Washington: Barack Obama, who is generally regarded as a gifted orator, would do well to find time to unwind before he delivers the speech of his lifetime to the Democratic party’s convention next week.
A new analysis of Obama’s voice patterns and the delivery of his speeches made available to and reported in the London-based Guardian, found the Democratic candidate somewhat restricted in his range of facial expression.
Specifically, Obama’s face is locked in an almost permanent attitude of anxiety, with his forehead muscles contracted.
“In all topics Mr Obama displays a similar worried, serious-looking facial pattern. Even when talking about more positive subjects, his facial expressions do not signal positive affective states,” said a report on the analysis, undertaken by the Vox Institute in Geneva for the Clearwater consulting group.
The institute reviewed footage of Obama’s speeches and those of the Republican candidate, John McCain. It relied on footage from four speeches conveying a range of emotions, as well as digitised voice samples, to rate the effectiveness of the two candidates in connecting with voters on the campaign trail.
The habitual worried look is a potential liability for Obama, undermining the image he is trying to project of a confident leader. The image could be disturbing for audiences, said James McBrien, the founder of Clearwater.
It also undercuts Obama’s outward appearance of extreme confidence.
“There is an element of the fact that he is on the edges of his comfort zone here,” McBrien said. “Going into a presidential campaign is not something he has done before, and you could say it is written all over his face.”
Despite that failing, Obama was the clear winner against McCain in the oratorical contest. The result is unsurprising, given that McCain’s own campaign team has gone to some effort to conceal his limitations as a speaker.
McCain has had problems adapting to the Autocue, that staple of public speaking. On the campaign trail he has favoured smaller venues, where he can take questions from audiences, rather than the grand venues and stirring speeches that have become Obama’s signature.
Obama had high scores on six of the eight voice values, including diction, fluency, speed and modulation. His voice could have been a little louder at times, although the study praised his ability to reflect anger, positive emotions and sadness.
The verdict on McCain was harsh. The acoustic analysis noted that the Republican’s voice was pitched slightly high, and that it remained flat, or emotionless, even while he was talking about sad subjects.
McCain’s range of facial expression was just as unvaried. “McCain’s facial repertory is very poor,” the analysis said. “His smile is often not fully developed, ie his cheek-raising muscles do not participate enough in the expression of positive affect [to be perceived as genuine].”
McBrien put it in terms that were even more stark. “He has a poker face,” he said. The problem with the lack of expression, according to McBrien, is that it makes it difficult for an audience to trust the speaker.
The Republican is restricted in his range of motion because of injuries received during the Vietnam war. He tends to keep his hands by his side when he speaks.
The Vox researchers also picked up on one of McCain’s tics. The candidate, who made a campaign slogan of his plainspeaking in the Straight Talk Express, has a habit of completely shutting his eyes and slightly smiling immediately before coming out with one of his signature sarcastic comments.—Dawn/Guardian News Service
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Time to give Kashmir freedom
On August 15, India celebrated independence from the British Raj. But Kashmiris staged a bandh demanding independence from India. A day symbolising the end of colonialism in India became a day symbolising Indian colonialism in the Valley.
As a liberal, I dislike ruling people against their will. True, nation-building is a difficult and complex exercise, and initial resistance can give way to the integration of regional aspirations into a larger national identity — the end of Tamil secessionism was a classical example of this.
I was once hopeful of Kashmir’s integration, but after six decades of effort, Kashmiri alienation looks greater than ever. India seeks to integrate with Kashmir, not rule it colonially. Yet, the parallels between British rule in India and Indian rule in Kashmir have become too close for my comfort.
Many Indians say that Kashmir legally became an integral part of India when the maharaja of the state signed the instrument of accession. Alas, such legalisms become irrelevant when ground realities change. Indian kings and princes, including the Mughals, acceded to the British Raj. The documents they signed became irrelevant when Indians launched an independence movement.
The British insisted for a long time that India was an integral part of their Empire, the jewel in its crown, and would never be given up. Imperialist Blimps remained in denial for decades. I fear we are in similar denial on Kashmir.
The politically correct story of the maharaja’s accession ignores a devastating parallel event. Just as Kashmir had a Hindu maharaja ruling over a Muslim majority, Junagadh had a Muslim nawab ruling over a Hindu majority. The Hindu maharaja acceded to India, and the Muslim nawab to Pakistan.
But while India claimed that the Kashmiri accession to India was sacred, it did not accept Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan. India sent troops into Junagadh, just as Pakistan sent troops into Kashmir. The difference was that Pakistan lacked the military means to intervene in Junagadh, while India was able to send troops into Srinagar. The Junagadh nawab fled to Pakistan, whereas the Kashmir maharaja sat tight. India’s double standard on Junagadh and Kashmir was breathtaking.
Do you think the people of Junagadh would have integrated with Pakistan after six decades of genuine Pakistani effort? No? Then can you really be confident that Kashmiris will stop demanding freedom and integrate with India?
The British came to India uninvited. By contrast, Sheikh Abdullah, the most popular politician in Kashmir, supported accession to India subject to ratification by a plebiscite. But his heart lay in independence for Kashmir, and he soon began manoeuvering towards that end. He was jailed by Nehru, who then declared Kashmir’s accession was final and no longer required ratification by a plebiscite. The fact that Kashmir had a Muslim majority was held to be irrelevant, since India was a secular country empowering citizens through democracy.
Alas, democracy in Kashmir has been a farce for most of six decades. The rot began with Sheikh Abdullah in 1951: he rejected the nomination papers of almost all opponents, and so won 73 of the 75 seats unopposed! Nehru was complicit in this sabotage of democracy.
Subsequent state elections were also rigged in favour of leaders nominated by New Delhi. Only in 1977 was the first fair election held, and was won by the Sheikh. But he died after a few years, and rigging returned in the 1988 election. That sparked the separatist uprising which continues to gather strength today.
Many Indians point to long episodes of peace in the Valley and say the separatists are just a noisy minority. But the Raj also had long quiet periods between Gandhian agitations, which involved just a few lakhs of India’s 500 million people. One lakh people joined the Quit India movement of 1942, but 25 lakh others joined the British Indian army to fight for the Empire’s glory.
Blimps cited this as evidence that most Indians simply wanted jobs and a decent life. The Raj built the biggest railway and canal networks in the world. It said most Indians were satisfied with economic development, and that independence was demanded by a noisy minority. This is uncomfortably similar to the official Indian response to the Kashmiri demand for freedom.
Let me not exaggerate. Indian rule in Kashmir is not classical colonialism. India has pumped vast sums into Kashmir, not extracted revenue as the Raj did. Kashmir was among the poorest states during the Raj, but now has the lowest poverty rate in India. It enjoys wide civil rights that the Raj never gave. Some elections — 1977, 1983 and 2002 — were perfectly fair.
India has sought integration with Kashmir, not colonial rule. But Kashmiris nevertheless demand freedom. And ruling over those who resent it so strongly for so long is quasi-colonialism, regardless of our intentions.
We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now, and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan, and union with India. Almost certainly the Valley will opt for independence. Jammu will opt to stay with India, and probably Ladakh too. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome, not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan.—The Times of India
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
As a liberal, I dislike ruling people against their will. True, nation-building is a difficult and complex exercise, and initial resistance can give way to the integration of regional aspirations into a larger national identity — the end of Tamil secessionism was a classical example of this.
I was once hopeful of Kashmir’s integration, but after six decades of effort, Kashmiri alienation looks greater than ever. India seeks to integrate with Kashmir, not rule it colonially. Yet, the parallels between British rule in India and Indian rule in Kashmir have become too close for my comfort.
Many Indians say that Kashmir legally became an integral part of India when the maharaja of the state signed the instrument of accession. Alas, such legalisms become irrelevant when ground realities change. Indian kings and princes, including the Mughals, acceded to the British Raj. The documents they signed became irrelevant when Indians launched an independence movement.
The British insisted for a long time that India was an integral part of their Empire, the jewel in its crown, and would never be given up. Imperialist Blimps remained in denial for decades. I fear we are in similar denial on Kashmir.
The politically correct story of the maharaja’s accession ignores a devastating parallel event. Just as Kashmir had a Hindu maharaja ruling over a Muslim majority, Junagadh had a Muslim nawab ruling over a Hindu majority. The Hindu maharaja acceded to India, and the Muslim nawab to Pakistan.
But while India claimed that the Kashmiri accession to India was sacred, it did not accept Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan. India sent troops into Junagadh, just as Pakistan sent troops into Kashmir. The difference was that Pakistan lacked the military means to intervene in Junagadh, while India was able to send troops into Srinagar. The Junagadh nawab fled to Pakistan, whereas the Kashmir maharaja sat tight. India’s double standard on Junagadh and Kashmir was breathtaking.
Do you think the people of Junagadh would have integrated with Pakistan after six decades of genuine Pakistani effort? No? Then can you really be confident that Kashmiris will stop demanding freedom and integrate with India?
The British came to India uninvited. By contrast, Sheikh Abdullah, the most popular politician in Kashmir, supported accession to India subject to ratification by a plebiscite. But his heart lay in independence for Kashmir, and he soon began manoeuvering towards that end. He was jailed by Nehru, who then declared Kashmir’s accession was final and no longer required ratification by a plebiscite. The fact that Kashmir had a Muslim majority was held to be irrelevant, since India was a secular country empowering citizens through democracy.
Alas, democracy in Kashmir has been a farce for most of six decades. The rot began with Sheikh Abdullah in 1951: he rejected the nomination papers of almost all opponents, and so won 73 of the 75 seats unopposed! Nehru was complicit in this sabotage of democracy.
Subsequent state elections were also rigged in favour of leaders nominated by New Delhi. Only in 1977 was the first fair election held, and was won by the Sheikh. But he died after a few years, and rigging returned in the 1988 election. That sparked the separatist uprising which continues to gather strength today.
Many Indians point to long episodes of peace in the Valley and say the separatists are just a noisy minority. But the Raj also had long quiet periods between Gandhian agitations, which involved just a few lakhs of India’s 500 million people. One lakh people joined the Quit India movement of 1942, but 25 lakh others joined the British Indian army to fight for the Empire’s glory.
Blimps cited this as evidence that most Indians simply wanted jobs and a decent life. The Raj built the biggest railway and canal networks in the world. It said most Indians were satisfied with economic development, and that independence was demanded by a noisy minority. This is uncomfortably similar to the official Indian response to the Kashmiri demand for freedom.
Let me not exaggerate. Indian rule in Kashmir is not classical colonialism. India has pumped vast sums into Kashmir, not extracted revenue as the Raj did. Kashmir was among the poorest states during the Raj, but now has the lowest poverty rate in India. It enjoys wide civil rights that the Raj never gave. Some elections — 1977, 1983 and 2002 — were perfectly fair.
India has sought integration with Kashmir, not colonial rule. But Kashmiris nevertheless demand freedom. And ruling over those who resent it so strongly for so long is quasi-colonialism, regardless of our intentions.
We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now, and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan, and union with India. Almost certainly the Valley will opt for independence. Jammu will opt to stay with India, and probably Ladakh too. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome, not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan.—The Times of India
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
Momentous decision
A BRITISH resident facing the death penalty at Guantanamo Bay has won his case for the government to disclose secret evidence that he says supports claims he was tortured into confessing to crimes he did not commit.
Binyam Mohamed, 30, who was arrested in Pakistan six years ago, says the Americans flew him to a prison in Morocco where he was tortured before his transfer to a US detention centre in Afghanistan.
In 2004, he was taken to the US Navy base in Cuba where he is awaiting a trial before a military commission on charges that he conspired with Al Qaeda leaders to plan terror attacks on civilians.
But this week the High Court in London said British authorities still held secret material that might help confirm Mr Mohamed’s whereabouts and the nature of his detention after 2002.
The judges said his allegations of torture were at least “arguable” and that the Security Service, MI5, had information relating to him that was “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.
In the ruling, the judges said the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the US when Binyam Mohamed was being detained by the US incommunicado” in 2002 in Pakistan. Working with the Americans after the 9/11 terror attacks, the British authorities sent an officer from MI5 to interview him, the court said. The officer told him he could expect no help from Britain unless he fully cooperated with his US interrogators.
The court found that without the information held by MI5, Mr Mohamed would be unable to put up a defence to the charges against him at his US military tribunal. His lawyers yesterday described the ruling as a “a momentous decision”.
In 1994, Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian by birth, was granted asylum in the UK.
— The Independent. London
Binyam Mohamed, 30, who was arrested in Pakistan six years ago, says the Americans flew him to a prison in Morocco where he was tortured before his transfer to a US detention centre in Afghanistan.
In 2004, he was taken to the US Navy base in Cuba where he is awaiting a trial before a military commission on charges that he conspired with Al Qaeda leaders to plan terror attacks on civilians.
But this week the High Court in London said British authorities still held secret material that might help confirm Mr Mohamed’s whereabouts and the nature of his detention after 2002.
The judges said his allegations of torture were at least “arguable” and that the Security Service, MI5, had information relating to him that was “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.
In the ruling, the judges said the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the US when Binyam Mohamed was being detained by the US incommunicado” in 2002 in Pakistan. Working with the Americans after the 9/11 terror attacks, the British authorities sent an officer from MI5 to interview him, the court said. The officer told him he could expect no help from Britain unless he fully cooperated with his US interrogators.
The court found that without the information held by MI5, Mr Mohamed would be unable to put up a defence to the charges against him at his US military tribunal. His lawyers yesterday described the ruling as a “a momentous decision”.
In 1994, Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian by birth, was granted asylum in the UK.
— The Independent. London
The eclipse of socialism
LOOKING back through August 2008 eyes, many commentators now seem to treat the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago this week as a primarily geopolitical event.
The coincidence of Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the anniversary of the invasion of 1968 perhaps makes it understandable that some should colour their thinking about the crushing of the Prague Spring this way. In this elision, securing their near-abroad against their empire’s enemies is what tsars in Moscow always do, whether the threat is from American capitalists or Georgian nationalists. The common theme, in other words, is always Russian power politics.
Undeniably there are important and ominous connections here — and they are ominous not only to those who live in any country in that vast geographic Russian border arc that stretches south from Finland to the Black Sea and then east from the Caucasus towards Mongolia.
No other state in the contemporary world treats its neighbours’ sovereignty with as much cynicism as Russia.
Yet to concentrate on the geopolitics of enduring Russian insecurity is to downplay some of the other large historical lessons of what happened in August 1968. That is because the central question in the eight months between the appointment of Alexander Dubcek as first secretary of the Czechoslovak communist party at the start of January 1968 and the overnight arrival of 500,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops on August 21 of that year was big and simple. Could the Soviet communist model of socialism be reformed or not?
Today we know the answer. But the world of 1968 could not be so sure. The question was at the heart of the Prague Spring. Dubcek’s reforms raised the possibility that there could be some kind of democratic socialist third way.
The reform question was not being asked only in Czechoslovakia itself. It was also being posed to some degree in all the Soviet client states of eastern Europe, though manifestly under less open circumstances, as well as in limited.
The invasion of August 1968 put an end to all that. Even so, it took a while for the full implications of the invasion to sink in. As Zdenek Mlynar, a leading Czech reform Communist, later put it (as told by Judt), when Red Army troops burst in on a meeting of Dubcek’s politburo and lined up behind each member, the future of socialism was not the uppermost thought in most people’s minds. “But at the same time,” Mlynar went on, “you know that it has a direct connection of some sort with the automatic weapon pointing at your back.”
August 21, 1968 was not the day that communism died. But it was the day that communism’s death sentence was confirmed. Christopher Hitchens had a neat way of encapsulating the whole thing during a debate at the Hay literary festival earlier this year. If you flip 68 upside down, he said, you get 89. In eastern Europe the protest generation of 1968 was the generation who then replaced the Soviet system 21 years later. Dubcek himself, however, re-emerging in 1989 from long years of obscurity, was not part of it. Even in 1989 he remained wedded to the possibility of communist reform, even as communism was dissolving around him.
Yet August 1968 was also the beginning of a more general crisis for socialists of all kinds. Many in the western left in 1968 believed that Dubcek’s reform programme, though noble, was doomed.
The Soviet invasion duly confirmed their view. Yet however firmly the western left dissociated itself from Soviet communism’s own crisis, many on the left remained wedded in various ways to the same ideological — and in some cases the violent and lawless — traditions of the French revolution, out of which the Soviet Union had itself also been forged.
Forty years on from the Russian tanks, the eclipse of socialism is now as general in the West as it is in the former Soviet lands further east — perhaps even more so. Most people who consider themselves to be on the left — whatever that really means in the post-1989 world — are aware at some level of this reality.
Very few parties of the left have been equal to this task. In Britain in the 1990s, New Labour began to ask such questions, but not in a sustained way. Too many key, but hard, issues were ruled off the agenda.
— The Guardian, London
The coincidence of Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the anniversary of the invasion of 1968 perhaps makes it understandable that some should colour their thinking about the crushing of the Prague Spring this way. In this elision, securing their near-abroad against their empire’s enemies is what tsars in Moscow always do, whether the threat is from American capitalists or Georgian nationalists. The common theme, in other words, is always Russian power politics.
Undeniably there are important and ominous connections here — and they are ominous not only to those who live in any country in that vast geographic Russian border arc that stretches south from Finland to the Black Sea and then east from the Caucasus towards Mongolia.
No other state in the contemporary world treats its neighbours’ sovereignty with as much cynicism as Russia.
Yet to concentrate on the geopolitics of enduring Russian insecurity is to downplay some of the other large historical lessons of what happened in August 1968. That is because the central question in the eight months between the appointment of Alexander Dubcek as first secretary of the Czechoslovak communist party at the start of January 1968 and the overnight arrival of 500,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops on August 21 of that year was big and simple. Could the Soviet communist model of socialism be reformed or not?
Today we know the answer. But the world of 1968 could not be so sure. The question was at the heart of the Prague Spring. Dubcek’s reforms raised the possibility that there could be some kind of democratic socialist third way.
The reform question was not being asked only in Czechoslovakia itself. It was also being posed to some degree in all the Soviet client states of eastern Europe, though manifestly under less open circumstances, as well as in limited.
The invasion of August 1968 put an end to all that. Even so, it took a while for the full implications of the invasion to sink in. As Zdenek Mlynar, a leading Czech reform Communist, later put it (as told by Judt), when Red Army troops burst in on a meeting of Dubcek’s politburo and lined up behind each member, the future of socialism was not the uppermost thought in most people’s minds. “But at the same time,” Mlynar went on, “you know that it has a direct connection of some sort with the automatic weapon pointing at your back.”
August 21, 1968 was not the day that communism died. But it was the day that communism’s death sentence was confirmed. Christopher Hitchens had a neat way of encapsulating the whole thing during a debate at the Hay literary festival earlier this year. If you flip 68 upside down, he said, you get 89. In eastern Europe the protest generation of 1968 was the generation who then replaced the Soviet system 21 years later. Dubcek himself, however, re-emerging in 1989 from long years of obscurity, was not part of it. Even in 1989 he remained wedded to the possibility of communist reform, even as communism was dissolving around him.
Yet August 1968 was also the beginning of a more general crisis for socialists of all kinds. Many in the western left in 1968 believed that Dubcek’s reform programme, though noble, was doomed.
The Soviet invasion duly confirmed their view. Yet however firmly the western left dissociated itself from Soviet communism’s own crisis, many on the left remained wedded in various ways to the same ideological — and in some cases the violent and lawless — traditions of the French revolution, out of which the Soviet Union had itself also been forged.
Forty years on from the Russian tanks, the eclipse of socialism is now as general in the West as it is in the former Soviet lands further east — perhaps even more so. Most people who consider themselves to be on the left — whatever that really means in the post-1989 world — are aware at some level of this reality.
Very few parties of the left have been equal to this task. In Britain in the 1990s, New Labour began to ask such questions, but not in a sustained way. Too many key, but hard, issues were ruled off the agenda.
— The Guardian, London
Our counter-terror strategy
OVER the last few years, Pakistan has been confronted with the ever increasing threat of insurgency. The latter is being fuelled by both state and non-state actors. The US coalition’s onslaught in Afghanistan being the rallying point is defeating the very purpose of Pakistan’s war on terror.
While alienating our own people, the very movement we created to fuel the Afghan jihad has come home to roost in ways which have found our army unprepared to take on the changing tactics of our foes.
While political will is sorely needed for any strategy to succeed in the long run, the on-and-off mode being employed to confront this insurgency is ruining any chances of a long-term political settlement.
Mao’s famous maxim, ‘there are no defined lines or fixed enemy’ in guerilla warfare holds good even today. The situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border today tends to confuse our strategists in fighting a war on our own turf and limits our own or US options in pursuing a common enemy across self-created fault lines. This weakness is obviously being exploited by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The latter are exploiting Pakhtun nationalism to fuel a common strategy against the Pakistan Army and US-led coalition forces.
The other maxim of ‘securing the enemy’s firm base’, as a prelude to tactical manoeuvre, is also being ignored. Where is this firm base in the first place? Is it in Waziristan, Bajaur or Afghanistan? Confusing, yes, because that is the very purpose of the insurgent’s strategy: to keep shifting its firm base whenever there is a direct threat to it.
When the coalition troops directed their offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban at Tora Bora to eliminate the leadership of this movement, the leaders fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas. Within the tribal areas, they had the flexibility to concentrate to launch pre-emptive attacks against the security forces and then vanish into neighbouring regions to avoid annihilation and live to fight another day.
The forces being employed need to operate along unconventional lines from secure bases, with rapid reaction through aerial assault using special forces and backed up by long-range artillery and air defence. Failure provides the enemy with the initiative of ambush and isolation leading to defeat. We have repeatedly made the same mistakes and paid dearly for them.
What then should be the unifying strategy of the US and Pakistan security forces fighting this common enemy? The Pakistan Army’s aversion to any predator or missile strike into Pakistan territory to kill the Taliban is tactically defeatist in essence and strategically flawed in concept. The Pakistan Army not only lacks any worthwhile real-time surveillance capability to pursue multiple targets in these remote regions, it also lacks the means to destroy these through long-range precision weapons.
Should not, therefore, both sides of the border be treated as a common war zone to eliminate this threat? Whosoever presses the trigger is immaterial, as the enemy being elusive and fluid will vanish if not destroyed by the swiftest possible means which until today comprise Predator drones and the precision-strike capability of US artillery batteries.
Coordination in communications by both forces, surveillance using real-time download facilities and wireless employing common Nato procedures to swiftly call in strikes when the enemy is spotted no matter which side of the border he emerges would be the essence of success.
The fact that the killer round has come from across the border should not make us defensive in essence as long as there is a common strategy to eliminate the threat. Long-range special patrols to continuously track fleeing militants and pass them over to coalition forces waiting on the other side once they cross would be of great benefit. These special forces should have the inbuilt capability to pursue, communicate and guide weapon systems for precision strikes based upon updated intelligence reports.
The Pakistan Army’s strategy of eliminating this threat seems to be confused over the issue of maximum use of force using regular forces or using paramilitary forces as surrogates who neither have the will nor the means to destroy the enemy. This is not only prolonging the conflict, it also risks alienating the very populace we intend to defend because of the collateral damage and the militants’ terror policies.
The Pakistan Army is governed by its own rules of engagement under fire and should not get involved with local jirgas and elders as political agents are used to establishing their writ by evoking harsh penalties through collective punishments. Images of senior army commanders garlanding outlawed militants who have mercilessly slaughtered our soldiers is detrimental to the morale of the officers and men who are fighting and sacrificing themselves for ‘a cause not dear to their hearts’. The army should give a clear message that it will never negotiate with those who have slaughtered their comrades, and will pursue them till they have been eliminated.
Every insurgency has to be tackled according to the prevailing environment, its players and their supporters. The situation on the Pak-Afghan border has to be seen in the context of its present reality, not in the perspective of conventional thinking where the traditional enemy could be counted in terms of men, weapons, equipment and capabilities. Unfortunately for many, cold calculations of threat identification haven’t changed with the times.
Our reluctance to name countries and tribes and their surrogates who are fuelling this war against our very existence is strange if we claim that foreign fighters are actively involved. The ISPR has to be pro-active and not apologetic in its response, the lame excuse of passing the buck, is not only demeaning to the paramilitary forces, who are bearing the brunt of the casualties, but ultimately reflects a lack of will to act concertedly against the state’s enemies. The Pakistan Army has a proud tradition to uphold and vacillation and inept leadership will not do when addressing matters of critical national security.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore/ By Jahanzeb Raja
While alienating our own people, the very movement we created to fuel the Afghan jihad has come home to roost in ways which have found our army unprepared to take on the changing tactics of our foes.
While political will is sorely needed for any strategy to succeed in the long run, the on-and-off mode being employed to confront this insurgency is ruining any chances of a long-term political settlement.
Mao’s famous maxim, ‘there are no defined lines or fixed enemy’ in guerilla warfare holds good even today. The situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border today tends to confuse our strategists in fighting a war on our own turf and limits our own or US options in pursuing a common enemy across self-created fault lines. This weakness is obviously being exploited by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The latter are exploiting Pakhtun nationalism to fuel a common strategy against the Pakistan Army and US-led coalition forces.
The other maxim of ‘securing the enemy’s firm base’, as a prelude to tactical manoeuvre, is also being ignored. Where is this firm base in the first place? Is it in Waziristan, Bajaur or Afghanistan? Confusing, yes, because that is the very purpose of the insurgent’s strategy: to keep shifting its firm base whenever there is a direct threat to it.
When the coalition troops directed their offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban at Tora Bora to eliminate the leadership of this movement, the leaders fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas. Within the tribal areas, they had the flexibility to concentrate to launch pre-emptive attacks against the security forces and then vanish into neighbouring regions to avoid annihilation and live to fight another day.
The forces being employed need to operate along unconventional lines from secure bases, with rapid reaction through aerial assault using special forces and backed up by long-range artillery and air defence. Failure provides the enemy with the initiative of ambush and isolation leading to defeat. We have repeatedly made the same mistakes and paid dearly for them.
What then should be the unifying strategy of the US and Pakistan security forces fighting this common enemy? The Pakistan Army’s aversion to any predator or missile strike into Pakistan territory to kill the Taliban is tactically defeatist in essence and strategically flawed in concept. The Pakistan Army not only lacks any worthwhile real-time surveillance capability to pursue multiple targets in these remote regions, it also lacks the means to destroy these through long-range precision weapons.
Should not, therefore, both sides of the border be treated as a common war zone to eliminate this threat? Whosoever presses the trigger is immaterial, as the enemy being elusive and fluid will vanish if not destroyed by the swiftest possible means which until today comprise Predator drones and the precision-strike capability of US artillery batteries.
Coordination in communications by both forces, surveillance using real-time download facilities and wireless employing common Nato procedures to swiftly call in strikes when the enemy is spotted no matter which side of the border he emerges would be the essence of success.
The fact that the killer round has come from across the border should not make us defensive in essence as long as there is a common strategy to eliminate the threat. Long-range special patrols to continuously track fleeing militants and pass them over to coalition forces waiting on the other side once they cross would be of great benefit. These special forces should have the inbuilt capability to pursue, communicate and guide weapon systems for precision strikes based upon updated intelligence reports.
The Pakistan Army’s strategy of eliminating this threat seems to be confused over the issue of maximum use of force using regular forces or using paramilitary forces as surrogates who neither have the will nor the means to destroy the enemy. This is not only prolonging the conflict, it also risks alienating the very populace we intend to defend because of the collateral damage and the militants’ terror policies.
The Pakistan Army is governed by its own rules of engagement under fire and should not get involved with local jirgas and elders as political agents are used to establishing their writ by evoking harsh penalties through collective punishments. Images of senior army commanders garlanding outlawed militants who have mercilessly slaughtered our soldiers is detrimental to the morale of the officers and men who are fighting and sacrificing themselves for ‘a cause not dear to their hearts’. The army should give a clear message that it will never negotiate with those who have slaughtered their comrades, and will pursue them till they have been eliminated.
Every insurgency has to be tackled according to the prevailing environment, its players and their supporters. The situation on the Pak-Afghan border has to be seen in the context of its present reality, not in the perspective of conventional thinking where the traditional enemy could be counted in terms of men, weapons, equipment and capabilities. Unfortunately for many, cold calculations of threat identification haven’t changed with the times.
Our reluctance to name countries and tribes and their surrogates who are fuelling this war against our very existence is strange if we claim that foreign fighters are actively involved. The ISPR has to be pro-active and not apologetic in its response, the lame excuse of passing the buck, is not only demeaning to the paramilitary forces, who are bearing the brunt of the casualties, but ultimately reflects a lack of will to act concertedly against the state’s enemies. The Pakistan Army has a proud tradition to uphold and vacillation and inept leadership will not do when addressing matters of critical national security.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn Lahore/ By Jahanzeb Raja
Victimised childhoods
WHAT does our national conscience have to say about the shocking arrest of 10-year-old Sikander Abro in Larkana? He was arrested on the suspicion of being involved in a theft and, according to reports, spent a week in illegal confinement. The report adds that the boy was in a ‘disturbed state of mind’. Unsurprisingly, given our desensitised police stations, a child in custody is perhaps more threatened than his peers on the streets. To this day, civil and official campaigns have failed to protect children from shackles, handcuffs and humiliation by police personnel. Abro is clearly not alone in his misery — a report by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) presents morbid figures of Pakistan’s juvenile offenders; approximately 2,200. An NGO research reveals that over 70,000 children populate the streets of Karachi and are vulnerable to both crime and criminals. For this reason, Sparc’s document demands that the age of criminal responsibility set at seven years in Section 82 of the Pakistan Penal Code be raised to a minimum of 12 years.
The dismal state of Pakistan’s impoverished children persists despite the fact that the country is a signatory to international conventions, such as the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action that require it to provide opportunities to its children to achieve their full potential and protect them from abuse. Meanwhile, the issue of child protection is also a part of the Millennium Development Goals. Yet not enough is being done for children especially in remote recesses of the country which are entirely bereft of an understanding of child rights. An environment conducive to healthy childhoods can only emerge if the police and the media are sensitised towards the treatment of child offenders. First and foremost, and as in Sikander Abro’s case, the identity of a juvenile offender must not be disclosed and violators must be liable to penalty. The Press Council of Pakistan Ordinance 2002 laid down the Ethical Code of Practice for the Media by stating “in the case of sexual offences and heinous crimes against children, juveniles and women, names and identifying photographs shall not be published”. Perhaps some reforms are in order; crimes cannot be limited to ‘sexual’ or ‘heinous’ but be crimes in general and the edict should apply to ‘suspects’, especially in the case of women and children. On the other end, parliamentarians and legislators need to review existing laws, data, detention facilities, including borstals and police stations, to ascertain that ‘conventions’ and ‘ordinances’ are not mere documents but devices that promote child-friendly processes.
The dismal state of Pakistan’s impoverished children persists despite the fact that the country is a signatory to international conventions, such as the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action that require it to provide opportunities to its children to achieve their full potential and protect them from abuse. Meanwhile, the issue of child protection is also a part of the Millennium Development Goals. Yet not enough is being done for children especially in remote recesses of the country which are entirely bereft of an understanding of child rights. An environment conducive to healthy childhoods can only emerge if the police and the media are sensitised towards the treatment of child offenders. First and foremost, and as in Sikander Abro’s case, the identity of a juvenile offender must not be disclosed and violators must be liable to penalty. The Press Council of Pakistan Ordinance 2002 laid down the Ethical Code of Practice for the Media by stating “in the case of sexual offences and heinous crimes against children, juveniles and women, names and identifying photographs shall not be published”. Perhaps some reforms are in order; crimes cannot be limited to ‘sexual’ or ‘heinous’ but be crimes in general and the edict should apply to ‘suspects’, especially in the case of women and children. On the other end, parliamentarians and legislators need to review existing laws, data, detention facilities, including borstals and police stations, to ascertain that ‘conventions’ and ‘ordinances’ are not mere documents but devices that promote child-friendly processes.
McCain’s admission
ACCORDING to its marketing literature, The Residences at 2211 Camelback, an upmarket apartment building in Phoenix, Arizona, is “a dream within a dream environment,” where “life beyond the expected awaits your discovery”.
An “ambience of distinction embraces residents and their guests upon arrival and rewards them with soaring architecture [and] a bountiful treasure of luxury amenities that ensure personal comfort”. There’s a fitness centre, business facilities and a boardroom, a massage service, and a rooftop pool terrace with a sun deck and spa, offering “majestic mountain views,” all just yards away from “couture boutique shopping, exquisite dining [and] championship golf”.
If John McCain does not win the US presidency this November, his two combined units at 2211 Camelback might provide a consoling setting in which to reflect upon why. So might his ranch on the banks of a creek in Sedona, a couple of hours’ drive away, which has three houses on it, or his three-bedroom apartment in Virginia. Or one of a number of other hideaways — the exact number, of course, being precisely McCain’s biggest problem at the moment.
Whether or not it ends up proving decisive in the outcome of the election, McCain’s admission in an interview this week that he does not know how many homes he owns — “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he promised a reporter for the Washington-based website Politico — certainly had many of the qualities of the perfect political gaffe. Like the first president Bush acting stunned by a supermarket checkout scanner, or John Kerry going windsurfing, it threatened to demolish McCain’s man-of-the-people credentials — an especially awkward matter in a campaign in which charges of elitism have been flung about so energetically, and in which winning the votes of struggling lower-middleclass Americans in key swing states is seen as crucial to victory. (It didn’t help that McCain, days earlier, had suggested that only those with an income of GBP3m or more really counted as “rich”.)
Helpfully for Barack Obama, it also raised another theme, one that the Democratic candidate’s campaign team felt unable to broach in the attack advertisement they launched within hours: the idea that McCain, who will soon turn 72, is growing so forgetful that he can’t recall basic facts about himself.
To be fair, the truth about McCain’s homes, which are mainly owned by his heiress wife, Cindy, or by companies she controls, is complex. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, who arrived at the White House having never owned any home at all, it depends on what the meaning of the word “home” is. Do the knocked-together units at 2211 Camelback, worth about $1.7m, count as one or two?
Cindy McCain certainly owns a $1m condominium unit in La Jolla, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but it’s reportedly occupied by an elderly aunt. A loft-style apartment in Phoenix features “a giant silver chimney” extending from the fireplace to ceiling “about 20ft above,” one reporter noted — but it was bought for McCain’s daughter Meghan. “The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff,” McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post. “It’s not as if he lives in 10 houses. That’s just not the case. The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.”
The McCain properties, worth an estimated $13m in total, demonstrate a striking homogeneity in their architecture and locations. Counting 2211 Camelback as a single residence, three of them are in Phoenix, or not too far away. Five are apartments in modern tower blocks, and three overlook the Pacific Ocean. Two are in Coronado, near San Diego in California. (Last year, Cindy McCain told San Diego Magazine she comes to the area “any time I get a chance to”.)
The most distinctive is probably the McCain ranch in Sedona, where McCain played host to several potential vice-presidential candidates earlier in the campaign, though the description of it as a “ranch” sometimes irritates his opponents. “McCain doesn’t graze cattle or sheep,” the liberal Arizona blogger David Safier wrote recently. “He doesn’t sell meat or wool. He has about 15 acres of land in Oak Creek near Sedona with a large vacation home ... and about six smaller guest houses... ‘Ranch’ evokes images of cowboys and horses and cattle roundups ... it makes McCain and [President George] Bush seem like virile, independent men of the land.”
In fact, Bush only purchased Prairie Chapel Ranch — his beloved “Western White House” in Crawford, Texas, where he entertains world leaders and relaxes by clearing brush — in 1999.
Nevertheless, accusations of housing-related elitism tend to work more effectively in US politics when levelled against Democrats: rightwing wealth, it’s implied, is the result of vigorous capitalist success, whereas liberal wealth is hypocritical, suggestive of out-of-touch elitism and feyness — and so it remains to be seen whether McCain’s remarks will hurt him to the degree that Kerry was damaged by attacks on his family’s home ownership in 2004.
In purely factual terms, the two cases are remarkably similar: Kerry, as Republicans took much delight in noting, had the use of at least five homes, again mostly owned by his heiress wife. One of them, notoriously, was a 1485 barn that had been shipped over piece-by-piece from England to Idaho — although not by Kerry but by his wife’s former husband, John Heinz III, a Republican.
Obama certainly does not live in penury, something upon which the McCain campaign was quick to try to capitalise in the wake of their candidate’s gaffe. Obama owns a large redbrick home in Kenwood, a neighbourhood of Chicago, which may or may not be “a frickin’ mansion” — as Rogers described it — but which does have four fireplaces and a wine cellar.
And purchasing it did involve Obama in dealings with the disgraced Chicago businessman Tony Rezko, a donor to his campaign, though the candidate has insisted that he paid well above market price and received no favours. (A McCain ad released on Thursday referred to the Rezko connection as Obama’s own “housing problem”.) Obama also rents a second-floor apartment in a townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Washington DC.
As so often in this election season, though, the McCain campaign response ended up sounding peevish, like a playground taunt hurriedly constructed in an attempt to turn Obama’s own words against him. “Does a guy who made more than $4m last year, just got back from a vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?” Rogers asked. McCain “is a guy who lived in one house for five and half years — in prison in Vietnam”.
Rezko was not a convicted felon at the time, of course (and, incidentally, there are no private beaches in Hawaii). On the other hand, some of the McCain family’s homes may have been smart investment decisions, and their total number really is a question of definition. But it’s perception that matters — and the appalling impression made by McCain left his campaign, last night, in the curious position of looking forward to the wall-to-wall media coverage that Obama’s vice-presidential announcement was bound to generate: at least it promised to change the subject.
— The Guardian, London
An “ambience of distinction embraces residents and their guests upon arrival and rewards them with soaring architecture [and] a bountiful treasure of luxury amenities that ensure personal comfort”. There’s a fitness centre, business facilities and a boardroom, a massage service, and a rooftop pool terrace with a sun deck and spa, offering “majestic mountain views,” all just yards away from “couture boutique shopping, exquisite dining [and] championship golf”.
If John McCain does not win the US presidency this November, his two combined units at 2211 Camelback might provide a consoling setting in which to reflect upon why. So might his ranch on the banks of a creek in Sedona, a couple of hours’ drive away, which has three houses on it, or his three-bedroom apartment in Virginia. Or one of a number of other hideaways — the exact number, of course, being precisely McCain’s biggest problem at the moment.
Whether or not it ends up proving decisive in the outcome of the election, McCain’s admission in an interview this week that he does not know how many homes he owns — “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he promised a reporter for the Washington-based website Politico — certainly had many of the qualities of the perfect political gaffe. Like the first president Bush acting stunned by a supermarket checkout scanner, or John Kerry going windsurfing, it threatened to demolish McCain’s man-of-the-people credentials — an especially awkward matter in a campaign in which charges of elitism have been flung about so energetically, and in which winning the votes of struggling lower-middleclass Americans in key swing states is seen as crucial to victory. (It didn’t help that McCain, days earlier, had suggested that only those with an income of GBP3m or more really counted as “rich”.)
Helpfully for Barack Obama, it also raised another theme, one that the Democratic candidate’s campaign team felt unable to broach in the attack advertisement they launched within hours: the idea that McCain, who will soon turn 72, is growing so forgetful that he can’t recall basic facts about himself.
To be fair, the truth about McCain’s homes, which are mainly owned by his heiress wife, Cindy, or by companies she controls, is complex. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, who arrived at the White House having never owned any home at all, it depends on what the meaning of the word “home” is. Do the knocked-together units at 2211 Camelback, worth about $1.7m, count as one or two?
Cindy McCain certainly owns a $1m condominium unit in La Jolla, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but it’s reportedly occupied by an elderly aunt. A loft-style apartment in Phoenix features “a giant silver chimney” extending from the fireplace to ceiling “about 20ft above,” one reporter noted — but it was bought for McCain’s daughter Meghan. “The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff,” McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post. “It’s not as if he lives in 10 houses. That’s just not the case. The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.”
The McCain properties, worth an estimated $13m in total, demonstrate a striking homogeneity in their architecture and locations. Counting 2211 Camelback as a single residence, three of them are in Phoenix, or not too far away. Five are apartments in modern tower blocks, and three overlook the Pacific Ocean. Two are in Coronado, near San Diego in California. (Last year, Cindy McCain told San Diego Magazine she comes to the area “any time I get a chance to”.)
The most distinctive is probably the McCain ranch in Sedona, where McCain played host to several potential vice-presidential candidates earlier in the campaign, though the description of it as a “ranch” sometimes irritates his opponents. “McCain doesn’t graze cattle or sheep,” the liberal Arizona blogger David Safier wrote recently. “He doesn’t sell meat or wool. He has about 15 acres of land in Oak Creek near Sedona with a large vacation home ... and about six smaller guest houses... ‘Ranch’ evokes images of cowboys and horses and cattle roundups ... it makes McCain and [President George] Bush seem like virile, independent men of the land.”
In fact, Bush only purchased Prairie Chapel Ranch — his beloved “Western White House” in Crawford, Texas, where he entertains world leaders and relaxes by clearing brush — in 1999.
Nevertheless, accusations of housing-related elitism tend to work more effectively in US politics when levelled against Democrats: rightwing wealth, it’s implied, is the result of vigorous capitalist success, whereas liberal wealth is hypocritical, suggestive of out-of-touch elitism and feyness — and so it remains to be seen whether McCain’s remarks will hurt him to the degree that Kerry was damaged by attacks on his family’s home ownership in 2004.
In purely factual terms, the two cases are remarkably similar: Kerry, as Republicans took much delight in noting, had the use of at least five homes, again mostly owned by his heiress wife. One of them, notoriously, was a 1485 barn that had been shipped over piece-by-piece from England to Idaho — although not by Kerry but by his wife’s former husband, John Heinz III, a Republican.
Obama certainly does not live in penury, something upon which the McCain campaign was quick to try to capitalise in the wake of their candidate’s gaffe. Obama owns a large redbrick home in Kenwood, a neighbourhood of Chicago, which may or may not be “a frickin’ mansion” — as Rogers described it — but which does have four fireplaces and a wine cellar.
And purchasing it did involve Obama in dealings with the disgraced Chicago businessman Tony Rezko, a donor to his campaign, though the candidate has insisted that he paid well above market price and received no favours. (A McCain ad released on Thursday referred to the Rezko connection as Obama’s own “housing problem”.) Obama also rents a second-floor apartment in a townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Washington DC.
As so often in this election season, though, the McCain campaign response ended up sounding peevish, like a playground taunt hurriedly constructed in an attempt to turn Obama’s own words against him. “Does a guy who made more than $4m last year, just got back from a vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?” Rogers asked. McCain “is a guy who lived in one house for five and half years — in prison in Vietnam”.
Rezko was not a convicted felon at the time, of course (and, incidentally, there are no private beaches in Hawaii). On the other hand, some of the McCain family’s homes may have been smart investment decisions, and their total number really is a question of definition. But it’s perception that matters — and the appalling impression made by McCain left his campaign, last night, in the curious position of looking forward to the wall-to-wall media coverage that Obama’s vice-presidential announcement was bound to generate: at least it promised to change the subject.
— The Guardian, London
The schizophrenia of our politics
GLOBAL pressure on Pakistan to do yet more in the war against terror and the wages of high energy prices compound the crisis of expectations from democracy. The country’s current crises are not a creation of the five-month-old democratic order.
And while some issues could have been resolved in a snap under a more authoritarian set-up, democracy is messy.
Within months of the new government taking over, but before the exit of Pervez Musharraf, a favourite parlour game was guessing the date of the government’s demise. Not just because of Mr Musharraf’s being there, but also because of the pairing of unlikely partners in a coalition and price hikes that Pakistan had not experienced in almost a decade. It is our impatience with democratic politics and the due process that impels us to look, again and again, towards Rawalpindi.
Grand narratives of doom and gloom — whether to castigate the previous regime or to emasculate the present one — dutifully peppered by our excitable media and coarse members of the coalition government serve only to reinforce the ‘stigma’ of democracy as moored in the popular imagination.
Case in point: a former coalition minister’s drubbing of Pakistan’s economy in front of an audience abroad in order to highlight his professional challenges and to rubbish his predecessors won the knee-jerk reaction of investors on the local bourses and led them to repatriate foreign capital. As a result, the work got needlessly harder and the democratic order was damaged by a campaign mentality and verbal diarrhoea.
The goals and successes of the infant government — securing Saudi oil payments’ deferment worth $5.9bn, reconciliation, charting a plan of transfer payments via the Benazir Income Support Scheme, plans to commute death sentences to life imprisonment, facilitating privatisation and the liberalisation of the economy coupled with balancing, safety nets — were dwarfed by the judges’ drama and the pulling down of the president. Now that Mr Musharraf is gone and the damaged democrats seem both satisfied and chastened, can we start accepting and seeing Pakistan as a democracy? Can we reconcile our polity with functioning democracy?
If that seems incredulous, then the Pakistani naysayer should take a page from the Indian political tome which has seen 61 years of uninterrupted democracy, with the exception of Indira Gandhi’s emergency. By and large, continuity and commitment to the democratic tradition have healed India’s internal schisms and enfranchised millions of its marginalised and dispossessed.
In praise of democracy, however, its contradictions, limitations and predicaments cannot and must not be condoned. And nowhere are these more apparent than in India itself.
An analysis of the Indian democracy mystique dispels the romantic notions harboured by our intelligentsia. A telling tale is disclosed by an Indian editor in a western weekly wherein the writer suggests that an anonymous army chief threw a spanner in the peace overtures to Pakistan recently — even though from a Pakistani perspective it was for once reassuring to learn that the spoilers did not come from its range of oft-maligned officers.
But the notion that extra-parliamentary appendages overhang Indian parliamentary sovereignty raises questions regarding the efficacy of the government and parliament. The eventual success, though, of Indian foreign policy that let its hawkish elements peter out was evidenced in the hitherto successful India-Pakistan rapprochement. Parliamentary sovereignty superseded individual whims.
Likewise, the editor pointed to the dominant role of the Indian Department of Atomic Agency in determining the progress on his country’s nuclear negotiations with the US. The rumbling thunder of the Left in the Indian parliament almost brought the coalition government down on the matter of the nuclear deal.
In practice, infighting on this and other issues — ranging from the privatisation of airports to labour reforms to retail deregulation to international affairs — have made Indian parliamentary proceedings nettlesome; but at another level the factoring in of stakeholders of all hues and shades has mitigated undue haste in nuclear statecraft. That, in turn, guarantees policy sustainability as opposed to pretty assemblages of houses of cards as seen in Pakistan’s post-military bouts.
All too often, Pakistanis chide their politicians for alleged corruption. On that basis, democracy is spurned in favour of the seemingly simple, hierarchical army juntas. The overthrow of democratic governments in the past is attributed to their alleged spate of monetary indulgences and excesses. That the abuse of power occurs is unequivocally condemnable. But that it could trigger the overthrow of an elected government via extra-parliamentary trappings is inexcusable.
While India is no exemplar of genuine democracy, nonetheless instances such as Rajiv Gandhi’s alleged role in the Bofors scandal, Tehelka’s riveting exposé on the BJP’s kickbacks, and government-sponsored horse-trading in the latest vote of no-confidence motion in the Indian parliament have not lured Indian generals to purge corruption or, for that matter, cleanse Indian democracy of cult figures such as Maharashtra’s Bal Thackeray, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi and Bihar’s Laloo Yadav.
Indeed, it feels odious to tolerate these thugs in the broader commitment to democracy. However, they are the unintended consequences of an empowered, enfranchised electorate. To suggest that pockets of the illiterate populace elect these morally hazardous, harlequin politicians is an orientalist statement. In the heart of enlightened Europe, Germany has elected rabid neo-Nazis and Italy has brought neo-fascists to the public realm. The saving grace of these countries’ political systems is the presence of checks and balances embedded in the democratic culture, minimising the risk to the ethos of the nation-state.
Our patience with democracy runs thin because of extra-democratic operatives ever willing to purge and sanitise the system. In an ironic hint of nostalgia for Gen Musharraf, one ex-PCO judge effusively, via an electronic channel, berated the present PPP-led government for allegedly being inimical to the idea of reinstatement of the judges (himself included). Such keen judicial harkening for the past cast doubts about democracy rooting itself in letter and spirit.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn / By Razi Ahmed
And while some issues could have been resolved in a snap under a more authoritarian set-up, democracy is messy.
Within months of the new government taking over, but before the exit of Pervez Musharraf, a favourite parlour game was guessing the date of the government’s demise. Not just because of Mr Musharraf’s being there, but also because of the pairing of unlikely partners in a coalition and price hikes that Pakistan had not experienced in almost a decade. It is our impatience with democratic politics and the due process that impels us to look, again and again, towards Rawalpindi.
Grand narratives of doom and gloom — whether to castigate the previous regime or to emasculate the present one — dutifully peppered by our excitable media and coarse members of the coalition government serve only to reinforce the ‘stigma’ of democracy as moored in the popular imagination.
Case in point: a former coalition minister’s drubbing of Pakistan’s economy in front of an audience abroad in order to highlight his professional challenges and to rubbish his predecessors won the knee-jerk reaction of investors on the local bourses and led them to repatriate foreign capital. As a result, the work got needlessly harder and the democratic order was damaged by a campaign mentality and verbal diarrhoea.
The goals and successes of the infant government — securing Saudi oil payments’ deferment worth $5.9bn, reconciliation, charting a plan of transfer payments via the Benazir Income Support Scheme, plans to commute death sentences to life imprisonment, facilitating privatisation and the liberalisation of the economy coupled with balancing, safety nets — were dwarfed by the judges’ drama and the pulling down of the president. Now that Mr Musharraf is gone and the damaged democrats seem both satisfied and chastened, can we start accepting and seeing Pakistan as a democracy? Can we reconcile our polity with functioning democracy?
If that seems incredulous, then the Pakistani naysayer should take a page from the Indian political tome which has seen 61 years of uninterrupted democracy, with the exception of Indira Gandhi’s emergency. By and large, continuity and commitment to the democratic tradition have healed India’s internal schisms and enfranchised millions of its marginalised and dispossessed.
In praise of democracy, however, its contradictions, limitations and predicaments cannot and must not be condoned. And nowhere are these more apparent than in India itself.
An analysis of the Indian democracy mystique dispels the romantic notions harboured by our intelligentsia. A telling tale is disclosed by an Indian editor in a western weekly wherein the writer suggests that an anonymous army chief threw a spanner in the peace overtures to Pakistan recently — even though from a Pakistani perspective it was for once reassuring to learn that the spoilers did not come from its range of oft-maligned officers.
But the notion that extra-parliamentary appendages overhang Indian parliamentary sovereignty raises questions regarding the efficacy of the government and parliament. The eventual success, though, of Indian foreign policy that let its hawkish elements peter out was evidenced in the hitherto successful India-Pakistan rapprochement. Parliamentary sovereignty superseded individual whims.
Likewise, the editor pointed to the dominant role of the Indian Department of Atomic Agency in determining the progress on his country’s nuclear negotiations with the US. The rumbling thunder of the Left in the Indian parliament almost brought the coalition government down on the matter of the nuclear deal.
In practice, infighting on this and other issues — ranging from the privatisation of airports to labour reforms to retail deregulation to international affairs — have made Indian parliamentary proceedings nettlesome; but at another level the factoring in of stakeholders of all hues and shades has mitigated undue haste in nuclear statecraft. That, in turn, guarantees policy sustainability as opposed to pretty assemblages of houses of cards as seen in Pakistan’s post-military bouts.
All too often, Pakistanis chide their politicians for alleged corruption. On that basis, democracy is spurned in favour of the seemingly simple, hierarchical army juntas. The overthrow of democratic governments in the past is attributed to their alleged spate of monetary indulgences and excesses. That the abuse of power occurs is unequivocally condemnable. But that it could trigger the overthrow of an elected government via extra-parliamentary trappings is inexcusable.
While India is no exemplar of genuine democracy, nonetheless instances such as Rajiv Gandhi’s alleged role in the Bofors scandal, Tehelka’s riveting exposé on the BJP’s kickbacks, and government-sponsored horse-trading in the latest vote of no-confidence motion in the Indian parliament have not lured Indian generals to purge corruption or, for that matter, cleanse Indian democracy of cult figures such as Maharashtra’s Bal Thackeray, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi and Bihar’s Laloo Yadav.
Indeed, it feels odious to tolerate these thugs in the broader commitment to democracy. However, they are the unintended consequences of an empowered, enfranchised electorate. To suggest that pockets of the illiterate populace elect these morally hazardous, harlequin politicians is an orientalist statement. In the heart of enlightened Europe, Germany has elected rabid neo-Nazis and Italy has brought neo-fascists to the public realm. The saving grace of these countries’ political systems is the presence of checks and balances embedded in the democratic culture, minimising the risk to the ethos of the nation-state.
Our patience with democracy runs thin because of extra-democratic operatives ever willing to purge and sanitise the system. In an ironic hint of nostalgia for Gen Musharraf, one ex-PCO judge effusively, via an electronic channel, berated the present PPP-led government for allegedly being inimical to the idea of reinstatement of the judges (himself included). Such keen judicial harkening for the past cast doubts about democracy rooting itself in letter and spirit.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn / By Razi Ahmed
Crisis of lies, hysteria
AFTER a fortnight of conflict on the ground and a flurry of propaganda and debate in European capitals the South Ossetian crisis is winding down. One of the abiding images — a Russian masterstroke — will be the moving concert given by world-renowned Valery Gergiev, a South Ossetian, and the Mariinsky orchestra in the ruins of Tskhinvali, the town the Georgians destroyed.
Another unforgettable memory will be Georgia’s flak-jacketed president cowering on the ground as a Russian plane flies over the town of Gori. Bravado turning into humiliation is a metaphor for the whole foolish adventure. Georgian men are hospitable and engaging, but fond of bombast and empty macho gestures. Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Russians for centuries, Georgians prefer poetry and vineyards to the challenge of war.
President Mikheil Saakashvili epitomises the style, made worse in his case by the lies he served up to deceive foreign opinion. He boasted of defeat. Georgia was being swallowed up, Tbilisi was on the verge of occupation, Russia was using weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest lie was his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers. It was absurd to think Russia would not retaliate. So the next lie was to claim Russia’s leaders had prepared a trap. In fact, they were taken by surprise as much as the Ossetians. Russia’s initial response had the hallmarks of hasty improvisation — though, as the crisis unfolded, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed increasing determination to exploit Saakashvili’s folly by preventing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from ever being forced back under Georgian rule.
Saakashvili and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis — from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia?
Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago.
Nevertheless, Russia should pull back completely now. It should also have restrained South Ossetian militias from running amok against Georgian villages. Nato troops made little effort to stop revenge-seeking Albanians from looting and torching houses in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo after Yugoslav forces were driven out. Russia’s forces should have done better in Ossetia. They had the moral high ground but quickly forfeited it by not changing the patterns of military indiscipline and cruelty shown in Afghanistan and Chechnya as well as towards conscripts in their own ranks.
How and why Saakashvili acted remains unclear. Did he tell the Americans of his plans? If not, he emerges as even more of a hothead than many in Nato feared. If yes, did the Americans approve? Giving him the green light would have been incredibly irresponsible. If the US warned Saakashvili off and he went ahead anyway, he should be condemned as an ally from hell.
One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin “a totalitarian dictator” and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a “serious negative” price.
In Britain senior politicians showed similar wildness, including the prime minister and foreign secretary. The ruling Labour party followed the White House line.
The mantra is that Russia cannot have a veto on Nato membership. True, but by the same token no country has a right to join Nato, or the EU. Look at Turkey, which has been a loyal Nato ally for four decades but was not allowed to start EU membership proceedings until 2005 and still has no guarantee they will succeed.
Nato and Russia are boycotting each other for the moment. But business will soon resume as western leaders see this was a manufactured crisis rather than the start of a new cold war or some cataclysmic shift in international relations. When Nato’s foreign ministers met last week, France and Germany made that point. The alliance promised reconstruction aid to Georgia but no support for rushing it into Nato.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London / By Jonathan Steele
Another unforgettable memory will be Georgia’s flak-jacketed president cowering on the ground as a Russian plane flies over the town of Gori. Bravado turning into humiliation is a metaphor for the whole foolish adventure. Georgian men are hospitable and engaging, but fond of bombast and empty macho gestures. Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Russians for centuries, Georgians prefer poetry and vineyards to the challenge of war.
President Mikheil Saakashvili epitomises the style, made worse in his case by the lies he served up to deceive foreign opinion. He boasted of defeat. Georgia was being swallowed up, Tbilisi was on the verge of occupation, Russia was using weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest lie was his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers. It was absurd to think Russia would not retaliate. So the next lie was to claim Russia’s leaders had prepared a trap. In fact, they were taken by surprise as much as the Ossetians. Russia’s initial response had the hallmarks of hasty improvisation — though, as the crisis unfolded, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed increasing determination to exploit Saakashvili’s folly by preventing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from ever being forced back under Georgian rule.
Saakashvili and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis — from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia?
Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago.
Nevertheless, Russia should pull back completely now. It should also have restrained South Ossetian militias from running amok against Georgian villages. Nato troops made little effort to stop revenge-seeking Albanians from looting and torching houses in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo after Yugoslav forces were driven out. Russia’s forces should have done better in Ossetia. They had the moral high ground but quickly forfeited it by not changing the patterns of military indiscipline and cruelty shown in Afghanistan and Chechnya as well as towards conscripts in their own ranks.
How and why Saakashvili acted remains unclear. Did he tell the Americans of his plans? If not, he emerges as even more of a hothead than many in Nato feared. If yes, did the Americans approve? Giving him the green light would have been incredibly irresponsible. If the US warned Saakashvili off and he went ahead anyway, he should be condemned as an ally from hell.
One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin “a totalitarian dictator” and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a “serious negative” price.
In Britain senior politicians showed similar wildness, including the prime minister and foreign secretary. The ruling Labour party followed the White House line.
The mantra is that Russia cannot have a veto on Nato membership. True, but by the same token no country has a right to join Nato, or the EU. Look at Turkey, which has been a loyal Nato ally for four decades but was not allowed to start EU membership proceedings until 2005 and still has no guarantee they will succeed.
Nato and Russia are boycotting each other for the moment. But business will soon resume as western leaders see this was a manufactured crisis rather than the start of a new cold war or some cataclysmic shift in international relations. When Nato’s foreign ministers met last week, France and Germany made that point. The alliance promised reconstruction aid to Georgia but no support for rushing it into Nato.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London / By Jonathan Steele
Crisis of lies, hysteria
AFTER a fortnight of conflict on the ground and a flurry of propaganda and debate in European capitals the South Ossetian crisis is winding down. One of the abiding images — a Russian masterstroke — will be the moving concert given by world-renowned Valery Gergiev, a South Ossetian, and the Mariinsky orchestra in the ruins of Tskhinvali, the town the Georgians destroyed.
Another unforgettable memory will be Georgia’s flak-jacketed president cowering on the ground as a Russian plane flies over the town of Gori. Bravado turning into humiliation is a metaphor for the whole foolish adventure. Georgian men are hospitable and engaging, but fond of bombast and empty macho gestures. Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Russians for centuries, Georgians prefer poetry and vineyards to the challenge of war.
President Mikheil Saakashvili epitomises the style, made worse in his case by the lies he served up to deceive foreign opinion. He boasted of defeat. Georgia was being swallowed up, Tbilisi was on the verge of occupation, Russia was using weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest lie was his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers. It was absurd to think Russia would not retaliate. So the next lie was to claim Russia’s leaders had prepared a trap. In fact, they were taken by surprise as much as the Ossetians. Russia’s initial response had the hallmarks of hasty improvisation — though, as the crisis unfolded, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed increasing determination to exploit Saakashvili’s folly by preventing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from ever being forced back under Georgian rule.
Saakashvili and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis — from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia?
Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago.
Nevertheless, Russia should pull back completely now. It should also have restrained South Ossetian militias from running amok against Georgian villages. Nato troops made little effort to stop revenge-seeking Albanians from looting and torching houses in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo after Yugoslav forces were driven out. Russia’s forces should have done better in Ossetia. They had the moral high ground but quickly forfeited it by not changing the patterns of military indiscipline and cruelty shown in Afghanistan and Chechnya as well as towards conscripts in their own ranks.
How and why Saakashvili acted remains unclear. Did he tell the Americans of his plans? If not, he emerges as even more of a hothead than many in Nato feared. If yes, did the Americans approve? Giving him the green light would have been incredibly irresponsible. If the US warned Saakashvili off and he went ahead anyway, he should be condemned as an ally from hell.
One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin “a totalitarian dictator” and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a “serious negative” price.
In Britain senior politicians showed similar wildness, including the prime minister and foreign secretary. The ruling Labour party followed the White House line.
The mantra is that Russia cannot have a veto on Nato membership. True, but by the same token no country has a right to join Nato, or the EU. Look at Turkey, which has been a loyal Nato ally for four decades but was not allowed to start EU membership proceedings until 2005 and still has no guarantee they will succeed.
Nato and Russia are boycotting each other for the moment. But business will soon resume as western leaders see this was a manufactured crisis rather than the start of a new cold war or some cataclysmic shift in international relations. When Nato’s foreign ministers met last week, France and Germany made that point. The alliance promised reconstruction aid to Georgia but no support for rushing it into Nato.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London / By Jonathan Steele
Another unforgettable memory will be Georgia’s flak-jacketed president cowering on the ground as a Russian plane flies over the town of Gori. Bravado turning into humiliation is a metaphor for the whole foolish adventure. Georgian men are hospitable and engaging, but fond of bombast and empty macho gestures. Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Russians for centuries, Georgians prefer poetry and vineyards to the challenge of war.
President Mikheil Saakashvili epitomises the style, made worse in his case by the lies he served up to deceive foreign opinion. He boasted of defeat. Georgia was being swallowed up, Tbilisi was on the verge of occupation, Russia was using weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest lie was his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers. It was absurd to think Russia would not retaliate. So the next lie was to claim Russia’s leaders had prepared a trap. In fact, they were taken by surprise as much as the Ossetians. Russia’s initial response had the hallmarks of hasty improvisation — though, as the crisis unfolded, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed increasing determination to exploit Saakashvili’s folly by preventing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from ever being forced back under Georgian rule.
Saakashvili and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis — from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia?
Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago.
Nevertheless, Russia should pull back completely now. It should also have restrained South Ossetian militias from running amok against Georgian villages. Nato troops made little effort to stop revenge-seeking Albanians from looting and torching houses in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo after Yugoslav forces were driven out. Russia’s forces should have done better in Ossetia. They had the moral high ground but quickly forfeited it by not changing the patterns of military indiscipline and cruelty shown in Afghanistan and Chechnya as well as towards conscripts in their own ranks.
How and why Saakashvili acted remains unclear. Did he tell the Americans of his plans? If not, he emerges as even more of a hothead than many in Nato feared. If yes, did the Americans approve? Giving him the green light would have been incredibly irresponsible. If the US warned Saakashvili off and he went ahead anyway, he should be condemned as an ally from hell.
One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin “a totalitarian dictator” and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a “serious negative” price.
In Britain senior politicians showed similar wildness, including the prime minister and foreign secretary. The ruling Labour party followed the White House line.
The mantra is that Russia cannot have a veto on Nato membership. True, but by the same token no country has a right to join Nato, or the EU. Look at Turkey, which has been a loyal Nato ally for four decades but was not allowed to start EU membership proceedings until 2005 and still has no guarantee they will succeed.
Nato and Russia are boycotting each other for the moment. But business will soon resume as western leaders see this was a manufactured crisis rather than the start of a new cold war or some cataclysmic shift in international relations. When Nato’s foreign ministers met last week, France and Germany made that point. The alliance promised reconstruction aid to Georgia but no support for rushing it into Nato.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London / By Jonathan Steele
Why IMF is not an option
PAKISTAN’S economic performance during the 1960s was spectacular and many countries at the same level of development used Pakistan as a role model to develop their institutions — and got ahead.
We continued on this growth path, although at a slower pace, in the years that followed. Even during the 1980s, Pakistan was still a prosperous country, with an annual average rate of growth of 6.4 per cent.
But the performance of the economy during the 1990s was in marked contrast to the growth performance of the earlier decades, when the rate of growth plummeted to 4.1 per cent. In addition we had a serious development crisis, which was of a structural and long-term nature. The socio-economic problems manifested themselves through an increase in armed robberies, murders, suicides, kidnapping for ransom, etc.
During the decade of the 1990s four democratically elected governments were removed unceremoniously from office. Although different reasons were cited for removing these governments, by 1998 the easiest and most effective pretext used was the allegation that the government was about to default on its loan repayments.
What were the reasons for the dismal performance of the economy during the 1990s? How did the 1990s differ from earlier decades? First, due to the adoption of a market-based monetary policy the government started borrowing from international financial institutions due to which the size of its foreign debt increased tremendously. It was the debt crisis which was the mother of all crises and gave rise to development and growth crises which in turn led to a distributional crisis.
The bulk of our revenues during this period was not available for development, as revenues were being used to service debts. The latter gave rise to a social crisis, which along with the debt crisis directly affected the political crisis.
Second, the decade of the 1990s was also the time when the country adopted the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Stabilisation and Structural Adjustment policies. The focus of these was on liberalisation, privatisation and reduction in government expenditure. This meant slashing the expenditure on health, education, infrastructure and human resource development, etc.
Since the bulk of these expenditures is consumed by the poor, slashing them increased the poverty level like never before. Poverty also increased as a result of reduction in the rate of investment, GDP growth and the employment level. This is corroborated by a recent study that shows there is a negative correlation between foreign debt and the Sindh GDP. Since increased credits come with conditions it is the latter that negatively impacted output growth in Sindh.
Some technocrats, with political ambitions, attribute the dismal performance of the 1990s to mismanagement of the economy by democratic governments. For the 1990s also happened to be the first decade when we had democratic governments in the country.
If the government borrows from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) for budgetary support all three factors prevailing during the 1990s will prevail again i.e. neo liberal policies, increase in debt and the installation of a democratic government. Even if the economy starts to witness a meltdown as a result of an increase in the debt-GDP ratio, which is already very high, or the adoption of structural adjustment and stabilisation policies, which will come with foreign debt, anti-democratic forces will attribute the meltdown to the induction once again of a democratic government in Pakistan.
And meltdown it will. During the 1990s when we experienced economic miseries emanating from the adoption of neo-liberal policies and increase in the size of debt, the threshold level from which we started descending was quite high. The level from which we will begin our descent at present will be much lower than it was in the 1990s. So the descent will be to a much greater depth and the decline far more steep. It will be a horrendous situation.
The country will be faced with a total meltdown on the economic front with serious socio-political ramifications — and this at a time when the Frontier and Balochistan are already in flames as a result of the so-called war on terror. Embarking upon neo-liberal policies in the present scenario will be a perfect recipe for disaster.
According to Naomi Klein, in her recent book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the IMF does not have a programme in any country except Turkey at present. So the IMF would naturally be looking for clients. It will even offer its credits at very favourable rates in the beginning to lure us into borrowing. But once we start borrowing and become dependent, the rates will be raised.
Intelligent and shrewd policymakers are able to see through this game and refrain from borrowing from IFIs for budgetary support. When India needed budgetary support, it decided to borrow from non-resident Indians rather than the IMF. Likewise, Pakistan can borrow from non-resident Pakistanis, friendly governments, etc.
Pakistan has faced with multifarious crises — General Pervez Musharraf’s impeachment, the call for the restoration of the judiciary, military operations in Wana, Waziristan, Swat, Balochistan and a serious economic crisis brewing for the last so many years. Countries that have faced such crises have experienced the thwarting of democratic processes and the installation of technocrats who have ruthlessly implemented structural adjustment and stabilisation policies.
Stephen Haggard has acknowledged that “Some of the widest ranging reform efforts in the developing world were undertaken following military coups.” The same is brought out very convincingly by the experience of several Asian, Latin American and African countries by Klein in her book cited earlier.
Pakistan now is so much wiser. With hindsight, we can state that increase in the foreign debt-GDP ratio has led to an interruption in the democratic process and the installation of technocratic governments. For the IFIs subscribe to the ‘new political economy’ approach, which labels politicians and statesmen and women as corrupt, insincere and therefore ineligible to govern.
As the stakes of the IFIs in a country rise, they feel comfortable when the country is governed by its own officials and consultants. The newly installed democratic government in Pakistan must bear in mind that any increase in the foreign debt-GDP ratio is bound to derail the democratic process. Turmoil, as a result of the economic, social and political fallout, will engulf the entire country like never before.
By Dr Shahida Wizarat
We continued on this growth path, although at a slower pace, in the years that followed. Even during the 1980s, Pakistan was still a prosperous country, with an annual average rate of growth of 6.4 per cent.
But the performance of the economy during the 1990s was in marked contrast to the growth performance of the earlier decades, when the rate of growth plummeted to 4.1 per cent. In addition we had a serious development crisis, which was of a structural and long-term nature. The socio-economic problems manifested themselves through an increase in armed robberies, murders, suicides, kidnapping for ransom, etc.
During the decade of the 1990s four democratically elected governments were removed unceremoniously from office. Although different reasons were cited for removing these governments, by 1998 the easiest and most effective pretext used was the allegation that the government was about to default on its loan repayments.
What were the reasons for the dismal performance of the economy during the 1990s? How did the 1990s differ from earlier decades? First, due to the adoption of a market-based monetary policy the government started borrowing from international financial institutions due to which the size of its foreign debt increased tremendously. It was the debt crisis which was the mother of all crises and gave rise to development and growth crises which in turn led to a distributional crisis.
The bulk of our revenues during this period was not available for development, as revenues were being used to service debts. The latter gave rise to a social crisis, which along with the debt crisis directly affected the political crisis.
Second, the decade of the 1990s was also the time when the country adopted the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Stabilisation and Structural Adjustment policies. The focus of these was on liberalisation, privatisation and reduction in government expenditure. This meant slashing the expenditure on health, education, infrastructure and human resource development, etc.
Since the bulk of these expenditures is consumed by the poor, slashing them increased the poverty level like never before. Poverty also increased as a result of reduction in the rate of investment, GDP growth and the employment level. This is corroborated by a recent study that shows there is a negative correlation between foreign debt and the Sindh GDP. Since increased credits come with conditions it is the latter that negatively impacted output growth in Sindh.
Some technocrats, with political ambitions, attribute the dismal performance of the 1990s to mismanagement of the economy by democratic governments. For the 1990s also happened to be the first decade when we had democratic governments in the country.
If the government borrows from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) for budgetary support all three factors prevailing during the 1990s will prevail again i.e. neo liberal policies, increase in debt and the installation of a democratic government. Even if the economy starts to witness a meltdown as a result of an increase in the debt-GDP ratio, which is already very high, or the adoption of structural adjustment and stabilisation policies, which will come with foreign debt, anti-democratic forces will attribute the meltdown to the induction once again of a democratic government in Pakistan.
And meltdown it will. During the 1990s when we experienced economic miseries emanating from the adoption of neo-liberal policies and increase in the size of debt, the threshold level from which we started descending was quite high. The level from which we will begin our descent at present will be much lower than it was in the 1990s. So the descent will be to a much greater depth and the decline far more steep. It will be a horrendous situation.
The country will be faced with a total meltdown on the economic front with serious socio-political ramifications — and this at a time when the Frontier and Balochistan are already in flames as a result of the so-called war on terror. Embarking upon neo-liberal policies in the present scenario will be a perfect recipe for disaster.
According to Naomi Klein, in her recent book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the IMF does not have a programme in any country except Turkey at present. So the IMF would naturally be looking for clients. It will even offer its credits at very favourable rates in the beginning to lure us into borrowing. But once we start borrowing and become dependent, the rates will be raised.
Intelligent and shrewd policymakers are able to see through this game and refrain from borrowing from IFIs for budgetary support. When India needed budgetary support, it decided to borrow from non-resident Indians rather than the IMF. Likewise, Pakistan can borrow from non-resident Pakistanis, friendly governments, etc.
Pakistan has faced with multifarious crises — General Pervez Musharraf’s impeachment, the call for the restoration of the judiciary, military operations in Wana, Waziristan, Swat, Balochistan and a serious economic crisis brewing for the last so many years. Countries that have faced such crises have experienced the thwarting of democratic processes and the installation of technocrats who have ruthlessly implemented structural adjustment and stabilisation policies.
Stephen Haggard has acknowledged that “Some of the widest ranging reform efforts in the developing world were undertaken following military coups.” The same is brought out very convincingly by the experience of several Asian, Latin American and African countries by Klein in her book cited earlier.
Pakistan now is so much wiser. With hindsight, we can state that increase in the foreign debt-GDP ratio has led to an interruption in the democratic process and the installation of technocratic governments. For the IFIs subscribe to the ‘new political economy’ approach, which labels politicians and statesmen and women as corrupt, insincere and therefore ineligible to govern.
As the stakes of the IFIs in a country rise, they feel comfortable when the country is governed by its own officials and consultants. The newly installed democratic government in Pakistan must bear in mind that any increase in the foreign debt-GDP ratio is bound to derail the democratic process. Turmoil, as a result of the economic, social and political fallout, will engulf the entire country like never before.
By Dr Shahida Wizarat
Truly exceptional Olympiad
THE head of the International Olympics Committee rightly called the Beijing Olympiad ‘truly exceptional games’, with the number of records shattered itself becoming a record of sorts. For the human spirit to go beyond conceivable limits, in terms of physical and mental capacity, as seen in Beijing, captured the imagination of billions around the world. The unassuming, almost shy, Michael Phelps splashed his way in the glittering Water Cube to a record eight gold medals in a single edition of the event — seven of them in world record times. His contrast was provided by the flamboyant, almost impudent, Usain Bolt, who became the fastest man on the planet ever and still had time to indulge in exaggerated chest-thumping even before he had crossed the finishing line. His characteristic ‘marksman’ celebrations, pointing to his own images on the giant screens inside the superlative Bird’s Nest when he came out for his next two gold medal sprints, will forever remain the image of the event. As is the nature of sporting meets, the ecstasy of success always comes with the agony of failure. At Beijing, especially for the home crowd, it came in the shape of the premature exit of Liu Xiang and Yao Ming from their respective disciplines. But that did not dampen the Chinese spirit for they still edged out the United States from the top of the rankings table which is but a rarity in Olympics history.
The extravagant opening and closing ceremonies apart, China also deserves the proverbial pat on the back for having organised the massive 17-day show with such perfection that all the fears that were expressed in the run-up to the main draw — smog, political tension, security threats, human rights concerns and so on — turned out to be absolute non-issues. In fact, the $40bn investment China made in the games would have earned it the awed admiration of millions of foreigners who were there as athletes, officials and spectators. Post-visit, many of them would now be able to see through the western propaganda, which will make the Beijing Olympics ‘truly exceptional’ in a much wider sense of the description than being limited to sporting excellence. In terms of organisational skills, event management and hospitality, China has certainly set a new standard that London, the host of the next Olympics, will find hard to meet.
The extravagant opening and closing ceremonies apart, China also deserves the proverbial pat on the back for having organised the massive 17-day show with such perfection that all the fears that were expressed in the run-up to the main draw — smog, political tension, security threats, human rights concerns and so on — turned out to be absolute non-issues. In fact, the $40bn investment China made in the games would have earned it the awed admiration of millions of foreigners who were there as athletes, officials and spectators. Post-visit, many of them would now be able to see through the western propaganda, which will make the Beijing Olympics ‘truly exceptional’ in a much wider sense of the description than being limited to sporting excellence. In terms of organisational skills, event management and hospitality, China has certainly set a new standard that London, the host of the next Olympics, will find hard to meet.
False truce
WHEN is a truce not a truce? When offered by the Taliban. Maulvi Omar, spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), told a foreign news agency that the militants in Bajaur had been directed to “stop attacks against the government and security forces” on the insistence of a tribal jirga. The government swiftly — and rightly — rejected the peace offer. Rehman Malik dismissed the militants’ “verbal commitments” and demanded their surrender. For good measure, the TTP has been banned by the government. The latest offer of a ceasefire by the TTP in Bajaur comes at a time when the militants are under severe military pressure in Bajaur and Swat and a humanitarian crisis threatens to turn the local population against the militants.
In the operation that was launched by the security forces on Aug 6 the government claims to have killed at least 500 militants, including some high-profile members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There is no doubt that Bajaur is a hub of militancy and that the militants led by Maulana Faqir Mohammad in the agency have close ties to the Maulana Fazlullah-led militants in Swat. Which is another reason to reject the truce offered by the TTP in Bajaur: it is only specific to the agency and any breathing space offered to the militants there will be a fillip to the militants in Swat. However, the government must be careful not to lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the local population. Nearly 200,000 people in the region are believed to have been displaced so far by the fighting in Bajaur. With the month of Ramazan approaching, the people will be desperate to return to their homes — which is not possible while the fighting is going on. The TTP knows this and — in a bid to win over the local population and also hide amongst them — they are keen to have the people back in their homes in Bajaur.
The non-military imperative for the government is to ensure that the internally displaced persons are provided a reasonable standard of care in the makeshift camps that have sprung up in the region to accommodate the Bajauris. News of delays in the provision of food and shelter and of appalling sanitary conditions is troubling. If the situation does not improve quickly the government may find itself winning the military battle but losing the war against militancy.
In the operation that was launched by the security forces on Aug 6 the government claims to have killed at least 500 militants, including some high-profile members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There is no doubt that Bajaur is a hub of militancy and that the militants led by Maulana Faqir Mohammad in the agency have close ties to the Maulana Fazlullah-led militants in Swat. Which is another reason to reject the truce offered by the TTP in Bajaur: it is only specific to the agency and any breathing space offered to the militants there will be a fillip to the militants in Swat. However, the government must be careful not to lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the local population. Nearly 200,000 people in the region are believed to have been displaced so far by the fighting in Bajaur. With the month of Ramazan approaching, the people will be desperate to return to their homes — which is not possible while the fighting is going on. The TTP knows this and — in a bid to win over the local population and also hide amongst them — they are keen to have the people back in their homes in Bajaur.
The non-military imperative for the government is to ensure that the internally displaced persons are provided a reasonable standard of care in the makeshift camps that have sprung up in the region to accommodate the Bajauris. News of delays in the provision of food and shelter and of appalling sanitary conditions is troubling. If the situation does not improve quickly the government may find itself winning the military battle but losing the war against militancy.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Mapping Pakhtunkhwa
Free Counter
A MILLION-DOLLAR Unesco project for mapping cultural and heritage assets in seven districts of the NWFP was recently launched in Peshawar. This is good news as the promotion of culture and heritage can lead to healthy economic opportunities for Pakistan’s violence-prone province — once the centre of the golden Gandhara era.
The Taliban’s crude culture reflects the extent of the morbid degeneration to which this ancient civilisation has been subjected under the Islamic state of Pakistan.
Considering the circumstances, this landmark exercise can result in the creation of a cultural repository of local knowledge and resources. In an emerging, borderless modern society, it is crucial to document local traditions and historical sites which are rapidly deteriorating or disappearing.
The effort becomes more productive when local communities are involved in identifying and mapping out resources that they consider meaningful. This participatory approach gives a communal sense of belonging to cultural roots, besides, empowering them.
“When local people gather information and become key holders of intangible and tangible cultural assets, it can lead to prosperity and progress. Cultural mapping is based on the premise that efforts to save cultural heritage cannot keep pace with the process of deterioration and may ultimately lead to the extinction of some invaluable cultural assets of a country,” said Mr Jorge Sequeira, Unesco director in Islamabad.
He added, “It is important to recognise that in losing cultural heritage we are in fact, losing appreciation for cultural diversity, which results in increased conflicts and wars. Therefore, culture has to be recognised as a binding force towards unity and social cohesion among and within nations.”
Unesco’s various normative instruments are geared towards reversing this process of deterioration of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The 1972 Convention on Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage is a resolution to protect natural and tangible cultural heritage.
Similarly, there is the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Unesco’s latest Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions demonstrates a commitment to protect and preserve the diversity of culture and various forms of cultural expressions.
The Norway-funded project, ‘Mapping of cultural assets in NWFP’ complements these resolutions. The first step towards preservation is inventorying natural and cultural assets that are beyond fine arts such as values, systems, beliefs, traditions and ways of living. The ideal inventory not only records these but also locates them on geospatial maps.
Ironically, the project-launching ceremony got delayed by more than an hour as restless guests waited for someone from the officialdom in Peshawar, the capital of Pakhtunkhwa (NWFP), to formally inaugurate the event.
The arrival of the expected chief guest, Chief Minister Amir Haider Hoti, never materialised. The message by a PRO was finally conveyed to the bewildered hosts from Islamabad that the chief minister was obliged to visit flood-affected victims. Therefore, he could not be present at the ceremony and the “show should go on” without official representation from the province!
The same evening, headlines news informed us about the catastrophic rain and floods that rendered thousands homeless and many dead. TV images showed hordes of government officials and ministers converging on the disaster scene. The very next morning, the electronic and print media reported hundreds of stranded and helpless people complaining about the total lack of assistance from government functionaries.
This happens to be the bane of our national existence. The PRO-guided provincial and national governments excel in making headline news each day about the countless services rendered by state representatives and functionaries. But even media gimmickry cannot alter negative perceptions. Therefore, this was yet another futile exercise, with ground realities speaking volumes for the insensitivity towards public welfare.
Granted the ANP government has very limited political space with nominal financial resources and the sword of militancy hanging over its head. It is being deliberately provoked by the establishment that wants to browbeat it into keeping a low public profile. What needs to be realised is that only an accountable leadership which imbues in the public a sense of ownership can prevent the inevitable consequences of inept governance. The priorities need to be set right.
After a long, fruitless wait, the Unesco team began the proceedings with prominent personalities from Punjab and Islamabad from the departments of culture, tourism and museums. Not a single cabinet minister or bureaucrat from the provincial culture department and who had been duly invited thought it fit to attend. Their commitment to a very important aspect of development with immense economic opportunity was seen to be lacking.
Culture, heritage and tourism play a very critical role in social cohesion for a prosperous future. Some prominent experts from Punjab were heard commenting on how unhappy they were at not having a single provincial representative to share the platform with — since the entire exercise was meant for their benefit. Had the MMA government been in office this lapse could have been forgiven.
For the ANP-PPP government to fail to seize this golden opportunity to impart a sense of ownership of the project was unbelievable. The representatives of Pakhtunkhwa clearly reflected their lack of commitment to the cause of conservation of cultural assets. The federal representatives and experts emerged as winners on our home turf while we lost.
Courtesy Daily Dawn Lahore / By Adil Zareef
Return of the great powers
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WHAT would George Kennan, peerless diplomat and father of the ‘containment’ doctrine that guided America in the Cold War, have said?
Russian troops strut about Georgia as if they own the place; an American president lambastes the Kremlin, while Russia’s foreign minister sneeringly comments that “you can forget about Georgia’s territorial integrity”, hinting at de facto annexation of the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Would not Kennan, were he still alive, conclude that history has gone on a 60-year fast rewind, and that the Cold War is back?
The answer is an unequivocal no. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a most unlovable power. But it is no longer the worldwide ideological adversary of the West, using proxy wars on four continents to advance its cause. In some respects it is not an adversary but ally (albeit an often fickle one) of the US on issues such as Iran, North Korea and the Middle East.
Putin has partially rebuilt Russia’s armed forces from their rusty nadir under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, but today’s Russia cannot project military power around the world on a scale that remotely matches America. Economically, Russia has chosen a blend of statism and jungle, gun-law, western capitalism, but its consumer-oriented ‘soft power’ is minimal. There is no Russian Google, no Russian challenger to Coca-Cola.
Events in Georgia have underscored how Moscow is an increasingly assertive rival of the US. But it is not Washington’s mortal adversary in a 21st century reincarnation of the Cold War. And why should it be? Russia, after all, lost the original Cold War. Right now it is flourishing under existing arrangements, which reflect less a new bellicosity on the part of the Kremlin, but a new set of global realities.
First, the US is relatively weaker than it was when the Cold War ended almost 20 years ago, in economic, military and not least moral terms. The recession almost certainly now upon it will be the most painful since that of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and conceivably the worst since the Great Depression.
America, moreover, is trillions of dollars in hock to foreign creditors such as China and Japan. Globalisation may be a splendid thing. But it has not yet repealed history’s law that great powers are brought down by debt and economic failure, not by defeat on the battlefield.
In fact, America’s military might also is less imposing than it was. American aircraft carrier groups, each packing more firepower than most countries, may patrol the seven seas. But resources of manpower and hardware have been stretched desperately thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if it wanted to, the US could not send troops into Georgia, any more than it could do so into Iran.
Finally, there is America’s moral decline. It was all very well for George Bush to rail against Russia’s “bullying and intimidation” of Georgia and to proclaim, in utter disregard of the facts, that “the days of spheres of influence are behind us”.
It was none other than the US that set the gold standard for spheres of influence with the Monroe Doctrine, back in 1823. And how, pray, has Washington behaved these past decades towards Cuba and other regimes in its Central American backyard, whose policies it disapproved of? In its determination to prevent Nato from setting up shop in Georgia and Ukraine, and its hostility to the US missile defence installations in the old ‘near abroad’ of Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia is observing Monroe to the letter.
Every great power’s foreign policy contains a good dollop of hypocrisy. But America’s foreign policy, uniquely, has always had an avowedly moral dimension. In the past, US claims to be on the side of the angels were broadly buttressed by events. Even to neutrals in the Cold War, it was America, not the Soviet Union, that seemed to be on the right side in that long silent struggle.
However, one of Mr Bush’s greatest disservices to his country, and one whose cost his successors will long be counting, is to have made that hypocrisy visible to a child. His entire foreign policy can be read in the key of, ‘do as we say, not as we do’.
So much, however, for American decline. Russia simultaneously has been on the rise, above all thanks to a new weapon (or rather, long dormant old weapon), its natural resources. During the Cold War, Russia’s vast energy and mineral wealth was not a big geopolitical factor. It is now. Increasingly Europe’s pre-eminent supplier, Moscow can turn the oil and gas tap on and off at will. Several times it has done so in recent years to signal its displeasure with former satrapies such as Ukraine and Georgia. But some countries in central and western Europe are no less vulnerable to energy bullying.
Even so, a reduced imbalance between the old superpower rivals does not translate into a new Cold War, in which Russia offers itself as the Soviet Union redux, an opposite pole and social model for the entire world. What we are witnessing is a reversion to pre-20th century great-power politics, featuring not just a somewhat creaky US and a resurgent Russia, but emerging actors such as China, India and, who knows, maybe Europe as well.
In Moscow’s case, its current great-power behaviour is fuelled by resentment and a desire for payback, after the humiliations of the Yeltsin era, on a playing field that is now tilted in its direction.
In short, spheres of influence, insofar as they ever went away, are back. Traditionally, if you find yourself in the wrong one, then you try to get another great power to help. That is what Fidel Castro did with the Soviet Union. It is what Georgia tried, and utterly failed to do, in playing the US/Nato card against Russia. And it is why the Poles, after endless prevarication, have suddenly signed on to missile defence.
It may infuriate the Russians, but it places American bodies squarely in Moscow’s line of fire. The game now is all about spheres of influence and trying to escape them.
That surely would be the conclusion of George Kennan. When he wrote his celebrated The Long Telegram in 1946, Kennan believed, correctly, that the inherent contradictions of the Soviet system would bring about its demise. Alas, spheres of influence will not go away so easily.
Courtesy: The Independent, London / By Rupert Cornwell
Mystery of the ‘disappeared’
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
— Thomas Jefferson
IN March 1976, a military coup overthrew the elected civilian government in Argentina.
The coup had been preceded by a period of economic crisis and political instability and many Argentines welcomed the generals. Little did they know that brutal repression was to follow.
Under Operation Condor, the military unleashed a ‘war against subversion’, targeting anyone considered ‘unpatriotic’. These included individuals, students, political activists, labour and human rights organisations.
However, the Argentine generals, having studied the lessons of previous military dictatorships, were determined to carry out their repression quietly and largely out of sight. They decided that rather than filling stadiums with political prisoners or leaving mutilated bodies on the side of roads, they would perfect the practice of kidnapping their victims from their homes, murder them in secret and leave no evidence behind.
Many political dissidents were heavily drugged and then thrown alive out of planes flying above the Atlantic Ocean, leaving no trace of their passing. Without any dead bodies, the government could deny they had been killed. In this manner some 15,000 to 30,000 men and women became desaparecidos — the Spanish and Portuguese term for the ‘disappeared’ that specifically refers to the mostly South American victims of state terrorism during the 1970s and 1980s.
A forced disappearance occurs when an organisation forces a person to vanish from view, either by murder or by simple sequestration. The victim is first kidnapped, then illegally detained, often executed and the corpse hidden.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, ‘forced disappearances’ qualify as a crime against humanity, which thus cannot be subject to the statute of limitation.
Imprisonment under secret or uncertain circumstances is a grave violation of some conceptions of human rights as well as, in the case of an armed conflict, of international humanitarian law. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance as Resolution 47/133 on Dec 18, 1992.
Despite this, it is estimated that secret imprisonment is still practised in about 30 countries. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances has registered close to 50,000 cases of people who disappeared under unknown circumstances.
The common denominator in all these countries is authoritarian rule, gross violation of human rights, abuse of power by state authorities, lack of accountability and a weak and complaint judiciary.
Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being a member of this select group of countries. While exact numbers are difficult to determine, hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistanis have simply disappeared. Since 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’ the disappearance of Pakistani citizens has increased. Many continue to languish in secret detention centres and prisons, subjected to psychological and physical torture with no recourse to justice. Many are taken out of the country to other destinations, including the now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
Nothing can highlight the plight of the disappeared more poignantly than the ongoing ordeal of the Pakistani neuroscientist Dr Aafia Siddiqui. A mother of three small children, Dr Siddiqui simply ‘vanished’ one day in March 2003.
Both the Pakistani and US governments denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. Both continued to do so for the next five years until out of the blue she turned up last month in the middle of Afghanistan, outside the governor of Ghazni’s compound. The bizarre events that followed her arrest and her extradition to the US defies belief.
In a perverse way, despite all that she must have gone through (and one cannot even begin to fathom her experience), Dr Siddiqui is one of the fortunate ones, for she has ‘reappeared’. The less fortunate never return. Can one imagine what their families must endure? Imagine what happens to us when a father, brother, mother, sister, son or a daughter is late coming back from work or college. Imagine the anxiety and distress we go through until contact is made or the individual returns home.
Now imagine an individual who simply disappears with his/her family left in the dark about their whereabouts. As no judicial procedure is followed in the ‘arrest’ no authority needs to admit the existence of the individual. The suffering of the families is probably as severe as the torture of the ‘arrested’ individual. Many develop complicated mental health problems and grief reactions from which they never recover. Many die, waiting in vain for the disappeared to return. Imagine what Dr Siddiqui’s mother must have gone through over the last five years of her disappearance.
What lessons are we to learn from the desaparecidos of Argentina, Pakistan and other countries where this practice goes on? There are several: recognising an individual’s right to liberty; the right of presumed innocence until proven guilty; and the right of the accused to defend himself in a court of law. These are the foundational principles of any fair society.
The other important lesson is that we must avoid at all costs the dangerous precedent set in Argentina in 1976 (now practised in the US) that allows the chief executive or his designate to declare a person an ‘enemy combatant’ (or enemy of the state) without a judicial process.
The fundamental problem with such absolute power is that it allows repressive state authority to kidnap, detain, imprison, torture and execute anyone, without the right to defend himself, on mere suspicion. This is being followed by many repressive regimes and must be struck down.
The ‘disappeared’ are a blot on a nation’s conscience. They remind us that societies whose government treats citizens with disdain, do not respect their rights, abuse power and authority and deny them the right to justice and freedom, are all but doomed. Sixty-one years after independence, with hundreds of our citizens secretly kidnapped and tortured, we are experiencing this bitter lesson. Let’s hope it is not lost on us.
Courtesy Daily Dawn Lahore / By Murad M. Khan
Language and resistance
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…[L]anguage is the primary means through which we maintain or contest old meanings, and construct or resist new ones.
— Eckert and Ginet
LANGUAGE plays an active part in the construction of social reality. The vital linkage between knowledge and discourse has been elaborated by Foucault in his works Discipline and Punish and Archaeology of Knowledge.
According to him, knowledge and power strengthen and justify each other as constructed discourses lead to a certain kind of knowledge that in turn justifies those discourses. The dominant groups in society make use of language to construct desired social realities that favour them by ensuring their superiority in an apparently ‘objective’ manner.
According to Atanga, “Power also consists of occupancy of positions, which carry with them the power of command over others. Such occupancy is accompanied by specific language use and this language is the language of power.” Fairclough’s book, Language and Power, also underscores the central role of language in the politics of representation and the construction of social reality.
In all social institutions, the role of language is central to the process of socialisation and the acquisition of social knowledge. In all imperialistic initiatives, language has been exploited as a powerful and effective tool for hegemonic purposes. The language of dominant groups possesses certain perks and to enjoy those perks marginalised groups have to act according to the linguistic and cultural rules of the dominant ones. But strategically, the access to language is made conditional by the dominant groups.
Can marginalised groups challenge the hegemony of dominant groups? How can marginalised groups be empowered to identify the politics of representation? Is resistance through language possible? What changes are required in the existing practices of English Language Teaching (ELT)? These are some major questions taken up by this article. Foucault is of the opinion that power is in fact relationship which is largely structured by discourse.
According to Foucault, the powerful and powerless keep on changing during different points in history as this relationship is not fixed. This also means that points of resistance are available to marginalised groups to tilt the balance of power in their favour. There seems to be a constant struggle for the possession of discourse in order to possess or regain power.
Resistance to hegemony can be undertaken in different ways. Some may not be very effective. For instance, in the subcontinent a group of people, mostly conservative Muslim clerics, refused to learn English as it was the language of the colonisers. This cost them dearly in terms of jobs, etc.
Another response to hegemony, which seems to be more effective, could be to learn the language and resist through its use by reversing the discourse, as Foucault would call it. This approach requires us to familiarise ourselves with the discourse of the powerful and discern allied aspects of power in those structures. This identification is not possible if language is viewed and learnt as a neutral and passive phenomenon.
This has direct implications for the study of applied linguistics. Pennycook, in his book A Critical Introduction to Applied Linguistics, underlines the importance of studying language with its socio-political aspects dealing with questions of representation, politics and power. It is this critical study which empowers the learners to see the political use of language and the power structures constructed with the help of language. Fairclough proposes this empowerment through critical discourse analysis where learners are sensitised to see the power in the text and behind the text. The awareness of the political use of language may help learners get to the next step of actually negotiating meaning and using the discourse for putting up resistance.
ELT practices in India and Pakistan need to be revisited. There is a need to expose students to the potent relationship of language and power. The use of critical pedagogy in the teaching of English in our classrooms can bring about a qualitative change in the thinking patterns of students. They can revisit stereotypical concepts by unpacking them linguistically. There is also a need to make English teaching more interdisciplinary in order to understand some major concepts in a more holistic manner.
Canagarajah suggests that the “The redefinition of constructs such as subjecthood, culture, power and knowledge by resistance theories has enabled us to conceptualise the potential for teachers and students to negotiate power.” A critical approach to the teaching of language empowers students to challenge the familiar, popular and taken-for-granted meanings of words and concepts. Derrida’s notion of deconstruction is relevant to this discussion focusing on ‘delaying the meaning’ of the word by challenging its meaning and connotations.
The resistance to hegemony needs a more holistic approach towards language teaching, language learning and language use. Educational institutions can play an important role by making sure that gendered stereotypes are not validated by teachers in the classrooms. Equally important is the point that language should be taught in a critical way so that students are able to challenge stereotypes based on ‘common sense’ and those ‘taken for granted’. The process of resistance should not be left to marginalised groups only; civil society too needs to play a role to encourage and facilitate this process. Similarly, marginalised groups also need to reach out to social networking. Chomsky says, “Organisation has its effects. It means that you discover that you’re not alone. Others have the same thoughts that you do. You can reinforce your thoughts and learn more about what you think and believe. These are very informal movements, not like a membership organisations, just a mood that involves interactions among people.”
Can we begin to empower the students in our educational institutions through critical pedagogy in ELT and challenge gendered stereotypes in the shape of sayings, proverbs, jokes, songs, etc.?
The writer is director of the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.
Courtesy Daily Dawn Lahore / By Dr Shahid Siddiqui
Health begins in school
A RECENT workshop in Islamabad attended by both educators and health professionals unveiled a project entitled School Health Initiative of Pakistan (SHIP), expected to be launched next month. If successfully implemented, SHIP could represent our first concrete effort to promote the health of children and adolescents in public and private schools through an integrated school health service programme. Investing in a national school health programme is tantamount to investing in Pakistan’s future and in the capacity of Pakistanis to thrive economically and as a society. Yet, despite international recognition of the importance of promoting health through prevention in schools, and the adoption of school health programmes in many countries — even before WHO launched the Global School Health Initiative in 1995 — we have been lagging behind in this effort. An attempt was made in the late 1980s and the 1990s to launch a school health services programme. The Seventh Five-Year Plan had recommended that all children have a complete medical check-up when they enter school and a comprehensive quarterly check-up as long as they remain in school. The Eighth Five-Year Plan was in favour of the programme being reoriented towards developing healthy lifestyles among schoolchildren. Neither initiative, however, managed to take off. Even the umbrella approach for the country’s overall social development, the Social Action Plan, did not define a recognisable role for school health services. Although certain public institutions — like special education institutions and cadet colleges — and some private schools had implemented their own school health service, these did not amount to a national strategic plan for school health provision.
Among the reasons behind our failure so far to launch a school health service programme are inadequate vision and acceptance, lack of infrastructure including financial, human and material resources as well as organising mechanisms, and inadequate collaboration and coordination among the ministries and agencies addressing health in schools. For SHIP to succeed where previous initiatives have failed, the programme must be well designed, monitored and evaluated to ensure its successful implementation and its intended outcomes. Equally important is the development of clear-cut policies, guidelines and even legislation on such a school health programme, as well as effective coordination among the relevant ministries, notably the ministries of education and health, participating private and non-governmental health and educational concerns and international donor and support agencies. Without all these, SHIP is unlikely to float notwithstanding its noble objectives.
Courtesy Daily Dawn Lahore
Nepal Maoist leader sworn in as PM
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The leader of Nepal’s Maoists, Prachanda, was sworn in as prime minister of the new republic on Monday, finalising his transformation from warlord to the country’s most powerful politician.
The former rebel chief was overwhelmingly voted in as Nepal’s new premier on Friday by lawmakers in the constitutional assembly, which in May abolished the unpopular 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.
“I will remain faithful to the nation and my countrymen, and promise in the name of the people that I will remain faithful to the sovereign nation of Nepal,” he said in his oath of office.
Prachanda’s real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, but he chooses to go by a nom-de-guerre meaning “fierce one.” Dressed in a grey suit and tie and wearing a traditional Nepali cap, the ex-rebel leader — once Nepal’s most-wanted man — looked at ease as he was feted by a guard of honour and watched by an large audience of dignitaries, among them scores of foreign diplomats.
A Nepal Army band played the new republic’s national anthem at the function, which was held in the lush gardens of the president’s office and residence in central Kathmandu.
After the oath had been read and he had signed the document, Prachanda visibly relaxed and smiled as he received congratulations from Nepal’s new president, politicians and foreign ambassadors.
“The priority is to take this peace process to a logical end,” Prachanda told reporters in his new office shortly after the swearing-in ceremony.
“I will also create an environment conducive to constitution-drafting which will be our first priority,” he said.
The ultra-leftists are still in negotiations with their political allies over the make-up of the incoming government.
“We are in talks with members of the alliance and will form a government as soon as possible,” Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara said.
The Maoists and their allies are still haggling over the distribution of ministerial portfolios, local media has reported.
Prachanda, a former school teacher, led a decade-long insurgency against the monarchy that claimed at least 13,000 lives before signing up for peace in 2006, when he vowed to renounce violence and embrace multi-party democracy.
The Maoists won the elections to the new constitutional assembly in April, positioning themselves to push through what they vow will be a radical programme of reform in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Nepal is desperate for financial assistance to help it recover from the civil war that devastated the economy.
“We have huge responsibilities ahead,” said the Maoist spokesman.
“We have to restructure the state. People have high hopes for us, and we will not let the people down.” High on the new government’s agenda will be swiftly tackling crippling fuel and food shortages as well as bringing about “socio-economic transformation through land reform.”
The Maoist-led government will be in charge of drafting a new constitution and establishing a ministerial body to address the fate of 19,000 Maoist guerrillas confined to camps as part of the 2006 peace deal.
A major challenge will be how to implement plans to integrate them into the former Royal Nepal army.
Law and order has also deteriorated across the country, particularly in the southern Terai region, where violent unrest has been simmering for two years.—AFP
Rate your tutor
AS feedback goes it’s a bit on the harsh side. “She is very kind and can be helpful but, boy, is she insane. The insanity leads to volatility sometimes which leads to her being not very kind.”
Welcome to ratemyprofessors.com — the website which lets students grade their tutors. It has been the scourge of university professors in the United States and now it has reached Britain and is being embraced by undergraduates. Nearly 1,300 British academics have been ranked on the website, where they are marked on “easiness”, “helpfulness”, “clarity” — and whether they are “hot”.
Some of the comments which accompany the marks are controversial to say the least. One tutor is described as: “Arrogant, rude, unhelpful and supremely egotistical. His specialist field is himself.” Another is damned with: “Ignores her students mostly, a very false personality and especially when handing out praise. Incredibly patronising and not very bright.”
Comments are posted anonymously. This has led to comments such as “bring a pillow”, “not only is the book a better teacher, it also has a better personality”, and “Boring. But I learned that there are 137 tiles on the ceiling.”
Ratemyprofessor.com has received around six million postings about 750,000 academics since 1999. Since it was extended to cover England, Scotland and Wales, the number of British lecturers on the site has reached 1,284. However, the ratings have been controversial, with academics protesting about bullying and derogatory comments.
One of the main criticisms has been that there is no way to tell if a comment comes from a vindictive student, a student happy about getting an A on an otherwise disappointing course — or the academic themselves. And academics complain that idle disaffected students have as much say as diligent ones.
A study of the ratings, conducted by James Felton, professor of finance at Central Michigan University, found that “the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher”. His research warned that at their worst, ratings are “not much removed from graffiti on the walls of restrooms”.
However, new research published this month in the journal Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education suggested that the ratings may not be biased.
But Sally Hunt, general secretary of UCU, the lecturers’ union, said: “All staff and students have the right to work free from intimidation. Online gossip might seem harmless but it can lead to serious bullying. If students have concerns about lecturers, they should go through proper channels. Universities need to consult unions regarding any policies they wish to produce in this area.”
Courtesy: The Independent, London / By Sarah Cassidy
Life in Pakistan without the general
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THE political demise of the president of Pakistan will have repercussions well beyond the humid corridors of Islamabad.
Last week, violence flared up throughout Pakistan: suicide bombers struck in the east, hundreds died as the army launched new offensives against radical Muslim militants, 100 or so miles to the west, there were riots across the border in Indian Kashmir and bombs, and the customary rockets and battles in Afghanistan.
“It is clear that we are on the brink of a major change that goes well beyond the end of another cycle of civilian-military rule in Pakistan,” said one Islamabad-based western diplomat.
The changes in Pakistan over the past decade are manifest. This weekend tens of millions followed events on the country’s scores of new local language television channels — predominantly Urdu, the national tongue, but in minority Sindhi, Punjabi and Pashto, too. None existed a decade ago. The vociferous and hugely popular talk shows have politicised swaths of the population.
For those without televisions, the now ubiquitous ‘one rupee a minute’ mobile phones will act as a secondary conduit of information. In the growing cities — a recent study revealed that more than 50 per cent of Pakistanis now live in towns of more than 5,000 people — the effects of the long economic boom of the Musharraf years has broadened the middle classes. The irony is that Musharraf instigated the changes, such as the liberalisation of the media and the economy, that have led to his downfall.
The 65-year-old general took power nine years ago in a bloodless coup, ousting Prime Minister Sharif.
The summer of 1999 had seen a series of corruption scandals breaking around Sharif and his family, a short, vicious and disastrous war with India in Kashmir, and an economy in freefall. One by one Sharif and his cronies corrupted, co-opted, imprisoned, exiled or intimidated almost all who could act as constraints on their power.
But when Sharif attempted to replace Musharraf, the head of Pakistan’s immensely powerful military, he went too far. As the general circled in a passenger jet above Karachi, forbidden to land and running out of fuel, loyal army commanders moved swiftly to secure the country.
“The Pakistani Army always has updated plans for a war in Kashmir, for an Indian invasion, and for taking control of government,” one retired senior officer said recently. “We just dusted off the right file and it was over in hours.”
Sharif was arrested, tried for treason and exiled to Saudi Arabia. He made no secret of his desire for vengeance. Eight years later it looks he has got it.
The coup had broad domestic support and Musharraf found himself back in international favour after the 9/11 attacks when, after some deliberation, he pledged his support in the ‘war on terror’. A flood of diplomatic, military and financial aid followed. And until spring last year, Musharraf seemed unassailable.
The threat to Musharraf came from two directions. The first was from the Islamic militants.
The surge of militant violence was partly a result of the fallout from the war on terror globally although incompetence also played a large part. Demoralised soldiers or policemen were sent repeatedly against enemies they were ill-equipped to fight, in campaigns with little strategic direction or consistency.
Overseas, the president appeared incapable of fighting even Pakistani militants, let alone the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which had based itself in the country he supposedly governed. American officials asked themselves if he really was the right man to be receiving billions of dollars of aid.
Here a second shift in Pakistan in recent years was important: the reassertion of a more confident and aggressive national and religious identity, which translates into a much less deferential attitude to the West.
The other threat to the former president came in the unlikely shape of Pakistan’s lawyers. Their protest was sparked when Musharraf moved to suspend the chief justice last year — a big mistake. Protests spread as for the first time, Pakistan’s middle classes turned against the man they had once supported. A manipulated election, a state of emergency and a continuing crackdown on the media brought reinforcements from journalists and intellectuals. A new ‘civil society’ movement appeared.
The two major parties, the PPP and the PML-N, recognised the need for uniting against the common enemy. But, given the changes in Pakistan, it seems likely that Sharif will be the long-term winner. And in a democracy the government reflects the culture, the attitude and the beliefs of the people. They may not be those the West hoped to see.
Courtesy: The Guardian, London / By Jason Burke
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