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Dire straits

WITH the government left with little to offer except gimmicks, the economic situation
is deteriorating by the day. According to a news report published in this paper’s Friday
pages, large-scale manufacturing — a bellwether for economic activity — contracted by
a staggering 7.75pc in October, registering a slowdown for the second straight month.

Since the start of fiscal 2023 (the July to October period), LSM has now contracted by an overall
2.89pc, indicating that the deceleration in economic activity seems to be getting worse with time.

Record energy and raw material prices are being blamed. The country’s inability to secure sufficient
gas supplies for the winter has also raised fears that the slowdown may worsen in the coming
months. Not only that, the major export industries are being deeply impacted, especially textiles,
which posted a massive contraction of 24.6pc in October over the previous year.

Those numbers should be giving sleepless nights to the incumbent government, but it seems it is
happy playing the fiddle while the economy burns. The same day as the LSM data was released by the
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the government announced that it was working on a plan to conserve
energy and cut the import bill.

Short on details and big on buzzwords like “extraordinary measures”, all this plan apparently
includes is a proposal to move key government buildings to solar energy and a crackdown on
electricity theft.

Making the announcement, the information minister claimed these measures will save “billions of
dollars” on the import bill, but observers later pointed out that the impact would be much lower and
that her math was all off. Such plans won’t do much to help the industrialists worried sick about
looming shortages of raw materials for production.

The State Bank’s restrictions on paying for anything imported from abroad — even goods that have
already landed at our ports and are incurring demurrages — will soon lead to shortages of essential
goods in domestic markets, manufacturers have warned.

Recent reports have also pointed to a contraction in remittances, which analysts say is likely
happening because the official exchange rate is so far below market rates that more people may be

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opting to send money back home through the illegal hundi and hawala channels.

Global economic conditions are not particularly healthy either, putting pressure on people’s pockets,
and higher interest rates in more established economies may be luring funds there that may
otherwise have been remitted for investment. Whatever the case may be, this spells more problems
for Pakistan.

Declining exports, slowing manufacturing activity and falling remittances make for a toxic cocktail of
economic challenges for the government.

The likelihood of mass layoffs in affected industries seems almost inevitable, which will, in turn, fuel
even more social upheaval and public dissatisfaction. If this government is serious about surviving its
tenure, it better watch its step.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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Bad air

CLIMATE-related catastrophes can have devastating effects on lives and livelihoods, as

this year’s ‘monster monsoon’ in Pakistan has shown. But while the nation struggles to
rebuild after the massive floods, another climatic event is casting its long shadow:
smog. As winter sets in, environmental pollution is having a visible impact on human
health in the country’s major cities, particularly Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar, with
these cities regularly topping the lists of metropolises with worst air quality. However,
as a recently released World Bank study has shown, bad air is a problem shared by all
of South Asia, and unless a region-wide approach is taken, things are likely to get
worse. According to the Striving for Clean Air report, nine out of the 10 cities with
worst air pollution in the world are in South Asia. As the study notes, the impacts of air
pollution can range from respiratory illnesses to premature mortality. The prime
contributors of air pollution include burning of high-emission solid fuels, brick kilns,
burning of municipal waste, as well as human cremation. But perhaps one of the key
findings of the study is that air pollution does not respect national boundaries; bad air
in one country is bound to affect other states. That is why a region-wide approach is
needed to address this key challenge.

Cooperation on this major environmental and health issue is, of course, easier said than done,
primarily because of the lack of integration in South Asia, particularly the frosty Pakistan-India
relationship. Yet if the current state of affairs persists, a quarter of the globe’s population will one day
literally be gasping for fresh air. Of course, states need to take internal steps to limit air pollution;
Punjab’s anti-smog plan is one example of this, though enforcement may leave much to be desired.
But to truly clear the air in South Asia, all the region’s states need to work together. The World Bank
recommends “full coordination across regions”, the sharing of data, and creation of credible scientific
institutes to analyse regional air quality, as well as behavioural change among populations. Perhaps
Saarc — which itself is gasping for air — can be revived to deal with this common environmental
threat. As the WB study says, the road ahead is not easy, but “the time is now to travel the road to
cleaner air”. The grim alternative would be a suffocating future where hundreds of millions of people,
quite literally, struggle to breathe.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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Ali Wazir’s incarceration

THE malice in the state’s violation of Ali Wazir’s right to due process is plain to see.
The MNA for South Waziristan was incarcerated four years ago on sedition charges
pertaining to a controversial speech he made at a Karachi rally. A number of cases
along the same lines have been filed against him, and continue to be filed, to ensure
that liberty for Mr Wazir remains tantalisingly out of reach. One court after another
has acquitted him, but legal proceedings against him never quite run their course. Last
month, an ATC in Karachi cleared him of the original charge. But he is still facing trial
in three similar cases registered in Karachi, as well as one in KP’s Miranshah.
Meanwhile, the media has by and large maintained a studied silence on the issue, not
even covering protest sit-ins earlier this year by the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement
against the lawmaker’s continued incarceration. The state’s determination to keep him
behind bars against all norms of justice should have had anyone with democratic
pretensions concerned and up in arms. Instead, it appears that most legislators, apart
from Mr Wazir’s counterpart from North Waziristan, Ali Dawar, believe this is not a
battle worth picking.

However, fellow Pakhtun and Pakhtunkwa Milli Awami Party chairman Mehmood Khan Achakzai, in
a speech on Friday, warned of protests across the country if Mr Wazir is not released from prison. He
appealed to the bar associations and members of parliament to demand the MNA’s release. It
redounds to the Sindh government’s shame that it has not asserted itself in the matter, given Mr
Wazir is imprisoned in Karachi’s Central Jail. As Mr Achakzai aptly noted, this is the same province
where notorious ‘encounter specialist’ Rao Anwar was granted bail and his own house declared a
‘sub-jail’. The National Assembly secretariat has issued production orders for the MNA only once,
when his vote was needed in the no-confidence motion. This farcical detention of Mr Wazir must
come to an end.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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Untenable Afghan policy

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK & UN.

RELATIONS between Pakistan and the Taliban authorities are under growing stress in
the wake of rising cross-border attacks and violent actions by the TTP from
Afghanistan’s soil. On Dec 11, a border clash between Afghan and Pakistani border
forces in Chaman claimed the lives of at least eight Pakistani citizens.

The clash and a subsequent one on Dec 15 reflected an uptick in border tensions in recent months.
This has often led to closure of the border crossing. Many incidents have been triggered by Afghan
forces’ resistance to stronger border controls recently imposed by Pakistan through documentation
and biometric requirements at all five border crossings between the two countries.

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Taliban authorities have voiced their reservations about these. Some incidents have followed
disputes over the border fence erected by Pakistan along much of the frontier.

The clash earlier this month prompted a sharp response from ISPR, which called the “unprovoked
and indiscriminate fire” from the Afghan side “uncalled for aggression”, while Prime Minister
Shehbaz Sharif condemned the incident.

Although Pakistani officials continue in global forums to call for greater international engagement
with Taliban authorities and urge financial assistance for Afghanistan, Pakistan’s own engagement
with Kabul is becoming a source of increasing frustration. This is privately acknowledged by officials
but the public posture is different — relations with the country’s western neighbour remain ‘normal’
and stable.

Harsh statements follow border clashes, but these are par for the course, they claim. Instead, they
point to strengthening trade ties, as also reflected in 60 meetings on commercial issues between the
two countries since the Taliban assumed power.

However, last month saw a significant departure from the all-is-well public stance. This came in the
policy statement delivered by Mohammed Sadiq, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, in
the meeting of Moscow Format member states on Nov 16 in Russia.

Presenting a ‘progress report’ of 16 months of Taliban rule, he said the expectations of Pakistan and
the international community had not been met on key issues. On political inclusivity, “there is little
to show”; “the rights of women and girls also appear to have regressed”; and “the footprint of
terrorist organisations in Afghanistan” had yet to be eradicated.

His remarks were an acknowledgment that for all the engagement with Kabul, its rulers had not
budged an inch on these counts. He attributed the lack of adequate international humanitarian
assistance to Afghanistan to the “cascade of unmet expectations”. In other words, the Taliban’s
failure to deliver on three core promises made to the international community was exacting a cost,
but not persuading Kabul to change its ways.

Between appeasement and confrontation,

there is room for a strategy that protects

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Pakistan’s security interests.

The subsequent visit to Kabul by the minister of state for foreign affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, also
yielded little by way of Taliban flexibility on these core issues. Khar conveyed Pakistan’s views,
including on girls’ education, as firmly as she could, but Taliban ministers offered the usual
assurances, while giving no commitments, not least because decision-making power lies not with the
cabinet in Kabul but the hard-line leadership in Kandahar.

Statements issued by both sides after the meetings focused mainly on trade issues and avoided
mention of sources of discord between the two countries.

Just days after the visit, Pakistan’s ambassador and its diplomatic mission in Kabul came under
attack, in which a security guard was wounded. This further strained relations. Meanwhile,
escalation in cross-border terror attacks by TTP, the militant group still based in Afghanistan,
continues to test relations between the two countries. Islamabad’s expectations that the Taliban’s
return to power would enable Pakistan to secure its western border have not been met.

Instead, Pakistan’s security concerns have mounted with the spike in cross-border attacks by the TTP
since the Taliban took over the country. Over 140 Pakistani security personnel have lost their lives in
these attacks in the past year or so.

A report earlier this year by the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring
Team found that “TTP has arguably benefited the most of all the foreign extremist groups in
Afghanistan from the Taliban takeover”.

The TTP has continued to carry out brazen attacks targeting Pakistani security personnel. Last
month, the banned group declared an end to its ceasefire with the government on the grounds that
military operations against it have continued. It threatened a new wave of retaliatory attacks across
the country.

The ceasefire had never worked anyway. Neither did negotiations with the TTP that Pakistani
military officials conducted in a bid to end the armed group’s 14-year war on Pakistan. Talks broke
down months ago when it became clear that the TTP’s demands were non-negotiable. Although
Kabul is urging Islamabad to resume these talks, there is no longer any Pakistani interest in doing so

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— an admission that direct talks with the TTP backfired as they only emboldened the militant group
and was responsible for the TTP’s effort to stage a (failed) comeback in Swat.

In the face of mounting security concerns emanating from Afghanistan, what are Pakistan’s options?
One, do more of the same, expand trade relations, help Afghanistan in other ways but raise security
and other concerns in the hope of eliciting a response from Kabul. This, however, won’t produce an
outcome any different from the past and will continue to be an exercise in futility.

The second option is a ‘tough love’ approach — using Pakistan’s considerable, unused leverage in a
carefully calibrated way from a policy toolkit of incentives and disincentives to secure the necessary
response.

The third option is to forge a coordinated regional strategy using collective leverage to bring pressure
to bear on Kabul. Security, after all, is a concern for all Afghanistan’s neighbours, even if their other
interests vary. The second and third options are not mutually exclusive and can and should be used
in tandem.

Stable ties with Afghanistan are Pakistan’s strategic compulsion. But between appeasement and
confrontation, there is room to craft a policy approach that effectively protects Pakistan’s security
interests. For that, our security managers must first accept that the country’s present Afghan policy is
now untenable.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK & UN.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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The case against technocrats

The writer is an economist at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. The views here are his ow

IT’S a simple argument: Pakistan’s problems emerge from leaders with poor skills —
people who simply lack the knowledge of how to ‘fix’ the various issues that keep
Pakistan poor. The solution is to bring people who are experts and give them the
power to undertake reforms.

In come people with fancy degrees and years of experience. In 1993, Moeen Qureshi, who hadn’t
lived, voted, or paid tax in Pakistan since 1958, was flown in from the United States to lead a
technocratic government.

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An economics PhD, with an accomplished career at the World Bank and no partisan affiliation within
Pakistan, he fit the technocratbill perfectly, but the reforms his administration championed were
unable to shift Pakistan’s economic trajectory. Many reforms he did undertake, such as the State
Bank’s independence from the finance ministry, were overturned when he left.

More recently, Imran Khan appointed several technocrats, all impeccably qualified, to lead key policy
areas: finance, tax, digitalisation, investment and civil service reforms. None could deliver. Some
resigned, others stayed in the room but had little impact.

While this wasn’t a ‘technocratic set-up’ like the Qureshi administration, it borrows from the same
logic that the key knowledge that matters most to drive reforms is subject-specific (it is theoretical,
technical) rather than about the underlying political economy that leads to certain policy choices in
the first place. Knowing how to build a data system is prioritised over understanding the incentives
of people to use or not use the data.

Outsourcing reforms to technocrats takes

away the incentive for political parties to
build up capacity to lead key reforms.

But in practice, reforms are a political process, rather than a purely technical one. Technical
appointees often lack the necessary knowledge of the coalition building needed to navigate a reform
process or have the political capital to push a reform agenda.

Politics is neither random nor secondary, but the principal factor in any public policy reform process.
Imran Khan’s tax reforms would have been more likely to be successful if led by Nadeem Afzal Chan,
rather than Shabbar Zaidi.

It isn’t the lack of technical expertise that restricts Pakistan’s economic growth or governance
ambitions. It is because politics doesn’t allow for pro-growth policies. Technical expertise can be
built where politics is conducive to reforms, but where politics isn’t conducive — technical expertise
can’t achieve much.

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Take tax reforms: for decades we have broadly recognised that we don’t raise enough taxes to pay for
public services. Research has been done, commissions have been set up to recommend changes, but
without any improvement in the system.

It is because the government’s inability to expand taxation is political. Whenever there has been an
attempt to expand taxes to retail or real estate, it’s the political cost that has been unable to manage,
not that it is technically impossible to do so.

The obsession with outsourcing reforms to technocrats also has wider implications. First, it takes
away the incentive for political parties to build up capacity among their political leadership to lead
key reforms. If politicians are going to always relinquish their seats on the table, how will they learn
the basic technical aspects of various reforms?

Second, it undermines the democratic control over public policy, even during the years when
Pakistan is a nominal democracy. It takes away responsibility from elected governments and gives it
to unelected officials, who can ignore or override public preferences while politicians can delude
accountability.

Third, as Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson point out in an excellent 2013 article in the Journal
of Economic Perspectives, seemingly technical policy choices often have unintended political
consequences — for example, when even well-reasoned policies end up strengthening an already
powerful group or lead to instability. This demands a wider understanding of the politics of the
country, rather than a narrow technical lens.

One example they discuss in the paper is of president Joseph Saidu Momoh of Sierra Leone, who, on
the advice of experts, undertook reforms in the 1980s which included austerity measures.

While this was the right technical policy, it undermined the president’s ability to maintain stability as
the country’s system of distributing benefits, such as through government jobs, weakened. He
changed strategy in the early 1990s by moving to directly take over the diamond mines in the
country’s east. This, probably, helped fuel the subsequent civil war in Sierra Leone.

Fourth, when technocrats drive reforms, it is natural that the reform process would end up focusing
on technical aspects of reforms instead of the underlying structural issues that create the incentives
for poor policy choices in the first place — treating symptoms, rather than causes.

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This doesn’t mean that technocrats don’t have a role in public policy. They do. The government
should leverage technical expertise to shape effective policy design, critically learning from the
evidence of what is working and what isn’t.

One way to do this is by bringing in technocratic expertise specific to policy levers, such as has
happened in the central bank, where such expertise can be recruited where needed. More useful
would be reforming the bureaucracy so more technocratic expertise is built in-house.

But reforms must be fundamentally owned by politicians themselves, who understand how political
coalitions can be built, can be held accountable for their actions, and can put policy advice in a wider
social, political and historical context.

When Moeen Qureshi was asked about why he accepted the premiership, he said: “There were things
that I could do for the country which were difficult to do from a political point of view — and people
had not done them for many years.” But ignoring the political point of view didn’t work then. It won’t
work now. The technocratic dream is what the name suggests — a dream.

The writer is an economist at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. The views
here are his own.

Twitter: @ShahrukhWani

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

Now you can follow Dawn Business on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook for insights on
business, finance and tech from Pakistan and across the world.

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A cup of plenty

The writer is a journalist.

IN the eighth century, Arab armies crossed from what is now Morocco into Spain,
conquering the Visigoths and establishing the Ummayad Caliphate of Córdoba.
Flushed with victory, they then ventured into France, only to be defeated by Charles
Martel’s Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. Basically, it’s pretty much the same
story we saw in the 2022 football World Cup, where Morocco defeated Spain but went
on to lose to France, which proves, once again, that history does indeed rhyme.

But, win or lose, this was certainly Morocco’s coming-out party and an incredibly cute one at that:
players brought their mothers onto the field to celebrate with them, and in one particularly

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heartwarming clip, the infant son of Moroccan footballer ‘Bono’ could be seen trying to take a bite
from the mic used to interview his sportsman father, thinking it was some kind of ice cream cone.

The fact that the World Cup was held in Qatar, and that an Arab team made it this far, has certainly
been a source of pride for the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular. That’s
especially significant, given the campaign waged against Qatar’s hosting the event in some sections of
the international media, and concerns over how ‘inclusive’ this event would be, given Qatar’s laws
and regulations.

Many of these concerns, such as the state of migrant labour in the Gulf state, were indeed legitimate;
but much of it — and the context in which it was presented — smacked of pearl-clutching and
hypocritical virtue-signalling. The emptiness of these gestures, such as BBC’s refusal to air the
opening ceremony of the Cup and instead running with a long-winded condemnation of Qatar, is
evident in the fact that the same BBC refuses to even discuss the extent of Qatari investments in the
UK, or the fact that British governments bends over backwards to seek the said investment while
eagerly selling weapons to Qatar and other Gulf states.

Win or lose, this was certainly Morocco’s

coming-out party.

Apart from projecting Morocco and Qatar even further on the global stage, the Cup also succeeded in
inadvertently highlighting the Palestinian cause, even if this was perhaps not a desired outcome by
the host country. The voices raised did not come from the Arab states, who have notably been
normalising relations with Israel, but from the Arab fans who flocked to Doha.

In video after video, we saw interview requests from Israeli journalists being mockingly denied by
Arab fans, who also made sure to raise pro-Palestinian slogans and wave Palestinian flags whenever
they saw an Israeli TV crew.

On the field, Moroccan players also prominently displayed the Palestinian flag, something that was
condemned by sections of the German media as ‘anti-Semitic’. Granted, the German media and state
tend to be more Israeli than the Israelis, having sublimated their guilt over the Holocaust into all-out
support for Israel and (as a corollary) opposition to the Palestinian cause; but even then, some of the

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commentary was beyond ridiculous. Take the gesture of the Moroccan team of raising the index
finger of their right hand in the shahada, meant to symbolise the oneness of God. It was wilfully
misinterpreted by a German TV channel as expressing support for IS terrorists.

Much to the chagrin of Israel and its apologists, support for Palestine wasn’t limited to Arab fans, as
Brazilian fans also raised the Palestinian flag from the bleachers, and English fans also caught onto
the trend of shouting “free Palestine” while being interviewed by Israeli journalists. Typically, there
was a lot of hand-wringing about this ‘disgraceful’ behaviour in Israel and, as if to prove their relative
moral superiority, Israeli police beat up Palestinians who were celebrating Morocco’s win. As for
journalists’ treatment, who in the West knows or cares about the murder of Al Jazeera journalist
Shireen Abu Akleh at the hands of Israel? Who cares about Basil Faraj, Yaser Murtaja, Khaled
Hamad, James Miller, Issam al Talawi, Nazih Darwazeh, Ahmed Abu Hussein and all the other
journalists killed by Israel with utter impunity, not to mention the Palestinians, young and old, who
regularly face Israeli bullets and bombs?

It’s a cliché to say that sport brings people together, but clichés are often true. In this case, we can see
that truth on display in the reaction of fans from around the world, who were bowled over by the
show put on by the host country. And in one particularly compelling instance of cross-cultural
learning, it seems that many Westerners have now been acquainted with the wonders of the shattaf,
or Muslim shower as we call it in this part of the world. Indeed, if that’s the only thing these people
take home with them, it would certainly be a giant leap for hygiene, if nothing else.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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‘One body, two hearts’

“CONGRATULATIONS! You are pregnant!” This was exciting news for 27-year-old
Ayesha (not her real name), who could not wait to share it with her husband and
family members. It was her first pregnancy, and she was eagerly looking forward to
the birth of her child.

Ayesha was booked for antenatal visits. Antenatal checkups are routinely carried out for every
pregnant mother three to four times during the entire duration of her pregnancy, to assess the health
of both the mother and her baby. In July 2022, Unicef figures showed that South Asia (including
Pakistan), in stark contrast with the industrialised countries, showed the lowest level of antenatal
care — and that barely half of the pregnant women in the region received antenatal care.

During one of her routine antenatal visits, Ayesha was diagnosed with ‘pregnancy-induced
hypertension’, or what is commonly known as PIH. She was too young to have this disease, and many
questions floated in her mind, about herself and her baby and what adversities future events might
hold.

Pregnancy-induced hypertension is defined as high blood pressure in pregnant women, detected

after 20 weeks of gestation, and a sustained blood pressure of more than140mmHg systolic and
90mmHG (or above) diastolic. A population-level analysis in 2019 has shown the prevalence of PIH
in 9.3 per cent of pregnant women in Pakistan. It is a condition that is associated with higher
maternal mortality and morbidity (complications).

Untreated PIH can lead to the death of the

mother and her unborn baby.

With early diagnosis, PIH is treatable. Women develop this condition because of the many changes
happening within their body during pregnancy. Once the diagnosis is confirmed, they are required to
have medical treatment to lower their blood pressure and prevent complications from arising.

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They may recover completely after giving birth or they may continue to have the problem after
delivery — chronic high blood pressure, recurrence of PIH in future pregnancies, and developing
early cardiovascular disease. Long-term surveillance is advised for these patients to identify whether
they are recovering or their condition is persisting. The surveillance is best done by a physician, with
active follow-up from the patient.

Pregnancy is a stress test of a mother’s heart. When a woman is pregnant, her heart must work 20pc
to 30pc more to fulfil her body’s needs. Her heart rate increases and so does her heart function,
especially in the last three months of pregnancy. A healthy heart can tolerate these changes without
compromising the health of the mother or child.

However, when the mother already has heart disease or develops a cardiovascular condition during
pregnancy, such as PIH, the game changes. The heart, then, struggles to perform well at the expense
of the health of the mother and child. Therefore, the key to good outcomes is early diagnosis during
routine antenatal checkups by primary obstetricians, and early referral to cardiovascular experts.
These women may need to be taken care of in health facilities where maternal and newborn child
emergency care is available.

Dr Pamela S. Douglas, a professor of cardiology at Duke University in the US, has noted: “It is
important that in the cardiovascular risk assessment of women, a history of any past pregnancy-
related complications like PIH or gestational diabetes should be noted as these conditions pose a sex-
specific cardiovascular risk for women. In addition, children born to these mothers are at risk of
developing premature cardiovascular diseases and its risk factors.”

Pregnancy is a ‘one body, two heart’ situation. There is a dire need of assessing the quality of care
that pregnant women receive and their cardiovascular risk. Heart checkups before conceiving and
after-delivery follow-ups for women whose pregnancy has been complicated by heart disease need to
be prioritised. Once we identify our challenges, we can develop a model of care for pregnant mothers
and implement it at a national level to improve maternal outcomes.

The writers are cardiologists at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. The research reported in
this publication was supported by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of
Health under Award Number D43TW011625. The content is solely the responsibility of the writers.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022

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