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Cricket - Sports

Saturday, August 31, 2013

DWS, Sunday 25th August to Saturday 31st August 2013


DWS, Sunday 25th August to Saturday 31st August 2013
The DAWN Wire Service (DWS) is a free weekly news-service from Pakistan's largest English language newspaper, the daily DAWN. DWS offers news, analysis and features of particular interest to the Pakistani Community on the Internet. DWS is sent by e-mail every Saturday.

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NATIONAL NEWS

Hakeemullah, Muawiya at odds over talks

Bureau Report

PESHAWAR, Aug 24: The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan on Saturday fired the head of the Punjabi Taliban for welcoming the government’s offer of peace talks..
The sacked leader, Asmatullah Muawiya, said the TTP had no authority to remove him.
The TTP’s recently-installed spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, told media that its central Shura, which met under its chief, Hakeemullah, took serious notice of Muawiya’s statement and decided that he had no relations with the umbrella organisation representing Pakistani militant groups.
Shahid said that the Shura had removed Muawiya and would soon name his successor to head the Punjabi Taliban. “He is respectable to us, but he has no relation with the TTP,” the spokesman said.
He further said that while the TTP did not appreciate the government’s threat of use of force, it would nonetheless mull over the peace talks offer and respond to it later.
Asmatullah Muawiya responded immediately, saying the TTP had no authority to remove him. He said that the Punjabi Taliban was an independent group and had its own Shura to decide matters.
The row between the two militant groups erupted after Thursday’s statement by the head of the Punjabi Taliban, welcoming Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s “political maturity” by offering peace talks.
In a letter issued to local newspapers, Muawiya had asked the government to introduce Sharia laws and end its alliance with the United States.
Earlier, he had also praised the government for staying the execution of three militants, including his close associate Dr Usman, convicted and sentenced to death for his involvement in the attack on General Headquarters in Rawalpindi four years ago.
The statement had followed a threat to the government that execution of any militant would be regarded as a “declaration of war”.
But security officials familiar with the state of militancy in Pakistan said the row between the two militant groups would not change anything on the ground. “At the tactical level, there may not be any change”, the official said.
He said those claiming that the row reflected a rift within Pakistani militant groups did not know much about the situation on the ground. He said the Punjabi Taliban was an independent group that had a loose association with the TTP, but was not part of the umbrella organisation.
“Punjabi Taliban is an independent group that plans and operates independently. It will make no impact. It does not make any difference”, the official added.
Punjabi Taliban, a group of what the official described as “hardcore, well-trained, sophisticated one hundred and fifty to two hundred militants”, was heavily involved in operations inside Pakistan. “They are involved in classic operations, ala Al Qaeda,” the official said. “The matrix is, however, different.”
“The only reason they have had association with each other is because both the groups co-habit North Waziristan”, the official observed.

Curfew imposed in Bhakkar

By Khursheed Anwar Khan

MIANWALI, Aug 24: An indefinite curfew has been clamped on Darya Khan and Kotla Jam, the two areas of Bhakkar district that saw sectarian clashes during which 10 people were killed on Friday .
All educational institutions and government offices in the district remained closed and no traffic was allowed on the Bhakkar-Darya Khan and Kotla Jam-Dera Ismail Khan roads on Saturday.
Sources in the Bhakkar district headquarters hospital confirmed that 10 bodies had been brought for post mortem. Four critically injured people were referred to Multan’s Nishtar Hospital.
Tension persisted in the district despite deployment of police and Rangers in troubled areas.
Police reserves from neighbouring districts and Rangers from Dera Ismail Khan were called in by the district administration on Friday evening to control the situation.
The confrontation between activists of the Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) started after the murder of Ghulam Mohammad, a shopkeeper, in Bhakkar town on Tuesday.
ASWJ activists placed his body on a road and blocked traffic. They alleged that the MWM was involved in the murder and threatened to observe a strike if police failed to arrest the killers within 48 hours. Police registered a case against two unknown men.
A complete strike was observed in the district on Friday protesters took out a procession on the town’s main road.
When participants pf the procession, led by the ASWJ general secretary Maulana Manzoor Okasha, were returning to Darya Khan after a demonstration, unknown people opened fire at them near Hussaini Chowk in Kotla Jam. Two protesters, Imran Shah and Safdar Shah, were injured and Imran later died in a hospital.
All shops in Darya Khan were closed after the killing.
A fierce crossfire started in Darya Khan and Kotla Jam and continued till late in the night.
Nine of the dead were stated to be activists of the ASWJ and MWM. A passer-by, Kamran, was killed in the crossfire in Darya Khan.
The Darya Khan police registered three cases on different complaints against unknown persons and also booked Maulana Okasha for abetment.
A prominent leader of the MWM, Amin Mashadi, arrived in Bhakkar in the morning from Karachi to lead the funeral prayers of three slain activists.
Six slain activists of the ASWJ were not buried till Saturday night because the organisation’s leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi was stopped in Layyah, due to security reasons, when he was going from Multan to Darya Khan to lead the funeral prayers.
Maulana Okasha said the burial would take place after the arrival of Maulana Ludhianvi. He complained that the district administration had allowed a central MWM leader to visit Bhakkar but had banned the entry of the ASWJ leader.
Talking to Dawn, PML-N MPA from Darya Khan Najeebullah Khan Niazi said he and MPA Ghazanfar Cheena from Bhakkar had been instructed by Punjab chief minister to reach Bhakkar to pacify the situation.

BHC disallows transfer of Bugti case to Rawalpindi

By Amanullah Kasi

QUETTA, Aug 24: The Balochistan High Court dismissed on Saturday a petition filed by former president Pervez Musharraf for shifting his trial in the Akbar Bugti murder case from Quetta to Rawalpindi..
A single bench, comprising BHC Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, directed the provincial authorities to provide full security to retired General Musharraf during his appearance before the court in Quetta.
Akbar Bugti was killed during an army operation in 2006.
Earlier, the assistant advocate general of Balochistan requested the court to allow the provincial government to withdraw an application filed by the caretaker provincial set-up for the transfer of the Bugti murder case to Rawalpindi for security reasons.
He told the court that the provincial government had the capability to provide security to Gen Musharraf.
The court allowed the provincial government to withdraw the application.
Ilyas Siddiqui, Pervez Musharraf’s lawyer, submitted before the court that his client’s petition for transfer of the case should be accepted because he had received threats to his life.
Sohail Rajput, a counsel for Jamil Bugti, son of Akbar Bugti, opposed the petition.
AFP adds: “The court has dismissed our petition saying it is not maintainable,” Mr Siddiqui said. “We had requested that Musharraf has serious security threats in Balochistan so his case should be shifted from the province, but the judge did not agree,” he said.

Govt determined to tackle terrorism: PM

By Waseem Shamsi

SUKKUR, Aug 24: Terrorism was the biggest spectre haunting the nation and the government was determined to tackle it head-on, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said here on Saturday. .
“My government has been holding negotiations with all stakeholders in order to evolve a consensus. We will ensure its implementation in all respects,” Mr Sharif said during a visit to flood-affected areas of Sukkur and Ghotki districts.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and some officials of the Sindh government accompanied Mr Sharif to Sukkur and Ghotki.
Turning to the flood havoc, the prime minister said the federal government would help all the provinces to overcome the flood losses and that he had directed the authorities to prepare a report on the destruction caused by the disaster.
Referring to possibility of more rains and floods next month, Mr Sharif said: “I have advised Qaim Ali Shah to start putting in place precautionary measures in order to minimise the damage from rains in September.”
The Sindh government had also been asked to fix responsibility for the “inadequate contingency measures” despite timely warnings by the flood forecasting centre, he added.
“The well-being of the people of Sindh is dear to me. The federal government will not leave them alone in their hour of need,” Mr Sharif said.
He said it was the duty of the provincial government, as well as the centre, to help the homeless by providing them food, medicine and shelter.
Later Mr Sharif visited a camp at Qadirpur and distributed relief goods among people affected by floods.
DISENCHANTMENT? The absence of big names of the Sindh PML-N like Ghous Ali Shah, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto and Liaquat Ali Jatoi from the events arranged for the premier set off speculations that all was not well within the provincial chapter of the party.
The only prominent face seen with Mr Sarif was that of Saleem Zia, the party’s secretary general in Sindh.
Workers of the PML-N had their own complaints. They said none of them was allowed to meet Nawaz Sharif either at Sukkur or Ghotki.
APP adds: The prime minister directed all provincial governments to enhance their preparedness to meet flood threats in case of more rains next month and ensure measures for relief and rehabilitation of the affected populace.
He said that besides Sindh, the recent rains had also affected Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and some parts of Balochistan.
He said several families had been shifted to safe places as their villages had been inundated.
The prime minister took an aerial view of the flood-hit areas in Ghotki and distributed relief goods among the affected people.
During a briefing on the flood situation, the authorities concerned complained to the prime minister about a shortage of funds to improve the canal system and protect the embankments.
Earlier on arrival at the Sukkur Airport, the prime minister was received by Sindh chief minister.

Nasir Khosa to replace Raja’s son-in-law at World Bank

By Mubarak Zeb Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: The government has appointed Nasir Mahmood Khosa as executive director at the World Bank in Washington..
He will replace Raja Azeemul Haq, son-in-law of former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.
Mr Khosa, who is retiring on Sept 14, was recently posted as secretary to the prime minister. He has served as chief secretary of Punjab and Balochistan.
The post at the World Bank fell vacant after resignation of Mr Haq two months ago. Mr Haq remained on the post for almost six months.
After his appointment, Mr Haq had landed in legal tussle which led to his resignation from the coveted post.
A Finance Ministry official said on Saturday the Economic Affairs Division had sent a summary of three career officers — Nasir Mahmood Khosa, Javed Iqbal and Ghulaam Dastageer — to the prime minister for the appointment. The prime minister selected Mr Khosa, he added.
According to the official, Mr Khosa enjoys respect in international diplomatic community. He said all codal formalities were fulfilled before his selection.
In December, the then prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf appointed Mr Haq to the post. At the time Mr Haq was working as an additional secretary at the Prime Minister Secretariat.
However, the appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court along with his out-of-turn promotion to Grade 21.
The case is still pending.
The Executive Directive at the World Bank represents constituency of seven nations on the bank’s board — Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana and Algeria.

Strike in Balochistan towns against dumping of bodies

By Our Correspondent

QUETTA, Aug 24: A strike was observed in Panjgur, Gwadar, Turbat and some other towns in Balochistan on Saturday in protest against the murder of Baloch political workers allegedly by agencies. .
The strike was called by the Baloch National Front (BNF) to condemn the dumping of bullet-riddled bodies of Haji Abdul Razzak Baloch and Pathan Bugti.
All main trading centres and shops remained closed in the striking towns.
The BNF claimed that Razzak Baloch, the information secretary of Baloch National Movement, was kidnapped a few months ago by the personnel of intelligence agencies and Pathan Bugti was picked up from Hub town.
It said that kidnappings and extrajudicial killings were aimed to undermine the Baloch political movement but declared that the struggle against the ‘oppressors’ would continue till the defeat of “exploiters who are looting the resources of Balochistan”.

Obama consults security aides over Syria options

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Aug 24: US President Barack Obama met his top security team on Saturday to consider options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government this week, as media reported the United States could launch cruise missiles at targets inside Syria. .
The president’s senior military advisers, including Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey, attended the meeting and were believed to have various military options available for strikes at Syrian targets.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, who were both abroad, participated through a video link.
Later, White House officials told reporters that Mr Obama discussed “a range of options” with his security advisers and that the US would “act very deliberately” and in a manner “consistent with our national interest”. They refused to give details.
Earlier on Saturday, CBS News reported that the Pentagon was making the initial preparations for a cruise missile attack on Syrian forces.
Potential targets included command bunkers and launchers allegedly used to fire chemical weapons, the report added, noting that launching cruise missiles from the sea was less risky than other options. It would not risk any American lives.
“It would be a punitive strike designed not to topple Syrian President Bashir al-Assad but to convince him he cannot get away with using chemical weapons,” CBS reported quoting senior Pentagon officials.
The Syrian opposition claims that government forces had used chemical weapons against civilian targets in Damascus earlier this week.
The Syrian government has rejected the claim, saying the opposition forces used the weapons that caused the death of between 500 and 100 people.
On Friday, Defence Secretary Hagel told reporters that the Pentagon was moving naval forces closer to Syria in preparation for a possible decision by President Obama to order military strikes.
Mr Hagel declined to describe any specific movements of US forces.
He said Mr Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria and that some of those options “requires positioning our forces”.
But the CBS also warned that this was only “initial preparation” because President Obama had not yet given the green light for the attack.
The president, however, has asked Syria to allow a UN team to inspect the site of the reported attack to determine what
happened.
He also has asked his intelligence staff to prepare a report for him.
CBS reported that US intelligence personnel detected activity at known Syrian chemical weapons sites in the days before the attack. At the time that did not appear out of the ordinary. But now it is part of the circumstantial evidence pointing towards an attack, according to the report.
The US media also reported that the US Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.
US Navy ships provide a variety of military options, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

Afghan minister due today for talks with Dar

By Our Reporte

ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: Afghan Finance Minister Dr Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal is arriving here on Sunday to hold talks with Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar on the economic agenda to be discussed during the forthcoming visit of President Hamid Karzai to Pakistan, it was officially announced on Saturday..
The Afghan president is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday.
Afghan Ambassador Muhammad Umer Daudzai met Senator Dar on Saturday to discuss details about Dr Zakhilwal’s visit. While they discussed the visit, Mr Dar told the Afghan ambassador he looked forward to meeting the Afghan finance minister.
The two ministers are likely to explore and discuss areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.
Later, Mr Dar chaired an inter-ministerial meeting to finalise the issues to be taken up in his talks with the Afghan finance minister.
The two countries have already agreed to enhance bilateral trade to $5 billion by 2015 from the current $2.5bn. Issues relating to transit trade between the two countries in the light of Afghan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement will also be discussed by the two finance ministers.
Informed sources said that cooperation in sectors like communication, railways, engineering, education, culture and tourism are expected to be discussed during the talks.
The two sides will also review the status of development projects such as CASA1000 power transmission project between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India gas pipeline project.

Secretary sought free air tickets after ban

By Iftikhar A. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: Defence Secretary retired Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik tried to get free international and domestic air tickets for himself and other members of his family through four “back-dated” letters a day after a reconstituted PIA board decided last month to scrap all perks and privileges of the present and past chairmen and members, according to documents. .
The first letter received by the PIA secretary sought authority for issuance of free tickets for Mr Malik as ex-chairman of the airline, his spouse, son and daughter for the Islamabad-London/ Manchester-New York-Lahore-Islamabad route.
The facility for travelling from Islamabad to Paris and back was sought with 95pc discount for himself and the three family members in the second letter.
Authority for issuance of tickets from Islamabad to Lahore and back on 95pc discount for the four members of the family was sought through a third letter.
The fourth letter sought the authority for issuance of free air tickets for Islamabad to Karachi and back for the wife, son and daughter.
The decision to do away with the practice of issuance of free air tickets to the sitting and former chairmen and members of the PIA board was taken on July 11 at the first meeting of the reconstituted board.
All the four letters were received in the office of the PIA secretary on July 12 and were recorded as per the standard procedure under diary numbers 5,416 to 5,419.
When contacted, defence secretary’s personal staff officer Col Sher Ahmad Khan, whose signature the four letters carried, said the tickets were never issued.
He conceded that the letters had been written, but said the decision of the board was not in the knowledge of the secretariat and, therefore, the tickets had been claimed as a matter of right.
He added that the decision had yet to be officially conveyed to the defence secretariat.
Meanwhile, although the month of July 2013 is typed on the top of all the letters, the date ‘10’ has been added by hand.
Analysts believe that the free tickets dolled out by the management of the airline are among the factors responsible for the continuous decline of the national carrier.
As many as 300,170 free air tickets were issued in 2011, 287,412 in 2012 and 82,978 in the first quarter of the current year by the PIA management.

Senate to debate judges’ appointment tomorrow

By Amir Wasim

ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: The Senate is set to debate on Monday the crucial issue of the appointment of judges in the superior courts on a motion moved by PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar..
It will be for the first time that a full house will be debating the issue since parliament was given a role through the 18th Amendment in the appointment of judges through a Parliamentary Committee with equal representation of the government and opposition from both the National Assembly and the Senate.
Voices have been raised in parliament, particularly by legislators from the PPP and ANP, complaining about ineffectiveness of the committee in the nomination process.
Besides parliament, the lawyers’ bodies have also shown their reservations over the ongoing process of appointments.
The vice chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), Qalbe Hassan, said the lawyers’ bodies wanted more representation of the bar in the Judicial Commission (JC) through another amendment to the constitution.
Moreover, he added, the PBC planned to file a petition seeking review of all the appointments recently made by the JC in which the judges, particularly the chief justice, were playing a dominant role.
Talking to Dawn, Senator Babar said that besides the Parliamentary Committee, the president and the prime minister also had no role in the appointment of judges. He said President Asif Ali Zardari had filed a constitutional reference before the Supreme Court seeking opinion on several questions of law, including the proper role of the JC, the Parliamentary Committee and the president in the appointment of judges.
The SC ruling, he said, had literally reduced the offices of the president and the prime minister to mere post offices.
He said another aspect of the matter was that nominations for appointment of judges could only be initiated by the chief justices of Pakistan and the high courts and no other member of the JC could do so.
Thus, he said, the law minister, the attorney general and the representative of PBC, who were members of the JC, could not float names.
He said the PBC had agitated the matter and demanded amendments to the rules to enable its representative to initiate names for the appointments.
For this reason, the PBC, the law minister and the attorney general had also recently declined to attend the meetings of the JC, he said.
Mr Babar, who is also the spokesman for President Zardari, said the presidential reference had sought opinion on whether any member of the JC could initiate names. The court said the rules provided for nominations to be initiated by the CJP or the CJs of high courts and the Federal Shariat Court, but did not give authoritative opinion on the substantive question of law.
Asked why he did not raise the issue when his party was in power, Mr Babar said any change in law or constitution required to be given some time to see its effectiveness or implications. He further said he was unable to raise the matter forcefully because of his association with the presidency. “Now I am about to be relieved from this position and would be in a position to raise the matter as a parliamentarian in an effective manner.
He said the manner of appointment of judges was central to the independence of the judiciary that raised a legitimate question whether the independence was best guaranteed by vesting the power in the hands of judge members of the JC alone or it needed to be diffused among the bench, bar, parliament, president and prime minister. He said time had come for a parliamentary debate on the issue.
Besides Mr Babar, PPP Senator Saeed Ghani and Zahid Khan and Haji Adeel of the ANP recently raised the issue while speaking on points of order in the Senate.
Speaking on a point of order on Aug 22, Mr Babar had expressed concern over the SC’s order to the government to draft legislation in respect of the Federal Service Tribunal (FST) and get it passed by parliament.
He was of the view that the judiciary was independent but its independence was from the executive and it could not be stretched too far to mean independence from the law and the constitution.
The PPP leader said the time had come for parliament to rise and say no to any institution that sought to abridge its role and trespassed its domain against the letter and spirit of the constitution.

PM links country’s progress to Gadani power project

HUB, Aug 24: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif directed the authorities concerned on Saturday to take all measures for completion of the 6,600MW Gadani power park project on a fast-track basis..
Presiding over a meeting of the Gadani Power Park Steering Committee here at Gadani, he said development hinged on the completion of this project.
The project will comprise 10 power plants of 660MW each and it is estimated to cost around $14 billion.
Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Minister for Water and Power Khwaja Mohammad Asif, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Energy Mussadiq Malik and Shaukat Tareen also attended the meeting.
The prime minister was informed that work would start in March and the first power plant would be installed by the government after which foreign investors would build the rest on build-own-operate and transfer basis.
The Pakistan Power and Infrastructure Board will select independent power producers through international bidding.
Mr Sharif informed the meeting that China had expressed interest in installing four power plants.
He called for simplification of procedures for awarding projects to companies in a transparent manner.
The prime minister was informed that the Balochistan government would provide 5,000 acres of land for the power park that would be connected with a 7km jetty to bring in 20 million tonnes of coal.
He was told that the Pakistan Power Park Management Company had been incorporated to carry out the infrastructural work of the project and seed money of Rs1bn had been allocated for the company.
He directed Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to approach the World Bank to arrange funding for the project.
The minister said private companies could also manage the same on their own from their respective financial institutions.
Mr Sharif said the project should be duly publicised to make private investors aware of it and directed the finance minister to arrange a briefing for local bankers.
The water and power secretary assured the prime minister that the project would be completed on a fast-track basis.
The meeting approved Balochistan government’s participation in the project as an equity partner.
Chief Minister Malik Baloch, who is a member of the committee, assured the meeting of his government’s full support for a successful and timely completion of the project. He offered to invest beyond the agreed equity and become a bigger partner in the project.—APP

Import of LNG faces fresh hurdles

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Controversies over the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) seem to be a never-ending game even after the passage of five years and an expenditure of $5 billion in additional oil imports. .
A fresh tender for the import of 500 million cubic feet of LNG has been questioned at the very outset by former and prospective bidders. They see the request for proposals (RFP) sought by Inter State Gas Systems (ISGS) in conflict with the country’s procurement rules and apparently favouring a single party.
Simultaneously, a controversy is still brewing among the board of directors of Sui Southern Gas Company over the reported cancellation on Aug 17 of another tender for 500mmcfd of LNG in which a single bid was evaluated.
Informed sources said an influential group within the SSGC board was now questioning the majority decision of cancellation of bidding results of LNG Retrofit project and trying to call a fresh board meeting to undo an earlier decision taken by it with a vote of 6 to 5. The other group is reported to have decided to provide recording of the proceedings to courts of law.
Documents available with Dawn suggest that a major contender to most of the previous LNG biddings has openly questioned the tender issued by ISGC that seemed to be on behalf of SSGCL.
“The RFP lacks clarity on the procuring agency for the LNG services and the roles of SSGC and ISGS”, said Global Energy International in a letter to ISGS — a public sector company set up for natural gas import projects.
It said the ISGS was defined in the RFP as guiding the procurement services and SSGC as company providing letter of credit for LNG services even though PPRA (Public Procurement Regulatory Authority) rules distinctively put forth the rights and obligations of procuring agency but in this case the procuring agency (SSGC) was not the advertising agency and hence “may constitute a violation of PPRA rules”.
DEVIATION FROM POLICY: The Global Energy of Turkey said the requirement in the RFP to transport LNG by terminal operator or owner was in conflict with LNG Policy 2011. It said shipping/transportation was a distinct separate activity from
re-gasification services (which include berthing and unloading of LNG carrier to terminal vessel, conversion from liquid to gas and delivery of LNG to designated point).
“Bundling re-gasification and shipping may constitute a violation of PPRA rule 10 & 32 which call for widest possible specification.” This bundling is also not in accordance with LNG Policy 2011 which specifies storage, re-gasification and transportation of LNG as the only responsibilities of the terminal operator. “It seems that the tender has been designed with a pre-determined proposal/project design in mind” and hence a violation of PPRA Rule 4.
Moreover, the Global Energy pointed out that LPG Company was a wholly owned subsidiary of SSGC specified in the current tender for retrofitting of LNG terminal for supply of 500mmcfd and, hence, responsible for all terminal and post costs, pilot fees, tug fees and marine costs.
While the contract for terminal services is for 20 years, the ISGS tender for supply of LNG was for 10 years, which seemed to be in breach of rule 32 of the PPRA rules 2004.
It said the requirement to put the responsibility on the LNG operator to transport LNG was discriminatory because the Economic Coordination Committee had directed all the public sector entities to use PNSC vessels, but instead of following the directive, it was trying to put the transportation responsibility on others.
Also, the SSGC and ISGC are committing on behalf of the government to make capacity payments (throughput guarantees) without any LNG supply contract which is likely to be uneconomical, become a very sensitive issue and invite judicial intervention. It said the tender was also not clear about LNG supply — whether it was 400mmcfd initially or 500mmcfd and then 625 MMCFD.
While the company had also raised questions about price evaluation criteria that was in conflict with LNG Policy, it said a high variation in Wobbe Index (low local BTU/higher for LNG imports) from spiked supply “will most likely blow turbines and other industrial equipment in Pakistan”.

Pakistan, Afghanistan mull over power project on Kunar River

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Pakistan and Afghanistan are moving towards joint management of common rivers starting with construction of a 1,500MW hydropower project on Kunar River — a major tributary of Kabul River contributing almost 13 million acres feet (MAF) annually to Pakistan. .
The two sides decided at a meeting on Sunday to pursue the matter on technical and political forums over the next two days as part of, and on the sidelines of, President Hamid Karzai’s visit on Monday, sources told Dawn.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and his Afghan counterpart Dr Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal led their respective delegations and “held an in-depth discussion to explore ways to enhance bilateral trade and economic relations” between the two neighbours, according to an official statement.
Beginning with cooperation on 1,500MW hydropower project on Kunar River, the two sides are likely to progress towards the Kabul River Basin Management Commission — an institutional arrangement on the pattern of Indus Waters Commission between Pakistan and India, the sources said.
“The beginning has been very good. Finance Minister Dar raised the issue and Dr Zakhilwal was very positive and forthcoming on joint development of a mega hydropower project,” the sources confirmed.
Pakistan gets about 17 per cent of water supply from Kabul River when Indus flows decline in winter. Pakistan and Afghanistan share nine rivers with annual flows of about 18.3 MAF. Out of this, Kabul River has water flows of 16.5 MAF, to which Chitral River, originating in Pakistan, contributes about 8.5 MAF. After entering Afghanistan, Chitral River becomes Kunar River, joins Kabul River near Jalalabad and then re-enters Pakistan.
The average annual flow of Kabul River is about 21 billion cubic meters (BCM). Kunar River, with a major contribution of 75pc in Kabul flows, draws more than 60pc of water from the Chitral area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Islamabad has been worried over New Delhi’s increased help to Kabul for development of a number of storages on Kabul River without addressing Pakistan’s concerns. Pakistan had previously hinted at diverting Chitral River before its entry into Afghanistan in the event of attempts made to deprive it of its due share.
The United States and the World Bank have been encouraging Islamabad and Kabul for more than four years now to have an institutional arrangement for beneficial sharing of common waters. The World Bank had in fact offered finances and services as an ‘honest broker’ to help two neighbours in joint water management under a bilateral treaty on the pattern of Pak-India Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.
The lending agency that had brokered the Pak-India treaty and later helped Pakistan in development of Mangla and Tarbela dams has already done necessary work, including arrangement of about $12m from five other lenders to finance at least four technical studies and the negotiation process.
“It is in the bank’s financial clout and its worldwide experience that provides the necessary incentives for reaching a trans-boundary agreement and paving the way for its successful implementation,” and promote crucial dialogue and cooperation for economic development and security in the region, said a World Bank communication seeking support from the two neighbours.
According to the official statement, the two finance ministers agreed to overcome hurdles to exploit the tremendous economic potential which presents opportunities to enhance economic cooperation, trade and greater connectivity between the two countries. The two sides held discussions on cooperation in areas of communications, railways, Afghan transit trade agreement and the power sector.
Mr Dar also took up the matter of the need for a double taxation treaty between the two countries for encouraging private sector investment.
The Afghan finance minister welcomed the proposal and termed it positive and said Pakistani construction companies have experience in undertaking huge infrastructure projects which should be utilised by Pakistani firms to avail the opportunity to work in Afghanistan where the government had launched huge communication projects.
The two sides agreed to hold a meeting of the Joint Economic Commission in Kabul in October to review the implementation status of the decisions taken in this meeting and to explore new avenues to enhance the economic cooperation between the two countries.

Number of flood-hit now 1.5m: NDMA

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Floods and heavy monsoon rains have killed 178 people and affected 1.5 million across the country in three weeks..
“At least 178 people have died and 1,503,492 others affected by recent monsoon rains and floods across the country,” a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) official said, citing updated figures.
He said that the rains had wounded 855 people, affected 5,615 villages and destroyed 20,312 houses.
On Wednesday the figures stood at nearly one million people affected and 139 dead.
Nearly 350 relief camps had been set up to help people, mostly in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, the official said.Further heavy monsoon rains were expected next month, but the NDMA was fully prepared, he said.
Our staff reporter in Lahore adds: The Chenab at Panjnad and the Ravi at Sidhnai were in high flood on Sunday.
The Indus was in medium flood at Sukkur and in low flood at Chashma, Guddu and Kotri. The Sutlej was also in low flood at Sulemanki and Head Islam.
According to the Flood Forecasting Division, the Indus is likely to be in high flood at Guddu on Monday and Tuesday.
Several villages were inundated in Toba Tek Singh, Kamalia and Pir Mahal because of the Ravi flood.
Floodwaters from the Chenab inundated Basti Bakhtiari and adjoining villages around Panjnad. At least 24 villages of Muzaffargarh’s Alipur tehsil were flooded. Dozens of villages around Nau Raja Jhota, near Jalalpur, and Pirwala, Multan, were inundated by the raging Sutlej.
The FFD said there was no immediate threat of any more flood-generating rain.
It nevertheless forecast scattered thundershowers in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Malakand, Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Kashmir for the next 24 hours.

Explosives seized

PESHAWAR, Aug 25: Security forces raided a house in Shakus area of Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency on Sunday and seized a huge quantity of bomb-making material. .
The AFP news agency put the quantity of explosive material at 500 kilograms while APP said it was 12 tons. At least 60 bags of potassium chlorate, mortar shells, timers, landmines, detonators, fuses, improvised explosive device circuits and gel explosives were recovered from the basement of the house, Colonel Mohammad Naeem Sarwar told reporters.
A suspect was arrested during the raid, which was carried out after a roadside bomb wounded three civilians in the area on Saturday, Col Sarwar added.
“The place was being used to make bombs for terrorist activities in Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore.”
—Agencies

Woman killed, seven injured in LoC shelling

By Tariq Naqash

MUZAFFARABAD, Aug 25: A woman was killed and seven other civilians were injured in “intense and unprovoked” shelling by Indian troops from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Sunday..
The casualties occurred in different villages of Nakial sector in the southern Kotli district, which has come under a barrage of trans-LoC shelling over the past 10 days, officials and residents said.
(According to AFP, two women were killed by the firing of Indian troops. Quoting a police officer, Chaudhry Majid, in the AJK, the agency said a 17-year-old woman who was wounded in shelling by Indian troops died at a hospital.)
A 50-year old woman, Zamarrud Begum, was killed and four others, identified as Mohammad Bostan, Nazir Begum, Mohammad Anwar and Mohammad Sabir, were injured in Datote village after shells landed on their homes after sunset on Sunday, Kotli’s Deputy Commissioner Masoodur Rehman told Dawn by phone.
Earlier in the day, he added, Rashida Begum, Irum Tariq and Mohammad Sharif were injured in Lanjot village.
The deputy commissioner said Indian troops used small and big arms during the unprovoked shelling. Pakistani troops fired back after exercising restraint for some time.
Residents told Dawn over phone that unrelenting shelling had sent a wave of fear among the populace in forward areas.
“The shelling was so intense that it was not possible for us to take away the body of the woman from her house for three hours,” one of them said.
“People have become hostage in their own homes,” he added.
Five families moved to a rear area on Sunday and were temporarily housed in the building of an educational institution.
Already, around 25 families have moved from extremely vulnerable villages of Nakial sector to safe places in rear areas.
Mr Rehman said: “As yet the administration has not officially executed any relocation.”
However, he added: “We have advised people to take precautionary measures, including relocation when it becomes indispensable.”
He said he had ordered closure of all government and private educational institutions within a three-kilometre radius of the LoC in Kotli district till Aug 30. Elsewhere in the region, all government schools are due to open on Monday after summer vacations.
Thirteen civilians have been injured by the firing of Indian troops in Nakial and Tatta Pani sectors of Kotli over the past 10 days.
At least two military casualties — one death in Tatta Pani sector and one injury in Nakial sector — have also been reported from the two sectors.
However, Sunday’s killing of a woman is the first civilian death in the recent shelling there, Mr Rehman said.
The latest death is the sixth Pakistani reported to have been killed in skirmishes across the LoC since five Indian soldiers were killed on Aug 5.
New Delhi blamed the Aug 5 killings on Pakistani troops, but Islamabad denied any responsibility and has called for restraint and dialogue.
The tense situation of LoC threatens to jeopardise a planned meeting between prime ministers of Pakistan and India on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next month.
Clashes along the LoC in January brought a halt to peace talks that had resumed after a three-year break sparked by the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people.
India blamed Pakistan for the attack.

Mangla becomes country’s largest reservoir

By Our Staff Reporter

LAHORE, Aug 25: The raised Mangla Dam became the country’s biggest reservoir on Sunday when water storage in its lake rose to 6.65 million acre feet, surpassing 6.58MAF, the maximum live storage capacity of Tarbela Dam. .
“Water storage in the Mangla Lake increased to 6.65MAF this morning, as against 6.58MAF maximum live storage capacity of Tarbela Dam that used to be the biggest reservoir till Aug 24, 2013,” a Wapda spokesman said.
The Mangla Lake now has 2.88MAF of additional water available to be used for agriculture and generation of hydel electricity.
The height of Mangla Dam has been raised by 30 feet which has enabled its reservoir to restore water up to 1,242 feet against the previous conservation level of 1,202 feet above the mean sea level.
“…[as a result] the live storage capacity of the raised Mangla Dam has increased to 7.39MAF from 4.51MAF. Given the current weather forecast, the prospects for filling of Mangla reservoir to its maximum conservation level are bright,” said the spokesman.
Water in Mangla crossed 1,232.5 feet level on Sunday morning, leaving 2.14MAF of additional water available in the reservoir. In addition to managing the current floods, the dam will ensure the country benefits worth billions of rupees in agriculture and power sector by utilising the additional water.
The spokesman said that filling of additional water in Mangla this year reflected the federal government’s resolve to conservation and optimal utilisation of water for agriculture-based economy.
“Last month, it was mutually decided by all stakeholders to fill the raised Mangla Dam this year up to its maximum level, as for the purpose the federal government had promised to pay off the financial liabilities of the affected persons of the project.
“The additional water that has so far been stored in the Mangla lake is a result of the concerted efforts of the Pakistan government, the Ministry of Water and Power, the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, the governments of Azad Jammu and Kashmir besides Punjab and Wapda.”

Balochistan parties bicker over cabinet

By Our Staff Correspondent

QUETTA, Aug 25: Balochistan has been doing without a cabinet of reasonable size even after the passage of three months since the general election. .
Sources said that coalition partners in the Balochistan government had failed to implement the Murree agreement agreed to by the PML-N, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and National Party about share in the provincial cabinet.
The Balochistan PML-N wants to be given the maximum number of ministries, saying it has the right for a big share in the cabinet because the PkMAP has got the office of governor and the NP the slot of the chief minister.
Sources in the PkMAP and NP said the PML-N’s Balochistan leadership was an obstacle in cabinet formation because it wanted to give less share to its coalition partners in the cabinet. But the PML-N leaders said that coalition partners, after getting offices of the governor and the chief minister, were insisting on giving only six ministries and two advisers’ slots to them, which was an injustice with the party.
Meanwhile, under the 18th amendment of the constitution, the provincial government is bound to form less number of standing committees in the provincial assembly, but the government of Dr Malik has found a way out and decided to get a bill passed in the assembly introducing amendments to rules and regulations of the legislature and after that, it would be empowered to form 15 standing committees in the house.
“The provincial government wants to include the members who will not become part of the cabinet in the standing committees,” the sources said.

Nawaz tells Punjab not to curb peaceful protests

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Sunday that peaceful protest was an inalienable right of all political parties and directed the Punjab government that there should be no violation in this regard. .
Talking to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on telephone, the prime minister said democracy and peaceful protests were interlinked.
The Punjab government should ensure that no authority created any impediment in the way of this constitutional right of all citizens, including political parties, he said, adding that all issues should be resolved through dialogue.—APP

Karzai offered help for talks with Taliban

By Baqir Sajjad Syed

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: Afghan President Hamid Karzai extended on Monday his daylong trip to Pakistan by another day after Islamabad offered to help it in facilitating talks with the Taliban. .
The extended round of talks will be held in Murree where, according to diplomatic source, the two sides will confer on “core and much harder issues” in the relationship — fighting terrorism and talking to “reconcilable Taliban”.
Mr Karzai, who is visiting Islamabad after almost 18 months and, more importantly, following a sharp dip in ties over the past few months, sought Pakistan’s support for the troubled reconciliation process in Afghanistan.
He looked cautiously optimistic as he went into talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
He told reporters he was “hopeful, but not sure” in view of his previous visits to Pakistan. But what was described by onlookers as “very positive atmospherics” at the talks with the Pakistani leadership, Mr Karzai’s confidence appears to have been restored. He immediately accepted Mr Sharif’s invitation for a working lunch in nearby Murree.
Sources on both sides confirmed that much of the time in the talks on Monday had been consumed by the economic agenda and the extended time would provide the two sides an opportunity to deliberate on thorny issues which have repeatedly affected relations.
A reflection of this was evident from statements made by the two leaders in front of television cameras after their talks. While Mr Sharif said “the central focus of this relationship has to be a strong trade and economic partnership” and listed a number of economic and connectivity projects, President Karzai immediately reminded him of the more pressing issues in the relationship.
“Afghanistan has also expressed willingness to engage with Pakistan in areas of culture and all other manners of cooperation, but for the two countries the primary concern is lack of security for their citizens and the continued menace of terrorism attacking both our populations, our governments, our soldiers and our security forces. It is this area that needs to have primary and focused attention by both governments and it is with hope on this that I have come to Pakistan,” the Afghan president emphasised. Mr Karzai expects the Pakistan government to release former Taliban number two Mullah Baradar, persuade the insurgent leadership to talk to the High Peace Council and host Taliban political office that is planned to be relocated from Doha after the botched opening in June.
Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of maintaining ties with the insurgent leadership, many of whose leaders are based here.
The longstanding mistrust between the two countries that got compounded by Kabul’s tirade against Islamabad and the former’s growing closeness with New Delhi is seen as the biggest obstruction in the way of any meaningful cooperation.
The Afghan president said he was in Pakistan “with the expectation that the government of Pakistan will facilitate and help in manners it can the peace process in Afghanistan and in providing opportunities or a platform for talks between the Afghan High Peace Council and the Taliban movement”.
“We hope that with this, on top of our agenda, we can move forward in bringing peace and stability to both countries,” he added.
The Foreign Office saw in Mr Karzai’s visit and subsequent extension of his stay “the readiness on both sides to work together for the furtherance of shared objectives of peace, stability and prosperity in the region and beyond”.
PARLIAMENTARY TIES: A delegation of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production will visit Kabul on Sept 9 for talks with Afghan parliamentarians.
The committee’s chairman Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed termed President Karzai’s visit significant for bilateral relations as well as peace and stability in the region.

Opposition blows hot and cold in NA

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: The opposition blew hot and cold in the National Assembly on Monday while the house also began a delayed debate on President Asif Ali Zardari’s last address to parliament..
All opposition parties began the day by jointly staging a token walkout to protest against Saturday’s police action to break up a Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) sit-in held in Lahore to protest against alleged rigging in the Aug 22 by-elections.
Afterwards, the opposition benches protested against the absence of most ministers from the house.
Leader of Opposition in the House Khursheed Ahmed Shah, while opening the debate on the president’s June 10 address to a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament, cautioned the PML-N government at the centre and in Punjab to avoid a Lahore-like “tamasha” (show) in the future.
Mr Shah and other lawmakers called for strengthening parliament and democracy to make the present democratic process a success, while noting, with a degree of pride the country’s first transition from one democratic government to another.
The debate, which could not be held last week as scheduled and for which the present session of the lower house, which began on Aug 13, was extended for a week on Friday, began when only two weeks were left for Mr Zardari to become Pakistan’s first democratically elected president to complete his five-year term on Sept 8 as did the previous coalition government led by his PPP in March.
Mr Shah repeatedly urged political parties to join hands to strengthen parliament and democracy, which he said could be done by “tolerating each other”.
While giving credit to the PPP and all other parties in parliament for making landmark amendment to the constitution and passing some other key laws during the previous coalition government’s tenure, he said an atmosphere of tolerance would strengthen Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government as well to carry out its programmes.
While proposing a “revisiting” of the National Finance Commission (NFC) award given under the PPP government, increasing the share of provinces in federal revenues, he urged the PML-N to implement what he called the remaining three points of a Charter of Democracy signed by the two parties in 2006, saying that 90 per cent of it had been implemented by the previous government.
He cited only two of the unimplemented points -- formation of a constitutional court to interpret the constitution in the event of any dispute and a commission to probe the 1999 conflict with India over Kargil in Kashmir -- as the third point apparently slipped from his memory which he later told reporters was a commitment by the two parties to form a “truth and reconciliation commission” as had happened in South Africa at the end of apartheid policy of racial segregation to reconcile grievances by admitting guilt.
The opposition leader stressed the necessity of addressing terrorism whether it is through dialogue or deterrence.
PTI’s Shireen Mazari called for formulating a counter-terrorism policy to deal with the issue “holistically” with which, she said, “other things” needed could not be done.
She criticised the government for doing nothing to stop US drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal areas and being mute about the recent deadly Indian ceasefire violations along the Line of Control in Kashmir.
Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s Abdul Rahim Mandokhel, while referring to what he called “terrorism nurtured here”, said the situation had reached a stage that on going out of one’s home one could not be sure of returning alive.
Several other members also spoke before the house was adjourned until 10.30am on Tuesday.

Dasu power project gets precedence over Bhasha

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: In a fresh twist, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Monday that the government had decided to immediately take up the $6 billion Dasu hydropower project because its construction could start without delay, while the $14bn Diamer-Bhasha project would take 10-12 years to complete. .
“We are going into both projects simultaneously. Why should we waste time” making preparations for the Diamer-Bhasha project, he said at a news conference.
He said the USAID had been able to persuade the US Congress to approve $20 million for technical study of the Bhasha dam which was a big development. Earlier nobody ever talked about this project. This would be followed by more funding for construction of the dam, he said.
The minister said the Asian Development Bank which would be the lead financier of Diamer-Bhasha was studying its project structure. He said it was a big project that no one agency could finance.
“Then the World Bank will study it and it will take 2-3 years for the project to shape up.
“Therefore, I have decided we should immediately start work on the Dasu hydropower project” that could be initiated in six months without any major paper and technical work and start producing electricity from two or three units in three years, he said.
Mr Dar said he had convinced the US authorities and the World Bank the project did not need a no-objection certificate from India.
When asked if lending agencies and investors could provide more than $20bn for the two projects, he said annual instalments and sequencing would address this challenge.
The World Bank has been asking Pakistan to give preference to the 4,320MW Dasu project over the 4,500MW Diamer-Bhasha dam that will also provide storage of 8.5m acre-feet of water and enhance the life of Tarbela Dam and barrages downstream.
But some Wapda officials viewed this sequencing as a ploy to put the strategically important Diamer-Bhasha dam on the back-burner.
AFGHANISTAN: About his talks with the Afghan finance minister, Mr Dar said the two sides had agreed in principle to jointly develop a 1500MW hydropower project on the Kunar River and Afghanistan had been asked to provide its feasibility study.
He said the two sides had accepted the Afghan minister’s proposal to build a motorway from Peshawar to Kabul. “We have agreed to the proposal and sought immediate preparation of a feasibility report so that the project can be placed before the multilaterals for financing.”
He said Pakistan had agreed to get approval of the federal cabinet for Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan-Afghanistan-Pakistan electricity trade, known as Casa (Central Asia-South Asia) project. He said the project would now be of 1,300MW instead of the originally envisaged 1,000MW.
The minister said the other states had adopted a resolution for the project’s implementation. He said Pakistan would clear the project in a couple of days.
He said Pakistan had agreed to resume work on the Torkham-Jalalabad road. About 57 per cent work on the road had been completed in 2008 when it was halted. The two sides agreed to realign the 170km Torkham-Jalalabad railway line through Loi Shalman valley bypassing Landi Kotal and create an 11km railway link between Chaman and Spin Boldak.
Mr Dar said Pakistan had removed all restrictions on Afghan transit trade through Wagah, including guarantee for goods transportation, insurance guarantee and permission for non-containerised vehicles.
Afghanistan has been asked to reciprocate by removing the requirement of cash guarantee on transportation of Pakistani goods to Central Asian republics.
BAILOUT PACAKGE: The finance minister said Pakis-tan had met ‘4.5’ of the five pre-conditions of the International Monetary Fund for a $6.6bn bailout package, while the remaining condition pertaining to the State Bank would be accomplished on Aug 27 when it would announce the monetary policy for the next two months.
He said the government had not accepted a condition of currency devaluation, except for natural devaluation.
In anticipation, the IMF management has already circulated the agenda and letter of intent of the Pakistan government to its executive board which will meet next month to approve the assistance programme.
He said that with the IMF programme and assistance from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank a total financing package of $12bn had been put in place that would take care of all external liabilities for three years.
He said the international lending and credit agencies were looking positively at Pakistan after the recent political transition and corrective measures taken by the government.
FISCAL DEFICIT: Mr Dar said the country had concluded the last financial year with a fiscal deficit of 8pc against the originally estimated 8.8pc as a result of cutting expenditures. He said the fiscal deficit of the federal government was estimated at 8.2pc but it dropped to 8pc (Rs1.834 trillion) because of Rs57 billion cash surplus provided by the provinces.
He said the FBR had missed its revenue target last year by a big margin and collected Rs1.936tr instead of Rs2.381tr. The total revenue stood at Rs2.982tr, including tax revenue of Rs2.231tr and non-tax Rs751bn. Total expenditure was Rs4.816t, while Rs368bn was provided for subsidies and Rs342bn for circular debt.

ECP summons Lahore by-poll candidates

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has taken suo motu notice of the rejection by returning officer of a plea of the candidate of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) for PP-150 constituency for a vote recount. .
In an order released on Monday, the ECP issued notices to contesting candidates for Wednesday.
Mian Marghoob Ahmad of the PML-N was declared winner from the Lahore constituency in the Aug 22 by-elections. Mehr Wajid Azeem of the PTI had filed an application, alleging irregularities and violation of rules by the election staff. But, the returning officer concerned dismissed the application on Friday.
“The commission headed by acting Chief Election Commissioner Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jilani and comprising four retired judges — one each from all the provinces — passed orders after examining the order passed by the Returning officer rejecting the application of Mehr Wajid Azeem — candidate of PTI seeking recount in PP-150 (Lahore) alleging serious irregularities,” the order said. “In first part of the order, the Returning Officer has taken note of all the allegations made and arguments advanced by the counsel for both applicant and the respondent, but surprisingly while dismissing the application the Returning Officer prima facie has not attended to all those allegations.”

PHC orders re-polling for women

By Waseem Ahmad Shah

PESHAWAR, Aug 26: The Peshawar High Court ordered on Monday re-polling in the polling stations for women where no votes or negligible number of votes were cast during the Aug 22 by-elections in two National Assembly constituencies -- NA-5 (Nowshera-I) and NA-27 (Lakki Marwat). .
A two-judge PHC bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Malik Manzoor ruled that barring women from casting vote was a detestable act which could not be approved by the court. “It is not acceptable that a vast majority of voters are deprived of their fundamental right of electing people of their choice,” it said.
The court directed the Election Commission of Pakistan to prepare recommendations for the federal government for making drastic changes in the Representation of People’s Act (RPA) 1976 to ensure maximum participation of women voters and punishment for the people involved in barring them from exercising their fundamental right.
The bench noted that there was no or negligible polling in several polling stations for women on Aug 22 and that too after the chief justice had taken notice of it and issued order for extending the polling time.
The court said in its order that after going through the fact and circumstances it felt it had no alternative but to ask the ECP to immediately hold a brief but meaningful inquiry into the matter and hold re-polling in the stations at a convenient date. There should be a vigorous campaign to persuade women to come out of their homes and cast vote.
It said the elements found responsible for barring the women from casting their vote should be booked under relevant penal provisions, prosecuted and brought to justice.
The chief justice said it was regrettable that in a country where a woman had twice become prime minister and another was elected speaker of the National assembly, women had been deprived of their voting right.
The chief justice had taken notice of the issue on a complaint by an election cell set up in the court which cited TV reports that women had been barred from casting vote in 18 polling stations after compromises and agreements among elders in the NA-5 and NA-27 constituencies.
The court has already stayed the announcement of results in the two constituencies.
Nusrat Yasmeen, returning officer for NA0-5, informed the court that there were 236 polling stations in the constituency, including 70 for women and 90 for both men and women. Of the 140,000 women voters, about 20,191 cast their vote. She said no voting had taken place in 34 female polling stations while in other stations the number of votes was negligible.
Provincial election commissioner Sono Khan Baloch and ECP’s additional director (legal) Abdur Rehman Khan informed the court that of the 187,600 female voters in the NA-27 constituency, 36,000 (20 per cent) had cast their vote.
Advocate Sher Afzal Khan, the counsel for JUI-F’s candidate Maulana Attaur Rehman, alleged that in several polling stations a few bogus women votes had been polled to hoodwink the high court. He said JUI-F was against barring women voters from exercising their right.
The court said there were also reports that in some polling stations the actual number of female votes was two or four but after the notice taken by the chief justice the ratio of votes in other stations had been mutually revised by the candidates or their polling agents. It was a violation of section 80 of the RPA because it constituted an offence of impersonation, the court added.

PHC orders re-polling for women

By Waseem Ahmad Shah

PESHAWAR, Aug 26: The Peshawar High Court ordered on Monday re-polling in the polling stations for women where no votes or negligible number of votes were cast during the Aug 22 by-elections in two National Assembly constituencies -- NA-5 (Nowshera-I) and NA-27 (Lakki Marwat). .
A two-judge PHC bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Malik Manzoor ruled that barring women from casting vote was a detestable act which could not be approved by the court. “It is not acceptable that a vast majority of voters are deprived of their fundamental right of electing people of their choice,” it said.
The court directed the Election Commission of Pakistan to prepare recommendations for the federal government for making drastic changes in the Representation of People’s Act (RPA) 1976 to ensure maximum participation of women voters and punishment for the people involved in barring them from exercising their fundamental right.
The bench noted that there was no or negligible polling in several polling stations for women on Aug 22 and that too after the chief justice had taken notice of it and issued order for extending the polling time.
The court said in its order that after going through the fact and circumstances it felt it had no alternative but to ask the ECP to immediately hold a brief but meaningful inquiry into the matter and hold re-polling in the stations at a convenient date. There should be a vigorous campaign to persuade women to come out of their homes and cast vote.
It said the elements found responsible for barring the women from casting their vote should be booked under relevant penal provisions, prosecuted and brought to justice.
The chief justice said it was regrettable that in a country where a woman had twice become prime minister and another was elected speaker of the National assembly, women had been deprived of their voting right.
The chief justice had taken notice of the issue on a complaint by an election cell set up in the court which cited TV reports that women had been barred from casting vote in 18 polling stations after compromises and agreements among elders in the NA-5 and NA-27 constituencies.
The court has already stayed the announcement of results in the two constituencies.
Nusrat Yasmeen, returning officer for NA0-5, informed the court that there were 236 polling stations in the constituency, including 70 for women and 90 for both men and women. Of the 140,000 women voters, about 20,191 cast their vote. She said no voting had taken place in 34 female polling stations while in other stations the number of votes was negligible.
Provincial election commissioner Sono Khan Baloch and ECP’s additional director (legal) Abdur Rehman Khan informed the court that of the 187,600 female voters in the NA-27 constituency, 36,000 (20 per cent) had cast their vote.
Advocate Sher Afzal Khan, the counsel for JUI-F’s candidate Maulana Attaur Rehman, alleged that in several polling stations a few bogus women votes had been polled to hoodwink the high court. He said JUI-F was against barring women voters from exercising their right.
The court said there were also reports that in some polling stations the actual number of female votes was two or four but after the notice taken by the chief justice the ratio of votes in other stations had been mutually revised by the candidates or their polling agents. It was a violation of section 80 of the RPA because it constituted an offence of impersonation, the court added.

SC orders authorities to produce missing persons today

By Saleem Shahid

QUETTA, Aug 26: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry has ordered the arrest of officials and personnel found involved in disappearance of people and dumping of their decomposed bodies in Balochistan..
The chief justice made these remarks during a hearing of the Balochistan law and order case. He directed the authorities concerned to produce the missing persons before the court on Tuesday.
Other members of the apex court bench are Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Azmat Saeed.
Balochistan Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Mohammad, Additional Attorney General Shah Khawar, Inspector General of Police Mushtaq Sukhira, newly-appointed Inspector General of Frontier Corps Maj Gen Ejaz Shahid and representatives of the federal interior ministry and provincial home department appeared before the court.
The chief justice said: “We had pinned hopes on the new government, but it is doing nothing for the recovery of missing persons. The previous government, which had recovered some missing persons, was better than the incumbent government.”
He observed: “Twenty personnel, including a deputy inspector general of police, were killed in Quetta but no terrorist was arrested so far. The government and agencies are accountable to the heirs of missing persons. The officials and personnel found involved in disappearance of people should be arrested, missing persons be produced and a report should be submitted to the court.”
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry recalled an allegation by a former police chief that the FC was involved in disappearance of people.
“Do you want to see your officers produced before the court,” he wondered. It should be a matter of concern for the FC if somebody misused its uniform, the chief justice added.
Justice Chaudhry said that laws were equal for all, including the president of the country and a common man. No one had the right to detain people illegally, he said.
“If somebody is involved in a case, he should be arrested and produced before a court,” he said.
He remarked the court was aware that personnel of security forces were also being killed in terrorist attacks, but it was not a justification for forced disappearance of people.
Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja said there were 55,000 personnel of FC and army in Balochistan, but disappearance of people had continued.
The court heard eight cases relating to missing persons and law and order, but the government failed to produce any result, he remarked.
He said this attitude of the government and law enforcement agencies was discouraging for relatives of missing persons and they were now staying away from courts.
He observed that despite the working of a task force, committees and a commission on missing persons, the issue could not be resolved. People had rejected the report of the commission, he said.
Justice Khawaja told the officials of law enforcement agencies that they should not demoralise their forces but help the government and the court in recovery of missing persons.
Justice Azmat Saeed said that objections were being raised about the role of the government and intelligence agencies on the issue of missing persons. The court put off the hearing till Tuesday.

Five civilians injured by Indian shelling

By Tariq Naqash

MUZAFFARABAD, Aug 26: The unprovoked shelling by Indian troops from across the restive Line of Control (LoC) showed no signs of abatement on Monday. Five more civilians were injured in the Nakial sector amid fresh displacement of 37 families from some highly vulnerable villages..
According to officials, Indian troops kept shelling Oli Panjni and Narrala Turkundi during the day. The injured were identified as Farzana, daughter of Kafeel; Abdul Qayyum, son of Abdul Aziz; Azhar, son of Wilayat; Nasim, wife of Inayat; and Khadija, daughter of Ghayas.
Twenty-five civilians have been injured by the Indian shelling in Nakial and Tatta Pani sectors of Kotli district over the past 11 days. One woman has lost her life. Meanwhile, a “stability of Pakistan” rally was taken out in Nakial to express solidarity with the Pakistan Army and sympathy with the families affected by the Indian shelling. The rally, led by AJK Minister for Food Javed Iqbal Budhanvi, was attended by a large number of people and local leaders.
The participants carrying Pakistani and AJK flags raised slogans in favour of the Pakistan Army and freedom struggle in India-occupied Kashmir and against India.
“The shelling cannot subdue or deter us from supporting the indigenous freedom movement on the other side of the LoC,” Mr Budhanvi, who represents Nakial in the AJK Legislative Assembly, said.
“We salute people who are braving the unrelenting shelling. We pay tribute to and express solidarity with the Pakistani armed forces for defending us against Indian aggression,” he said.
Mr Budhanvi and other speakers urged the United Nations and human rights organisations to take notice of “continuous ceasefire violations by Indian troops and shelling on civilians” and play their role in defusing the tension.
The officials said Indian shelling had forced 45 families comprising 200 people to leave their homes in the Nakial sector and take refuge in rear areas. They have taken shelter in hostels of different colleges. Some families have decided to put up with their relatives.
The officials said they had also made arrangements in some other educational institutions to meet any eventuality.
“Indian troops have been firing indiscriminately, forcing us leave our homes that hardly survived some mortar shells last night,” said 20-year-old Yasir Ashraf who, along with his mother and seven siblings, had fled from Kaneth village.

Senate briefing on Taliban, LoC violations planned

By Amir Wasim

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: The government accepted on Monday an opposition’s proposal to hold a briefing in Senate by National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz on foreign policy with particular reference to talks with Taliban and violations of the Line of Control by India..
The proposal was made by PPP’s parliamentary leader Raza Rabbani and Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq immediately accepted it. He said he would try to arrange the briefing this week and inform the house about the date.
Both the government and the opposition also agreed to hold a full-fledged debate on the procedure for appointment of judges of superior courts on a motion moved by PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar.
The issue of the acquiring private land in the name of defence and national security and refusal by the defence ministry to pay compensation to owners came under sharp criticism in Senate on a motion moved by Mr Babar.
Senators introduced six private member bills, three of them on constitutional amendment. The bills were referred to standing committees concerned. Senate also passed two resolutions asking the government to take steps to check “sale of spurious and substandard drugs” and “implement international obligations regarding global warming and control environmental pollution in the country”.
Two constitutional amendment bills were tabled by independent Senator Mohsin Leghari seeking powers for parliament to “create new provinces” and making it mandatory to hold local government elections within 45 days after the expiry of the term.
Through their bill, PPP’s Raza Rabbani and Saeed Ghani sought allocation of reserved seats for workers in the national and provincial assemblies. Speaking on a point of order, Senator Rabbani regretted that the new government had not taken the parliament into confidence so far on its foreign policy. He said the adviser must brief them on the Afghan situation and continued violations of the Line of Control by India.
Mr Rabbani also said the government must take parliament into confidence on its plan to reconstitute the National Security Council, which seemed to be a violation of the Charter of Democracy signed by the PPP and the PML-N in May 2006. He said these were important issues and the national security adviser should be asked to brief Senate on it within this week.
LAND ACQUISITION: Debating the motion on the issue of non-payment of compensation by military authorities to land owners in Nowshera, Mr Babar said over 18,000 acres of private land had been acquired by the military ostensibly to be used as firing range.
He said several years after the acquisition, a compensation at the rate of Rs88 per marla was announced which was far below the market rate even at the time the land had been acquired. The decision was challenged in the court and the Peshawar High Court directed that payment of compensation at the rate of Rs1,500 per marla with six per cent simple interest. But, he regretted that the defence ministry had refused to make payment.
Mr Babar that said in July last year the Defence Committee of Senate had taken up the matter, but the ministry officials used delaying tactics and made different excuses.
The senator said that while the affected people were running from pillar to post to get their rights, orchards had been grown on the land acquired in the name of national defence.
Demanding payment of compensation to affected people of the AFV Ranges, Nowshera, in accordance with court verdicts, Mr Babar said this was only one instance to demonstrate the need for looking into the management of military land.
Admitting the motion for further discussion, the Senate chairman raised some questions and asked the government to furnish replies to resolve the decades-old issue.
“If the government is sincere in addressing the issue and paying the rightful dues of the owners, it should allocate funds for payment instead of filing a review petition unnecessarily,” the chairman directed.
PML-Q’s Kamil Ali Agha asked under which law the land had been acquired. He said if it had been acquired illegally then it could be set aside.
When Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs Barjees Tahir said the government had allocated over Rs5 billion for the purpose and was taking up the matter with the GHQ, the Senate chairman asked why the government was allowing other institutions to use its forum. He deferred the matter asking the minister to come up with a complete report.

SC seeks statement of missing person’s father

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: Amina Masood Janjua, who has been campaigning for the cause of missing persons, accused police on Monday of harassing the father of Khairur Rehman who has been missing since Feb 9, 2009, from Bajaur Agency..
A two-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani which had taken up the cases of missing persons ordered the Bajaur political agent to record the statement of the father, Abdul Rehman, within 10 days and send a copy to the court.
Abdul Rehman, it may be mentioned, had collapsed inside the Courtroom No 1 on July 31 after learning that the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa police had failed to find out the whereabouts of his son.
Khairur Rehman was prayer leader of Bilal mosque in Bajaur. An Afghan refugee got acquainted with him and even started living in the upper portion of his house without paying any rent.
The local authorities, assisted by police, raided the house on Feb 9, 2009, and arrested the Afghan national along with Khairur Rehman, his sister Khaista Jan and her mentally retarded husband.
The Afghan national was released after allegedly greasing the palm of Assistant Sub Inspector Arshad. Mr Rehman’s sister and her husband were also set free after nine days.
But whereabouts of Mr Rehman are still not known despite repeated directives by the apex court to the KP police to recover him.
Amina Janjua reminded the court that at the last hearing it had ordered the arrest of ASI Arshad if Khairur Rehman was not recovered, but the police official had got a bail before arrest.

Government opinion sought on Pemra’s denial

By Nasir Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26: The Supreme Court asked the government on Monday to advise it whether to expunge an assertion, later denied by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), suggesting that a media house aired foreign-funded programmes. .
A two-judge bench headed by Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani ordered Additional Attorney General Atiq Shah to seek instructions from the government and assist the court on the question when the hearing resumes after a fortnight.
The bench had taken up applications filed by anchorpersons Hamid Mir and Absar Alam requesting it to make public evidence in support of the allegations made by senior officers of Pemra that had been made part of a voluminous report issued by a two-member media commission headed by retired Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid.
The court asked the information secretary to submit detailed comments on the report.
The media commission was appointed by a bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja on Jan 15 in response to petitions filed by the anchorpersons requesting the court to disclose the names of the beneficiaries of the ministry’s secret funds. The report and recommendations were submitted before the court on July 3.
The commission, after meeting Pemra Chairman Chaudhry Rashid Ahmad, Executive Director Dr Abdul Jabbar, Director General (Licensing) Ashfaq Jumani, General Manager (Legal) Nasir Ahmad and Secretary Suhail Ahmed, included unsubstantiated but serious allegations in the report.
“It was revealed that lot of funds was pouring into media outlets from abroad in the form of sponsorship and that the programme ‘Zara Sochieay’ had received sponsorship to the extent of Pounds Sterling 20 million,” it said.
It also mentioned the allegation that the ‘Aman ki Asha’ was being funded by a Norwegian NGO, Friends Without Borders, and that the footprints of this funding led to Indian sponsors, including the state television Doordarshan.
Later, Javed Jabbar, member of the commission, in an email to the court said that the allegations mentioned in the report had been levelled by the Pemra officials.
Advocate Zulfikar Maluka, who represented Pemra, told the court that a detailed reply had been submitted on behalf of the regulator, denying that the officials had levelled the allegations as mentioned in the media commission report. The written reply was also annexed with affidavits on behalf of the five officials against whom notices had been issued.
The bench noted that Pemra had failed to present any evidence or material to corroborate the allegations.
The court made it clear that it could not hold a trial on the matter and the anchorpersons, if aggrieved, could file a defamation suite or seek criminal proceedings in appropriate courts. But in case their positions had been vindicated they could accept the regrets offered by Pemra on the statement in good grace, it said.
Absar Alam agreed but said the journalists could be harmed because of the statement in view of the prevalent violence in the society.

MQM demands army rule in Karachi

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: In a tumultuous National Assembly sitting on Tuesday, the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) demanded a handover of violence-plagued Karachi to army, but all other major parties on both sides of aisle immediately rebuffed the call..
While the opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah, whose Pakistan People’s Party governs Sindh province, described the demand of its former ally in the previous PPP-led coalition government as undemocratic and a “slap on the face of democracy”, a government minister said a handover to army could mean imposing local martial law in the Sindh provincial capital and the country’s commercial capital.
The MQM’s latest protest seemed provoked by what its parliamentary leaders in the National Assembly and Senate, Faooq Sattar and Tahir Mashadi respectively, called killings of members of Kutchhi ethnic community in Karachi’s mainly pro-PPP Baloch-dominated Lyari area and was marked by token protest walkouts from both houses.
Mr Sattar called his demand an “SOS call” from self-exiled party leader Altaf Hussain and Karachi residents and accused the PPP government in Sindh of doing little to restore peace in the port city, and of “patronising criminal elements”, before threatening a walkout from the lower house over both the Karachi situation and the registration of a case by police in Balochistan province against a private television channel under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
However, the MQM walkout materialised immediately as the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi led a somewhat similar walkout to protest at what he called the federal government’s “insensitivity” over Karachi and the registration of a case against ARY television channel for showing some allegedly objectionable clips of a video released by a banned militant group about the destruction of Ziarat Residency, where the Quad-i-Azam had spent last days of his life, in a militant attack in June.
The PTI leader too opposed the MQM call saying he was surprised over “such a big demand” coming from a party that the PPP had repeatedly asked to join the new Sindh government and had been consulting with recently over the local government system in the province, and on the heels of the MQM vote for the presidential candidate of the ruling PML-N last month.
The first PPP response to the MQM demand came from a senior party lawmaker, former federal minister Naveed Qamar, who regretted what he called a “casual manner” in which the demand was made to invoke article 245 of the constitution that provides for army to act in aid of civil power. He recalled the situation always got from “bad to worse” in previous such experiences, and said the situation could have been discussed with the Sindh government as had happened on questions of the MQM joining the provincial government and on the local government system.
And then, an apparently agitated opposition leader Khursheed Shah, who came to the house much later just before the MQM and PTI ended their walkouts, delivered his strongest public snub to the MQM seen in recent years for making “such a big demand”, which he described in different remarks as “undemocratic”, “possibly a very big political blunder”, and “a slap on the face of Pakistan and democracy”. He also wondered if “there was some other conspiracy behind this” move and said that if it happened in Karachi, similar demands could be made about the troubled provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as well as Punjab.
Pointing out that while the MQM was sitting in opposition in parliament, but it was “to some extent part of the government”
in Sindh with its provincial governor, Ishratul Ebad, continuing in office since the days of former military president Pervez Musharraf, he said: “We should strengthen democracy rather than taking the country away from it.”
Mr Sattar, in his speech on a point of order at the start of the National Assembly sitting, himself acknowledged that his demand would “seem unnecessary and non-political”, but said there could be nothing more important than protecting the lives, property and honour of people.
“We couldn’t sleep the whole of last night and continued consultations and begging peace from the provincial government,” he said. But he said “when we got no response”, his party chief Altaf Hussain came to the conclusion that there was no choice left but to invoke Article 245.
But Minister for States and Frontier Regions retired Lt-Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch, said Article 245, as he understood it, clearly provided for armed forces to “act in aid of civil power when called upon to do so” and beyond that it could only be an imposition of a “local martial law” about which only parliament could decide.
There were uproars during the speeches of two Karachi lawmakers, Nabil Gabol, who converted to MQM from the PPP earlier this year and wanted to speak repeatedly, and PPP’s Shah Jehan Baloch from Lyari.
MQM member, Sajid Ahmed, repeatedly urged his colleagues to interrupt Mr Baloch — “in no way we will let him speak” — in an audacious manner that brought not only counter-shouts from the PPP benches but also a rebuke from Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi and an advice from the PTI vice-chairman that such an attitude could not help run the house smoothly.
From the treasury benches, opposition to the MQM’s demand came also from Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and PML-N chief whip Sheikh Aftab Ahmed who said calling in army would mean an “admission that this house has totally failed” and from Ghaus Bakhsh Mahar, a senior member of the government-allied Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, who advised the MQM to better settle its disputes with Sindh government in Karachi and asked that if the MQM governor was not so effective then why he is sitting in the governor’s house?
As Mr Sattar of MQM apparently wanted to take the floor once again to respond to a spate of criticism against his demand, the deputy speaker adjourned the house until 4.30pm on Wednesday.

SC wants recovery of missing persons in two weeks

By Saleem Shahid

QUETTA, Aug 27: The Supreme Court gave security forces and intelligence agencies on Tuesday two weeks for recovery of missing persons. .
“Police, Frontier Corps and intelligence agencies should recover the missing persons in two weeks and produce them before the court,” said an order issued by a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
The bench is hearing the Balochistan law and order case at the Quetta registry of Supreme Court. The chief justice expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of security agencies and regretted that despite several assurances given by them, no progress had been made in the recovery of missing persons for three years.
Additional Attorney General Shah Khawar informed the court that efforts were being made and the missing people would be recovered soon. He said a high-level meeting held in Quetta on Monday had discussed a number of important issues, including missing persons.
The chief justice asked him to submit a report on the meeting.
Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, a member of the bench, said it was a matter of concern that the court reopened the case from the same point where it had been left three months ago.
The chief justice said if anyone was suspected of wrongdoing, he should be tried in accordance with the law. “Illegal detention of a person is violation of human rights as well as the law,” he said, adding that there were evidences against the FC, police and intelligence agencies in 70 cases of missing persons.
“Increased recovery of bodies from different areas of the country is a very serious issue and this situation is very dangerous,” he said, adding that allegations regarding security agencies’ involvement in disappearances and dumping of the bodies were tarnishing the image of the forces.
The court was not satisfied with a report on the law and order situation in Balochistan submitted by Deputy Attorney General Tariq Ali Tahir and said more steps should be taken to restore peace and order in the province.
“The law and order situation is worsening because of non-implementation of the law,” the chief justice said, adding that it appeared that there was no writ of the government.
When Mr Tahir informed the court about the recovery of a large quantity of explosives and arms and ammunition in Eastern Bypass and Satellite Town areas of Quetta, the chief justice asked which routes had been used to smuggle these into the country.
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry said the presence of a large number of Afghan refugees was causing a law and order problem in Balochistan. “These refugees become part of the ongoing terrorist and other criminal activities. Hospitality is all right, but Afghan refuges should be confined to their camps,” he said.
The chief justice ordered that data of Afghan refugees be collected so that they could be shifted to their camps.
The additional attorney general said the government was collecting the data and a survey was also in progress. The National Database and Registration Authority has also been approached for assistance. But he said many Afghans had returned to Pakistan after repatriation.
“Afghan refugees have no right to do business in Quetta since nobody is above the law,” the chief justice remarked.
Balochistan IG Mushtaq Ahmed Sukhera informed the court that police officers transferred to the province were not ready to join their duty here.
This prompted the chief justice to tell the IG to send their names to the court.
The court adjourned the case for two weeks.

Afghan leader returns disappointed

By Baqir Sajjad Syed

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned to Kabul on Tuesday after completing an extended visit to Pakistan, but apparently without any major breakthrough on stalemated peace talks with Taliban or release of militants the Afghan government wants to be freed by Pakistan. .
The upshot of the visit was renewal of political contacts between the two countries after months of acrimony and estrangement.
The visit had started with low expectations. But the unexpected extension in President Karzai’s trip had spurred hopes of a breakthrough.
Both the countries were nudged into this engagement by the US and the UK after fears that a rupture in Pak-Afghan ties could affect the drawdown plan.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Karzai met for the extended round of talks in Murree on Tuesday but could not come up with anything concrete about revival of the reconciliation process in Afghanistan except for reiteration of principled stance that Pakistan remained committed to helping the Afghans in restoring peace to their country.
“Pakistan would facilitate in whatever manner we think would be useful,” Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Chaudhry told Dawn after the meeting.
Prime Minister Sharif was quoted in a statement issued by his office as having reaffirmed “strong and sincere support for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan”.
Meanwhile, the Afghan presidency in a statement after Mr Karzai’s return to Kabul asked Islamabad to fulfil the promises made during the talks spread over two days.
“The Pakistani side is expected to take specific and practical steps in accordance with the decisions made during these negotiations,” an Afghan presidential spokesman said. The agreed steps were, however, not revealed.
During his visit, Mr Karzai sought Pakistan’s help for the troubled reconciliation process and pressed his Pakistani interlocutors for making restoration of peace and stability in Afghanistan a priority in the bilateral agenda.
Release of key militants in custody of Pakistani authorities, particularly Mullah Barader, and coaxing Taliban to talk to High Peace Council were the Afghan leader’s key demands.
Prime Minister’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz claimed in a television interview that the Pakistani side was able to convince Mr Karzai that it did not control the Taliban.
Mr Karzai said Pakistan had failed to use its influence to convince the Taliban to join peace talks. In a reference to Pakistan, he said, Taliban backers wanted to keep Afghanistan “impoverished and underdeveloped forever”.
The harsh statement indicated that Afghan president’s expectations from the visit haven’t been met, even though some promises might have been made with him.

Execution moratorium not an EU condition

By Mubarak Zeb Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: The debate whether or not to lift the moratorium on executions took a new turn on Tuesday when European Union Ambassador to Pakistan Lars-Gunnar Wigemark said the European Commission had no condition linking abolition of death penalty to grant of preferential market access to the country..
Various circles, including the Foreign Office, had informed the government that lifting of moratorium on implementation of death penalty might compromise the country’s prospects of qualifying for the new generalised system of preferences (GSP) plus scheme which allowed duty free exports to the 27-nation European market.
The moratorium imposed by the PPP government expired on June 30.
Ambassador Lars was speaking alongside the head of the EU parliamentary delegation on human rights, Ana Gomez, who is visiting the country to assess the situation.
Pakistan formally applied in March to the European Commission for the scheme. The commission’s team is likely to evaluate the application by next month. Then the application will be submitted to the European Parliament for approval in two months.
Ambassador Lars said the GSP had no condition related to death penalty.
The clarification came on the day when the interior ministry’s spokesman Umar Hameed informed the Senate standing committee concerned that the foreign ministry had recommended continuation of the moratorium on death penalty for the GSP plus scheme. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had ordered that no death penalty be carried out till further orders, he said.

Pakistan said to have large reserves of shale gas, oil

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: In a major development, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the American federal authority on energy statistics and analysis, has estimated fresh recoverable shale gas reserves of 105 trillion cubic feet (TCF) and more than nine billion barrels of oil in Pakistan..
These estimates of recoverable hydrocarbon reserves are many times larger than so far proven reserves of 24 TCF for gas and about 300 million barrels for oil. Pakistan currently produces about 4.2 billion cubic feet of gas and about 70,000 barrels of oil per day.
A government official said the new estimates appeared to be ‘very very encouraging’ but it had not been shared with the government of Pakistan. He said the shale gas had seen tremendous developments in the United States and a couple of other countries were trying to use the latest technology. Pakistan, he said, was also encouraging exploration and production companies to venture into the fresh horizon.
According to a June 2013 estimates of the EIA based on surveys conducted by Advanced Resources International (ARI), a total of 1,170 TCF of risked shale gas are estimated for India-Pakistan region --584 TCF in India and 586 TCF in Pakistan.
In case of Pakistan these estimates are backed by proven studies and verified technical data “The risked, technically recoverable shale gas resource is estimated at 201 TCF, with 96 TCF in India and 105 TCF in Pakistan,” said the EIA.
The EIA also estimated risked shale oil in place for India/Pakistan of 314 billion barrels, with 87 billion barrels in India and 227 billion barrels in Pakistan. “The risked, technically recoverable shale oil resource is estimated at 12.9 billion barrels for those two countries, with 3.8 billion barrels for India and 9.1 billion barrels for Pakistan,” the EIA said.
The southern and central Indus basins are located in Pakistan, along border with India and Afghanistan which are bounded by the Indian shield on the east and highly folded and thrust mountains on the west.
The lower Indus basin has commercial oil and gas discoveries in the Cretaceous-age Goru Fm sands plus additional gas discoveries in shallower formations. The shales in the Sembar Formation are considered as the primary source rocks for these discoveries.
The EIA said that while oil and gas shows have been recorded in the Sembar Shale on the Thar Platform, no productive oil or gas wells have yet been drilled into the Sembar Shale.
About the resource assessment, the EIA said that within 31,320 sq miles of dry gas prospective area, the Sembar Shale in the lower Indus basin had a resource concentration of 83 billion cubic feet per square mile. Within the 25,560 square mile wet gas and condensate prospective are, the Sembar shale has resource concentration of 57 BCF per sq. miles of wet gas and nine million barrels per square mile of condensate. Within the 26,700 square miles oil prospective area, the Sembar Shale has a resource concentration of 37 million barrels per square mile.

PTI chief defends use of word

By Nasir Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: PTI chief Imran Khan pleaded before the Supreme Court on Tuesday to withdraw its contempt notice against him and clarified that the word ‘sharamnak’ (shameful) he had used in his July 26 press conference was never used in its literal sense or connotation but in the context of “unbecoming”. .
But in his 21-page comprehensive reply he severely criticised Election Commission Member retired Justice Riaz Kiani who he said acted more as a representative of the PML-N which had nominated him for the post and described his role as ‘most shocking’.
Mr Khan will appear on Wednesday before a bench comprising Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry that will resume the contempt proceedings against him.
He is facing the charge for his statement at a press conference in which he criticised the role of the judiciary and the ECP as shameful. He alleged that the general elections had been rigged due to the role played by the two institutions.
Mr Khan did not mention the words regrets, apology or remorse in his reply but requested the bench to consider his demeanour in the court and his past services to the cause of rule of law and independence of judiciary in his favour to conclude that he would neither commit contempt of court nor would ever scandalise the court or bring any judge into hatred, ridicule or contempt.
The reply mentions his disappointment and sadness over a June 8 meeting of the National Judicial Policymaking Committee, headed by the chief justice of Pakistan and attended by the chief justices of all the high courts that had expressed satisfaction over the performances of the district returning officers and returning officers in the elections.
“It was indeed shocking to the PTI and its candidates because they felt that their cases have already been prejudged by the NJPMC,” he said, adding that it appeared that the acts of the DROs and ROs had been condoned and they had been given a clean chit.
He said a large number of aggrieved PTI candidates had not filed election petitions because of disappointment arising out of the meeting.
Explaining further why he had vented his frustration at the press conference, the reply said the July 24 Supreme Court order of advancing the presidential election date to July 30 from Aug 6 after allowing a PML-N petition without any notice to the PTI.
Mr Khan said the unfair election process had resulted in the unfortunate exit of Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim.

US showed ways for Aafia’s return in 2010

By Iftikhar A. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27: Senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclosed on Tuesday that the United States had suggested to Pakistan over three years ago the ways which could be adopted for possible repatriation of Dr Aafia Siddiqui currently languishing in a US prison..
The officials, including Foreign Office’s Special Secretary Noor Mohammad Jamani and Additional Secretary (US) Naghmana Hashmi, told a Senate committee that in response to Pakistan’s request for signing an agreement on transfer of offenders, the United States had said that a bilateral treaty was not possible but indicated that the purpose could be achieved if Pakistan signed one of international conventions relating to the matter.
Anne W. Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan at that time, in a note verbale, mentioned the accession to the Council of Europe convention for transfer of sentenced persons and the inter-American convention on extradition as workable options for Pakistan.
The Senate Standing Committee on Interior was informed that Pakistan had now decided to seek accession to the Council of Europe convention and the issue would be on the agenda of a meeting of the federal cabinet on Wednesday.
Dr Aafia’s sister Fauzia Siddiqui, who attended the meeting on special invitation, termed the decision a ‘ray of hope’.
The meeting was informed that soon after approval of a summary by the cabinet, a letter would be written to the secretary general of the Council of Europe, making a formal request for accession.
Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Interior Tariq Hayat said the summary had been sent to the cabinet and the ministries of interior and foreign affairs held similar views.
Interior Ministry’s spokesman and Senior Joint Secretary (Law) Umar Hameed said the matter of Dr Aafia had been handled with extreme care. He said all the ministries concerned and legal experts had been consulted and political, diplomatic, legal and humanitarian aspects had been considered.
He said the previous government had also made considerable efforts for repatriation of Dr Aafia, adding that a letter had been written by the then deputy attorney general to the US authorities on July 27, 2010.

Another peace prize for Malala

THE HAGUE, Aug 27: Malala Yousufzai has won the prestigious International Children’s Peace Prize, KidsRights announced on Tuesday..
The 16-year-old will receive the award from 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner and women’s rights campaigner Tawakkol Karman at a glittering ceremony in The Hague on Sept 6, the Amsterdam-based organisation said.
Malala “risked her life in the fight for access to education for girls all over the world,” KidsRights said in a statement.
“By awarding the 2013 International Children’s Peace Prize... KidsRights shines the spotlight on a brave and talented child who has demonstrated special dedication to children’s rights,” it added.—AFP

Balochistan LB poll on party basis

QUETTA, Aug 27: A three-member committee of the Balochistan cabinet headed by Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch decided on Tuesday to hold party-based local bodies’ elections in the province. .
The committee approved the proposed local bodies’ bill for its tabling in the provincial assembly.
The cabinet also constituted a sub-committee headed by Abdul Rahim Ziaratwal, a minister, to suggest reforms in the local bodies system and de-limitations. One member each will be drawn from the National Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to form the sub-committee.
The cabinet also approved the Child Protection Policy. —Staff Correspondent

A calm day along LoC

MUZAFFARABAD, Aug 27: The Line of Control (LoC) remained relatively calm on Monday night and Tuesday but migration continued as 65 more families fled from forward locations of Nakial sector, officials said. .
“There was no firing last night and even today it has been generally calm, except for sporadic shelling for a small time in two areas of Nakial sector. But, luckily, there were no casualties,” Deputy Commissioner Masoodur Rehman told Dawn on Tuesday.
Following the arrival of 65 more families, comprising over 230 people, the administration set up a third camp in the Model Secondary School Khandar on the outskirts of Nakial, he said.
The total number of displaced people being looked after by the administration increased to 430.
“We are trying to convince them to return to their homes but they are still scared,” AJK Food Minister Javed Iqbal Budhanvi said.
Meanwhile, around 350 people held a demonstration in Kotli in protest against the cross-LoC shelling and civilian casualties.
Leaders asked India and Pakistan to honour the ceasefire agreement and stop artillery duels “which are not only killing human beings but also destroying the wildlife”.
In a related development, AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed told a press conference in Islamabad that 12 constituencies of the Legislative Assembly had been affected by Indian shelling.
Mr Majeed urged the United Nations “to make its military observer mission for Kashmir effective and save the civilian population along the LoC from Indian shelling”.
Interestingly, while the LoC in Kotli district was witnessing skirmishes, intra-Kashmir trade went on unhindered. On Tuesday, 11 trucks went through the Chakothi-Uri crossing and 20 arrived from the other side.—Staff Correspondent

Altaf wants army deployed in Karachi

By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque

KARACHI, Aug 27: Once a staunch opponent of deployment of military troops in Karachi, Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain called upon the Nawaz Sharif government on Tuesday to hand over the city to the army for maintenance of law and order. .
Whether it was the June 1992 army operation or establishment of military courts in November 1998 under Article 245 of the constitution, the MQM always saw a conspiracy in them by the centre and resisted the moves tooth and nail. Nawaz Sharif was prime minister on both the occasions.
Also in the recent past, the party had rejected every demand for a de-weaponisation drive or a Swat-like operation by the army in Karachi.
But it appears that the fragile law and order situation in Lyari area and attacks on the Kutchhi community have disturbed the MQM chief to such an extent that he called upon the federal government to deploy army troops in the city.
And when his demand drew strong criticism from the PPP and other parties, Mr Hussain clarified in a statement that the appeal was being “unduly criticised and that Article 149(4) of the constitution needs to be referred to and also to look into the Supreme Court’s 1994 judgment in the Shehla Zia case with reference to Articles 9 and 14. Furthermore, Article 245(1) is also well known to the students of law”.
Article 245(1) reads: “The armed forces shall, under the directions of the Federal Government, defend Pakistan against external aggression or threat of war, and, subject to law, act in aid of civil power when called upon to do so.”
In a statement issued from London, Mr Hussain came down hard on the Sindh government and said it had failed to maintain law and order in the city and protect Kutchhi families who had migrated to Badin and Thatta and returned to Karachi on Monday.
He criticised the chief minister, the Sindh government and the Karachi administration for their inaction over the killing of scores of people belonging to the Kutchhi community in Lyari as well as disappearance of law enforcement agencies from the troubled area. “It gives an impression as if police and law enforcement agencies don’t exist in Karachi.”

Target killers, extortionists have political links: Nisar

By Khawar Ghumman & Iftikhar A. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: A day after the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) called for army deployment to bring violence-hit Karachi back to normality, the federal government cautiously decided on Wednesday to step in and play its role. .
The federal cabinet decided to hold a special meeting on Karachi in coming days and consult all concerned quarters to chalk out what a minister said would be a “sound and workable strategy” against criminal elements.
The minister said the government had decided to invite to the proposed meeting the Sindh chief minister, governor and the chief secretary as well as the directors general of Rangers, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB). The MQM’s parliamentary leader, Dr Farooq Sattar, will also be invited to give his party’s perspective with special reference to its call for bringing in troops.
Soon after the meeting commenced, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asked Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to brief the cabinet on the law and order condition in Karachi. Chaudhry Nisar termed the situation “increasingly going out of control” if the Sindh government didn’t act forcefully.
Speaking at a press conference later, the interior minister ruled out handing over Karachi to the army, saying it would be inappropriate to send troops to the city without taking the provincial government on board. He said the army was already overstretched because of being heavily engaged in internal and external security matters.
He said a number of target killers, extortionists and other criminals had been identified and most of them had some political links. “The agencies’ record about these criminals will be placed before the cabinet’s special meeting.”
Chaudhry Nisar said a blueprint about Karachi’s worsening situation and a methodology, involving targeted operation, to address the issue had been prepared, but said the proposed plan would be implemented after evolving a consensus.
He said it was possible to resolve the issue, but it was imperative to give a free hand to police and Rangers and keep the process completely free from political intervention. It would not be possible to achieve the objective if efforts were made to protect political interests, he said. “I will be the first to expose those belonging to my party found involved in wrongdoings.”
Chaudhry Nisar said the centre wanted to give a final word to the provincial government and proposed that the chief minister should lead the entire effort.
“We want to take all steps within the domain of the constitution and under the supervision of the provincial government.”
He said a committee comprising leaders of political parties represented in Karachi and renowned business and media personalities to oversee the operation had also been proposed so that nobody could raise a finger at the transparency of the exercise. He said the proposed operation would be totally non-political.
In reply to a question, he said the MQM would be represented at the meeting if Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad returned from his foreign visit before it.
Underscoring the urgency to address the problem, he warned that more serious threats were looming over Karachi.
Chaudhry Nisar said the woes of Karachi could be addressed but it required political will, a sense of direction, clarity of thought and transparency.
“Karachi and the people of Karachi do not deserve what is happening right now,” he said.
The timing of the MQM’s call for using army against violence in Karachi has raised eyebrows. Throughout Gen Pervez Musharraf’s rule and then the PPP-led government’s term, the MQM was part of the government but it never raised such a demand, although Karachi remained in the grip of violence.
The MQM even angrily reacted to a statement of Chaudhry Nisar when, soon after taking over charge in June, he called for intervention by the federal government in Karachi.
However, since the election of the president on July 30 in which the MQM voted for the PML-N’s candidate, it appears that the two parties are coming closer to each other.
Some believe the MQM’s call for handing over Karachi to the army and the swift response by the federal government to have a special cabinet meeting is part of the developing good working relationship between them.On the other hand, the MQM and PPP, former allies in Sindh and the centre, have developed serious differences over the new local government bill for the province. Despite opposition by the MQM, the PPP got the bill passed last week. It was signed on Monday by Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani as acting governor since Dr Ibad is abroad these days.
“No doubt the PPP government in Sindh has completely failed to improve law and order, but a military operation is no solution to the problem,” PTI leader Shafqat Mahmood said.
He said the most “intriguing” development at the moment was the MQM’s cry for army deployment. He wondered whether the MQM, by engaging the military in Karachi, wanted to pave the way for imposition of governor rule in Sindh.
No MQM leader was available for comments.
DR AAFIA: The cabinet approved the signing of the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. It was informed that after attaining accession to the convention, the US government would be requested for repatriation of Aafia Siddiqui. The prime minister asked the interior minister to expedite the signing.
According to the US law, a person sentenced under federal law can only be repatriated or transferred to the country of origin/citizenship if it is a signatory to a prisoner transfer treaty to which the United States is also a signatory.

‘Different demands’ coming due to non-implementation of verdict: CJ

By Tahir Siddiqui

KARACHI: Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry observed on Wednesday that “different demands” were being made in view of the poor security situation in Karachi because the federal and provincial authorities had failed to implement the Supreme Court’s judgment in the city’s law and order case in letter and spirit. .
He came down heavily on the Sindh chief secretary and provincial chiefs of police and Rangers, saying that instead of showing improvement the law and order situation had in fact worsened since the apex court’s judgment in the case. Law-enforcement agencies failed to protect the life and property of citizens, the chief justice added.
A five-judge larger bench, comprising the chief justice and Justice Jawwad Khawaja, Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Ather Saeed and Justice Azmat Saeed, had taken up a case relating to implementation of its judgment.
The court expressed extreme annoyance and dismay over the killing of over 100 people over the past 10 days and asked Chief Secretary Ijaz Chaudhry, Sindh IG Shahid Nadeem Baloch and Rangers Director General Maj-Gen Rizwan Akhtar to explain what was obstructing them to curb extortion and target killings in Karachi.
At the outset of the hearing, the chief justice asked Advocate General Khalid Javed what steps had been taken to cope with the two issues.
The bench took notice of the absence of DG Rangers and directed the official concerned to call him to the court. “Rangers seem to have no interest in maintaining law and order,” a member of the bench remarked.
The DG Rangers later appeared before the court.
The chief justice observed that the law and order situation in the city could not be considered satisfactory because 10 to 15 were dying every day.
The court regretted that the situation had not improved ever after a passage of two years since its judgment in the Karachi case.
The chief justice asked the chief secretary if he had written any letter to the federal government regarding the situation in Karachi. The court directed him to place on record his correspondence with the provincial and federal governments on the issue.
The court came down hard on Deputy Attorney General Aashiq Raza when he submitted an old report on the law and order situation in the city. It asked Attorney General Muneer A. Malik to inform it about the stance of the federal government for providing assistance to the provincial government in normalising the situation.
The court observed that it was the responsibility of police to protect the life and property of citizens, but their performance was not satisfactory despite the fact that they had the support of Rangers, Frontier Constabulary and intelligence agencies.
The CJP asked the chief secretary to approach the federal authorities if the IG was incapable of handling the situation effectively.
The bench directed the prosecutor general to place on record data containing convictions and sentences awarded to the accused. The court will take up the case on Thursday.

Official in Russia for strategic dialogue

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani was in Moscow on Wednesday for the first strategic dialogue between Russia and Pakistan. .
The strategic dialogue marks a new phase in their relations that have been characterized by a long history of estrangement.
The two-day dialogue would cover a wide range of issues including exchange of views on regional and international developments, and discussions on economic, political and defence cooperation.
Pakistan-Russia rapprochement has been quietly in the works for the past three years. There have been a number of high-level exchanges, both political and military, during this period, which essentially helped the two countries to move towards a reset in ties. The start of the strategic dialogue now lays the institutional framework for rebuilding the relationship.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was to visit Pakistan last September, but cancelled the trip at the eleventh hour due to unspecified reasons. However, the setback did not stop the normalisation process.
The Pakistan-Russia détente is driven by international developments in which both countries have policy convergences on a number of issues. Equally important is the fact that the détente is centred around growing defence relations between the two countries. Army Chief Gen Kayani visited Russia for the second time last year and Russian ground forces chief Col Gen Vladimir V. Chirkin was here this month. Moscow had for long remained averse to developing defence cooperation with Islamabad because of opposition from New Delhi.

Ecnec approves Rs132bn power projects

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved on Wednesday 16 projects with a total estimated cost of Rs132 billion, most of them for transmission of electricity from power plants to the distribution system. .
An Ecnec meeting presided over by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and attended by ministers and senior representatives from provincial governments constituted a committee to ascertain the reasons behind an inordinate delay in the construction of the Kachhi Canal that was scheduled to be completed in March this year at an estimated cost of Rs28bn. The cost has now increased to Rs60bn and the project is likely to take another two years.
Of the approved projects, 12 relate to the energy sector, amounting to Rs96.48bn, including the Rs7.51bn 31.17MW Koto hydropower project.
Three projects of Rs41.39bn were approved for Sindh, two costing Rs9.81bn for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, seven of Rs43.6bn for Punjab along with a Rs11.8bn project for the province’s southern region and a Rs8.73bn scheme for Balochistan. A Rs22.58bn project was approved for Azad Jammu and Kashmir and one of Rs2.63bn for Islamabad.
In order to streamline the procedure of approval of projects, the finance minister asked the planning and development department to present projects approved by the Central Development Working Party within seven days.
The Planning Commission was asked to prepare an integrated plan for transmission lines needed for the electricity planned to be generated by 6,600MW thermal plants in Gadani, 1,200MW from Jamshoro, 2,017MW Karachi coastal plants and other scheduled projects. The meeting was informed that 90 per cent work on the D.G. Khan-Loralai and 70pc on Dadu-Khuzdar lines had been completed.
Work on a grid station in Dera Ghazi Khan will be completed by April next year.
The committee deferred discussion on the Kachhi Canal project’s first phase and constituted a committee headed by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and comprising the planning secretary, Balochistan chief secretary, Water and Power Authority chairman, finance adviser and Punjab irrigation secretary to look into the causes of delay and suggest a way forward so that work on it can be expedited. It decided that development projects fully funded by the provinces should be fast tracked.
The projects approved by the committee include the third 500kv AES-Jamshoro-Moro-R.Y. Khan and 500kv Moro-Dadu transmission lines, rehabilitation of Jamshoro thermal power station, transmission scheme for power from Neelum-Jhelum, Karot, and Azad Pattan hydropower projects. It also approved 132kv new substations, conversion of 66kv substations to 132kv and associated transmission lines and augmentation sub-projects of the Multan, Faisalabad, Islamabad, Peshawar, Hyderabad and Lahore power companies.
Projects for laying 132kv double-circuit transmission lines for the Quetta Electric Supply Company and interconnection of Chashma 3 and C4 nuclear power plants were also approved.

Imran absolved of contempt charge

By Nasir Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: A visibly worried Imran Khan came to the Supreme Court, along with senior leaders of his party, on Wednesday to face the contempt charge for his tirade against the judiciary at a press conference. But he left as a free man after the court absolved him of committing the contempt. “The notice is discharged,” announced a three-judge bench in a surprise move. .
It was Mr Khan’s second appearance before the bench comprising Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry which had expressed displeasure over the word ‘sharamnak’ (shameful) used by the PTI chief at his press conference on July 26 while criticising some judicial actions.
The bench was not satisfied with a reply filed earlier by the PTI chief which it said did not contain any remorse, apology or regrets, although all kinds of explanations were given for using the word.
Even on Wednesday Mr Khan could not pacify the bench when he said that although the court recognised his struggle and stature, it was not ready to accept his assurance that he could never think of undermining it and that he had used the word ‘sharamnak’ for the judicial officers associated with election matters, and not for the superior judiciary.
But it was the statement of Attorney General Muneer A. Malik which did the trick. The attorney general who acts as prosecutor in contempt matters said it was his belief that the dignity of the Supreme Court rested on the surest foundation of public respect and admiration.
“This is the most independent judiciary in our history. We as a nation have reached a point in our history that whosoever makes allegation against the judiciary, people will never believe it and the judiciary will remain untainted,” the AG said.
He said the present contempt case was not one of disobedience of Supreme Court orders and the surest foundation of dignity was still alive. The legitimacy of the court will always be there in the eyes of the people.
The moment Mr Malik concluded his brief arguments, the court discharged the contempt notice against Mr Khan.
Attired in a white shalwar-kameez and black waistcoat, Mr Khan had arrived at the SC premises amid tight security and greetings and slogans by workers and supporters of his party. The courtroom-2 was packed to capacity. The PTI chief was accompanied by leaders of his party, including Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Shafqat Mehmood, Chaudhry Sarwar and Shireen Mazari.
Mr Khan’s panel of lawyers headed by Advocate Hamid Khan comprised Mohammad Anwar Qazi, Ahmad Awais and Mohammad Waqar Rana.
Hamid Khan clarified before the bench that at a number of press conferences his client had tried to dispel the impression that the Supreme Court or any superior court was the target of his criticism.
He regretted that appeals moved by the PTI candidates against riggings in the May 11 elections had been pending before tribunals for three months. He said the purpose of the July 26 press conference was for the future of democracy in the country. The apex court should have taken notice of the rigging.
The counsel said other political parties had also criticised the judiciary, but they had been spared and the PTI was in the dock.
But the court said there was a difference between the PTI and other political parties because Imran Khan being a frontline leader commanded much more respect than others and that nobody could expect such words against the dignity of an institution from a political leader of such a stature.
“How things will end up if encouraged,” the court said and asked the counsel if he wanted a judgment suggesting the word ‘sharamnak’ if used against the judiciary did not have a derogatory connotation and that such a judgment be cited as precedence in future.

Senate body approves ‘freedom of information law’ draft

By Syed Irfan Raza

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: The Senate committee on information and broadcasting on Wednesday approved the draft of a much-awaited “Freedom of Information Law”. The committee finalised the draft after eight months of deliberations. It ignored reservations of the defence authorities. The draft was prepared by the ministry on the recommendations of a sub-committee headed by Farhatullah Babar, the President’s spokesman. .
It was decided that the committee chairman, Kamil Ali Agha, would move it in the Senate as a multi-party bill on Thursday. “I will submit the draft of the bill before Senate Secretariat on Thursday,” said Mr Agha while talking to Dawn.
In reply to a question about addressing the defence ministry’s (MoD) reservations, Farhatullah Babar said the Senate could not wait for long for the ministry’s reply.
The MoD had asked the Senate’s sub-committee on information to keep the bill pending till further orders of the defence authorities.
Later it asked the committee to incorporate a condition in the draft making it mandatory on anyone seeking official information to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC).
The committee, however, rejected the defence ministry’s point of view and approved the draft of the freedom of information law.
Senator Babar said the committee waited quite long for a letter from the ministry and then decided to approve the draft.
Mr Agha said the bill would give media and the common man access to all types of information - be it secret, classified, confidential or simple.
“Each and every government department comes under the ambit of the bill and they will have to provide all kinds of information to people,” said Mr Agha.
He said although the bill was not media-specific, the media will have more access to information than a common man.
Mr Agha said decisions of the government would be placed on websites. “Even appointments of officials and their perks and privileges will be placed on the website,” he said.
Under the law, government officials will provide information within 20 days or else a complaint may be lodged against him/her which will be decided by the head of the relevant department in next 20 days.
Asked about action against officials for non-compliance, he said the bill has proposed punishment to official/s for not providing the required information. “We also suggested punishment in this regard in the bill,” he added.
Pervaiz Rasheed, the minister for information and broadcasting, said the government believed in consensus and took decision after taking on board all stakeholders and cited the example of a similar bill adopted by the Punjab cabinet before the dissolution of assemblies.
The committee finally decided that the bill would be moved by its chairman Kamil Ali Agha on a private members day as a multi-party bill.
Later, the government will own the bill and present it in the cabinet for approval.
FIR AGAINST A PRIVATE TV CHANNEL: The committee condemned the registration of an FIR against a private television channel and decided to summon the Balochistan information secretary to record his statement on the unfortunate incident. The information minister told the committee that Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik had informed the court that the case was registered on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Human rights cases on decline, claims minister

By Jamal Shahid

ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed informed the National Assembly on Wednesday that there had been a decline in human rights cases registered in all provinces except Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the last two years. .
The minister said that 12,884 cases had been registered since 2011 at four regional offices of the human rights department operating under the Ministry of Law and Justice in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta. He said there had been a marked decline in cases of acid attack, burning, domestic violence, karo kari/honour killing, kidnapping of minorities, missing people and police and prison-related matters.
The minister said there had been a decline in the number of cases of acid attack as only five cases were reported this year in comparison to last year’s 53. He said there were 20 such cases in Sindh last year and only three this year.
He said there had been an increase in acid throwing cases in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from two in 2012 to six this year.
While cases of burns and domestic violence were down in Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad, they were high in the KP. He said that cases of karo kari and honour killing had also declined in all provinces as 368 cases were registered in Sindh this year, 22 in Punjab and 28 in KP. Two cases of honour killing were registered in Islamabad.
The minister said the KP was the only province which saw an increase in the number of people going missing, adding that 22 people had gone missing in 2011, compared to 64 this year.
The NA was further informed that cases of violence against women had also gone up in KP from 70 in 2011 to 179 this year. The same was the case for violence against children in KP, which saw an increase from 67 cases in 2011 to 161 this year.

Two polio cases found in North Waziristan

By Pazeer Gul

MIRAMSHAH, Aug 28: The National Institute of Health, Islamabad, confirmed two new cases of polio in North Waziristan on Wednesday, raising the number of cases to five. .
Taliban militants had banned vaccination in the area in June last year.
With the new cases, the number of polio-infected children in Pakistan rose to 27, a statement issued by the health department said. Of the 27 cases, 17 are in Fata.
Twenty-one month-old Maryam Bibi, daughter of Saeedullah of Shalkikhel village in Mir Ali tehsil, has been tested positive for the polio virus. She had not received any polio drop.
Eleven-month-old Mohammad, son of Abdul Basit, has also tested positive for the virus. He had not been vaccinated because of the Taliban ban.
Agency surgeon Dr Jahan Mir Khan told journalists that samples of at least 42 suspected cases had been sent to Islamabad for examination. He also said that the political administration had started talks with the Taliban through a grand tribal jirga to persuade them to allow vaccination in the area.
Health officials said the disease could reach epidemic proportions and spread to areas adjacent to Fata if vaccination campaign was not started immediately.

Centre favours ISI, IB role in Karachi action

By Tahir Siddiqui

KARACHI, Aug 29: The federal government submitted in the Supreme Court on Thursday that intelligence agencies were required to identify the first and second line leaderships of all criminal groups in different communities in the disturbed areas of Karachi as well as of a hitherto unknown outfit, Muhajir Republican Army, so that action could be taken against them under the law. .
This was stated in a report submitted to a five-judge larger bench by Attorney General Munir A. Malik, who had been asked on Wednesday to inform the court about the stance of the federal government on providing assistance to the Sindh government in normalising the situation.
The bench, which comprises Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad Khawaja, Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Ather Saeed and Justice Azmat Saeed, is hearing implementation of its judgment in the Karachi law and order case.
The report said the law and order situation in Karachi was in shambles when the present government took over in June. It said the city was confronted with multi-dimensional threats compounded by a rapid increase in population as over a period of time criminal gangs had matured into formidable syndicates by entering into alliances with terrorist organisations.
“Unfortunately, various facets of these syndicates have succeeded in developing political patronage in various forms,” the report said, adding that an “extremely careful and responsible handling is required to disentangle the situation”.
The report suggested that an outright major operation should be avoided in crime-infested Lyari at all costs because “it could open an additional front”. More visible security forces should be deployed in Kutchhi community-dominated areas.
In addition to the existing coordination, the report said, both Intelligence Bureau and Inter-Services Intelligence should identify the first and second tier leaderships of all criminal groups in different communities in the troubled areas. The IB, through technical and communication intelligence, including geo-fencing, should collect evidence about criminal activities of these ringleaders.
Individuals financing displaced persons in Badin or Thatta also needed to be identified. All-out efforts are needed to identify members of the Muhajir Republican Army and take action against them under the law.
The report said the interior ministry had extended full assistance to the Sindh government in utilising the strength of federal institutions, including Rangers, Federal Investigation Agency, National Database and Registration Authority and National Aliens Registration Authority.
It said the office of National Crisis Management Cell had been made functional in Karachi and a director was tasked with managing round-the-clock control room for coordination with the local authorities as well as the NCMC in Islamabad.
The attorney general said the federal government had to be cautious about meddling in the affairs of provinces after the passage of 18th Amendment and there were governments of different political parties at the centre and in the provinces.
At this, the chief justice said there might be governments of different parties, but the constitution was same for them. He regretted that a large quantity of arms and ammunition were being smuggled into Karachi through ports and supplied throughout the country, including Balochistan, but the authorities were sitting like silent spectators. There were reports that about 19,000 containers containing weapons and vehicles had gone missing, he added.
The court came down hard on the Singh chief secretary and the inspector general of police, saying they had failed to discharge their responsibilities to protect the life and property of citizens.
The chief justice got angry when the advocate general said there was a “war-like” situation in Karachi and asked him if he knew what he meant by saying so. “We will not let the democratic system to derail,” the CJ said.
The court directed the advocate general to place on record details of the assistance required from the federal government to restore law and order in the city. It also asked the attorney general and the advocate general to seek instructions from the federal and provincial governments.

JUI-F joins govt, backs Taliban talks

By Syed Irfan Raza

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) has managed to get a slot in federal cabinet and the president has appointed its leader Akram Khan Durrani as a minister. .
“President Asif Ali Zardari, on the advice of the prime minister, has approved the appointment of Akram Khan Durrani, MNA, as federal minister in terms of Article 92(1) of the constitution,” the president’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar said on Thursday.
The JUI-F recently joined the PM-N government and had been demanding a ministry at the centre.
According to media reports, the JUI-F wanted at least two ministries but the PML-N agreed to spare only one seat in the cabinet.
When contacted, JUI-F spokesman Jan Achakzai said the party had presented its demands, including one federal minister, a minister of state and the chairmanship of three standing committees in the National Assembly.
He said the JUI-F had not yet sought any specific ministry. “Our committee dealing with the issue will soon decide which ministries and standing committees we would like to get.”
JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday and offered complete support for holding talks with Taliban.
He reportedly suggested that there must be a forum to decide which group of the Taliban would be engaged in talks.
An official press release said different political issues had come under discussion with particular emphasis on the law and order situation and terrorism.

Re-trial of Dr Afridi ordered

By Waseem Ahmad Shah

PESHAWAR, Aug 29: Setting aside the conviction and sentence of 33 years awarded by an assistant political agent last year to Dr Shakil Afridi, suspected of helping American CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden, the appellate court of the Frontier Crimes Regulation’s commissioner remanded his case on Thursday to the Khyber tribal agency’s political agent for re-trial on charges of having links with a banned outfit. .
The commissioner, Sahibzada Anees, who is the appellate forum under the FCR, ordered that Dr Afridi should remain behind bars and not be set free on bail till conclusion of his re-trial.
Advocate Samiullah Afridi, the main counsel for Dr Afridi, told a large number of reporters gathered at the Commissioner’s House that the court had accepted their plea that the APA of Bara tehsil, who had convicted him on May 23 last year on charges of being involved in anti-state activities by supporting the Lashkar-i-Islam, had tried him as an additional district magistrate whereas the sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) under which he had been convicted meant he could only be tried by a district and sessions judge. In the present case, this meant the political agent of the agency should have tried Dr Afridi.
The state prosecutor, Iqbal Durrani, said the conviction had been set aside on technical grounds and the commissioner had ordered that the suspect should be tried by the political agent.
In the tribal areas the administrative officers also serve as judicial officers and have been delegated powers of sessions judge and magistrate.
Dr Afridi, a former agency surgeon, was picked up allegedly by personnel of an intelligence agency in May 2011 on suspicion of helping the CIA trace Osama bin Laden by carrying out a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad. However, he was not convicted on that charge.
An appeal against his conviction was filed on his behalf by his brother Jamil Afridi.
A panel of lawyers comprising Abdul Lateef Afridi, Samiullah Afridi, Qamar Nadeem and Ijaz Mohmand represented Dr Afridi and contended that he had not been provided a fair trial guaranteed under the constitution.
They said the APA had mentioned in his order that their client had been arrested on May 23, 2011, by the political administration and handed over to an intelligence agency on May 29.
The appellant remained in illegal detention of the agency for almost a year and was finally handed over back to the administration on May 11 last year, they said.
They denied that the appellant has any link with the LI and argued that Bara had been under curfew since 2008.

Petrol and diesel prices to go up

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The prices of petrol and other major petroleum products are estimated to go up by more than Rs4.5 per litre on Saturday because of rising trend in the international market caused by reports of a looming US attack on Syria. .
According to an official of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra), the declining value of rupee and concern over possibility of a conflict over Syria have pushed up oil prices.
As a result, the ex-depot prices of both petrol and kerosene oil may go up by Rs4.50 per litre. Therefore, the ex-depot price of petrol may be increased to Rs109 per litre from Rs104.5.
Likewise, the ex-depot price of kerosene oil will go up to Rs105.78 from Rs101.28 per litre and of high speed diesel to Rs113.06 from Rs109.76.
The price of light diesel oil (LDO) will be increased by about Rs2 per litre to Rs98.12 and of high octane blending component (HOBC) to about Rs5 per litre to Rs134.
The retail price of petroleum is usually 30-40 paisa per litre more than the ex-depot price fixed by the government because of transportation cost from depots to the retail outlets.
The official said the Ogra was recommending to the government to absorb a part of the proposed increase in the petroleum levy instead of passing on full impact to consumers already facing inflationary pressures.
He said the government was currently getting about Rs8bn per month on account of petroleum levy on petroleum products and another Rs21bn revenue from general sales tax.

Parties endorse Nisar’s ‘grand consensus’ move

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Despite an MQM protest in the National Assembly on Thursday over overnight arrests of what it called hundreds of its workers in Karachi, the government seemed moving towards what Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan sought as a “grand consensus” for a targeted operation against criminals infesting the country’s commercial capital. .
And the minister’s ideas about the federal government helping a transparent and non-discriminatory operation led by the Sindh government of the PPP received a rare support from most opposition parties in the house, after two days of heightened tensions over a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) call for handing over Karachi to the army and then a combined opposition walkout on Wednesday against absence of a government assurance for a briefing to the house on some key foreign policy and security issues before it ends its present session on Friday.
While the MQM demand on Tuesday for handing over its electoral base to the army was rejected the same day by the ruling PML-N and all major opposition parties as an undemocratic prescription in a democratic era, the row over the briefing ended on Thursday with the interior minister telling the house that the prime minister’s adviser on foreign affairs and national security, Sartaj Aziz, would appear before it on Friday to respond to questions raised the previous day about the government’s positions on issues such as the so-called Doha dialogue for Afghan reconciliation, a proposed peace dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban, tensions with India over the Line of Control in Kashmir and widely expected US military strikes in Syria over the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Damascus regime.
Those issues were raised by opposition leader Khurshid Ahmed Shah and parliamentary leaders of other opposition parties.
The MQM, which had demanded army rule in Karachi over the killing of some members of the Kutchhi community in the city’s Lyari area and alleged patronisation of criminals by the provincial authorities, came with another grouse on Thursday: that the Sindh government had arrested what MQM parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar called “hundreds of our workers without justification” and voiced fears that he and some other party figures could also be arrested. The party’s lawmakers wearing black armbands as a mark of protest also staged a token walkout.
The interior minister said he also received a telephone call from Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad, who belongs to the MQM, at 4am on Thursday complaining of an operation against his party and that on being contacted by telephone, Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah assured him there were no arrest orders against MQM politicians.
While no information was given to the house about the affiliations of the arrested people except the MQM’s claim of “hundreds of its workers” picked up, Mr Khurshid Shah told reporters later that only alleged criminals had been arrested without any political considerations, with 40 to 50 of them being from the PPP-stronghold of Lyari. While the two successive MQM protests against the Sindh government indicated little chances left for the PPP to pursue its invitation to its ally in the previous PPP-led governments at the centre and in Sindh to join the present Sindh cabinet, the PML-N, which won MQM’s support in the election of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by the lower house in early June and the presidential election last month, too seemed to cold-shoulder the Muttahida.
Chaudhry Nisar, while speaking in the house on Thursday, wondered why the MQM was so strident in attacking security authorities like paramilitary Rangers in Sindh, while “there was no such finger-pointing” when it was part of the PPP-led coalition there for the previous five years and five years before that under military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Mr Sattar had asked for an assurance against any resort to torture of his party workers, forced confessions and “extrajudicial murders” like those of the decade of 1990s during what he called the “so-called democracy of that time” and warned the house that a repetition of such happenings would “lead to an irreversible anarchic and chaotic situation”.
Despite some recent friendliness between the MQM and the PML-N, Mr Sattar’s reference to the 1990s could hardly please the treasury benches as an army crackdown in Karachi then, about which the MQM often claims, was ordered during the first prime ministership of Mian Nawaz Sharif.
Yet the interior minister assured Mr Sattar that “your fears will be addressed” within legal and constitutional bounds though he repeatedly said that he could not give directives to the Sindh chief minister who, he added, would be “team captain” of the envisaged operation with federal security and intelligence agencies acting on his command.
While parameters of the operation would be finalised by a special cabinet meeting before which the prime minister would visit Karachi on Tuesday and hold a meeting with provincial authorities at the Governor’s House, he said.
“But it can succeed only if there is a grand consensus,” the minister said and added: “We are, God-willing, ready to carry out this responsibility.”
He said he also envisioned formation of a committee including representatives of all political parties, some senior businessmen, journalists, and senior citizens to oversee the transparency of the operation.
From the PPP, its senior lawmaker Naveed Qamar said his party “fully welcomes” the interior minister’s stated plans, particularly his assurance that they would be within “the limits of constitution and law”.
Similar endorsement came from the opposition Jamaat-i-Islami and Awami National Party, government-allied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F and the independent group from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Policeman linked with Kharotabad case killed

By Saleem Shahid

QUETTA, Aug 29: A former police officer involved in the infamous firing case in Kharotabad area was gunned down by suspected militants in the same area on Thursday night. .
Police sources said that Raza Khan was receiving death threats and an attempt had also been made on his life.
He was removed from police force after a commission headed by a judge of the Balochistan High Court found him guilty of providing wrong information to security forces, which led to the killing of five foreign citizens, three of them women, in May of 2011.
“Former police officer Raza Khan was travelling in his car when armed men targeted him,” police said, adding that the assailants on bike escaped after fatally injuring the former ASI.
Raza Khan died while being taken to hospital. “The deceased suffered multiple bullet injuries in his head and other parts of his body,” hospital sources said.
“We are investigating the matter and after completing investigations will be able to say anything about the killing of the former police officer,” a police officer said, adding that efforts were under way to arrest the killers.

ANP and MQM walk out of Senate over activists’ arrest

By Iftikhar A. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Awami National Party (ANP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Thursday staged a walkout from the Senate in protest against “mass arrest of their innocent workers” in Karachi, with the MQM reiterating its demand that the metropolis be handed over to the army under article 245 of the constitution. .
The walkout came a day after Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said a number of extortionists, target killers and other criminals in Karachi had been identified and most of them had political backing.
Haji Adeel of the ANP raised the issue by saying that activists of his party were being arrested for the last two days and so far over 100 of them had been rounded up. “We have no objections if someone involved in crimes is arrested but we strongly protest over these uncalled for arrest of innocent people,” he remarked before walking out of the house.
Soon afterwards, retired Colonel Tahir Hussain Mashhadi of the MQM pleaded that army be called out to help improve law and order situation in Karachi. He criticised the Sindh government for arresting workers of the opposition parties, including those of the MQM and ANP.
“Do you want to throw the people of Karachi into the sea? Do you want 1992-like situation?” he asked before storming out of the house.
PPP Leader Senator Raza Rabbani read out article 245 of the constitution and said if the article was invoked, the jurisdiction of the high court would be taken away and fundamental rights of the people of the city would be suspended. He said that according to his information, 45 PPP workers had also been arrested from Lyari.
Earlier, Saeed Ghani of PPP alleged that the PML-N and judiciary were behind the MQM’s demand for handing over Karachi to army, but did not elaborate.
He said there was an allegation against the PPP that it did not restore the judges sacked by Gen Pervez Musharraf, but said it was a misconception. He said around 70 judges had been sent packing by the-then military ruler who had been offered to take oath under the constitution to resume their work.
He said most of them did so but some who had not felt bad about taking oath under the PCO showed hesitance in taking oath under the constitution.
Criticising the role of the judiciary, he said it allowed Musharraf to contest presidential election while in uniform, but had an objection against President Asif Ali Zardari holding dual offices. “If there is some institution weakening other institutions, it is Supreme Court,” he remarked.
He said Imran Khan was pardoned in contempt case even without asking for it, but the-then PPP Ministers Rehman Malik and Babar Awan were not treated in the same manner. He said the requests of the-then prime ministers --- Yousuf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf --- for changing the bench and Ali Musa Gilani and Moonas Elahi’s pleas for changing the investigation officers were turned down, but on Arsalan Iftikhar’s plea the FIA and NAB were dissociated from the inquiry against him.
Nasrin Jalil of the MQM said her party was against army’s involvement in politics, but when it demanded that army be called out in Karachi it showed how bad the situation was in that city.
She said the banned outfits were taking part in elections and the workers of MQM and other parties were becoming victims of target killings. She also accused the Sindh government of protecting criminals. She said former Sindh home minister Zulfikar Mirza had conceded that he had issued 300,000 arms licences.
Afrasiab Khattak and Haji Adeel of the ANP showered praise on the outgoing president.

Plea to exempt teachers from other duties

By Nasir Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Supreme Court was requested on Thursday to order federal and provincial governments to do away with the practice of assigning elementary schoolteachers tasks other than imparting education like performing election duties and administering polio drops. .
In his petition, Raja Saimul Haq Satti, an advocate, said that engaging teachers in different national campaigns was not only tantamount to disgracing their community but also creating hardships for students and affecting the quality of education.
He said the 2011 matriculation results had exposed the Punjab government’s claim of doing a lot for the promotion of education since no student of any government school was able to get one of the top 13 positions. The government through the education secretary, health ministry, Election Commission and provincial education secretaries have been made respondents in the petition.
The petitioner said government schools were already facing shortage of teachers, adding that most teachers were reluctant to accept postings in far-flung rural areas.
“The situation is having an adverse impact on the quality of education in government schools whereas education departments are helpless in the face of political patronising of teachers,” the petitioner regretted.
The Annual Status of Education Report Pakistan Survey 1010-15 highlights gaps in the quality of education for children aged four to 16 at the district level. “The survey is a mirror for the government and citizens to track implementation and its challenges,” the petition said.
Mr Satti said that existing laws — the Islamabad Capital Territory Compulsory Primary Education Ordinance 2002 and the Punjab Compulsory Primary Education Act 1994 — were inadequate and flawed since these had failed to achieve their objectives. The two laws were applicable only to the primary education whereas article 25-A of the constitution called for free and compulsory education for children aged between five and 16, he added.
“The acts or omissions of the respondents are discriminatory, unwarranted, unconstitutional and illegal and by no stretch of imagination the elementary schoolteachers should be burdened with any other additional adventures other than imparting education to innocent children,” the petition said. The petitioner requested for early legislation similar to the one introduced by the Indian government in the form of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009.

Zardari to be in politics after vacating presidency

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: President Asif Ali Zardari will do politics and work for his Pakistan Peoples Party after vacating the presidency on Sept 8, Khursheed Ahmed Shah, the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly and a senior PPP figure, told reporters on Thursday..
Answering questions at a reception for him by the Parliamentary Reporters Association about the future role of Mr Zardari after completing his five-year term as president, Mr Shah said: “He is our leader. He will remain in the country and do politics.”
Pointing out that Mr Zardari had suffered more than 11 years in prison, Mr Shah said there was no question of his going into exile.
Mr Zardari will become the first democratically elected president in the country to complete his five-year term, which runs out on Sept 8.
He will be succeeded by Mamnoon Hussain of Pakistan Muslim League-N who was elected to the office by a parliamentary electoral college on July 30.

Indian response to maintaining LoC ceasefire awaited: FO

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Foreign Office said on Thursday that it was yet to hear from India about measures proposed for maintaining ceasefire along the Line of Control..
“We have made some concrete proposals to the Indian side to help reduce the tension along the LoC. The Indian response is awaited,” Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Chaudhry said at his weekly media briefing.
The measures proposed by Pakistan included reinforcing the existing political and military mechanisms and convening a meeting of senior diplomats and military officials for ensuring that ceasefire on LoC is observed.
Calm seems to have returned to the LoC after weeks of continuous shelling by Indian troops. Three Pakistani soldiers and two civilians were killed in the attacks.
The two countries have a ceasefire accord that has been left in tatters since the start of this year because of repeated hostilities — more importantly the incidents this month since August 6 and breaches of ceasefire in January.
The skirmishes renewed strains in bilateral relations and impeded the progress towards normalisation of ties. The LoC hostilities in January left the peace talks on ice and as the new government prepared to revive the dialogue, the latest episode has further delayed its resumption.
The events have also left an expected meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session next month, in a limbo.
The uncertainty about the prospects of the Sharif-Singh meeting was evident as spokesman Chaudhry once again said: “Should an opportunity arise we believe that such a contact between the leadership of two countries will be a useful occasion to discuss the steps required to improve relations.”
And while the political leaders on both sides are not directly talking to each other for defusing tensions, the job for finding a way out looks to have been left for Track-II.
Ambassadors Shahryar Khan and S.K. Lamba, the Track II pointsmen for Pakistan and India, respectively, are preparing to meet in Dubai. The two, Mr Chaudhry said, had been regularly interacting with each other since Mr Shahryar’s appointment last month.
Mr Shahryar has earlier visited India as PM Sharif’s special envoy.
SYRIA: The Foreign Office expressed concern over violence in Syria and condemned the use of chemical weapons.
Urging Western countries that are raring to attack Syria to show restraint, Pakistan, which is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, said it was important to wait for the outcome of a UN probe that is currently under way to ascertain the facts about the use of chemical weapons.
A team of UN inspectors, currently in Syria for investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons, is leaving the violence-wrecked country on Saturday.
“Pakistan believes that sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria must be respected. Use of force must be avoided at all costs as the people of Syria have already suffered enormously,” the spokesman said.
Pakistan’s position, he said, was guided by the principle of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-intervention in internal affairs.
SCO SUMMIT: Pakistan’s delegation to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit being held on Sept 13 in Kyrgyzstan would be led by Foreign Affairs and National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz.
Pakistan is currently an observer state and is seeking a full membership status in the SCO.

Action against Syria to be limited, tailored: US

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Aug 30: US President Barack Obama assured his nation on Friday that he was not leading them to yet another open-ended war in Syria as the Bush administration did in Afghanistan and Iraq..
“We’re not considering any open ended commitment. We’re not considering any boots on the ground approach,” said Mr Obama while welcoming leaders from the Baltic region to the White House.
The US president said he was only considering a “limited, narrow act”, and emphasised that he had “not made any decisions” yet about what actions to take. “We have consulted with allies. We have consulted with Congress,” he said.
Minutes before the president, US Secretary of State John Kerry read out a policy statement, promising the Americans that any action in Syria would be “limited and tailored”.
The top US diplomat said the Obama administration had been “more than mindful of the Iraq experience … we will not repeat that moment.”
Earlier in the day, NBC News released a poll showing that 79 per cent Americans wanted President Obama to seek congressional approval before taking any military action in Syria.As Americans prepared for a three-day weekend; the Obama administration appeared increasingly isolated on the Syrian issue.
On Thursday, the British parliament rejected a motion to authorise the use of force in Syria by 285 to 272 votes. And on Friday, the German government said it was not considering joining any military action.
But France, which had refused to back the US military operation in Iraq, has emerged as the staunchest American ally on the Syrian issue. French President Francois Hollande said that a military strike on Syria could come by Wednesday and made it clear that Britain’s surprise rejection would not affect his government’s stand.
“The chemical massacre of Damascus cannot and must not remain unpunished,” Mr Hollande told Le Monde newspaper.
Although disappointed by the British vote, Secretary Kerry echoed similar sentiments, saying that the United States would make its own decision on a possible strike.
“President Obama will ensure that the United States of America makes our own decisions on our own timelines based on our values and our interests,” he said.
As Mr Kerry was speaking, the White House released four pages of unclassified evidence, including a map, which they said proved beyond any doubt that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad were responsible for a chemical attack on Aug 21 outside Damascus.
Secretary Kerry claimed that at least 1,429 civilians, including 426 children, were killed in the attack.
These “findings are as clear as they are compelling. ... Read for yourselves the verdict reached by our intelligence community about the chemical weapons attack”, he said.
Secretary Kerry also criticised the Syrian president in the harshest possible terms, calling him “a thug and a murderer”.
“If we choose to live in a world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar Al Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the
United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will,” he said.
The consequences of the failure to respond to the Syrian crisis, he warned, would go beyond Syria’s borders.
“It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attacks, will now feel emboldened, in the absence of action, to obtain nuclear weapons,” he said.
“It is about Hezbollah, and North Korea, and every other terrorist group or dictator that might ever again contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction.”“Will they remember that the Assad regime was stopped from those weapons’ current or future use, or will they remember that the world stood aside and created impunity?”
Mr Kerry acknowledged that the American public was weary of war, saying that he, too, was tired after the years of military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. But “fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about”.
The NBC poll showed that overall, 50 per cent of Americans oppose any military action against Syria, while 42 per cent support it. Fifty per cent, however, supported launching cruise missiles and 44 per cent opposed it.
Apparently, this caused Secretary Kerry to warn that the Americans could not ignore the moral responsibility to respond to the use of chemical weapons.
“History would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction against all warnings, against all common understanding of decency,” he said.

Accord to diversify ties with Russia

By Baqir Sajjad Syed

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: Pakistan and Russia wrapped up their first strategic dialogue with a commitment to remaining engaged and maintaining the momentum in the relationship. .
“Both sides noted with satisfaction the growing understanding between the two countries and discussed in detail the state of bilateral relations. They reaffirmed their commitment to further deepening and diversifying the bilateral relationship to their mutual benefit,” a statement issued by the Foreign Office on the conclusion of the strategic dialogue said on Friday.
At the talks held at the foreign secretaries’ level in Moscow, the Pakistani side was led by Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani and Russia’s First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Gennadievich Titov led his side. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov also participated in the consultations.
The dialogue, the Foreign Office says, lays an institutional framework for building closer relations between the two countries through discussions for cooperation in political, economic, defence and other sectors. The two sides exchanged views on regional and international developments. Broadly, Pakistan and Russia agreed for more high-level contacts, closely coordinating positions on regional and international issues, and expanding trade and investment relations and cooperation in the field of energy and power generation.
Pakistan and Russia, which have a history of estrangement and remained on opposite sides during the cold war era, now look to have policy convergences on a number of international issues, including Afghanistan and Syria. This similarity in views coupled with growing warmth in defence ties has helped the two countries to come close.

Govt in secret contact with Taliban: minister

By Syed Irfan Raza

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: Backchannel talks between the ruling PML-N and Taliban are under way to work out a peace formula and end violence which has claimed thousands of lives in the country since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in Oct 2001. .
“Unofficial talks between the government side and Taliban are in progress,” Information Minister Pervez Rashid told Dawn on Friday. He said the government was exploring all options to restore lasting peace in the country and was in contact with Taliban at different levels.
He endorsed a statement made by Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman that a formula had been chalked out for holding formal talks with Taliban within a month. “Maulana Sahib is a responsible person and whatever he said is correct,” he said.
Earlier in the day, the JUI-F chief told reporters in Parliament House that a forum comprising authoritative and responsible people was being formed for holding talks with Taliban within a month.
The information minister did not say at what level talks had been initiated and with which group of militants. But, he said the government was ready to negotiate with any group of Taliban interested in holding talks.
“I cannot say with which group of Taliban we are holding talks because today we are talking with two groups and if another group wants to join we will welcome it too,” he said.
Mr Rashid said the government’s main objective was to restore pace and it would do everything possible to achieve that. “We have to rid the country of the menace of terrorism for which all options would be utilised.”
Asked if the government had taken opposition into confidence before going for negotiations with Taliban, he said the opposition was always consulted during formal and informal meetings and, particularly, in the Parliament House.
But, he said, there would be no opposition leader in the forum being formed for the talks which would be between the government and Taliban. “Therefore there is no need to include any leader of the opposition in the process.”
Earlier, the government had announced that it would hold an all-party conference to seek proposals for a formula under which talks could be initiated with Taliban. But the conference has not taken place for one reason or the other.
It may be mentioned that leaders of major opposition parties including the PPP, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Awami National Party and the PML-Q have supported the decision to hold talks with militants.
When contacted, JUI-F spokesman Jan Achakzai said the government had established some contacts with Taliban. “Certain steps have been taken behind the curtain.”
He said the government had formulated a strategy which would be followed by the forum for the talks. “The strategy is being discussed by the government with allied parties,” he added.
Intelligence agencies, he said, would be taken into confidence during the peace process.
Taliban confirm: Meanwhile, a senior Taliban leader confirmed that initial contacts between the militants and the government had been made. He told the BBC Urdu Service that the talks encompassing a wide range of issues including prevention of sectarian violence and snapping of ties with Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had been held.

Altaf wants allegation investigated

By Our Staff Reporter

KARACHI, Aug 30: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has urged the chief justice to order a probe into a report submitted to the apex court about a hitherto unknown organisation, the Muhajir Republican Army (MRA), and inform the people about the truth behind such a “mischievous act”. .
Speaking to members of the MQM coordination committee from London, he said that if the allegation about the MRA was found to be correct, the people behind it should be prosecuted.
“Otherwise, the interior ministry should be prosecuted for making this mischievous act, hatching a conspiracy against people and spreading hatred and bias.”
The Muttahida chief asked the committee to raise the issue in the assemblies and challenge the report in the Supreme Court after discussing the matter with constitutional and legal experts, said an MQM press release issued after the meeting on Friday.
Referring to the submission of the report by the ministry in court, he asked scholars, journalists and historians whether it was a mere accusation or a new idea had been given to the people. “Or is a conspiracy being hatched to launch an operation to crush the people of urban areas?”
Altaf Hussain said those who accused others of treason in fact committed treason by their actions. “If someone thinks he can crush us by levelling false accusations, I can only feel sorry for him.”
He asked the committee to educate workers and supporters about the “conspiracy being hatched against the sole representative of the middle-class people”.

Shipload of arms brought to Karachi: official: SC informed of former minister’s connivance

By Tahir Siddiqui

KARACHI, Aug 30: The Director General of Rangers, Maj Gen Rizwan Akhtar, submitted in the Supreme Court on Friday that about 19,000 containers had gone missing a few years ago and it must be pointed out who was at the helm of affairs in the ports and shipping ministry at that time. .
He said there were many ways for smuggling arms and ammunition into the country. Dealers of arms and ammunition in Karachi must be put to scrutiny because without their assistance it was not possible to control the flow of weapons.
The DG Rangers informed a five-judge bench that in connivance with the then minister for ports and shipping, a shipload of arms and ammunition had been brought to Karachi and their whereabouts was never ascertained.
The bench, which comprises Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad Khawaja, Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Ather Saeed and Justice Azmat Saeed, is hearing implementation of its judgment in the Karachi law and order case at the Karachi registry of Supreme Court.
The court directed the collector of customs and director generals of the Pakistan Coast Guards and the Maritime Security Agency to hold a meeting to chalk out a strategy to curb the smuggling of weapons into the country through borders and ports.
The chief justice said customs duty was being evaded in connivance with custom officials, calling for strict check on the menace because it generated black money which was subsequently used by crime syndicates.
The court named Ramzan Bhatti, a former customs official, as one-man commission to find out whether arms and ammunition were brought or smuggled through the sea and suggest measures to stop it.
The commission will find out whether customs officials posted at Bin Qasim and Karachi parts recovered hundred per cent duty and revenues or was there any loophole which enables traders to avoid such payments. It will try to determine whether such black money is used for financing unlawful activities.
The commission will also look into the allegation levelled by the DG Rangers that a shipload of arms and ammunition was brought to Karachi in the past in connivance with the then minister for shipping and recommend action against the people found responsible for it. The commission is required to submit its report in seven days.
Advocate General Khalid Javed submitted a report to the court on behalf of the Sindh government which attributed its failure to eradicate terrorism and maintain law and order in Karachi to financial constraints. It said that over the past few years a huge amount of resources had been diverted to handing the crisis resulting from floods.
The report said a financial assistance of Rs10 billion would be sought from the federal government soon to “beef up security in the province and for capacity building of law enforcement agencies to combat crime on a sustainable basis”.
The chief justice regretted that Karachi was awash with illegal arms and ammunition, but no efforts had been made by law enforcement agencies to recover them despite a passage of two years.
“Not only in Karachi but in the entire country there is an uncontrolled flow of smuggled arms and ammunition which is definitely being used by unscrupulous elements for criminal activities,” the bench said.
The court observed: “After going through the report submitted by the advocate general, we are of the opinion that as now both the governments i.e. federal and provincial are on board, and have decided to provide protection to and secure the life, property and liberty of the citizens, therefore we have opted to exercise judicial restraint and adjourn this case.”
The court will resume the hearing on Sept 18.

‘Muhajir Republican Army’ part to be omitted

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan informed the National Assembly on Friday that it was without his approval that the name of a previously unknown so-called “Muhajir Republican Army” with a role in Karachi violence had been mentioned in a report submitted to the Supreme Court on Thursday by Attorney General Munir A. Malik..
He said that the existence of such an outfit was mentioned in a meeting he held with security officials in Karachi but the report about it was “not of the level” that it should have been presented to the Supreme Court.
The minister said the portion of the report about the outfit was being withdrawn with an apology to the court.
The attorney general’s report to the court had called for all-out efforts to identify members of the “Muhajir Republican Army” and take action against them.
SACKINGS: The PPP’s parliamentary leader Amin Fahim and some other party members, while speaking on points of order, complained about alleged termination of services of several employees of the Pakistan International Airlines who had been given employment during the previous government and wanted the house to pass a resolution or form a committee to examine the matter.
Defence Production Minister Rana Tanvir Hussain assured the house that although any organisation could resort to ‘downsizing or rightsizing’ on merit, there would be no victimisation on political grounds and the matter could be taken up again in the next session of the house.—Raja Asghar

NA briefed on ties with neighbours, US

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: Making an opposition-sought appearance, the prime minister’s foreign affairs and national security adviser told the National Assembly on Friday of what he called new ‘warmth’ with Kabul flowing from Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent visit to Islamabad while he blamed India for “persistently rising” tensions and bloody violations of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir..
In a policy statement following opposition demands for a briefing on some key foreign policy and security issues, adviser Sartaj Aziz also spoke of a history of ups and downs in Pakistan’s relations with the United States and a planned resumption of a strategic dialogue between the two long-time allies.
He expressed hope that “more headway” would be made in the coming days to get US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas stopped.
On the prevailing concern over Syria following US threats of military strikes in the country over alleged use of chemical weapons by government forces, he said Pakistan, currently being a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, wanted the international community to wait for the report of UN inspectors now in Syria to investigate the matter.
But Mr Aziz, in his prepared speech in Urdu, skipped a reported government offer for dialogue with Pakistani Taliban and the implications of the recent conversion of the old Defence Committee of the Cabinet into the Cabinet Committee on National Security -- with an enhanced scope to consider internal security besides external threats -- over both of which the opposition had sought to be briefed. The opposition had staged a walkout from the house on Wednesday when the government failed to assure the house whether the adviser’s briefing could come before Friday’s conclusion of its 18-day session.
The adviser referred to frostiness in recent past in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan due to Kabul’s allegations, repeatedly denied by Islamabad, of Pakistan’s favourable links with the Afghan Taliban rebels and said that as result of President Karzai’s Aug 26-27 visit, “this chill has changed into warmth”.
He also referred to planned rail and road projects linking the two countries, in which Pakistan will have a role, and said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had assured the Afghan president that Pakistan would use its influence and “contacts with all groups in Afghanistan” to help national reconciliation there and that “we do not wish to make any nationality or political party our favourite”.
Pakistan, he said, also wanted the work done so far in connection with the so-called Qatar process for Afghan reconciliation to succeed with the cooperation, rather than intervention in Afghanistan, of regional countries.
Regarding India, he dilated on derailment of the 1999 Lahore Declaration of then prime ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif by the 1999 coup, the setback dealt to a “composite dialogue” process by the 2008 attacks on Mumbai and then a process to end tensions initiated by the present government halted after an Aug 6 LoC incident in which five Indian troops were killed.
The new government’s initiatives included two telephone talks between the two countries’ prime ministers, a projected meeting between them, start of back-channel diplomacy and a schedule issued for working groups under the composite dialogue.
The adviser regretted that the Indian defence minister had succumbed to pressure from opposition in parliament to accuse Pakistani troops for the incident after initially blaming an estimated 20 “terrorists” for the attack half a kilometre inside the Indian side of the territory in Poonch sector and authorised the Indian military to take “effective action”.

Gen Qazi to be brought to book: Saad Rafique: Former railways minister accused of triggering PR’s collapse

By Khawar Ghumman

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: If a federal minister is to be believed he intends to send a retired army general and former railways minister behind bars for causing a severe haemorrhage of the institution. .
Painting a bleak picture of the state of railways in the National Assembly on Friday, Khwaja Saad Rafique said the organisation had been bleeding profusely since 2000 at the hands of its managers and at present it was literally on a ‘life support system’.
He lashed out at retired Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi for triggering collapse of the Pakistan Railways in 2002 as its minister and said he was waiting for the appointment of a new chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to file cases against the general.
“We have done the homework and the moment a new NAB chairman, whose appointment is due, takes charge, we will bring all those, including Gen Qazi, to the dock for causing irrevocable losses to the organisation,” Mr Rafique said.
It may be mentioned here that Gen Qazi and a number of PR officials were accused of being involved in the controversial leasing of railways land in Lahore to a private company which built a golf. A special parliamentary committee of the previous National Assembly had recommended filing of criminal cases against people involved in the leasing of the land. According to the findings of the committee, the deal caused losses of over Rs25 billion.
“Until now many officials of the PR have served sentences for their part in its mismanagement, and some are serving, but so far none of the big guns has been held accountable,” Mr Rafique said, adding that time had come to bring them to book. “I will not spare anybody.”
The minister was replying to lawmakers’ questions about how soon the government would be able to bring some improvement in the operations of the railways which over the years had severely deteriorated.
“At the moment the entire fleet the PR locomotives have completed their shelf lives and one can well imagine how trains are being managed,” he said.
The PR is running 96 passenger trains in the country and at least during the current financial year the government can’t afford to start any new train due to shortage of engines.
About a deal for importing 75 locomotives from China signed by the PPP government, the minister said not only had the contract been cancelled but the Chinese company had also been blacklisted.
“It was the same company which provided 69 faulty engines in 2002. Notwithstanding the Chinese government’s pressure, I have also through the Foreign Office filed a claim of Rs2.5bn against the company.”
Sharing details of how the PR had suffered because of sheer ineptitude of its former bosses, Mr Rafique said: “I got the shock of my life when I was told that the director general (legal) of the PR is not a law graduate.”
He said the ministry was hiring a former high court judge as director of legal affairs to retrieve its land from illegal occupants.
He said the railways had suffered a loss of Rs32bn in 2012-13, which he hoped would be curtailed because he had recently managed to put about 10 redundant locomotives back on the tracks after maintenance. The PR also has to repay loans of Rs71bn.
The minister said in a written answer that the railways owned 167,690 acres of land which, if put to use, could be of great help in ending its losses.

Plea to restrain Zardari from travelling abroad: SC asks govt to submit legal response

By Nasir Iqbal

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: The Supreme Court directed the federal government on Friday to submit its legal response to a plea for restraining Asif Ali Zardari from leaving the country after the expiry of his five-year term as president on Sept 8. .
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali issued the directive on a petition filed by Shahid Orakzai last week while his fresh application was fixed for Friday through a supplementary cause list issued in the morning.
Mr Orakzai had also sought the change of bench because one of his petitions moved in November 2011 was clubbed with half a dozen petitions which were pending before a nine-judge larger bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry hearing the memo scandal case.
In that petition, he had sought an order for President Zardari to inform the court about his travel plans.
Mr Orakzai had also challenged the inquiry against former ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani who was grilled by the army chief as well as then director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the presence of the president and the then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at the Presidency soon after the memo controversy.
The controversial memorandum was allegedly sent by Mr Haqqani to former US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen seeking US intervention to avert a possible overthrow of the civilian government by the military following the May 2, 2011 US raid in Abbottabad in which Osama Bin Laden was killed.
A judicial commission constituted by the Supreme Court to investigate the matter had held that Mr Haqqani was the originator and architect of the June 12, 2012, memorandum.
The petitioner asserted that the president had a personal stake and was worried about the exposure. Besides, he added, the concealment of information about the impending US raid allegedly by the president amounted to collusion with the intruders.
In his fresh application, Mr Orakzai requested the court to separate his original petition from other petitions on the memo scandal because the term of President Zardari was about to expire and he might leave Pakistan.
He argued that his original petition had no common question of law like that of the other petitions filed by PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and other members of his party and, therefore, did not require the audience of nine judges. Since Nawaz Sharif was now prime minister he could not be a petitioner against the government, he added.
Mr Orakzai requested the court to constitute a new bench of not less than two judges to hear his petition in accordance with the court rules.
The case was adjourned for Sept 3.

PPP warns against attempts to derail democracy

By Iftikhar A. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Friday warned against ‘systematic’ efforts being made to derail democracy in the country and called for unity among political parties to foil such attempts..
Taking part in the debate on the presidential address to the joint sitting of both houses of parliament, PPP Senator Mian Raza Rabbani said an analysis of the situation showed that there were threats to the constitution. He pointed out that the day after a leader talked of a possible dissolution of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, a demand was made for handing over Karachi to the army under article 245
He said whenever article 245 was invoked, the enforcement of law went beyond the area where the army had been called out. He said such a situation was being created which would affect only the three smaller provinces but not Punjab. He warned that if the system was derailed, a long struggle would be required for restoration of democracy.
The PPP senator said through the National Security Council, the supremacy of civil institutions on security matters was being surrendered to the military organisations. He accused the government of ignoring parliament and regretted that despite repeated requests the adviser to prime minister on foreign affairs had not bothered to come to the house to make a policy statement.
Former leader of opposition in the Senate and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri said that a ban should be imposed on all those political parties that had militant wings. Describing Karachi as the economic jugular vein of the country, he said political parties should be directed to abolish their militant wings and those who failed to do so should be proceeded against.
Zahid Khan of the Awami National Party accused the government of concealing facts from parliament. Mr Khan, who heads the Senate’s Standing Committee on Water and Power, said the government had persistently told lies about power generation and announced that he would investigate the payment of Rs500 billion to clear the circular debt.
Jehangir Badr of PPP conceded that the PPP government could not deliver during its five-year tenure. He then folded his hands in a gesture of offering apology to PPP workers and the people of Pakistan.
Jaffar Iqbal of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz said Asif Ali Zardari took unconstitutional decisions while holding the office of the president. He said there was no provision in the constitution for the appointment of a deputy prime minister, yet the post was created and given to PML-Q. He said Mr Zardari made it sure that terrorists and murderers convicted by courts of law were not executed during his tenure.
WALKOUT: Opposition senators walked out of the house in protest against the killing of Zafarullah Khan on the day of by-election and abduction of a senior leader of Balochistan National Party-Awami.ANP’s Daud Achakzai said that his relative Zafarullah Khan was killed on Aug 22, but a case had not been registered yet. He said a senior BNP-A leader was missing and announced that he would stage a walkout as a mark of protest.
Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan of PPP observed that both non-registration of a case and the abduction of a BNP-A leader were alarming. He announced that the entire opposition would join the walkout.
Haji Ghulam Ali of JUI-F said that Director and Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence in Karachi were involved in incidents of kidnapping.The house passed a resolution expressing gratitude to the president for his address to the joint sitting of parliament on June 10. The house was prorogued sine die.
Meanwhile, 40 opposition senators submitted a requisition in the Senate secretariat on Friday. A PPP leader said the opposition wanted the adviser on foreign affairs to make a policy statement before the house.

Editorial NEWS

More work needed: Hong Kong status for Gwadar

THE prime minister’s remarks about a Hong Kong-like status for Gwadar seem to have been uttered in haste. The two are poles apart in terms of historical experience and present status. Hong Kong had been a colonial possession for more than a century and a half. It was returned to the Chinese administration in 1997 with certain reservations, the most important pertaining to the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. The latter means, among other things, that Hong Kong has its own currency — HK dollar — instead of China’s yuan. Gwadar is altogether a different story. It was purchased by Pakistan from Oman in 1958 by a civilian government — a reminder that a civilian government added new territories to Pakistan instead of losing any — and has since then been part of mainstream Pakistan. It never enjoyed a special status; Pakistan’s sovereignty was never in dispute; and it has had the rupee as its currency all along. Disturbing this status quo without a well-thought-out scheme and ignoring its political implications will create problems for Pakistan and offend Baloch sensitivities..
Gwadar is in a mess. Large parts of Balochistan are insurgency-infested, and the transfer of the harbour’s management from a Singaporean to a Chinese entity hasn’t served to make Gwadar a going concern. The port does need a turnaround, but coming up with schemes and ‘visions’ without doing proper homework merely betrays a proclivity for hare-brained schemes. The big question is: in what way will Gwadar’s Hong Kong status help Pakistan? Supposing that the new scheme is worked out and foreign investors come in a big way, where will the manpower come from? Given the prevailing mood in Balochistan, will there be a Baloch workforce? If not, will not the induction of non-Baloch threaten the province’s demographic character and lead to more tensions? Beijing will maintain Hong Kong’s current status for another 32 years. The very thought of entertaining a similar ‘one country, two systems’ idea for Gwadar is impractical.
The ideal course would have been to seek a Baloch consensus on Gwadar’s status, with the initiative coming from the newly elected provincial government and assembly. We do not doubt Nawaz Sharif’s sincerity to the Gwadar cause, but it should be accompanied by an equal commitment to tackling the insecurity in and isolation of Balochistan. We say study the issue seriously, see why Hong Kong has remained an economic powerhouse even after its return to China, and how Gwadar can be salvaged in Pakistani conditions.

A dormant volcano: Bhakkar clash

IT is no small achievement that despite high-profile sectarian attacks across the country, including bombings and targeted killings, the Shia and Sunni communities in Pakistan have managed to maintain relative harmony. But as Friday’s incident in the Punjab district of Bhakkar shows, sectarian outfits are constantly trying to stir up passions through violence and provocation. Several people have died in a clash that was reportedly sparked by the murder of a shopkeeper said to be an activist of the extremist Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat. ASWJ supporters had taken out a procession on Friday to protest the murder committed by unknown assailants, but matters got out of hand when the demonstrators were fired upon. Violence escalated after the incident, with firefights between Shias and Sunnis, which has led to a partial curfew being imposed in Bhakkar. The district lies in a sensitive part of Punjab. While sectarian violence has occurred in the district before, Jhang to the east and Dera Ismail Khan in KP to its west also witness communal discord off and on. The region is geographically and sociopolitically distant from Lahore, which has resulted in a hands-off approach to governance on part of the Punjab administration. Such an approach, if not remedied, will be detrimental to the maintenance of peace in the district and the province..
A multi-pronged effort is needed to ward off communal tensions. This would involve security forces ready to be deployed at the first hint of communal trouble, and an effort by political parties, currently overshadowed in Bhakkar by local chieftains, to engage communities and work towards sectarian harmony. The state must also work with community leaders to defuse potential crises. But what is needed most is strong action against the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and other extremists of its ilk active in Punjab, in order to prevent these outfits from sparking unrest. The Punjab administration needs to pay specific attention to the threat sectarian outfits pose to peace and communal harmony in the province; a passive approach will have disastrous results.

Dancing to another tune: Rehabilitated militants

THEY used to belong to shadowy groups that inspired such fear that in Swat, for example, where they briefly held sway, an intersection was named Khooni — bloodied — Chowk. But on Friday, at a function organised by the Pakistan Army, 60 former militants presented tableaus, sang national songs and delivered speeches. Belonging mostly to the Swat, Dir, Swabi, Malakand and Nowshera areas where militancy remains a challenge these men have received three months’ vocational training in the Swat area. One of them, who received training as a welder, said that he had learned the means to be a good citizen; another said that he had realised his mistake in taking up arms against the state. Cameras flashed and civil and military officials as well as local elders applauded. It was a moment of bonhomie and only goes to show that should the piper play a different tune, much can be achieved..
On a more practical note, though, the success of such efforts at rehabilitation can only be judged in the long term. It is true that apart from those that are ideologically motivated, extremist outfits also sweep into their criminal embrace other people who join out of economic need, a twisted sense of belonging or sometimes just fear. These people can be redeemed. But to judge the efficacy of the rehabilitation methods such people need to be kept track of, and the success of their rehabilitation into society assessed. Further, once back in their hometowns, they are also vulnerable to being convinced or coerced into returning to their former activities, in which case help should be at hand. State and society must have faith in the men who exchanged their guns for welding or sewing machines, as well as keep a watchful eye.

Push for peace: India-Pakistan tensions

ONCE again it is down to the leaders at the top. It is for Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Manmohan Singh to find a way out of uncertainty. Precious lives have been lost in border firing incidents this month — with each side blaming the other. All these lives could have been saved provided there was in place a corrective system which swung into action at the first sign of tensions. Then again, that system will need several rounds of talks and the need for a resumption of these talks takes us back to the all too familiar point: knocking at the doors of the chief executives of the two countries..
Bilateral ties are where Pakistan and India must always defy the standard working procedures. Elsewhere, chief executives may only be required to formally put the seal on an agreement that has already been worked out by officials on either side. Not so in our uneasy corner of the world. A meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan is the cue essential to the resumption of the bilateral dialogue process at various levels. Routinely, one country’s leadership appears keener on pursuing talks than the other. Right now, the supposition is that, with a general election in India due next summer, this may not be the right time for New Delhi to be talking peace with Pakistan. It is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, fresh in his new term, who wants his peaceful intentions known. Just as instances such as the release of more than 300 Indian fishermen in Karachi counter jingoistic tendencies on either side of the Line of Control, Mr Sharif talks about the costs of the arms race. He says he wants to “pursue conflict resolution with New Delhi with far more energy and vigour”.
These are welcome words but there are issues Pakistan must deal with to add greater meaning to this push for peace. The militant groups within the country are not just against the Pakistani state, they are viewed as a threat by India. They have been quite categorical in their warnings to Islamabad against ‘befriending’ India just as Mr Sharif has been ready to negotiate with these militants. Unless the PML-N government can effectively silence the militants at home, its call for dialogue will be viewed by Delhi to be lacking in substance. Whereas this is not an easy position for Mr Sharif, his counterpart Mr Singh surely understands the pitfalls of dismissing positive overtures from Pakistan. Between them the two prime ministers must achieve a fine balance.

Progress or status quo? Karzai visit

AS President Hamid Karzai visits Pakistan after a year and a half, expectations are low but behind the scenes some serious work can be done if the two sides work on convergences, instead of playing up their differences. The expected focus of the meetings will be how to get the tattered reconciliation process back on track, whether in Doha, Qatar, or, as speculation increasingly suggests, in another country. President Karzai’s key demand in any reconciliation process has always been for his government to play a lead role in talks with the Afghan Taliban. But, as is widely known, the Afghan Taliban have preferred to deal with the Americans first. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s principal leverage are the Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistani custody and, less publicly stated, the sanctuary and hideouts the Afghan Taliban have in Pakistan. In the best-case scenario, then, the Pakistan and Afghan states have something to offer each other..
The problem is that the best-case scenario in Afghanistan never quite seems to materialise. In fact, the opposite is often the case. At the moment, on both the Afghan and Pakistani fronts there are more than usual complications. Mr Karzai is set to leave the presidency next April, but little about the presidential election process is clear, not least who are the leading contenders for the job. In the meantime, Mr Karzai appears determined to not be sidelined and furthermore to find some kind of way to stay relevant, and safe after April next year. On the Pakistani side, the new political government has not quite got its foreign-policy house in order, neither having established a clear pecking order at the Foreign Office nor having seriously dipped into matters of foreign policy yet. Meanwhile, the army is preparing for a change of command at the top, a change that does not fundamentally alter the army’s institutional outlook but does matter significantly for an organisation where the apex is from where all decisions flows. Hope for the best, but prepare for continuation of the status quo — that may be the best approach as President Karzai arrives in Islamabad.

New strategies needed: Adapting to climate change

THE fact that the monsoon pattern is changing in Pakistan has been experienced in no uncertain terms over the last few years. Devastating floods have battered large parts of the country and this year too the rains and swollen rivers have wreaked havoc in some areas. Experts quoted in this paper have said that the annual monsoon pattern has shifted about 100km westward in the country. Among the effects of this phenomenon have been flash floods and erratic, extreme weather events with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southern Punjab and Sindh being particularly vulnerable to the fallout. Given this trend, fears that floods will pose serious problems for the country for the next three to four decades are valid. Suggestions to control the expected flooding include building new dams in the south of Pakistan — a politically explosive issue — while there are suggestions that crop calendars should be adjusted..
But the danger of loss of life and property caused by extreme weather patterns can be minimised to some extent if there is effective implementation of the National Climate Change Policy. Unfortunately, climate change is low on the state’s priority list, and if this attitude persists it will only spell more trouble for those living in flood-prone areas. Attention needs to be focused on installing nationwide flood early warning systems and formulating practical evacuation plans. While climate change is beyond human control, there is no excuse for inaction when it comes to mitigating its effects, especially when a fairly comprehensive policy to address the effects of the phenomenon exists. With meteorologists predicting the likely pattern of flooding and rainfall for the foreseeable future, the state cannot feign surprise when disaster strikes. Adaptation is essential in order to, as the climate change policy says, “…steer Pakistan towards climate-resilient development”.

The threat remains: Militants’ internal divisions

EVERY few months or so, differences and divisions in the TTP bubble to the surface and allow the outside world an insight into the internal functioning, hierarchy and present operational status of the umbrella organisation of militants towards which most groups have now gravitated. But, as with all things TTP, it is difficult to know what the individual clues mean, or even how to piece any of them together. According to media reports, the TTP central shura has either ousted or temporarily suspended Asmatullah Muawiya, believed to be head of the TTP’s operations in Punjab, for speaking out of turn and welcoming the PML-N government’s offer of dialogue. Analysts have pounced on the news as signs of strain within the TTP — though according to Muawiya himself the Punjabi Taliban are an independent group. They see this as a possible clue pointing towards the eventual break-up of the terror conglomerate. Some of that could be true, or not much of it..
Consider that on several occasions in the past, there have been suggestions of rifts within the TTP, but no discernible effect materialised on the overall state of militancy or the TTP’s structure. In the present case, it could just be a case of a falling out between two or more of the TTP’s leaders rather than terror sub-franchises going their separate ways. Perhaps the most relevant fact here is that the Punjabi Taliban continue to live and operate alongside the TTP in North Waziristan Agency. If Asmatullah Muawiya has been punished and sidelined, the threat the Punjabi Taliban continue to project will not be immediately affected. If anything, through a series of leadership losses, the TTP has demonstrated its capacity to continue to strike and pose a grave threat to Pakistan’s internal security.
The basic problem, one that has been articulated by consecutive governments and the military high command for years now, is that there is no overall strategy to gradually roll back the tide of militancy, terrorism and extremism. Even now, as the present government promises an overarching strategy will be rolled out soon, there is a sense that the government is willing to continue with strands of the old policy of picking and choosing which groups need to be acted against and which will be tolerated, or even covertly supported. That approach has not worked in over a decade of trying nor will it work if given another 10 years. Pakistan’s internal security will always be at risk as long as there is a dualist policy, whether in Punjab or in Fata. Does the government know that and accept its implications?

Syrian war talk: Reaction to chemical attack

THE war talk emanating from various Western capitals regarding Syria may result in a dangerous escalation of an already bloody conflict. The US is mulling military action against Damascus in reaction to an alleged chemical attack last week, while the UK and France have said the UN could be bypassed in order to allow armed intervention. Washington also says Syria’s decision to allow UN inspectors to probe the reported attack has come “too late”. While international opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime blame the strongman for the alleged atrocity, Damascus says the Syrian rebels are responsible. Many in the international community are not keen to launch another pointless war: Russia and Iran have forcefully condemned the war talk while China has called for a “cautious” approach..
What is clear is that any war, whether it involves Western\Nato boots on the ground — not likely in Syria’s case — or aerial bombardment, will only worsen the situation. While there are reports that US intelligence agencies have “very little doubt” the Assad regime orchestrated the chemical attack, this must be taken with a grain of salt. The devastation of Iraq is testimony to the folly of launching wars on the basis of questionable intelligence. Besides, if Mr Assad falls because of Western intervention, who will fill the power vacuum? The list of candidates — from hardened Islamist militants to the more secular yet hapless rebels — is not very appealing and the US military’s top brass has admitted as much. As for the chemical attack itself, it must be condemned no matter who perpetrated it. The UN team of inspectors investigating the incident must be allowed to do its job while global players must realise that going to war after bypassing the world body will have disastrous results. The fog of war often obfuscates the truth; that is the reason why irresponsible talk of aggression on the basis of unverified intelligence should not be used to push Syria further into chaos.

Size and efficiency: Balochistan cabinet

IT has already been demonstrated many times that what suits one province may be a cause of great discomfort to another. Balochistan, in particular, has found it extremely difficult to be bound by the rules that are followed elsewhere in the country. The problems faced by Dr Abdul Malik’s government in forming a cabinet are reflective of the peculiar realities in the province. This may seem to be a case where all claimants are talking sense yet are unable to resolve the issue at hand. The members of the PML-N, which is the single-largest party in the Balochistan Assembly, are pressing for large representation in the cabinet after their party under the leadership of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif allowed the nationalist groups a leading role in the provincial government. Just as the nationalist politicians and their supporters in the province and outside of it appear to be asking the PML-N to forego a little more, they would know there is a limit to what a leading party can concede. A majority party that concedes too much is seen to risk losing public support. .
A special provision that allows Balochistan to have a larger cabinet for now is one of the options that may soon be tried. However, this could set a dangerous precedent in which political expediency overtakes the necessity of a more efficient cabinet. In the past, the province has had cabinets large enough to accommodate almost all the Assembly members. That drew a lot of flak because it compromised efficiency and promoted corruption. A leaner cabinet, stocked with politicians qualified to head ministries, may be less susceptible to criticism. A little more political accommodation is required to settle the issue and allow the government to get on with its job.

Unresolved issues: Afghan president’s visit

TRUST deficit was the underlying theme of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Islamabad and it appears that while little of substance was immediately agreed to, there may have been some movement towards lessening the distrust. Mr Karzai may have boosted the speculation surrounding his visit when he agreed to stay overnight, but yesterday did not bring any significant news. Perhaps the public tone of the meeting was set by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when he claimed on Monday that the “central focus of [the Pak-Afghan] relationship has to be a strong trade and economic partnership”. That anodyne characterisation is almost as meaningless as the other familiar Pak-Afghan relationship clichés: an ‘Afghan-led and Afghan-owned’ peace process and seeking a ‘peaceful and stable’ Afghanistan..
As ever, the hard issues will have been addressed behind closed doors. And, as ever, little will be said publicly about what transpired until well after the event. Interesting to note, however, is that the Sharif government is still allowing such a visible and public role to the military high command in foreign relations. Both the army chief and the DG ISI sat in on meetings with Mr Karzai despite their Afghan counterparts not being in attendance. Perhaps this is because Mr Sharif wants to present a united front when it comes to dealing with the thorny Afghan problem. Or perhaps it is because the prime minister and his team have no real idea of how to proceed and are relying on the army’s greater experience to provide guidance. The former is a welcome possibility; the latter not so much.
Ultimately, though, the clock is winding down on the Karzai presidency and the already tiny window of opportunity for resetting ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan is becoming ever tinier. The slow grind of diplomacy may help in improving the atmospherics of the relationship — a reciprocal visit by Mr Sharif to Kabul is on the cards according to the Foreign Office — but it still leaves the critical triangle of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US out of shape. Pakistan and the US may have edged closer on an acceptable post-2014 outcome in Afghanistan, but the Karzai government is still acutely suspicious of both Pakistan and the US — while the US and Pakistan try hard to hide their exasperation and frustration with Mr Karzai. How a puzzle that hasn’t been solved in over a decade will quickly fall into place in the next six months to a year and a half is difficult to imagine. Perhaps it will come down to there being no choice.

Muzzling journalism: FIR against news network

THE chief minister of Balochistan has apologised, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has sought an explanation and scores have protested. Yet, the fact remains that the FIR was filed on the basis of reasoning that bodes ill for not just media freedoms but also citizens’ right to information. The burning down of the Ziarat Residency was shocking enough. But soon after, footage emerged that showed that the account offered by the government was inaccurate. The state had initially said that the heritage building had been targeted remotely. The video, however, showed masked men on the premises wreaking destruction even before the flames were lit. It was this last aspect that agitated the Supreme Court when it took suo motu notice on the airing of these clips on an ARY News network programme. The concern was that the footage could be in contravention of Pemra rules that nothing shall be aired that incites violence or tends to glorify crime. This, in turn, led Balochistan’s information department to allege that ARY News had run “objectionable video clips”, and an FIR was registered under provisions of the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act that pertain to disseminating material to incite hatred or projecting the cause of terrorists..
As violent extremism grows in Pakistan, news networks in the country have learned to tread the thin line between projecting an anarchic cause and remaining true to their responsibility of putting things on record and informing the public. What we saw in the ARY case was no different from an attempt to muzzle the media. Worryingly, this is not the first time. Last September, cases were registered against some Baluchistan publications and news agencies for reporting on militancy. Before that, the provincial high court had ruled that the publication or broadcast of a report on a proscribed organisation would be considered a violation of the law. The realisation needs to dawn that extremism cannot be countered through curbing the media’s ability to report on it; that would be to be distracted by a dangerous red herring.

Capital move: LG for Islamabad

PERHAPS egged on by the Supreme Court order that elections be held in Islamabad, the PML-N government has let it be known that it has prepared a draft law for a local government system in the capital. The draft law provides for a metropolitan corporation for Islamabad; elected representatives from ‘wards’; reserved seats for women and minorities; and deputy mayors and a city mayor. Details are still missing. For instance, there is no news on the number of wards. Similarly, it also remains to be seen if this draft act, which appears to be an initiative of the interior minister, is backed by the prime minister and his government. But there is no doubt that this is a step in the right direction. Islamabad cannot be denied its democratic right any longer. .
Unfortunately, the city has always been plagued by authoritarianism. It was created by a dictator, and his successors — democrats or otherwise — rarely thought that the city deserved self-rule. Even the last great saviour, retired Gen Pervez Musharraf, left the capital out of his ‘national’ reconstruction of Pakistan under which local government was introduced. For Islamabad, the centrally appointed bureaucrats were deemed sufficient. Lording over the Capital Development Authority, these bureaucrats were appointed by the inhabitants of Constitution Avenue and rarely bothered with the city’s residents. Shortage of housing and water were ignored as officials spent their tenures looking for expensive plots to build retirement homes or helping the powerful buy large tracts of land on the outskirts of this rapidly expanding city. The PPP was no different. Despite its promises it never provided a local government system. Now the PML-N has jumped into the fray. It is hoped that it lives up to its word.

It won’t work: Army intervention in Karachi

THE spotlight is once again on Karachi. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court’s criticism of the law-enforcement agencies for failing to keep the peace in the city was followed by a news conference in which Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan called for a political solution to Karachi’s troubles. In response to MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s demand that the city be handed over to the army, Chaudhry Nisar rightly pointed out that without political consensus among the stakeholders, no security agency could turn around the situation. Unfortunately, it is the very absence — for several years now — of such a consensus that has made Karachi a security nightmare for its citizens. The city has seen two major security operations — in 1992 and 1995 — and the results have been anything but lasting: the sectarian, ethnic, political and criminal violence that exploded with fury in the mid-1980s continues to gather steam. Shootouts, assassinations, arson, kidnappings and extortion seem to have become Karachi’s destiny. Thousands of people have met a violent death, while few perpetrators have been arrested and hardly anyone brought to justice. .
Given that most targeted killings in the city are politically motivated, any operation aimed at taking out all those who perpetrate violence must necessarily focus on the armed wings of the main political parties and religious groups operating in the city. Would the MQM or any other political party or religious group for that matter be prepared for such action if their members are picked up on charges of extortion, violence and targeted killings? It is better then for the parties, whether or not in government, to take the initiative themselves and come to a consensus to crack down on all those who disturb the peace regardless of their affiliations.
At another level, the army’s induction into Karachi could have dangerous consequences for Pakistan’s nascent democracy. To the generals, a politician seeking the army’s help to solve a political problem could be seen as an invitation to usurp what should be policing functions. True, the Constitution does provide for the army to “act in aid of civil power”. But the question is, what will the army’s modus operandi be? Will it be any different to the one that regular law enforcers like the police and Rangers have? Will there be curfew, arbitrary detentions, house-to-house searches? In fact, previous army interventions have resulted in political groups alleging human rights violations. Against this backdrop it is difficult to see how administrative measures and policing by the army can give peace to Karachi.

Legislation needed: Police torture

AMONG the many valid criticisms of Pakistan’s law enforcement and security agencies is their proclivity for and acceptance of torture. For those in uniform, torture is virtually an instrument of policy, a well-established part of the dreaded thana culture. Taking the example of three districts in Punjab, a survey released in Lahore on Tuesday says that 57pc of complainants interviewed said they were tortured by police during investigations. Illustrating the brutality that some of our law enforcers are capable of, a news item published on Wednesday detailed the reported torture of an 18-year-old woman in Rahimyar Khan. The victim was picked up by the police after they failed to locate her brother, who was wanted for questioning. As a result of their brutal methods the woman is said to be in critical condition. Tales of similar police brutality in different parts of the country appear frequently in the media, indicating that torture is a nationwide scourge. Yet what is most depressing is that society has accepted torture as a fait accompli. Such complacency in the face of a major societal ill is unacceptable..
What is urgently needed is a well-defined law outlawing torture in all its forms. Despite the fact that torture is constitutionally prohibited and Pakistan is party to multilateral instruments, including the UN Convention against Torture, no legislation exists to tackle these abominable practices. As a result, a culture of impunity prevails, where those in uniform know they can get away with torturing those in their custody or those being investigated. If security personnel are punished, it is little more than a slap on the wrist. Hence, a legal framework against torture is the first step towards eradicating it from our society. There must be zero tolerance for such barbaric behaviour. Once legislation is in place, there should be no excuse for not taking action against those in uniform as well as others who violate an individual’s human rights through the use of torture.

Child or commodity? Adoption media-style

WHY is it that in Pakistan nothing good is allowed to quietly carry on? Why must a worthy practice be turned into a circus that ends up negating the value of the deed itself? Charitable organisations have for many years been matching up abandoned babies with prospective guardians, thus giving the infants a chance for a rosier future. Given that regulatory mechanisms are present in Pakistan’s guardianship laws, this system is entirely laudable in a country where far too many children end up on their own on the streets. Handing over infants to their foster parents has always been done quietly and without fanfare, which is the way it should be..
But a few weeks ago, a religious personality and television host had turned this procedure into a spectacle for his TV audiences. This stirred up a storm of criticism because of the affront his action presented to human dignity — both of the infant and his new guardians. In a single gesture, he had commodified human life. Now, a charity Karachi-based organisation has followed this example by handing over an infant to a couple in the full glare of press cameras. Can we plead for sanity to prevail? The placement of foundlings with foster parents may be an act of gain for the new family, but it is also one of loss — for the child whose links to his biological parents have been severed, and for the adults in a country where, overwhelmingly, couples only adopt if they are unable to conceive. Turning such an intensely private moment into currency for ratings and reputation is simply appalling. The example to be followed instead is that of Edhi Foundation, which has always resisted the base impulse to invite public applause for its charitable work.

Land & corruption: FBR’s move on real estate

IN announcing its intention to try and bring real estate investors into the tax net, the Federal Board of Revenue has drawn attention to a crucial sector, even if the intended move itself amounts to very little, given the complexities involved. There is no doubt that the government needs to drastically increase tax yields, and while there are several sectors that see the movement of vast sums of money, the state accrues barely any benefit at all. Curiously, though, actually taxing real estate transactions does not seem to be on the state’s agenda. As he spoke to the media on Wednesday, FBR chairman Tariq Bajwa’s chief concern appeared to be to find a way to track the remittances sent here by overseas Pakistanis, which mostly end up in real estate. To this end, he said, the army-run Defence Housing Authorities and the private Bahria Town development projects had been asked to collect data. The goal, he reiterated, was not to tax transactions but to identify people who should, but do not, exist on the tax rolls..
Given the way the real estate business has developed, and the massive real-estate speculation market that has emerged in urban areas, activity in this sector ought to be swelling the coffers of the state just as it does those of private parties. Flowing from this, the sector has over the years ended up with so many loopholes, inefficiencies and disparities that corrupt, illegal practices have effectively been built into the system. Consider, from many examples, the vast sums of money the state loses because in several, if not most, urban areas, the price of a piece of property on paper is far lower than it is on the market. Or the fact that rapid urbanisation and the unquenchable thirst for property means that great tracts of agricultural land are absorbed by cities. Unless the state can ensure that rezoning occurs in every single instance, this means that land can be bought at agricultural rates and sold at urban prices.
The problems with regulating and thus earning from the real estate sector are systemic, deeply entrenched and far too many to recount here. A holistic process of reform and regulation, followed by equitable taxation has to be worked out from the bottom up. But there is significant resistance from well-known individuals and groups with vested interests. Unless the latter problem is overcome, and some blue-sky thinking applied, piecemeal moves such as the FBR’s demand for data are unlikely to yield any meaningful benefits.

Doubtful numbers: Human rights cases

NOW this is what we call news. State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed said there has been a decline in ‘human rights’ cases in the country. He told the National Assembly on Wednesday that, except for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the incidence of human rights violations had gone down. The minister gave figures from across the country to back this assertion but even that could not make this bit of information any less incredulous. In the news coverage of his statement, the key words are “registered” and “reported”. It is unclear whether the source is newspapers, as they generally are in data collection exercises conducted by state and non-state organisations, or whether the figures are based on the number of cases brought to the police. The minister said there were “only” five “reported” cases of acid attack in Punjab so far this year as compared to 53 last year. The number has increased in KP. The cases of burns, domestic violence, violence against children and women and of missing persons had all gone up in the province. .
For a nation desperately looking for positives, there is an urge to welcome the ‘fall’ in human rights violations in the other three provinces, even when it is difficult to correlate this rather sudden improvement to any visible anti-violence campaign there. This is a very sensitive matter, and just as a deeper look at the reasons behind the rise in rights cases in KP is in order, it would be worthwhile to double check the numbers gathered by the law ministry. It could well be that the suppliers of information to the minister were not able to keep track of events this side of Attock. Maybe, just as the media cannot be expected to report all such cases, the minister and the relevant officials could also have missed out on some of the routine atrocities carried out with impunity in the cities and villages of Pakistan. Let’s hope they have not, but let’s have a recount nonetheless.

A wise move: Charges against Imran Khan dropped

A QUICK end to the Imran Khan-contempt of court issue was in everyone’s interest and, thankfully, that’s exactly what happened in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Lessons, if either side is willing, are there to be learned. For the court, this was an utterly unnecessary and thoroughly inadvisable foray into the political arena. That the court itself seemed to consider a single word — the now much parsed sharamnaak — to be the bedrock of potential contempt of court charges was a widening of the principle of contempt at the same time as the judicial world at large is narrowing it to very specific cases of disrupting courtroom proceedings or refusing to obey a court order. The majesty of the court comes not from its ability to suppress public dissent, but from the quality of its judgements. Dragging national political leaders before the superior judiciary to potentially face charges that are controversial and divisive is not really in the best interests of the judiciary, and the country at large..
For Imran Khan and the PTI, perhaps the time has come to accept the electorate’s judgement rather than endlessly harping on perceived biases in the electoral process. Even the recently held by-elections saw the PTI leadership getting embroiled in allegations against other parties of vote rigging and ballot stuffing. To be sure, the electoral process in Pakistan is more credible and acceptable than truly free and fair. But the PTI’s complaints increasingly seem to come down to this: ‘if we win, the electorate’s will has been realised; if we lose, decisive foul play must be involved.’ This does not behoove a party which now has a proven national vote bank and can legitimately look towards future elections with hope. More governance, less politics, please.

The Karachi puzzle: Talk of operations

WHILE the MQM’s call for army action to restore order in Karachi has been shot down by nearly all parties, the state is considering various other options. On Thursday, in a report submitted to the Supreme Court through the attorney general, the centre suggested bringing in the intelligence agencies to identify leaders of criminal outfits active in the city. It would be interesting to see what results this move produces, for if the bloodshed and death toll of the past few decades is anything to go by, the intelligence apparatus has failed miserably in keeping a check on the proliferation of weapons and militant groups in the metropolis. There can be little argument that Karachi needs the state’s attention. The question is whether the state’s responses — both on the law and order and political fronts — will result in a permanent solution to the all too frequent bouts of violence witnessed in the city..
There must be no rush to launch any new operations. Earlier state action in Karachi — that has included two major and countless minor security ‘operations’ — must be thoroughly reviewed; the reasons why these failed to produce lasting results must be probed. Such law enforcement actions have only produced temporary peace, with long-term safety and security eluding the residents of Karachi. New action can no longer afford to be cosmetic; if there are targeted operations they should follow a well-planned strategy. It is also essential that all political parties are on board and informed of what the intelligence agencies have to say. In this regard the federal interior minister has called for a ‘grand consensus’ amongst the politicians for a ‘targeted operation’ in the Sindh capital. It is important that such operations do not target any single party and turn into political witch-hunts. Already the MQM and ANP have cried foul over the arrest of more than 100 individuals in Karachi on Thursday, with both parties accusing the PPP of victimising their workers.
Just as important as properly planning action against militants in Karachi is the need for follow-up plans to ensure that violence does not recur. The authorities must have mechanisms in place that prevent militants of all stripes from rearming themselves after action has been taken, or else the vicious circle will continue. This requires cooperation between the intelligence agencies and the police. The onus is on the Sindh government to take action, while Islamabad must use the tools at its disposal to help the provincial administration establish lasting peace in Pakistan’s commercial heart.

Absurd scheme: New airport

THE PML-N has been crying hoarse about the financial crisis facing the country and the need for austerity since its arrival on Constitution Avenue. Hence, its suggestion for a third airport for the capital when the second one is still not operational appears incomprehensible. Islamabad needs a new airport. The existing shabby premises are outdated and consist of a small building where buses are still used to transport passengers to the aircraft; meanwhile, the parking lot is always overflowing and passengers have to battle their way through the mess called immigration and customs. But one new airport — already delayed and ridiculously over budget — should be enough. More importantly, only once it is complete and running, can a firm conclusion be drawn as to whether or not another airport is needed. And if there is a design fault with the new airport, as has been claimed, why cannot it be fixed? Perhaps it is to get the answers to some of these questions that the opposition has filed a notice in parliament. .
At present, with this government’s penchant for providing little information as it goes about running the country, it can only be assumed that the prime minister’s proposal stems from his and from the Punjab chief minister’s obsession with grand ‘development’ projects. The story that originally reported this proposal added that the prime minister also spoke of building a road such as the Shaikh Zayed Road, the main artery running through Dubai. This road would connect the airport to Islamabad and, like its Dubai counterpart, would have high-rise buildings on both sides. Once again there were few details of how this high-rise paradise would be achieved — the PML-N excels at grandiose dreams of the symbols of economic success but tends to fall short of achieving them. The government would be well advised to wait for some hard facts and figures on the need for this ‘third airport’ before beginning work on what at the moment sounds like a hare-brained scheme.

An act of haste: Shakil Afridi’s conviction

WHEN Dr Shakil Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison in May last year, this newspaper editorialised that it seemed to be the preposterous act of a government with a smarting ego. The doctor had been suspected of having organised, for monetary recompense, a fake vaccination campaign that was understood to have helped the CIA in identifying Osama bin Laden. But the crime for which he was convicted during the hastily conducted trial turned out to be maintaining links with the proscribed group Lashkar-i-Islam. Amongst the reasons that Dr Afridi’s conviction was viewed with general misgiving was that it was conducted under the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which applies to Fata..
On Thursday, though, the FCR’s appellate court held that he had been tried by the assistant political commissioner, acting under the FCR as an additional district magistrate, while the sections of the PPC under which Dr Afridi was convicted meant that he could only be tried by a district and sessions judge, or the political agent of the agency. On technical grounds, therefore, the conviction has been set aside and a fresh trial is to begin. This constitutes a chance for the state to correct some of its earlier wrongs. As was pointed out at the sentencing last year, the charges against Dr Afridi — amongst others, conspiring to wage war against Pakistan or depriving it of its sovereignty — were such that he could have been tried in an open court under the regular laws of the land; legal precedents are available, and refer to people tried and convicted for providing information for recompense to foreign governments. Every effort must be made to ensure that the new trial is transparent and fair; smarting egos are no reason to rush convictions through.

Columns and Articles

Polio: bottom of the list

By Arsla Jawaid

TWENTY-FIVE years ago when eliminating polio became a priority, close to 350,000 people in the world, mostly children under the age of five, were affected by the disease. .
Today, through concerted efforts carried out by the global health community, aided largely through private enterprises, the global polio count stands at 192 for 2013.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s ambitious Polio Endgame and Eradication Strategic Plan aims to eradicate polio by 2018. However, recent outbreaks in declared polio-free countries have complicated the crisis. Already this year, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have recorded 121 cases of polio outbreak whereas Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan remain the last three polio endemic countries.
Pakistan’s case is troubling at best. Polio remains a vicious predator, incurable and in some cases fatal, preying on children. Amongst other donors like Rotary International and the Gates Foundation, the Islamic Development Bank recently disbursed $32.6 million to help eliminate the disease in Pakistan, as the first instalment of its $227m pledge.
Despite exorbitant global investment, the real work and political will must come from within Pakistan. Close to 34 million children under the age of five remain susceptible to polio.
The anti-polio campaign has been hampered due to a number of different factors, which include poor performance of the teams and the traditional benchmark that views the campaign as a ‘back-door family planning programme’ that aims to sterilise children.
In other cases, the negative perception emanating from the CIA’s ‘polio vaccination’ campaign to hunt Osama bin Laden (actually a Hepatitis B campaign), and America’s unapologetic attitude has done more to fuel resentment, instil suspicion and harm the anti-polio drive here than anything else.
In a country that harbours strong anti-US sentiments, many families refuse the drops due to anger with the US, or the belief that either the drops may harm the child or the white-chalk markings outside the house may make it easier to be targeted by drones.
Fata remains the major poliovirus reservoir and 24 cases of wild polio virus 1 from across the country have already been reported for 2013. Of these, 14 have been reported in Fata and five in KP. For the same time period, last year, Pakistan recorded 29 cases and 58 cases in total for 2012, a marked 71pc decline from the 198 cases the country recorded in 2011 (the highest in the world that year).
Further complicating the problem is the Taliban threat. Since June 2012, local leaders have suspended the immunisation campaigns in North and South Waziristan, depriving close to 260,000 children of the vaccine.
Approximately 28 people, including polio team members, NGO workers and police personnel have been targeted and killed, with the threat most pronounced in KP and Fata. While reports claim that the Afghan Taliban support anti-polio drives and refrain from attacking polio workers, the same cannot be seen in Pakistan.
Religious scholars from the Pakistan Ulema Council have condemned the killing of polio workers as “inhumane” and “un-Islamic”. Deeming the polio vaccination as safe and healthy, statements from clerics play a strong role in alleviating suspicion and fear.
While the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring and Coordination Cell has set up vaccination camps in mosques, much more needs to be done to engage local communities and battle the principal handicap of the eradication campaign: the issue of missed children in KP and the adjoining tribal areas. Religious scholars can play a critical role in negotiating with the Taliban and participating in grass-root level advocacy, which the KP government must use to its advantage.
Furthermore, a number of national immunisation days have been delayed due to elections and the monsoon rains. The growing cases of polio do not bode well for a country that sees a sharp spike soon after the monsoon season is over, leaving innumerable children susceptible to the virus.
It will be imperative for Imran Khan’s party to demonstrate diplomatic muscle and deem polio eradication a priority. More than often, ‘softer’ issues like education and health pale in comparison to drones, energy and terrorism where negotiations are concerned.
While it is commendable that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government has, for all intents and purposes, furthered a welfare budget, it remains to be seen whether it covers real ground and goes beyond rhetoric.
It will certainly be an uphill task for the provincial government to effectively invest almost Rs8 billion in health. Services and accountability must be improved and the government should stress upon reaching missed children. Better management and coordination between law enforcement agencies is required.
Pakistan is close to eradicating polio. Strong and sustained political will to stamp out the virus is urgently required. Although Rs320m have been released for the salaries of Lady Heath Workers throughout the province, the threat to workers’ lives remains serious.
Much is riding on PTI’s ability to distinguish itself from the politics of the past. While both external mishaps and internal mismanagement have hampered the anti-polio campaign, the PTI is in a unique position to adopt a firm stance on the issue from the outset.
The provincial government would be well advised to be more vocal, whether it requires pushing the agenda during negotiations with the Taliban or condemning violence and demanding stringent security measures.
The real issue that plagues efforts in KP revolves around negotiations and the PTI must be prepared to push through, if it is committed to the cause. The World Health Organisation has already hinted at travel restrictions on Pakistanis if polio continues unabated in the country. India eradicated polio two years ago and remains just one year away from being declared ‘polio-free’. If for nothing else, perhaps embarrassment and competition could force the anti-polio drive to be taken more seriously in Pakistan.

The writer is a journalist covering foreign policy and development.

Intellectual deficit

By Muhammad Amir Rana

AS Mohammad Sikandar’s Islamabad adventure unfolded on our TV screens, two very significant developments failed to attract the attention of the media: the security forces unearthing a reportedly Al Qaeda/Taliban-linked communication hub in Lahore and the recovery of more than 100 tons of explosive material in Quetta. .
It was not so much the absence of news sense as a weak threat perception that compelled the media to ignore these developments and focus on the lone wolf from Hafizabad.
The media people will have their own arguments, some of them logical, supporting their response, but only a few will admit that Pakistan’s media lacks professional capacity and expertise vis-à-vis terrorism.
There is a dearth of scholarship and expertise on the topic even among some of the leading anchorpersons and opinion-makers based in federal and provincial capitals.
Think of TV talk shows on security issues. Everything is monotonous, repetitive, superficial and at times misleading and annoying — from anchors to experts, from topics to content, and from analyses to recommendations.
The print media is not very different from its electronic counterpart, with the exception of some op-ed pieces and editorials which actually contribute to the issue. On the whole, the print media too reflects serious intellectual deficit on the subject of terrorism.
While the entire nation has long faced the direct and indirect consequences of terrorism, much of the media debate on the subject ends up confusing public opinion by oversimplifying and externalising the threat. Interestingly, many opinion leaders still avoid naming terrorist groups and their leaders.
One may link the media’s clumsy response to issues of militancy and terrorism to the overall intellectual deficit that pervades almost all spheres of life in the country.
A famous proverb by Chinese strategist Sun Tzu offers the students of strategic studies an insight on such attitudes: “know your enemy, know yourself, in 100 battles, you will never be defeated; if ignorant of both your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle”.
Apart from public debate and the role of opinion leaders, the academic discourse on the subject is also weak. Empirical and methodologically sound scientific research is a particularly significant missing link in the academic discourse focused primarily on the political and ideological aspects of the problem. Most of it is neither relevant to the emerging realities nor has much to say about the future course of action to tackle terrorism and related issues.
Indeed, the insight on threat perception, evidence base and projections that is critical to formulating effective policies is missing across the board — from the Pakistani media to the academia and intelligentsia to the political leadership.
The consequences? Militants are far ahead when it comes to propagating their ideology. The people have confused views on the militants and militancy. Security forces fighting the militants are demoralised. The state is still looking for a counterterrorism policy.
The achievements of the security and intelligence agencies in Lahore and Quetta in unearthing a militant network and recovering a huge cache of explosive material, respectively, should be carefully analysed; even a small clue can lead to significant discoveries. This is a general principle across the world. Failure to do so will provide militants an opportunity to recover and strike again by changing their tactics.
Unfortunately, it is probable that the law enforcement agencies will lose this opportunity to expand the scope of their investigations. In the absence of a firm tradition to analyse their failures, it is hardly likely that security agencies will build upon these or other successes.
Every law enforcement agency understands the dynamics of terrorism threats and counterterrorism measures. Each knows that the five major targets of the terrorists are the security forces, sectarian rivals, political leaders, foreigners and foreign interests, and public and private infrastructure mainly communication networks and properties.
The terrorists’ strategies are also well-known — suicide attacks, targeted killing, guerilla-style operations at sensitive installations, car bombs and improvised explosive devices.
The operational areas of the militants are specific, and the groups, their locations and their support bases are known. Even vulnerabilities are known, and the terrorists’ future targets, strategies and tactics which they have yet to employ in Pakistan, are identified.
State institutions know how to counter these threats and they have tried to respond accordingly. The state knows it can ban and restrict terrorist groups, their publications and public appearances.
The state can take several countering measures, among them the introduction of new legislation, developing an effective intelligence-sharing mechanism, tightening border security and granting special powers to security forces and courts to speed up trials of suspected militants. It knows the long-term implications of terrorism and has included political measures like talks and truces in its response.
But is it as simple as all that? It appears that the dynamics of terrorism and counterterrorism are quite easy to understand. But ask implementing agencies and they say it is complex. Most importantly, in the context of counterterrorism, using the available resources effectively is as necessary as understanding the nature of the threat.
A phrase in counterterrorism and counter-insurgency studies is “think beyond conventional measures”, but this is not easy to do. This idea has generated some responses in security circles but the terrorism challenge will not go away simply because of isolated responses here and there.
At a certain level, even these responses can be connected to evolve an effective protection mechanism against terrorism. Many advocate a cycle of reforms in the security sector — from better policing, intra-departmental coordination, proper judicial response, and cyber security — to counter terrorism and terrorism financing. But what is needed to evolve these initiatives is an overall recovery from the prevailing intellectual deficit.
Both the state and society need to combine their strengths to not only evolve counterterrorism measures but to also encroach on the ideological and political domain of the militants.

The writer is a security analyst.

A slow surrender?

By Cyril Almeida

IT’S an old trick of Nawaz’s: the more you see, the less you know. And he’s at it again..
DCC, NSC, CDNS, none of it matters really until you get the A, B, C right. I.E. It’s not the name that matters, it’s the configuration and the quality of the decisions that do.
Before the election, Nawaz seemed to be on the right track.
The NSC was anathema because it represented all that the politicians had come to loathe: institutionalising what was the de facto arrangement of power — military on top, the civilians thrashing around below.
Before the election, Nawaz seemed to get that the DCC is more miss than hit not because of its existing configuration, but because it didn’t have the right ammunition.
Give the DCC a proper secretariat, a dedicated staff that can help the principals make sense of things, and much of the fog would automatically lift — at least on the civilian side, because the military already has all the paper-churning backup it needs in GHQ and Aabpara. That was before the election. After the election, are we witnessing a slow surrender?
Nawaz being Nawaz, it’s never easy to say. Inscrutable and insular at the best of times, he’s taken it to a new level this time — just ask any of the desperate PML-N leaders always asking around about what their boss is thinking, or even up to.
But there are some clues to what Nawaz is thinking, if not planning and doing.
First, you have to go back to the basic Nawaz mould. He did and seems still to consider himself heir to the Mughal throne.
Ardeshir Cowasjee used to tell a brilliant, possibly embellished, tale about this particular tendency of Nawaz.
The prime minister’s office once rang up Ardeshir to inform him that Nawaz wanted to pay a visit to the splendid Cowasjee home in Karachi. He wasn’t told why, but since no one says no to a visit by the prime minister, Ardeshir agreed.
When an advance team arrived at his home to secure it and map out the visit, an objection was raised.
The little wooden door through which all visitors entered the Cowasjee home required everyone to stoop a bit, to avoid banging their head against the beam above the door.
The prime minister doesn’t bow his head before anyone, Ardeshir was told by the prime ministerial advance team, you’ll have to use a different entrance to receive him.
Heir to the Mughal throne means Nawaz will only do things when Nawaz is ready to do them.
The election, Nawaz decided, was a referendum on electricity, so that was his first priority. When terrorism quickly forced itself to the front of the queue, Nawaz’s default response kicked in: I’m not ready yet, I’ve got five years, I’ll deal with this in my way, on my own clock.
Terrorism, India, Afghanistan, Punjab, intelligence, police, CDNS — they’re all inter-linked and nowhere has the Nawaz imprint been made yet.
If it rested at that, perhaps it would not matter that much. But there is one significant difference between Nawaz 3.0 and the earlier versions: while he’s not ready to decide, he’s letting others decide.
It matters less that the leaner, supposedly more focused CDNS will have one more civilian member than uniformed; what matters is that the uniformed members can be expected to speak as one and they alone have a semi-institutionalised form of decision-making and input-taking.
How that squares with Nawaz’s pre-election promise of the civilians leading and the military following isn’t hard to figure out: it doesn’t.
The second clue to what Nawaz is thinking was doing the rounds for weeks and confirmed in his speech this week: he and his team had no real idea how bad things were.
That things were bad was obvious enough; just how bad they are has only dawned on the N-League leadership after coming to power. Reality has caused Nawaz to pause, to take stock first before figuring out what has to be done.
Politics is of course, and unhappily, supreme here. The right thing to do is secondary to the politically advantageous, or least disadvantageous, thing to do.
The go-slow approach — for now — is less about figuring out what to do, but about figuring out how to fit the new, post-election, since-coming-to-power information into the political matrix of decision-making.
Yeah, for example, dialogue isn’t going to go anywhere, but take it off the table quickly and what could that mean for peace in the realm — Fortress Sharif, Punjab?
The third clue comes courtesy the very small circle that speaks to Nawaz on such matters. Call it the ‘C’ choice: confrontation or co-option.
Confrontation is off the table, Nawaz’s aides claim. Don’t think about it as wresting power back from the army, they explain, think of it as finding ways to take everyone along.
Even talk of co-option makes Nawaz’s aides squeamish; they’d rather not frame civ-mil relations in a way that suggests one side emerging ahead of the other. Seen from that perspective, the CDNS makes sense.
An institutionalised role for the army; a decision in which there was some give-and-take (no NSC, but significant say); a group that presents a joint front; a body that allows one side, the military, to press its case, while the other side, Nawaz, makes up his mind — it gives the veneer of forward movement, while allowing the state of suspended animation to continue.
Essentially, the heir to the Mughal throne keeps his robes, while the original power centre doesn’t have to get its guard up. A neat, temporary arrangement, if ever there was one.
Except, passivity on the civilian side can lead to that most familiar of denouements: where everyone begins to see the heir to the Mughal throne is dressed in the emperor’s clothes.

The writer is a member of staff.
cyril.a@gmail.com
Twitter: @cyalm

Matters of procedure

By Hajrah Mumtaz

THE task of keeping track of and attempting to look after a citizenry involves large amounts of paperwork..
The government of Pakistan requires all adults to possess a computerised national identity card (CNIC). Mechanisms have been created — such as requirement of the CNIC to vote or benefit from schemes such as the Benazir Income Support Programme — to induce people to take the trouble of having them made.
People need passports and driving licences, and children need union council-issued birth certificates, ‘Bay’ forms (the basis on which the CNIC is issued at 18 years) and certificates of domicile.
Previously, getting any of these documents issued or renewed was an unpleasant endeavour involving long, rowdy queues, unhelpful staff and a system that seemed to be designed to make things harder for the applicant.
Information had to be cross-referenced against musty old ledgers kept in labyrinthine complexes to which the ordinary citizen had only restricted access. This often meant that there was plenty of scope for corrupt petty officials to demand bribes, or for touts with contacts inside who, for a certain sum, would ease your progress.
Thankfully, computers and their use in many places, including the National Database and Registration Authority or various traffic police authorities, have made much of this paperwork a far easier terrain to traverse.
Apart from the sheer stress on these systems because of the vast numbers of applicants, about which nothing much can be done, they now work well on the whole. Much has been done to make things easier for citizens, and the authorities deserve commendation for that.
Nevertheless, there are some areas where problems remain, that hopefully the directorates and authorities will turn their attention to.
One is that the edifice of paperwork does not really factor in the fact that there are increasingly large numbers of people who leave their hometowns, most often for work.
How does this make a difference to the applicant for paperwork? Because, for example, when applying for a government-issued document, you need to have your evidences attested. If I live in the area where my family has always lived, I will most probably have access to a person who can attest my documents — a magistrate, nazim, doctor, etc. Not so if I’m in a different place, and especially if I am, like the vast majority of migrant workers, also poor.
The ‘permanent address’ vs ‘current address’ on the CNICs presupposes some link to land, and some form — however small — of land ownership or village membership.
I could be from Murree, present that as my permanent address, but be living in Karachi. But what if I am one of those increasing numbers of people born in a large urban centre that gives only anonymity, and with no land or house, moving from rented place to rented place? What is my permanent address then?
Nadra-issued documents can be renewed from any city (and changes in residence are factored in). Not so for passports, though, which fall under the interior ministry.
This detail needs to be fixed, with the passports-issuance system computerised along the lines of Nadra; in this day and age there’s simply no reason for a document, one that is itself computerised, to not be renewable in an area or city different to that where it was originally issued.
There also needs to be more recognition that development of the state and its systems can often be rendered meaningless if development of the citizenry does not receive an equally strong push.
I was recently having my driving licence renewed, for example, and was impressed by the efficiency of the system and the courteousness of the staff.
I had expected delays because my expired license was the old-style paper booklet — till this year, I had been able to have it renewed without having a computerised one made — whose details would have to be checked against a ledger but even then, a couple of hours later, I would be able to pick up the new one.
There were numbered rooms to which you went in sequence, starting from obtaining the bank-form for depositing the fee to the one where you were issued a token for the collection of the document, having had your eyesight checked, your ID-card details verified and photo taken, etc, along the way.
But the system faltered because of the inadequacies of the applicants themselves. The officer accepting the money, for example, had to reject every third form because it had not been filled in by the applicant, or had been filled in partially or incorrectly.
Not only was this wasting his time, scanning these submissions, in the 15 minutes or so that I stood there, his level of irritation had also risen noticeably.
Similarly, in the eyesight testing room the person before me could not read, and the ophthalmologist had to have him describe a series of lines and marks.
Another officer nearby was telling an applicant that he would have to have his blood group identified and explaining why. Should the citizenry have a reasonable expectation that the state will educate it and invest in it? Yes, of course.
But this is yet another sector where the state is faltering badly. The advantages of literacy and education are so self-evident and vast that they don’t bear repeating here, as is the fact that on paper every child in Pakistan ought to be going to school.
I merely wish to point out that the efforts of some of the notable success stories of Pakistan’s administration are being undermined because they aren’t being bolstered at the level of the individual. The buck, again, stops with the state.

The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

No cloistered virtue

By Babar Sattar

CHIEF Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s long-drawn-out term is winding down and in a few months we will have a new chief. While we have had one chief justice for the last eight-and-a-half years, we might see up to seven in the next eight-and-a-half. .
Now that we have an independent and fiercely assertive Supreme Court, it might be a propitious time to evaluate the independence of the individual judge in view of the administrative functions of the office of chief justice that gravely impact the administration of justice by the apex court and the judiciary as a whole.
It is now settled that an essential component of judicial independence is the ability of a judge to rule without being influenced by peers, including the chief justice. Critics assert that lack of independence of the individual judge is evident in the near absence of dissent in our judicial verdicts. Can our national propensity to flatter the powerful explain this trend? Sociological inclinations notwithstanding, the prime reasons for entrenchment of the misconceived concept of chief justice being pater familias (owner of the family estate) are structural.
Lord Acton asserted that, “liberty consists in the division of power; absolutism, in concentration of power”. The civilised world through a process of trial and error has now learnt that the best defence against abuse of power is distributing it widely and making its exercise transparent and accountable by subjecting it to an institutional system of checks and balances. We have unfortunately not applied this wisdom when it comes to the chief justice’s office.
The framework of rules, procedures and traditions that enables a chief justice to establish dominion over judicial offices across Pakistan is neither in sync with our constitutional structure nor with best institutional practices. The judiciary is no army for which unity of command is a functional necessity. The chief justice ought to be the first among equals and no more. But concentration of administrative functions in the office of chief justice is such that it can transform any incumbent into an autarch with significant ability to influence judicial outcomes.
We have a federal constitutional structure that endows each high court with the power to superintend and control courts subordinate to it. The Supreme Court is vested with no supervisory jurisdiction over high courts or district courts. Other than its extraordinary Article 184(3) powers, it is only meant to exercise appellate jurisdiction in matters decided by high courts. Unfortunately, over the last two decades we have seen judicial power getting bloated at the top and ineffectual at the district level where ordinary folk interact with courts.
The authority of the chief justice as chairman of the Judicial Commission, chairman of the Law Commission and chairman of the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee, and the manner of its exercise, seems to be transforming our federal judicial structure into a unitary one. Is excessive use of Article 184(3) jurisdiction by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Chaudhry’s watch doing to the relevance of High Courts what liberal exercise of writ jurisdiction in the 1990s by the high courts did to the potency of district courts?
Exercise of authority under Article 184(3), especially on suo motu basis, exemplifies the lack of transparency in exercise of administrative functions by the office of the chief justice. While the Constitution vests Article 184(3) powers in the Supreme Court, the administrative procedure employed for its exercise has converted it into the chief justice’s power. There are no objective criteria to determine which of the innumerable matters of public importance involving fundamental rights ought to be taken up by the Supreme Court in its original jurisdiction, especially of its own volition.
There are no objective criteria to determine how benches are to be constituted, how many judges will comprise a bench, what will their composition be, and which cases are to be fixed before each bench. During the last months of chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah the size of the bench headed by him that heard all consequential matters began to shrink. The tradition of dispatching judges out of favour with a chief justice away from the principal seat to hear decades-old appeals as sanction is well known, as is the practice of reconstituting benches midweek should a chief justice so desire.
The 18th Amendment introduced a detailed procedure to make the judicial appointment process deliberative, transparent and vigorous, while giving the Judicial Commission the power to regulate its own procedure. And what did the commission do? It made a rule stating that only the chief justice can nominate candidates for the consideration of the commission.
In other words through this procedural rule the chief justice has been given an absolute veto over all superior judiciary appointments across high courts as well as to the Supreme Court. His overarching authority within the Judicial Commission also gives him considerable ability to determine whether to elevate a high court judge to the Supreme Court or retain him as a high court chief justice and for how long.
The obligation to act in a fair and transparent manner imposed by law on all public office holders and enforced by the judiciary, applies with equal vigour, if not more, to the office of the chief justice. We need to introduce efficient and transparent case and court management systems in the Supreme Court and high courts to replace the existing system of unaccountable discretion of the chief justices.
“Justice is not a cloistered virtue,” Lord Atkin had observed back in 1936. As we approach a change of guard at the Supreme Court we must seek wider distribution of the administrative powers of chief justices amongst senior-most judges of the court to oust arbitrariness in the administration of justice and strengthen the independence of the individual judge. It is not the fame and power of a chief justice, but the integrity, efficiency and effectiveness of the ordinary magistrate that is the gauge of a functional justice system.

The writer is a lawyer.
sattar@post.harvard.edu

A lethal nexus

By Tariq Khosa

IT is time to note the voice of anguish and desperation of senior police commanders..
“The more serious problem in Pakistan is that the terrorists and insurgents are getting aligned with all kinds of criminals. We are heading for a situation like Mexico where drug lords and street criminals are operating like a corporate firm,” a senior officer told a Senate Committee on the Interior.
Police officers of the four provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan said in one voice that criminal gangs were working in tandem with the terrorists and unless the state security apparatus is revamped, the situation would get worse.
A senator from Karachi alleged that militants’ groups like the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Baloch Liberation Army operated with the help of local criminals in Lyari and other parts of Karachi.
“If you catch a small fish involved in crime, his backing comes from the TTP whose field operations in Karachi are run by criminals belonging to Waziristan and other tribal areas,” the senator charged.
An inspector general of police conceded before the Senate body that statistics of kidnapping for ransom cases did not reflect the true picture as victims and complainants do not generally come forward out of fear and lack of trust in the police.
The consensus that is emerging is that police arrests and investigations are confined to low-level killers or operators and that the planners, facilitators and masterminds remain out of reach because of official incompetence and the lack of will or capacity to handle complex cases of terrorism with professionalism and integrity.
Such a situation sometimes results in desperate remedies.
Stopping just short of recommending that the police should take decisions to “crush the known criminals” on their own, the Senate committee’s chairman suggested that law enforcement personnel should use strong-arm techniques to curb crime rather than wait for the outcome of court cases against the criminals.
Those subscribing to this school of thought believe in eliminating the criminals rather than the crime. Staged encounters and killing the killers are billed as a battle between ‘evil’ (the criminal) and ‘good’ (the cop).
This mindless and violent course of action is resorted to and encouraged in an environment that actually shows contempt for the rule of law and due process.
In fact, what is needed is an attempt at a deeper understanding of organised crime and its developing nexus with terrorism and militancy. Our policymakers and police officers should not ignore this any further.
State failure correlates with the presence of organised crime groups. Vulnerability may be at its zenith where the shared interests of terrorists and organised criminals generate a cumulative impact.
Over time, the weakening of intelligence and investigative processes, shoddy collection of evidence, poor follow-up and prosecution during the trial stage and the tendency to muzzle the voices of truth have greatly harmed the efficacy of the criminal justice system.
The intersection of organised crime and terrorism has taken different forms: we have seen alliances between criminal and terrorist groups or direct management by criminals in terrorist activities and involvement by militants in criminal activities.
One of the main reasons why crimes are committed is to tap funds needed for carrying out terrorist activities — this is arguably one of the stronger links in the organised crime and terrorism nexus.
Examples include kidnappings for ransom and bank robberies by the sectarian terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and by the TTP. Similarly, ethnic and sub-nationalist militant groups are known to indulge in kidnappings, extortion, robberies and to even provide hired assassins.
Combating organised crime is futile if income opportunities in the documented economy do not exist and critical ‘enabler’ elements such as corruption are not addressed. Those resorting to organised crime probably have more ties to high-ranking politicians or state functionaries.
Meanwhile, the absence of good governance further strengthens the nexus between militants and criminals. Lack of capacity of the state to provide social services and dispute resolution mechanisms is exploited to the hilt by militants such as the Taliban.
The nexus between crime and militancy can be broken by strengthening state institutions that enforce the law and deliver justice without fear or favour. The writ of the state in the safe havens, usually in the country’s periphery, needs to be established through the creation of a benign and benevolent state machinery.
Instead of using the military or civil armed forces as a routine measure of establishing the state’s writ, a combination of effective policing and judicial institutions needs to be nurtured along with the establishment of local government systems.
The certainty of punishment is more important than the severity of the sentence. Zero tolerance against criminal activities and violence will lead to an environment in which organised crime will find it hard to form a nexus with militancy or exploit the governance machinery.
An effective community policing model produces the community police officer who acts as a bridge between citizens and the state and keeps an eye on unusual and suspicious activities in his jurisdiction. Similarly, residents’ associations are encouraged to nominate motivated citizens to work with the police in identifying issues of concern.
This model leads to problem-oriented policing through which a cross-section of professional police and allied government machinery get together to address a certain type of lawlessness or a grave problem relating to organised crime and complete the task at hand to the entire satisfaction of the community.
Only committed, professional and honest police officers can earn and win the trust of the community.
Instead of giving in and losing hope, the police need to show leadership qualities and boost the sagging morale of the law enforcement services by standing up to the criminal mafia and its patrons in the corridors of power. They will soon find public support to be their true strength in serving the community.

The writer is a retired police
officer.

What governments do and why

By Anjum Altaf

A SEMINAL book of the 20th century, at least for academics, was An Economic Theory of Democracy, published in 1957. In it, Anthony Downs applied economic theory to the study of politics and, among other things, inferred what a rational government would do given its incentives..
At its simplest, the theory claims that a government aims to stay in power and therefore, if it is democratic, adapts its policies and actions to appeal to a majority of the electorate.
For example, in the current run-up to the elections in India, the general wisdom is that the ruling party would spend extensively in the rural areas to negate a likely swing to the opposition in urban areas. (Contrary to Downs’ prototype, though, it seems it is not the effectiveness of expenditures that matters most to voter sentiment in India — it is the courting that is important.)
Incentives are the key variable in Downs’ proposition and in normal circumstances a government’s incentives are aligned with the objective of retaining power.
Having observed Pakistani politics for decades, however, a circle of friends has inferred a variation that might better explain outcomes in the country. It might also illustrate the nature of the gulf that has opened up between the politics of India and Pakistan.
The essence of the variation is that the incentive of a typical Pakistani civil government (as a whole, not of rogue individuals within it which is more universal) has not been re-election but the maximum accumulation of wealth during any period in which it is in office.
For one, the duration of its rule in any given period was highly uncertain given that real power was wielded behind the scene by actors other than itself. Therefore a strategy to satisfy the wants of any part of the electorate might yield no returns whatsoever.
For another, it knew, given the paucity of political alternatives, that in the merry-go-round of Pakistani politics its turn would eventually come again. Thus it made strategic sense to build up a war chest to sustain it during its period in the wilderness and be available when re-entry appeared possible.
This strategy was abetted by globalisation when virtually all Pakistani leaders arranged safe havens abroad to recuperate in when out of power or to which to escape when things got hot. Some are foreign nationals ruling by proxy from abroad; others shift abodes as and when the situation demands.
One consequence of the safe havens was that the leaders parked all their capital assets abroad and retained just running expenses in local currency.
The operating game plan was then entirely tactical and risk-free — to do whatever was needed to extend their resource-extracting rule in the short term till such time when the music stopped. At that moment, they could take flight literally with the clothes on their backs and await some patron or the other to engineer their return.
With such incentives there was little need or time to do anything for the electorate barring the incidental by-products of the process of making money (large infrastructure or service contracts, for example).
This was quite unlike India where electoral strategy demanded the amelioration of some constituency at the very least. Governments could guess wrong (as with the Shining India strategy) but none could afford to ignore all the constituents all the time.
The complete apathy towards citizen needs in Pakistan is plausible in this perspective. A victim is the democratic process itself. Unlike in India, the real opposition is no longer represented by alternate political parties but increasingly by groups that reject the worldview of electoral politics altogether.
The rejection also removes compunctions about the destructive economic consequences of their actions. They can survive on the bare minimum and believe everyone should too till the desired alternative is attained from which the nation would rise purer and stronger.
In exploring the fundamental divide in the politics of India and Pakistan, I often think back to the 300 years of the Mughal Empire. Half this period was dominated by the six Great Mughals whom everyone recognises. The other half was populated by dozens of emperors most of whom few can recall. This was the period dominated by behind-the-scene king-makers who shuffled puppet emperors at will, retaining them only for the legitimacy they conferred.
This could explain how democratic India and Pakistan both remain overwhelmingly dynastic and yet on different political trajectories. I am tempted to conclude that Indian politics is a continuation of the first half of the Mughal Empire while Pakistani politics resembles more the second — the rule of kings versus that of king-makers.
Of course, in the age of democracy kings don’t rule till they die or are deposed — they can take turns in office. From the viewpoint of incentives it makes a huge behavioral difference if a leader knows he has to remain at home when out of power as opposed to one prepared to flee abroad to seek a patron.
These contrasting imperatives, incentives, and strategies have led to divergent political trajectories in Pakistan and India and thereby to the different fate of their citizens — the one ignored, the other appeased.
The first completion of the political term of a civilian government in Pakistan could signal a change. Constraining further the power of king-makers could bend the Pakistani trajectory towards the Indian model, itself a variant of the Downs’ prototype.
When that happens, Pakistani citizens would attain parity with their Indian peers. It would make little difference in their immediate conditions, but place them on a better political platform for the long struggle ahead.

The writer is dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Sharif in Wonderland

By Zahid Hussain

IT may have not been difficult for Nawaz Sharif to reclaim the top position. But he certainly does not appear comfortable there. His morose demeanour portrays a man in deep agony, inspiring little confidence in the nation he is supposed to lead..
It was a rare moment in recent months when he was seen smiling in public, curiously enough, during the visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry last month.
Mr Sharif’s first 80 days in his third term in office have not been promising enough to build public confidence in his government. His much-delayed first address to the nation lacked focus and direction. His tentative approach and indecision on almost all key policy issues has reinforced the state of inertia afflicting the republic.
Now almost at the end of the honeymoon period, the government does not have much to show for its performance. The prime minister’s dithering is proverbial. Several key diplomatic and government positions are lying vacant because he cannot make up his mind. Mr Sharif has never been known for the delegation of powers, but the situation seems to have worsened this time with him keeping several key portfolios such as foreign, defence and commerce for himself.
The rest are the same old faces, part of the previous PML-N administration some 13 years ago, thus bringing no new vision or ideas relevant to a radically changed domestic and external environment.
His unwillingness to induct new blood illustrates Mr Sharif’s old cliquish style of governance. The consultations on important matters are restricted to close family members and a few trusted hangers-on.
It is a government running in neutral gear. There has not been any substantive move yet to implement the party’s much-touted reform agenda.
Take for example, the economy, said to be on top of Mr Sharif’s priority list. There seems to be no clear policy direction. Despite his comfortable majority in the National Assembly, Mr Sharif is not willing to take the tough decisions urgently needed to put the economy back on track. It is ad hocism at its worst.
In last week’s address, the prime minister spoke at length about what had gone wrong, but nothing on what is to be done. Reforming the taxation system certainly does not seem to be Mr Sharif’s priority. That was quite apparent from what he said in an interview to London’s Telegraph last week: “I have not yet discussed this matter because … these are very initial days.” So how long will it take for Mr Sharif to think about this critical issue?
Mr Sharif has also hinted at cutting income and corporate taxes. “We will have to lower the taxes in the country, the income tax, the corporate tax and all the taxes,” he told the Telegraph. With the tax collection now accounting for less than 9pc of GDP, one of the lowest in the world, cutting taxes for the rich, without widening the tax base, is a recipe for disaster.
Mr Sharif’s government has already agreed to a $5.3billion IMF bailout package that will give breathing space to Pakistan’s ailing economy. The programme also requires Pakistan to bring down the whopping fiscal deficit. But can this be possible without radical tax reforms? Given this situation, the government will find it extremely difficult to comply with the terms of the IMF programme.
Mr Sharif appears much more conflicted and confused on the issue of terrorism. A large part of his address last week was devoted to the human and financial cost of rising militancy. He was right when he said that political stability and economic development is not possible without eradicating the menace. But his resolve seemed to weaken when it came to the issue of taking action against those challenging the state’s authority.
While holding out the possibility of a military option, Mr Sharif still seems to be hung up on the idea of a negotiated peace deal with the militants. What he does not realise is that such an approach has not worked in the past and there is no hope of it succeeding this time either. While the Taliban have made it very clear that they are prepared to talk only on their terms, the government seems to be hell-bent on placating them.
The government’s desperation to appease the Taliban was evident from the comment made by Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan during a TV interview that the previous administrations were not sincere in negotiations. He ruled out the use of force against the militants saying that dialogue was the only option.
Such remarks not only legitimise the terrorists, they may also weaken the resolve of our security forces battling them. The minister does not even want to have preconditions for the so-called peace talks. Nothing could be more defeatist than this.
There is an increasing perception that Mr Sharif is willing to reconcile with the militants as long as they spare Punjab from terrorist attacks. The reported divide between the Punjabi Taliban and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan over Mr Sharif”s offer for peace talks lends credence to the prevailing impression. Many believe that the prime minister has put on hold the hanging of two convicted members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi after the threat from the Punjabi Taliban. The group threatened to target top government leaders if the men were executed.
So, it was not surprising that the group welcomed Mr Sharif’s peace talks offer after the suspension of the execution order. Buying peace for one province at the cost of the country’s stability is certainly not going to work.
One expected that the third Sharif government may have learnt from past mistakes and would bring political stability to the strife-torn country. But the performance of the government so far does not instil much hope for the future. Mr Sharif needs to come out of his Wonderland before the situation becomes irreversible.

The writer is an author and journalist.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
Twitter: @hidhussain

An unequal vote

By Chaudhry Faisal Hussain

WITH regard to adult franchise in Pakistan, Article 51(2) of the Constitution provides the right of vote to every Pakistani citizen who is 18 years old or older and whose name appears in the electoral rolls — unless the person is declared to be of unsound mind by a court of competent jurisdiction..
The rights and duties under the law and Constitution are not subject to any gender, caste, or creed. They are there for all citizens of Pakistan.
How these are flouted is amply demonstrated in the practice where women are stopped from voting. Last May, it was not for the first time in Pakistan’s electoral history that women were barred from casting their ballot.
This has been a practice in a few parts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when elections take place in Pakistan. This year, in NA-61 Chakwal, at the Dhurnal polling station, there were reports that women were barred from casting their votes.
A more frightening dimension of the problem relates to the militants’ hold. A militant outfit issued a written warning to the people of Hangu to stop voters from participating in the elections, declaring it the infidel’s way to elect a
government.
Female voters were particularly ordered to stay home, away from the polling stations, otherwise they could abducted and slaughtered.
In line with ‘tradition’, the contestants and ticket holders of some registered political parties contesting elections from Mianwali and from Phalia tehsil in Mandi Bahauddin in the heart of Punjab and from Lakki Marwat and Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, executed agreements to bar female voters from casting their ballots after holding meetings with the local elders.
A particularly appalling situation was reportedly observed at a government primary school in Mardan, where the agents of all three candidates including one advocate allegedly agreed to violate the law and the presiding officer gave a written assurance that no action would be taken under the law.
The sad truth is that until or unless these issues are highlighted by the media, no one will initiate any action. The media shakes gavels, the gavels nudge the executive and the executive finally springs into action.
Ideally, political parties themselves should introduce reforms in their internal systems and undertake to perform their legal responsibilities.
Under the law, all political parties that are registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan are bound by the Political Parties Order 2002 that bars their office-bearers and members, including those holding poll tickets, from propagating any opinion and acting in a manner that is injurious to the ideology of Pakistan.
Political parties are also bound to work towards strengthening the sovereignty and integrity of the country, and not subverting public order or fuelling the sway of terrorism.
It is a worrisome situation that the political parties have become so naïve that they have not taken any action against their ticket holders for participating in such activities which again they are legally bound to do.
Under the law, any member of the party who is involved in illegal activities can be suspended or expelled after the holding of a free and fair inquiry according to the party’s own constitution, if he or she is found guilty.
Going by electoral laws and the Pakistan Constitution, excluding citizens (in this case women voters) from the electoral process is a glaring violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity, and those who have done so, or attempted to do so, should not be allowed into parliament.
They have violated the principle of freedom of franchise and the equality of men and women, and have thus acted against the country’s ideology.
If these political parties fail to initiate any action against their members, then the federal government has the power to send references through the ECP against those political parties that have indulged in the practice. The reference may be sent to the Supreme Court of Pakistan where the court after considering all evidence can issue orders for the dissolution of the party.
Political resolve is always more effective than legal penalties. To avoid this unwanted situation, the insertion of a clause specific to women voters in the Representation of People Act 1976, could be a significant measure.
Under this clause, at least 10pc to 15pc of women whose names are on the voters’ list at a particular polling station should have voted, otherwise the results could be stopped or annulled.
The barring of women voters must be declared a valid enough reason for declaring an election null and void. It should lead to strict penalties for candidates, ticket-holders and parties who support this ban or fail to take strict action.
The candidates must be black-listed and barred from taking part in the elections from the platform of any party or as independent candidates.
The Peshawar High Court has ordered re-polling in two constituencies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where women were barred from voting. The courts in other provinces should follow suit.
However, only when there is a greater resolve by the state to penalise those propagating this practice will women be given unhindered access to the polling booths.

The writer is a lawyer.
Twitter: @faisal_fareed

Reliving a dead man’s dream

By Mahir Ali

WASHINGTON D.C. was on a war footing on Aug 28, 1963. It had been a fraught year for race relations in the United States, with frequent outbreaks of violence in the Deep South, mostly as a consequence of police brutality against peaceful demonstrators rallying in defence of civil rights..
These were rights that, 100 years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, non-whites were universally deprived of in most of the states that had once constituted the Confederacy. It was apartheid under a different name. In his inaugural address as governor of Alabama earlier that year, George Wallace had intoned the slogan: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
In the case of another southern state, the songwriter Phil Ochs was sufficiently incensed by the violence against black children he had witnessed on his TV screen to declare: “Here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of/ Mississippi go find yourself another country to be part of.”
It was in a charged atmosphere, then, that a range of civil rights organisations came up with the plan for a mass mobilisation in the nation’s capital — an idea that at least one of the organisers, A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and an acknowledged doyen of the movement, had been toying with since 1941.
President John F. Kennedy tended to see desegregation as a political necessity rather than a moral imperative, and he had introduced a Civil Rights Bill in June 1963.
He apparently felt that the proposed March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom could jeopardise the legislation. They were not the only ones, though, who feared that a gathering of 100,000 — that was the figure the organisers were hoping for — would lead to race riots on the streets of Washington.
The White House tried its level best to persuade civil rights leaders to call off the march. It failed. Contingency plans were thereafter put in place. Huge military contingents, equipped with tanks and helicopters, were ready to swoop down at the first indication of an insurrection.
The capital’s jails were evacuated to make place for the inevitable arrests. Liquor sales were banned for the first time since prohibition. It had been decided that the microphone at the rally would be switched off at the first hint of a call to rebellion. Washington was in lockdown mode.
In the event, it turned out that there was no cause for alarm. Although an estimated quarter of a million people showed up, far more than the organisers had imagined in their wildest dreams, there was no violence whatsoever. It has been described as a huge picnic. Until, that is, the final speaker appeared at the podium.
Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) was a Baptist preacher who had gained prominence less than eight years earlier as the driving force behind a successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, who had famously refused to cede her bus seat to a white passenger.
There were rumours of MLK’s effectiveness as a speaker, but until that day in Washington most white Americans had never been exposed to anything more than sound bites.
They were in for something of a shock. In his speech, MLK made a most eloquent case for an end to segregation and racism, pointing out the profound flaws in America’s image of itself. But then, as he began to wind down, his favourite gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, shouted: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”
She was familiar with the refrain from MLK’s previous orations. One of his aides had warned him the day before against mentioning the dream, deeming it too clichéd and trite. But MLK pushed aside his prepared text and, as another of his favourite singers, Joan Baez, puts it, “let the breath of God thunder through him”.
MLK’s speech is today acknowledged as the outstanding oration of the 20th century, not least because it articulated America’s deepest flaws in such poetic cadences.
It was a while, though, before it reached that stature. In the years that followed, MLK was denigrated for his advocacy of economic justice for all, and even more so for designating his homeland, in the Vietnam context, as the biggest purveyor of violence in the world.
One can be sure Barack Obama will ignore that aspect when he stands today in the shadow of a giant to offer a commemorative tribute to a man whose endeavours were instrumental in clearing Obama’s path to the White House. He’s also unlikely to acknowledge the Supreme Court’s recent evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
There can be no doubt that Obama’s White House tenancy is a tribute to what MLK strove for, as attorney-general Eric Holder pointed out in his speech at last Saturday’s 50th anniversary rally.
But, although segregation received a legal burial, the Obama residency appears to have given a new lease of life to racism. And the fact that more African-Americans are incarcerated today than were enslaved in the mid-19th century is, to put it very mildly, not a good look.
And, after all these years, it remains pertinent to cite the prescient verses Carl Wendell Hines inscribed after MLK’s assassination in 1968:
“Dead men make/ such convenient heroes: They/ cannot rise/ to challenge the images/ we would fashion from their lives./ And besides,/ it is easier to build monuments/than to make a better world./ So, now that he is safely dead/ we, with eased consciences/ will teach our children/ that he was a great man … knowing/ that the cause for which he lived/ is still cause/ and the dream for which he died/ is still a dream,/ a dead man’s dream.”

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

The Karzai visit

By Najmuddin A. Shaikh

SECTIONS of the Western media had been reporting that even though formally suspended talks on the US-Afghan bilateral security agreement had continued informally, agreement had been reached on a single text with points at issue being placed in brackets. .
It was then announced by the Afghan foreign affairs ministry on Aug 20 that negotiations had entered a new phase and were being conducted by a new team comprising the foreign minister, the national security adviser and the head of the Security Transition Commission, and that lastly there was confidence that the agreement would be finalised soon.
Four days later, President Hamid Karzai on the eve of his visit to Pakistan told reporters that Afghanistan was in no hurry to conclude the agreement and that if no agreement was reached it could perhaps be left to the next president to discuss whether or not to accept such an agreement.
Karzai of course knows full well that the Americans are anxious to conclude the agreement by October so that they have the time needed to plan for the stay of the residual force after the rest of the forces are withdrawn by end 2014 and, more importantly, to ensure that the American residual presence does not become an issue in the presidential election in April 2014.
Karzai knows that Afghanistan needs this agreement, not only for the ostensible purpose of providing training to the Afghan forces and fighting Al Qaeda, but also because without such an agreement the promised military and economic assistance that alone can keep Afghanistan going after 2014 may disappear.
So what does this mean? Is it a hard-nosed negotiating tactic designed to secure concessions? Is it meant to tell the Americans that if his term cannot be extended his designated successor must win the April election? Or is it to tell the Americans that they need the agreement more than Karzai’s Afghanistan does? It is difficult to tell what Karzai is aiming for.
This is how Karzai approaches relations with his principal benefactor. The attitude towards Pakistan, which may be a benefactor in so far as it provides shelter to some five million Afghans but which is nevertheless painted as the principal villain, is far worse.
Afghanistan has just cause for complaint but Karzai needs to acknowledge the contribution Afghanistan and its leadership have made towards creating this situation. Realism also demands that even if Afghanistan is the aggrieved party it must recognise that it has more to gain from rectification than either the US or Pakistan. This does not seem to resonate in Kabul. This then is the backdrop against which the Karzai visit is to be viewed.
On the face of it, Karzai’s visit to Pakistan on Monday went off well. He was accorded a welcome befitting the head of state of an important neighbour which should have served to assuage some of the ire prompted by officially inspired assessments in Pakistan, earlier this year, that Karzai was an impediment to peace and was “taking his country to hell”.
There was an agreement concluded on economic cooperation and development projects but that means little more than an expression of good intentions. Similarly, there was apparently talk of setting up a joint commission on the Kabul River and the development of joint hydel projects, but what will come of this is also not very clear since it does not seem that any solid preparatory work has been done.
The important point was Karzai’s request at the joint press conference that Pakistan should facilitate the peace process in Afghanistan and “provide opportunities or a platform for talks between the Afghan High Peace Council and the Taliban movement”. In response he got Nawaz Sharif’s assurance of “strong and sincere” support for an Afghan-led reconciliation process.
The prime minister added: “Pakistan will continue to extend all possible facilitation to the international community’s efforts for the realisation of this noble objective.”
One does not know whether the reference to the international community will go down well. It may have been meant to indicate that Pakistan believed that a US-Afghan Taliban agreement on the exchange of prisoners and on the removal of Taliban names from the UN sanctions list was an essential starting point for the unconditional talks that the Afghan High Peace Council has proposed holding with the Taliban.
No mention was made, however, of the Karzai demand that Pakistan release all Afghans being held by Pakistan and particularly those like Ghani Baradar, Mullah Omar’s former deputy who the Afghans believe could facilitate the reconciliation process.
Most Afghan observers are of course aware that Pakistan had arranged for Umer Daudzai, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, to meet Ghani and he had been disappointed to learn in that meeting that Baradar was not interested in being an intermediary for Karzai’s talks with the Afghan Taliban. This, however, should not be sufficient reason for us to renege on an earlier commitment made after the Chatham House meeting to release all the Taliban, including Ghani Baradar.
At the Pakistani prime minister’s request, Karzai extended his stay and the two leaders met in Murree.
One can hope that in this meeting the prime minister convinced Karzai that all Pakistanis are sincere in pushing for reconciliation, and that we will therefore release the Taliban in our custody and will inform the Afghans of the time and place so that Afghan officials can meet them.
Second, it is in our interest to have peace and stability in Afghanistan but the Afghan leader must acknowledge that Afghanistan will be the principal beneficiary and Pakistan will expect that, to facilitate further cooperation, negative propaganda against Pakistan will stop. Third, Karzai has said often that Pakistan and Afghanistan are conjoined twins. This must now find reflection in the way we talk to each other and the way we show sensitivity to each other’s concerns.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Men, women and the city

By Rafia Zakaria

IT happened around dusk, the time when the cities of South Asia, Lahore and Delhi and Mumbai and Karachi exhale collectively and let millions out into the streets to begin their slow crawl home. .
The victim was a photojournalist who had been taking pictures of an abandoned factory in Mumbai. For protection, perhaps, she had a male colleague accompany her. It was not enough.
As news reports would decry soon afterwards, the 23-year-old was brutally raped by a gang of five men and her escort beaten. India, that has hardly recovered from the gang rape of a bus passenger in Delhi barely a year ago, was once again stunned by this latest act of gender violence.
Spurred into action by media coverage and denunciations by activists and political parties across the board, Mumbai police authorities had, by Sunday, arrested five suspects, each of whom, if found guilty, is expected to face the maximum 20-year sexual violence penalty passed into law by the Indian legislature a few months ago.
The victim is said to be recovering from her injuries. In a statement to the media, she said, “Rape is not the end of life. I want the strictest punishment for the accused, and to return to duty as soon as possible.” Her brave remarks were praised by activists and political figures across India.
The victim of the gruesome Delhi gang rape, they may have remembered, had died from her injuries never able to make such a statement.
Across the border in Pakistan, rape often is the end of life, with many victims choosing to commit suicide or suffer in silence rather than press charges. If social taboos do not destroy their chances of survival, other factors will ensure their persecution.
Even while Indian legislators increased the penalties for rapists this year, the Council of Islamic Ideology, Pakistan’s constitutional advisory body on Islamic injunctions, deemed DNA evidence inadmissible as primary evidence in rape cases.
Already, the number of victims coming forth or pressing charges in Pakistani courts is quite low.
The burden that gender places on the subcontinent’s females is thus formidable. In both India and Pakistan, droves of people are pouring into cities, leaving behind the communal structures of old.
Recent studies reveal that the cities of Asia are seeing the greatest increase of urbanisation in the world.
Karachi is supposed to be the fastest growing city in the world and is projected to overtake Shanghai by the year 2025. Mumbai is similarly situated. On the streets of both, millions of women take to cars, buses and rickshaws every day, out to earn a living. The rupees enable them to manage the steep costs of living, a parent’s healthcare bills, a sister’s wedding or a younger brother’s tuition. The demands are many and the pressures great.
Against all of this are pre-urban social structures that have not yet developed the cultural mechanisms to ensure women’s safety or punishments for those that jeopardise it.
In both India and Pakistan the basic moral mechanisms of society continue to be largely communal, resting on the maintenance of reputation, honour and the precept that a woman must be kept at home to be kept safe.
According to the old ways of life, before the city, the best deterrent against the commission of rape is the threat of retaliation and the shaming not only of the person who commits the act but his entire extended family.
In the post-migratory urban environment, this mechanism fails. In crimes of sexual violence in urban contexts, men can target women without fear of accruing any social cost, the intimate nature of the crime precluding the likelihood of their ever being caught.
The anonymity of a newly grown city, with police forces still dominated by patriarchal ideas of old, serves thus to victimise women.
In the namelessness of new urban landscapes, male reputations, it seems, can be made and remade many times, creating an amoral space where men can do as they please.
Women, however, are left still imprisoned, dangling between governments that are unable to hold men accountable in the newly individualised urban environment and old communal arrangements that expect them to abandon public life for safety.
In sum, the few old strictures that were available to curb male sexual violence are no longer viable, the mores of ‘protecting’ women by restricting them to the home are no longer economically feasible.
At the same time, the mechanisms of state — the laws and their enforcers — are unable or unwilling to fill the moral vacuum or let go of the beliefs that see all women in the public sphere as somehow sexually available.
Growing fast and teeming with women, the cities of South Asia are thus moral spaces that are contested between the old and the new and between men and women.
Acts of collective male violence against women, such as the rape in Mumbai, reveal the gross inequality in the moral costs of urbanisation, where the absence of robust mechanisms for prosecuting rapists effectively creates an environment where women can be victimised without repercussions, leaving them condemned to a life on the defensive.
In this sense, in both Pakistan and India, women’s bodies become targets for male rage and aggression, their visibility even being equated with the opportunities being taken away from men in the city where chances are few and the burdens many.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

No woman no cry

By Jawed Naqvi

INCREASINGLY, in India, women live on edge, fearing assault, abuse or rape by men, known and unknown to them. .
Opposition MP Najma Heptullah said so in parliament. She lived in Delhi alone, and she lived in fear. What about women who have to live with the men-turned-beasts or who gave them birth?
Let’s share the responses of two mothers of such men that were published in the Indian Express and Times of India this week.
I think the stories do open up the aperture to allow a better peep into the nightmare that women face, be they victims of rape or relatives of rapists.
The Express interviewed the mother of an alleged member of a group that raped and fatally brutalised a woman in a Delhi bus in December.
The Times of India wrote of a mother whose son was reportedly among the rag-pickers or drug addicts who raped a woman journalist in an abandoned cloth mill of Mumbai last week.
After reading about the Mumbai mother named Chand Bibi, a male reader of the Times replied: “This Chand Bibi should be raped in front of her rapist son to teach him a lesson.”
This is not a stand-alone opinion in the increasingly violent and callous society that India is becoming. An element of desperation too is becoming evident.
A woman reader spoke of an “urgent need for compulsory birth control (which) is evident from the situation that these youths are growing up in — no opportunities available, and yet (we have) parents who keep producing kids”.
Meanwhile, the Times reported that 21-year-old Qasim Shaikh, was arrested on Sunday for the alleged gang rape of the Mumbai journalist. He was kept in the police lockup where he was visited by his mother Chand Bibi the next day.
“He was clad in a burqa and started crying upon seeing me,” Chand Bibi said, weeping. “Barey sahib (a policeman) told him to narrate what he had done. Qasim admitted to having done a wrong thing to a girl. I asked him why he did so. He kept quiet. I was shattered.”
Chand Bibi’s husband died 10 years ago and she lives with her three children in a shantytown.
Describing her ordeal she said: “On Sunday, some journalists came home and told me the police had caught my son. I went to the crime branch office at night and waited for hours, but barey sahib did not let me meet my son. So I visited again on Monday morning.”
There is an interesting pointer, in the Times report, about how the police go about their investigations, or deal with women. “Sahib told me to come after two days. I begged him to let me meet my son, but he slapped me twice on the face. I tolerated this since I wanted to see my son. A few minutes later, they brought Qasim before me.”
So that’s the lot of Chand Bibi: apparently, let down by her son, abused by readers of the media report on her visit to him, and slapped by a constable for wanting to meet her delinquent offspring.
The Express report showed the equal trauma of the mother of a man who has been named in the Delhi brutality. We have to go to an unnamed village in western Uttar Pradesh to meet her.
“On a winter morning last December, a sleepy Uttar Pradesh village woke up to police vehicles in its lanes, asking for the address of a boy no one knew,” the report begins.
The police, in pursuit of the boy’s father, were taken to a “half-brick, half-plastic structure”. Being mentally unstable for a number of years, the father was unable to understand what the police were telling him.
The police then told the mother that her eldest son had been arrested in the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in Delhi.
Some months later, she heard that her son’s fate would be decided on Aug 31 by the Juvenile Justice Board. With no money or acquaintance in Delhi, she is hardly likely to be there when the verdict is announced.
In fact, as a farm labourer, this mother of six, who mostly gets work during the harvesting season, will find it difficult to feed her family for the next few months.
The media attention following her son’s arrest might have given her some much-needed cash, but despite this occasional charity, the journalists’ questions irritate her.
“I have too much sadness in my life to keep dwelling on my eldest son all the time. His father, so many mouths, no food, no work, no money, no relatives,” she says dismissing the thought that her son’s arrest caused her pain.
Rape is of course not the exclusive preserve of the poor, not at all. It was, on the contrary, the powerful feudal satraps who led a truly institutionalised assault on women, mostly Dalit women. The country’s caste mix offered a bizarre challenge to upper caste women as their men inflicted what was regarded by then prevailing customs as socially acceptable violence on lower caste women.
Did a high caste Thakur woman, for example, endorse the gang rape of a Dalit orchestrated by the scion of her landlord family? There could be no easy answers to the question.
Women in a patriarchal set up faced the ignominy of brute power at two levels — first, what was inflicted on them, and, second, having to endorse or being forced to remain silent when lower castes were subjected to sexual violence.
‘Bandit Queen’ Phoolan Devi resisted the gang rape inflicted on her by shooting her tormentors. But what about the women in Gujarat who endured or sometimes applauded spectacles of rape and massacre of people of a different religion in 2002? I’m sure Bob Marley would have cried.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com

The survival route

By I.A. Rehman

NOW that the guns that had been blazing at the previous government have fallen silent and are unlikely to open fire again, unless the present government offers serious provocation, or a powerful vested interest raises a storm, it is possible to attend to the state’s serious problems..
The Lahore High Court Bar did well to discuss the impact of the contempt of court law on the right to freedom of expression. This is one of the issues regarding the frequent use of the law of contempt that needs to be sorted out.
Although the courts have progressively become tolerant of favourable comments on their verdicts and praise for the conduct of judges, and discussion in the media on undesirable briefs before they are addressed to the bench, that once used to be disallowed, there is considerable lack of clarity about media persons’ and citizens’ right to comment on court judgments and procedures.
While the independence and dignity of the judiciary cannot ever be compromised the contempt law can be effective and beneficial only if used sparingly. Quite absolute is the dictum that courts have to win respect by their even-handed dispensation of justice and the measure of wisdom ingrained in their rulings and their smallest possible resort to contempt proceedings.
In underdeveloped countries the courts are often required to protect the citizens against state excesses but the nature and extent of such interventions are still being debated.
For instance, there is need for clearer understanding on the question whether the courts’ power to strike down a government’s policy includes the privilege to lay down a new policy, beyond pointing out the obligation to respect the Constitution and the law. Likewise the courts have a right to censure the executive if it acts wrongly but it is doubtful if they can assume the latter’s functions to decide administrative matters.
One hopes the contempt of court law will be debated not only by lawyers but also by scholars and public-spirited citizens with due regard to the rights of the parties concerned, and the temptation to tailor arguments to suit one’s favourite faction will be resisted.
A debate of a more fundamental import, concerning the design of the state structure, has been revived by Babar Ayaz’s thought-provoking study, What’s Wrong with Pakistan?
Written with a commitment to the truth and a candour that should characterise our historical treatises more and more, this study traces the Pakistani people’s political wanderings since the Lahore resolution of 1940 to the latest general election and invites the people to ponder the causes of their tribulations instead of lumping everything that is thrown at them under the label of ideology or security.
The trouble began when religion was used as a tool to promote the political and economic interests of the Muslim elite and the means became more precious than the end. This distortion in the concept of the state led to the denial of the multi-ethnic and multinational character of Pakistan and the adoption of a highly centralised state model. The aberration carried the seed of disintegration that did come about in only the 24th year of the state’s life.
Babar Ayaz develops his argument for a secular state by exposing the use of religion to exploit all federating units except Punjab, the inevitable rise of military despotism and Gen Zia’s exertions to turn Pakistan into a theocratic state.
With national security and Islamic ideology being accepted as the two sides of the same coin, Pakistan’s defence alignments and external policy priorities became increasingly contrary to people’s interest. Religious extremism and notions of private jihad have created a situation where one has to labour to repel suggestions of a failed state and keep the hope of deliverance alive.
The author is frequently outspoken because he wants the people to stop blaming the mirror for their pitiable reflection. His initiative will fail to achieve results if those opposed to his thesis decline to accept the challenge, because an open discourse is the only way out of the crisis our people have nursed for six decades or more.
A discourse on the secular route to survival cannot be complete without a parallel discourse on the unavoidable hazards of a theocratic polity. The biggest disservice to the people of Pakistan done by the advocates of a religious state is to freeze Islamic thought to an even greater extent than Iqbal had found it and had held as the cause of Muslim decline.
How an intra-religion discourse can open up new vistas may be seen in the work of Abdullahi Al-Naimi, one of the world’s outstanding authorities on the politics of Muslim peoples. He began by rejecting attempts to exclude religion from a Muslim country’s politics but warned that by following classical Islam a modern Muslim state could do justice neither to women nor to its non-Muslim citizens and thus become a pariah in the world.
A way out was possible by interpreting human rights in the light of the Makkah revelations of the Quran instead of the Madinite ones but for that the ulema had to review the theory of naskh ie subsequent revelations cancel out the earlier ones. After studying several Muslim states, including Pakistan, al-Naimi says in his latest book, Islamic State and Sharia, that Islam does not enjoin mixing belief with the affairs of the state that are always secular.
If the Pakistani religious authorities allow their pupils just the right to follow the Quranic command to think, they may not fail to find a religious path to agree with Babar Ayaz and the secular elements of the country.

Criminal economics

By Khurram Husain

“THEY’VE turned all of Lyari into beggars,” complained a senior law enforcement official in an off the record chat with me once. He was referring to some notorious gangsters in the troubled locality. .
Over the years I’ve had many opportunities to walk the alleys of Karachi’s Old City areas and meet traders — big and small — who do their business there. Watching the rising arc of violence one more time in my city, I’m reminded all over again of the most important conversations I’ve had in that area, which was my favourite beat as an economic journalist.
The Old City area is almost five to six square kilometres of contiguous markets. Something like three-quarters of Pakistan’s non-oil imports are transacted by merchants from this area. Although it’s hard to come up with precise numbers, a simple calculation shows that approximately Rs200 billion worth of business gets transacted from this area every year.
The demand for labour in this area is huge, and day labour is drawn from surrounding residential localities in very large numbers. Warehousing is an integral part of the trade carried out in the area, and I’ve been surprised to discover how even seemingly small-time operators maintain dedicated warehouse space.
Walk around Bolton Market and Bombay Bazar and you’ll see any number of money changers and bank branches. Right outside the main Mithadar police station, for instance, a long line of exchange companies find competition from street-side money changers who keep their cash on display in small glass boxes.
The large number of bank branches and exchange companies in the area are a clear indication of the volume of the business transacted here. Payments for imports are made through a combination of letters of credit arranged via a bank, and wire transfers sent under the table through exchange companies.
The idea of course is to conceal the true value of the consignment when it lands at the port, for taxation purposes.
A thriving economy hums and bustles with energy in this entire swath. Between its demand for labour and warehousing, food and transport, banking and currency exchange, it provides opportunities for traders and wholesalers, drivers and day labour and auditors and bank tellers and money changers and scrap dealers and cooks and waiters and all manner of economic agent all through the year.
But over the years the Old City area, and the massive cash flows that travel through it on a daily basis, have been targeted by gangsters from Lyari who have served to disarticulate the street economy in important ways.
Labour and warehousing, for instance, used to be arranged from Lyari a little more than a decade ago but now traders have become very wary of maintaining any links with the troubled township.
Baloch youth, the overwhelming majority of whom want nothing to do with the violence, are today eyed with suspicion and find it difficult to locate willing employers, and most traders have shifted their warehouses further out towards SITE or Sher Shah, or converted residential quarters within the Old City into commercial storage instead.
Hundreds of trade associations exist in the area, some quite obscure. I discover a new one every time I go, the last being the ‘Powdered Milk Importers Association’ which consists of half a dozen members with complex politics constantly unfolding between them.
Association leaders find themselves in complicated circumstances. While sitting with a gold traders’ association leader in his tiny office, I noticed two framed photographs on his work table. One showed him shaking hands with the city’s police chief. The other showed him shaking hands with a notorious leader of a Lyari gang.
The gold market is located right on the boundary between the Old City area and Lyari, and often bears the brunt of the gang activity.
Nestled inside this vast and sprawling economic space is Lyari town, which had in the past performed vital functions in the economy of the Old City. Today the warren of alleys that lead from Lyari into the Old City area have barriers on them, erected at the insistence of the trade associations of the area, with plans to install more currently halted due to threats received by the work crews.
The growing disarticulation of Lyari from the economy of its neighbouring areas, whether the Old City to the east, or the port to the south, or the SITE industrial area to the north, is giving rise to a malignant economy of its own. The criminal economy that thrives on the barren landscape of isolation actively seeks to sever the links the general populace has with the larger, more formal economy of the city, and makes beggars and thugs out of workers and students.
Many of these gang leaders enjoy cultivating a public profile as ‘Robin Hoods’ of sorts, cloaking themselves in the altruistic image of a strong man who helps to solve people’s problems, whereas in reality they are the problem that needs to be solved.
Many parts of Pakistan are now seeing themselves slip into the deadly embrace of criminal economies. A perverted symbiosis has developed between political parties and organised crime.
A redistributive machine is thus created, where the criminal provides the street muscle and the money, and the politician provides the shelter. Lyari is not alone in its suffering, but its economy has been impacted more than any other neighbourhood with the ascendancy of the gang wars.
The growing sphere of violent and organised crime is having a deep and lasting impact on the structure of livelihoods that sustains entire townships in Karachi. This infernal machine is eating up the city from the inside. It has turned a once thriving, ethnically diverse and peaceful neighbourhood into a hive of beggars and thugs.
Criminal enterprises have a transformative impact on their surroundings, a fact visible in the Old City area, and a peculiar danger arises when politics sees in the gangster a useful tool.

The writer is a business journalist and 2013-2014 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington D.C.
khurram.husain@gmail.com
Twitter: @khurramhusain

Back in town

By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

ONE of the most defining features of the neo-liberal epoch is the shift in ideology and practice of mainstream parties to the right. .
All around the world, political organisations that once took pride in their links with organised labour and a form of Fabian socialism are now keen to prove that they are just as committed to the ‘free market’ as the most unapologetic conservatives. ‘New Labour’ in Great Britain is arguably the most prominent example in this regard.
The situation in this country more or less mirrors the global trend. The PPP famously made its name by invoking socialism and developing a base within the labouring classes. The PPP has since ventured far from these beginnings, and during its latest term in office confirmed that it wants to be considered just as loyal a servant of global capital as any other contender for power.
The party now in power has a long history of unabashedly supporting private business, and, relatedly, turning a blind eye to the rights of working people.
The Sharifs represent the brand of urbanised, commercially oriented politician that came to prominence during the Zia years by drumming up opposition to Bhutto’s left-wing populism. While the PPP has changed colour in the subsequent period, the PML-N and others of its ilk have very much stayed the course.
These divergent historical trajectories at least partially explain why there are still differences in the focus of both major parties at the micro level, even while their macro policy commitments converge.
For instance, the PPP relies heavily on the rural voter and concentrates on regions outside of the Punjabi heartland whereas the PML-N focuses on the largely ‘urban’ tract between Rawalpindi and Multan.
More generally the PML-N looks to pump money into cities, develop roads and other macro-infrastructures, and provide opportunities to technocratic elites in metropolitan centres to generate both knowledge and profit.
The PPP is rather more old-fashioned in its approach to politics, and arguably will pay the price in votes as urbanisation and neo-liberalisation deepen.
Among the more obvious indicators that the PML-N is in power is the threatening language being directed by government functionaries towards the urban poor. In the name of beautifying the city, katchi abadi residents are being warned to look for alternative, ‘legal’ abodes. The warnings will likely soon give way to planned eviction drives.
The government has already violently expelled rehri-wallahs and other informal vendors operating on roadsides in a number of urban centres, including the federal capital. Aside from providing an indication of what is to come, these evictions represent punishment for a class of subsistence hawkers that clearly never votes for the PML-N.
These anti-poor initiatives of the PML-N are all cases of déjà vu. A little before it was unceremoniously dumped out of office in October 1999, the PML-N had bulldozed a number of katchi abadis in the federal capital and some other cities in Punjab under the pretext of freeing up valuable real estate to be used for more productive purposes.
During Shahbaz Sharif’s most recent tenure as chief minister of Punjab, the PML-N was seen to regularly invoke the threat of terror to target Pakhtun daily wage workers in Lahore.
The federal government in Islamabad has learned from the younger Sharif’s example; the interior minister has suggested that katchi abadi dwellers in the federal capital — particularly those of Pakhtun lineage — are aiding and abetting ‘terrorism’ across the country.
These examples do not necessarily suggest that the PML-N is in a league of its own. As I mentioned at the outset, invoking the need for speculative investments in financial assets (such as land in metropolitan centres)
and labelling the poor who obstruct such profiteering as security threats are strategies befitting any good neo-liberal government.
However, the PML-N distinguishes itself by its ruthlessness towards ‘expendable’ social elements and its ability to bring together technocratic and business cliques to produce the required results. It would not be incorrect to suggest that the Sharifs are better placed to put Pakistani capitalism on the global map than any of their contemporary political rivals.
The MQM and PTI might argue to the contrary, the former having done its best to ‘modernise’ Karachi along neo-liberal lines, and the latter convinced that it has the best selection of ‘experts’ at its disposal to genuinely bring ‘development’ to Pakistan.
Regardless of whose claims are the most viable, the point is that all of the contenders think almost exactly alike. To the extent that any of our mainstream parties concerns itself with the housing, employment and other welfare needs of the majority of the urban — not to mention rural — population, they do so instrumentally.
There are upwards of 30 million Pakistanis living in ‘illegal’ katchi abadis across the country, and many millions more living in settlements that may be formally recognised but resemble katchi abadis in virtually all other ways.
I do not know of any mainstream party that has made substantive efforts to understand the complex political economy of urban squatting and/or slum development. Neither have any efforts been made to think about generating livelihoods in rural and peri-urban locales so as to stem the steady flow of low-income migrants coming into cities that cannot absorb them.
Having said this, such policy research is conspicuous by its absence (or sparseness) within ‘civil society’ circles too. Just as mainstream parties cannot think beyond the immediate imperatives of political and economic profits, the so-called development sector is motivated less by concern for working people’s needs and more by the funding portfolios of international donors.
The anti-poor brigade is back in town. Or perhaps it never left? Either way, there is no silver lining for the working people who build the shiny buildings and pave the steaming roads that make our cities into the neo-liberal havens our rulers, and their external patrons, seem determined to create.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Loath to let go

By Faisal Bari

THE Punjab Local Government Act 2013 (Act XVIII of 2013) was recently passed by the provincial legislature. The law provides, among other things, for the constitution of district education and health authorities. .
The law was supposed to devolve the two functions to the local government. But, on reading the provisions of the act, it seems the government has opted to merely shift the functions of health and education to these ‘authorities’ while keeping tight control over them from the provincial capital and not trusting local governments or bodies with oversight and responsibility.
Section 17 of the act states “the government shall, by notification in the official gazette, separately establish and determine the composition of the district education authority…” and ‘government’ is defined as the provincial government.
The members of the authority will either be indirectly elected members from the local government or technocrats nominated by the provincial government. “The technocrat members of an authority shall have expertise in the relevant field and shall be appointed by the government,” it reads.
In addition: “The government shall appoint the chairman and the vice chairman of an authority and they shall serve during the pleasure of the government”.
Though the board might have a nominal majority of indirectly elected local representatives, since the chairman and vice chairman are to be appointed by the province and are answerable to the province — and not to the nazim or mayor or even the local populace — the locus of control will be with the provincial education department or the chief minister’s office.
It will depend on who the appointing authority is at the provincial level and who is nominated to look after day-to-day dealing with the authority.
The power of the province becomes stronger since it will also control the appointments of the ‘technocrat’ members. The nazim or mayor will have some local representatives on the board as members of these authorities. But given that boards, especially those of not-for-profit entities, are usually not very involved in day-to-day affairs, do not have ready access to information and have little control over the chairman or vice chairman, the nazim’s control of the local government, its representatives and the local populace will be weak.
The provincial government is to appoint the chief executive officer of the authority: “The government shall, through open competition, appoint the chief executive officer of an authority on such terms and conditions as may be prescribed… .”
Again, the incentives and powers of the CEO are going to be determined by the province and he or she is going to look to the province for continuing in office. Local influence on the CEO could be rather limited.
Limiting local influence might not be a bad strategy in education. Current research shows that there is too much political interference in teacher recruitment, deployment, posting and transfer. One way to limit that is by keeping those responsible for local education answerable to the province. But this could have been achieved by keeping specific functions of the education department, where there is more interference or where more interference is feared, under the province’s control.
The same objective could also have been achieved by allowing the local population far more transparent access to the authority and its functioning. The extra scrutiny of all processes could also have created some check and accountability mechanisms.
But in keeping the authority answerable to the provincial bureaucracy and political set-up, the intention was not just to make it immune to local influence. Nothing is mentioned about the teachers, their recruitment, training, deployment, transfer and posting in the list of functions specified for the district education authority.
The only mention about teachers is that the authority has to “ensure teaching standards”. So, one presumes all the functions that are mentioned here regarding teacher recruitment and deployment, will stay with the province. Keeping that in mind, clearly the intention of having appointment and firing powers over the chairperson/vice chairperson and CEO have to do with issues of exercising control.
The authorities have been given important powers regarding the possibilities of going into contracts with the private sector and/or starting private-public partnerships. They have also been given the current mandate of the districts: “A district authority shall (a) establish, manage, and supervise the primary, elementary, secondary and higher secondary schools, adult literacy and non-formal basic education, special education institutions of the government in the district….”
Development planning and activities regarding schools and education, have also been given to the authority. The last is a change. Currently most of the development activity, though being fed from districts, was carried out at the provincial level. The district education staff is used to managing schools but they have not been doing development planning and not managing its execution. This capacity to do so will need to be built up in the authority.
The sections on the district education authority do not mention how matters are going to be organised below the district level. Which functions will be located at the school level, the sub-tehsil, tehsil and the district level? Will schools get more autonomy? Will school councils get any autonomy? Will tehsils and sub-tehsils be involved in the planning process?
These things need to be clarified. At the moment it seems that the province is not planning to change any of these structures, and is just thinking of replacing the top, executive district officer for education, with the CEO of the authority and have the authority controlled from Lahore. Does the province want devolution below its own level? Given what is being proposed for health and education in Punjab’s new bill, it does not seem so. The authorities, as they have been proposed, seem to be an attempt to run education and health like vertical programmes.

The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.

One bypass for everyone

By Asha’ar Rehman

THE by-polls on 40-odd seats on Aug 22 were to vindicate the general election results and by most accounts they were one of the fairest votes in the history of this country. .
They provided parties with new possibilities. All of them gained something from the polls and each one should now be trying to carry the impetus from these by-elections and work it into some political capital. Some have been more successful than others towards achieving this objective.
The PML-N must have been most anxious to have the Aug 22 vote hailed as fair. Additionally, its win on a seat vacated by Imran Khan in Mianwali and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) surrender to the Awami National Party (ANP) of another seat that was easily clinched by the PTI chief in Peshawar in May must have given the N-League some satisfaction.
For the ANP, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour’s victory over PTI in NA-1 signalled some kind of a return to its position in the recent past as a party to contend with in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. ANP politicians were quick to use the occasion to resume the debate about the ‘pre-poll rigging’ which, they say, had contributed to their rout in May.
They certainly have a point — with better electioneering they could have won a few more seats in the May 2013 election than they were allowed to. But a lot many people have been quite indifferent to this line of argument.
The ANP as well as the PPP have been confronted with accusations of misrule and corruption during their term in power between 2008 and 2013.
The cruellest of remarks before the May general election had blamed both the ANP and PPP of using the militants’ threat to mask their own inability to reach out to the people they had ‘misgoverned’ for five years.
Now as in May the ANP and PTI were the main contenders in Peshawar and Bilour did enjoy open or tacit support of all those with reason to be upset with Imran Khan’s rise in Pakistani politics — which includes pretty much everyone outside the PTI with the exception of the Jamaat-i-Islami.
The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl’s backing of Bilour was a plus for him this time but that could not have cleansed the ANP of the misrule label after the party’s complete rejection in a general vote only 70 days earlier.
Clearly, along with other factors including the hurt the people in Peshawar must have felt at being ‘ditched’ by Imran the fact that the ANP was allowed a bit of a campaign this time did have an effect on the result.
If more proof was needed, the ANP’s improved showing justifies the reasoning that the redcaps as perhaps the PPP could have done a little better had they been given a level playing field in May. Despite its faults, the improvement in its profile by virtue of this victory promises to restore to the ANP’s home province a much-needed diversity.
Of the PPP’s past allies, the Mirpurkhas by-poll on Aug 22 provided the MQM with that special moment to widen the split with the debilitated Zardari camp and try and find a more assertive position for itself from a regional standpoint.
The MQM realises that an alliance with the PPP at this moment could cost it dearly in the midst of a new challenger in Karachi. The PTI, which has necessitated so many adjustments in Pakistani politics despite its struggles to maintain its own momentum, is an obvious threat to the MQM in parts if not the whole of Karachi.
Mirpurkhas set the MQM not only further apart from the PPP, but the conduct of the by-polls under military supervision also facilitated MQM leader Altaf Hussain’s quest for Karachi’s handover to the army. The logic was simple: only a force that can ensure free polls in a Sindh constituency can guarantee security in the troubled commercial capital of Pakistan.
The PPP, which looks so increasingly dependent on its Sindh core to pull it forward, was totally taken up by the MQM’s proposal to spare any time for some gainful elaboration on the victories of two of its candidates in Punjab.
This was Rabbani Khar’s defeat of Javed Dasti (who sought to build a little dynasty on a seat based on a tradition established by the once-common man Jamshed Dasti) on a national seat in Muzaffargarh and Khurram Wattoo’s recapture of some of the lost family territory in Okara.
Along with the Muzaffargarh win by the PPP against a candidate it was backing, the PML-N suffered two blows in two provincial D.G. Khan seats on Aug 22, with PTI the gainer in both cases. One of these provincial constituencies has been a traditional Gurchani bastion from where Shahbaz Sharif had himself contested successfully in May.
The denial of the PML-N ticket to a Gurchani was a major factor in the PML-N defeat here, but instead of celebrating their victory on this Shahbaz Sharif seat, the PTI cadres chose to concentrate on protesting alleged rigging by PML-N in a provincial constituency in Lahore.
This was an understandable move by the PTI when viewed in the context of Imran Khan’s promise of a campaign against alleged rigging in general elections post-Eid. It was argued that the PTI had lost an opportunity by not lodging their complaint against ‘rigging’ in May strongly enough.
The results that declared the election of Mian Marghoob Ahmed, a close Sharif associate, provided the Imran camp with an opportunity to try and seize the initiative, if somewhat belatedly.
The eventful dharnas by the PTI after the by-polls have forced the authorities to look for ways to pacify the protesters, through recounts, etc.
What has been proven in the process is the PML-N government’s penchant for treating dissent with utter contempt. It reacted to the PTI protest violently and with the betrayed self-righteousness of a party that considers itself above reproach. That is a protester’s dream. What more can a set of protesters ask for than an easily provoked opponent?

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Life’s great lottery

By Irfan Husain

IF you are reading this column, you can consider yourself very lucky, for you have won life’s biggest lottery..
Let me hasten to add that your good fortune does not lie in reading this particular article, but because you are able to buy this newspaper, and read it in English. Both facts place you in a very small, privileged minority in Pakistan.
Out of a population of nearly 200 million, only six million or so buy daily newspapers; out of this, English dailies account for just over 10pc. So you are clearly in a very tiny minority. Your reading habits also reveal more about you: chances are that you were privately educated, and this places you in Pakistan’s small upper middle-class. And you probably own a car and a house.
Your relative affluence suggests your children, too, attend private schools and colleges. If they have graduated, their education makes them eligible to get good jobs, and marry well. In short, privilege and affluence are passed on from one generation to the next smoothly and seamlessly.
While these are generalisations, being able to buy and read English newspapers does place you in an exclusive niche.
Some would say that to really hit the jackpot, you should have a green card, a penthouse in Manhattan and a yacht. But let’s not get greedy here: the fact that you are among the top 0.1pc in Pakistan is something to be grateful for. However, where you are today is largely due to an accident of birth: most of us were born to parents who could afford to send us to good schools.
Imagine, for a moment, that you had been born in, say, the rural areas of Sindh, and your father was a tenant farmer. If, as a male child, you could leave work on the tiny family land holding and go to school, you would find that 55pc of schools in rural Sindh are without water connections and toilet facilities.
This is despite the fact that the province produces 72pc of Pakistan’s oil and gas. Oil companies are supposed to spend 1pc of their revenues on improving local infrastructure, but routinely fail to do so.
Most people in rural Sindh receive an average of 1,700 calories in their daily diet, well below the body’s requirement. So while the hinterland has 50pc of the province’s population, it only accounts for 30pc of its GDP.
This translates into an average monthly family income of around Rs15,000 or under $150. Try and even imagine raising a family on that.
There was a time when the quality of education in state schools, while uneven, was not as poor as it is today. Many of our successful public figures were educated there. My first year of schooling was in a very basic classroom where we learned the Urdu alphabet on wooden takhtis or slates, and with reed pens which we dipped in ink.
But as with so much else in the public sector, institutions have got worse instead of improving. Now, if a child is condemned to state school education, he has very little chance of clawing his way out of the poverty trap.
A handful of NGOs like The Citizens Foundation are running excellent free schools for the needy, but given our rapidly growing population, this is a drop in the ocean. Unless the state plays its role in a meaningful way, generations of children are doomed to poverty.
Given the malnourishment that afflicts around a third of Pakistani children under five, it should not surprise us that over half in this age bracket are stunted.
This perpetual hunger not only affects their physique, but their mental development as well. Even in recession-hit Britain, thousands of kids arrive in school without having eaten breakfast. Their teachers report a lack of concentration, and an inability to remember their lessons. One can only imagine what it must be like to sit in a hot classroom in rural Pakistan, suffering from hunger pangs.
In other developing countries, the state tries to even out some of these inequalities. In Sri Lanka and in many Indian states, a daily meal is provided to students free of charge.
But in Pakistan, despite the promises of universal education made by successive governments, millions of kids are deprived of this basic right. Small wonder that parents elect to send their boys to madressahs that usually feed them.
Indoctrination in extremism is all too often part of the curriculum. And of course, children graduating from these seminaries are ill-qualified to get jobs, so who can blame them for joining jihadi groups?
If things are bad for boys, think how much worse they are for girls. Many parents do not send them to local schools just because they lack working toilets. In many parts of Pakistan, girls simply aren’t allowed out of their homes. And in several places where they do try and get an education, extremists bomb their schools.
For all the lofty talk in TV studios and newspaper editorials about national honour and sovereignty, we have failed millions of our fellow citizens by our lack of concern for their plight. Most of us are quite happy with the status quo, and because we have won life’s lottery, we have fallen into complacency.
However, by consigning millions to poverty, illiteracy and disease, we have also condemned Pakistan to permanent backwardness.
Those reading this newspaper are complicit with the state in its callous negligence. While we all have our excuses, the fact is that we simply don’t put any pressure on the government of the day to focus on the poor.
Shamelessly, begging bowl in hand, we plead for aid, but after billions of dollars collected over the years, our children still lack the most basic educational facilities. Sadly, they are forever losers in life’s great lottery.
irfan.husain@gmail.com

Political interference

By A. G. Noorani

SINCE independence, India has been rocked by a good few cases of ill-treatment of civil servants by politicians in power. .
But no case has aroused such widespread outrage as that of the arbitrary suspension of a 28-year-old member of the India Administrative Service (IAS), Durga Shakti Nagpal, on July 27. She was a sub-divisional magistrate, a junior scale officer in UP of the batch of 2009.
She had bravely taken on the sand-mining mafia which made billions by illegally loading trucks with sand, from the banks of the river Yamuna between midnight and dawn, for supplying it to the booming construction industry nearby in Delhi. She would be personally present while the squads of policemen she had assembled conducted raids in the dark of the night. Sixty-six FIRs, 104 arrests, and 81 vehicles seized reflected her commitment to eradication of crime.
Soon after the suspension, a senior member of the Samajwadi Party, the ruling party in UP, Narendra Bhati, boasted that he had got Durga Nagpal suspended precisely in 41 minutes.
The young chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who functions under the tutelage of his father and party boss, Mulayam Singh Yadav, remarked that she was an errant child who was being disciplined.
With an eye on the Muslim vote in the general elections to the Lok Sabha due in 2014, the chief minister accused the officer of demolishing the compound wall of a mosque in a village. The time is gone when Muslims could be duped. Ever since the Yadavs came to power in UP, it has had a string of communal riots in which, as usual, Muslims suffered. The UP waqf board gave Durga Nagpal a clean bill of health saying that she did not order the demolition of the mosque wall and was, indeed, doing her duty by reclaiming waqf lands from the land mafia.
On her part, the officer has maintained a very proper silence, refused to speak to the media and confined herself to rebuttal of the charges in her reply to the show cause notice.
However, the state’s IAS Officers’ Association and the Central IAS Officers’ Association voiced their strong protests at the action. So did more than 100 civil servants in Delhi at a meeting with the union minister in charge of personnel. Capping them all was the Congress president Ms Sonia Gandhi’s well-publicised letter of Aug 2 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to look into the matter since the official belonged to a central service.
Involved in this case are two issues of fundamental importance. One concerns the rule of law; the other, the status of the civil service in a democracy. When a civil servant exercises any power under a particular law, he or she cannot be overruled, still less punished, by the political executive except by recourse to the procedure laid down in that very law.
The chief minister or any other minister has no extra legal power to overrule that official.
A former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra opined: “The ground situation in a law and order matter is not supposed to be decided by the chief minister or the politicians but by the designated district magistrate and SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] in the area.
“The statutory judgment made by SDM Nagpal and the order passed by her as a magistrate is being questioned by the chief minister even as the latter is not recognised under the Criminal Procedure Code … this is the most colourable exercise of executive power by a chief minister.”
Every district is divided into two or three divisions each headed by an SDM who is charged with enforcing very many laws. Under the superintendence of the district collector, it is the SDM who issues prohibitory orders under the Criminal Procedure Code to ensure that agitators and agitations do not get out of hand. A chief minister who acts arbitrarily to override statutory orders by SDMs demoralises the entire civil service and undermines the rule of law.
The weapon used by politicians in power is suspension and transfer. In UP every time the government changes, there is a mass transfer of district magistrates, superintendents of police and at the secretariat itself. But the civil service does little, once the immediate crisis is over, to press for institutional reform.
In the wake of the Nagpal case, a senior civil servant, Shailaja Chandra, who has served as secretary to the government of India and as chief secretary, Delhi wrote: “It is essential to have a civil service authority that independently decides on the postings and transfers of IAS officers. Recommended by the Administrative Reforms Commission and promised by the central government, it has been soft-pedalled for too long.
“Second, anyone who obstructs a public servant performing his/her duty or gives the wrong information about enforcement activities, needs to be arrested under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code. If the police do not take cognisance, the affected public should file collective complaints and pursue the cases in court.”
B.K. Nehru, an ICS of the Punjab cadre before partition, urged reforms so that “the administrative apparatus does not become a slave of the will of the chief executive and, unlike as at present, administers the laws instead of carrying out his arbitrary orders. This requires that the civil services be granted the kind of autonomy which they possess, by convention, in all Western parliamentary democracies.
“The powers of promotion, suspension and transfer which are the powers now used to bend the civil servant to the minister’s will, must be exercised, not by the political executive, but by a group of senior civil servants themselves. As we are no respecters of any convention, this result will have to be achieved by law.”
The point is very well taken and legislation is sorely called for. It must be drafted in full consultation with female members of the civil services, serving and retired.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Consensus alone won’t work

By Abbas Nasir

THE government’s statement on convening a special cabinet meeting soon to evolve a ‘consensus’ on law and order in Karachi hasn’t come a day too early..
This quest for consensus is a positive change in the thinking of the PML-N. The last it ruled its propensity to ride roughshod seemed endless and many attribute the premature end of its tenure as much to its own attitude as to a renegade general’s self-preservation instinct.
But the desire for consensus should not translate into inaction if unanimity isn’t forthcoming. Perfunctory consensus won’t be able to withstand the slightest of strains anyway. Also, before any operation, ‘targeted’ or broad brush, is initiated there is a need for institutional and legislative reform.
In all these areas leadership is needed. Unlike its predecessor, the PML-N government has a sound majority in the National Assembly and doesn’t need the support of unreasonably demanding and often fickle allies to stay in power. It needs to demonstrate this strength.
So far whatever Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said makes sense (even though one would be grateful if he were to buy into the virtue of brevity). That there is many a slip between the cup and the lip is equally true.
One would like to see urgent steps in the short term. Agreement should be secured to post the best police officers in the country to Karachi, if they aren’t already there and all political parties made to pledge non-interference in their day-to-day working.
To make sure that all parties continue to remain confident of an even-handed enforcement of the law, a body on the lines of the UK’s Police Complaints Commission should be set up and empowered to look at complaints and order remedial measures.
The minister, sources say, has already been advised on the need for such a body and referred to it in his news conference where he announced the convening of the special cabinet meeting next week to be chaired by the prime minister.
These two decisions, if implemented, can lead to a visible improvement in the situation. All of this won’t be easy and will take time to bed down. Nonetheless, it’ll be a start. In any case, there should be no underestimating the challenges. Karachi is a right royal mess. It’ll need unprecedented political will to even think of sorting it out. The minister seems to lay store by the reports of intelligence agencies he is receiving. He should also be aware that there are some people in these agencies who have their own agenda.
For example, look at a prime intelligence agency and what its track record in Karachi shows. Wary of MQM’s dominant firepower, rather than use lawful means to counter it, the agency allegedly started backing gangland figures from another ethnic group of the erstwhile People’s Amn Committee.
The resultant mess alone would account for a fair proportion of killings in the city as both the armed groups vie for dominance and expanding their areas of influence. In what is seen as a zero-sum game, the PPP is also taking sides now to the chagrin of the MQM.
Armed thugs will be armed thugs. The political umbrella enables them to do much more than ‘enforce’ party policy or take on political opponents. Many of them freelance. A life of crime, including extortion and murder, brings them riches beyond their dreams.
This then is among the ‘gifts’ of the agencies to Karachi. One must take with a pinch of salt whatever the agencies say. Some of these agencies have brought Balochistan to the brink of a disaster and have allegedly ‘outsourced’ to similar criminal gangs the task of enforcing the ‘state’s writ’.
The suspected involvement of naval intelligence personnel in a kidnap for ransom incident earlier this week showed proceeds of crime in the lawless metropolis are seen as easy money that is there for the taking. So, even the holiest of the holy enforcement machines is not immune from its lure.
Then there was an ‘extortion’ demand call to a resourceful businessman traced to personnel of an elite crime fighting unit of the Karachi police whose head was among a bunch of officers recently demoted on Supreme Court orders.
The acquittal of those, including a retired army major, charged with the kidnapping of film tycoon Satish Anand, is a case in point for the need to bring changes to the law. This case is just one example. There are dozens of others involving sectarian, ethnic murderers where complainants, witnesses, even judges have been intimidated. The government will also need to familiarise itself with the concept of witness protection, of video-link and behind the screen testimony, and with the need to keep judges’ and the prosecutors’ identity secret.
Not just that, it’ll be well-advised to inform itself from the experience of, for example, the Italian judiciary and balaclava-protected elite crime fighting units which battled well-entrenched mafia figures and succeeded in getting many, many convictions. It won’t be easy but can be done.
Of course the most important journey will have to be undertaken by all parties with a presence in Karachi to realise that violence begets more violence. Nobody will ever monopolise the tools of terror entirely. We are currently witnessing this phenomenon in the metropolis.
Unless these parties, which are quick to charge each other with undemocratic conduct at the drop of a hat, truly embrace democratic ways and means to achieving their legitimate political goals, to securing the rights of their enormous vote banks, any positive change may remain a pipe dream.
And when (as an eternal optimist I won’t say if) all these wishes have been granted and a semblance of peace and order restored, there will still be the existential threat posed by the Taliban and their hate-filled takfiri allies in Karachi as in the rest of the country.
That’s when the real fight for the country’s soul will begin.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

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