Poverty in Pakistan by By M. Zaidi

IN Pakistan’s scenario, where approximately two-thirds of the people live in rural areas, rural poverty is a major destabilising factor. Authoritative studies have documented rising poverty levels with a decreased capacity to acquire and hold land which is the main source of subsistence in the agricultural areas.

Nearly 67 per cent of Pakistan’s households are landless (though this cannot in itself be taken to be the sole denominator of poverty in the country). The problem is thrown into sharp relief when compared to the decline in India’s rural poverty levels between 1987 and 2000.

The comparison is pertinent since both countries inherited a nearly identical system of land holdings and feudalism. India seems to have tackled the issues better than Pakistan which appears to have alternated between monetary policies dictated by the IMF and the World Bank and its own experiments with land reforms which proved unsuccessful. The income disparity between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in Pakistan has also increased significantly while income disparity largely became an urban phenomenon during the period under review.

Since the reasons behind the rise of radicalisation are multifarious, an analysis utilising any single variable would be empirical, not to mention misleading. Nevertheless, whenever socioeconomic factors spring up in debates, the relationship between rural poverty and radicalisation figures quite prominently. Rural poverty was going down in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s but started increasing steadily during the 1990s. Although the methodologies and assumptions interpolated into the projection by a publicly funded Pakistani body are open to discussion, the poverty increase trend in the 1990s is alarming.

The official notification points out that nearly 67 per cent of households owned no land at the time this study came out; 18.25 per cent households owned less than five acres of land; and 9.66 per cent owned between five and 12.5 acres, sufficient only to provide meagre levels of existence for sometimes large extended families that tend to rely on land as the sole source of income. The pattern is dismally skewed towards a few feudal families in possession of large land holdings; barely one per cent (0.64 per cent plus 0.37 per cent) of households owned over 35 acres.

Thus, the problem in Pakistan is not just low levels of land holdings but also highly unequal land distribution leading to a class of ‘land haves and have-nots’.

Strikingly, poverty levels tend to decrease in inverse proportion to land-holdings, with poverty virtually disappearing with holdings of 55 acres and above. This indicates that poverty and landlessness are directly related to each other in Pakistan’s rural areas.

In terms of the spatial distribution of landlessness, 86 per cent of the households in Sindh were landless (landless plus non-agricultural), followed by 78 per cent in Balochistan and 74 per cent in Punjab. The evidence of the income disparity rampant in Pakistani society is bolstered by statistics, with the Lorenz curve of 2001-02 for Pakistan lying below the 1984-85 levels. In economics, the Lorenz curve is often used to represent income distribution and can also be used to show the distribution of assets.

This indicates that income distribution patterns have gradually worsened, resulting in higher income inequality in 2001-02 relative to 1984-85. Greater changes are visible in the higher part of the income distribution curves than in the middle and lower parts of the income brackets. This stipulates that during 2001-02, the upper income brackets registered a gain in income share to the richest 20 per cent at the expense of the poorest 20 per cent and middle 60 per cent.

This increased poverty levels in the lower and middle brackets. This projection also indicates that the richest one per cent who used to get 10 per cent of the total income in 1984-85 was, in 2001-02, getting almost 20 per cent.

It is estimated that in 1998-99, 30.6 per cent of Pakistanis were living below the poverty line. The estimate stands at 23.9 per cent in the period 2004-5, and according to official projections, dropped to 22.3 per cent by 2005-6. Rural poverty was estimated at 27 per cent in 2005-06, unfavourably comparing with an urban incidence of 13.1 per cent.

The official surveys have, however, been criticised on the grounds of faulty methodologies and the padding of results. A World Bank survey put the figures of poverty incidence in Pakistan at 28.3 per cent in 2004-05, with income distribution patterns utilising the Gini coefficient yielding a figure of 0.3 in 2005-06 as compared to 0.27 in 2001-02. This indicates that there is a skewed income distribution pattern in favour of the high earners, which negates the gains made in the eradication of absolute poverty by increasing income inequality. The overall poverty incidence was highest in Balochistan, with almost half the population living below the poverty line, with minimal difference between the poverty incidence in Sindh and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa. However, once the Sindh data was adjusted for the skewed data patterns for rural poverty obtained by the inclusion of Karachi by comparing rural Sindh with rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Sindh figures rose to 38 per cent of the rural population living under the poverty line as compared to 27 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Punjab fared the best, with an overall poverty incidence of 26 per cent and, anomalously, a rural poverty incidence of just 24 per cent. This also implies that rural poverty was lower than average in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, which seems to militate against conventional wisdom and other studies.

However, the problem is compounded once other variables such as lack of education, cultural and social paradigms are factored in, areas that need greater research in order to present a more meaningful picture of poverty in Pakistan.

The writer is a security analyst.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/poverty-in-pakistan.html

Kidnapped journalist returns

MIRAMSHAH, Oct 12: A journalist kidnapped by suspected militants about two months ago reached home here on Wednesday, after a deal was struck between the kidnappers and a jirga, sources said.

Rehmatullah Khan Derpakhel was kidnapped on Aug 11 from the main bazaar of Miramshah, they said.

Additional Political Agent M. Amin Khan confirmed that Mr Derpakhel had returned to his home, at around 9pm.

Mr Khan said a jirga formed by Khyber Pakhtunhwa Governor Masood Kausar had negotiated the deal with the kidnappers.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/kidnapped-journalist-returns.html

ex � e o �H~ � ~ ll end in civil war. It`s not my job to reassure them this time, because like most foreign journalists I can`t even get into the country, but in any case I would have no reassurance to offer. This time, it may well end in civil war. Like Iraq.

The Assad dynasty in Syria is neither better nor worse than Saddam Hussein`s regime was in Iraq. They had identical origins, as local branches of the same pan-Arab political movement, the Baath Party. They both depended on minorities for their core support: the Syrian Baathists on the 10 per cent Alawite (Shia) minority in that country, and the Iraqi Baathists on the 20 per cent of that country`s people who were Sunni Arabs.

They were both ruthless in crushing threats to their power. Hafez al-Assad`s troops killed up to 40,000 people in Hama when Sunni Islamists rebelled in Syria in 1982, Saddam Hussein`s army killed at least as many Shias in southern Iraq when they rebelled after the 1991 Gulf War, and both regimes were systematically beastly to their local Kurds.

When the American invaders destroyed Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq in 2003, however, what ensued was not peace, prosperity and democracy. It was a brutal civil war that ended with Baghdad almost entirely cleansed of its Sunni Muslim population and the whole country cleansed of its Christian minority. Only the Kurds, insulated by their own battle-hardened army and their mountains, avoided the carnage.

So if the Baathist regime in Syria is driven from power, why should we believe that what follows will be any better than it was in Iraq? The country`s ethnic and sectarian divisions are just as deep and complex as Iraq`s.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/civil-war-in-syria.html

The burden of bans by Rafia Zakaria

AS September gasped its last, something unprecedented happened in the French town of Meaux, located about 25km from the heart of Paris.

In this town, whose previous claim to renown had been its cheese and a special variety of mustard, the first fine was imposed on two women who had been found wearing the niqab, or the full-face veil, in public.

The women, Hind Ahmas and Najate Nait Ali, were ordered by the municipal court judge to pay fines of 120 euros and 80 euros respectively. They vowed to appeal against the court’s ruling in the European Court of Human Rights.

It was through this humdrum route that France, historically renowned for its cultivation of creativity and its evolved appetite for artistry, entered the ranks of nations that utilise bans to eliminate from the public sphere acts which a majority deems morally repugnant or politically subversive.

France was thus inducted into the dubious fellowship of the afraid, which include — amongst others — the Saudi state that sends men with sticks after ‘inadequately’ covered women and the Chinese state that imprisons bloggers that try to tweet against the government.

Like the majority of the French, who would emphatically endorse the municipal court’s actions, most Chinese and Saudis apparently see no problem with their bans — after all, order and stability must be protected and who better to do the deed than the state under the imprimatur of law.

Bans catalogue a nation’s worst fears, enumerating acts which many believe would — if left unchecked — instigate a devastating loss of identity. It is a proximity to existential terror that creates justifications for the existence of bans —for the French, cafes spilling over with veiled apparitions; for the Saudis, a cavalcade of untamed tresses streaming out from convertibles; for the Chinese, virtual revelations of the peasants felled to make way for skyscrapers. In each case, the ban in question is tied, purposely and with great intention, to the behaviour it seeks to prohibit, its content justifying its coercive nature and obscuring its intrinsic fallacy.

Through this circle of flawed logic a ‘ban’ society, be it Saudi or French or Chinese, adheres to the specificity of the ban it produces as a justification for it. By criminalising an act, say the wearing of a niqab or the abandoning of an abaya, the act is redefined as deviance.

What is banned becomes the same as what is dangerous, leaving only incremental shades of difference between covered and uncovered women and murderers. The mechanics of bans is employed by governments with an appetite for political manoeuvring to get vast populations to back bans, to get scared minorities to adhere to them and to have those unaffected by their proclamations ignore them.

To draw up an itemised account of the costs imposed by bans requires moving beyond the intoxicating concoctions of right and wrong meant to trip the unwary citizen. Rid of context and criminality, a ban inflicts two wounds on society: the first cripples, the second kills.

The imposition of a ban, like no other act of state, proclaims the breakdown of a society’s own mechanisms for imposing blame and shame. Hence, it controls communal behaviour. A society that bans has no moral confidence in itself and becomes, with decades of accumulating bans, unable to judge behaviour without the mandate of the state to distinguish between right and wrong.

Acts become wrong not because of calculations of harm and the benefit or dictates of social conscience but because they have fines and penalties attached to them. With time, getting caught becomes more crucial than the act itself. Cleverly evading censure becomes the basis of moral decision-making, skewing all equations on the basis of being found out.

It is as a consequence of the stunting of moral life that the intangible costs of bans can also be weighed. The most avid fans of bans, the Saudis and the Chinese, believe in the assumption that an artful selection of prohibitions retains just the right amount of freedom. Based on this premise societies safely incentivise science and technology, for instance, while placing curbs on literary or artistic expression.

In China, therefore, you can consume an expensive French meal and purchase a Ferrari but you cannot get on Facebook or ask your friends to assemble and protest against the razing of a slum. This same idea of circumscribed freedom exists in all ‘ban’ societies, pivoted on the premise that freedom can be rationed or directed into certain permissible pathways.

This idea of limited freedom would work if those subjected to it were not already crippled by their navigation of bans. The ultimate cruelty of a ‘ban’ society is that it judges all acts by their permissibility; hence, an act becomes defined by limits instead of possibility.

Creativity, too, while initially whetted by the trickery required to get around firewalls and get on Facebook anyway, or drive a car deep in the desert, reaches a desolate dead end dictated by the very edict it seeks to evade. There can be no invention in these societies since the unimaginable is a realm that cannot be explored; the unimaginable is off-limits precisely because it is unknown.

A ‘ban’ society is a scared society, where the terror of the future must be curtailed by artificial guarantees of order. In its feeble attempts to destroy uncertainty, to create identity by outlawing this or that, it eliminates the possibility of ideas whose impetus is not defying bans and whose originality is not located in the simplistic mechanics of violating well-known taboos.

This past week, a world enamoured of bans bid adieu to an inventor whose creations could not be described, or even imagined, until they existed. Such is the potential of creativity unhampered by the maze of restriction, a suggestion that when acts and expressions are not teased and tampered with through prohibition, the translation of the unknown becomes not the terrible but the possible.

The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law. 

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/the-burden-of-bans.html

CNN Article: Zakaria: How Obama can overcome the down economy

I talked to John King the other day about President Obama's reelection strategy in this down economy. Take a look at the video above and/or the transcript below:

John King: The data is just simply not good for the president. And then on top of that, that's looking backward on the data we already know, today markets are talking about a bear market, financial markets don't look good, the housing market don't look good, the president can't look out at the horizon and see anything to be optimistic about, can he?

Fareed Zakaria: It looks pretty grim. There's a famous model that was designed by a professor in economic at Yale, Ray Fair, which predicts outcome of presidential elections. He's never been wrong in 40 years. And the basic inputs are economic growth, unemployment, inflation you know your basic economic data that the theory is that the campaign itself is actually irrelevant, that you give me the economic data and I will tell you whether the incumbent will get re-elected. Well, if you use those kinds of models and those numbers, the situation looks very tough for the president.

John King: And this one issue. The president answers the question, 'No, people aren't better off than they were four years ago.' This is in one issue on which you would say he's in absolute agreement with his chief nemesis politically, that would be the House Republicans. Listen here for the majority leader, Eric Cantor: "The president said yesterday that people in the country are worse off than they were when he was elected. We feel the same way. The economy continues to sputter." Is the president's only hope to say it's not all my fault, it's their fault too?

Fareed Zakaria: I don't think that's going to be as convincing. I think his hope is probably the tack he's taking to say, 'Things are very bad; they're bad because of the very broad forces beyond our control, the collapse of Lehman, the financial crisis, the global financial crisis, Europe and the euro zone crisis. But here's the issue, I have a plan. I have a plan to help get us out of this. And that is my jobs plan. And I have a way to pay for it. And the Republican Party, on the other hand has no plan.'

He has to draw that distinction and he has to hammer home the idea that he has a set of proposals that are powerful that would take immediate effect that would help Americans and the other side doesn't. I don't think spreading the blame around or complicating the issue is going to help as much.

Elections are referendums. And there has to be referenda on something. If it's not about the plan, it's going to be about him. And, frankly, I think he's better off it being about a comparative analysis of the plans rather than just a referendum on him.

John King: And how complicated is it? How hemmed in is he by the fact that a lot of the long-term things that need to be done, whether entitlement reform, dealing with debt, other structural issues in the U.S. economy might be at odds. Those long-term challenges might be some would say certainly at odds with his short-term political needs?

Fareed Zakaria: I think the sensible thing to do economically is pretty clear, which is to have a short-term plan that has some stimulus for the economy, and various forms, tax breaks, extensions of unemployment, a very significant infrastructure bill because that is what you get. What the government can do more than anything else is rebuild America and put people to work and a debt reduction plan.

And you do it altogether so that you reassure the markets that while spending some money now, you're going get your fiscal balances in order. Politically this seems impossible. And that is the dilemma I think that the president is grappling with that he's not able to get any of that stuff done that would actually have an impact on the economy because there is so much political gridlock and opposition in Washington that he can't manage to make it happen.

Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/07/zakaria-how-obama-can-overcome-the-down-economy/?hpt=wo_r1

Nuclear disarmament and the youth: View from India - Dawn Blog

President Obama’s Prague speech, in which he laid the foundations of a renewed quest for a world free of nuclear weapons, was greeted around the world with both awe and skepticism. Analysts all around the world dissected his words, ruminated over his intent and commented on his vision, I found the speech intriguing for completely different reasons. When President Obama said that the goal of nuclear disarmament will not be accomplished in his life time, for many political pundits around the world, it represented an act of buck-passing. However those words conveyed an essential truth: the need of an enabled posterity to understand the risks of a trigger-happy nuclear world and to continue the endeavour towards a world free of nuclear weapons and concomitant hazards. Yet at the altar of political interpretations, this foresight was sacrificed.

It is this characteristically different reading of his speech which allows us to see the importance of an enabled posterity which can understand fully the stakes involved in the project of nuclear disarmament and can convincingly argue the case of a nuclear weapons free world. If the goal of a nuclear weapons free world is to be pursued, one has to acknowledge the importance of youth, the shoulders which are going to bear responsibility for the future and who will make sure that the quest continues, until the ultimate goal of a global zero is achieved. 

In the context of South Asia, the need for involvement of youth in the nuclear discourse is being acutely felt. There is a paucity of institutions, both government backed or private, which can educate the masses specially students and develop a capacity among the youth in order to understand the nuances of nuclear weapons and issue of disarmament. Without an independent and matured understanding of the issue, critical reflection on the need and viability of nuclear weapons has become a casualty. Given the desperate socio-economic condition of the majority of the people in the region, the unwillingness of the state to allow a more informed understanding of nuclear issues and the incapacity of youth to question nuclearisation appear to constitute nothing less than a conspiracy to sustain the discourse of nuclear brinksmanship.

There are also very few avenues for students, who have genuine interest in the subject, to understand the minutiae of the debate and engage with these at both national and international level. Hardly any regional workshops or conferences are organised to bring the youth of the region at a single platform to discuss nuclear disarmament. Given the rapid proliferation of think tanks and NGO’s in the aftermath of 1998 nuclear explosions, such a scenario is an awful reminder that nuclearisation has been accepted as something normal in the subcontinent.

Fallouts of such a situation are many. First, even when most of the states in the region are democracies, the lack of expertise on nuclear issues is a serious handicap in openly debating the need and viability of nuclear weapons and subsequent opportunity costs. This lack of knowledge encumbers the development of strong civil society initiatives against the politically motivated weaponisation program of the national governments. This also allows the dominant narratives of the nuclear hawks and other bureaucratic lobbies in the region to be generally accepted by the uninformed citizenry, since the capacity for critical evaluation is lacking.  More so, such a situation also allows the use of overt weaponisation strategies by the political parties to garner an electoral base.

Second, the politics of nuclear weapons has allowed the building of militarist regional order where power hierarchies have dominated the issues of cooperation and development. The muteness or relative silence of the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) on issues of nuclearisation of the region points in this direction. Even when the nuclearisation imperils the security of all the states in the region, NNWS have hardly acted as a cohesive pressure group within the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to bring the agenda of nuclear disarmament at the negotiating table in various regional summits. Again the lack of expertise on the nuclear issues and active civil society in these countries has played a spoilsport.

Third, the lack of effective regional youth networks dealing with the issue of nuclear disarmament has not allowed the development of a collective identity of the region as a possible nuclear weapons free zone. The issue of nuclearisation of the region is still seen through the contours of national boundaries and the deficiency of interactions has stifled the possibilities of hearing the views of the others.

Yet to underscore the need for developing and shaping young minds in South Asia is to understand the fact that the thought process of strategic communities in South Asian region is still embedded in the experiences of the Cold War decades. For example, the Indian strategic mindset mostly perceives various arms control proposals through skepticism bred and nurtured during the Cold War years and it is hard to conceive a different approach until this staunchly embedded thinking is challenged. Most of the strategic analysts in the country are victims of this Cold War nuclear schizophrenia.

What is also to be noticed is that India has relinquished its stand on global nuclear disarmament for all practical purposes, though it still rhetorically clings to the past at times. Such a reinterpretation of Indian priorities is informed from a wrong perception of India’s rise. The need, therefore, is to reverse this trend of great power mimicry and to provide a new discourse in which priorities are not the amount of fissile material production but the alleviation of poverty and illiteracy.

In the case of Pakistan, on the other hand, the anti-India security discourse has helped the political elite specially the military to secure its sectional interests over the years. Nuclear weapons are only a new avatar, though much more potent and aggressive, of this contrivance of Pakistan’s military to perpetuate its hold on Pakistan’s polity and society. Interestingly, in both the states, people have come to love the bomb rather than detest it. The atomic publics of India and Pakistan, as Itty Abraham puts it in his new book, have embraced the weapons of their own destruction rather emphatically.  

In this backdrop, it is important to understand the crucial role which young, independent analysts can play in ameliorating the situation. There is a need to question and challenge the current discourse which eulogises nuclear weapons as acceptable instruments of political and social life. The collective wisdom – that nuclear weapons make us safe – is not what the youth of the region have decided for themselves; it is rather an imposition on younger generations from above, from the nuclear hawks who have sworn their life in the service of nukes.

The time is appropriate for thinking of a new collective future for South Asia, a future without nuclear weapons and only the youth can do that because in all legitimacy, the future belongs to them and them only.

Yogesh Joshi studies international politics at the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). New Delhi. He is a youth representative of Global Zero – an international NGO working towards a nuclear weapons free world – and runs a Global Zero Chapter at JNU.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/08/nuclear-disarmament-and-the-youth.html

Is circular debt the real issue?

By Salman Khalid and Kamal Munir 

PAKISTAN has been facing a series of power crises over roughly the last two decades. However, since 2007, the situation has deteriorated rapidly.

As a result of severe electricity shortage, industry, commerce and agriculture have all taken serious hits with the country’s growth prospects dimming significantly. At the same time, residential consumers have had to endure over eight-to-12-hour blackouts in major cities. The situation is even worse in rural Pakistan.

Surprisingly, the total energy produced in the country has actually decreased nearly 10 per cent between 2007 and 2010.
This is primarily due to lower-capacity utilisation, which in turn has been the result of ‘circular debt’, a concept that has been bandied around freely over the past few years as the primary problem that besets energy production in Pakistan.

However, despite its dominance of policy discourse, circular debt is not the fundamental issue here. The two most glaring reasons behind the present mess Pakistan finds itself in are the 1994 energy policy and the resultant extreme over-reliance on expensive imported fuel mix.

It is easy to forget that the roots of the present power crisis can be traced to almost two decades back with the advent of the highly generous 1994 power policy for independent power producers (IPP). At that time the country’s electricity generation relied on a fuel mix of approximately 70:30 in favour of hydro versus thermal. This changed dramatically over the next decade with the fuel mix going to 30 per cent hydro and almost 70 per cent thermal by the end of 2010.

This dramatic shift in generation source occurred because the 1994 power policy (and later the 2002 power policy) did not discriminate on fuel source being employed and made the country hostage to fluctuations in international oil and gas prices (the country does not possess either commodity in sufficient quantity).

The cost of this strategic policy-level folly can be understood with the following comparison. As per the National Power System Expansion Plan 2010-2030, as of 2010, Wapda (employing hydro production) generated electricity at Rs1.03/kWh ((1.2 cents/kWh) while public-sector thermal power plants provided the same at Rs8.5/kWh (10 cents/kwh).

However, the IPPs (primarily thermal) provided the same at Rs9.58/kWh (11.2 cents/kWh). As a result, the average blended cost of generation was Rs6.6/kWh (7.7 cents/kWh) in 2010 which further increased to Rs9.81/kWh (11.5 cents/kWh) for the end consumer due to line losses and theft in the transmission and distribution systems.

It should be noted that the above numbers underestimate the true cost because the cost of energy from old power plants is substantially lower due to repayment of debt. Most new thermal IPPs are charging in the range of 15-18 cents/kWh at current oil prices. As a result, tariffs will substantially increase further as the world economy comes out of recession over the next few years and oil/gas prices jump (with the US trying to print its way out of recession).

Even after adjusting for debt repayment, power production through indigenous hydro resources comes out much better than what we are given to believe.

The estimated cost of energy stands at 1.6 cents/kWh for Kalabagh dam with a vast majority of new hydros expected to come under 4.5 cents/kWh as per a recent NTDC (National Transmission and Despatch Company) report. Furthermore, the country has so far completely failed to develop its coal reserves (only 30MW coming from coal) which are estimated at 175 billion tonnes (the second largest in the world). Engro estimates a tariff of 10-12 cents/kWh for Thar coal-based power production based on the current policy. Incredibly, the world average for coal-based power production in the energy mix is 40 per cent while it is only 0.1 per cent in Pakistan.

To make matters worse, many of the thermal IPPs set-ups under both the 1994 and 2002 power policy are of inefficient design (single cycle rather than more efficient combined cycle) since these policies provided cost plus equity return of 15 per cent irrespective of the efficiency of the technology/fuel source being used in the power plant.

Many of these IPPs would normally be used for load-balancing (matching sudden jumps in demand etc) in other countries and would fall low in the merit order for power plants used but are instead employed for satisfying standard base demand in Pakistan. One begs to question the wisdom and/or sincerity of the policymakers of the country who completely ignored two of the biggest energy resources available locally which cost substantially less than the options they opted for.

Some people provide the excuse regarding the political deadlock over the Kalabagh dam and hence the need for Pakistan to go to the oil/gas-based IPP route. But what stopped the policymakers from going down the coal route, let alone hydro projects apart from the Kalabagh dam? Why couldn’t the Diamer-Bhasha dam or the Bunji or Doyian dam be commenced in the early 1990s instead of a Hubco?

Circular debt is a red herring. The core problem lies in wrong policy choices made in the early 1990s that have continued since then. These choices, made for whatever reasons (pressure from the World Bank, corruption, incompetence) have shifted Pakistan away from self-reliance in energy generation and landed us at the mercy of daily fluctuations of the international oil/gas markets and choked industrial progress in the country.

Taking subsidies away is not the solution. Electricity should not only be available to the wealthy! The provision of affordable electricity is the basic right of every citizen.

In a country that has unparalleled resources to generate electricity the present situation is unacceptable. Printing money to clear circular debt will hardly deliver us from this problem. For Pakistanis to be able to get an affordable, sufficient, long-term energy supply, the sustainable solution lies in revisiting the ridiculous power policies of 1994 and 2002 and exploiting other, more sensible sources of generation.

Salman Khalid has managed investments in power generation in Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Kamal Munir teaches Strategy and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/10/is-circular-debt-the-real-issue.html

UK review identifies Afghan civil war risk

LONDON: A British government review of the Afghan conflict is to warn that there are “significant risks” of civil war or a Taliban takeover of the south and east of the country after Nato withdraws its combat troops at the end of the 2014.

On the 10th anniversary of the start of the war, military progress is patchy with fighting still intense in the east and in parts of Helmand province. Over the past few days, British troops have been sent in to the thick of a bloody, drawn-out struggle along the Helmand river valley, taking over a fiercely contested area from US marines a few kilometres south of Sangin town, the site of the UK’s heaviest losses since its forces moved into the province in 2006.

With three years to go until Afghan security forces are supposed to fight the insurgency without the help of foreign combat troops, the Afghanistan review will portray a country in turmoil. Last year’s 30,000-strong US troop surge and new counterinsurgency tactics have pushed the Taliban out of much of the territory it controlled a year ago, but with the widespread use of improvised mines and roadside bombs, as well as a campaign of assassinations, the insurgents have sought to paralyse the Kabul government and hinder western-backed development.

Retired US general Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), said the force was only “50% of the way” to achieving its goals in the country.

President Hamid Karzai’s administration remains weak and corrupt, reliant on a loose coalition of warlords. The country’s biggest bank has been crippled by rampant embezzlement, and there have been a string of assassinations of high-profile Karzai allies, culminating last month in the killing of the government top peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The British government review, ordered by the prime minister David Cameron earlier this year and due to be delivered in mid-November, will warn of significant risks of the recent, hard-won progress unravelling and the very real threat of a multi-dimensional civil war between insurgent factions, regional and tribal groups, fuelled by neighbouring powers jockeying for position.

Talibanisation of the Pakhtun belt
Another possible outcome is referred to as the “Talibanisation of the Pakhtun belt”, in which the Pakhtun areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border slip permanently under the control of ultra-conservative militants, further destabilising Pakistan, an already fragile state armed with nuclear weapons.

The report, as described by officials, will make clear that these remain worst-case scenarios which can be avoided. But even the outcome judged by the report to be most likely after the 2014 transition, a precarious Afghan state with pockets of chronic violence, would leave the terrorist threat from the region as potent as it is today.

A senior British diplomat would not comment on the specifics of the review as it is classified and has yet to be finalised, but confirmed that “those sorts of scenarios are being studied”. “It is going to be a cold-eyed realistic appraisal,” the diplomat said.

The 20 September killing of Rabbani by a suicide bomber with explosives concealed in his turban, has set back hopes of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. While senior Nato officials believe the evidence leads back to the Taliban’s Pakistan haven in Quetta, they do not think the assassination was specifically ordered by the top leadership, but rather was the work of an over-zealous second-tier commander. That leaves open the possibility that informal US contacts, begun last year, could resume.

But levels of distrust, both between Nato and the Taliban, and between Rabbani’s northern kinsmen and rebel Pakhtun tribes in the south, are now higher than ever.

“Anyone who is following the situation in Afghanistan is worried. A civil war is a real possibility,” said Martine van Bijlert of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

“There is a real feeling of instability, that the future is unsure. People don’t know who are their friends and enemies. So they try to make themselves ready for any eventuality, positioning themselves politically and worrying about how strong they are.
People are falling back on old networks and old loyalties.”

In Helmand, last year’s influx of 11,000 of US marines has suppressed the insurgency in several districts and reduced the pressure on British troops garrisoned in the province. But Barack Obama is now drawing down the surge, and the troops are going home or redploying to the eastern provinces to counter the threat of splinter jihadist groups.

Three hundred British soldiers are currently being deployed with Afghan troops along a particularly volatile stretch of the Helmand river south of Sangin, replacing a US marine battalion that was unable to make progress against the local insurgents and found itself under daily attack, suffering five deaths over six months and more than 80 wounded.

Danish forces stationed further south towards the town of Gereshk were forced to withdraw earlier this year from a forward base known as Armadillo as a result of an insurgent onslaught, dismantling the fortifications stone by stone and shipping part of it back to a military museum in Denmark.

Not a lot has changed
The newly-arrived British troops and their Afghan counterparts will be patrolling an area known as Qal Yeh Gaz, just 12kms south of Sangin town. One of the departing US marines, Captain Andrew Terrell told the BBC that “not a lot has changed” since he was deployed nearby with British commandos four years ago. “The situation is no better. The people here are not fed up with the fighting, they’ve not reached the limit of what they’re willing to accept from the Taliban,” Terrell said. “It’s easier for them to move out of the area and hope it settles down, but they don’t look much further than tomorrow.”

A coalition of Afghan and western aid agencies has published research suggesting that despite the influx of $57bn in foreign aid since 2001, progress in health, education and a public sense of security has been patchy and tenuous.

Farhana Faruqi Stocker, the director of Afghanaid said: “Investments have been made where there is the greatest insurgency rather than where there is the greatest need. Impoverished regions have been ignored because they are ‘secure’.” She added: “Afghan lives have improved but the gains are fragile and reversible.”—Dawn/Guardian News Service

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/09/uk-review-identifies-afghan-civil-war-risk.html

Ties with Pakistan vital to security, says US

WASHINGTON: Ties with Pakistan remained vital to US national security, the White House said on Friday as the State Department pledged to continue to work with Islamabad to defeat terrorism.

“The cooperation we have with Pakistan is extremely important in terms of our national security objectives, in terms of protecting Americans, in terms of taking the fight to Al Qaeda,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told a briefing in Washington.

“And that’s why we continue to work with the Pakistanis and try to build on that cooperation,” he added.

At the State Department, spokesperson Victoria Nuland underlined “an intense relationship on a number of issues, including on the counterterrorism docket.”

She also noted that US secretaries of state and defence and the CIA’s chief had all maintained contacts with their Pakistani counterparts while a special envoy was due in Islamabad for talks on all major issues.

“We are going to continue working on this issue of counterterrorism together because it is in both of our interests,” Ms Nuland said.
The statements followed recent media reports that increased cooperation between US and Pakistani intelligence agencies had
helped defuse the existing tensions between the two countries.

The ISI – although much-maligned in the US media – has been credited in these reports with arranging a meeting between US
officials and the Haqqani network.

ISI-CIA TIES: On Friday, the Director of US National Intelligence, James Clapper, told the Associated Press news agency that the ISI had quietly stepped up cooperation with the CIA, arresting some Al Qaeda suspects at their request and allowing US interrogators access to the detainees.

Pakistan has also stopped demanding the CIA suspend the covert drone strikes that have damaged Al Qaeda in Fata, another report said.

This cooperation “could mark a turning point in US-Pakistani relations,” observed Fox News while reporting the development.

“They are doing things to cooperate and be helpful,” said Mr Clapper. Other US officials told Fox News that both countries have made some progress in restoring the joint intelligence cooperation that used to be routine prior to the covert US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.After the raid Pakistan stopped joint operations with American intelligence officers, refused access to militant detainees and delayed visas for some US officials.

At the State Department, spokesperson Nuland, however, hinted that Pakistan had also allowed US officials to question bin Laden’s wives.

“We are working well with the Pakistanis on the aftermath of the bin Laden events,” she said but refused to “get into any specifics” of this cooperation. The US also appears to have softened its stance on Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician, who helped Americans trace bin Laden and is now in custody in Pakistan.

Washington wants him in the United States with his family. Pakistan not only turned down the request but a parliamentary committee indicated this week that he could be charged with treason.

The White House press secretary refused to condemn Pakistan when asked to comment on the committee’s decision.

“I’d refer you to the Pakistani government,” he said.

State Department’s Ms Nuland also refused to discuss this issue at a briefing where reporters asked half a dozen questions on the decision to try Dr. Afridi on treason charges.

“I’m not, from this podium, going to get into this set of issues at all,” she said. Instead, the White House and the State Department offered a general description of their ties to Pakistan.

“We have an important relationship with Pakistan. We have had enormous successes through our cooperation with Pakistan,” Mr Carney said. “We have also made clear that we have issues with Pakistan at times, and that it is a complicated relationship.”

Ms Nuland completely rejected the assertion that the US was running a campaign against Pakistan.

“We are trying to make the case to the Pakistani people as well as to Pakistani leaders that only working together are we going to defeat this threat (of terrorism) to both of us.”The US, she said, was also trying to publicise the civilian assistance it was giving to strengthen the Pakistani democracy, education system and the economy.

“That is also one of the best deterrents to extremism, when quality of life is being raised for everyone,” she said. When an Indian journalist suggested that most Pakistani hated the US, Ms Nuland urged him to help improve the US image.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/09/ties-with-pakistan-vital-to-security-says-us.html

View from US: Mystery of the missing chapters By Anjum Niaz

Zamir Niazi would not know that 25 years since his book, The Press in Chains, was first published, it would cause an uproar today. The journalist embodying a frail frame, a soft voice, with pen and paper as his weaponry, challenged the ruling dictator Zia by exposing his press censorship and antipathy against free speech. The year was 1986. Zia was at the zenith of his power.

His information czars were like bulldogs let loose on any publisher, editor and reporter daring to cross the red line. Tamed and terribly crushed, the media hailed Zamir Niazi as its champion, instantly canonising his book as the ‘bible’ of press freedom.

A quarter of a century later what’s the brouhaha? Agatha Christie would have loved to weave a web of conspiracy around the mystery of the two missing chapters in the second edition published 15 months ago. At the heart of ‘whodunit’ are the Oxford University Press (OUP) Managing Director Ameena Saiyid, Editor Zubeida Mustafa, and the author’s two sons, Haris and Junaid. Zamir Niazi passed away in 2004. The mystery of the missing chapters in the new edition has taken a life of its own when this newspaper published a story three weeks ago.

I emailed Ameena and Zubeida for their comment on the controversy raked up 15 months too late. Ameena gave the background, saying Zamir Niazi had requested her, in 2000, to bring out a second edition that he was in the process of revising. He wanted Zubeida Mustafa, a senior journalist at Dawn, to edit this edition. However, the unfinished second edition died with its author. Some years later, son Junaid sent the OUP the revised material in the form of an e-file on a CD, requesting Ms Saiyid to pick up the project from where his late father had left it. Missing from the e-file were the two most critical chapters on the Zia and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto period.

Confusion worse confounded set in. After a flurry of exchanged emails between the sons and the OUP, the mystery of the missing chapters remained unsolved. In June 2010, Ameena Saiyid brought out the 2nd edition minus the two ‘Zees’ (Zia and ZAB) chapters. Why didn’t Ameena or Zubeida press the sons for the two missing chapters? Here’s what Ameena emailed back to me in response: “The OUP and Zubeida Mustafa did not raise the matter of those chapters with the sons nor did Zohra Yusuf who wrote the introduction. The reason? The 2nd edition is a complete rewrite. The subjects and titles of the chapters had changed…There was no (further) conversation with the sons about this. They did not raise it [instead they] said they had given us all the material.” Zubeida Mustafa’s response to my query corresponds with Ameena’s. She confirms that she did not receive the two chapters. The back-story that she gave me of her involvement in editing the 2nd edition is straight forward.

She is therefore surprised why the whole thing has been turned into a controversy. And why is she being blamed for omitting the two most significant chapters on Zia and ZAB. “The missing chapters were not there but their contents were there in different parts of the book though they may be not in identical words.”

Now, the sons want the OUP to pull out the 2nd edition of their father’s book to include the missing chapters. Ameena Saiyid has refused. “It will be difficult to simply insert the two chapters in the 2nd edition (now). They won’t fit with the flow.”

Besides, she says “If material from the original edition was not included, perhaps that was the author’s intention. I could not, as publisher, tamper with the author’s material and add or take away from it. I had to maintain the integrity of the material and use what the family/ heirs had given me since they were now the owners.”

Why should son Haris Niazi blame the publisher and the editor for the missing chapters? “Without these chapters,” Harris reportedly said, “the current generation of readers will be deprived of an account of two crucial periods in the history of the Pakistani press.” The mystery of the missing chapters can only be solved if we find out who compiled the final manuscript that was sent to the OUP? Many months after Zamir Niazi’s death, one of his friends and admirers – he had many – had asked Zubeida Mustafa to help in finalising the book. “The material was in the form of handwritten notes in tiny handwriting all over sheets of paper. They were not organised and needed a writer with plenty of time, skill and experience to do it.” Zubeida did not agree to do the project ostensibly because it required a lot of time.

In 2009, after retirement, Zubeida eventually agreed to edit the 2nd edition after the OUP sent her a complete manuscript on a CD. Whoever compiled the manuscript sent to the OUP by the sons of Zamir Niazi, can solve the mystery of the missing chapters. Who is that person? Meanwhile, the plot thickens: While Ameena Saiyid has agreed to publish “The Press in Chains” in its original form, the permission by the heirs of Zamir Niazi has reportedly been declined.

Is it a case of nerves? Who’s afraid of ZAB? Is it the heirs of the late author or is it the publisher who may fear a backlash from his son-in-law, President Asif Zardari? “There is no question of our censoring or being ordered by the PPP government to remove the Bhutto chapter as some people are implying. No one from the government has said a word. No pressure at all,” Ameena wrote to me.

The biggest losers are Zamir Niazi, the media, and the coming generations of Pakistanis who will never know the truth as told by the man of steel and nerves who refused to buckle under pressure. Let’s then hope Haris and Junaid Niazi (two very fine people) will allow the reprint of their father’s irreplaceable book The Press in Chains, as it appeared 25 years ago.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com

Seven more die of dengue in Lahore

LAHORE: Another seven people including five women died of dengue fever in different hospitals on Saturday, raising the death toll to 205 in the city.

Dengue cases are on the rise and patients with high fever flocked to hospitals in the provincial metropolis.

Today, 60-year-old Mukhtaran Bibi of Baghbanpura, Mrs Iqbal (61) of Temple Road and Arooj of Dharampura lost their battle against dengue at Services Hospital while under treatment Rabia (24) of Kot Khawaja Saeed, Aliza (7) and Saeed of Bahawalpur died at Mayo Hospital.

The identity of the seventh patient who perished at a private hospital could not be ascertained.

Health department figures revealed that during the last 24 hours, 312 new dengue cases were reported in Punjab, raising the number to 14,978 while 498 new cases were reported in Lahore, raising the total to 13,457. Some 1,862 patients are under treatment in various hospitals in Punjab while over 600 have already been cured.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/08/seven-more-die-of-dengue-in-lahore.html