STORIES, TRADE & SERVANTS [ KHURRAM HUSAIN ]

by CSS POINT » Sun Mar 23, 2014 8:49 pm

Stories, trade & servants

KHURRAM HUSAIN

A POWERFUL trade dispute these days between the United States and India is brewing, and has the potential to boil over into a trade war.

At issue is the price of medicines. American pharmaceutical producers are saying that companies in India reverse-engineer new life-saving drugs put out by American companies, then market them as generics. In one case, when a Swiss pharmaceutical company brought a new drug to the Indian market and wanted to patent it, the Indian Supreme Court disallowed the patent.

This has caused enormous friction between the American and Indian governments. The Americans argue their company’s invest huge amounts of money in pharmaceutical research and innovation and are entitled to recover that money by patenting their drugs and selling them at stupendous prices.

The Indian Supreme Court, on the other hand, argues that Indian law gives a higher place to the rights of the poor who find life-saving medicines priced beyond their reach under American patent law. As such, the Indian law places a higher bar than American law does to determine when exactly an innovation is eligible for a patent.

The narratives marshalled by both sides dovetail with their history and peculiar cultural priorities. In America, business calls the shots, but in India the rights of the poor have to be safeguarded by the law. The Indian Supreme Court makes reference to India’s colonial history in its judgement, and the role that the colonial-era patent law played in placing agricultural and medicinal advances beyond the reach of the poor. It argues that today’s patent regime must be interpreted in such a way so as to prevent those injustices.

Whose story is one to believe? Is each side trying to protect their own industry? It comes down to whose story you want to believe, although the Indian story sounds a lot more appealing to the ears than the American one I must say.

The clash of the narratives is so powerful it might well be the backdrop to the whole Khobragade affair. This too has mobilised its own narratives.

This is how a New York Times editorial put it: “It is not unusual in India for domestic employees to be paid poorly and required to work more than 60 hours a week. But such practices are not allowed under American law, and abuses by anyone should not be tolerated, regardless of their status.”

Stripped off its sanctimonious language, this American outrage translates into this as the narrative enters the realm of the day to day: ‘What’s with these South Asian elites and their domestic servants? How come they can’t get by without domestic help?’ A bit rich coming from a society whose average resident has a carbon footprint five times as large as the world average, according to an MIT study. Let’s talk about who can’t get by without what.

India and Pakistan are labour-surplus economies, and it’s very common to find human labour doing work that is otherwise performed by machines in economies where labour is scarce — work such as washing dishes, or sweeping the roads.

Let’s face it: the only reason Americans don’t use domestic labour is because they cannot afford it, that’s all. So they buy a dishwasher instead. And how exactly is domestic labour any more morally repulsive than sweatshop labour? Of course “such practices are not allowed under American law”. They outsource these practices. Out of sight, out of mind.

On the flipside, the story being put out by the Indian Foreign Service, is also somewhat distasteful. Is a domestic helper more important than our bilateral relationship? they ask incredulously. Yes, indeed, how dare that lowly creature demand her rights as a human being!

Behind this clash of narratives may well lie a growing series of trade disputes, that are getting very intense indeed. But behind those trade disputes lie other narratives, and behind those, yet others about colonial history and the obligation of states to safeguard a collective interest and so on forever.

Policy decisions and economic outcomes are intimately woven into narratives and stories if they are to find a place in public life, and sometimes the warp and weft of these narratives gets so dense, so intricate, that it sparks an endless conversation. Speaking of which, something bears mentioning here. Last week, I wrote about KESC, and vented some indignation at the public relations campaign that is under way to lionise their management and their achievements. I felt it’s a bit soon for them to start polishing their trophy or writing their epitaph just yet.

I was contacted by somebody who had served as a member of the core team that took charge of KESC in 2008. This person took issue with my description of the 560MW project. Specifically, I had said that KESC management is taking credit for a project that was begun by their predecessors, even though implementation was done by them.

The person who contacted me argued that whatever beginnings they inherited from their predecessors were negligible compared to the work they themselves put into the project. He shared details, but there are space restrictions here. He felt I had been unfair in asserting that credit had been taken for other people’s work. I promised him I would convey his sentiments to my readers in my next column, and hopefully that promise stands fulfilled.

The writer is a business journalist and 2013-2014 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington D.C.The Prophet’s legacy By Qasim A. Moini

THE Holy Prophet (PBUH) is a point of unity for all Muslims, regardless of which school of thought they adhere to. The words revealed to him by the Almighty — the Quran — are the central codex for every believer, while his Sunnah (way of life) is to be emulated. In fact, the Messenger has been described as uswatul hasana (an excellent example) in the Holy Book.

Following the Prophet’s example requires the believer to learn about how he lived while carrying out his mission both during the initial period in Makkah and later in Madina, after the migration, as well as how he addressed different spiritual and worldly problems. In essence, Islam expects believers to make earnest efforts to learn about the Prophet so that they may live their lives according to his example.

This can be done through poring over the great works of seerah, hadith and history, as well as listening to what scholars of repute have to say.

In fact, if efforts are made to study the Prophet’s life with all prejudices set aside, sectarian and doctrinal differences may give way to consensus and a spirit of ecumenism within the world of Islam, enabling Muslims to live in harmony with themselves and with others.

Conversely, not studying the Prophet’s life will only add to the differences within the world of Islam, as each group claims its own view constitutes the ‘authentic’ Sunnah.

Debate, dialogue and research about the Prophet’s life, what he preached and how he preached it may bring the varying strands of Islamic thought together. Dare one say that it is due to not fully understanding the magnanimous personality of Allah’s Messenger that today there is such a great number of claimants to what is truly ‘Islamic’?

The hate-filled militant claims to act in the name of Islam, as does the placid Sufi, while the dignified scholar and zealous missionary also claim to be inspired by Islam.

Only by studying the authentic sources concerning the Prophet can we reach a consensus about what is and what is not Islamic.

Yet while Muslims are free to consult various literature about the Prophet’s life, the living history associated with the Noble Messenger in his birthplace as well as the city of his residence has practically been wiped out.

The ‘development’ of Makkah and Madina by the Saudi authorities over the decades has actually resulted in cutting off Muslims from the sites that were intimately related to the Prophet. Perhaps this is among the reasons why Muslims today are so fragmented and confused: we have been separated from our history and the legacy of our Prophet.

Leading Saudi architect and a prominent campaigner for saving the Islamic heritage of Hejaz Sami Angawi estimates that over the past half century or so, over 300 historical sites in Makkah and Madina have been destroyed.

Another figure estimates 95pc of Makkah’s buildings, some dating back a millennium, have been bulldozed. Islam’s holiest city has been completely transformed thanks to a combination of capitalist greed and fundamentalist zeal.

Instead of sites associated with the Holy Prophet and the earliest Muslims, today believers are surrounded by garish luxury hotels, shopping malls and fast-food joints.

Invaluable pearls from Islam’s history and the Prophet’s life have been lost forever. These include the house of Sayyida Khadija in Makkah, several of the mosques from the Battle of the Trench in Madina, as well as the tombs of close members of the Prophet’s family, his companions and later Muslim luminaries in Madina’s Baqi cemetery. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Every school of thought has a right to preach what it believes is ‘truly’ Islamic. But this wanton iconoclasm has deprived Muslims of a key link to their history. And as reports indicate, the authorities in Saudi Arabia now have their sights set on the Bayt al-Mawleed, the house in Makkah believed to be where the Prophet was born.

Is it not ironic that today, when Muslims are celebrating the birth of the Messenger, the very spot where he was believed to be born is under threat?

It is hoped better sense prevails and the house is spared. Too much has already been lost and the results of destroying our own history have been catastrophic. Today it is as if Muslims stand adrift in the middle of the ocean, without a compass to guide them, simply because we have been detached from our history. And this has not been the work of colonial oppressors or non-believers, but of some within the ranks of Islam.

The Prophet’s legacy belongs to over a billion individuals across the world. Let us try and preserve what is left of the living history associated with the Noble Messenger.

The writer is a member of staff.

Legal case for damsBy Ahmer Bilal Soofi

THE recently issued Kishanganga arbitration award has again proved what I have been saying all along: that by invoking the dispute resolution mechanism of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), Pakistan cannot halt India from undertaking various upstream hydroelectric projects and it needs to bilaterally take up this matter. In this regard, certain observations in the award are actually

quite helpful and Pakistan must make use of them.

But let’s be clear. We can blame India’s conduct as an upper riparian state only up to a point for our water issues. What of our own conduct and responsibilities as a lower riparian state? Lamentably(unfortunately or disappointedly), we have been wasting our water resources with almost criminal negligence and abandon.

In fact, what Indian scholars highlight in my interaction with them at international conferences is that Pakistan must share responsibility for the wastage of water on its territory as its people and successive governments have failed to undertake effective measures for the storage of water or its more constructive utilisation.

Under international law, a positive obligation to not inflict unreasonable harm on the lower riparian state restricts the sovereignty of the upper riparian state. However, while the upper riparian is almost like a trustee for the lower riparian and must therefore adopt suitable measures to preserve the catchment areas, its failure to do so does not absolve the lower riparian from its independent obligation to manage water flowing through its territories so as to ensure both equitable and reasonable utilisation of shared water resources.

Crucially thus, the optimal management of water through means such as storage facilities and dams remains the equal responsibility of a lower riparian state like Pakistan.

Moreover, international law binds Pakistan to better manage its territorial water resources in order to secure the right to water of its citizens under Articles 11 and 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Pakistan ratified in 2008. Failure to give effect to our obligations under the ICESCR may now have consequences of its own in the context of recently granted GSP Plus status by the European Union.

Given this legal framework, the provinces ought to appropriately approach the matter of management of rain and floodwater as well as of construction of dams in the light of Pakistan’s legal compulsion under international water law. Importantly, a possible failure to reach consensus on the Kalabagh dam should not prevent the federal government and the provinces from planning and undertaking an extensive programme of construction of several other dams in order to fulfil Pakistan’s international legal obligations.

Presently, under the water accord of 1991, the provinces remain focused on the agreed upon water flows while completely ignoring Article 6 of the accord which states that “the need for storages, wherever feasible on the Indus and other rivers was admitted and recognised by the participants for planned future agricultural development”. Thus far, the provinces have planned no water storage pursuant to Article 6. Significantly, this noncompliance by provinces also hinders the federation from fully performing its international law obligations.

Since provinces are subsets of the federation, they are also bound by international law obligations. Therefore, irrespective of Article 6, the upper riparian province has a responsibility to let flow the water while the lower riparian province has the responsibility to preserve and make storages to avoid wastage of water resources.

In addition to the construction of dams for efficient management of water resources, international customary water law also mandates Pakistan to preserve water during floods and rains. At present, no provincial plan for the management of floodwaters exists. In this regard, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah of the Lahore High Court penned a highly illuminating judicial inquiry tribunal report in 2010 extensively detailing the reasons and causes of floods. The report also highlights the critical role of dams in water management and recommends construction of several dams. The lower riparian provinces ought to seriously implement the report’s recommendations.

The Kishanganga Award must be assessed holistically in the light of the above context. If, as the lower riparian state, Pakistan had taken an early initiative in the planning of Neelum-Jhelum, it would then have been able to persuade the International Court of Arbitration to allow more flow of water into Pakistan.

Although this delay has been costly for Pakistan, it also reinforces the importance of fulfilling our obligations of managing and conserving water resources as a lower riparian state.

I am afraid that the failure of the federal and provincial governments to plan for construction of dams and water reservoirs will legally and politically weaken our stance against India which is unabatedly constructing several more dams in a far smaller catchment area than ours.

Whereas India has built 63 large dams in its northern areas in the last 30 years, Pakistan has only built two large dams along the Indus passing through a stretch of over 2,000 kilometres on its territory. There is no question that we have been acting as an irresponsible lower riparian state.

In the wake of greater provincial autonomy after the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, it is imperative that provinces demonstrate greater responsibility and resolve in managing the country’s water resources. Extensive plans for the management of Indus waters as well as flood and rain waters must be developed and initiated without any delay.

The writer was a caretaker federal law minister.

ahmersoofi@hotmail.comA little of everythingBy I.A. Rehman

PAKISTAN can easily be described as a country that has a little of almost everything that a modern, developed state can boast of and also much that an underdeveloped, backward-looking state often wishes to hide.

Spurred by the latest campaign of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), for workers’ social protection and their right to decent work, several Pakistani labour organisations have stepped up their

efforts to secure social security cover for their following, including bonded labour.

Their struggle has already helped a good number of workers, several hundred of them bonded, receive social security cards that go a long way in improving their economic security. They constitute a small group of privileged workers, though not necessarily from the disadvantaged category.

A vast majority of the workers are still deprived of their basic rights — the right to work of one’s choice, a fair wage, security of tenure, unionisation, collective bargaining, et al. The disparity between the two groups is truly enormous.

The state’s desire to keep up appearances with the advanced and privileged societies of the world and its inability to substantially improve the lot of a vast majority of people has created similar disparities in almost all fields of life.

Take justice, for example. The apex court has been vying for honours with corresponding courts in the advanced world in terms of its capacity for innovative interpretation of the basic law, its exercise of the suo motu jurisdiction, its ability to check the executive’s transgressions, and its keenness to remove citizens’ grievances.

At the same time, ordinary people get little justice from the subordinate judiciary, and stories of corruption and inefficiency at that level are common. The ordinary Pakistani, particularly the rustic villager, lives in perpetual dread of the police that are supposed to serve and protect him. And if that Pakistani happens to be a resident of Balochistan, he is exposed to greater excesses by the more privileged ‘servants’ of the people. Also, the poorer one is the lesser his or her access and entitlement to justice.

Pride in the country having become a nuclear power and owner of a nuclear arsenal is now an integral part of the Pakistani people’s mindset. Yet, a large number of schools, perhaps a majority, do not have a science laboratory worth the name.

The disparity in the standards of educational institutions that serve the rich elite and those meant to cater to the needs of the less resourceful segments of the population is quite alarming. Institutions in the former category claim to be at a par with Western centres of learning, while the products of the latter are distinguished neither by their learning nor by their proficiency in any vocation.

Besides, it took the republic 63 years to recognise the right to education as a fundamental right, a concession meant entirely for the underprivileged people as the affluent ones had no problems, but almost four years since Article 25-A was added to the Constitution one does not know how and when the state is going to fulfil the obligation it has much too belatedly assumed.

Otherwise, too, nobody can claim that Pakistan is taking due care of its disadvantaged children. Child labour is still rampant and little has been done to end the worst form of child labour although Pakistan

was quick to ratify ILO Convention 182.

The protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that prohibits the employment of children as soldiers remains unratified — perhaps out of deference to or fear of militant extremists. The infant mortality rate is still very high and small girls continue to be given away for settlement of feuds and sex-related crimes.

Much is said about the advances made by women. Their number in the legislatures has risen by a wide margin and they can, theoretically at least, make laws for the whole population. It is doubtful if they are allowed a share in managing their homes and in taking decisions about their children. There is, however, no doubt about the denial of such privileges to a preponderant majority of Pakistan’s womenfolk. Most of them are no better off than unpaid servants of the patriarchs.

The company responsible for waste management in Lahore can advertise its modern machinery and advanced methods to keep the city clean, while a better part of the population is condemned to wallow in filth and squalor. Construction barons are building luxury houses that match Western comforts but there is no hope for the slum dwellers.

These disparities are visible to the naked eye and sear the disadvantaged people’s hearts. It was such disparities that sparked the alienation of the Bengalis and these are now alienating the Baloch and the tribal population.

True, no country is free of differences between the privileged and the disadvantaged but civilised societies try to ensure that such distinctions are progressively reduced, that at least they are not allowed to increase.

Pakistan unfortunately belongs to the group of countries where the gap between the elite and the common citizens is widening all the time. Any improvement in the life of the poor is insufficient to reduce the gap because the margin of uplift of the privileged is much higher.

The stark reality is that a minority has everything and the majority has very little for itself. So long as this equation is not altered in the interest of the poor and those without resources, Pakistan will remain stuck in the danger zone.

Education challengeMEER M. PARIHAR

THE refusal of Laado to accompany her mother to the paddy fields during the harvesting season because of homework is an encouraging sign in a society where education for girls is still frowned upon. Laado belongs to the Ghuna fisherfolk community and is studying at a government school — practically run by an NGO — in a small village in the Sindh district of Badin.

Her refusal is the outcome of 10 years of tireless efforts put in by local community activists, who besides arranging for uniforms and reading material, have managed to make transport available for girl students.

After leaving government service, I decided to settle in the village, and after three years of interaction with the rural folk, have seen how wrong the general assumption can be that children help their parents earn a livelihood and therefore cannot be sent to school. Actual land is shrinking thanks to expanding villages; with greater infrastructure, rapid farm mechanisation and unchecked population growth the agricultural sector is losing its capacity to absorb more people in the workforce.

Most school-age children, who accompany their parents to the fields, do nothing but play in the mud, catch fish or collect leftover post-harvest stalks which they sell.

The challenge is to enrol such idle children in schools. For that, lucrative incentives are free lunches and cooking oil. These were introduced in selected rural schools for girls some years ago in many areas of Sindh; there was a remarkable rise in enrolment, but then many donors withdrew due to corruption in the education sector.

Besides offering such incentives, the need is to discourage parents to bring children to the fields, and to, instead, persuade them to send their offspring to school. Anyone closely observing rural life in Sindh can see the large shadow of the landowner hovering over the common man. However, success of the education project depends on the collective efforts of local waderas who enjoy authority at the village level under the patronage of big feudal lords.

Feudalism in Sindh, unlike in other parts of the subcontinent, has continued. Only education can undermine the evil. No government in Sindh has ever given sincere thought to educating the masses — despite the yearly increase in the education budget and multi-million-dollar foreign projects.

The deterioration of education in Sindh can be traced to the early 1970s; no government after that, elected or installed by a dictator, focused on education meaningfully. Political considerations have dominated recruitments and postings and the issue has been exploited to strengthen vote banks and usurp funds.

The poor commitment of Sindh’s rulers to education is evident from the fact that despite the selection of high-school, middle-school and primary-school teachers by the National Testing Service in October 2012 and January 2013 the recruitment process has not yet been completed. The Sindh education department might have been able to bring about some improvement in some of the schools in the category of public-private partnership, but the conditions in thousands of primary and secondary government schools are reported to have worsened.

Reports from independent agencies and donors such as the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational

Development present a gloomy scenario with regard to enrolment, quality of education and performance of teachers. The Annual Status of Education Report 2012 paints a sorry picture of education “especially in Sindh” where the number of children who do not have access to schools has increased.

The state of affairs in the realm of higher and technical education in interior Sindh also leaves much to be desired. Except perhaps for the medical and engineering universities in Jamshoro, academic activities in other public universities are below par. Postings of allegedly ineligible vice chancellors and principals are a key cause of discontent.

Fortunately, there are still some competent and committed persons in the Sindh bureaucracy. Progress can be achieved if their services are more usefully employed to ensure that recruitment is made strictly on merit and postings as per policy and the focus remains on training and enhancing the capabilities of teachers.

Monitoring through effective community participation at all tiers and the constitution of a powerful independent board at the provincial level, comprising educationists and civil society members are necessary steps. Last but not least, across-the-board accountability including of the secretary who is not only the administrative head but the principal accounting officer of the department, is a must.

Bringing improvement in education appears to be a gigantic task but it is surmountable; when Punjab has shown that it can do it, why not Sindh? It may be a distant dream, but if the major obstacle of educational institutions functioning as the personal fiefdoms of feudal lords — to whom educating the public represents a threat — can be overcome, the battle would partly have been won.

The writer is a former secretary, Sindh.

meer.parihar@gmail.comhttp://www.dawn.com/news/1078819/edu

Woman on the bench

by AMBER DARR

JUSTICE Ashraf Jahan made history as she took oath as the first female judge to be appointed to Pakistan’s Federal Shariat Court.

Whilst she appears to have remained silent on the momentous occasion, the remarks of the FSC chief justice have been widely quoted in the press: “I took the initiative,” he is reported to have said, “as it would send the message in the world that we are enlightened people and would dispel many misconceptions.”

Laudable as the sentiments of the FSC chief justice may be, they raise two related questions: first, is the appointment of the first woman judge of the FSC capable of being anything more than an exercise in judicial image-building, and second, is the move likely to convey a message of Pakistan’s enlightenment to a broader audience?

The implications of this appointment may be understood more fully by examining not only the history and mandate of the FSC but also its place in Pakistan’s judicial system. Gen Ziaul Haq established the FSC in 1980 as part of his Islamisation drive.

However, despite the propaganda surrounding its birth, the FSC has remained marginal to the country’s mainstream legal system primarily due to its limited mandate: the FSC may only determine whether or not a law conforms to the injunctions of Islam, or review decisions of lower courts in respect of Hudood matters. It may not hear any appeals.

Whilst litigants may file petitions before it in matters related to conformity of a law with Islam, only the FSC itself may take notice of decisions in respect of Hudood cases. Further, all decisions of the FSC are appealable to the Supreme Court, which may either affirm or reject them.

The mandate of the FSC shrinks further due to the attendant difficulty likely to be faced by potential litigants, of pressing Islamic law into legal argument, the absence of specialist lawyers in this field and the fear of adding yet another layer of litigation to their cases unless they are either passionate about Islam or, which is more likely, merely seeking to stall a matter.

Whilst the FSC itself has the power to take notice of matters within its purview, its ability to actually do so is circumscribed by its resources, gumption and perhaps an unspoken judicial policy.

Given the somewhat adjunct and certainly subordinate status of the FSC vis-à-vis Pakistan’s mainstream judicial system, it may be argued that a judge of the FSC, whether male or female, may not be in a position to play a direct or meaningful role in developing the country’s jurisprudence.

There is, however, an important, alternate point of view: it is increasingly believed in circles responsible for making judicial appointments, that gender balance and diversity on the bench bring perspective to the judicial decision-making process.

It is argued that the thinking of a person is conditioned by his place in society (which is, in large part, determined by race, ethnicity and gender), upbringing and education and, therefore, judges drawn from a relatively homogenous group are likely to have a similar ideology and thought process.

Given that judges in Pakistan are both male and privileged, the presence of a woman on the bench is likely to add a fresh dimension to their deliberations.

Does this simply mean that a female judge will champion the cause of women? Perhaps not. Because gender sensitivity does not necessarily flow from one’s gender but is a function of a general attitude.

It is widely acknowledged that women, as men, can be each other’s harshest critics and even worst enemies. Further, male judges have amply demonstrated time and again, that men are entirely capable of recognising and treating women as human beings at par with men.

A most recent example is that of Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, who in his judgement in ‘Ali Muhammad v. The State’ not only directed the release from Darul Aman of a woman who had been sent there by the Lahore High Court and allowed her to return to her father, but also reprimanded the judge below for his decision.

The appointment, however, does mean that if indeed the judge in question is a woman of substance as she is believed to be, and is able to make her voice heard in a space traditionally occupied and dominated by men, she will succeed in injecting an alternate point of view in any matter under her consideration and for any litigant, whether male or female.

The fresh perspective afforded by her presence will encourage a more holistic examination of a case and, therefore, ultimately a more judicious outcome. And it is in the enhanced quality of its decisions that Pakistan will appear more enlightened to the international audience rather than by a mere inventory of the gender of its judicial appointees.

The writer is a barrister.

amber.darr@gmail.comhttp://www.dawn.com/news/1078605/woman-on-the-bench

Past present: Knowledge at par

MUBARAK ALI

For much of his life Charlemagne (800-814), also known as Charles the Great was illiterate, but he was an enthusiastic promoter of literacy in others. Throughout his empire, he used the church and the well-organised clergy to undertake the task of spreading literacy. Realising the importance of education, the authorities of the church extended him full support and cathedral schools were founded in church buildings where the curriculum was designed to make the young students devout Christians.

Later, the famous theologian Thomas Aquinas (d.1274) integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian beliefs, which became known as Aristotelian scholasticism. The curriculum emphasised knowledge of the absolute truth by revelation and not by any other means and methods while the association between Aristotle and Christianity became quite profound.

The curriculum was based on the belief that only tradition and past values could stabilise the society as these are tried and tested. Aristotelian scholasticism endorsed traditional ideas and that these should be respected, honoured and observed without any endeavour to change or challenge them with innovation.

Throughout Europe, this curriculum was enforced in all universities and the Cambridge University charter stated that students should not deviate from, criticise or reject it. Reading any other literature which contradicted the prescribed curriculum was prohibited. As a result, the students blindly followed existing traditions and customs without creating new ideals and thoughts. The main objective of the education system was to strengthen the Christian faith and prevent any kind of questioning or rebellion.

For the many years that this system prevailed, students remained occupied with religious activity and were not allowed to investigate, probe and research for new venues of knowledge. Consequently, the universities failed to respond to the challenges of time.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the European society went through a radical change due to political, social and economic development. Although new ideas, scientific inventions and technological innovation were needed to meet modern day challenges, yet the universities continued to follow the outdated and obsolete educational system and the dogmatic church authorities refused to alter the curriculum.

To meet the demands of their time, scholars and philosophers decided to establish their own research institutions and societies under royal patronage. In 1660, the Royal Society of London was established and committees of scientists and scholars from the fields of physics, chemistry, agriculture, engineering and architecture were constituted. The members of these committees undertook respective research projects, presented their papers in discussions and research journals were published in order to disseminate scientific knowledge to the general public.

These scholars and scientists challenged outdated ideas and a new vision emerged paving the way for intellectuals, scientific and technological revolution which transformed the European society.

Considering the above as a case study, there is a lesson for us to learn. Our public universities have failed to produce new ideas, thoughts and concepts required to understand the ongoing problems in our society. Instead of producing creators of knowledge, they have produced consumers. Our universities continue to follow old and rusted curricula which have no relevance to our society.

On the other hand, private universities, like tuition centres, are commercial set-ups which have no concept of training young minds to undertake social responsibility, nor to equip them with new ideas. Since social sciences and humanities are not included in their curricula, they produce robots without thinking minds. Students are educated according to the needs of the market and after completing their education, they only want to pursue material interests and have no desire to enlighten the society or to

change their environment. Sadly, private universities are producing an incompetent, educated class empowered with only self-interest and materialistic values.

There is a need to establish independent research institutions in order to understand our problems and transform the society. Unless the society supports independent research institutions that will provide relevant knowledge to reconstruct and reshape political, social and economic structure, there is not much hope of survival in the competitive world of knowledge.

The hiccups(deley) continueBy A.G. Noorani

IT would be tedious(boring) to draw up a list of brief intervals of relaxation in relations between India and Pakistan and proceed to pinpoint the causes that led to their discontinuance, followed immediately thereafter by the resumption of their cold war. That has been a constant feature in their relations.

It has taken all of 2013 for both countries to tackle the crisis that erupted in January 2013 with alleged beheadings on both sides of the Line of Control in Kashmir. As in all such cases, resumption of dialogue in earnest was a slow affair. Prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif met in New York in September 2013.

A fine opportunity for a candid exchange was lost. Little did Manmohan Singh realise that he had in Nawaz Sharif an earnest advocate for reconciliation who had made friendly relations with India a plank in the 1997 general election in Pakistan.

Domestic political compulsions prevailed. The Indian spokesman said: “It was decided that it was first necessary to tackle the immediate issue of tranquillity on the border before moving forward on others”; specifically, even “trade issues”. The sole result was to ask the directors general of military operations to “meet and establish a joint mechanism for not only investigation of incidents on the LoC, but also to ensure that there is no recurrence of violence”.

It took three months for the DGMOs to meet. They had met last in 1999 during the Kargil war. There was nothing they devised now which they could not have agreed upon during their weekly telephonic exchanges; such as “combined patrolling”, no illegal constructions on the borders, meetings to resolve the issues and agreement to “re-energise existing mechanisms”. It is not the DGMOs who hit upon these points; it is their respective governments which gave them the brief.

Indian sources claim that the three-month delay in the meeting of the DGMOs was due to Pakistan dragging its feet on fixing the date. In between, the two sides were not idle.

Officers from Pakistan’s Rangers and India’s Border Security Force met on Oct 29. The prime minister’s

adviser Sartaj Aziz met India’s Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid on Nov 12. But, for reasons more than one, the basic resolve on restoration of the status quo before January 2013 has not yet been made in New Delhi.

Electoral conditions is just one of them. Another is the lack of any progress in the trial of those accused of planning and executing the attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The trial judge has been changed a number of times in a case which should have been put on the fast track. It is such incidents which derail the peace process.

However, the record shows that the attacks did not lead to an immediate derailment. The Sharm El Sheikh joint communiqué of July 2009, the Thimphu accord in 2010, foreign ministers Hina Rabbani Khar and S.M. Krishna’s meetings in July 2011 and the prime ministers’ two meetings the same year put the process back on the rails to a considerable degree.

The incidents of January 2013 caused an overreaction because they reminded people of an unhappy strife-stricken past coupled with resentment at the failure to punish the attackers. Still, India’s reluctance to hold a dialogue is most unwise as is Pakistan’s failure to push that trial to a speedy conclusion. There is no sign of even some tangible progress.

That said, it helps nobody to harden, rather than relax, the visa regime and make a dialogue and trade conditional on tranquillity along the LoC. Revival of the peace process on Kashmir, interrupted in 2007, will help. Also, there is no point in delaying the final talks on Sir Creek which is on the verge of a breakthrough. So, of course is Siachen; but, given the state of things, it will have to await the 2014 election in India.

Everything need not be put on hold till then. Fishermen from both countries resolved in New Delhi to move their respective Supreme Courts to order release of their colleagues. The credit for this goes largely to an NGO, the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif took a statesman-like step in coming on a five-day tour of India. He met his Indian counterpart Prakash Singh Badal, chief minister of Punjab, at Amritsar on Dec 15 and addressed a conference on Punjab-Punjab cooperation. They agreed to “promote people-to-people contact through encouragement, development and participation in sports, cultural and tourism activities” and promote cooperation in a host of activities.

They will pursue this with their respective central governments.

The ‘core issue’ must not be overlooked. India was not happy with the PPP government’s stalling on the agreed four-point plan on Kashmir. It must be revived.

The writer is an author and lawyer based in Mumbai.

Global FDI flows rise 11pc

Updated 2014-01-29

ISLAMABAD: Global foreign direct investment rose by 11 per cent in 2013 to an estimated $1.46 trillion, up from a revised $1.32tr in 2012, while FDI flows to developing economies reached a new high of $759 billion, accounting for 52 per cent of global FDP inflows in 2013, Unctad announced on Tuesday.

According to the ‘Global Investment Trends Monitor’ the total inflows to developing Asia as a while amounted to an estimated $406bn in 2013, at a level seminar to 2012.

With inflows to China at an estimated $127bn including both financial and non-financial sectors, the country again ranked second in the world, closing the gap with the United States to some $32 billion, the UN Conference on Trade and Conference report says.

West Asia is the only region to see a fifth consecutive decline in FDI in 2013, dropping by another 20pc to $38bn.

The region’s two main recipients Saudi Arabia and Turkey both registered significant FDI declines of 19pc to $9.9bn and 15pc to $11bn respectively. Turkey witnessed virtually a total absence of large FDI deals.

The FDI flows could rise further in 2014 and 2015, to $1.6tr and $1.8tr respectively as global economic growth gains momentum.

Activity is expected to improve further in 2014 and 2015, largely on account of recovery in developed economies. Those improvements could prompt transnational corporations (TNCs) to gradually transform their record levels of cash holdings into new investments.

Developing economy mergers and acquisition sales’ value in 2013 increased by 64pc to $88bn, bouncing back to their pre-crisis levels.

Almost 68 per cent of the acquisitions were from other developing countries.

The value of greenfield projects continued to decline in 2013, although only minimally, by 1.7 per cent from the previous year.

A 17pc decrease of project values in developed economies was counterbalanced by a few developing countries that saw announced greenfield activity increase.

Expectations of a rebound in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in 2013 did not materialise as TNCs maintained a cautious approach.

The value of cross-border M&A sales increased only modestly by 5 per cent to reach $337 billion in 2013.

Cross border sales in developed countries decreased by about 10 per cent on both sides of the Atlantic. However, there are signs that confidence is returning in Europe.

US, Pakistan seek stability amid Afghan doubts

Published 2014-01-25

WASHINGTON: The United States and Pakistan resume talks next week after a three-year hiatus as they seek stability in often turbulent ties amid mutual concerns over Afghanistan's future.

Pakistan and the United States started a “strategic dialogue” in 2010 to work through their complicated relationship, but the talks were quickly frozen due to repeated crises — including over the secret 2011 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who announced a resumption of the talks during a visit to Islamabad in August, will hold the dialogue Monday in Washington with Sartaj Aziz, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's national security adviser.

A US official said that the talks would look at both security and economic cooperation and seek to build a “blueprint” for future ties.

“Having seen the highs and lows of this relationship,” the official said on condition of anonymity, “both countries have put an enormous amount of effort into assiduously putting this relationship on firmer grounding over the last year and a half”.

The United States, which formed an uneasy partnership with Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, is seeking Islamabad's assistance again as it pulls tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan this year and Washington ends its longest-ever war.

US President Barack Obama's administration has grown frustrated as Afghan President Hamid Karzai holds off on signing a security agreement that would allow a smaller number of troops from the United States and the rest of the Nato alliance to stay in a support role.

“I think our analysis and Pakistan's analysis are pretty much the same — that an abrupt termination in the Nato and American presence there would be destabilising, would incentivise Taliban and other militant groups and would demoralise significant elements of the population,” another US official said.

Since sweeping to power last year, Sharif has notched down Pakistan's often strident tone that had grated on US officials. In a meeting with Obama in October, Sharif pledged to work for better relations with Afghanistan and historic rival India.

But whatever his intentions, Sharif may face limits in assisting the United States. Opposition supporters led by former cricketer Imran Khan have blocked a key trucking route into Afghanistan.

Pakistan has also been torn by internal violence. More than 400 Shia Muslims were killed in targeted attacks last year with extremists enjoying virtual impunity, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

Sharif is seen in Washington “as potentially a strong partner because he has a strong political position, which was not the case with the previous government,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center.

“But whether he will be considered a real strong partner will really depend on how much he can deliver in terms of improving and stabilising the conditions inside Pakistan and then helping the US stabilise the situation in Afghanistan,” Nawaz said.

Nawaz said that Pakistan will likely be looking for a solution on joint operation of drones. The unmanned US aerial attacks on Pakistani territory are deeply unpopular with the public and have become a major source of friction.

Pakistan also has staunch critics in the US Congress, which recently voted to withhold $33 million in aid until the release of Shakil Afridi, a doctor imprisoned for helping the CIA track down Osama.

In a new study, Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said that Congress should keep the current level of about $400 million in annual defence assistance to Pakistan but link it to improvements in internal security instead of the Afghan war.

Markey called for Pakistan's integration into the US “rebalance” toward Asia, saying that the Obama administration's professed new regional focus has led to feelings of abandonment in Islamabad.

Among other ideas, Markey called for the United States to negotiate preferential access for goods from Pakistan, India and Afghanistan — a three-way deal that would help improve Islamabad's relations with its neighbours.SHAIBIIIAfghans and Pakistanis; friends turned foes?

HINA BALOCH

Published 2014-01-28

‘Man mekhahum dar aidna raees-e daulat-e Afghanistan Shawam

[I want to be the president of Afghanistan in the future]’, says Nogreh in front of her class at a girl’s school built of mud walls in Kabul, Afghanistan. This proclamation follows a debate

among the girls of the school on why or why not a woman can be the elected head of an Islamic state. To bolster her argument, Nograh says, ‘I was in Pakistan for several years, where Benazir Bhutto, a woman, was once the prime minister’. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a point of no return for Nograh – a point from where she almost loses the argument. One of her classmate retorts, ‘Why do you give the example of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan? Although she was a woman, she unleashed the Taliban on the women of Afghanistan’.

The above narrative is borrowed from an actual scene from a 2004 Dari movie titled, ‘Panj-e-asar’, [At five in the afternoon]; the first movie to be shot by an Iranian director, Samira Makhmalbaf, in post-Taliban controlled Kabul.

The anger expressed by the school girls in the movie points towards the events of 1996, when Pakistan, under the premiership of Benazir Bhutto, became the first country to recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan – barely a day after it had captured Kabul.

Since the making of this movie, especially so in the past decade, the anger of the Afghan people against Pakistan has increased exponentially. Today, Pakistan is the most negatively viewed country in Afghanistan. While the tit-for-tat exchanges made by the political leaderships of both the countries receive significant media attention, what is rarely canvassed, are the sentiments of the Afghan people and their increasingly negative, rather hostile, perception of Pakistan.

Recently, Asia Foundation, a reputed international development organisation, released the key findings of its ninth and longest running public opinion poll in the country, titled ‘Afghanistan in 2013: A Survey of the Afghan People’. The survey which was released in Washington DC on December 11, 2013, highlighted Afghan public opinion on various critical issues. The report, a highly-telling document, is a must-read for anyone remotely connected to Pakistan’s foreign policy road-map vis-à-vis Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, Pakistan has been brought up by the respondents at several points over the course of the survey – almost always in an unflattering light. For example, when asked why Afghans might disagree with the goals of the Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs), the third most commonly cited reason was the perception that ‘they work for Pakistan’. This was above more expected reasons like ‘they carry-out suicide bombings’. Similarly, when participants were asked what the two biggest problems facing Afghanistan were, a sizable number of them cited ‘interference from Pakistan’ as one of the key reasons. Alarmingly, this was equal to the percentage of respondents who cited the obvious ‘presence of Taliban’ as a key problem facing Afghanistan. For Pakistan to be bracketed alongside the Taliban as amongst the central disorders plaguing Afghanistan speaks volumes about the evolving Afghan perception.

Over the course of the survey, the field supervisors were asked to note down any newsworthy events or notable observations that they came across during their fieldwork. In the Nooristan province, one of the field supervisors reported, ‘the security conditions were perilous in the Waygal and Bargi Matal of Kamdesh - there were Pakistani Taliban and Arabs in the area who had made lives difficult and dangerous for the local residents.’

Pakistan also fared the lowest in donor recognition. In central Kabul, only 2 per cent of

respondents recognised Pakistan’s work as a donor in the areas of educational development and rebuilding of infrastructure and provision of civic amenities. The figure fares even more poorly when compared with the other international players in Afghanistan. For example, the top most recognised donor country was the United States (46 per cent), Japan (24 per cent) as the second-most, and the third spot was shared evenly between India and Germany (both at 16 per cent). Pakistan occupies almost negligible space when it comes to foreign benevolence in the minds of the Afghans.

Another evidence of the rising Afghan anger against Pakistan can be seen on various social media platforms. Despite a low internet penetration rate, with only 2.4 million Afghans (7.7 per cent) out of 31 million having access to the internet through computers or smartphone devices, there still is a sizable population (in absolute terms) that is making its political opinions known online. In fact, of those having internet connectivity, over 74 per cent of them are regular users of social media websites. The Afghan anger on social media can be seen through the content posted on various Facebook pages managed out of Afghanistan, as well as through the comments made by young Afghans. One Afghan social media page that has over 125,000 ‘likes’ and regularly posts articles promoting solidarity among Afghans, recently uploaded a video of former Pakistani military dictator General Pervez Musharraf. The video titled, ‘That’s how they brainwash you: Pervaiz Musharraf, Pakistani leader, trying to break Afghanistan’ shows Musharraf talking about Afghanistan’s demographics and the high presence of non-Pashtuns in the government. The footage is followed by a sermon in ‘Dari’ which calls upon the Afghans to rise above ethnic lines and focus on national solidarity and unity.

The anger has not just been limited to survey responses and social media posts. On 16 May 2007, after a series of border clashes, hundreds of Afghans took to the streets chanting anti-Pakistan slogans. In October 2011, many Afghans protested against the Pakistan army’s shelling of border towns and on the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The protesters openly accused Pakistan’s intelligence outfit, of plotting Burhanuddin’s murder. More recently, on 8 May 2013, 11 Afghans were killed during an anti-Pakistan protest in Kandahar that turned violent. The protesters, consisting entirely of Afghan youth, held placards with anti-Pakistan slogans.

It is also pertinent to remember that a large number of young Afghans residing in Afghanistan have once lived in Pakistan as refugees (during the Najibullah-era civil war and then when the country went under Taliban rule).Today, 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees are still living in Pakistan. While many in Pakistan view this as an extension of their country’s hospitality, with an implicit expectation from the Afghans to be grateful for their accommodation, the Afghan sentiment is far from one of indebtedness. Aalya, a female civil society leader in Afghanistan says,

‘We lived in Pakistan in Peshawar from 1991 to 2002. My feelings and views about Pakistan have changed drastically in the past few years. While living in Pakistan, and even a few years after moving back, I felt thankful for the hospitality that my family and I received. Increasingly, however, with Pakistan’s interference in our internal politics, I have a sour feeling towards the Pakistani government that is coloring my memories from Pakistan.

'The younger generation has the ability to ultimately distinguish between the Pakistani people and the state. However, the prevalent political narrative in Afghanistan can hardly be described as Pakistan-friendly and this naturally impacts the views of the youth who see the country as directly responsible for most of the ills they we are plagued by today.’

Other Afghans describe the constant discrimination they faced and the fear they felt when stopped or interrogated by security forces. Many claim they were referred to as “Maajara” by the police and often harassed based on their wafer-thin legal status in the country. Najib, an Afghan who lived in Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as a refugee, says:

I could not study beyond grade 10 as a refugee in Pakistan. As refugees, we were not allowed to attend public universities. Only those who were able to bribe the officials or find clever ways of making their identity cards could study further.

Despite bitter personal experiences, many Afghans, like Aalya and Najib, say that their disdain for Pakistan has got little to do with their marginalisation as refugees and far more to do with the fallout from what they call Pakistan’s flawed ‘Strategic Depth’ policy framework. The policy, they say, has nurtured extremist elements as non-state assets, including the Taliban.

Back in the 70’s the Afghans were seen by Pakistanis as sufferers of strife and hailed as ‘the fighters that ousted the Soviets’. Thirty years on, that sentiment no longer perseveres. Pakistanis today view the influx of Afghan refugees with mixed-feelings. In a 2012 interview given to Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN-Asia), Ameer Arif, a local transport company owner, admits that, ‘Afghans worked hard and helped the economy’, but quickly goes onto add, ‘it has been 30 years since they came, and perhaps they should [now] return, given the contest for jobs is tough and many local people need them’.

The 2009 report on Afghan Refugee, issued by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, also states that ‘official and popular perceptions of (Afghan) refugees have changed in response to altered geo-political realities’. The report goes onto claim that many Pakistanis today associate Afghans with the spate of terrorist attacks happening in their country.

‘Many [Pakistanis] believe Afghans are involved in terrorism or crime’, said Asif Khan, a worker with the NGO Afghan Friends whilst speaking to IRIN in 2012. What Asif was alluding to is actually the general perception that prevails amongst Pakistanis today - that a number of Afghan refugees were largely responsible for the massive importation of illegal arms and narcotics into their country. Pakistanis today feel that the socio-cultural and political turmoil plaguing their country is a direct fall-out of the Afghan-run heroin and Kalashnikov trade.

Last year, whilst delivering a lecture at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Dr. Sanaa Alimia, a teaching fellow at the School of Advanced and Oriental Studies (SOAS), summed-up the Pakistani perception of Afghan refugees the best when she described the Afghan refugee image transforming over the decades from one of ‘victims of conflict’ to that of ‘liabilities’. Acknowledging Pakistan’s tremendous support for the Afghans and the hospitality extended to them, Dr. Sanaa Alimia went onto explain that ‘the lack of economic opportunities and education

has meant that many Afghan refugees have been forced to become a part of the informal sector, thus resulting in further regional instability’.

Interestingly, many Afghans are also uncomfortable with the return of Nawaz Sharif as Pakistan’s premier. One of Nawaz Sharif’s 1993 election campaign slogans (targeting the Pakistan People’s Party at the time) was ‘you gave up Dhaka, we took Kabul’. Till today, these words are recalled with equal dismay and aghast by Afghans.

Today, the verdict from Afghanistan is loud and clear - the Afghans want to be left alone. They do not want international and regional powers to once again turn their country into a battle ground for their short-lived tactical gains. Their steaming anger, the highest it has ever been, should caution Pakistan as the scenario today is starkly different to what it was in the 90s.

Similarly, the Pakistani public seems to have run out of the love and sympathy it once espoused for Afghan refugees. From their perspective, the Afghan fall-out has been detrimental to Pakistan’s socio-cultural and political landscape – with drugs, weaponry and terrorism as its nagging legacy. Pakistanis feel that the undue criticism hurled at it from across the Durand line reeks of ungratefulness and only further maligns them at the global stage.

With multiple countries laying claim to their heroic contribution in Afghanistan’s progress, including the US and India, Pakistanis feel that they have been overlooked despite playing host to the single-largest refugee population in the world. With the US and Nato troops withdrawal eminent, many Pakistanis harbour an unspoken desire to see the Afghans out of their borders and to put an end to this uncomfortable and long-expired relationship. They would rather remain as cordial neighbors – like they once were. How realistic and possible that desire is ultimately rests on the shoulders of both the country’s political and military leadership.SHAIBIIIIgnoring Pakistan will be shortsighted, dangerous: US think-tank [ ANWAR IQBAL ]

Updated 2014-01-23

WASHINGTON: A US strategy for Asia that does not contemplate Pakistan’s role is incomplete and a policy that views Pakistan in the context of Afghanistan is shortsighted, says a US think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations.

A special report titled “Reorienting US Pakistan Strategy: From Af-Pak to Asia,” warns that focusing narrowly on security threats will “alienate Pakistanis and reinforce a dangerous hostility from Pakistan’s elected and uniformed leadership”.

The report’s author, Daniel S Markey, argues that Pakistan is also “unusually well positioned to play a non-aligned role”, maintaining ties with both Washington and Beijing and reap the benefits of each relationship without having to pick sides.

While highlighting the problems Pakistan faces today, the report insists that the country is not “doomed

to a downward slide” as improvements in leadership and governance can enable it to play a more constructive role over time.

It warns US policy-makers that a hostile or violently unstable Pakistan would compromise the broader US agenda in Asia, whereas a cooperative, growing Pakistan would advance it.

The report, however, notes that groups like the Pakistani Taliban now attack Pakistan’s state institutions and civilians in ways that were inconceivable in prior decades and that raise doubts about Islamabad’s capacity to maintain basic law and order.

The report points that the current US strategy is interpreted in Islamabad “as part and parcel of an impending US abandonment of Pakistan, tilt towards India, and effort to contain China — all unwelcome developments”.

The paper warns that such concerns are likely to exacerbate Islamabad’s sense of insecurity and widen existing rifts with Washington.

To counter this, the report advocates a two-pronged approach: confront and quarantine the immediate threats it poses to regional security while integrating Pakistan into the broader US agenda in Asia.

The paper urges the US administration to open a formal dialogue with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Pakistan issues and explore options for expanded counter-terror cooperation with India.

It proposes that the United States restructure its military aid to Pakistan, decoupling it from the war in Afghanistan and focusing it instead on Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism within its borders.

The paper recommends that the United States create opportunities for Pakistan to develop relationships with its neighbours in Asia, particularly India.

To encourage a trade agreement among India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the paper proposes preferential access to American markets on the condition that those countries reduce barriers to intraregional trade.

It also recommends that the United States support the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline project and focus its civilian aid on other trade-related infrastructure such as roads, bridges and ports.

The report argues that more normal relations with India could enable Pakistan to act as a regional trade hub or even contribute to regional security.

Another recommendation that could raise eyebrows in Islamabad urges the US to discuss with India, after its general elections, the possibility of basing American military and intelligence operatives in the

country.

This would allow the two countries to address threats posed by Pakistan-based terror groups in a post-Afghanistan context, it argues.

Paralysing Pakistan [ MAHNOOR SHERAZEE ]

Updated 2014-01-23

It is barely a month into the new year and healthcare workers and their security personnel continue to be mercilessly targeted. Pakistan has already recorded four cases of polio and the death of three healthcare workers on an anti polio drive.

In the latest incident six policemen on their way to provide security to a polio team were killed in Charsadda on Wednesday. However, it is not confirmed if they were the intended target due to their association to the anti polio drive.

There were 19 polio-related killings in 2013 which included 10 healthcare providers and nine police personnel. As many as 22 people were reported injured during the same period.

The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attacks calling the campaign un-Islamic and a rouse for Western conspiracies and agendas.

But Dawn's special correspondent Hasan Abdullah who covers militancy says there is a difference of opinion within the ranks of the TTP on the targeting of healthcare workers. According to Abdullah, the senior leadership of the militant organisation does not oppose the anti polio drive but is reluctant to issue an official statement allowing polio vaccinations for a number of reasons.

“First of all, they want to create a consensus on the issue before making any statement,” he says adding: “Second, they still believe that espionage operations may be carried out under the garb of vaccination campaigns so they do not want to give a blanket green signal.”

Secretary General for the Wafaq ul Madaris al Arabia Pakistan and a member of the council of Islamic Ideology, Qari Muhammad Hanif Jallandhri rubbishes the Taliban’s claims. “These vaccines are essential for our children and there is nothing un-Islamic about them,” he says. Taking initiative Jallandhri’s federation has spoken extensively with doctors and declared that polio vaccines are not against the Shariah.

“This is just an injustice against our children and our country and is sabotaging our future,” says the renowned cleric. He further urges parents to be more aware vis a vis the health and wellbeing of their children. “They (parents) themselves should take their children to get vaccinated. That way they protect their children and not put the polio teams in any danger they way they are now.”

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic. Afghanistan has shown substantial improvement in their efforts with aggressive campaigns at its border areas, a major reason behind Balochistan’s relative success in controlling polio cases in 2013. On the other hand, Pakistan reported 91 children infected with the polio virus last year, higher than the 58 cases in 2012 but notably lower than the 198 cases in 2011.

The year’s first nationwide vaccination campaign began amidst talks of Pakistan drastically limiting the number of polio cases this year. However, as bodies of health workers pile up and anti polio drives subsequently get suspended officials fear the polio count will substantially rise. It is important to mention here that the WHO recently declared Peshawar as the largest ‘reservoir of polio’ in the world.

On the other hand, urban centres such as Karachi were considered relatively safer but over the last couple of years the unstable security situation has seriously damaged the anti polio initiative. In 2012 five healthcare workers were killed while there was an unsuccessful attack on a team in 2013. The latest attack on a team working in Qayyumabad left three dead and one injured.

“No matter how much this act (of killing of healthcare workers) is condemned, it is not enough,” says deputy director for the Expanded Immunisation Initiative Dr Durrenaz Kazi.

When Karachi started getting targeted, the high risk areas included mainly Gadap and Baldia, according to Kazi. “In fact on the first day of the campaign on January 20 the police personnel escorting the team outnumbered the healthcare workers in Baldia.”

But Qayyumabad was marked as “a safe or low threat zone”. So much so that there was no police deployed with the two teams which were working simultaneously on the opposite sides of the same street when they were targeted. “Now all of Karachi is a high risk zone and we need to completely reassess our plans,” she adds.

According to Kazi, Karachi will now be ‘vaccinated in phases’ to ensure the over 8,000 members involved in the anti polio drive can be sufficiently provided security. After the death of the healthcare workers, the campaign was suspended but not cancelled; however, there was no confirmed date for resuming the drive till this report was published.

Calling healthcare workers “frontline force against polio” Prime Minister’s focal person on polio eradication Ayesha Raza Farooq asks the questions many have echoed recently: “Why would anyone want to kill someone who is trying to protect their children?”

According to Farooq, they are “rethinking the entire strategy” and need some time to finalise their next course of action. But there is no doubt that “stringent measures will be implemented, we have lost too many workers already.” Almost in the same breath though she adds, “At the same time we need to keep on with our (anti polio) efforts, we simply cannot let these cowardly acts deter us from our cause.”

National technical focal person for Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell Dr Altaf Bosan offers a few suggestions. Strengthening coordination between the vaccination teams and security personnel especially in Central Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi is one. “Our best strategy is ‘protected campaigns’,” Bosan says. He also proposes other solutions such as ‘mini curfews’ for a few hours in the areas being covered during which the vaccinators can easily administer the vaccine to children.

Afghanistan’s anti polio drive

To better understand the reasons behind Afghanistan’s relative success in limiting the number of polio cases, Dawn.com contacted Dr Asmatullah Arab who is the focal person for the Gates Foundation in Afghanistan.

Of the 13 cases in 2013, 12 were from the country’s eastern regions including Kunar and Kandahar which border with Pakistan while one was reported from Helmand. As of June 2013, the Afghan Taliban announced their support and cooperation for the anti polio drive and provide safe passage to polio workers in the area. “There are some conditions though,” Arab explains. “Only local healthcare providers are permitted and no expatriate is allowed to enter but since this arrangement we have not had any problems in the area.”

While it is difficult to monitor the extent of the campaign’s success from afar, the ‘non polio rate’ in the area provides a good indicator, Arab elaborates.

Since the announcement there is ongoing communication and close coordination between the negotiator and the Taliban on this issue. “They (Taliban) are taking ownership of the eradication initiative saying: we need to eliminate polio from our country and save our children from being crippled,” Arab says.

Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination on anti polio initiatives

According to genetic coding of the virus strain, a majority of cases in Afghanistan are linked with Pakistan, says Arab. “We had a meeting in May 2013 to strengthen Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination but nothing concrete since then.”

In some areas, for example Helmand, and some parts of Kandahar, 70 to 80 per cent of the campaign work and funding has been handed over to the Taliban which is closely monitored by authorities.

Back in Pakistan, Farooq says it would be unfair to draw analogies between the two countries. “Pakistan is on the frontline of the war on terror and often bears the brunt of fall-outs of international politics.”

Further, she adds: “No country has a ban on vaccination so people need to understand that we are dealing with a number of issues.”

Chinese delegation visits Gwadar port [ SALEEM SHAHID ]

Updated 2014-01-08

QUETTA: A high-level Chinese delegation visited Gwadar on Tuesday and discussed the possibilities of linking the port through road and rail with China and other regional countries to make it fully functional for future trade and economic activities.

In the meeting between the delegation — headed by Mr Yang Zan, DG Department of International Cooperation Ministry of Transport — and the officials of Gwadar port authorities, the plan of the proposed Pak-China Economic Corridor was also discussed. It was observed that it could not achieve goals of economic development and progress and prosperity until Gwadar port was made fully functional.

Under the Pak-China Economic Corridor Gwadar Port would be linked through road and rail up to Kashgar that would be a shortest route for China to use Gwadar port for its future trade with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asian states, Iran and other regional countries.

It was also observed that Gwadar port could prove to be an economic hub and future’s successful big deep sea port till it was not linked with China and other countries of the region.

Sources said that Chinese officials expressed keen interest in investment in various sectors including energy, road construction and expansion of Gwadar port. The port’s expansion was the part of its actual plan under which more berths would be constructed. They also vowed to take all possible efforts to provide maximum required facilities to make Gwadar Port fully functional.

Briefing the meeting, Gwadar Port Authority chairman Dosteen Khan Jamaldani said Pak-China Economic Corridor has great importance in the success of Gwadar port and it will create many jobs.

He further informed the meeting that the province has great potential in various sectors and specially minerals. “Heavy mineral based industries could be set up in Balochistan,” he said.

The government also determined to make Gwadar Port and perfect port of the region that would provide best trade facilities to entire region. The construction of Pak-China Economic Corridor is also part of its future planning.

The official of the 15 members’ Chinese delegation also visited Gwadar port where they were briefed about the future planning of the government. Joint Secretary Ms Rukhsana Rehman, DS railway Quetta division Faiz Muhammad Bugti, Director General National Highways Authority Mushtaq Ahmed and Deputy Commissioner Gwadar Dr Tufail Ahmed were also attended the meeting.

Economy in a crucial year [ NASIR JAMAL ]

Updated 2014-01-06

The country’s capital markets greeted the New Year by pushing the benchmark KSE-100 index to a then-new all-time high of 25,608.85 points on the first day.

The rally was driven by local investors, reflecting their confidence that 2014 would prove to be a year of economic recovery that has eluded the country for many years now.

During conversations with Dawn over the last few weeks of 2013, many leading businessmen like Mian Mohammad Mansha repeatedly expressed their confidence that ‘things will start turning around’ from the start of the new year.

Their optimism stems mainly from their belief that the government remains on track to achieve most of the promised structural, fiscal and governance reforms it had committed itself to in its election manifesto, and with the IMF. Actually, some believe that the government may meet the targets long before the deadlines agreed with the Fund.

Some even underscore the recent ‘successes’ of the government, like the 6.8 per cent growth in large-scale manufacturing from 0.4 per cent a year earlier, reduction in energy shortages, 20 per cent growth in tax revenues, cut in fiscal deficit in the first five months of this fiscal to 2.2 per cent from 2.9 per cent, reduction in terrorism etc. as pointing towards a brighter economic future.

The overall mood is starkly different from last year.

But the question is: Will this optimism translate into investment and jobs? A majority of businessmen believe it will, though the reasons for the optimistic view vary from one businessman to another.

A major textile manufacturer, for example, was pleased to point to the generous trade concessions given by the 27-member European Union and the government’s policy of continuing supply of power and gas (two days a week) to the textile industry (in Punjab, where 75-80 per cent manufacturing capacity is located) during winter as a sign of a changing business environment that would lead to new investments in capacity expansion as well as new projects, especially in the downstream value-added industry.

However, he said, the government must take steps to cut the price of credit and bring it down to the regional average.

Others argue that the reduction in judicial activism after the retirement of former top judge Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and the change in the top military command without kicking off any controversy should provide a lot of space to the government to take tough decisions for implementing its economic

agenda without fear of judges overturning them, as they did in the past four or five years.

“This government understands what it needs to do to encourage businesspeople to invest in the economy and create jobs. It also enjoys the confidence of a majority of businessmen,” argued an assembler of split air-conditioners on condition of anonymity.

He was confident that the tax incentives announced by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in November to encourage investment in the economy and create jobs would pay off.

His views were partially shared by a car company executive. “The way the finance minister has controlled the slide of the rupee and brought the price of a dollar down [to Rs105.5 from Rs110.5] has brought price stability in the market and strengthened businesses’ confidence in the government’s abilities to deliver what it promises,” he said.

Yet, he added that investors would wait another few months before taking any decision to see if the minister could back up the revaluation of the Pakistani currency with raising foreign exchange reserves, as he has repeatedly claimed.

The business community is also closely watching progress on electricity generation projects that the government claims will eliminate or substantially cut power shortages in the next five years.

“We are in a crucial year, which can be a make or break moment for us,” commented a Karachi-based banker who did not want to give his or his bank’s name. “Our economy is facing multiple challenges, ranging from terrorism to energy crunch to cash flow problems to high public debt to stagnating tax revenues to drying investment and foreign flows.

“The rupee has been under stress and more people are investing in speculative businesses rather than in real sectors. We cannot afford to delay key reforms.”

Like many others, he said this is the last chance “we have got to resolve long-standing economic problems. If we succeed in implementing structural reforms, getting rid of our dead wood, improving governance, and fixing the energy, particularly power, sector and privatising it, nobody can stop us from putting the economy on a high growth path. And if we falter again, no one will come to our rescue.”

A century of war, 1914-2014: After 9/11 [ LISA HAJJAR ]

Published 2014-01-08

The year 2014 marks 100 years since the start of World War I. What was supposed to be the war to end all wars turned out to be one of the many bloody conflicts since then. The death count of the past 100 years has been more than that of any other century and our region, for one, continues to be mired in violence.

Pakistan came into existence amidst bloodshed, fought wars with India and became involved in proxy wars, all the while facing internal divisions. September 11 and the wars that it spawned are some of the biggest and bloodiest stories of our times. The Middle East remains a troubled region and Kashmiris continue to suffer under occupation.

The following is a column which is part of Sunday, January 5th's special double issue of Books & Authors - an issue that looks at some of the conflicts that have shaped and are shaping the world we live in, and how Urdu literature has responded to them.

How America became a torturing regime in the 'war on terror'

“Actionable intelligence” refers to information that has use-value for the protection of national security and the advancement of military goals in a war. In the US ‘war on terror,’ the legitimate need for actionable intelligence was pursued through illegitimate and illegal methods, namely torture and cruel treatment in the interrogation of people taken into US custody.

On the television programme ‘Meet the Press’ on September 16, 2001, five days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, vice president Dick Cheney said: “We’ll have to work … the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies — if we are going to be successful.” The following day, president George W. Bush signed a memorandum of understanding granting the CIA authority to establish a secret detention and interrogation operation overseas.

By December 2001, Pentagon officials were exploring how to “reverse engineer” SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, extraction) techniques that had been developed during the Cold War to train US soldiers to withstand torture in case they were captured by regimes that don’t adhere to the Geneva Conventions. The Clinton-era rendition programme of sending detainees captured abroad to foreign states for trial was revamped as “extraordinary rendition” to permit the CIA to kidnap people from anywhere in the world and disappear them into secret prisons, euphemised as “black sites,” where they could be held as “ghost detainees” — i.e., with no record of their identities or whereabouts and no access to monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — or transferred extra-legally to other states for interrogation.

Cheney and other officials in the Bush administration devised a “new paradigm” according to which the president, as commander-in-chief, has unfettered powers to wage war. On November 13, 2001, president Bush issued a military order declaring that captured terror suspects were “unlawful combatants,” a heretofore non-existent category conceived to place such prisoners outside of the law. Anyone taken into US custody could be designated an unlawful combatant by presidential fiat rather than on the basis of any status review by a tribunal, and could be held incommunicado indefinitely. Bush also declared that such detainees could be prosecuted in a new kind of military commission whose rules would admit coerced confessions, hearsay and secret evidence.

On February 7, 2002, president Bush issued a secret memorandum to his national security team endorsing the claim that the Geneva Conventions are too “quaint” to apply to this novel form of global war against stateless enemies, and asserted that captured terror suspects have no legal rights but would be treated humanely as “a matter of policy,” with the caveat that interrogation and detention policy would prioritise “military necessity.”

Interrogators working in Afghanistan were under intense pressure from Washington for actionable intelligence about Al Qaeda and the Taliban. People who wound up in US custody included fighters captured on the battlefields or fleeing military strikes, and other men and boys who were picked up in sweeps through villages, sold to the US for bounty, or turned over by allied Afghan warlords or the Pakistani security services. Because most US interrogators lacked the requisite language skills and knowledge about the region to accurately assess the intelligence value of detainees or the veracity of their statements, the tendency was to err on the side of caution, and virtually every captured non-Afghani was shipped off to GTMO for more intensive and protracted interrogation.

In the division of interrogational labour, the CIA was vested with primary responsibility for “high value detainees” (HVDs) — people assumed to be terrorist leaders or planners of 9/11, or to have knowledge about terrorist operations and plots. On March 28, 2002, the first HVD, Abu Zubaydah (nom du guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad), was captured in Pakistan and transported to a black site in Thailand. The escalating harshness of Abu Zubaydah’s treatment was due to contractor interrogators’ frustration that he was not providing the actionable intelligence he was assumed to possess.

But contrary to the initial claim that he was a “top Al Qaeda strategist,” in fact he was more like a receptionist who had been responsible for moving people in and out of training camps in Afghanistan. The brutal and dehumanising methods authorised for Abu Zubaydah, which included waterboarding him 83 times and placing him in a coffin-like “confinement box,” set the stage for the CIA’s secret interrogation programme.

By mid-summer 2002, some agents were growing anxious about their vulnerability to future prosecution under federal laws. In response, justice department lawyers produced two memos dated August 1, 2002. One interpreted the applicable definition of physical torture to exclude anything less than “the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” and opined that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment would not constitute mental torture unless it caused effects that lasted “months or even years.” The second memo provided legal cover for tactics already in use. The White House forwarded these memos to the Pentagon, which was seeking a solution to military interrogators’ frustrated efforts to get actionable intelligence out of GTMO detainees. A three-course menu of reverse-engineered SERE tactics was authorised by secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld in December 2002. Top military lawyers protested that the use of tactics that contravene the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which enshrines the Geneva Conventions) would expose soldiers to the risk of court martial, but their dissent was silenced by the Pentagon.

This confluence of radical legal reasoning and the ideologically driven presumptions that all detainees are terrorists and that torture is effective in obtaining actionable intelligence meant that

US military interrogators, CIA agents and government-hired contractors were, in effect, licensed by the Bush administration to utilise methods that were no longer regulated by the laws of this nation or the world. But the Bush administration never officially authorised “torture.” Rather, “torture” became the euphemism for anything that was not authorised by the US government.

What was authorised included stripping prisoners naked, short-shackling them to the floor for protracted periods of time, forcing them to defecate and urinate on themselves; subjecting prisoners to days or weeks of sleep deprivation by bombarding them with constant light and / or excruciatingly loud music or grating sounds and / or extremes in temperature; weeks, months or even years of isolation; stress positions such as “long time standing” and “wall hanging” prisoners from hooks on the wall or ceiling; “walling,” which refers to bashing prisoners into walls; and waterboarding to induce the feeling and fear of death by drowning.

The Bush administration’s decision to take the ‘war on terror’ to Iraq had to be sold to the American public and skeptical allies. In early 2003, the CIA and military interrogators were under intense pressure to produce evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime had an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme, and that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. The “actionable intelligence” that the administration presented to make the case for war included claims about Iraq’s attempts to import tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger, and a statement by a Libyan prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, that Iraq had provided training in chemical weapons to members of Al Qaeda. (Al-Libi subsequently recanted the false claim which he had made to stop the torture, and revelations that the Niger uranium deal was based on falsified documents later devolved into a scandal and the conviction of Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.)

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003. In August, the Pentagon sent GTMO commander Major General Geoffrey Miller to Iraq to provide advice on how to “set the conditions” to get actionable intelligence from the thousands of people — including women and children — who were being taken into custody. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the Iraq theatre of operations, signed off on a policy to “GTMO-ise” Iraqi prisons, despite the fact that up to 90 per cent of detainees were picked up in military sweeps or as a result of intra-Iraqi score-settling and had no connection to the insurgency, let alone to Al Qaeda.

On April 28, 2004, shocking photos of naked, abused, humiliated, bloodied and dead prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were published on CBS’s ‘60 Minutes II’. The context was provided by the simultaneously-published New Yorker exposé by Seymour Hersh on the leaked (“not meant for public release”) report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba which concluded that prisoner abuse was “systematic” and “wanton,” and that unlawful interrogation tactics linked Iraq to Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The Bush administration’s initial reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal was to blame “bad apples” ostensibly acting autonomously.

However, the pressure for information about the government’s secretive interrogation and detention programme mounted. In June 2004, the first batch of legal memos and policy documents pertaining to military and CIA interrogations was declassified or leaked to the public. These “torture memos” were, in their own way, at least as shocking as the Abu Ghraib photos because they exposed a sanctioned and pervasive disregard for the law. Cheney and other

officials defended the practices authorised in the memos as necessary and effective means of combating terror.

On September 6, 2006, Bush publically acknowledged the existence of CIA black sites and the authorisation of waterboarding and other “alternative” interrogation tactics, which he characterised as “tough,” “safe,” “lawful” and “necessary.” He announced that 14 HVDs were being transferred from black sites to GTMO, including self-proclaimed 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM) who had been in CIA custody since 2003 (during which he was waterboarded 183 times). In October 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA), one feature of which provided ex post facto immunity for any US officials and agents who violated the Geneva Conventions in order to block future accountability under the 1996 War Crimes Act.

The authorisation for “enhanced interrogation methods” endured to the end of Bush’s second term in 2008. Thousands of people who were interrogated and detained in the ‘war on terror’ were affected by the torture policy. The overwhelming majority was innocent of ties to terror organisations, and many continued to be interrogated harshly long after their innocence or lack of intelligence value was known by officials. Under torture some people revealed some information about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, but there is abundant evidence that many statements were false. Indeed, the American experience has verified the ageless truism that many people will say anything they believe their interrogators want to hear to make the torture stop; a worst case example is al-Libi’s false claims about a connection between the regime of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that the Bush administration used to advance the cause for war against Iraq, a tortured lie that has cost tens of thousands of lives and a trillion of dollars.

The day after Barack Obama assumed the office of president in January 2009, he signed executive orders to end torture and shutter the CIA’s black sites, to suspend the GTMO military commissions, and to close that prison within one year. But his administration quickly realised that getting out of the torture business was more complex and daunting than anticipated.

The ongoing national debate about torture, terror and the law intensified following the 2009 Christmas day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to detonate a bomb in his underwear while travelling on a transatlantic flight bound for Detroit. Critics excoriated the Obama administration for not subjecting him to “enhanced” interrogation or shipping him off to GTMO, despite the fact that the Bush administration had followed an identical course of action with Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.”

The Obama administration’s “looking forward, not backward” posture includes refusal to investigate or acknowledge past crimes. To keep the lid on demands for accountability, the administration needs to rely on heavy-handed classification and other efforts to block public access to information deleterious or embarrassing to the US government. Moreover, the Obama administration emulated its predecessor’s strategies to bar judicial oversight of overseas detentions and to stymie legal redress for victims of torture. No victim of US torture has ever found justice in a US court and no official has ever been prosecuted for torture.

And what of the promises to end torture? On May 11, 2010, the ICRC confirmed the existence of

a secret prison at Bagram in Afghanistan to which it has no access. When this news broke, defence department officials initially denied the existence of a secret detention facility, and then the administration asserted that the black jail is an “interrogation facility,” not a “detention site,” and therefore the ICRC has no right to access those held there nor do the regular rules apply.

As the ‘war on terror’ has morphed under the Obama administration, the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has assumed a leading role in interrogations and kill operations. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill’s comprehensive study of JSOC, Dirty Wars, attests that interrogational abuse has not ended, and that black sites and extraordinary renditions are not entirely a thing of the past. The implication is that America still fights dirty.

Lisa Hajjar is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California — Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the laws of war and conflict, human rights and torture. She is the author of Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human RightsA century of war, 1914-2014: The language of war

MADELINE AMELIA CLEMENTS

The year 2014 marks 100 years since the start of World War I. What was supposed to be the war to end all wars turned out to be one of the many bloody conflicts since then. The death count of the past 100 years has been more than that of any other century and our region, for one, continues to be mired in violence.

Pakistan came into existence amidst bloodshed, fought wars with India and became involved in proxy wars, all the while facing internal divisions. September 11 and the wars that it spawned are some of the biggest and bloodiest stories of our times. The Middle East remains a troubled region and Kashmiris continue to suffer under occupation.

The following is a book review which is part of Sunday, January 5th's special double issue of Books & Authors - an issue that looks at some of the conflicts that have shaped and are shaping the world we live in, and how Urdu literature has responded to them.

Owen Sheers’ Pink Mist seems to evoke a millenia of war poetry

‘Pink mist’ is not a term which is yet enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Search for it online and the hits returned will be from urban dictionaries. Their definitions describe ‘the blood that comes out of a sniper’s target when hit’, the ‘quick burst’ of which ‘makes a misty effect’ and ‘appears pinkish over the distance’. Examples of usage include ‘I want the pink mist’ and ‘the sniper got his first pink mist’.

Wants are high on the agenda in Welsh poet and playwright Owen Sheers’ verse drama about the fortunes of three Bristol boys who set out for the British army garrison at Catterick and, soon after, to serve in Afghanistan, where they fast learn the meaning of the truncated, acronymic and euphemistic language of war. Intent less on “going someplace” than “leaving somewhere” these largely apolitical

youths yearn to make their fortune, to have an adventure. Driven by the thought of “getting out, moving on,” as opposed to defending a nation or championing a cause, they join up because they “want more” than lives spent stacking shelves in the shopping mall and getting drunk at weekends. As their narrator and ring-leader, Arthur explains:

My idea, my plan, [was] to link our arms again, to go on a tour. To answer the chant of our school days with us, us, we want to play war.

The stories of what happens to the three friends, Hads, Taff, and Arthur are told with hindsight by these outgoing boys and their home-staying womenfolk in voices which turn quickly from buoyant to blunt, bitter and macabre. They are intended to engender a pause: to point to the physical and psychological consequences of “playing war.”

Published in the UK on the cusp of the centenary of the Great War, and at a time of gradual withdrawal of British and American troops from Afghanistan, Sheers’ lyric narrative has been praised for its capacity to evoke contemporary events “with the humanity of a Wilfred Owen” and bring “the pity of the far Afghan war into our own mind’s neighbourhood” (Dannie Abse). Woven into Pink Mist are a prefatory quotation from a medieval Welsh elegy for the Britonnic casualties of the battle of Catraeth, who died fighting against overwhelming odds; allusions to how the Second World War has shaped the landscape and life histories of the protagonists; and echoes of Homeric epic. These encourage the reader to consider Sheers’ 21st century lyric drama as written in dialogue with a millennia of war poetry; it invokes earlier traditions even as it foregrounds its claim to reflect, particularly through its characters’ use of contemporary military slang and Bristolean vernacular, specific temporal and regional realities.

Informed by the stories of service personnel and their families, Pink Mist was originally written under commission for BBC Radio, recorded on location in Bristol, and broadcast in March 2012. One suspects that the play’s ‘lyric’ contents prove more powerful when it is performed aloud, rather than read as a verse narrative. Without actors to enliven its words they lie somewhat leaden on the page, denoting scenes with technical precision — such as “a pair of plastic chairs / empty, lit up by the fires / turning reddish brown” after a “blue on blue” helicopter attack — but failing somehow to make a strong visual impact.

Certain images are intended to be striking, however. And it is over these — rather than the Under Milk Wood-like interplay between the plaintive and admonitory female and more muscular, self-exculpatory male voices — that one may linger in the hope of gaining a deeper insight into the sentiments of irony, outrage and pathos, which Sheers wishes to convey. For example, Pink Mist is framed by a vision which our focalising point, Arthur, recalls seeing when he was “only twelve” on a Clifton bridge, just “just past the Samaritans sign.” An “older man” of about 22 (the narrator’s age now), surely ex-army, calmly takes a drag on a cigarette before launching himself into the air and “flying” — presumably to his death. This confused image, combining sublimity with futility, precedes and precipitates the poem’s main events. For it is after this that the awestruck Arthur and his friends sign up for war, only to return maimed and emasculated, so traumatised that they end up living rough on the streets, or in ghostly form as “a fine

spray of pink, a delicate mist,” after being hit by an IED. Pathos comes with the picture of the good-looking, green-eyed, half-Somali lad:

Hads Gullet, twenty-one, half a tall man trying to sleep Holding what’s left of his legs to his chest, as he tells himself … that of the half of him gone and the half of him left, it isn’t the cursed he should count, but the blessed.

The rhythms and half-rhymes drum the image of the rocking man home, reinforcing both his pitiful helplessness and his determination in a seemingly godless world to “count himself blessed.” Arthur’s strange encounter with the tender, attentive Staff Sergeants during his stay in the sweet-scented, refrigerated “Rose Cottage” is particularly poignant: we are both caught up with their young guest’s optimism, likewise half-believing that his remaining body parts have entered a place of rest and recuperation, and — when we realise that the “cottage” is a mortuary — touched by his naiveté. However, in general, profundity is lacking in Sheers’ poem: symbols or “signatures” of war are proposed, such as “a bloke with no legs / wincing in pain / as he shifts himself forward, inch by inch, / again and again,” but fail to impress a sense of their deeper significance, although they ring true.

Elsewhere, Sheers has praised the Second World War poet Keith Douglas’s use of “a language that loses none of its focus when observing the realities of war” (lyricism would mean “immense bullshitting”). Sheers describes his own stage play, The Two Worlds of Charlie F (2012), “inspired” by the experiences of soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, as an attempt to offer a “troops-eye view,” thereby creating not a “political” piece but a “theatrical rendering of what these men, women and their families have been through.” However, like The Guardian newspaper’s Michael Billington in his critique of Andrew Motion’s 2011 play Incoming, about a “cynically realistic” soldier killed in Helmand during the continuing Afghan conflict, I was left wanting Sheers to develop his anti-war arguments and to be more attentive in a geopolitical age of the impact of British actions. Unlike novels such as Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s The Watch, Pink Mist leaves the effects of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan on the region’s people largely unimagined. The enemy, always referred to as “them,” or “Terry Taliban,” is neither humanised nor differentiated. Civilians are only slightly less faceless: on one brief occasion a farmer and his shrapnel-impaled granddaughter are mentioned. Taff describes:

An outdoor man, skin leathered The way he unwrapped the end of his turban to wipe at his eyes, raw with what we’d done.

But rather than bringing about an awakening, engendering a sustained enquiry into the specific political circumstances of, and justifications for, his country’s going to war, this event brings about a narrowing of focus for the British soldier: he becomes obsessed with the idea of “punishment,” with the need to find “a god / some kind of law” that orders this belligerent chaos, and perhaps exonerates him.

Yet it seems to be Sheers’ point that he circumvents both pacifist rhetoric and patriotic spin, preferring — like Douglas — neither to take a particular political stance, nor to write cathartic, humanising “cries from the heart,” but to hammer out verse which makes “hard reading,” because its speakers can “only

watch, describe and admit” to the killing with which they are complicit — and by which they will ultimately be consumed. The criticism Pink Mist does offer is not of governments or ideologues but — strikingly — of the “tightening down of pride and the bond” that initially brings the boys to it. As Arthur asserts, we should:

Forget queen or country, the mission or belief It’s more about keeping your mates alive ... Cos that’s what fuels war ... love, and grief

Although he briefly hints at their place in a wider (political) “debate” in which “reasons” for going to war are given, starting “the chant” again, Sheers ultimately uses Arthur to suggest that responsibility for the mental and physical incapacitation and death of their onetime school-friends and, later, compatriots, rests with the soldiers themselves. Perhaps Sheers does the veterans to whose charity a portion of the proceeds of his book will be donated some service in revealing how the camaraderie they may have craved as wanting “boys” has been exploited by the masters of a greater game. However, writing from a perspective conscious of the greater proximity of my readers to the theatre of war, and the people’s plight, I can’t help but think that there are other battles that Sheers might choose to fight when it comes to questioning and to representing the war in Afghanistan.

Modi’s election as PM would be disastrous for India: Manmohan

Published 2014-01-03

NEW DELHI: India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday “it would be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as prime minister”.

Singh's strong attack on the Hindu nationalist ring-winger from western Gujarat state came during his first full press conference in three years.

Polls show Congress is extremely unlikely to emerge as the winner in the world's biggest election due this year, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party making gains under hardline leader Modi.

Singh said he will step down after elections due by May this year even if his Congress party defies predictions and sweeps to power for a third consecutive term.

“In a few months' time after the general elections, I will hand over the baton to a new prime minister,” he said in opening remarks at the press conference.

Singh, 81, had already hinted strongly at his intention to make way for leader-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi dynasty which has dominated India's politics since independence.

He said Congress would announce its prime ministerial candidate in due course.

“Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials. I hope our party will take that decision at an appropriate time,” he added.

During his time as prime minister, Singh has seen his formerly stellar reputation built up through his work as a reforming finance minister in the 1990s tarnished by a string of corruption scandals and slowing economic growth.

He mounted a defence of his legacy, regretting high inflation, the graft scandals and weak growth in manufacturing output, but hailing his government's work for the rural poor and farmers.

Four issues Pakistanis can influence more than US drones [HINA BALOCH]

Published 2013-12-25 14:20:18

US drone strikes have caused an outrage in Pakistan where thousands of young impressionable Pakistanis have taken to the streets. Until last week, the demonstrators had disrupted Nato supplies travelling through Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to register their protest.With political gains and expediencies involved, Pakistan’s foremost politicians have publicly canvassed the drone strikes as a violation of national sovereignty and honour. Public opinion has been diverted from the more organic and distressing issue of internal human rights abuses against Pakistan’s ethnic and religious minorities to the populist and emotional one of drone strikes.

While civilian casualties, as a result of these external strikes, are a reality, it is important for the people of Pakistan to also protest and denounce abuses that are a result of internal Pakistani policies and are well within the control of the state. However, political manipulation and lack of national awareness and public empathy have so far ensured that these abuses continue unchecked.

The masses of Pakistan are ideally placed to influence and pressure the government into stopping these human rights abuses against the country’s ethnic and religious minorities. Raising their voices against the four major issues highlighted below will safeguard their national unity, security and welfare.

1) The fundamental rights of tribal Pashtuns

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) usually see the front page of Pakistani newspapers when Pakistanis are angry about US drones. But little do most Pakistanis know that Fata is home to over three million Pashtuns, deprived of legal and political rights and faced with enormous economic problems.

Fata is governed by the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) – a 19th-century law that the British devised as an instrument of subjugation and to establish the writ of the colonial authority.

Despite some changes made to the law in 2011 on a piece of paper, FCR in practice continues,

over a hundred years later, to deny the people of Fata basic justice. The law has famously denied tribal people three basic rights — “appeal, wakeel, daleel” (the right to appeal their detention; the right to an attorney; and the right to present evidence).

It has been used to collectively punish families and tribes for the crimes of individuals. It has also allowed a federally appointed executive to exercise all executive as well as judicial powers, serving as the final arbiter of justice in cases, even including those where he is the accused.

Likewise, many of the political rights enjoyed by Pakistanis continue to be denied to those living in the tribal areas. While the tribal people have the right to vote, they do not have the right to elect their own administrative heads, known as political agents.

Political agents, who are widely considered corrupt, are appointed by the federal government and not accountable to the tribal people. Moreover, Fata has no provincial assembly. Federally, Fata has elected representatives in the parliament, but those representatives have no say in the administration of Fata because no act of parliament applies to Fata.

On top of denying these fundamental human rights to the tribal people, Pakistan has invested little to no resources in Fata. The area remains one of the poorest and least developed parts of the country. The people of Fata lag far behind much of the rest of Pakistan in infrastructure, education, healthcare and other basic services.

2) The rights and lives of the Baloch

Hundreds of brutally tortured and mutilated bodies of young students, political activists, doctors, lawyers, and teachers turn up every few weeks in different corners of Balochistan.

Their eyes scooped out, genitals bearing marks of electric prods, limbs broken, parts of their bodies drilled and their faces lacerated beyond recognition. Yet, their tormentors still want them to be recognised and the whole town to witness the burial, so they very carefully leave a note with their names in the pockets of their blood drenched shirts.

This is the end that many young Baloch men meet in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province that provides billions in revenues to the state. There are hundreds of people still missing, allegedly picked up by intelligence agencies and the military’s Frontier Corps (FC).

Their families move from one city to another, knocking on the doors of the judiciary, observing hunger strikes, holding sit-ins and demonstrations outside press clubs and covering hundreds of miles on foot to register their protest. Their aim is to seek an answer from the state on one simple question: “Where are the young and bright men of our families?”

The reasons for their abduction, torture and murder range anywhere from demanding a fair share in the resources extracted from their land to speaking against ongoing human rights abuses.

According to the Human Rights Watch, there is undisputed evidence that point towards the

involvement of the Frontier Corps, Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence in these murders and abductions. The helpless locals have nothing more left to say except that their "lives are now clouded in darkness. Asking for our rights is akin to a death wish.”

3) Stand up against the internal support for Taliban

It is widely accepted by the international community that Pakistan helped create and then later supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is likewise largely undisputed that certain segments of the Pakistani security forces to this day continue to support the Afghan Taliban. Most of the Taliban today have taken refuge inside Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

Consequently, Pakistan’s northwest, often characterised as one of the most dangerous places on earth, has become ground zero in global 'jihad'. The militants, many of whom come from outside Pakistan, have internally displaced millions of people from their villages, killed thousands of innocent civilians and subjected tens of millions of people to daily terror. They operate with impunity in Pakistan’s territory where they destroy the homes, schools, hospitals and mosques of local Pashtuns. They also attract US drones to the tribal areas.

4) Pakistanis should protect the rights and lives of religious minorities

Prominent Shia doctors, lawyers, clergy and scholars continue to lose their lives to targeted acts of violence on a frequent basis. Shia neighbourhoods and places of worships remain a priority target for extremist organisations functioning across Pakistan. Hundreds of Hazara Shias have been killed in bomb blasts and other targeted violence.

Another ostracised community, the Ahmedis, declared non-Muslims by the state’s amended constitution, live in the dark shadow of secrecy and fear. They know that their identity, if disclosed, endangers not just their lives but also restricts access to jobs, education, housing etc.

Similarly, unfortunate for Pakistani Christians, this September, a church bombing in Peshawar killed 85 people, including women and children. Today, hundreds of Christians are languishing in jails across Pakistan, facing charges of blasphemy.

Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law, which carries a possible death penalty, for anyone accused of insulting or criticising Islam, its scriptures or its last Prophet. The law has become a convenient tool to settle personal scores against vulnerable citizens.

The dwindling Hindu population is not any safer. Hindu girls in Sindh are frequently abducted by extremist groups and forced to convert and marry into Muslim families. With religious intolerance and sectarian violence growing out-of-control, it is hard to figure out what is worse in this state: To be a non-Muslim or to be the wrong kind of Muslim.

Conclusion

Despite such horrific conditions faced by the Baloch, tribal Pashtuns and religious minorities, politicians have led zero protests in solidarity with their fellow citizens.

There is a deafening silence and even a defensive denial by some leaders on the issue of internal support for the Taliban as well as abuse of Baloch, Pashtun and religious minorities. If anything, those often loudest about US drones have led the charge to oppose efforts to improve the conditions of Pakistan’s minorities.

Given that Pakistani leaders largely control the fate of these ethnic and religious minorities, the people of Pakistan can have a far greater influence to help promote equality and peace for all than they do over US drones. They, therefore, must speak for the voiceless. This is a way for Pakistanis to show that they care about the lives and rights of all Pakistanis at all times, not just when US drones are involved.