Looking For Justice, Not Revenge By Kamila Hyat: New Age Islam's Selection, 21 December 2017
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
21 December 2017
• Looking For Justice, Not Revenge
By Kamila Hyat
• Normalising Abnormalities Of Civil-Military Relations
By Imtiaz Alam
• Big Little Lies
By Owen Bennett-Jones
• The Rise of a New Threat in Afghanistan
By Tahir Hasan Khan
• Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh’s Struggle
By Barrister Hassan Niazi
• This Was a Busy Year for Our Learned Judges
By Dr Noman Ahmed
• Bizenjo and His Politics
By I.A. Rehman
• CPEC Plan Details Still Awaited
By Khurram Husain
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Looking For Justice, Not Revenge
By Kamila Hyat
December 21, 2017
As we have done now for three years, the anniversary of the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar which killed 144 people has been marked with a true sense of loss by people across the country. New messages in song and word have been released with a promise to fight back against the ‘enemy’ who carried out the massacre.
Of course, we must fight. But this has to be a collective, united and carefully planned struggle, waged on not one front but several. We should be seeking not revenge but justice: a kind of justice and an adherence to rule of law which can prevent further such attacks. The evidence that we are failing in this quest came merely a day after the APS anniversary, with the strike on a church in Quetta which added to the toll taken by terrorism in the country.
Since those terrible events in Peshawar of December 2014, roads have been named after some of those who died, individual deeds of extraordinary bravery highlighted and tributes paid to the young victims in many forms. But is this enough? The parents of the children who died think not. Their dismay over the failure to bring the killers of their children to trial has been expressed again and again, even though fewer and fewer appear to be listening to them. In many ways, they have been left alone with their grief, revisited only once each year when memories of that terrible day flood back.
Justice is important – and it is important not just for the families. It is important also for the country as a whole, to demonstrate to the people that they live in a state which will not tolerate a complete violation of law and order and continuous acts of immense inhumanity. There is a lack of clarity over who has been arrested, or punished, for the APS killings. The same is true of other acts of terrorism. This is hugely damaging. Justice, after all, must not just happen but also be seen as being done.
The case of Ehsanullah Ehsan, the former Taliban spokesman who later linked up with a splinter faction, the Jama’atul Ahrar, does not provide much hope. In April this year, Ehsanullah, in a widely publicised interview, had stated that the Taliban were in fact funded by RAW and other Indian agencies and had been misled to believe they were acting in the name of Islam. It would be interesting to know what tactics these enemy agencies used to persuade any human that it was an act of religious duty to put a bullet through the head of a 15-year-old or to mow down at least 132 children in their classrooms while they screamed in fear and agony for hours.
Ehsanullah Ehsan had claimed responsibility for the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in 2012, the APS attack in 2014, the Lahore Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park massacre of 2016 and multiple other killings or acts of terrorism. Yet months after he apparently handed himself over, there has been no trial and no obvious attempt to place him before a court. There were rumours that he was likely to be released as part of a deal.
This led to the father of a young APS student who had been killed in December 2014 filing a petition before the Peshawar High Court, urging that the killer not be given clemency. The court ordered a few days before the APS anniversary that Ehsanullah not be released without court orders and that investigations be completed by the federal government. It is strange that a court should need to order a government to proceed as per the law against a man who has confessed to the involvement in multiple crimes of the most heinous nature.
Justice however goes beyond courts and beyond deals struck behind closed doors. It also involves understanding where the roots of militancy lie, and in tackling them before they spread any wider. This would mean offering many more services to communities across the country, notably those in some of the most deprived areas where militancy has flourished. These include the tribal areas and southern Punjab.
There should never be any suggestion that the people of these areas are in any way collectively responsible for the terrorists who have placed themselves amongst them. Indeed, these people have suffered more than most due to the presence of such persons. Many of them have been forced to flee their homes and live as IDPs for years on end, others suffering losses of employment or life or any sense of normalcy. Instead, these communities need to be strengthened by offering them basic facilities and working to remove the factors which give rise to extremist tendencies.
All institutions need to work together for this end. There can be no sparing of specific groups or specific individuals to serve any other purpose. The security and welfare of people, and offering them access to justice, must come before all else. If this does not happen, we can only expect further acts of extremism and violence. The Pakistan Army has waged a long and bitter battle against the militants. It has lost many men in the course of this dangerous internal war.
But war does not involve just guns alone. Using only guns as the weapon to crush militancy can never work. Yes, force is essential in certain cases. But it must be combined with a plan to offer development, help and rehabilitation to people who have suffered so that we can avoid that cycle of death and injustice which leads to more and more militants springing up with each act of violence against them. This is even more true of acts of violence committed by external forces, such as the drone attacks which have killed children, women and innocent persons along with some militants. They must stop.
All this will only stop if the government of Pakistan is able to demonstrate a clear commitment to battling militancy effectively and forcefully. Although the National Action Plan was drawn up as a detailed document after the APS tragedy, very little has been done to implement its contents. While extremism is impossible to measure, there are many who would argue it has grown in society and could grow further. The arrival of Khadim Rizvi and his supporters on the scene points to that.
There are other pieces of evidence as well. Exterminating extremism is not an easy task. But it cannot be achieved by hailing young children who died while at school as heroes engaged in a war or by failing to bring their killers to justice. Leaders of organisations engaged in terrorism, whatever its form and whatever its intent, must be apprehended. Too many remain free; others such as Mullah Fazlullah have reportedly been killed in mysterious circumstances. Such killings do not however provide any sense of justice. The details of their crimes remain hidden and the involvement of people that comes with a public trial remains absent.
In such circumstances, it is hard to build the sense of a real fight against extremism or promise that those guilty of killing innocent victims will indeed be penalised under the law of the land.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/258675-looking-for-justice-not-revenge
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Normalising Abnormalities of Civil-Military Relations
By Imtiaz Alam
December 21, 2017
This Tuesday, we saw three breakthroughs on very pivotal issues. First, the Senate passed the 24thAmendment bill on the re-demarcation of constituencies on the basis of a fresh population census – thus paving the way for holding the general elections on time.
Second, COAS Gen Bajwa tried to set civil-military relations on an even-keel by appearing before the Senate. And third, thanks to the good general’s mediation, a tentative breakthrough on Fata’s inclusion into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seems to have been reached with Maulana Fazalur Rehman. These are good things to have happened in what are felt as most uncertain times.
There are real paradoxes, fault-lines and abnormalities that dog the democratic transition in the country; there is also the mal-functioning of the state and consequent overlapping of its institutions. The crisis triggered with the judicial ouster of an elected prime minister on what have widely been seen as flimsy grounds is being played out by various stakeholders, as the country faces multiple crises and challenges. Thanks to the accommodation shown by the PML-N and the flexibility of the PPP, the differences over the population census between Sindh and the federal government were resolved to pave the way for the passage of the 24th Amendment by the Senate to ensure timely elections of all legislative bodies, including the Upper House. The uncertainty about the Senate elections seems to have been be cleared – that is, if the PPP and the PTI do not wreck the transition by joining hands with the Qadri juggernaut to deny the PML-N the legitimate advantage of four or five Senate seats in the upcoming Senate elections in March.
It was very wise on the part of the Senate chairman and the committee of the whole house to have invited COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa for a briefing on the emerging security scenarios and civil-military relations. It was also quite remarkable that Gen Bajwa tried his best to alleviate the apprehensions about security challenges and civil-military relations that were being loudly expressed in various sessions of the Upper House.
The briefing came at a time when both the geo-strategic environment and financial and political structures are under great pressures. Gen Bajwa not only tried to clarify the military leadership’s view over various strategic issues, but also quite laudably asked parliament to guide the nation on security and foreign policy challenges. While assuring the house that Pakistan will not in any way become a party to the Saudi-Iran conflict, the army chief also showed his willingness to support any effort by the government in re-starting a dialogue process with India, something that seems difficult at the moment due to the Modi government’s intransigence.
However, what remains unclear is how Pakistan is to face the greatest challenge posed by the Trump administration and its approach towards the region and the tremendous pressure that it is building on Pakistan. Simply saying ‘no more’ in response to ‘do more’ is not the answer. Hard posturing might be necessary, but that doesn’t mean that we swing in the opposite direction – in the false hope of a new cold war – which we can neither afford nor is in our national interest.
What we are trying to say to the Americans is not satisfying them. The real issue is how we wriggle out of the Afghan quagmire in a way that it doesn’t become adverse strategic depth at the same time. We also have to rethink our relationship with the Afghan Taliban. There is no choice but to force them to join the negotiation process and decline them any relief that jeopardises our security via possible retaliation under a unilateral interventionist Trump paradigm to achieve certain tactical objectives that we should be ready to deliver. The objective should be peace in Afghanistan and pre-emption of a two-front situation. The strategy should be to reduce security threats, not expand them to a self-defeating point.
For this to happen, we must redefine our ultimate national interest. If the objective is to make Pakistan an economic hub on the crossroads of Central and South Asia, then the cumbersome geo-strategic paradigms must adjust to the economic-strategic imperatives that also make our security sustainable. This requires a shift from our current hostile relationship with our neighbours, India in particular. While keeping our strategic deterrence, we should forget about asymmetry with India and let the Chinese check India’s hegemonic designs in the region. A relationship of economic interdependence will create a conducive environment for conflict resolution as Kashmir or other disputes cannot be resolved through military means or in a hostile environment.
The reversal of our erstwhile policy of using proxies should now come to a logical end with others, both India and Afghanistan, reciprocating by stopping their proxy wars against Pakistan. The countries of the region can join hands in bringing peace to Afghanistan, rather than further exaggerating the critical situation in the war-torn country by adding various proxy wars to the war theatre.
Gen Bajwa has in fact thrown the ball into the court of the public representatives – be they in the opposition or in government. He has rightly asked them not to drag the army into politics. There is also a need to address the genuine complaints of the civil society and the media about enforced disappearances. The explanation given in the meeting did not do that.
If the armed forces are institutionally satisfied with their role as originally envisaged by the letter and spirit of the constitution, then parliament must take the responsibility to put appropriate institutional arrangements and checks and balances to keep civil-military relations on a stable trajectory. Pakistan cannot afford any rift in civil-military relations, particularly at this point in our history. Unfortunately, politics has become too personalised and self-serving. The country’s politicians should now be focusing on the next elections, rather than jeopardising a much warranted smooth transition. The confusion and destabilisation caused by the successive inconsistent court judgments in high-profile political cases – and in an extremely polarised political situation – need to be addressed. Either the full Supreme Court bench should clear the confusion over its prerogative under Article 184 (3) or parliament should set it right while avoiding an institutional conflict with the judiciary.
The country’s political parties should agree on a modus operandi for the holding of free and fair elections on time as required by the constitution. This they should do while not encouraging any unscrupulous elements and sectarian extremists to derail the democratic transition or compromise the writ of the state. Let us hope that such good things continue to happen to ease our burdens.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/258678-normalising-abnormalities
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Big Little Lies
By Owen Bennett-Jones
December 21, 2017
PAKISTAN has had plenty of genuine conspiracies. The assassinations of Liaquat Ali Khan, Gen Zia and Benazir Bhutto were all planned and plotted — and yet no one was brought to justice. Hidden hands have influenced elections and jihadis have been given secret funds. In such cases conspiracy theories seem entirely appropriate. Even so, there is a national tendency to explain just about any event by way of a conspiracy theory. With the dreary, and more often than not, unenlightening phrase ‘who benefits?’, people claim to be able to see the schemes behind the most mundane happenings.
While conspiracy theorists have always been a global phenomenon, until recently they were most numerous in places such as Pakistan where Americans, Zionists, corrupt politicians, generals and spies have all been ascribed superhuman powers of foresight as they act out their dastardly plots.
But something new is happening in the world of conspiracy theories. They are becoming increasingly common in the West. True, there were always some Westerners willing to blame everything on communists or Catholics but for the most part they remained on the fringe.
Take, as a benchmark, the 9/11 attacks in New York. Many Pakistanis still believe, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that the attacks were a Jewish plot. It is a claim that flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence about who actually organised the attack and should not be given even momentary consideration. Yet millions believe it.
There’s something new in the world of conspiracy theories.
In the West too there were conspiracy theories concerning 9/11: by using misleading versions of contemporaneous reporting and spurious claims about pictures of what happened, a few fringe anti-establishment activists tried to claim that the CIA did it. Very few believe that.
Back in 2001 many would have explained the Westerners’ greater willingness to reject outlandish claims by reference to higher education levels. Because Western education puts greater emphasis on critical thinking, the argument went, people were in a better position to make up their own minds of the basis of evidence.
Today, the American president constantly tweets about so-called fake news. And many believe him. One of the many things President Trump has brought to politics is the insight that if you control the information bubbles in which people live, some people will believe just about anything. It’s partly about trust. With good reason, many Pakistanis have for many years had next to no trust in their political and legal institutions, not to mention their corrupt leaders.
But trust is now breaking down in the West too. When some judges in the UK handed down a verdict on Brexit that was not to the liking of those who want to leave the EU, they were denounced by one of the best-selling British newspapers as ‘enemies of the people’ with hidden pro-European agendas. Meanwhile, politicians are widely viewed as self-serving and dishonest; journalists are dismissed as biased and even doctors — who once enjoyed very high levels of trust — are suspected of making decisions based not on the best interests of their patients but rather on the inducements they receive from drugs companies.
As a sceptical journalist I have always thought that the public was too ready to believe the bland assurances of politicians that the world was a series of cock-ups rather than conspiracies. To take the most glaring of all examples, it is really not controversial to say that companies and individuals do not give money to political parties out of any sense of altruism as they claim but so as to curry favour with those in power.
But a reasoned, evidence-based scepticism about how the world works now seems somewhat archaic. Because today communities of activists loyal to their particular political tribe gorge themselves on the unending nonsense that turns up on their Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Many thought social media would be a democratising force that would challenge dictatorships. Instead, master manipulators have learnt how to use the new platforms to drive people deeper into ideological camps. The process has gone so far in the US that studies have shown significant problems in families when a Republican Party supporter marries into a Democratic Party family and vice versa. The new tribalism has enabled the most crackpot theories to be repeated ad nauseam until significant numbers of people believe them. The much-maligned mainstream media used to be believed by most people for good reason. For all its inaccuracies and failings, mainstream media outlets were — and still are — committed to trying to report on the world as it actually is.
So it is now the age of the conspiracy theories not just in Pakistan but in the West too. As public trust recedes and mutual suspicion increases, fantasists have an ever-greater chance to use social media to publish their ideas and ever greater numbers of like-minded people believe them.
Source: dawn.com/news/1377962/big-little-lies
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The Rise of A New Threat In Afghanistan
By Tahir Hasan Khan
December 21, 2017
The growing political instability and weak security apparatus in Afghanistan is encouraging the Islamic State – or Daesh – to spread its tentacles and wrest more territories in the country’s northern and eastern provinces.
Though Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani is claiming that the network is ‘on the run’, in reality the group – after having had to face the onslaughts of both Taliban militias and government forces in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces – is now moving up fast to the northern provinces. This is now stirring security fears in the bordering Central Asians Republics, popularly known as ‘Russia’s soft underbelly’.
The rising fears of Daesh gaining an advantage are not just random perceptions or gossip by men on the streets. This fear and imminent threats is disturbing the Afghans quite visibly – both in the streets and in power circles in Kabul.
Talking to a delegation of visiting Pakistani journalists at his residence in the highly secured Wazir Akbar Khan locality in Kabul, Dr Abdullah Abdullah – the chief executive officer in the National Unity Government – minced no words when sharing his own worries about the increasing footprints of the terror network in the northern provinces of Afghanistan.
“No doubt [the] Taliban militia is fighting against Islamic State in eastern provinces [but strangely] both are united and acting as one [group] in the northern provinces of Afghanistan”. This from the second most powerful man in the Afghanistan’s Unity Government.
Dr Abdullah was not playing naïve at all while talking to Pakistani media persons about the growing threats posed by Daesh. He was definitely aware that his senior partner in the NUG, Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani, categorically stated just a day earlier that “the terror network [Daesh] is on the run” and “nine districts of the country [where the group had hideouts] have been cleared of Daesh.” The president had said this while speaking at a ceremony in connection with handing over control of border police to the Ministry of Defence in Kabul.
Dr Ghani’s claims of eliminating the Daesh network came in response to persistence accusations levelled by leaders of the political opposition in Afghanistan and by members of parliament against [certain] elements in the ruling administration that they have been supporting Daesh in the Khorasan province in the country’s eastern areas.
“When the [military] operations begin, the Taliban are being bombed while the Daesh fighters are not bombed”, Ahmad Ali Hazrat – the chief of the Provincial Council of Nangarhar – was quoted by the media. He was essentially accusing the [NUG] government of supporting Daesh/Islamic State locally known as the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISKP).
Astonishingly, at the moment – as stated by a senior Afghan political leader – the fears of Daesh growing strong are ‘omnipresent’. These fears seem to have fast replaced similar threats that were earlier posed by the Taliban militias.
Although President Ghani claims to have gained successes against ISKP in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces bordering Pakistan, those who know the security environment believe that out of a total of 34 provinces of the country, 16 are dominated by Daesh. According to these observers, the Islamic State is taking advantage of the overall deteriorating security situation across the country. Taliban insurgents are gaining control of more and more areas, pushing back the Afghan security forces to the districts and provincial centres.
With the increasing influence of Daesh in the country’s east and north, the Afghans are becoming more and more sceptical about the role of the US-led Nato allies and their own government vis-a-vis the terror group.
Previously, it was former Afghan president Hamid Karzai who had been publically accusing the United States of financing and supporting the Daesh network in Afghanistan after transporting planeloads of the group’s activists to the country’s eastern provinces. Now more political leaders, jihadi commanders and political analysts are joining the bandwagon of the former president and questioning the role of the US-led Nato forces and the NUG in the fight against Daesh.
A senior political leader from the Paktika province who is also a member of the parliamentary committee on international relations says that he had proof of US forces supporting the terror network both financially and in providing transportation from one area to another. He claims that the majority of his colleagues in the Afghan parliament suspect American efforts in the fight against the ISKP.
Interestingly, besides parliamentarians and leaders of the political opposition, even common citizens in Afghanistan are talking about ‘unmarked helicopters’ – which many Afghans believe were used to transport Daesh activists from the east to the north. They also wonder about the sources of what seems to an abundant supply of money to the terror network.
A senior leader of the Unity Government also confided that Russia is very disturbed by the increasing footprints of Daesh in the northern parts of Afghanistan. According to him, “We have reports [that] Russia is arming local armed [former Mujahideen] groups to fight against the Taliban and Daesh duo in the Northern provinces bordering Uzbekistan and Tajikistan”.
Mirwais Yasini, the deputy speaker of the Wolesi Jirga from the Nangarhar province in the east, while downplaying the accusations against the NUG and the US supporting the terror group, said the group is not only increasing its footholdsin more areas but that its supporters and activists are also increasing.
Yasini, who contested for the office of president against Hamid Karzai, says that the majority of the Hizb-e-Islami activists, who were against the peace deal of their leader Gulbaddin Hekmatyar with the government, have joined the terror group. He fears that the hardcore fighters of the Taliban militia, who are currently dead set against any peace negotiations with the Kabul government, will also definitely join the terror group in case the militia’s leadership strikes any agreement with the government.
According to Yasini, the current government in Afghanistan is seen as incompetent, and Ghani proved as a weak leader, with the foreign forces mostly unable to read the writing on the wall.
The instability and deteriorating security environment can be gauged from the fact that parliamentary elections in Afghanistan have been getting delayed for the last two years consecutively. “We have planned to hold parliamentary elections in mid of next year Insha’Allah”, says Dr Abdullah. Following that immediately by saying that: “When we say ‘Insha’Allah’, Western leaders believe we are not serious in doing the job.” Like many Afghans, Dr Abdullah himself doesn’t seem sure if the government will be able to conduct the elections or not.
There was a time when foreigners would move around in Kabul – in armoured vehicles, of course. Now, though, the movement of foreign nationals is completely restricted to their official compounds or embassies. At a dinner at Pakistan House Kabul, we heard Western diplomats saying that the situation has become so worst that a number of countries have totally restricted the movement of their diplomatic staff in Kabul.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/258676-the-rise-of-a-new-threat-in-afghanistan
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Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh’s Struggle
By Barrister Hassan Niazi
December 21, 2017
“I am passing a message to the Zionist occupation army. This is our land. We are not going to give up. America has to withdraw from the declaration they made. We are to give the message that Palestinians are strong people.”
This was the last message of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh for the Zionist occupying forces and the Trump administration, sent out from the border of Gaza and the occupied part of Palestine.
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine recently reignited when US President Donald Trump signed a document recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With this act, he plunged the entire region into another episode of chaos and anarchy, all the while maintaining (hypocritically?) that he was, in fact, aiming to help safeguard peace in the Middle East.
The Palestinian issue started with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent signing of the Balfour Declaration. Lord Balfour had written a letter to Lord Rothschild, a prominent Zionist, promising Jews a home in the state of Palestine. The follow-up to the Balfour Declaration was the UN declaration of November 1947, in favour of partition of land between Jews and Arabs.
Once the division had been executed, East Jerusalem remained part of Palestine – with custody of the Holy sites and the sovereignty of the State of Palestine. It was blatantly clear from the very start that the Zionists were not happy: they wanted complete sovereign control over Jerusalem and other (all) parts of Palestine. After the Six Day War of 1967, Israel took over most of Palestine and the West Bank from the Jordanians. Since then, Jerusalem has been in the control of the Israel’s administration.
The struggle for liberation did not stop and the First Intifada took place in the late 1980s, the Second Intifada in 2000 when Ariel Sharon visited Temple Mount.
The courageous struggle of the Palestinians cannot be denied or disputed. The major casualties of this whole struggle had always been the Palestinian children. The Palestinian people have decided to keep fighting till the last drop of their blood, just like Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh.
The martyred Ibrahim was 29 when he was shot in the head by the militant of Israeli Defence Force, on December 16 this year. Ibrahim was and will forever remain to be a symbol of the struggle for all the liberation movements across the world. He is the icon for the rights activist. He is an inspiration for all the disable community across the world.
Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh was a warrior who had lost both legs in the Israeli air strike in 2008 on the Gaza and occupied Palestine border while removing Israel’s and putting up a flag of Palestine.
He did not let that unfortunate incident stop him and continued his struggle even as he remained the breadwinner of the house (he used to wash cars to earn a living). Ibrahim’s wheelchair became his legs. He was everywhere. He was last photographed making a victory sign a few meters away from the Israeli forces.
Amidst the thousands of Gazans protesting for their rights, the armed militants of Israel aimed at a man on a wheelchair. The man on the wheelchair had no fear and was looking directly at the Israeli forces. There was no choice of turning back. For Ibrahim, liberation was the only option. The shot was fired and it went through the forehead of this hero. Ibrahim was dead before his body was graced with an ambulance.
The protesters had to call off their protest for the day. They had lost their friend, brother, companion: they had lost their bravest of warriors. The Israelis had chosen the most cowardly way to stop the protesters.
Ibrahim left the world as heroes and legends do. He fought hard for Al-Quds. He left all true rights activists in pain and despair. However, even though Ibrahim has left the world in body, his spirit lingers on as a call to all to unite in the battle against brutality and hatred.
Ibrahim’s passing is not an end of a struggle, but the herald of an even more determined and strong-footed struggle; one that the likes of Israel, or Trump, will not be able to defeat.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/258679-ibrahim-s-struggle
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This Was A Busy Year For Our Learned Judges
By Dr Noman Ahmed
December 21, 2017
THIS was a busy year for our learned judges. The range of their legal engagements has included the usual disputes and cases related to the conduct of politicians, infrastructural planning and delivery of water and sanitation services. While many would consider these proceedings as normal in the administration of justice, some outcomes have seen important policy and operational changes.
The country finally carried out a census after 19 years due to a Supreme Court order. In a constitutional petition related to clean drinking water and a safe environment for the people of Sindh, the court imposed tough conditions upon the Sindh government, while sessions court officials in the province went around checking educational and healthcare institutions.
The verdict in the case of the Orange Line in Lahore allowed the Punjab government to carry on with the project, albeit with strict safeguards.
The Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court also intervened in the matter of the Faizabad sit-in.
Prime institutions have lost credence in society.
Where people doubt the honesty of purpose of the executive, the courts have emerged as monitors and judicial observers in the public interest. The judiciary even assumes the role of policymaking in matters traditionally dealt with by the executive — matters that have a direct bearing on the welfare of the common people. The declining ability of the executive to deliver on basic matters of governance is one of the core reasons for such enhanced judicial roles.
Is this a desirable approach towards governing the country and managing complex matters related to administration? How can the equation be reversed in favour of the executive again?
Much of the rot in the service delivery apparatus is by design, not by default. Almost every provincial government has made the regulatory apparatus under its control toothless. A Supreme Court order has imposed restrictions on the construction of multi-storeyed buildings in Karachi, due to the limited availability of water. This has caused anxiety amongst the ranks of builders and contractors, who are still pursuing the matter in court. The provision of adequate urban services, regulation, monitoring and control of construction practices is an important area of public management.
The existence of legally valid and technically appropriate building solutions for various facilities is a prerequisite to healthy lifestyles. In reality, private interest with the active support of the various agencies and tiers of government facilitate illegal development. Acting on petitions and even exercising suo motu jurisdiction, the superior courts have taken action on several occasions, apparently with the intention of setting technically and legally correct precedents. Sadly, the reverse has continued to happen. It is neither the responsibility nor mandate of the courts to micromanage affairs related to urban service delivery.
The political will to correct the ills in the executive machinery is simply non-existent. In many cases, the interest of the political leadership coincides with the conduct of corrupt officers/functionaries. Many of these officials become very successful in service cadres. Meanwhile, the interference of the political class continues. The present IG of Sindh Police was working well to stem the rot in his department. Obviously, he ruffled the feathers of those in power, who had him sidelined. He was finally saved from abrupt transfers by the Sindh High Court, though his sphere of command and performance capacity has been greatly clipped by the political bosses.
The message received by his subordinates is quite clear. The staff tends to spend its energies on following the directives of political bosses. In return, it receives favours that even the judiciary cannot straighten out. The result is the breakdown of the service structure, little motivation amongst honest cadres and the overall collapse of institutional capacity. No wonder prime institutions such as the police have completely lost credence in society.
The backbone of the executive used to be the officer cadres. Extraordinarily strict and demanding procedures were adopted to fill these slots. The bureaucrats of yore managed very challenging assignments. There used to be a clear distinction between the political leadership and bureaucracy, and the judiciary used to work closely with the bureaucracy. The political process allowed coexistence. The objective was to facilitate the common folk. The effectiveness of the staff/officers lay in their unstinted attention to their respective tasks — not on pleasing the higher bosses.
Unfortunately, the deep (and probably irreversible) penetration of political interference has eroded the capacity and moral fibre of working bureaucracies. Much improvement can be achieved by ring-fencing the mandate, capacity building and empowering the cadres of the civil service. Some assistance from the judiciary could be useful in this respect.
Source: dawn.com/news/1377963/judges-everywhere
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Bizenjo and His Politics
By I.A. Rehman
December 21, 2017
BEFORE we say goodbye to 2017, it seems appropriate to remember Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, whose birth centenary fell this year and was celebrated by his friends and admirers in Quetta some time ago. But as he had fought for the interests of the entire human family of Pakistan, his services deserve to be recalled outside Balochistan too.
Indeed, the tendency in the country to ignore the heroes of Balochistan — not only the Baloch but also the Pakhtuns — has been a factor in that province’s alienation from the state.
Bizenjo’s choices from the very beginning of his long and extraordinarily active political career did not qualify him for admission in the club of patriots as defined by the establishment. For instance, he did not conceal the fact that as a young man he was attracted to the Indian Congress and not the Muslim League. His reasons for this choice are worth noting.
First, as a footballer he interacted with players, from various regions, who subscribed to different creeds and this “lent a broader dimension to my thinking and perceptions”. Secondly, in Baloch society, tribal values mattered more than religious strictures and thus he “associated with the nationalist students subscribing to the secular political philosophy of the Indian National Congress”.
Bizenjo’s choices did not qualify him for admission in the club of ‘patriots’.
Further, privileged political pundits never forget Bizenjo’s speech in the lower house of Kalat’s bicameral legislature in which he had preferred the princely state’s independence to accession to Pakistan. The fact that Bizenjo’s views were in harmony with the Muslim League’s pledge to the Khan of Kalat and the Quaid-i-Azam’s advice to him is forgotten.
While in the beginning Bizenjo’s politics was limited to Kalat and Balochistan as a leading member first of the Kalat State National Party and later on of Ustman Gul, by the mid-1950s he had become active on the West Pakistan stage with the formation of the Pakistan National Party. Shortly afterwards, the whole country became the arena of Bizenjo’s politics when the PNP and Maulana Bhashani’s faction of the Awami League formed the National Awami Party (NAP).
Much of Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo’s time was spent on fighting for the people’s democratic rights (opposing martial law and One Unit during the Ayub regime). The regime used Nawab Nauroze Khan’s revolt to imprison the leaders of NAP Balochistan, including Bizenjo, for a year or so. Bizenjo was again arrested and after six months in the notorious torture camp called Quli he was awarded imprisonment for six months and five lashes or Rs10,000 as fine in lieu of lashes.
The regime couldn’t keep the retired footballer away from politics. Sardar Ataullah Mengal is reported to have said about him: “He cannot live without politics. He has to have it all the time, or he will perish.” During the Ayub regime he also benefited from a rift between president Ayub Khan and governor Kalabagh and won the Lyari seat in the National Assembly in a by-election with the help of Mahmoud Haroon.
Before the year 1966 ended, Bizenjo was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for possessing a currency note on which somebody had stamped a slogan against One Unit. The Lahore High court ordered his release after two years.
Bizenjo was an active political player during the most tumultuous period in the country’s history — 1969 to 1971. He witnessed the Round Table of 1969, Ayub Khan’s fall and the rise of Yahya Khan. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1970, and the establishment chose him to persuade Sheikh Mujib to talk to Yahya Khan.
He has kept a valuable record of what he was told by the main actors in the macabre drama of 1971. For instance, he recalled Gen Yahya Khan telling him before the 1970 election that “sooner or later, East Pakistan will have to be amputated. And if at all that is to happen, why let them suck our blood for two or three years more?”
He also recalled asking Yahya on the eve of the military operation in East Bengal whether the crisis could be resolved through the use of military force and the general surprised him with an answer in the negative.
The years 1972-1977 witnessed Bizenjo’s rise as master negotiator who came to be called ‘Babai-I-Mazakrat’, sometimes approvingly and sometimes derisively. He successfully negotiated the NAP-Bhutto accord as a result of which NAP named the governors of Balochistan and Frontier and the NAP-JUI coalition governments were formed in these two provinces.
Pakistan might have avoided quite a few of the wrong turns it took if this accord had been sincerely implemented. It was broken by Bhutto when he sacked Bizenjo from the governor’s post and manipulated the fall of the Ataullah Mengal ministry in Balochistan. And Bizenjo was stabbed in the back by the leftist extremists in his party. Even then, he contributed significantly to the accord on the 1973 Constitution. He was rewarded by being arrested soon after the new Constitution came into force.
Bizenjo also played an important role in the MRD movement. His success in persuading the MRD leaders to sign an accord on the federating units’ autonomy was a significant step forward and could be described as a precursor of the 18th Amendment of 2010. It was in those days that he affirmed his absolute commitment to democratic values by demanding for the federating units the right to secede if the democratic process was disrupted.
Democratic politics owes a huge debt to Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, one of the most accomplished leaders Pakistan (and not Balochistan alone) has had. Unfortunately, both for him and Pakistan, he could not realise his full potential because he was born in Balochistan and could compromise neither on Balochistan’s autonomy nor on the Pakistani people’s right to democratic rule. (The details of Bizenjo’s life are taken from his autobiography, In Search of Solutions, edited by B.M. Kutty.)
Source: dawn.com/news/1377965/bizenjo-and-his-politics
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CPEC Plan Details Still Awaited
By Khurram Husain
December 21, 2017
THE Long Term Plan for CPEC ‘launched’ by the government on Monday is, as feared, only an abridged, abbreviated, and heavily edited version of the longer document upon which it is based. Nevertheless, for now this will do. More transparency is required in the CPEC enterprise, because people need to understand that it is far bigger than roads, power plants and transit trade. Those elements have been hyped up by our government for its own reasons, but they do not define the enterprise.
This is a good time to ask the government why there is such a visceral reaction every time questions are asked about CPEC, and specifically why there was such a visceral reaction to the Dawn report on the LTP back in May. The question is simple: please identify a single discrepancy between the LTP officially released by the government on Monday, and what was published in the Dawn story back in May.
That story was based on the longer version of the LTP document prepared by the China Development Bank and the National Development Reform Commission of China. In terms of the broad “areas of cooperation” identified in both documents, there is no difference. Both versions talk about facilitating the entry of Chinese capital into Pakistan. Both talk about developing tourist resorts, with the locations identified being the same. Both documents talk about the extensive financial cooperation between both countries, with special focus on expanding the role of the yuan within Pakistan’s economy, for settlement of bilateral trade and as a reserve asset, as well as raising debt in yuan-denominated bonds by federal, provincial and municipal governments.
The longer version contains details that take most people by surprise, simply because people don’t know that the CPEC enterprise goes as far and as deep as the LTP lays out. The shorter version, released by the government on Monday, provides only abbreviated pointers, general statements that speak in brushstrokes alone, about where things are supposed to go in the future.
This is a good time to ask the government why there is such a visceral reaction every time questions are asked about CPEC.
A close reading of the 26 pages of the LTP released by the government is enough to establish this. When the plan says, for example, that Pakistan will “encourage Chinese enterprises, private sectors and private sector funds of other economic entities to make various forms of direct investment”, it is worthwhile to bear in mind that there is a massive, heavily worked out, reality behind these seemingly simple words.
Those details, of what ‘encourage’ means, and where all this investment will come and in what sectors, are contained in the longer version of the LTP, that the government will not release.
It goes on. On the financial side, the document contains sentences such as “[e]ffective ways shall be explored for Pakistan’s federal and provincial governments, enterprises and financial institutions to conduct RMB financing in Mainland China, Hong Kong and other offshore RMB centres”.
Translation: expect to hear more about provincial governments floating RMB bonds in Hong Kong, if they want to foot the bill for the projects they are asking for.
Here’s another: “Both countries shall promote the mutual opening of their financial sector and the establishment of financial institutions in each other; encourage financial institutions of the two countries to support the financing, including the loans from international consortium of banks, for the projects along the CPEC; establish and improve a cross-border credit system, and promote financial services such as export credit, project financing, syndicated loan, trade finance, investment bank, cross-border RMB business, financial market, assets management, e-bank, and financial lease; support the project financing by RMB loans, and establish the evaluation model of power bill in RMB.”
There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it certainly points towards a growing role for the RMB in our economy, quite aside from the fact that exactly this sort of thing is detailed in the longer version upon which the Dawn story was based, which the government is trying to tell us is “incorrect”.
What exactly was ‘incorrect’ here? This was the document developed within the JCC framework, and finalised at the sixth JCC meeting for forwarding to the respective governments for all internal reviews prior to finalisation. If it changed in substantial form between then and the actual finalisation, please tell us where, because the abbreviated and abridged version released on Monday points in exactly the same directions as those contained within the document upon which the Dawn story was based.
The other thing that is difficult to understand about this discourse is why simply publishing the details of the plan should be considered as stoking controversy. First of all, the details of the LTP are different from the details of CPEC as presented by the government, so it is natural that they will attract journalistic attention. Second, there is nothing ‘unnecessary’ about any ensuing controversies, given that the government itself describes CPEC as a ‘game-changing’ endeavour. Any agreement that is going to be ‘game changing’ will necessarily need to be scrutinised, debated and discussed, and in the course of this exercise, there will necessarily be divergent points of view that will need to engage with each other.
Third, why should the conversation that ensues from a disclosure of the details of the LTP be described as a ‘controversy’? Since people have been misled into thinking that CPEC is about nothing more than China building power plants and roads in Pakistan as preparation for eventual long-distance transit trade, naturally there will be surprise when they learn that the enterprise is, in reality, about something very different.
In reality, CPEC is about allowing Chinese enterprises to assume dominant positions in all dynamic sectors of Pakistan’s economy, as well as a ‘strategic’ direction that is often hinted at but never fleshed out in the JCC meetings and the LTP. All else is distraction. The LTP put out by the government on Monday is enough to discern this.
Source: dawn.com/news/1377964/cpec-plan-details-still-awaited
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/pakistan-press/looking-justice-revenge-kamila-hyat/d/113638