And
what they got is so far below
what they were expecting as of
last year that the figures alone
tell a story of a significant shift
taking place.
Meanwhile, remuneration of
civil service officers has risen by
more than 10pc, minimum
wage by 20pc, and allocations
for the prime minister’s special
schemes and projects have
absorbed around the same
amount as has been trimmed
from last year’s projected
defence allocations. Two years
ago, when Hafeez Shaikh was
brought in as finance minister, I
wrote a column titled ‘The
figurehead prime minister’, in
which I argued that Khan
seems to have been relegated
to a figurehead role now that
the purse strings have been
taken away from him. For two
years he chafed in that role,
and it was inevitable that a
moment would come when he
would try to claw back some of
the space that he had to cede
back then.
It would seem that moment has
now arrived. It began with the
ouster of Shaikh from the
finance ministry, the attempt to
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replace him with Hammad
Azhar, and the eventual
compromise on Shaukat Tarin
as the candidate all parties in
the executive could agree upon.
The budget was to be a test of
wills to see who will get how
much and it seems, from the
look of things at least, that the
prime minister has carried the
day and appropriated for his
own priorities the bulk of the
incremental resources of the
state.
Now he’s asserting himself on
the foreign policy stage too. You
can see this first in parrying the
pressure to normalise ties with
Israel, then in denying loudly
and repeatedly that his
government will grant basing
rights to the Americans post
Afghanistan withdrawal, and
more recently in loudly
protesting any pressure to
downgrade ties with China as a
quid pro quo for moving
towards a bilateral relationship
with the United States.
The ground ahead is
dangerous. But if the defect in
this set-up is to be fixed, Khan
has no choice but to walk this
road. Let’s see where it leads
him.
Pakistan’s
flawed Indian
policy
Published in The Express Tribune
Let me clarify at the outset that
war never solves anything, least
of all a tense relationship
between two nations.
Simultaneously, the other
extreme side of war; passivity
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and friendly gestures, are not
the answer either. The wrong
approach Pakistan adopts
when it comes to India is to
downgrade the success of
Indian ulterior motives and
sanitise the looming Indian
threat.
India keeps grabbing land in
Kashmir so that the land is
literally cultivated for harvesting
what would someday yield an
Indian identity of the place.
Pakistan’s response to that
could be summed up as
denialism. It keeps making
noise about Indian defeat in
Kashmir. What is worse is that it
creates a passivity inside the
minds of the Pakistani citizenry,
that India is already on its way
out of Kashmir because they
have lost it there. Nothing could
be further from the practical
ground realities though. India
may very well be right on the
path toward never reversing the
annexation of August 5, 2019.
The people of Kashmir hate the
Indians but the world is never
guided by democratic
principles. Brute force and
aggression always win.
The underestimation of the
Indian threat that is created
inside Pakistan’s psyche
because of the incessant noise
made in support of the case for
an Indian failure in Kashmir is
not going to serve Pakistan’s
interests. Foreign threats must
not be communicated to the
citizenry keeping the very
citizenry in mind. Bad news
must be conveyed
immediately. If our leadership
wants to act as a good friend of
its citizenry then it should tell
the harsh truth even if the
public doesn’t want to hear it.
The most potent knowledge in
winning against an enemy is
knowing its strength. Singing
songs about why India must
leave Kashmir is not going to
cut it.
Keeping the same domestic
audience in mind, Pakistan’s
foreign minister argues in
foreign media in a manner that
would shame the most
well-respected comedians.
Opinions can be democratic,
facts cannot. Facts must be told
regardless of public opinion.
Pakistan can learn from the
American mistake when it
comes to the makeup of foreign
threats.
The American government acts
on the other side of that
extreme. They maximise the
foreign threat and scare their
citizenry from small and at
times nonexistent threats, which
achieves the American
citizenry’s support of the
savagery that follows as
aggression in the name of
some nice-sounding cause
such as Responsibility to
Protect, defending human
rights and so forth. Pakistan
indirectly asks its citizens to
brush the threat under the
carpet to justify their policies
and diplomacy, while the
Americans ask their citizens to
imagine the threats out there to
justify the ensuing aggression.
Both are wrong because they
don’t tell the truth about the
nature and extent of the foreign
threat. The result is that
Americans are cognizant of the
imagined threat while
Pakistanis are incognizant of
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the real threat.
I am not making a case for
Pakistan to adopt the American
model of looking for enemies
and making case after case for
aggression, but rather that the
extreme passivity is wrong. That
is perhaps one contributing
factor in the success of the
fifth-generation warfare waged
inside Pakistan. The
fifth-generation warriors are
winning partly because there is
less noise about India being an
enemy and more noise about
sending friendly gestures
toward that enemy. And don’t
even start me on what case
Pakistan is making against
India globally.
A few tweets by Imran Khan
and some comic interviews by
the FM could be summed up as
Pakistan’s foreign diplomacy
regarding Indian atrocities. One
could put one’s money where
one’s mouth is but first the
mouth has to make the
required noise. Seeing no evil
doesn’t diminish the evil.
Absolute no to
the US
Published in The Nation
Pakistan’s first Prime Minister,
Liaquat Ali Khan, paid an official
visit of the US while declining
the Soviet Union’s invitation
earlier. Later Pakistan also
joined US sponsored
organisations like the South
East Asian Treaty Organization
(SEATO) and Central Treaty
Organization (CENTO). It was in
1962 that a U-2 spy plane took
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off from the Badaber base in KP
which was shot down by a
surface to air missile fired by
the Soviet Union. During the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
which changed the dynamics
of the region, Pakistan was
again in the US’ corner along
with other Middle Eastern
countries. The Afghan
Mujahideen who were waging a
jihad against Soviet forces were
supported by the US and the
West through the provision of
weapons and logistics through
Pakistan.
After the 9/11 attacks in New
York, Pennsylvania and
Washington, the US started
bombing Afghanistan and
landed its ground forces in
Afghanistan. That was the time
when the Musharraf
government agreed to side with
the US and also allowed the US
to use Pakistani bases and air
space. After 9/11, Pakistan itself
became a victim of terrorist
attacks who found refuge in
erstwhile FATA. The first US
drone strike inside Pakistan was
on June 18, 2004, in North
Waziristan and they continued
afterwards as well, killing many
innocent civilians outside of
terrorists alone. In November
2011, NATO forces killed 24
Pakistani soldiers in a missile
attack. As a retaliation to this
strike, Americans were asked to
vacate the Shamsi air base, 310
kilometer South West of Quetta.
American logistics supplies
were also stopped which led to
a two months halt to drone
strikes. Imran Khan, while not in
power, tweeted on January 10,
2012, “US: we will be your friend,
not your slaves. We will help you
withdraw from Afghanistan but
will not launch military
operations for you”.
As an opposition leader in 2012,
Imran Khan led thousands of
people in a rally from
Islamabad to the tribal areas of
Pakistan to protest against US
drone attacks. From 2004 to
2018, the US carried out more
than 400 strikes in the tribal
areas which killed innocent
people. The last drone strike
was carried out on July 4, 2018,
in North Waziristan and since
then, no drone attack has been
carried out. Successive
governments accused the US
administration of violating
Pakistan’s sovereignty with
drone strikes. According to US
officials and media, Pakistan
approved some strikes
especially against the leaders
of the TTP. In December 2018, in
an interview with the
Washington Post, Imran Khan
said that Pakistan will no longer
be America’s hired guns. He
further clarified, “This is a very
imperialistic approach, that you
are either with me or against
me” and stuck to his anti-drone
stance. On February 29, 2020,
the Trump administration and
Afghan Taliban signed a
historic agreement at Doha,
Qatar. The US agreed to pull out
its troops by May 1, 2021.
The new Biden administration
did not agree to this and
decided to complete the
withdrawal by September 2021,
which will coincide with the 20th
anniversary of the 9/11 attack.
The withdrawal has started and
the ground situation is that the
Taliban forces are occupying
district after district in a
blitzkrieg move. The Afghan
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National Army units are
surrendering to the Taliban and
the situation is getting out of
control. The Afghan
government is struggling to
contain the Taliban as they
march on to Kabul. In view of
developments inside
Afghanistan, and the likely
future scenario, the US
administration is looking for
bases for the CIA-led drone
operations.
CIA director William Burns also
secretly visited Islamabad and
met COAS General Bajwa and
DG ISI and Lt Gen Faiz. They
reiterated the stance that
Pakistan will not host the CIA’s
drone bases in its territory. PM
Imran Khan in his recent
interview with Jonathan Swan
of HBO Axios made it loud and
clear that Pakistan will not
provide bases to the US. The
journalist was surprised by his
clear cut response and went on
to interrupt him to reconfirm his
words. PM Imran Khan made it
clear again that Pakistan will
not allow US military bases in its
territory to launch operations in
Afghanistan. Foreign Minister
Qureshi, while making a policy
statement in the Senate, said
“Let this be a house and
Pakistan be a witness that
under Imran Khan, there will be
no American base built in
Pakistani soil”.
Pakistan shares 2611 kilometers
with Afghanistan. Earlier, the
porous nature of the border
enabled terrorists to move
freely by crossing the border
into Pakistan. Pakistan started
fencing the western border in
May 2018, a project worth 532
million dollars which included
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the construction of border
outposts and the employment
of high-tech surveillance
systems. 90 percent of the
western border has been
fenced and will be completed
by the end of this year. The
fencing will benefit both
Pakistan and Afghanistan to
check and prevent an influx of
terrorists from Afghanistan to
Pakistan. The big question is,
what the need of more US
bases is when they already
have bases in Qatar and
Bahrain from where operations
can be carried out. 70,000
Pakistanis martyred, the price
paid by Pakistan in the war on
terror. Pakistan was once
considered as the breeding
ground for terrorism has been
declared the only country in the
world who combatted terrorism
successfully. Salute to
Pakistan’s armed forces and
other law enforcing agencies
for their sacrifices in achieving
peace in the country.
Who is to blame
for out-of-school
children?
Published in The Express Tribune
Pakistan has the world’s second
highest number of
out-of-school children (OOSC)
with approximately 22.8 million
in the age bracket of five to 16
years old. Almost 10.7 million
boys and 8.6 million girls are
enrolled at the primary level
and the numbers drop to 3.6
and 2.8 million, respectively, at
the lower secondary level. In the
five to nine age bracket, five
million children are not enrolled
in schools and after primary
school-age, the number of
OOSC doubles. Even though
education budgets have
increased, accounting for 2.8%
of the total GDP, it still does not
make it to the 4% target. The
vast differences are due to
disparities in gender,
socio-economic status, geog-
raphy and availability of quality
education.
Examining the factors outlined
above, most OOSC are in
Balochistan, including 78% girls.
In Sindh, 52% of the poorest are
OOSC, of which 58% are girls.
Inaccessibility to a primary
school in remote areas has a
significant impact on enrolment
and attendance. In terms of
geographical factors, this plays
a huge role as provision of
educational services is tough in
mountainous areas. Moreover,
communities affected by
natural disasters and influx of
migrants experience higher
dropout rates. The conflict in
K-P between 2008-10 led to
almost 3.35 million people
being internally displaced, of
which 60% were children. Most
IDPs stayed with host commu-
nities where local schools were
unable to accommodate the
huge influx of children. In 2010,
floods affected 16,400 schools
in Pakistan and the 2005 earth-
quake destroyed 3,669 educa-
tional institutes in the Hazara
division. These findings indicate
how geographical factors, poor
transportation, natural calami-
ties and poor communication
facilities are important causes
of dropping out at the primary
level and hinder access to
education. With these prevalent
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conditions and the future
generation at stake, how can
we expect the country to prog-
ress and prosper?
The problems associated with
Pakistan’s education system
can be attributed to socio-cul-
tural demand side barriers too.
At the systems level, we lack
adequate finances, policy
implementation, competent
faculty, and a conducive teach-
ing environment. The brunt of
this is borne by marginalised
groups, particularly girls.
Gender wise, boys outnumber
girls at every stage of educa-
tion (and hence the economic
journey). Moreover, owing to the
pandemic, the figures have
worsened globally. When the
lockdown began in March 2020,
about 26.1 million students
dropped out of school in Paki-
stan. In September, schools
were allowed to reopen and
about 13 million children
remained unenrolled, of which
60% are girls. A major reason of
dropping out amongst girls is
the patriarchal setup. Amidst
Covid, there are economic
considerations too. Children
may be used as labour to
generate additional income.
Low-income families have been
hit hardest by the pandemic.
But if their children are not
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educated properly how will this
viscous circle of poverty ever
end?
Some possible solutions to
these could be subsidised
school fees, interest-free loans,
education grants and scholar-
ships to sustain and revive
Pakistan’s education sector.
Financial institutions can play a
vital role by providing fee loans
with flexible repayment sched-
ules aligned with cash flows of
parents’ business activities.
Moreover, special scholarship
programmes or quotas for girls
would prove fruitful in increas-
ing re-enrolment rates. Addi-
tionally, adoption of public
schools by the private sector for
a high-quality education
system must be considered by
the government to utilise the
barren infrastructure and
enable access to much-need-
ed quality education for all.
Unparliamentary
politics
Published in Dawn
IN recent weeks the National
Assembly has been the scene
of shouting matches between
members, exchange of insults
and copies of the budget being
flung at one another. A truce
was eventually reached
between the government and
opposition only to be breached
a few days later when some
lawmakers again reverted to
conduct unbecoming.
This triggered considerable
debate on television and com-
ment in the social media. Much
of this assumed a partisan
nature. It was said this wasn’t
the first time parliament had
seen such a fracas and
mayhem. Examples were cited
of the past as also of brawls in
the legislatures of other coun-
tries. But this missed the point.
Past uncivil behaviour doesn’t
make it any more acceptable
today. Nor does the breakdown
in norms and civility elsewhere
mean that it is alright to repeat
the same conduct here.
Members of parliament have a
responsibility to the people who
elected them; to do the job for
which their constituents have
sent them to the legislature.
They have a responsibility to
the country’s taxpayers too.
After all it is taxpayers’ money
that pays for their salaries and
the many perks they enjoy.
Therefore, they also have a
responsibility to the country, not
just to their political constituen-
cy.
Of course, it is the deepening
political polarisation in the
country which often drives
unparliamentary conduct. The
unrestrained and intemperate
language used by many MPs is
a reflection of this as well as the
dominant political culture that
sees the ethic of war — to
subdue the ‘enemy’ — rather
than the ethic of competition as
their guiding ‘principle’. This
rules out efforts to engage
rivals or show them any
respect.
What gets lost in this deeply
polarised environment is the
obligation to work parliament in
the public interest. If parlia-
ment’s role is to legislate,
debate and inform, then disor-
derly behaviour is tantamount
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to a dereliction of duty and
responsibility. Political leaders
and members of the assem-
blies never cease to declare
their commitment to parlia-
ment’s supremacy, but these
claims sound hollow coming
from those who engage in
rowdy behaviour on the floor of
the House.
The Senate has demonstrated
more sobriety in the conduct of
its business. Debates in the
Upper House are often substan-
tive. Several members of the
National Assembly have also
been diligent in their work and
have acted with dignity. But the
behaviour of some of their
colleagues in the Lower House
has been anything but civil.
It is the majority party that sets
the substance and tone for
parliamentary activity. Thus, its
attitude is fundamental for the
smooth — and peaceful —
functioning of the Assembly. But
if the treasury benches and
their leadership regard all those
sitting on opposition benches
as venal politicians who should
be in jail rather than parliament
that makes for a charged
environment. It also obviates
efforts to elicit the cooperation
needed to carry out parlia-
ment’s actual functions.
July Edition’21
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CSS Magazine Edition 12
Moreover, if the ruling party
treats parliament as a means
only to maintain the
government in power rather
than as an instrument of
governance this has a bearing
on parliament’s functioning. Its
role as a forum to initiate and
shape laws, articulate and
debate policy is left diminished.
When the leader of the House
barely comes to parliament this
not only signals lack of interest
but also sets an example for
senior ministers to routinely skip
attending the Assembly.
Lawmaking by executive fiat
also marginalises parliament’s
role. The PTI government has
relied more on promulgating
ordinances for its legislative
agenda than legislating by
parliament. It may be following
an inglorious tradition but it has
now beaten the record of two
predecessor governments in
issuing ordinances, according
to an assessment by Pildat. The
great value of parliamentary
debate is that it mobilises
consensus, builds legitimacy for
government measures and
galvanises support for its
policies. Lawmaking by
ordinance denudes the
government of these benefits
and prevents wider ownership
of laws that are decreed in this
manner or rushed through
parliament without discussion.
The opposition too has an
obligation to participate with
earnestness in parliamentary
proceedings. But the major
opposition parties have not
engaged in a sustained or
consistent way in the Assembly.
They have often swung
between boycotts, walkouts,
disruptive actions and even It is the unseemly behaviour
threats to resign from witnessed recently — not for the
membership. The opposition first time — that is the most
should use parliament as a unedifying aspect of many
forum to articulate policy members’ participation in
alternatives and present parliament. This entails political
solutions to national problems costs for all sides. While
in addition to subjecting members indulging in this may
government measures to think this plays to their political
critical scrutiny. Irrespective of base, and arguably pleases
how treasury benches act, their leadership, it does nothing
opposition members can seize to earn the respect of the public
the initiative by proposing at large. The conduct of
legislation, initiate debate on parliamentarians matters and
key issues and vigorously unseemly conduct has
perform the function of consequences for how they are
oversight of executive actions. perceived by people. If
On occasion this has happened anything, it generates public
but not often enough. disillusionment and brings
Significantly, female lawmakers parliament into disrepute. Not
from both sides of the aisle only is the Lower House’s
have made a greater credibility eroded but
contribution in terms of agenda democracy too is debased.
setting and attendance
according to a recent Fafen
report. Some of the NA
committees have also taken
their role seriously, often due to
the interest and activism of
individual members rather than
their party’s directives.
There is another reason for the
diminished role of parliament
as a debating chamber. 24/7
television news channels with
their proliferation of talk shows
have increasingly become the
main platform for political
debate. Appearing on television
gives instant, high visibility, and
is therefore prioritised over
Assembly attendance by most
political leaders. This affects
parliament’s deliberative role.
Media engagement is of course
essential in politics today but
that should not mean
lawmakers treat television
appearances as a substitute for
parliamentary duties.
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CSS Magazine edition 12

ESSAY
SPECIAL

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

Essay: Great Nations Win Without Fighting

Outline
1. Introduction

i. Introduction
Thesis Statement:
Undoubtedly, war brings along many perils, hinders the way of efficient national progress and
leaves a nation in multi-fold socio-economic and political crisis. Contrastingly, the policy of
no-war and peaceful competition along with cooperation brings promising prospects for
sustainable national growth making a country dignified and great among the comity of nations.

ii. Perils of War

A. Unjustifiable Outcomes
B. War crimes
C. Humanitarian Crisis
D. Human Rights Infringement
E. Infrastructure Destruction
F. Economic Recession
G.Stalled Developments
H. Pre-calculations Impossible
I. War- way towards Self Annihilation
J. Diplomatic channel ceases
K. War- a total loss

iii. Policy of Great Nations

A. Peaceful Dispute Resolution
B. Diplomatic pursuance of issues
C. Bilateral and Multilateral Engagement
D. China's peaceful growth model
E. Economic Progression
F. Soft power- a key policy tool
G. Investing in education

iv. In quest of being great nation

A. Say no to warmongering policies
B. Band wagoning trade race
C. Liberal Economic Policies
D. International Engagements
E. Opting Win-Win route
F. Role of leadership
G. Investment in Human Resource Development
H. Pursuing sustainable growth model

v. Conclusion

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CSS Magazine Edition 12
Almost as if according to some natural law, in
every century there existed a country with divine
capability, power, the will, and the intellectual
and moral impetus to shape the entire
international system in accordance with its own
values. These values of greatness later on
become manifestation of national growth and
help in shedding down the war mongering
policies. In the emerging international order,
nationalism, has not lost its relevance, but has
gained new lease of life. Nations have pursued
self-interest more frequently than high-minded
principle, and have competed more than they
have cooperated. However, the history of
international relations is testimony to fact that
the nations pursuing competition in a peaceful
manner have taken themselves far in their quest
of global dignity and prestige. This is achieved
by incorporating modern tools of diplomacy,
sanction, strategic and trade embargos, forging
alliances and counter alliances in the pursuance
of national interest. Undoubtedly, war brings
along many perils, hinders the way of efficient
national progress and leaves the nation in
multi-fold socio-economic and political crisis.
Contrastingly, the policy of no war and peaceful
competition along with cooperation brings
promising prospects for sustainable national
growth making a country dignified and great
among the comity of nations.
Historically, fighting has been a costly business,
war brings along everlasting perils which nations
have to survive for decade if not centuries. When
a nation steps into war, ends are unjustifiable
and this grey area deprives policy makers to
forge a pragmatic policy to the best interest of
their nations. Mere interest in the period of war
remains survival and that too under the clouds
of bombshells, lethal artillery fires, air strikes and
for most fear of chemical and nuclear weapons
that are curse of 21st century against humanity.
The fate of public is left in the hands of few
generals, where a single step ahead remains
decisive of national future. Undoubtedly, the
torments brought by wars fought in 20th century
and beyond have vindicated that war shall
never be a choice in course of national
engagements in comity of nations.
Likewise, the World War I (1914-1919) – originating
in Europe led to mobilization of 70 million military
troops and immense resources – left 13 million
civilians dead as the direct consequence of war.
The war that originated after the assassination
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of Austro-Hungarian heir Arch duke Franz
Ferdinand, brought Austria-Hungary and Serbia
on war footings. Later on, network of interlocking
alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral
issue to one involving whole Europe. The war
continued for five long years again with
unjustifiable outcomes and ended with peace
treaties and truce at large among the allied
powers and central powers. Hence, peaceful
means were at last incorporated to halt the war
crisis.
Similarly, World War II (1939-1945) that was
again six years long war become more terrifying
and devastating when the United States
bombed Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. It is estimated
that these six years costed sixty million lives
including twenty million military personnel and
economic losses beyond one’s imagination.
Again, the war ended by peace agreement,
truce and creation of United Nations. The UN
Charter mentions a costly lesson learnt by
humanity in these words:
“We the people of United Nations determined to
save succeeding generation from scourge of
war, which twice in our lifetimes brought untold
sorrow to mankind, to reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights… And for these ends
to practise tolerance and live together in peace
and to ensure that armed forces shall not be
used… have resolved to combine our efforts to
accomplish these aims.” These two wars taught
humanity a lesson that fighting brings less pros
and more cons and leaves humanity in
perpetual crisis.
Moreover, humanitarian crisis and human rights
infringement are inevitable in the course of war.
In the words of Plato, “Only the dead have seen
the end of war”. Wars, throughout history of
humankind, have rendered rights of the citizens
at stake. Mass killing, brutal punishments to the
prisoners of war, rapes, pillaging, detention,
using civilians as shield are few of the untold
massacres brought by war. Freedom of citizens
is infringed and they are limited to their homes
without any clear notion of near future, which
remains bleak. In other words, people in a
war-torn country fall prey to mental torture that
remains with them until peace is ensured.
Generally, when militaries are in war the
principle of distinction, proportionality and
military necessity stands compromised.
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Resultantly, civilians pay the costs of the matters
not really in their hands, considering all the woes
of war- their fate. Although in the contemporary
epoch, War crimes are covered under the
auspices of International Humanitarian Law
including four Geneva Conventions and their
additional protocols, yet the war remains a
terrifying and devastating act that a country
shall avoid for its substantial growth.
As a direct consequence of fighting war,
infrastructure of a nation suffers a severe
backlash. Artillery shelling, armoured hits and air
strikes leave buildings, roads, military
infrastructure and public buildings razed to
ground. A developed infrastructure in the form of
road networks, buildings and metropolitan cities
furnishes the goal of economic progress. Owing
to this reason, developed nations pay great
head towards upgrading and overhauling the
infrastructural requirements of their country. A
war is anti-thesis to infrastructure wellbeing
leave alone its progression. It is estimated that
rehabilitation and reconstruction after Second
World War costed nearly eight trillion dollars
collectively to the exchequers of direct actors of
the war. Moreover, infrastructure depletion
connects other political and social cons that
render adverse impacts on social fabric of a
nation. For instance, it is estimated that during
Iraq war more than 75% schools were used as
military camps and bases, many of them when
destroyed in cross military ambush attacks left
many students out of school – a direct impact
on country's educational endeavour. Thus, a war
devastates country's infrastructure that can be
avoided simply by avoiding wars in country's
economic, political and social benefit.
Putting aside the actual human cost, war brings
serious economic recession to a nation opting it.
Along-with loss of infrastructure it burdens the
national infrastructure. Increase in foreign debts,
plummeting GDP, decline in working labour
results in the overall inflation that impacts a
citizen unfavourably. For instance, during Korean
war, North Korean Government struggled
financially to meet the costs of the war.
Therefore, the government started printing
money to pay military salaries. Consequently,
the value of money soon declined and inflation
rose to the level of economic crisis and north
Korean economy collapsed. Similarly,
hyperinflation in Hungary and Austria touched its
highest rate in 1946. Interestingly, during war
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there is public support for the war efforts and
government are least hesitant in borrowing hefty
loans that simply raise the payable
interest-based debts to the donor states and
institution.
Evidently, national development remains stalled
if not halted during the times of war. Sun T Zu the
author of "The Art of War" pens that "the
outcomes of war are neither calculated nor
imaginable for no one knows the coming turn in
a ruthless struggle for underlying interests on
both sides". The practicality of war is the grey
area that cannot be easily turned to the
desirable outcomes. Glaring example is the US
pull out from Afghanistan after its face-saving
that objectives of War on Terror have been
achieved although future of war-torn
Afghanistan still remains in the hands of taliban.
Even United States by mobilizing its military,
economic and diplomatic might has remained
unable to properly jot down the chapter of
Afghan war in its benefit. Leaves of history testify
that during late 2001 US declined talks with the
Afghan Taliban declaring that "We do not talk to
the terrorists"; and later on, after 20 years of war
Doha Peace talks made headlines throughout
the global print and electronic media.
It is oft quoted that war is an aisle towards
self-annihilation and developed nations are
today developed because they were able to
ponder war impacts and travelled the course of
non-involvement and pursued policies of
non-alignment. War ceases to much extent the
diplomatic channels thus giving no way to the
table talks and bilateral dispute resolutions,
once militaries are in war field it is an ardent job
to exercise restraint. Hence policy of war is a way
towards total economic, political and social loss.
The perils of fighting are multifaceted thus it
shall be avoided in policy of national interests
and sustainable development.
Interestingly, the great nations had avoided
wars and taken alternate routes towards dispute
resolution. Most importantly, the nations willing
to grow in the terms of economy and Human
Development never indulge themselves into war
save it is imposed on them and their sovereignty
is threatened. War can be avoided by
developing mutual trust and opening versatile
diplomatic corridors in bilateral issues that can
lead to war. Undoubtedly, the dispute resolved
on table talks results in long lasting solutions
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and are backed by bilateral trust and
compromises. These compromises at very
instance are tough decisions but later on they
prove to be life saviour for national cause and
war stands defeated itself. Henry Kissinger in his
epitome "Diplomacy" maintains that one of the
reasons of United States growth is its huge
diplomatic force that spreads across the globe
carrying forward US national interests. Another
example of successful diplomatic dispute
resolution was seen when Indian and Pakistan,
both being arch rivals of South Asia, resolved
their water disputes with the involvement of
World Bank and signed Indus Water Treaty in
1960. This treaty solved the major water dispute
between two nuclear capable countries for once
and forever. Thus, cementing the notion of
peaceful dispute resolution as a pragmatic
option in national progress.
Great nations have always been seen involved in
bilateral and multilateral engagements in order
to achieve their foreign policy goals in
international arena. For this purpose, states opt
the channels of United Nations and other
platforms of regional and international
organisations. For instance, China since its
inception in 1949 had raised itself as a global
military, economic, and political might. It has
second highest GDP of fourteen trillion dollars
according to world bank report - 2020. Today
China runs global technological markets and
has occupied completely the services sector as
a lead developing economy. Major reason
behind this success is Chinese policy of
non-intervention in other states’ domestic
matters and policy of non-alignment. China
sees its national interest in global peace and
harmony and prefers the route of trade. Its
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ambition of completing Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) is testimony to its sustainable policies of
growth. Similarly, growth of Asian Tigers, i.e.,
Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore
are true examples of winning nations through
peaceful means.
Rapidly growing nations had opted for using the
channel of soft power to influence other states in
the arena of global politics. This is the era of
artificial intelligence and media. A single piece
of news spreads globally in matter of minutes
and possesses ability to impact international
stock exchange and global commodity markets.
Developed nations keep eyes on news and news
makers to avoid backlash at the hand of
rumours and misinformation. Interestingly,
states incorporate the social, print and
electronic media in bid to maintain their global
prestige and reaffirm their impact on global
politics. This way they effectively manage to
create impact at global level through
constructivism.
In conclusion, nevertheless opting for war, great
nations try to subdue their enemy by investing
more in education and research. The
thought-provoking insight regarding this is
Samuel P. Huntington’s epitome "Clash of
Civilization" where in the author discusses the
possible clash between western and Islamic
societies and its repercussions. Thus, great
nations invest in forging solutions to inevitable
vows far before they are revealed and pose
threat to the very national survival be it social,
political, ideological or economic. Sun T Zu has
rightly mentioned in the Art of War: "Supreme art
of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting".
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CSS Magazine edition 12

RECOMMENDED
BOOKS' REVIEW

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Pakistan A Hard Country

by Anatol Lieven:
A Review
By Anza Abbasi

Written in the backdrop of the war on terror,

Anatol Lieven's Pakistan a Hard Country tries
to discover how Pakistan, a country
connecting Central Asia, South Asia, and the
Middle East, works. The book's central thesis
surrounds the notion that Pakistan is a
country with several kinship networks, which
aid in its survival and at the same time
compete with it to keep it weak.

The book begins with the author explaining its

central thesis and discusses some recent
happenings when writing the book—NFC 2010
and the 2010 floods. The following chapter is a
brief recalling of the history of Pakistan,
beginning from the entrance of Islam in South
Asia to the recent events of 2010. The next
chapter is a fascinating study of Pakistan's
criminal justice system. It highlights flawed
evidence that leads to criminal acquittal and
the fact that the kinship networks protect their
own from the state's writ. This chapter is
recommended for criminology students.

Maleeha Lodhi presents a more positive view

on the middle class in her chapter in Pakistan
Beyond A Crisis State; CSS candidates should
also look into that. In the following chapter, the
writer theorizes the Pakistan military to be
another kinship network, a more organized and
merit-based one. Then the writer looks deep
into the politics and provinces of the country.

The book ends with a discussion on the Taliban.

For anyone reading this book in the post-APS
attack era, these chapters are shocking. The
writer narrates how during his travels, he found
the Taliban to be popular in Pakistan. While this
portion of the book might provide some
insights into the public opinion that existed
when the writer wrote the book, it is essential to
research policy changes in Pakistan following
the APS attack for present-day CSS candidates.
Moving on, the writer talks about religion, and
here the book gets its first criticism. The writer
claims that Pakistani liberals are the solution
to the country's issues, but a larger
conservative middle class dominates the
media and religion. Candidates must note
that western writers categorize Pakistanis into
two groups. Either the country is full of the
debaucherous elite, or fundamentalist clerics
dominate it.

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Important Quotes Who Should Read This Book?

• "All the same, with Pakistanis, there is usually a
wheel within a wheel, an identity within an identi-
ty, which in turn overlap with another identity."
• "In attacking the saints, the Islamist extremists –
though they refuse to recognize this themselves
– are striking at the very roots of Islam in South
Asia. One might say that the beginnings of South
Asian Islam were the Book and the Saint."
This book is a must-read for candidates who
want to understand Pakistan in-depth. Howev-
er, candidates with weak English must put it on
hold. The vocabulary and the sentence struc-
ture could be a little confusing for them. Over-
all, it is a good read and recommended for the
CSS candidates.

• [Pakistan is] "divided, disorganized, economical-

ly backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often sav-
agely oppressive towards the poor and women,
and home to extremely dangerous forms of
extremism and terrorism."

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

CSS Magazine edition 12

HISTORY
IN COLORS

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

REASONS FOR FALURE OF

REASONS
1987 FOR FALURE OF
REVOLT
1987 REVOLT

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

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Magazine dolor
edition 12 sit amet, con-
sectetuer adipiscing elit, sed
diam nonummy nibh euis

MCQS Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer

adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh
euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna
aliquam

COMPILATION Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

Pakistan Affairs
1. The Economy of Pakistan is witnessing a 8. According to Pakistan Army (Amendment)
_____ recovery after Covid shock. Act 2020, Army Chief can be reappointed for a
(A) U-shaped tenure up to _____ year(s).
(B) K-shaped (A) 1
(C) V-shaped (B) 2
(D) W-shaped (C) 3
(D) 4
2. Who is the current ambassador of Paki-
stan to the United States? 9. Who is considered the founder of “All India
(A) Ashraf Qazi Muslim League”?
(B) Munir Akram (A) Quaid-e-Azam
(C) Asad Majeed (B) Allama Iqbal
(D) Ali Jehangir Siddiqui (C) Mohsin-ul-Mulk
(D) Nawab Sir Salimullah
3. Who is the current Permanent Represen-
tative of Pakistan to the United Nations? 10. The All India Muslim League was founded in
(A) Maleeha Lodhi December
(B) Munir Akram (A) 1906
(C) Ali Jehangir Siddiqui (B) 1908
(D) None of these (C) 1911
(D) 1913
4. The under construction Gulpur hydro-
power project to generate 102 MW of elec- Current Affairs
tricity is located in
(A) Jhelum 1. The United States has eliminated the special
(B) Kotli status and halted Defence Exports to which
(C) Mirpur country?
(D) Gilgit (A) China
(B) Hong Kong
5. The Bhikki Power Plant to generate 1180 (C) India
MW of electricity was inaugurated on 19 (D) Vietnam
May 2018. It is located in
(A) Jhelum 2. Which country has dropped India from the
(B) Kotli Chabahar Project due to delay in funding?
(C) Jhang (A) Afghanistan
(D) Sheikhupura (B) Iran
(C) Myanmar
6. The Haveli Bahadur Shah Power Plant to (D) Nepal
generate 1230 MW of electricity was inau-
gurated on 10 May 2018. It is located in 3. As per the Lancet journal, the potential
(A) Jhelum Covid-19 vaccine developed by which institu-
(B) Kotli tion has produced strong immune response?
(C) Jhang (A) Oxford University
(D) Sheikhupura (B) Yale University
(C) Stanford University
7. The total installed capacity of (D) Harvard University
Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project is
(A) 660 MW
(B) 969 MW
(C) 1320 MW
(D) 1440 MW

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

4. Which country is to inaugurate its new 10. Which country has discovered a large
Supreme Court building, constructed with natural gas reserve along Black Sea coast?
Indian assistance? (A) Turkey
(A) Mauritius (B) Georgia
(B) Sri Lanka (C) Bulgaria
(C) Bangladesh (D) Romania
(D) Maldives
Islamic Studies
5. Which global organisation has estimated
that about 24 million additional children may 1. Eid Prayer (or Salat al-Eid) is
drop out of school? (A) Wajib
(A) World Bank (B) Fard
(B) World Economic Forum (C) Sunnah
(C) UNESCO (D) Mustahib
(D) International Monetary Fund
2. The book of Hadith, Al-Muwatta, was com-
6. India has extended technical response team piled by
and equipment to which country, to tackle its (A) Imam Abu Haneefa (R.A)
massive Oil spill? (B) Imam Shafi (R.A)
(A) Maldives (C) Imam Ahmad bin Hambal (R.A)
(B) Mauritius (D) Imam Malik (R.A)
(C) Philippines
(D) Madagascar 3. The book of Hadith, Kitaab-ul-Aathaar, was
compiled by
7. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who has recently (A) Imam Abu Haneefa (R.A)
resigned, was the President of which country? (B) Imam Shafi (R.A)
(A) Mauritius (C) Imam Ahmad bin Hambal (R.A)
(B) Brazil (D) Imam Malik (R.A)
(C) Mali
(D) Zimbabwe 4. In Hajj, touching the Black Stone is known as
(A) Istilam
8. Which country has recently proposed to (B) Sayee
draft its new constitution and to remove (C) Ramee
restriction on Presidential powers? (D) Tawaf
(A) Bangladesh
(B) Sri Lanka 5. The first migration of the Companions and
(C) Thailand relatives of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
(D) Myanmar was to
(A) Makkah
9. Who is the Presidential candidate nominated (B) Madina
from the Democratic Party for the upcoming (C) Ethopia
Presidential elections of USA? (D) Baghdad
(A) Joe Biden
(B) Hillary Clinton 6. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is called with
(C) Kamala Harris the name “Ahmed” in Surah
(D) Bernie Sanders (A) Ya-Seen
(B) Muhammad
(C) Saff
(D) Muzzammil

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CSS Magazine Edition 12

7. “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” is Answers

stated in Surah
(A) Ya-Seen MCQ Current Pakistan General
(B) Muhammad Affairs Affairs Science and
(C) Muzzammil Ability
(D) Fath 1 (C) (B) (A)
2 (C) (B) (D)
8. Allah says, “Wives of Prophet Muhammad 3 (B) (A) (A)
4 (B) (A) (A)
(PBUH) are mothers of the believers” in Surah
5 (D) (C) (C)
(A) Aal-e-Imraan
6 (C) (B) (C)
(B) Yaaseen 7 (B) (C) (D)
(C) Muhammad 8 (C) (B) (D)
(D) Ahzaab 9 (D) (A) (D)
10 (A) (A) (B)
9. The name “Muhammad” has been men-
tioned _______ times in the Holy Quran.
(A) 1
(B) 2
(C) 3
(D) 4

10. Which Surah of Quran has Bismillah twice?

(A) Aal-e-Imraan
(B) Al-Namal
(C) Yaaseen
(D) Muhamad

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