Articulate (Vol 22) April 2022

ARTICULATE
April 2022
(Volume - 22)
An online magazine for CSS 2022

EFFICIENT JUDICIAL SYSTEM: THE WAY FORWARD
The Constitution of Pakistan has guaranteed certain fundamental rights, one of which ensures speedy justice as a principle of
policy to its citizens. Good governance and speedy and inexpensive justice are important to protect fundamental rights. They
are just as essential for our internal security and the bright future of Pakistan. However, Pakistan ranks among the worst
countries in areas of judicial and governance deliverance. Every year, its ranking downgrades a little further. This state of affairs
definitely needs the consideration of our legislatures. The justice-related stakeholders need to address the existing problems on
a priority basis and to make the governance and the pursuit for justice effective, vibrant, and time-bound. The inherited
colonial governance and judicial system had the objective to engage the locals in multiple proceedings so they would not
demand or raise their genuine legal rights and go for independence. It is important to note that at that time, when the existing
governance and judicial system was introduced in 19th century India, it was never legislated for the Britishers in the UK. After
independence, no concrete or visible effort has been made to completely overhaul the colonial governance and judicial system
at any appropriate stage including the parliament and provincial assemblies. This state of affairs has created a strong perception
on one side that the present judicial system is so complex, overlapped, inefficient, and old, that years and years have been spent
by the common man seeking justice; almost losing the citizens’ trust and confidence in state institutions.
Pakistan is at the same time also among one of a few countries where too much litigation has been cropped up or initiated
against govt departments either due to misgovernance, complex procedure, delay, or by exercising unbridled discretion of state
officials during their official assignments. Resultantly, it increases the workload of courts and as well the precious courts time is
not there being allocated properly for the protection of citizens’ rights. Being that the mafias are protected against the
supremacy of law resultantly, the country has been poor in all areas including in governance, enforcement of rights, and in
economic and investment areas. There is no fear among those who have broken laws or encroached upon other rights because
of delay and mal-governance. Hundreds and thousands of cases are pending before different courts, tribunals, forums, and
administrative authorities throughout Pakistan and in most of these cases, everyday proceedings are adjourned in one or
another way with no conclusive and time limit legal judgment. The existing laws, the present governance, and judicial system
have further weakened our international legal ranking that now international investors try and demand to exclude our legal
jurisdiction while drafting the international investment contracts in Pakistan. The country had earlier paid a heavy monetary
price as well to the international contracts before different international forums. Thus, the present governance and judicial
system should not be rectified through a patchwork but it urgently needs to be overhauled completely both in procedure and
in areas of substantive laws. The new, vibrant, and time-limited governance and legal system would not be a new experiment
for Pakistan but every modern and welfare state has done it according to their need and requirements by considering the
supremacy of law and citizens well being. For an efficient and credible judicial system in Pakistan, it is suggested and
recommended that,
1. Governance and justice reforms should be initiated immediately to curb the delay in governance and justice sectors. The
new governance and judicial system should be based upon the legal principles of simplicity, equality, less procedural, time
limit and to have the capacity to curb all delays in provisions of judicial and administrative justice. Best practices of
different successful judicial systems both on substantive laws and on procedure sides can also be studied and to be
included for improving our governance and judicial system in the best interest of our country and citizens.
2. Special Core Group of Justice Deliverance be constituted like National Judicial Reconstruction Bureau with the approval
of Federal Cabinet under the umbrella of PM Office or the Ministry of Law for deliberations and recommendations for
new judicial reforms and to make new draft statutes with specific requirements of modern justice needs with a new
strategy for “Dispensation of Justice” both in administrative/Civil and Criminal Justice systems. The task given to them
should be to this institution should be specific and time-bounded and they should also take benefits from the
opinions/views of all stakeholders including from observation of Superior Courts. These suggestions and
recommendations as model draft legislation be taken and forwarded to the Parliament and Superior Courts for their final
input before implementation. Decisions taken by this institution should be monitored and implemented by the top level.
3. Model Civil Procedure Code and Criminal Procedure Code should be drafted by taking into consideration the ground
reality, courts observations/judgements to include best legal practices with minimum procedures and to set a timeline to
finalize court cases at all stages of litigation from 1 month to 12 months. Superior Courts, later on, be also requested to
suitably amend their Rules & Orders on priority by adding new best practices in view of new draft legislation and to
ensure specific time for specific categories of proceedings of cases pending with them and before district Courts. Superior
Courts may also be requested to activate Administration Committees of High Courts and Provincial Justices Committee
at the district level as per their mandate for dispensation of timely justice.
Page 2 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

4. 4. Very few civil, criminal and tax laws almost involve more than 80 per cent litigation of our governance and judicial
system, so these laws need to be given priority for redrafting as model statutes to reform them for timely dispensation of
justice in the larger public interest.
5. Forensic audit regarding working and performance through independent expert sources of our governance and judicial
system be carried out at the earliest for rectification and to make the system more effective and vibrant.
6. Modern technology should be used/introduced at all stages of court proceedings including Process Service, Fixation of
cases, Case Management, Case Tracking and recording/ submission of evidence and arguments by litigants in court
proceedings.
7. The concept of “Conclusive Proceedings of Case” along with a time limit of arguments of both sides may be initiated for
a timely decision of cases. New SOP for case management and conclusive proceedings system be designed with
coordination of all stakeholders. Efforts are made to finish left-over proceedings in all court cases.
8. Cause list of a judge at all levels may be rationalized so that he can manage and perform his duties in a good manner and
ensure conclusive proceedings.
9. Special measures should be taken for strengthening the Internal Complaint Resolution / Dispute Resolution Mechanism
of government departments at all levels. Regular interaction can be made with Federal and Provincial Ombudsman
Offices who are dealing with mal-administration issues of government departments and so they can become the main
source to minimize the administrative litigation of Superior Courts and District Courts.
10. Special Benches should be constituted in Superior Courts in special areas of different laws having the same legal
propositions.
11. Steps legally are required for reconsideration of the closing the forum of Intra Court Appeals in High Courts wherever it
now exists as it consumes more time both of the courts and litigants with not much legal productivity.
12. Cases may not be fixed before judges until it is ensured that all the documents/replies are received from both sides, and
for this purpose, the capacity of the administrative staff of High Court and District Courts may be enhanced. Special
benches or judges are designated for the cases of children, women, overseas Pakistanis and citizens who are above 60
years of age.
13. The Concept of “Special Costs” be initiated and ensured in courts matters for the avoidance of frivolous litigation.
Measures are suggested for the recording of evidence and arguments through video links to save time and money.
14. Existing, govt Rules of Business were made soon after the promulgation of 1973 Constitution and much time has passed,
thus it needs reconsideration as per modern governance requirements. For better working and structured discretion
within the government affairs and departments, Rules of Business relating to the functions of Federal and Provincial
governments should be redrafted in a way for giving more efficiency in administrative justice. This is the time as well to
make such rules and regulations for structured discretion in govt affairs with today’s requirements for the efficiency in
govt affairs in the public interest. Action against delinquent officials of government departments while deciding cases at all
levels be taken who are regularly involved in maladministration and responsible for obstructing justice and not
performing their duties as per law and more importantly responsible for increasing the court’s litigation.
Legal reforms are a continuous process. Regular, yearly independent Forensic Audit of judicial working and client satisfaction
in Pakistan should be conducted and recommendations made during these reports be taken into consideration for future
strategy and implementation. Reforms should be started and continued regularly as other successful nations do in the world. In
the present circumstances and situation of our country, it is the need of time to start working without wasting further time for
the improvement of the judicial system and to initiate immediate rudimentary steps for those laws which are not only outdated
but failed to deliver and have not come up to the expectations of the public at large and resultantly creating unrest among
countrymen and society. Finally, I must say, it is the Constitutional and legal obligations of all the state organs, especially
relating to legislation and justice sectors to look into and take the lead immediately for overhauling/improving the present
governance and judicial system in Pakistan for a bright and confident future. (Hafiz Ahsaan Ahmad Khokhar is a practicing
lawyer at Supreme Court and has served as Judicial Member, Federal Excise & Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal and Advisor
Federal Tax Ombudsman. Published in Daily Times on March 23, 2022).

PLIGHT OF WOMEN IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Examining the disenfranchisement of women in Pakistan requires us to ask a broader question – why do Muslim countries, in
general, perform so poorly when it comes to gender parity? According to the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender
Gap index, fifteen of the worst-performing countries are all Muslim-majority countries. Out of the 156 nations ranked in the
report, Pakistan was bested for the bottom place by only three – namely Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Similarly, Muslim
countries were over-represented in the Thomson Reuters Foundation poll (2018), which surveyed 548 experts on women’s
issues to identify the countries globally perceived as most dangerous for women. 8 out of the 10 most dangerous countries
were Muslim, with Pakistan featured at 6th place. The dismal performance of these Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan’s,
can be attributed to patriarchal cultures that use religion as a smokescreen for female subjugation. Since Islamic jurists are, after
all, products of their societies, Islamic literature has become so inundated with patriarchal interpretations of the Quran that
many have come to view these interpretations asunassailable facts.
Muslim women, who must live their lives governed by these patriarchal interpretations, naturally experience a great deal of
inner conflict and frustration. But they are often forced into a Catch-22 of sorts: traditional Muslim jurists’ appropriate holy
texts to enforce and justify oppressive regimes and legislation. Neo-orientalists then use these misogynistic interpretations of
Islam to support their – often xenophobic – critiques of Islam and Muslims. Muslim women (and men) end up responding
with a kneejerk defence of “Islam gives women more rights than Western societies” without having access to either
scholarship on the subject or – as evidenced by these global indexes – the rights of which they speak.Advocating for women’s
rights or freedoms in Muslim countries is also seen as advocating for western hegemony, for the ruin of piety, and the
dissolution of Islamic tradition. Women remain passive because of the social cost of speaking out. With Islamic jurists
throwing their support to the status quo, asking too many questions can be seen as practically blasphemous. The polygamy
paradigm is a particularly contentious area of women’s rights in Islam. It has been at the centre of much debate, in both the
Muslim world and the west. Muslim countries regulate polygamy judicially in various ways. For example, in 2009 a new
family law was enacted in Bahrain that allowed Sunni women to prohibit their husbands from taking on second wives. In
Pakistan, the Family Muslim Law ordinance (1961) requires the consent of the existing wife/wives and permission from the
Arbitration Council before Muslim men can contract another marriage. In other countries like Turkey, Tajikistan and Tunisia
there is a complete embargo on it. Tunisia, under its 1956 law, prohibited polygyny on the authority of Surah 4:129 which
emphatically forbids polygamy by stating the inability of men to treat all wives equally: “And you do not have the ability to do
justice between the wives, even though you may wish (to do so)…” (4:129).
However, despite judicial provisions, polygamy is being practised unrestricted in many Muslim countries, including Pakistan.
Traditional jurists continue to make a mockery of Quranic ideals of chastity and justice by allowing polygamy on the grounds
that “men follow their natural instinct, which should then be made legal to avoid sin.” Some of them have gone so far as to
advocate polygamy as a recommendation from God. Traditional jurists have also fiercely opposed attempts by Muslim
governments to provide legal protection to women in violent marriages. For example, the Council of Islamic Ideology of
Pakistan (CII) not only opposed the Punjab Women Protection Act 2016 but also issued a statement that “light beating” is a
permissible act in Islam to “discipline” wives. Similarly, CII challenged government efforts to save young girls from becoming
“child brides” by declaring minimum marriage age laws as un-Islamic. Unfortunately, many Muslims regard discriminatory
family practices as directly derived from the teachings of the religion. Women have been politicised as symbols of cultural
authenticity and carriers of religious tradition. Their demand for equality and justice is interpreted as demands to change the
Divine message. This makes reform particularly difficult. Justice is integral to the philosophy of Islam. But justice is influenced
by our lived realities and changes with time and context. This should be reflected in Islamic legal tradition. Since Islam and
Islamic law are not monolithic, there will always be and should always be multiple understandings and interpretations of
Islamic law. Pakistan needs to allow for more debate and contrasting viewpoints when it comes to Islamic exegesis. Our jurists
live in an echo chamber and operate like a mafia. They strategically defame and ban scholars deemed as too liberal or
controversial to suppress any parallel or progressive narrative to their patriarchal interpretations of Quranic text. Greater
diversity of gender, ethnicity and thought is sorely needed amongst our jurists. Since women have a vested interest in
readdressing the historical prejudices entwined in the current interpretations of traditional jurists, we need them to come
forward and play a greater role in the exegesis of the Quran. It is only when liberation begins from within the Islamic sphere,
that we will finally see a change in Muslim societies. (Dr Khadija Bari is an Associate Professor and Director Population
Research Center at Institute of Business Administration Karachi. Published in Daily Times on March 23, 2022)

PROMOTING DIGITAL TAXATION IN PAKISTAN
Learning from the global best practices, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is fast becoming digital. The country’s premier
revenue collection organization has achieved one more milestone through successful implementation of Track and Trace
System (TTS) on Sugar Sector during the current crushing season. The innovative digital monitoring system of sugar
production has been implemented over 79 sugar mills, having 151 production lines nationwide. It is pertinent to mention that
Prime Minister had himself launched TTS on 23rd November, 2021 on the Sugar Sector. Thereafter, FBR ensured through
strict enforcement that no sugar bags were allowed to be removed from the factory premises and sold in the market without
tax stamps. Owing to this transparent electronic monitoring of production, all sugar mills had to declare their actual crushing
and production during the current crushing season. Therefore, as a result of this digital intervention, the sugar mills have
produced record high sugar i.e. 7.51 Million Tons (up to 24.03.2022) as against 5.63 Million produced during last crushing
season, showing an increase of 34%. Likewise, FBR has collected Sales Tax amounting to Rs.26.5 Billion in first four months
i.e. December, 2021 to March, 2022 of current crushing season as against Rs.19.9 Billion collected during the corresponding
period in the last crushing season, registering an increase of Rs. 6.59 Billion which comes to 33% growth. In addition to above,
Inland Revenue Enforcement Network (IREN) Squads of FBR, in a counter-evasion operation, conducted more than 60
raids in various markets throughout the country to ensure successful implementation of Track and Trace System. During the
operation, the unstamped bags were seized by FBR officials as per law and procedure, which were being sold without tax
stamps. Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Shaukat Tarin has commended FBR for successful implementation of
Track and Trace System which has made Pakistan a sugar surplus country, once more. Likewise, Chairman FBR/ Secretary
Revenue Division has also appreciated the performance of Track and Trace System. It is further reiterated that over the next
few months, implementation of Track & Trace System on the entire Tobacco Sector as well as on other important sectors like
Fertilizers, Petroleum, and Cement will be ensured. It will result in digital monitoring of the large scale manufacturing and
production of these key sectors. Besides, preventing revenue leakages, it will help in minimizing human intervention and thus
pave the way for a transparent and reliable tax compliance system across the country. Amongst various innovative digital
interventions made by FBR to maximize tax compliance through automation of its operations and facilitation of taxpayers,
Point of Sale System is one key initiative which aims to monitor sales made by Tier-1 Retailers across Pakistan. Adding value
to this critically important sector and plug revenue leakages, FBR has launched an aggressive awareness campaign on the
mainstream national media to educate and engage consumers in order to ensure that tax collected from them at the point of
sale is deposited into state exchequer and not pocketed by the retailers themselves. Furthermore, the campaign also
encompasses a prize scheme worth Rs.53 Million to be disbursed among 1007 lucky winners through a transparent
computerized ballot to be held on 15th of every month at FBR Headquarters, Islamabad. This is truly an unprecedented
example of involving citizens in tax compliance and raise their awareness about their national responsibility to not pay their
due tax but also safeguard the same from being stolen on its way to national exchequer.
The ongoing outreach campaign and the prize scheme together continue to gain momentum as numbers keep growing up. In
February, FBR has witnessed that about 2,60,000 invoices were verified by customers who shopped from outlets integrated
with FBR POS System as against 153,000 in January 2022. Likewise, around 38 Million invoices were issued by Tier-1
Retailers which are integrated with FBR POS System in February as compared to 37 Million in January, 2022, despite the
current month being short of 3 days as compared to January. Approximately, another 4 million verified invoices would have
been added to tally if 3 more days were available in February. The number of customers has also jumped from 27,000 in
January to around 39000 in February who successfully verified their invoices. This is a phenomenal increase in public
participation and is likely to further grow with every passing day. The third computerized ballot was held on 15th March
(Tuesday evening) at FBR Headquarters, Islamabad, with Chairman FBR, as the Chief Guest. It is very heartening to see that
people at large are excited to engage in this national call to duty. In its ongoing country-wide awareness campaign, FBR has
appealed the Pakistani citizens to actively promote a culture of tax compliance in the country. The country’s premier revenue
collection organization has suggested a three pronged strategy to ensure that Sales Tax collected from customers at the point of
sale could actually be deposited in the state exchequer. FBR has proposed that people should shop only from those Tier-1
retail outlets which are integrated with FBR POS System, demand computerized invoice (Pakki Receipt), and finally verify
the same through FBR Tax Asaan App. It is also very reassuring to witness that citizens have started responding to this call to
national duty and are demanding Pakki Receipt from the retail outlets. FBR has already distributed prizes worth Rs. 106
million among 2014 lucky winners in two successive computerized ballots held in a transparent manner on 15th of January &
February 2022. It is also worth sharing that people are showing a lot of interest in becoming part of next computerized draw,
which will be held on 15th March, 2022. This empowering zeal and exemplary commitment shown by huge number of
people at large is a testimony to their trust in FBR and its innovative POS Invoicing Prize Scheme. The national spirit has
already triggered an increased sense of responsibility in the people at large to become the custodian of their tax collected by the
retailers in order to ensure that the same is safely deposited in the national exchequer. This innovative initiative of engagement
of customers is all set to pick momentum and thus accelerate the desired national drive to promote tax compliance and

substantially increase revenues. It also aims to incentivize people to play their role as responsible citizens and compliant
taxpayers. The POS Prize Scheme is providing an opportunity to people to win cash prizes after they shop from Tier-1 POS
integrated retail outlets by verifying their receipts through Tax Asaan App or SMS. Furthermore, as a result of strong
enforcement by FBR Field Formations across Pakistan, out of around 4200 identified as Tier-1 Retailers, over 3600 have
already integrated their business operations with FBR POS System. Their 17000 outlets with over 19500 cash counters are
fully integrated with POS System which lends FBR the facility to digitally monitor their sales and thus ensure that Sales Tax
being collected from customers is being actually deposited into state exchequer, without fail. Beyond the shadow of any doubt,
it can safely be inferred that through the vigorous use of digital interventions, FBR is all set to maximize tax compliance and,
thus, promote a transparent and reliable tax culture across Pakistan. (Published in Daily Times on March 27, 2022)
EMBRACING GLOCALISATION
IN the face of the Covid 19 uncertainties and economic challenges compounded by the Ukraine crisis, the conventional
wisdom continues to clasp with national priorities that are shaping against globalism with international firms becoming locally
territorialized with multidimensional domino effects. These global challenges are the biggest stress test that international
development cooperation and regional integration initiatives have ever faced. In the midst of all this, governments are
exploring solutions to avoid long-term damage to the economy and facilitate the recovery that can address challenges to
livelihoods, poverty alleviation, provision of global public goods, employment creation and maintain the global order. While
COVID-19 did not trigger technological, and political competition between countries, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis has
compounded the challenge of economic recovery and has triggered a sharp surge in inflation as well as political division across
the world resulting into brewing energy and food crises. Before all this, Globalization has been the defining feature of the
unipolar world after the demise of the Soviet Union. The global economic structure evolved on its basis for the last three to
four decades.But soon the challenges of the 21st Century initiated the debate of modified economic and political structure
with more opportunities in the surrounding environment. The less competitive systems which could benefit from
globalization have more chances to perform better in their local environment. In this fractioned environment, global
businesses and investment will be impacted increasingly by oppositional politics, polarization and different ways of doing
things across different poles. Tackling these global challenges requires pragmatic policy approaches away from conventional
ideas about governance, organizations, leadership and innovation including the concept of glocalization developed by Roland
Robertson and George Ritzer strengthened through technological changes and innovation.
Glocalization is a combination of the words “globalization” and “localization” and can be used to describe a product or service
that is developed and distributed globally but is also adjusted to accommodate the user or consumer in a local market. Through
Glocalization, localities develop direct economic and cultural relationships to the global system through information
technologies making the world a more connected and interdependent place. Glocalization promotes regional trade for
harnessing the potential for economic gains by expanding business, investment, and other initiatives across borders while
leveraging local endowments. Thus, while the conflicts and challenges are moving the world towards a new era of a fully
multipolar world with the statements like” You are with us or against us” echoing again, China on its part maintains that a
normal trade relationship with Russia is not aiding Russia’s war efforts, just as Beijing’s maintaining a normal trade relationship
with Ukraine is not sabotaging Ukraine’s war efforts. Therefore, the world must learn to adapt to the needs of the other,
explore new relationship models promoting democracy in internal relations, and establish a favourable environment for mutual
growth and shared prosperity. The way China has approached the conflict and has encouraged regional peace and prosperity
through negotiations, it is believed that role of China will be pivotal and peripheral position to resolve the issue. However,
whatever the outcome of the conflict, the world economic and development approach will change and will have long-term
consequences. The crises may on the other hand increase China’s reliance on BRI and its projects like the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC), it also gives partner countries like Pakistan the opportunity to leverage the initiative and
immediately work on addressing key infrastructural and connectivity bottlenecks for seamless trade. The road and rail
networks towards China and Afghanistan including CAREC initiatives need to be developed fast. However, despite the
nature and duration of a war the outcome always brings new challenges and approaches for others to learn and improve from.
Viewing the global economic and political trends, the enterprises and investment-related government agencies will be required
to take a broader and long-term view for showcasing a glocalized approach to attract investment through a refined approach
for achieving strategic fit by showcasing local natural endowments and leveraging regional and global connectivity. Global
enterprises need to take several steps to mitigate the effects of the crisis.Learning from China’s economy, an intertwined
regional and global approach is imperative. Countries need to craft regulations properly tailored to ensure that competition
and regional integration are addressed. Tax incentives can be geared to help workers more and global talent to work for govt
and private enterprises locally. The government may attract investment in science and technology, education and vocational

training as these increase productivity which in turn can improve the economy and increased possibilities through government
programs of ease of doing business. The challenge is to make local enterprises competitive to face global competition and
technological dynamism equipped with training, incentives and safety nets that will allow them to flourish.
Developing countries despite political issues and politics must stay open to the world and yet secure international investment
for achieving national development agenda. In these challenging times, they also need to modify their industrial structure and
improve transport, electricity supply and other infrastructures, and the legal environment. A strong government role will be
required to closely monitor risks and initiate stimulus packages and improve productivity across sectors. While competing for
investment and business through a competitive incentives-based approach, the overall politico-economic climate and enabling
environment need to be ensured. Learning from regional countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, to attract strong regional
players, especially Chinese enterprises a clusters-based approach with vocational and tech-based entrepreneur assistance
programs can forge a pathway leading to higher incomes and stronger interconnected markets. In this changing global scenario,
the process will be challenging and incremental and this daunting task needs us to chart a clear and innovative path to regional
and global economic success as in the words of Deng Xiaoping “It does not matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it
catches mice”. (Published in Pak Observer on March 25, 2022)
PAKISTAN’S CRISIS MANAGEMENT MECHANISM
Since its inception in August 1947, Pakistan has been grappling with crisis after crisis — of many types. The prevailing political
landscape further exemplifies this. However, a crisis is both a challenge and an opportunity. Tunnel vision and the inability to
think out of the box result in misunderstanding and mismanaging the crisis. If a country is a fragile, failing or failed state, it
means it is incapable of managing crises. Mark Amstutz defined crisis as “a situation involving a threat to a country’s vital
interests, limited time constraints, the potential use of force, and the involvement of a government’s top leadership.”
According to the Oxford definition, crisis is “a decisive moment, time of danger and great difficulty, the turning point.” A
crisis also means a situation when there is a grave danger and threat of the outbreak of violence and war. The fundamental
elements contributing to a crisis include fragile decision-making, weak nerves, confusion, dearth of courage, loss of time, and
control over events along with meagre leadership qualities. Management of crisis means when the parties concerned are
mindful of skilful decision-making, timeline, patience, perseverance, shrewdness, using diplomacy and best practices. Crisis
management mechanisms can only take place when there is awareness about a crisis, insight, analytical skills, critical thinking,
teamwork, the right kind of choices, and institutions have control over events. The term ‘mother of all crises’ is relevant in
today’s Pakistan when the country is grappling with a tug of war between the government and opposition. If both sides remain
adamant, there is a likelihood of large-scale chaos and instability. Ultimately, the 220 million people of Pakistan will suffer.
When the two sides have crossed all limits of immaturity and indecency, the outcome will be internal chaos, tarnishing
Pakistan’s image globally. Is crisis in-built in Pakistani society and have people become immune to the periodic surfacing of
events, which destabilise the normal way of life? Why is there an absence of a crisis management mechanism, which can give
early warning and take timely steps for management? Why do political parties of Pakistan and other state institutions lack the
capability and capacity to deal with a crisis and fail to manage it promptly? If the party is over and Prime Minister Imran Khan
is losing power, will such a change manage the crisis, or will it trigger another crisis? When former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto faced a grave crisis in the form of the agitation launched by the Pakistan National Alliance against alleged rigging in the
March 1977 elections, why was he unable to manage the crisis effectively? If both the government and the opposition have
taken an egocentric approach on the no-confidence resolution tabled in the National Assembly against Prime Minister Imran,
why is there an absence of mediators? When the opposition rightfully presented a resolution on a vote of non-confidence
against the Prime Minister, the government should have faced the challenge with courage and grace. However, the dissident
PTI members of the National Assembly and the use of abusive language against the opposition reflect panic and insecurity in
the rank and file of PTI leadership. The no-confidence motion is a part of the normal political process and is constitutionally
legal. It should have been allowed to take place without any hurdles. However, insecurity and lust for power have permeated
the ruling party and it is unable to reconcile with the fact that its leader has lost a majority in the National Assembly. In its
75-year history, Pakistan has never witnessed such an unprecedented political polarisation at the expense of democracy and the
political process. There are three dangers emanating from the prevailing crises, which urgently require an effective crisis
management mechanism.
First, the issues that both the government and opposition parties should have focused on have been entirely disregarded. The
lawmakers have failed to prioritise the sharp escalation in prices of essential commodities including fuel, electricity and gas
prices, corruption, nepotism, bad governance, absence of the rule of law and foreign policy challenges. Instead, the opposition
is focused on removing the Prime Minister from power while the government wants to stay in power. Lust for power and the
politics of patronage further augment the level of crises. When there is the absence of qualified, honest, intelligent and
visionary leadership the outcome is mismanagement of crisis, which was reflected in the 1971 East Pakistan and 1977

government-opposition crisis. Pakistan’s ranking of 144 in the human development index and its poor record in human
security, human rights, and perception corruption index is an outcome of the non-serious and unprofessional attitude of both
the government and the opposition. Other state institutions and actors have failed to play a viable role in the management of
crisis because they cannot understand the issues at the grassroots level.
Second, the absence of towering personalities or organisations that can act as a buffer between the two warring parties will
further aggravate the prevailing crisis. It appears that there is a leadership vacuum because there is no societal force that can
exert pressure on the government and the opposition to refrain from acts that can damage the country’s global image and the
economy. Had the Prime Minister and his government focused on ameliorating the socio-economic conditions of people
instead of targeting key opposition leaders by using NAB and FIA, the present crisis would not have taken such a threatening
course. However, the vindictive and ego-centric approach taken by the Prime Minister forced opposition parties to unite and
place a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly. Now four years down the lane, the credibility of PTI’s regime is
being questioned because the party wasted a valuable opportunity to unleash the process of qualitative change in society by
focusing on resolving real issues.
Third, the required skills, knowledge and expertise about crisis and crisis management is a plus point in dealing with a situation
which, if not properly dealt with, can cause colossal damage to the country’s economy. The non-serious approach taken by
stakeholders including lawmakers in understanding the dynamics of political crises is putting the country’s survival at stake.
The country is running out of time to manage the prevailing political crisis and if a professional approach is not pursued,
everyone should be prepared to face serious consequences. The political parties must follow the example of the judiciary
offering mediation to political leaders to follow a prudent, tolerant and sane approach on issues that cause fragmentation. Both
the government and the opposition must adopt a wise and responsible approach to cooperating. (Published in The Express
Tribune on March 27, 2022)
RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN ISLAM

OPPRESSED, inferior and unequal – for many people, these are the first words that come to mind when thinking about
women in Islam. These stereotypes confuse Islam with cultural practices and fail to recognize that Islam has empowered
women with the most progressive rights. In Islam, women are not inferior or unequal to men. This brochure presents the
actual teachings of Islam regarding the rights, roles and responsibilities of women, with a special focus on gender equality in
Islam. In 610 C.E. , the Almighty began to reveal the message of Islam to the Last Prophet (PBUH). The Prophet called
people towards the belief in oneness of the Almighty and encouraged them to be just and merciful to one another. In
reforming the pagan Arab society, he particularly transformed their mindset regarding the treatment of women. Islam
abolished the practice of killing female children and raised the stature of women in society to one of dignity, esteem and
privilege. The Almighty devotes an entire chapter of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, to women. In addition, the Almighty
directly addresses women repeatedly throughout the Quran. Islam proclaims that all human beings – men and women – are
born in a pure state. The goal of every Muslim is to preserve this purity by shunning evil tendencies and beautifying their
inner being with virtuous traits. Islam further confirms that both men and women are equal in the sight of the Almighty.
While Islam clearly establishes that men and women are equal, it does recognize that they are not identical. The Almighty
created men and women with unique physiological and psychological attributes. In Islam, these differences are embraced as
vital components to a healthy family and community structure with each individual contributing his/her own distinctive talent
to society. Hence, the Almighty’s rules apply to both genders, but in diverse ways. For example, the Almighty commanded
women to cover certain parts of their body, including their hair, to preserve their modesty. Men are also required to cover
parts of their body out of modesty, but not in the same way as women. Therefore, the Almighty commanded both men and
women to be modest; yet, the manner in which they observe it is different. Similarly, the rights, roles, and responsibilities of
women are evenly balanced with those of men but are not necessarily the same. As Islam has granted individual identities to
men and women, a constant comparison between the two is futile. Each plays a unique role to mutually uphold social morality
and societal balance.The following overview details a wide range of women’s rights in Islam. It addresses some common
misconceptions and provides insight into the diverse roles and responsibilities women fulfil in society. It must also be
mentioned here that Muslims are not always representative of Islam and may follow their cultural influences or personal
interests. In so doing, they not only disenfranchise women, they also go against the clear guidelines laid out in Islam regarding
the treatment of women. Therefore, their practices go against the liberties and entitlements which Islam empowers women
with, as shown below. Among the early Muslims, women were active participants in the cohesive functioning of the society.
Women expressed their opinions freely and their advice was actively sought.Women nursed the wounded during battles, and
some even participated on the battlefield. Women traded openly in the marketplace, so much so that the second caliph, Umar,
appointed a woman, Shaffa-bint-Abdullah, as the supervisor of the bazaar. In Islamic history, women participated in

government, public affairs, lawmaking, scholarship, and teaching. To continue to uphold this tradition, women are
encouraged to actively participate in improving, serving, and leading the different aspects of the community. In Islam, women
are not obligated to earn or spend any money on housing, food, or general expenses. If a woman is married, her husband must
fully support her financially and if she’s not married, that responsibility rests with her closest male relative (father, brother,
uncle, etc). She also has the right to work and spend the money she earns as she wishes. She has no obligation to share her
money with her husband or any other family members, although she may choose to do so out of good will. For instance,
Khadija, wife of the Last Prophet, was one of the most successful businesswomen of Mecca, and she freely spent from her
wealth to support her husband and the cause of Islam. Any form of emotional, physical, or psychological abuse is prohibited in
Islam and the improper treatment of women is no exception to this rule. Indeed, there is no teaching in Islam, when studied in
its true context, which condones any kind of domestic violence. Islam clearly disallows any form of oppression or
abuse.Anyone who exercises unjust authority in the name of Islam is actually doing so to uphold his own cultural influence or
personal interest. In conclusion, Islam has an extensive tradition of protecting the civil liberties of women based on the
guidelines set forth by the Almighty and His Prophet. Women are empowered with many rights and protections under Islamic
law and are honoured with dignity. (Published in Pak Observer on March 25, 2022)
INDIA’S STRING OF PEARLS
The regional stability is at stake with India’s increasing military might in the region. India has been trying to strength its
military muscles in order to contain China and Pakistan. After trying to get Sri Lankan and Bhutan’s support to accomplish
strategic objectives, India is now working tirelessly for Maldives strategic support. The tiny island nation Maldives is
strategically very important for both China and India as it possesses some strategically routes. In lieu of the growing strategic
competition in the region, India has decided to land its ground forces in Nepal. Interestingly, incumbent pro-India
government of Maldives under PM Sher Bahadur Deuba, has given green signal to Indian proposal. If this Indian proposal
materializes, this will create arms race and strategic competition in the region. It will also have severe implications for regional
peace. In greater context, deployment of ground forces in another sovereign country is clear cut violation of international
treaties, conventions and territorial laws. Unfortunately, India is doing so openly for strategic competition, which is putting
regional peace in jeopardy. Only few people in Maldives’ government are supporting this move. On the other hand, majority
of the lawmakers and people have announced to protest against Indian move. Even former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli of
Maldives has recently announced to protest against the Bhutan government’s decision to give free hand to Indian Army. In
addition, former Nepali President Abdullah Yameen has also announced his political come back and resentment against threats
emanating from Indian side. He is working with other political parties to reduce growing Indian influence in the country. The
activism of two former top politicians in domestic politics and statements against Indian offensive posture has also created
chaos within hawkish Indian establishment circles. The announcement of Maldives’ politicians to resist Indian move has
caused a stir in Indian policy circles, which are already struggling to find new opportunities in the Indian Ocean to compete
with China. The trio of Modi-Shah-Doval is exploring other notorious options as well to accomplish its strategic objectives.
Likewise, it should be noted that despite decades of close ties, the former Maldivian President Abdullah Yameen is in favor of
scrapping all defense agreements with India. He has alleged that India has greatly increased its military infrastructure in his
island nation, which the current government denies. The demands of the former president, who was ousted on corruption
charges and remained in custody, have been well received by Maldivian people. The large number of people re attending his
Progressive Party meetings is strengthening his rhetoric. People are urging his party to take aggressive stance against possible
Indian occupation. It is pertinent to mention here that India’s growing military presence has not only posed a serious threat to
its national security but has also hampered the development of Maldives. Therefore, it is imperative that Indian Army be
withdrawn from here by the end of this year. The presence of Indian Army in Maldives will encourage other powers to
increase their influence in the region. Similarly, Maldives is of great importance to India in achieving its strategic goals in the
Indian Ocean. Rising anti-India sentiments, which have now gained a strong political voice, are becoming a major obstacle to
its goals. If former President gets political success in next general elections, it will be huge setback for Indian policymakers.
They are now investing heavily in Maldives’ pro-India politicians to get favorable policies and its strategic objectives. By
reaching out to its neighbors such as Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, India actions seems similar to China’s so-called string of
pearls strategy to increase its strategic pivot in the region. But, the intentions of India are heinous. The fact is that India cannot
invade or deploy its military in any other independent/ sovereign country. As far as Chinse String of Pearls strategy is
concerned, Beijing has been helping smaller nations to develop their economic model and state infrastructure. It helped them
in achieving economic growth and provided them economic assistance. Recently, China helped Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Maldives and Nepal. Likewise, it is seeking greater regional cooperation by through China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC). Both China and Pakistan have offered regional as well as extra-regional powers to become part of CPEC for the
economic uplift of the region. It is also pertinent to mention here that the sole purpose of CPEC is greater economic
integration and regional cooperation. In Indian case, things are different and contrary to Chinese model. India is not looking
for economic uplift of smaller nations. It is looking for strategic depth and opportunities in the region which are purely

regarding containment of its strategic rival China and Pakistan. So, hawkish Indian intentions are threat to entire regional
peace and need international attention. If US and West are viewing Russia through occupational prism, they must also
denounce Indian offensive strategic designs condemn them. The blatant Indian acts are direct threat to Nepal’s sovereignty as
well. International community must come forward this time around and stop India from using sovereign country to
accomplish its strategic objectives, which aims at destabilizing regional peace. (Published in Pak Observer on Apr 4, 2022)
THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM (Written by Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai)
For us to do justice to the topic of Islamophobia, we must understand what fear implies. Fear is defined as “a distressing
emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of
being afraid.” In line with this definition, it would not be wrong to claim that many in the Western world are currently living
in a state of fear of Islam. However, one needs to acknowledge that the threat Islam is seen as posing to the world is imagined
rather than real. Unfortunately, though, the repercussions of this irrational fear of Islam are not only affecting individual
Muslims in the form of increased discrimination, harassment, and persecution but also infiltrating into foreign policy decisions
worldwide. The West has numerous misconceptions about Islam, particularly about human rights. Often human rights
violations in certain dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world are cited to prove the point. The point to note is that human
rights violations can never really occur in genuine Islamic states. Ironically, the West continues to support these oppressive
autocracies and despotic regimes in the Muslim world, ignoring popular voices that oppose these regimes and their rulers.
Islam upholds the same human rights precepts as enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR). Unfortunately, though, it must be conceded that these rights are rarely upheld in the so-called Muslim world. The
word Islam means submission to God, which only means that Islam encapsulates the same moral principles as outlined in the
Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, both of which served as templates for the modern Western code of law and legal
system. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) introduced the concept of human rights to Arabia when there was no such
concept in the world, what to speak of 7th century Arabia. He is the one who promoted human rights and human dignity not
only for his followers but also for all of humanity.
Islam, as a growing force in the world, is not a threat and it is compatible with the Western ideals of freedom and democracy.
This is not to say that an Islamic society would look like an American one, but neither do any of the socialist democracies or
monarchies found throughout Western Europe and much of the Western world is modelled on the American system. It
should not be the West’s goal in particular America’s, to impose their version of democracy in the Islamic world but rather to
support the rise of governments that uphold the same tenets of equality, freedom, and justice that the West holds dear.
Undoubtedly, the message of some emergent Islamic groups tends to be more extreme (often misrepresenting or misreading
Islamic teachings altogether), but the West needs to understand that this is often a reaction to the policies of some of its states
and their governments. If Islamic groups that protect human rights and representative ideals were to receive support from the
West, they would be able to find a foothold in the Muslim world and help usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. Before
proceeding to unveil human rights as envisaged in the Qur’an, it is necessary to point out that while most Muslim scholars cite
human rights to highlight certain apparent similarities in Western and Islamic value systems, they erroneously try to cloak the
Islamic values in contemporary Western ideological garb to project them in a favourable light. Using the UDHR as a
reference point, they fashion frail arguments using verses such as: “We have honoured the children of Adam (AS) and carried
them on land and sea and provided them with good things and preferred them over many of those we created,” (Qur’an,
17:70) to prove, for example, that “dignity is a resolute principle that every human being warrants at a humanitarian level.”
This initiative is merely an attempt to squeeze out of the Qur’anic verses on something, which has a resemblance to modern
Western declarations. In fact, most readers would not have otherwise interpreted dignity in this passage as it is conventionally
defined (dignity: “the quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect’). Islam does indeed uphold the spirit of such values
but refers to them in a manner that can be applied across time and space. The Qur’anic precepts are universal and are meant
for individual spiritual development, as well as a blueprint for establishing peace and harmony between peoples. For example,
God says in the Qur’an: “O mankind, we created you from the same male and female, and rendered you distinct peoples and
tribes, that you may recognize one another. The best among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. GOD is
Omniscient, Cognizant..” (Qur’an, 49:13) This affirmation of a single lineage of common ancestry links all human beings as
brothers and sisters. After all, we are all descendants of one father and one mother. From this clearly flow the concepts of
brotherhood and reciprocity and all other ideals central to civilized interactions between peoples. However, the pursuit of
happiness in the Western and Islamic contexts may differ. If one’s pursuit of happiness encroaches on another individual’s basic
rights, Islam would not condone it, given the obvious difficulties that would arise (cannibalism is an extreme, albeit excellent
example). While Qur’anic ideals are timeless, Islamic thinkers need to explain them in universal terms. For example, readers
need not be reminded that slavery was allowed in the United States until 1865 (although technically not until 1928 with the
abolition of the convict lease system and even with such legislative mandates, most of the slaves bought and sold today – for

sex, labour, etc., unfortunately, find their destination in modern Western countries without much press or legislative
attention). The Qur’an has been discouraging slavery since 600 C.E. Based on the typical frivolous “catch-up” and imitative
approach of Islamist thinking, Muslim apologists, before 1865, would even have contended that Islam also allowed slavery
because it never forbade it. Again, Islamists should concentrate their efforts towards defending universal truths as conveyed
through all the sacred scriptures, especially the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity & Islam. Some of these timeless
spiritual principles are reflected in the thirty articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though
many have been still left out, as subsequent paragraphs will show.
A summary of how the Qur’an deals with the concept of human rights as covered in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) follows Article 1, 2, UDHR: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Everyone is entitled to all
the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or another status. Furthermore, no distinction
shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person
belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Islam teaches the ethic of reciprocity, which entails treating others as we would wish them to treat us: “None of you [truly]
believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” (See Hadith no. 13 in Imam Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths).
From this extends the principle that each individual is of equal worth, simply because they are human. As such, every human
being should be considered of equal value despite superficial differences.
As mentioned above, the following verse lays the blueprint for brotherhood between people: “O mankind, We created you
from the same male and female, and rendered you, distinct peoples and tribes, that you may recognize one another. The best
among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. GOD is Omniscient, Cognizant..” (Qur’an, 49:13) Prophet
Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, or a non-Arab over an Arab, or a black
person over a white, or a white over a black person except by being more righteous.” (Prophet’s Farewell Sermon).
It has been reported that during the Caliphate of Umar ibn-ul Khattab, the son of Amr ibn al-As, the governor of Egypt
entered into a horse race with a native Egyptian Christian. The Egyptian won the race, which angered Amr’s son who slapped
the Egyptian. The Egyptian brought the issue before Umar, who ordered the father and son to Medina and reprimanded him
by saying, “Why do you enslave people whose mothers have given birth to them as free human beings.”
Professor Arnold Toynbee, the British historian who completed a twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations,
remarked: “The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the extraordinary moral achievements of Islam,
and in the contemporary world there is as it happens a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.” The Qur’an also
contains numerous verses which beautifully capture what it means to behave in a spirit of brotherhood as it encourages the
uttering of kind words, honesty, restraining anger, avoiding greed, practising forgiveness, giving due measure, condemning
fraud and bribery, behaving humbly, admonishing mockery and sarcasm, honouring one’s promises and commitments, and
encouraging peace, reconciliation, charity, tolerance, generosity and respect.
Article 3, UDHR: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. The ethic of reciprocity covers this right too
(as well as most of the articles in the UDHR). The Qur’an also states: “Because of this did we ordain unto the children of
Israel that if anyone slays a human being unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth-it shall
be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all
mankind.” (Qur’an, 5:32). From this, we not only take cognizance of the fact that every individual has the right to life, but
that every life is sacred and that the killing of one life is as atrocious as the destruction of the entire human race. In Islam, the
first and foremost basic right is the right to life.
Article 4, UDHR: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
All the spiritual teachings found in the Qur’an address the topic of slavery in one way or another. For example, the Qur’an
encourages the ethic of reciprocity, the spirit of brotherhood, protects the sanctity and dignity of human life, and calls for
ending the oppression of others. All these dictates stand in stark contrast to the institution of slavery. Here is one very clear
passage: “… the way of blame is only against those who oppress [other] people and behave outrageously on earth, offending
against all right: for them, there is grievous suffering in store!” (Qur’an, 42:41). God even specifically encourages the freeing of
slaves in the following passage: “And it is not conceivable that a believer should slay another believer unless it be by mistake.
And upon him who has slain a believer by mistake, there is the duty of freeing a believing soul from bondage and paying an
indemnity to the victim’s relations.” (Qur’an 4:92) And while the reader will note that the verse stipulates the victim of the
crime being “another believer”, it should be emphasized here that “believers” referred to in the Qur’an are all peoples that
believe in God, including the followers of the 25 prophets mentioned in the Qur’an as well as the followers of all the

thousands of Prophets not mentioned in the Qur’an. This is evident in the following Qur’anic verse: “Behold, We have
inspired thee [O Prophet] just as we inspired Noah and all the prophets after him- as We inspired Abraham, and Ishmael, and
Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants, including Jesus and Job and Jonah, and Aaron, and Solomon; and as We vouchsafed
unto David a book of divine wisdom; and as [We inspired other] apostles whom We have mentioned to thee before this, as
well as apostles whom We have not mentioned to thee; and as God spoke His word unto Moses: [We sent all these] apostles as
heralds of glad tidings and as warners, so that men might have no excuse before God after the coming of these apostles, and
God is indeed almighty, wise.” (Qur’an 4:163) And: “Verily, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as
those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the Last Day and do
righteous deeds – shall have their reward with their Sustainer and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.”
(Qur’an, 2:62). And: “Say: “We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which
has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed
by their Sustainer unto Moses and Jesus and all the other prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto
Him do we surrender ourselves.” (Qur’an, 3:84).
Article 5, and 6, UDHR: No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any
discrimination in violation of this Declaration and any incitement to such discrimination. Again, the golden rule is “Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you.” The following Qur’anic verse alludes directly to the subject of torture and other
inhuman treatment of others: “…the way of blame is only against those who oppress [other] people and behave outrageously
on earth, offending against all right: for them, there is grievous suffering in store!” (Qur’an, 42:41). Moreover, Prophet
Muhammad (peace be upon him) laid down the ground rules for engagement in warfare during the battle of Badr, which took
place on March 17, 624 CE: Non-combatants cannot be killed, prisoners of war cannot be tortured, temples and churches
cannot be demolished, green trees cannot be uprooted, standing crops cannot be destroyed and the wounded people cannot be
attacked. Some of these ground rules are evident from the following Prophetic directives: “Do not kill any old person, any
child or any woman.” (Sunan Abi Dawood). “Do not kill the monks in monasteries.” “Do not kill the people who are sitting
in places of worship.” (Musnad ibn Hanbal). It is a historical fact that during the battle of Badr, no prisoner of war was tortured,
because of these specific orders given by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), nor were there any custodial killings or
kidnappings. Not surprisingly, when Umar came with the suggestion that all prisoners of war should be killed because they
had fought against Muslims, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) chose to release them instead.
It is a historic fact that during the battle of Badr, no prisoner of war was tortured, because of the specific orders given by
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), nor were there any custodial killings or kidnappings. Not surprisingly, when Umar
came with the suggestion that all prisoners of war should be killed because they had fought against Muslims, Prophet
Muhammad (peace be upon him) chose to release them instead.
Article 7, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): All are equal before the law and are entitled without any
discrimination to equal protection of the law. According to Islamic law, the judge has to maintain total impartiality. “…and do
not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just.” (Qur’an 5:8) During the Caliphate of Umar, a Jew raised a case
against Ali ibn Abu Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet. When they came to court, Umar addressed Ali by his pet
name, Abu al-Hasan and addressed the Jew only by his first name. Ali showed displeasure about this because of Umar’s
unintended discrimination against the Jew. It has been narrated that a dispute arose between Caliph Ali Ibn Talib and a Jew on
a missing armour. Ali brought the case before a judge, namely Shuray al-Kindi. The Jew pleaded that the armour was his
because it was in his possession. Ali responded that his son Hasan could testify that it was Ali’s. The judge replied that the
testimony of a son in his father’s favour was not admissible in court. So the armour was given to the Jew, who was so
astonished upon hearing the verdict that he told the judge that the suit of armour was Ali’s. He (Ali) had dropped it at night,
and he (the Jew) had found it.
Article 16, UDHR: (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right
to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2)
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and
fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Family and marriage are clearly
spiritual rights, as they are discussed in all the sacred texts. Marriage as an institution is, in fact, an institution created by God
and is, therefore, an obvious “right:” “O mankind! Revere your Lord, who created you from a single soul, created of like
nature his mate and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women.” (Qur’an 4:1). “And of His signs is this,
that He created mates for you from yourselves that you might find quiet of mind in them, and He put between you love and
compassion. Surely there are signs in this for a people who reflect”. (Qur’an, 30:21).

Article 17, UDHR: (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be
arbitrarily deprived of his property. As for usurping the rights of others, the Qur’an states: “And devour not one another’s
possessions wrongfully, and neither employ legal artifices with a view to devouring sinfully, and knowingly, anything that by
right belongs to others.” (Qur’an, 2:188).
Article 18 and 19, UDHR: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The Qur’an deals with this issue of freedom of
worship and expression very directly by teaching that “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an: 2: 256) and
encourages people to say the following: “I do not worship that which you worship, and neither do you worship that which I
worship. And I will not worship that which you have ever worshipped, and neither will you ever worship that which I
worship. Unto you, your moral law, and unto me, mine!” (Qur’an, 109:2). “He who hurts a Non-Muslim citizen of a Muslim
state, I am his adversary, and I shall be his adversary on the Day of a Judgment.” (Prophet Muhammad in Bukhari) During the
Caliphate of Umar, an old woman came to see him to ask for help. After offering her help, Umar asked her to accept Islam,
which she refused. Afraid that it might be misunderstood as coercion, Umar raised his hands and thanked Allah that he had not
forced her to convert to Islam.
Article 25, UDHR: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of
his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his
control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of
wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. The mandated institution of Zakat (compulsory charity) makes it an obligation
on the part of wealthy Muslims to donate a portion of their income to help the needy (which encompasses all the outlined
conditions above. Moreover, God often refers to charity throughout the Qur’an in verses such as: “And they have been
commanded no more than this: to worship God, offering Him sincere devotion, being True; to establish regular prayer; and to
practice regular Charity; and that is the religion right and straight.” (Qur’an, 98:5). “And be steadfast in prayer and regular in
charity; and whatever good you send forth for your souls before you shall find it with God; for God sees well all that you do.”
(Qur’an, 2:110). “Those who believe and do deeds of righteousness and establish regular prayers and regular charity will have
their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear nor shall they grieve.” (Qur’an, 2:277). Prophet Muhammad (peace be
upon him) also reiterated the same: “Everyone is a keeper unto every other and responsible for the welfare of all.” In
conclusion, Islamic ideals encompass universal values, all of which naturally flow out of the ethic of reciprocity. If human
beings were to uphold this basic tenet, there would be neither oppression nor denial of human rights because no one would
ever oppress others or deny them their basic rights. Beyond that, however, the Qur’an is not value-neutral but rather always
encourages duties unto others that would benefit the individual spirit as well as the greater part of society as a whole. Unlike
the UDHR, which envisages the presumption of denial of rights, the Qur’an, does not spell out every possible right that could
ever be denied. However, under the spirit of peace and brotherhood, there are no limits to individual freedom as long as it
does not lessen another’s basic rights or create disharmony in society. The UDHR is temporal and seeks to prevent known
forms of human rights violations. But what about things that have been left out, such as the right to breathe clean air or enjoy
nature, issues which are now becoming more relevant with fears of global warming? The Qur’an, in its universal approach also
addresses other timeless topics not covered by the UDHR, such as the rights of a wife towards her husband and vice versa, the
rights of parents, children and relatives, the right for the preservation and safety of natural resources, and others.
As discussed earlier, the Qur’anic teachings are timeless and universal. The beauty and grace of God’s word can be applied
anytime, anywhere and is robust enough to address all social issues that may arise. And it is His word that upholds all the
human rights ideals of the West and more. The West should be partnering with Muslims across the globe to allow for the
emergence of societies and governments that would embody these ideals rather than suffer from a baseless and unjustified fear
of Islam that colours today’s geopolitical landscape. In contrast with the Qur’anic principles relating to human rights, the
UDHR seems to have been written on the assumption that some systems or individuals are trying to deny human beings their
basic rights. The Qur’an’s more positive approach enshrines the idea that all human beings are born with these inherent and
inalienable rights that no one can take away.
TRANSITION IN FOREIGN POLICY OF PAKISTAN

IN 1948, Pakistan’s foreign policy was sketched by its founder, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Now, key areas of
foreign policy which Pakistan need to tackle are relations with US and China, maintaining relations with Russia especially
after Ukraine crisis, dealing with Afghan situation after Kabul fall, to maintain equilibrium relationship with KSA and Iran and

lastly most importantly managing relationship with India. Now, at first when it comes to US then it is well known that
Pakistan is strategic ally of US since its birth, we have seen several era’s when tensions emerged in between the two countries,
issues like WoT, Afghan invasion, NATO supply and OBL operation caused serious mistrust in between the two sides. Even
in FATF review meeting US didn’t helped Pakistan to come out of the grey list. The aforementioned issues led Pakistan to
overlook and rethink its dependence on US. Secondly, when it comes to Pakistan relations with Russia, then both countries
did not enjoyed good diplomatic relations in past due to several reasons, but at present Pakistan is also looking towards Russia
as well to fulfil its needs especially in energy sector. Recently PM IK visited Russia and discussed bilateral relations and
cooperation in between the two countries. Pakistan gained from that visit both diplomatically and economically. At third I
think it’s the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that cause Pakistan to rethink on its foreign policy because the way US troops
left Afghanistan was not expected, due to which humanitarian crisis and security threats to region emerged. Pakistan is now
solely on its own doing efforts to help Afghan refugees to overcome human catastrophe. Fourth factor is situation in Middle
East and role of Pakistan especially when it comes to KSA-Iran tensions, Pakistan enjoys good relations with both countries
but there is impression that Pakistan is more inclined towards KSA than Iran. Pakistan once again diplomatically tried to
engage both countries on negotiations table and somehow remained successful. Last issue which could be addressed in Pakistan
foreign policy is its relations with India, as bitter relations of both countries have affected both countries, now Pakistan is
urging India to resolve Kashmir issue so that our region could progress. If both countries start trade then it will have impact on
region and its prosperity. As recently Pakistan announced it national security policy which clearly indicated that Pakistan is
more focused towards economic gains rather than having armed conflict with India. I think, if the aforementioned issues will
be addressed and tackled by Pakistan then it will be beneficial for Pakistan. So there is a transition in foreign policy of Pakistan
which clearly says that look towards allies in east as well, rather than only relying on western countries If Pakistan wants to
realign its foreign policy then at first it needs to boost economy, as it is an important factor in modern era to build diplomatic
relations with world by having a strong economy. In an increasingly multipolar world, Pakistan also needs to raise its
diplomatic clout by vigorous outreach to other key countries and actors beyond governments to secure its foreign policy goals.
(Published in Pak Observer on Apr 3, 2022)
CHINA’S ROLE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WAY FORWARD
MOST recently a regional conference was held in China on Afghanistan which vividly reflected its positive, productive and
participatory role in achieving peace, stability and harmony in the region. Representatives from Afghanistan, China, Russia,
Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan rigorously participated in the said conference. Beijing spotlighted its
aspirations to play a leading role in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US forces last August. While addressing the
conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping showed strong backing for Afghanistan and pledged China’s support. President Xi
showed Chinese respect for Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and pledged his commitment to
supporting Afghanistan’s peaceful and stable development. He termed a peaceful, stable, developed and prosperous
Afghanistan, the need of the hour which served the common interests of regional countries and the international community.
A joint statement issued after the meeting noted the importance of ensuring women’s rights and children’s education and
protecting the rights of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan. It also “urged the countries mainly responsible for the current
predicament in Afghanistan” to fulfil their commitments on its economic recovery. China’s Foreign Minister Wang called the
US to unfreeze Afghan assets held abroad and end sanctions on the government. Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry said the
US and NATO should “earnestly assume the primary responsibility for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan,
and return the property of the Afghan people as soon as possible. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi showcased that
Afghanistan has achieved “certain partial results” in boosting stability, improving livelihood, and protecting human rights,
Wang said, despite widespread reports of abuses and incompetent governance under the Taliban. However, Afghanistan “has a
long way to go to achieve lasting peace, sustainable development and to advance its foreign relations,” he said. China follows a
strict policy of “non-intervention” in other countries’ internal affairs. Separately, Foreign Minister Wang also attended a
meeting of special envoys for Afghanistan from China, the United States and Russia, a group known as the “Extended
Troika. ” At that forum, Wang again called for an end to “unreasonable” sanctions and the unfreezing of Afghan assets, saying
the US should take “practical steps” on those matters. During his keynote speech the Chinese Foreign Minister proposed three
suggestions to support Afghanistan. Firstly, Foreign Minister Wang urged the need to support Afghanistan to achieve
self-reliance and self-improvement. Furthermore he coined to support the Afghan people to implement the holistic policy of
“Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” principle. He stressed the need to realize Afghan national reconciliation and domestic solidarity,
and exploring a governance model that conforms to Afghanistan’s national conditions and the development requirements of
the times. He condemned any non-regional countries’ acts that create chaos in Afghanistan and use Afghanistan to engage in
geographical rivalry. He termed that a broad-based and inclusive government, moderation and prudent governance, adhere to
good-neighbourliness and friendship, and protect the fundamental rights of all Afghan people, including all ethnic groups,
women and children should be encouraged. Moreover, Foreign Minister Wang highlighted the importance of a focused
approach to manage any kind of conflict resolution through caring common concerns and interests of all parties, and promote

Afghanistan to fulfil its foreign commitments and assume its due responsibilities. Secondly, he urged to support Afghanistan in
embarking on a path of prosperity and progress. He termed humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan an important issue which
should be resolved as soon as possible. He presented that we should work to improve Afghanistan’s capacity for self-reliant
development. He labelled it as an essential step to synergize international forces to assist Afghanistan. In this regard, China has
provided Afghanistan with emergency assistance such as food, vaccines, medicine and winter supplies, and is still willing to
promote and support Afghanistan’s integration into the regional economic pattern and participation in regional coordinated
development. Foreign Minister suggested that we should promote synergy among the international community’s bilateral and
multilateral mechanisms related to Afghanistan and increase their positive effect, and support the United Nations in playing its
due role. He said that we should respect the dominant position of the Afghan Interim Government in accepting foreign aid
and oppose the politicization of humanitarian aid. Thirdly, according to him all regional countries should support Afghanistan
in embarking on a path of peace and development by promoting Afghanistan to take comprehensive and multi-pronged
measures to cut off terrorism at the source, resolutely crack down on all kinds of extremist terrorist organizations, including
the Islamic State and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, and ensure that Afghanistan will no longer become a hotbed,
harbour or source of terrorist forces. Finally he suggested that we should address both the symptoms and root causes of the
refugee and drug problems, help Afghanistan deal with urgent livelihood issues, and support Afghanistan in carrying out
alternative cultivation, so as to jointly eliminate regional drug sources. Thus Chinese Foreign Minister presented a complete
road map for the reconstruction, social uplift, economic development, political harmony, and capacity building mechanism to
transform it a peaceful and prosperous country. Most recently, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang also made a surprise stop in
Kabul last week to meet Taliban leaders. The Foreign Ministers of Qatar and Indonesia were invited to the meeting of
neighbouring states as guests. Taliban-appointed Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, represented Afghanistan at the
meeting. Participants agreed to a mechanism for regular meetings of their special envoys for Afghanistan and three working
groups to coordinate on political and diplomatic affairs, economics and humanitarianism, and security and stability. Uzbekistan
will host the fourth Foreign Ministers’ meeting. To conclude, road to political stability, economic sustainability and a
harmonious Afghanistan is long and seemingly difficult task. It suggests that China, Pakistan, Russia and all the Central Asian
countries should immediately initiative diversified socio-economic projects in Afghanistan to bring it out of economic malaise.
A regional consortium should be formed to dispatch essential humanitarian assistance for the dying souls of Afghanistan
because widespread poverty may derail all regional efforts of achieving peace and stability. On its part, Afghanistan’s Taliban
led interim setup should come out of it past so-called glory and gratification to reconcile with the current conflicting realities
to show some important policy changes towards human rights, women education, employment, minority rights and strict
actions against drugs and human trafficking along with big no to radicalization and any kind of support to terrorist activities on
the soil of Afghanistan. Only economic prosperity and bigger socio-politico bargaining of Taliban may change their
psychology and transform political philosophy in the days to come. Indonesia’s rich experiences of conflict resolution, pure
humanitarian assistance and last but not least religious clergy humanistic approach must be explored and tapped in Afghanistan
to achieve peace and stability. (Published in Pak Observer on Apr 2, 2022)
RELIGION IN SOUTH ASIAN POLITICS
I will begin with a discussion of India before going on but briefly top their nations in the Subcontinent. Having tried hard to
create a nation out of extreme diversity, India had initially succeeded. That was the conclusion reached by Indian-American
historian Sunil Khilnani in his book, The Idea of India. The thesis developed in the book was based on the assumption that
India had created a system of governance that had, by and large, accommodated religion, language, caste and ethnic adversity
into political economic structures that were inclusive. The Indian constitution whose principal author was the untouchable
lawyer Ambedkar granted several rights to the people who were not mainstream Hindus. This began to change, first gradually
and then quickly as Prime Minister Narendra Modi gained political power. Modi, after having served as the Chief Minister of
Gujarat in India’s west, became prime minister in 2014. By winning the majority of seats in Lok Sabah, the lower house of the
Indian parliament, Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was able to form a government of its own. Previous administrations
were coalitions of several parties with Congress in the lead. Modi came to Delhi with a reputation of being a Hindu
communal leader. In 2002, a fire in a train killed 59 Hindu pilgrims. Although there was uncertainty about the cause of the fire,
violent Hindu mobs targeted the Muslim community, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, several burned alive. Modi, as
Chief Minister, could have prevented the slaughter but he looked the other way, allowing the mob to pick up Muslims from
their houses. By winning a larger majority in the 2019 elections compared to the one in 2014, Prime Minister Modi and the
BJP decided that India was ready to adopt Hindutva as the governing philosophy. This approach held that India was a Hindu
nation and should, therefore, base governance on the Hindutva concept of governing. Adopting that as the governing
approach, India began to give a low status to minority religions even when their numbers were large as was the case with the
Muslim population. In 2021, the numbers of Muslims were estimated at 200 million in a population of 1.4 billion people.
Hindu extremists in Indian politics sharpened their attacks on Muslims, encouraged by senior functionaries in the Modi
government and the BJP. According to a report filed on February 8, 2022, by New York Times journalists from the city of

Haridwar, “before a packed audience and thousands watching on line, the monks had called for violence against the country’s
minority Muslims. The monks’ speeches in one of the holiest cities promoted a genocidal campaign to ‘kill two million of
them’ and urged an ethnic cleansing of the type that targeted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.” The event was organised by
Yati Narsinghanand, a Hindu extremist, who continued to make speeches that were regarded as spreading hate. He saw India’s
Muslims as the enemies of the Hindu state and, given their higher birth rate compared to the Indian average, was likely to turn
India into a Muslim state within a decade or two. Once regarded as fringe elements in Indian politics, the extremists were
more blatantly taking their message into the mainstream. This provoked hate in a push to reshape India’s constitutionally
protected secular republic into a Hindu state. Modi remained silent. “You have persons giving hate speech, actually calling for
genocide of an entire group, and we find reluctance of the authorities to book these people,” Rohinton Fali Nariman, a
recently retired Indian Supreme Court judge, said in public lecture. “Unfortunately, the other higher echelons of the ruling
party are not only being silent on hate speech, but almost endorsing it.” Hindu extremists have celebrated Nathuram Godse,
Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin. Pooja Sahkun Pandey, a monk at the Haridwar temple, held reenactments of Gandhi’s
assassination, firing a bullet into his effigy as blood runs down. Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swamyamsevak Sangh,
RSS, a century-old rightwing Hindu group that borrowed heavily from the Nazi Party in Germany. Modi is also a member of
the RSS. The current campaign was led by Narsinghananad, an extremist, who gained attention following the adoption by
Parliament of a citizenship amendment seen as discriminatory against Muslims. When the Muslim community protested,
Narsinghananad called for violence using the language of a “final battle”. He had no problem encouraging his followers to
murder Muslims. “They are Jihadis and we will have to finish them off.” His agenda, and of those who agreed with him, was
to rework the Indian political system. “This Constitution will be the end of Hindus, all one billion Hindus,” he said in one
address. “Whoever believes in this system, in this Supreme Court, in these politicians, in this Constitution, in this army and
police – they will die a dog’s death.” The next test for the rise of Hinduism came in February 2022 when Uttar Pradesh,
India’s largest state and one of the most impoverished one, began a month-long voting process to elect a new provincial
legislature. Modi had given the job of chief minister of the state to Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk. He was regarded by some
as a potential successor to the prime minister. He went on television to cast the election in terms of “80 versus 20” – a thinly
veiled reference to the rough percentage of Hindis in the state compared with Muslims. Would this approach work for the
BJP? It did. The BJP won the state although with a narrower majority it had in the earlier provincial assembly. Coinciding
with the elections in Uttar Pradesh were those in several other Indian states including the one in the state of Punjab that
neighbours Pakistan. There, the BJP lost to a small political party, Aam Adami Party, that governed Delhi, the Indian capital.
It is not surprising that the appeal of Hindutva did not work in the Indian Punjab as the state has a large presence of Sikhs in
the population. India’s Sikh population has been restive for decades. Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister at the time, was
assassinated by her Sikh guards after she ordered the military to take over the Sikh temple in Amritsar that, along with several
places in Pakistan, are the holiest sites for the Sikh religion. The holiest is the temple in Kartarpur, two miles inside Pakistan
from the Indian border. Pakistan decided to rebuild parts of the Kartarpur gurdwara and allow the Indian Sikh citizens to
approach it without going through the hassle of procuring visa to enter Pakistan. The moved was welcomed by the Sikh
community. Also attracted to the site are the members of the large Sikh diasporas including those in Canada and the United
States. Religion has not only caused a major upheaval in Indian politics, it has also entered India’s relations with Pakistan.
Religion has also raised its head in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s neighbour in the northwest of the country. There, the new Taliban
government has declared that it would be governed according to the principles laid down in the Sharia. A third neighbour,
Iran, is already a state run by Islamic clerics. Religion, in other words, has become an important player in the political
development of South Asia. (Shahid Javed Burki. Published in The Express Tribune on Apr 4, 2022)
PAKISTAN’S ECONOMY CHALLENGE
We live in uncertain times. The last two years have been tumultuous for citizens globally. A pandemic for which there was no
playbook, followed by a fragile economic recovery, recently overshadowed by geo-political turmoil and a resultant inflation
shock, has left many families struggling to make ends meet. Higher fuel, food and shipping costs continue to increase prices
and stretch household budgets. In Pakistan’s case, weak economic fundamentals, global price pass-through with devaluation
enhancing the price effect, and expansionary fiscal stance, have all exacerbated prices. Inflation touched a high of 12.7 percent
YoY in March 2022. Nine month average inflation is in double digits at 10.77 percent. Inflation is likely to remain elevated in
2022. Consequently, the State Bank of Pakistan raised the discount rate to 9.75 percent on March 8, 2022. This rise may
negatively impact the healthy private-sector credit off-take seen in FY22 of about Rs874.3 billion as opposed to Rs403.6
billion last year, with consequences on slowing economic growth. The country’s economy’s external economic indicators are
more concerning. Current account deficit is now estimated to widen to an untenable level of 5-6 percent of GDP in FY22 –
twice as high as the initial forecast of 2.6 percent and even surpassing the recent forecast of 4 percent. A widening current
account deficit continues to erode Pakistan’s largely borrowed foreign exchange reserves. State Bank reserves have declined to
$12.05 billion on March 25, 2022 from a high of $20.1 billion in August 2021 – a hefty fall of 40 percent. Reserves now
barely cover two months of Pakistan’s import needs. Our economy may fast be approaching an uncomfortable

balance-of-payment position. Foreign direct investment remains stagnant at an unimpressive level of $1.26 billion in 8MFY22.
Foreign private portfolio investment has witnessed a net outflow of $314.6 million during 8MFY2022. Foreign public
portfolio investment had a net inflow of $904.9 million in 8MFY22 aided by an inflow of $1.0 billion of Pakistan International
Sukuk bond. The Sukuk carries an interest rate of 7.95 percent – the highest return Pakistan has ever paid on an Islamic bond.
The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) tax collection has been encouraging in FY22 after three years of low growth. The
FBR has collected Rs4,382 billion from July-March 2022 against Rs3,394 billion in the same period last year – a growth of
29.1 percent. It is prudent to mention that the bulk of the FBR revenue growth is dependent on imports, which grew by 50
percent from $32.1 to $47.9 billion in 8MFY22. With monetary tightening to slow the economy, a weakening rupee acting as
a buffer to slow imports, the rise in revenues may not sustain the same growth momentum as seen in 9MFY22. Collection of
Rs575 billion in March is about 5 percent shy of the Rs604 billion target. The FBR also missed its collection target in three
out of the last four months. Non-tax revenue (NTR) is a substantial resource spinner for the budget, estimated at Rs2,080
billion for FY22. NTR collections at Rs783 billion for the first six months of FY22 are 16.7 percent lower than the same
period last year – not an encouraging picture. Budget deficit in the first seven months of FY22 has risen to a worrisome level
of Rs1,862 billion (2.9 percent of GDP) from Rs1,309 billion (2.4 percent of GDP) in FY21 – a mammoth increase of 42
percent. This requires higher domestic and international borrowing and puts further pressure on rising inflation.
Given the above challenging economic picture and a fluid political climate, astute economic management and near-perfect
calibration of monetary and fiscal policies in the near term is critical. Let us outline some practical steps.
First, it is wise for Pakistan to complete the on-going programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). External
financing needs have risen to near $32 billion for FY22 and $35 billion for FY23. The continuous depletion of SBP reserves
and the unsettling devaluation in the exchange rate is a ramification of the economic frailty that exists in the country.
Restoring confidence requires successful closure of the seventh review with the IMF. A note of caution: if the talks with the
IMF were to remain inconclusive, it could raise both local and foreign borrowing costs and hurt Pakistan’s sovereign credit
ratings. One can’t stress enough our preparation in data accumulation, economic modelling and policy prescription that will
get us across the bridge with the IMF on favourable terms.
Second, the IMF programme review closure is time bound. Being in an IMF programme requires consultation on the
contours of Budget 2023 with the IMF. Budget 2023 needs to be prepared considering available financing options,
encompassing the needed repair of expenditure side as current expenditure has swelled to Rs7,523 billion in the past three
years. The burgeoning pensions of the federal government to Rs480 billion and rising mark-up payments near Rs3,073 billion
remain an unfinished reform agenda.
Third, we must, for the medium term, put up a framework which stabilises and then reduces gross and net debt as a share of
the economy. Pakistan’s accumulated debt and liabilities of Rs29.88 billion in FY18, have markedly risen to an uncomfortable
level of Rs51.72 billion in less than four years. External debt has increased to $130.6 billion as of December 31, 2021 from $92
billion in 2018. We must target a budget balance, on average, over the course of an economic cycle that is consistent with
reducing the debt growth. This can be achieved by: i) managing expenditure growth; ii) supporting sustainable, progressive
and simple tax burden by bringing the retail sector into the tax net and ensuring property taxes, agricultural income tax, capital
gains tax and inheritance tax form part of mainstream taxation; iii) using the government’s financial resources to support
agriculture productivity; and iv) enhancing investments in soft infrastructure that build a productive economy.
Lastly, managing inflation, especially ensuring vigilant supply-side monitoring of key perishable and non-perishable food items
in the coming months, is crucial. Initiatives should focus on reducing food inflation as it erodes the buying power of the
vulnerable and urban middle-class. This is the best relief for citizens. Beyond interest-rate hikes, much more can be done. Our
goal must be to manage the supply of cheaper fuels, improve performance of competitive markets, ensure that there is no
undervaluation of the rupee, and limit the rate of monetary expansion to a low double-digit rate. In the medium term,
correcting the fundamentals is a sound way to manage inflation. This is all hard work.
Policymakers have to be realistic about our growing challenges. Pakistan’s structural reform agenda must be articulated in an
economic reconstruction plan, and must remove the brakes on growth. The nation must believe that we are fundamentally
altering the structure of Pakistan’s economy even if by a small margin – through lowering barriers to entry, broadening
ownership patterns and lowering the cost of living and doing business. The task at hand is indeed daunting. (Dr Khaqan
Hassan Najeeb is former adviser, Ministry of Finance.. Published by The News International on Apr 4, 2022)

BIDEN’S CONTRADICTORY APPROACH TO IRAN
In order for the US to effectively confront the Iranian regime’s destabilizing behavior and military adventurism in the Middle
East, a coherent, robust and informed policy, which is devoid of contradictions, ought to be enacted. The Biden
administration’s move last week to impose new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program is a step in the right direction. In
response to Iran’s missile attack on Irbil last month, the Treasury Department announced new sanctions against the unit in the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is in charge of the research and development of ballistic missiles, as well as against
Iran’s Parchin Chemical Industries. Iran’s ballistic missile program has long been a threat to the security of the region. Tehran’s
missile capability is one of the most critical pillars of its national security policy. Apart from managing Iran’s nuclear program
and supporting the regime’s proxies, the IRGC’s third important responsibility is its ballistic missile program. Tehran’s missiles
can hit any country in the Middle East. The US Treasury statement also noted that: “The Iranian-enabled Houthi missile
attack against a Saudi Aramco facility on March 25, as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and
the UAE, are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to pose a serious threat to
international security.” Not only has the Iranian regime been emboldened to the extent that it is violating the sovereignty of
other states through its missile attacks, but the regime’s expanding program and frequent test-fires are also intended to create
fear in the Middle East. This inevitably leads to further destabilization and militarization of the region. Instead of restraining
their ballistic missile activities, the Iranian leaders are in fact proud of their advancements because they can project power and
show their hard-line base, along with militia and terror groups, that the regime is a dominant power in the region. For
example, state-controlled Iranian newspaper Kayhan boasted in an article entitled “Gen. McKenzie: Iran’s Missile Capabilities
‘Remarkable’” that “US Central Command’s General Kenneth Franklin McKenzie told lawmakers that Iran now has about
3,000 ballistic missiles capable of hitting the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. McKenzie said over the last five to seven years, Iran has
invested heavily in its ballistic missile program.” But in order for the US sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program to be
effective and send a strong message to the Iranian regime that its military adventurism and destabilizing behavior will not be
tolerated, the Biden administration needs to show consistency. This means that it should not be lifting sanctions on other
sectors or entities.
To illustrate, here are some of the inconsistencies in the Biden administration’s policy toward Iran. The White House last year
told the Iranian leaders that not only is it willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting other
sanctions. This was followed by the first concession to Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the evidence —
including a report by the UN — showed that the Iranian regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in
Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions that the Trump administration had imposed
on the group. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the Houthis’ designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Additionally, last June, the Biden administration lifted sanctions on three former Iranian officials and several energy companies.
Then, in a blow to the Iranian people and advocates of democracy and human rights — a few days after the Iranian regime had
effectively hand-picked Ebrahim Raisi to be its next president — the US announced that it was also considering lifting
sanctions against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Biden administration is now even considering removing the IRGC
from America’s terrorist list. How can the White House believe that it will impose pressure on Iran’s ballistic missile program
if it is simultaneously appeasing the IRGC? In addition, no robust position has been taken toward the Iranian government’s
expanding and destabilizing roles in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Even Iran’s human rights violations have taken a back
seat in the White House’s Iran agenda. Another policy contradiction is that the Biden administration appears to have invested
all its political capital in a renegotiated nuclear deal. The 2015 nuclear deal lifted all major economic sanctions against the
Iranian regime. Returning to it now would boost Tehran’s ballistic missile program and enhance the regime’s legitimacy on
the global stage. Subsequently, world powers would be less reluctant to hold the theocratic establishment accountable for its
ballistic missile violations. In summary, in order to address the Iranian regime’s threat, the US must show consistency in its
pressuring of the Tehran government. (Published in Arab News on Apr 3, 2022)
GRAHAM ALLISON ON THE US AND CHINA
In his classic History of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides wrote: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear
that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” In his critically acclaimed and best-selling 2017 book, Destined for War:
Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, eminent international security analyst Graham Allison explores this
phenomenon in modern eras when, as in ancient Greece, a rising power has threatened to displace a ruling one. The recent
record is not particularly heartening: In the last 500 years, 12 of 16 such historical confrontations have ended in war. Graham
Allison has been a top analyst of national and international security policy for decades, advising or serving in the US Defense
Department, State Department, and CIA and taking on a variety of leadership roles at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of
Government, where he has taught for more than 40 years. His Thucydides trap book has become a starting point for
many—and perhaps most—serious discussions of recent US-China relations around the world. In this interview with Bulletin

editor-in-chief John Mecklin, Allison explains why the United States and China appear to be falling into Thucydides’s trap
and how the relationship between the world’s two greatest powers might be managed to avert war. (Editor’s note: This
interview took place before Russia invaded Ukraine. It has been edited for clarity.)
John Mecklin: Your Thucydides’s trap article ran in The Atlantic back in 2015, followed by the book. And it’s almost seven
years later. Are the United States and China falling into the trap?
Graham Allison: In short, yes. The book-length version—Destined for War, which was published just as Trump became
president—forecasts that things will get worse, before they get worse. I’m often asked by folks in Washington, “Well, you
know, that was five years ago. What would Thucydides say now?” And I answer that if Thucydides were watching, he would
say: Both antagonists are right on script, almost as if they were competing to see which could better exemplify the
characteristics of the rising power on the one hand, and the ruling power on the other. And that he’s sitting on the edge of his
seat as they accelerate toward what could be the grandest collision of all times.
Mecklin: Given that happy view, what should the United States do to change its approach? I would understand if somebody
had that sort of dark view with Donald Trump in the White House, saying all sorts of horrible things about China. What
should Joe Biden be doing differently?
Allison: I am generally supportive of the president, whom I’ve known since the 1980s, and the team that he’s got wrestling
with this, including [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan and [National Security Council coordinator for Indo-Pacific
Affairs] Kurt Campbell, and [Secretary of State] Tony [Blinken], etc. But I think the objective conditions that Thucydides trap
captures, and Thucydides described in his brilliant analysis of the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, create a dynamic that is
extremely difficult to manage successfully. Indeed, as I’ve written elsewhere, I believe President Biden faces the most complex
and extreme challenge any American president has had to try to cope with. In China, one confronts not only a meteoric rising
power on all dimensions that has in a single generation become a full-scale peer competitor. We also confront a nation that has
become the second backbone with the United States of the global economy—an indispensable economic partner of Germany,
Japan, the UK, and most other major economies in the world. Unlike the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, where the
Soviet Union essentially isolated itself from the global economy and traded only with the countries in its sphere, China has
developed an economy that’s now as large as ours—indeed, by the yardstick CIA believes is the best metric for comparing
national economies, an economy larger than ours. Hard to believe, yes; but go to the CIA website and look at their Factbook.
China is the manufacturing workshop of the world. China is the most essential link in most critical global supply chains. So let
me step back, if I can. In trying to address this issue, one initially has to work on the diagnosis of the problem, to make sure
that you have all the dimensions. In strategy, diagnosis precedes prescription [of a solution]. So the proper diagnosis, I believe,
is to recognize this as a classic Thucydidean rivalry, in which a genuine, rapidly rising power is in fact, threatening a colossal
ruling power.
As Thucydides explains, the Thucydidean dynamic is driven by three factors: material reality, psychology, and politics. At the
material level, China really is rising and encroaching on positions and prerogatives Americans have come to believe are
naturally ours. In the book I suggest we visualize this as a seesaw of power—with the United States on one end and China on
the other. As China has bulked up, it is lifting our feet off the ground. Many Americans see this as an assault on who we
are—since for us, USA means number one. Others are still “China deniers”—refusing to acknowledge that China could be
number one in any race that matters. Psychology combines perceptions and misperceptions with emotions and identity—often
producing what Thucydides called “fear” in the ruling power and “arrogance” in the rising power. The rising power thinks,
“Well, wait a minute; I’m just asking for my due. The current arrangements of the so-called order were put in place before I
arrived. I now have grown, and I deserve more say—and more sway. That’s only reasonable.” And the ruling power’s
perceptions and psychology begin with, “What the hell is going on here? Who does he think he is? What does he think he’s
doing? Why is he not appreciative of the international order that we provided within which he was allowed to grow up?” And
then there’s a third layer of politics. Within the struggle for leadership within each government, a fundamental axiom declares:
Never allow a significant political competitor to get to your right on a matter of national security. If he were looking for a
poster child to illustrate this point, Thucydides could not find a better example than Washington today. I have no doubt that
some members of the Biden team get it. Certainly, Biden, Sullivan, and Kurt do. They appreciate that this is the best diagnosis
of the challenge we face. But if that’s the challenge, what about the response? I’ll confess that in Destined for War, I punt. The
concluding chapters draw a dozen lessons from the earlier rivalries for escaping Thucydides’s trap. And the final chapter
outlines four potential strategies that cover the spectrum from accommodation, on the one hand, to seeking to undermine the
Chinese regime, on the other. But end with a rousing call for a surge of strategic imagination, as impressive as what occurred
in the period between 1946 with the ‘Long Telegram” [on containment of the Soviet Union, written by George Kennan] and
1950 and NSC 68 and ultimately the framework for a Cold War strategy. I’ve been working on this problem, and I still am
short of an appropriate answer. But I’ll offer my current best idea: Because China is so much more complex a challenge than
the Soviet Union, the fundamental problem is that we have to pass what F. Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby called the test
of a first-class mind. Namely, we have to be able to hold two contradictory ideas in our head at the same time, and still

function. That’s a high bar. The two contradictory ideas and contradictory imperatives the Biden administration must respond
to as it tries to find a way to manage this relationship are these: On the one hand, China is the most formidable rival any ruling
power ever saw. So as [Singaporean statesman] Lee Kuan Yew said, China is becoming the biggest player in the history of the
world. A nation with 1.4 billion people who are extremely talented and extremely ambitious believe their time has come. And
China is displaying almost all the characteristics of a normal, rising power. In fact, and contrary to much of the Washington
commentary, I believe the Xi government has not been excessively assertive, relative to rising powers at that stage in their own
trajectory. I have a chapter in the book entitled “What if Xi’s China were just like us?” But not us as we imagined we are
today, but as we were were when Teddy Roosevelt, at the beginning of the 20th century, was leading us into what he was
supremely confident would be an American Century. And if you look at what we did, in what we call our hemisphere,
relative to what Xi’s been doing at the same stage, he seems remarkably restrained. In any case, one set of imperatives come
from the fact that this rival—who has different values, and different views about how life should be organized, and how central
to civil life individual liberties are—is a formidable competitor. On the other hand, both the United States and China live on a
small planet in which technology and nature have condemned us to coexist—since the alternative is to co-destruct. China
now has a nuclear arsenal that can absorb any American first strike and retaliate with a counterattack that destroys the United
States as a functioning society. Thus, we have a condition that Cold War strategists identified as MAD: mutual assured
destruction. That’s a deep, deep, complicated, painful truth that those of us who lived through the Cold War came to
internalize. Ronald Reagan captured the central truth in his favorite one liner: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must
therefore never be fought.” This is a foundational insight. If I find myself in a nuclear war with you at the end of which my
country has been erased from the map, who could call that victory? And if that’s true, I then have somehow to constrain my
behavior and to persuade you to constrain your behavior that would lead us to confrontations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis,
that could ultimately end in a war, a nuclear war. So proposition one, we have a shared common interest in our own survival,
and in avoiding the nuclear war, of which we would each be the first two victims. We now have a second version of this that
I’ve called climate MAD. We now understand in ways we didn’t earlier, that both the United States and China live in a small,
contained biosphere in which greenhouse gas emissions from either of us goes into the same biosphere, and has the same
impact on both of us. On our current trajectories, either of us, by itself, can so disrupt the climate, that neither of us can live
appropriately within it. Unless the two of us can figure out a way to mutually constrain greenhouse gas emissions, we could
make an unlivable biosphere. So that’s, again, a common shared interest that we are powerfully compelled to address for the
sake of our own survival. And I now think there’s a third dimension of this, which I’m still struggling to get my head around.
If one considers the benefits of advancing global integration from creation of a bigger economic pie to advances in science, and
technology, and medicine, and indeed, life as we know it, is it possible for a state to decouple itself from these benefits without
impoverishing itself in a way that would be unsustainable for its political leadership? If the answer is no, then we have three
dimensions of thick, inescapable interdependence that together condemn us to coexist. The drive to survive is perhaps the
most powerful motive for human beings. Thus, if my survival depends on finding some way to co-exist with you, however
fierce our rivalry, I have to find a way. As Scott Fitzgerald pointed out, even for an individual, holding two genuinely
contradictory ideas in your head at the same time and still functioning is really a stretch. To do that as a government and as a
society, including our society today is even more so. So that’s the challenge that the Biden administration is wrestling with. So
far, they’ve made some progress on the rivalry front, less on the necessities for cooperation. And beyond that, there’s the
further issue of finding a way to articulate cooperation with China that would be politically palatable.
Mecklin: You’ve explained the setup to the situation very well. The United States seems to be in the process of constructing
some kind of containment of China, something, with this pivot to Asia idea, involving new alliances and the moving of forces.
I’m not sure that that exactly matches up to what you just described. Is a military surrounding, a containment strategy,
workable, given the complex situation you just described?
Allison: That’s a good question and one that I’ve struggled with, too, so let me step back just one step, and then I’ll answer
directly—since I think the answer is no. Given the complexity of the competing imperatives that we just discussed, it’s not
surprising that in trying to develop a playbook, people go back to historical analogs. The Cold War is becoming increasingly
the preferred analog, even though most of the people talking about it don’t know what the Cold War was. They vaguely
remember that somehow we won, so let’s do that again. It’s like the challenge you and the magazine have in trying to remind
people that nuclear weapons didn’t disappear, either. In short, we live in the United States of Amnesia. When people think
about historical analogies, the Applied History Project here at Harvard recommends they follow the advice of Ernest May, one
of the most distinguished international historians of the 20th century. According to what we call the “May Method,” when
you think of an analogy, like the Cold War, put it at the top of the page. Draw a vertical line down the middle of the page and
put “similar” at the top of one column and “different” at the top of the other column. If after reflection you can’t list three
bullet points under each, take an aspirin and call a historian. When I analyze the differences between the current situation and
the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the differences outweigh the similarities. The first big difference is that China has an
economy as big as ours, while the Soviet Union’s GDP never reached half that of ours. Secondly, China has established itself as
the indispensable partner of most major economies including Germany, Japan, the UK, and 130 other nations. If we tried to
build some new economic Iron Curtain, which side will we find them on? Germany’s major industry is automobiles and
China is their No. 1 market. So as they and others keep telling American officials: Don’t try to get us to choose between our

security relationship with you and our economic relationship with China, which is essential for our prosperity. Now, what
could people rightly have in mind? I think those in the administration who’ve though about this more strategically would say,
“Well, what we’re doing with AUKUS or with the Quad [4]or attempts to build positions of strength in Asia is to establish, at
least in the military security area, a balance of power, or seesaw, where the correlation of forces advantages free societies like
ours and our allies’ and partners’ over authoritarian competitors.” Actually, I like that conceptualization since it recognizes that
the China challenge is not a problem to be solved but rather a condition that will have to be managed. And if we are able to
manage on a level playing field a long-term competition between democracy and autocracy, I’d sign up. I’m still enough of a
traditional small “l” liberal committed to a society based on citizens’ liberties to believe that over the long run, that system will
outperform a party-led autocracy. But we would see. Looking at the recent record, I understand why many Americans are
disheartened. Looking at the recent record, the Chinese have some considerable grounds for their belief that their system—not
just their society and economy, but their system—is in the ascendancy. But my bet is still on Team USA.
Mecklin: You’ve been talking about a rising power and a formerly dominant power, that relationship. But there’s a third
power in here, Russia, that may not be playing economically, but certainly has the nuclear weapons and the guile to play some
sort of role here, as it’s playing with Ukraine right now. How do you manage this really complicated, difficult US-China
relationship when there’s a spoiler like Russia jumping up and down and saying, “No, look at me.”
Allison: Again, a great question. And in thinking about it, one’s reminded why it’s so much easier to offer advice from the
sidelines than to be in the arena. First, start with the historical canvas: We’ve seen many instances previously, in which there
were not just the primary antagonists in a rivalry between a rising and a ruling country, but a third party as well. In the run up
to World War I, it was not just Germany rising, threatening Britain’s predominance. Germany was also looking over its
shoulder at Russia, which appeared to be getting its act together, building up its army and completing railroad lines for
bringing troops to the German border to present a serious threat. Second, as a result of the failures of American policy in
dealing with post-Cold War Russia, on the one hand, and the brilliance of Xi’s diplomacy, on the other, we have essentially
created what [Carter administration national security adviser] Zbig Brzezinski called the “alliance of the aggrieved.” Two
countries that should objectively find themselves at odds because of territorial disputes and history have quickly become
thickly aligned. Third, while most of the Washington policy community is trying to hold onto the mantra from the decade
after the Cold War that declares “Russia doesn’t matter anymore,” the brute fact is that Putin’s Russia today is no longer the
failing state many unilateralists remember. Putin’s Russia has a military that can fight and win to achieve political objectives.
The Russians demonstrated this in brutally destroying Chechnya—which is now pacified under Russian rule. They
demonstrated this in their attack on Georgia, which spiked its efforts to join NATO, and again in 2014 in seizing Crimea from
Ukraine. In Syria, while Obama was declaring: “Assad must go,” Putin said “nyet.” And Russians smile when they remind
American interlocutors that Obama is now gone, and Assad still rules Syria. If what one reads in the press and journals is an
actual expression of what people really think, I’d say most of the Washington foreign policy establishment is not yet in this
new reality zone. In analyzing the current confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, consider five poker tables in which the
hands have been dealt: the military cards, economic, diplomatic, hybrid warfare, and court of public opinion. I think Putin has
the high cards in the first four of those games. The only arena in which we can seriously compete is the public sphere—and
there I’d give the Biden team’s effort good marks. On the global chessboard, the fact that in Xi and Putin—not just two
countries but two leaders who each are planning on leading their country for a decade or even two decades ahead—have such
a tight relationship makes the US challenge all that more complicated. But if we recognize the fact, it offers clues about the
timing of any Russian invasion of Ukraine. To make the point, I’m prepared to offer you 4-1 odds that Russia does not invade
Ukraine before February 20. That means I’ll bet $4 against your $1 on no invasion before that date. Why? Because the Beijing
Olympics that begin on Feb 4 run to Feb 20th; Xi has designed what he’s promised will be a “spectacular” show that shines
the spotlight on a China that now stands tall; the most honored foreign guest at this event will be Vladimir Putin; and there is
no way that he will rain on Xi’s parade.
Mecklin: Interesting that something like the Olympics could have that power.
Allison: Yes. And a good reminder that these leaders of countries are fellow human beings. Relationships among them really
matter. Watch the body language. Remember: Putin calls Xi his “best buddy.” While China has only recently been active in
most of the winter sports and thus is not going to win many medals, I have no doubt that the opening and closing ceremonies
are going to be off the charts.
Mecklin: It’s going to be interesting to see them try to do that, in the middle of a pandemic, when exactly nobody goes there.
We’ll see; maybe they’ll pipe the applause in. I wanted to ask about two other things. One is this: You’ve been talking about a
very complicated and difficult management situation for the United States versus a rising China. Within that difficult situation,
how does the United States continue to push for human rights and democracy? I mean, what’s happening to the Uyghurs is
horrible.

Allison: Great question. Jake [Sullivan] has given the best answer to it that I’ve heard recently. First and foremost, this is about
who we are. Start with the old Cold War mantra. Our overriding objective is to ensure the survival of the United States as a
free nation, with our fundamental values and institutions intact. So the purpose of the United States in the world is first to
provide space for a society to realize what free people can do. The centerpiece of our values is liberty for individuals. And
that’s the core of America’s commitment to human rights: first survival, and then the Bill of Rights, and then what ultimately
becomes the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The thought that it’s possible to create a government and a society in which
individuals can be free to the maximum extent to realize their potential—is a radical idea. But it is the core of the American
experiment. We don’t always succeed but that’s what we aspire to be—and what we encourage in other countries. As we
re-learned in Afghanistan, attempting to promote democracy through the barrel of a gun is misguided. But affirming our
values, standing up for them, calling out abuses of fellow human beings wherever they live, reflects our identity. And in the
long-term competition with China, we are confident that a freedom-based democracy will prove superior to a Party-led
autocracy in delivering what people want. Of course, foreign policy pursues multiple objectives and hard cases require
tradeoffs. So it’s complicated. But in contrast to realists who dismiss or denigrate human rights, or some activists who imagine
that the promotion of human rights should be the only objective, my view is that the centerpiece of American engagement in
the world is to build a world safe for free human beings to be all they can be—beginning here in the USA.
Mecklin: Last thing I wanted to ask you about is something that may or may not be fun for you. I’m going to throw an old
proposal of yours back at you—for a White House Council of Historical Advisers.
Allison: Yes, I’m still an enthusiast.
Mecklin: Why? Tell people why that would be a good idea.
Allison: Why do we have a Council of Economic Advisers? The answer is because we believe that by analyzing some of the
choices that the president and the government have to make, professional economists can clarify the choices and their likely
consequences. How well do they do? Well, excuse me, look at the inflation we have today. Did they forecast that? Nope.
They don’t have a crystal ball. The real world is highly uncertain. Nonetheless, relative to people who know no economics,
they do a little bit better most of the time. Not as well as they claim—but a little bit better. My colleague Niall Ferguson and I
proposed an analog that could be called the Council of Historical Advisers. They would not have a crystal ball that would
allow them to predict what’s going to happen in the confrontation with China or Russia. But by analyzing the historical
record, and by being systematic about historical analogies that policy makers grab in trying to make sense of a confusing world,
like Cold War or containment, they can help illuminate the challenges that we face and the choices. I’m happy to report that
the Applied History movement now includes not just Harvard and Stanford, but vibrant work at the Kissinger Center at Johns
Hopkins, the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, at Duke, Ohio State, Berkeley and a dozen other
universities that actively have people doing this. If the question were, “What the hell is going on in the current confrontation
with Putin, and why might he be doing this now?”, that would be a good question to give to the Council. And you can see
the pontification about it in a many, many publications, who knows maybe even your own.
Mecklin: A little bit, yeah.
Allison: To be suggestive, let me mention one of the tools in the Applied History toolbox. It begins with the recognition that
for many policy makers and most of the foreign policy community, in what’s been called the United States of Amnesia, every
day is a new day where we begin with a clean whiteboard. Thus, the current confrontation with Putin is like a frame or
snapshot from the course of a movie. But the applied historians remind us that what we see today is just the most recent frame
in a process that has evolved over the past year or even decade. So the applied historian asks: “Show me the main scenes in the
movie that led to the current picture. Or how about give me the main events in the movie that led to the current picture?”
That sequence goes back at least to 2014 when Putin seized Crimea. Analyzing that event, what were the underlying factors,
what were the proximate causes? The historian would note that this came after the color revolutions that overthrew
governments in Georgia and Ukraine; that the EU was in a bidding war with Russia over Ukraine; that the Yanukovych
government which the US certified had been legitimately elected was overthrown by the Maidan demonstrations; that the
new government had Ukraine on a fast slide towards the EU. All this presented Putin the specter of the Russian navy’s major
warm water port in Sebastopol, which had been built by Catherine the Great, falling under the control of NATO—an
outcome no Russian would accept if there were any alternative. And to understand that, the historian would go back to scenes
from 2008 when at the NATO Summit in Bucharest the Bush administration, and [Secretary of State] Condi [Rice] pushed
for an entry into NATO of Georgia and Ukraine.
In trying to answer the question of why Putin is acting now, in 2022, an applied history analysis would review key scenes over
the past two years: actions by Ukraine, Europeans, and the US as well as those by Russia or others. Answering that question
would require overcoming the myopia that dominates most thinking in Washington—what HR McMaster called “strategic

narcissism.” The alternative is to develop a capacity for “strategic empathy” in which one tries to get inside the adversaries’
skin, to see the world through his eyes, and to think about his interests and threats to him as he does. The goal is not to
legitimize or sympathize with his values and views, which can frequently be deplorable. Rather, it is to do a better job of
forecasting what his next step might be, and to be in a better position to try to influence his behavior. So I think, bottom line
for the Council of Applied Historians: If the benchmark is the assistance that the Council of Economic Advisers provides in
helping to clarify the economic dimensions of economic issues, historians could help clarify the geopolitical history and the
factors that lead to the challenges and choices that the president faces today. (This article was published in Bullet-in of the
Atomic Scientists on March 10, 2022)
ECONOMIC COSTS OF JUDICIAL (IN)ACTIONS
Pakistan inherited a legal and judicial system from the British rulers. While the colonial masters have moved forward with time
and modified their laws and procedures consistently, we are still frozen in the 1850s. A number of well-informed
commentators have diagnosed the weaknesses and shortcomings of the system, both on substantive matters as well as
procedural issues. There is a broad consensus that the present system is inequitable, expensive, protracted and time consuming.
The proceedings span decades to obtain a final decision and, having reached that stage after so many appeals and reviews by
multiple tiers, the execution of decrees is slow and cumbersome. Frivolous litigation without any substantial penalties,
tampering of evidence and retraction by key witnesses under pressure and due to monetary benefits are prevalent widely. Use
of modern ICT tools in case management, recording of evidence, transparency in preparation of cause lists, servicing of
summons and other administrative matters are also sporadic and selective. The quality and content of legal education,
enrolment as lawyers, non-observance of the code of conduct and the open display of rowdy behaviour, and the inherent
conflict of interest in regulation are issues that have been highlighted several times by well-meaning members of the Bar
themselves. Further, the human resource management of the judiciary falls below the desirable benchmarks due mainly to
factors such as the method of appointment of judges at the entry level and their perfunctory training, promotion based on
seniority rather than performance and expertise, reluctance to weed out the incompetent and corrupt, and payment of same
amount of compensation across the board to everyone. The recent debate on the basis of appointment to the Supreme Court
— seniority or merit — reflects the divergence of views within the profession itself about the possible direction of high-level
judicial appointments. It is indeed gratifying that some highly competent individuals of caliber and integrity have been
appointed to the Supreme Court in the last few years on the basis of merit, expertise and performance rather than seniority.
Each one of the topics mentioned in the previous paragraph has been widely debated in newspapers, electronic and social
media, seminars and conferences ad infinitum by able lawyers, retired judges and scholars. The first Law Reform Commission
was formed in 1958, followed by another in 1967 with several committees on judicial reforms in the intervening period until
1979 when a fulltime standing Law and Justice Commission headed by the chief justice of Pakistan was set up to constantly
work for the improvement, modernization and reforms of the legal system. Another committee created in 2002 — the
National Judicial (Policy making) committee — also exists and formulated the 2009 National Judicial Policy. Each commission
and committee has come up with very sensible and practicable suggestions but somehow the progress in adopting and
implementing them has been extremely lethargic. It is time to translate these recommendations and proposals into time-bound
result-oriented actions. The subject I wish to take up here is the severe economic costs caused by the protracted delays and
frequent unjustified adjournments, indefinite stay orders, multiple stages of appeals, suo-motu cognizance taken by the
Supreme Court and consequential judicial activism, and the lingering pace of execution of decrees awarded by the courts.
Before discussing the economic costs in some detail, two suggestions would go a long way in addressing some of the issues
facing our legal system. First, the whole administrative structure of the judiciary — from the lower courts to the Supreme
Court — needs a complete overhaul in the induction, promotion, training and severance of human resource and bringing in
experts and specialists in fields such as economics and finance, ICT, adoption of ERP and e-office, e-case management systems
with dashboards along with a centralized data center and dynamic website; reengineering of business processes; adequate
physical infrastructure for the judges ,their staff; and regular monitoring and reviews by the Law and Justice Commission. The
antiquated system of ‘readers’ and ‘nazirs’ and clerks needs to be replaced by a professional management system. Second, the
Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism and small-cause courts without the representation of the lawyers would
bring a lot of relief to poor litigants who cannot afford the costs of litigation; it will also help reduce the burden on the courts.
It is seldom realized that there is a close causal relationship between economics and law that runs both ways. Usually, they are
considered two separate disciplines with little shared linkages. This is not correct. In fact, rule of law, sanctity of private
property and contract enforcement form the basis of all economic transactions. Markets cannot function efficiently without
observing these underlying principles. Disputes between the contracting parties are adjudicated, mediated, resolved or
arbitrated by the judicial system. In the realm of economic governance, interpretation of laws, regulations, and rules belong to
the domain of the judiciary and their verdicts are binding upon the executive branch. There is hardly any recognition that
incorporating economic analysis in judicial verdicts can potentially resuscitate dead capital buried in informal and illegal
settlements and squatters, promote financial savings, augment tax revenues, reduce land speculation and prices, enforce
banking and other regulatory compliances, minimize elite stranglehold and bring about many other economic benefits to
society. It has been found that whenever economic analysis is taken into account and expert opinions have been sought by the
judges, the quality of the verdict improves and the economy benefits. We are by no means arguing in favour of the Chicago

School law and economics model of rational choice and the belief that legal rules and court decisions should be aimed only at
promoting efficiency. In our view, equity and easy and affordable access to justice ought to play an equally important role in
the legal system. What are the economic benefits a sound judicial system can bring about? First, trillions of rupees worth of
urban property is possessed by households living in informal and illegal settlements, squatters, katchi abadis in the main
metropolitan centres of the country. They live in substandard conditions without access to basic services. As they have been
settled illegally with the connivance of the land mafias, politicians, bureaucrats and police, they do not have title to the pieces
of property they are living in. The owners of land in katchi abadis that were regularized were able to get titles on the basis of
which they were able to obtain mortgages for further improvement, using their plot as collateral. In many other cases, they
were able to move up socially and shift to better places or used bank loans to start or expand their businesses. The release of
this huge amount of dead capital can be put to efficient and productive economic use while at the same time upgrading the
social and economic status of excluded poor communities. The courts can order enforcement of laws that were meant to
regularize and legalize these katchi abadis, establishing titles and ensuring proper planning, utilities, open spaces and amenities
rather than order forced removals as encroachments. It is to be commended that the Lahore High Court recently decided a
six-year-old pending case against the foreclosure law which has fueled mortgage lending by commercial banks in the country.
Huge amounts of money has also been invested by aspiring middle class families in purchasing plots of land, booking
apartments and renting dwellings. Due to the absence of a weak and fragmented regulatory framework and prevailing corrupt
practices in land allocation, utilization, conversion and registration, a large number of irregular and illegal housing cooperative
societies have sprung up throughout the country taking over fertile agriculture land and also sucking in billions of savings of
middle class aspirants for getting decent housing. Many of these societies have left incomplete structures and buildings not fit
for occupation while legal proceedings are held up and not concluded for years altogether because of adjournments and stay
orders or absence of lawyers on the dates of hearings. While the main responsibility lies with the executive branch for allowing
a laissez-faire environment without a single regulatory agency overseeing the real-estate sector, the judiciary at the lower level
hasn’t helped much. Housing is both a social as well as an economic asset. Deciding these cases expeditiously would help these
middle classes acquire assets which can be used as collateral for other economic purposes. The country would witness a
quantum jump in liquidity and augmentation of savings in the financial system as the disenfranchised poor and the lower
middle classes become part of the formal sector. In place of the present tendency of the courts to order demolition of built
structures in which the middle class has invested all their savings, a better approach is to regularize and confer property rights
upon them while severely punishing the developers, builders and the complicit officials responsible for the infractions. The
judges as executive magistrates can also direct the urban development authorities in their districts to take preventive measures
that such irregular and illegal construction does not take place and ask for reports at regular intervals. Citizen complaints on
portals against such violations and whistleblowers should also be encouraged. The recent judgments of the Islamabad High
Court on the acquisition of land from poor owners and allotting them at several times below market prices to bureaucrats,
judges and generals are indeed a breath of fresh air. Overnight the members of this elite class become millionaires, making
huge windfall gains by a stroke of the pen of their colleagues at the expense of the dispossessed poor owners of the land. This
injustice and use of discretionary powers to benefit a small class of the connected and well to do should be brought to an end
all over the country using the Islamabad High Court verdict as a precedent. A substantial amount of non-performing loans
cannot be collected by the banks as the defaulters have obtained stay orders that have been in force in many cases for several
years. The willful defaulters are enjoying conspicuous consumption at the expense of the bank depositors. As the ratio of
non-performing loans declines, the cost of advances to borrowers is also reduced, thus spurring investment. Similarly, the FBR
has recently reported that more than Rs3.5 trillion of taxes due cannot be realized from those who have understated or
concealed incomes or evaded tax payments due to on-going litigation in the courts. Those from whom these amounts are due
are in fact living comfortably or rolling over the money for business purposes while the country is facing a shortfall in revenue
mobilization. Imagine if the courts decide these cases quickly and half of this amount is collected (and a deterrent effect is
created for the future) how much borrowing the government would be able to avoid every year. Regulatory agencies such as
the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP), National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), Oil and Gas
Regulatory Authority (Ogra) are confronted with a similar problem. It was after 11 years that the question of the jurisdiction
of the CCP post-18th Amendment was resolved by the Lahore High Court. Hundreds of millions in fines and penalties could
not be collected because of the stay orders given by the courts. Regulatory effectiveness and the deterrent effect are diluted by
unending litigation due to these long pendencies Several glaring examples of suo-motu action and judicial activism that have
brought enormous economic and financial losses to Pakistan have been well documented. One such case pertains to the
Pakistan Steel Mills. During the tenure of the late Col (r) Afzal, a hardworking, dedicated man of integrity the Steel Mills were
a profit-making entity that had repaid its loans before the due date. But this profitability was not the normal outcome but an
exception. Most of the years since their start, the Steel Mills were running in losses due to overstaffing, incompetent and
corrupt management, inefficiencies in production and sales. The government decided that as it was a commercial enterprise it
was best to privatize it through an open competitive process. The transaction was successfully structured and completed and
won by a strategic investor group. Pakistan Steel was designed originally with a production capacity of three million tons and
the infrastructure was laid for meeting that capacity. Under government ownership, the actual production never exceeded one
million ton while bearing the fixed cost of three million tons. It was expected that the successful private-sector bidder would
invest a large sum to bring the capacity to its full utilization. This way the government would be relieved of subsidizing the

losses and collect corporate taxes, surplus employees would be absorbed and the increased capacity would save foreign
exchange as imports of steel and steel products would be substituted by domestic production. However, the Supreme Court
took suo-motu notice of the privatization and cancelled the transaction. Since then, Pakistan Steel started accruing losses and
incurring liabilities which had accumulated to Rs189 billion between 2009 and 2019. Rs58 billion has been paid in salaries to
the workers and managers although the Steel Mills were shut down in 2015. Retirement benefits to the tune of Rs23 billion
were also paid out of the exchequer. The country continued to import steel products starting 2009 to feed the demand of
downstream industries and as the international prices have hiked in the last few years the landed costs of imported steel have
also jacked up domestic user prices. The cost to the economy in terms of fiscal and current account imbalances caused by this
single judicial intervention is quite apparent. Imagine if this amount or part of this amount was instead spent on bringing
out-of-school children into the formal and informal education system or to reduce external borrowing. Pakistan’s already
high-risk profile has become elevated with the addition of litigation risk to the other existing economic, financial and political
risks. Investors and businesses, particularly foreigners who have plenty of other choices, face a number of hurdles imposed by
the government agencies and departments. Now they are faced with an additional uncertainty – whether, after having crossed
all the given hurdles of the executive branch, the courts issue stay orders, injunctions or take suo-motu cognizance, getting
them embroiled in long-drawn legal proceedings. International courts and arbitration panels have so far given verdicts against
Pakistani courts’ decisions in relation to foreign investors. FDI in Pakistan is less than one percent of GDP because the
cumulative country risks are high relative to other countries in the region. Judicial reforms are badly needed, in addition to
other reforms, to mitigate the litigation risk and make Pakistan attractive for foreign and domestic investors, and raise
investment-to-GDP ratio to at least 30 percent to generate a seven percent growth rate to be able to absorb one million youth
entering our labour force every year. (Dr. Ishrat Hussain. Published in The News International in March 2022)

Articulate (Vol 22) April 2022

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Articulate (Vol 22) April 2022

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ARTICULATE

An online magazine for CSS 2022

Page 2 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 3 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 4 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 5 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 6 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 7 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN ISLAM

Page 8 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 9 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 10 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 11 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 12 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

TRANSITION IN FOREIGN POLICY OF PAKISTAN

Page 13 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 14 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 15 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 16 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 17 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 18 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 19 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 20 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 21 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Allison: Yes, I’m still an enthusiast.

Mecklin: Why? Tell people why that would be a good idea.

Mecklin: A little bit, yeah.

Page 22 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

ECONOMIC COSTS OF JUDICIAL (IN)ACTIONS

Page 23 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 24 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

Page 25 of 25 — Articulate (Volume 22) April 2022

You might also like