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trade Newswatch development Star Wars health Perennial
constraints
issue
trade The cliche that
globalisation and free trade drive the global economy towards prosperity by
lowering prices and stimulating trade is being increasingly questioned. The
views of international trade theorists, who have long argued that the free
trading system benefits all its participants, have been challenged. The World
Trade Organisation (WTO), which is the successor of General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), is alleged to be promoting a form of globalisation
which resembles 16th It is not mere chance that almost all WTO summits are marked by public protests of some sort. Some protests have hogged media limelight like that of Seattle in 1999, Washington DC in 2000 and 2002, Quebec and Genoa in 2001, and Cancun in 2003. Many have gone unnoticed, like the benign march by farmers on April 22 in Lahore to condemn policies of The Cairns Group. Evidence suggests that the concerns of protesters are not unfounded. The arrantly outrageous policies of the champions of 'free trade' are widening the gap between the West and the Rest. Developing countries (DCs) are urged to implement blanket liberalisation in their economies while the industrialised countries themselves opt for 'cautious liberalisation'. The case of agricultural trade perfectly illustrates the nauseating hypocrisy of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. More than 75 per cent of poor people in DCs live in rural areas and most of them are dependent on farming for a living. Liberalising agriculture is crucial if they are to break free from the poverty trap. Unfortunately, USA, EU and Japan use a combination of tariffs, domestic and export subsidies to erect formidable barriers around their farm trade. The mammoth subsidies of $300bn which the OECD countries heap on its farmers on average annually, amount to pitting farmers of DCs against the financial might of the governments of industrialised countries. The bulk of these subsidies are prohibited under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture because tariffs, subsidies and quotas encourage surplus production. The surplus is then dumped onto world markets, effectively depressing prices and wrecking global farm trade. Consequently farmers belonging to countries which don't give subsidies, earn less for their products which undermine their livelihood and cause food insecurity. Low global prices leave poor farmers unable to sell their harvest even in domestic markets. Support to farmers belonging to OECD countries totalled $ 350bn in 2005 and 70 per cent of the support was provided in the form of trade distorting subsidies. Free trade is about allowing market forces to dictate production across the globe; it is characterised by the rule of the efficient over the inefficient. Inefficient, agri businesses kept alive on subsidies should not figure in the equation. The apparently low tariff rates applied by EU and USA on goods supplied by DCs are a smokescreen as well. Even though ad-valorem tariffs which are levied as a proportion of the value of the imported good are low, specific tariffs which are a fixed charge on every unit of the imported good are sky high. Specific tariff rates when converted to their ad-valorem equivalents are as high as 121 per cent in USA and 252 per cent in EU. Local content subsidies are used as well to impede imports of DCs into EU even though they breach WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Manufacturers of processed food like juices and pastes are given generous subsidies contingent on the use of fruits and vegetables grown in the EU. Tariff escalation is also used as a weapon of protection. Such tariffs lower a country's chances of and gains from exporting processed food. Tariff escalation refers to charging a progressively higher duty on processed food as compared to raw materials. Tariffs on milled rice rise by 97.16 per cent as compared to 21.11 per cent on rough rice. Even though agricultural superpowers, EU and USA, illegally subsidise a string of products ranging from tomatoes to tobacco, US support to its rice farmers damages Pakistan the most even though we are supposed to have a competitive advantage in Basmati rice. The USA is the world's third largest exporter of rice and extends $1.2bn in subsidies to rice producers every year. Without these subsidies, rice production would be chronically unprofitable for US farmers. The resultant decrease in US rice on world markets would raise international prices by at least five per cent. Even such a slight increase in prices would mean a substantial rise in income of our cash strapped farmers. Creative WTO rules such as the Sanitary and Photo Sanitary (SPS) Agreement, according to which a country can limit imports if they pose risk to human or animal health reek of back door protectionism. For instance, farmers in DCs are mandated to use ISO 9000 certified fertilisers if they expect to sell their products internationally, something Western farmers did not have to worry about when they were in the phase of industrialisation. According to a research by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), protectionism in agriculture by industrialised countries inflicts an annual loss of $ 24bn on DCs in agricultural and agro agricultural income. This estimate does not take into account multiplier effects of income lost in agricultural and farm related activities e.g. transporting food and equipment. It would be a much better deal if OECD countries stopped giving the annual $300bn support subsidies to their farmers, which results in millions of dollars worth of lost market opportunities for poor farmers instead of doling out the paltry average of $80bn in development assistance to DCs. These startling statistics corroborate that the charges against the current trade regime are not unfounded, abstract allegations. They demand that every DC should review the economic benefits vis-a-vis the costs accruing from joining the free trade club. Considering 40 per cent of Pakistan's labour force employed in agriculture and a quarter of the GDP comes from value added to agriculture, our decision to lower agricultural trade barriers and to join The Cairns Group, which propagates low trade barriers both for its members and other countries, is momentous.What is the wisdom in stripping our farmers of subsidies when there is no end in sight to industrial giants cushioning their farmers? The Doha Round of talks failed precisely because the rich countries offered vague and generalised concessions with no time frame as to cutting subsidies. When American representatives at Doha pledged to free farm trade, the Bush Administration made a travesty of their promises by announcing $180billion in farming subsidies to be paid over a span of ten years. The European Union was not to be outdone and at the Cancun Ministerial in September 2003, it disowned significant parts of Doha agenda which referred to slashing subsidies. The WTO framework is punctuated with critical escape clauses such as the Peace Clause, under which certain issues could not be challenged e.g. agricultural subsidies. Mercifully the Peace Clause expired in 2004; however the USA has requested its renewal. And even when the Dispute Settlement Body has ruled American cotton and European sugar subsidies illegal, plaintiffs Brazil and Argentina are waiting to date for the subsidies to be totally abolished. And we have the instances when EU and USA have circumvented law by jostling banned subsidies from the Blue Box to permitted subsidies in the Green Box. Green Box subsidies refer to support which doesn't distort trade like support for research and disaster payments while Blue Box subsidies affect trade substantially, and are only sanctioned if the payments are made on fixed areas, yields or heads of livestock, or if they are made on 85 per cent or less of base level of production. Green Box research subsidies are a vantage point for USA and EU, not only are they legal, but the resultant technology can be patented under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to reap long term gains! Litigation is an expensive and time consuming process as far as DCs are concerned. The option doesn't seem feasible for poor countries which cannot be sure that even if they do win, as in the cotton and sugar subsidy cases, they will be compensated. The WTO lacks the teeth to make a country do something it doesn't want to. Or more likely large, professional lobbies for countries like USA make sure that if the teeth do exist, they are used discriminately. Consider the fact that the USA has a brigade of over 250 members to look after its interests. The WTO is a distorted establishment in need of drastic revamping. The current trade regime works on the principle of 'for the rich and by the rich'. With rules of the game out of line and poor countries bullied into accepting negative tradeoffs, this world is another Animal Farm in the making. As long as the playing field of world trade remains as level as the Himalayas, free trade will remain a myth.
Newswatch Inter-governmental
squabbling has erupted in the United States yet again, this time between
Vice-President Dick Cheney and the White House over Cheney's contention that
the rules governing confidentiality in the Executive Branch don't apply to
him. Cheney claims, somewhat unconvincingly, that he is "not part of the
Executive Branch" and does not have to abide by the rules. What
this amounts to, in effect, is Cheney claiming to be above the law. Nobody is
buying the argument, and Congress is up in arms over the issue. Meanwhile,
President George W. Bush continues trying to put a brave face on his much
vaunted 'war against terrorism'. But he is finding it increasingly difficult
to sell the idea to the American public, which is now thoroughly
disillusioned with the enterprise and is clamouring for the US troops in Iraq
to be brought home. As a result of the growing chaos in Iraq, Bush's job
approval rating in US opinion polls has now sunk to an all-time low of 29 per
cent -- the lowest figure for any US president in the last 60 years. Not only
is this war against terrorism 'a war without end' (in Bush's own words), it
is also a war against an abstract noun. Bush must really hate grammar if he
wants to keep fighting abstract nouns all the time. But just
how exactly do you fight a war against an abstract noun? If this question
were put to Bush, he might say, "What's an abstract noun?" Abstract
nouns are pretty thin on the ground in his neck of the woods in Crawford,
Texas, where people tend to be more concerned with things like T-bone steaks
and patriotic exhortations to 'Remember the Alamo'. In the
days of the Cold War, the United States used to claim it was fighting a 'war
against communism.' As it so happens, communism, too, is an abstract noun. It
is also a system of government with the stated aim of establishing a
classless society. It was never really, however, clear whether the US 'war
against communism' was a war against the concept of a classless society or
against a single party controlling the means of production. The
irony is that the United States itself is a society where a single party of
sorts controls the means of production. The name of this party, of course, is
Big Business. A survey published a few years ago showed that the top 10 per
cent of the people in the United States controlled 90 per cent of the
country's wealth, while the remaining 90 per cent of the people had to be
content with the other 10 per cent. Small
wonder, then, that 'Engine' Charlie Wilson, who headed General Motors back in
the 1940s and early 1950s and was later Secretary of Defence in the
Eisenhower administration, once famously remarked, "What's good for
General Motors is good for the United States." The
billions of dollars in contracts to 'rebuild' Iraq's infrastructure that the
Bush administration has awarded to crony companies like Halliburton and its
subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, is of a piece with Engine Charlie's
philosophy. Not for nothing is it said that the business of America is
business -- even if it means bombing one's way to 'free' markets. On
December 12, 2001, three months after the events of 9/11, Bush told
congressional leaders at a White House breakfast meeting that his
administration intended to pull the United States out of the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Bush described the treaty as a
'relic of the past' which had outlived its usefulness. It was
probably the same philosophy that explained the Bush administration's
post-Iraq-invasion indifference to the looting and destruction of thousands
of priceless antiquities and manuscripts at Baghdad's Iraqi National Museum
and National Library -- two other 'relics of the past'. The
museum housed items dating back to the first civilisation in Mesopotamia,
ancient Babylon and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known
handwriting. Mesopotamia -- modern-day Iraq -- was known as the 'cradle of
civilisation'. Today, that cradle has become civilisation's graveyard and the
whole world is the poorer for it. Nabhal
Amin, the museum's deputy director, blamed US troops for not protecting the
museum, despite appeals from its staff, and despite an urgent petition signed
by 712 international scholars of Mesopotamia and the Near East urging the US
military command to ensure that Iraq's museums, universities, libraries and
other buildings housing resources for the study of Iraq's ancient and more
recent past should come to no harm.
When
asked about the looting back in April 2003, then-US Secretary of Defence
Donald H. Rumsfeld tried to make light of it by saying 'Stuff happens'. The
callousness of that remark defied belief. When
reporters at a Pentagon news briefing on April 11, 2003 suggested that the
looting in Baghdad and other cities was casting a shadow over the success of
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' (the Bush administration's astonishing euphemism
for the US unprovoked and blatantly illegal invasion of Iraq), Rumsfeld
totally lost his cool. "I
picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it," he fumed.
"I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest,"
he said. "And it was just Henny Penny -- 'The sky is falling'. I've
never seen anything like it. And here is a country that's being liberated
from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and
they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines,
they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot, one
thing after another. It's just unbelievable how people can take away from
what is happening in that country." What
were we to make of this extraordinary diatribe? That no civilians were killed
in Iraq? That nobody bled there? That there was no looting? And what was
Rumsfeld's definition of 'liberation' -- a country invaded, bombed and
occupied by more than 150,000 US troops?
If
that's liberation, US-style, then the world needs a new dictionary.
When our State secured a
loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) a couple of years ago, Jammu &
Kashmir's ruling establishment went for a virtual political carnival telling
people that it had succeeded in getting more money into the kitty. As always, the loan was
presented as a kind of gift -- this time not from the government of India but
from an international funding agency, the ADB, with blessings of the
Government of India. Neither the authors of the proposal to the ADB nor a
single politician in power at that time had the courage to tell the common
people that what we had obtained was not a gift or a grant but a loan At that time hardly anyone
pointed out that we had nothing to celebrate about. The details made
available to us then were insufficient to substantiate any argument. But
today, as activities under the ADB loan have started rolling, there is little
doubt that we have walked into a big trap. The impression given to the
people in the State many a times has been that the loan is a 'soft loan'
which carries a big grant component and has been secured with great labour. The fact is that these
kinds of loans by agencies like the ADB and the World Bank are not hard to
negotiate. They are rather the kind of loans which are forced down the
throats of almost all developing countries with devastating effects to the
lives of the people, particularly the poor. Sadly, as a late entrant into the
international loan business our State has not had the harsh experience of
what it means to live with the conditionalities of such loans. But today we
are in a better position to understand where we are heading. According to the ADB's
document on J&K loan titled 'Draft Design and Monitoring Framework in
India: Jammu & Kashmir Urban Sector Development Project' a few things are
clear: One, by 2014 drinking water supply in Srinagar and Jammu cities would
be privatised and people would be required to pay hefty amounts as water tax.
Two, those who would not be in a position to pay would receive lowest
priority in water supply, meaning our poor and many sections of the middle
class will be without drinking water. Three, the people of Srinagar and Jammu
cities would be paying property tax by 2008, meaning people owning
non-commercial properties in Srinagar and Jammu would pay taxes. Four, the
people in these two cities would also be paying other hefty taxes to the
Srinagar and Jammu corporations as by 2010 they are required to be
restructured. Finally, and significantly, there also has to be recovery of
Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs of the water supply from the
people: 30 per cent within three years after approval of first tranche; 60
per cent within two years of approval of the second tranche and 100 per cent
within two years of approval of the third tranche. Interestingly, these are
the conditionalities which are in public domain now. There are many other
hidden conditions where both the government of J&K and the ADB management
can use their discretion to make them public. Experience in other Indian
states and some of the developing countries in Asia show such conditions are
hardly ever put in public domain. In view of the fact that
there hardly exists an independent civil society in our State which could
look into these issues and hold governments accountable, however, does not
mean that we cannot collectively create a public opinion which would make the
government take notice and address people's concerns. Time for that to happen
has come. One of the planned impacts
of the projects undertaken with the ADB loan in J&K is stated to be
"sustainable economic growth through the provision of urban
infrastructure services and the promotion of urban management improvement in
Jammu, Srinagar and the towns of Gulmarg, Pahalgam, Sonamarg and Patnitop."
But how is economic growth under our present conditions related to the
activities to be undertaken with ADB loan like improvement in water supply,
sewerage/drainage systems and urban transport? There is an assumption in
the ADB monitoring framework that within one year of approval of the first
tranche the State will establish semi-autonomous entities responsible for
water supply, sewerage and drainage operations for Srinagar and Jammu cities
and will work on commercial principles. That, in other words, means within a
year most of our civic amenities would be commercialised. Why is there
silence at the government level? There is another provision
in the project: the State will issue government orders requiring all property
owners to connect to the sewerage system. In other words connection to
sewerage system would no longer be a public amenity but rather a facility on
payment basis. This might not happen directly, but the kind of financial
restructuring that the ADB has in mind for the newly-created semi-autonomous
bodies in Jammu and Srinagar might well take care of that. One of the key goals of the
ADB project is that by end of project in 2014 unaccounted-for water will be
reduced to a 'reasonable level'. That means by installing water meters by
2014, drinking water will no longer be a public good but a commercial
commodity. That would be the time when possibly we would have no public water
taps which are still one important drinking water source for the public on
the move in the two cities. Under the Urban Management
and Institutional Development Program, ADB has made it clear in its Draft
Design and Monitoring Framework that semi-autonomous entities responsible for
water supply, sewerage and drainage operations for Srinagar and Jammu cities
would be established. It also entails 'improved financial performance'
inclusive of tariff revisions for municipal corporation services. To make
that happen, by July 2008, formation of Water Supply and Sewerage and
Drainage Boards for Srinagar and Jammu cities are planned. As per the
milestones set by the ADB for the project, by December 2014, billing and
collection of taxes will be improved in the two cities and the four tourist
towns. Levy of property tax by Municipal Corporations, "at rates within
a range laid down by state" will be introduced. The point that is not so
well known in J&K is that these terms and conditions of institutions like
that of ADB are nothing new or unique to our State. There has been a dearth
of independent discourse in our State on what actually drives such kind of
funding. It would not be out of place, as such, to throw light on some of the
similar funding and their conditions in other countries in Asia. The work of P. Raja Siregar
of KAU (Anti Debt Coalition), Indonesia, on the funding impacts of ADB and
the World Bank in developing societies like ours is an important guide to us.
He traces the current projects of the ADB in the water sector to 16 January
2001, eight years after the World Bank released its water policy, ADB's Board
of Directors approved a comprehensive water policy of its own. Among others,
it recognised the Asia and Pacific region's need to formulate and implement
integrated, cross-sectoral approaches to water management and development.
ADB in one of its reports in 2002 has said that it "will advocate a
participatory approach in meeting the challenges of water conservation and
protection in the (Asia-Pacific) region" with a national focus on water
sector reform as one of the principal elements. All borrowing countries are
supposed to formulate and implement integrated cross-sectoral approaches to
water management and development. Water use efficiency, cost
recovery, institutional strengthening and private sector participation are
key instruments of the policy. From ADB's perspective, "Water must be
utilised by those who render the most economic advantage." (ADB, 2001
cited in Chantawong, 2002, p.3) As a consequence, those who can afford the
cost will be prioritised over the poor who have the least purchasing power.
(Shiva, 2000, p.6 cited in Kijtiwatchakul, 2002) Ironically, the ADB Water
Policy falls under its Poverty Reduction Strategy, which can only lead to
water commodification and privatisation. The ADB claims that "the poor
are increasingly willing to pay for water service that are predictable and
effective" and "governments have been consistently mistaken in
their assertion that charging farmers for irrigation service is not possible
because of their inability to pay" (ADB, 2000b, p.14). The ADB takes a step
further by emphasising 'Tradable Water Rights' (Kijtiwatchakul, 2002).
Nevertheless, even without highlighting the concept of 'Tradable Water
Rights', World Bank key policies, especially cost recovery and water pricing,
do create an enabling condition for the institution and promotion of
'Tradable Water Rights' or the commodification of water. As such if our
irrigation water system would next be on the 'reform table' we would not be
surprised. According to P. Raja
Siregar, the ADB has a long history of involvement in the Asian water sector,
mainly in terms of project investment loans. Its intervention in water policy
reform is, however, more recent, following the World Bank's initiatives. As
its water policy states, "we will advise to include cost recovery
principles in national water policies and strategies". It has already
pilot-tested several reforms in Sri Lanka, the Lao PDR, PRC, and Viet Nam. Some ADB loans are
contingent upon water policy reform. That is what is the case with J&K's
loan, though shrouded in the garb of a 'soft loan'. In other countries,
increasing the role of water regulatory bodies are common requirements. ADB
also insists that governments secure greater private participation in
projects. That is what is exactly happening in J&K. There are many examples of
that cited in P. Raja Siregar's work on the subject. The Sri Lanka government
received a $10.7 million ADB loan to improve water resources management. This
was a part of the World Bank's and ADB's efforts since 1996 to wean farmers
away from growing non-export food crops and charging farming families for
irrigation water. As early as the 1980s, the
Sri Lankan government attempted to introduce a Water Tax to the farmers, but
public pressure forced its withdrawal. Pressure against the proposed policy
is once again mounting in that country. In Thailand the Development
Policy Letter and Policy Matrix of the ADB required the Thai government to
reform water management structures in the country as a condition for the
loan. The $600 million ASPL also requires the Thai government to adopt a free
market paradigm. Sectors or water user groups, who can make a high profit
from water, are given priority in access to water resources. Farmers who do
not produce much value added products are given the lowest priority in terms
of water allocation. "The Thai Royal
Irrigation Department would allocate water to urban and industrialized
sectors at highest priority but to agricultural sector as the least." (Chantawong,
2002, p.1). In neighbouring Pakistan, a
few years before, the World Bank and the Pakistan government decided in
favour of privatising water as part of a larger push to privatise services in
Karachi. When the public found out the details and protested the scheme, the
Bank and the government cancelled the plan. Very recently, a leaked memo by a
visiting ADB mission called again for water privatisation as a condition for
extending further financial assistance to Pakistan, not just to its water
sector. In Nepal such loans have
been simply devastating for people in Kathmandu Valley. The ADB approved a
US$1.4 million technical assistance (TA) grant to support water and
sanitation sector reform in the Kathmandu Valley. It includes the
establishment of the National Water Supply Regulatory Board (NWSRB) and the
Kathmandu Valley Water Authority (KVWA), and private sector participation (PSP)
scheme. The ADB project in Nepal is
pushing for implementation of cost recovery, water costs and charges, and
privatisation (ADB: 'Nepal: push for sector reform with private sector
involvement' 2003). This has led to immense social and political tension in
Nepal with people fully resisting the moves of commodification of drinking
water. Looking at the experiences
of privatisation of water in other parts of the world through ADB and World
Bank policy prescriptions, it is high time people in Jammu & Kashmir ask
its government about the details of the conditions. Drinking water is an issue
in J&K which is directly linked with the pending political question of
our state, more so because J&K State as an independent political entity
is yet to ratify the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan.
Privatisation of drinking water here along with possible structural
adjustments in irrigation water sector could alter the dynamics of the Indus
Water Treaty further to J&K's disadvantage. It is really not the time for
us to bring in petty money to put us further into a political disadvantage
which would be hard to alter. J&K's civil society
must start questioning now how and why we were made to fall in the ADB trap.
And it is time our poor start knowing what their future has in store for
them. (The writer is a Srinagar-based
columnist and can be e-mailed at arjimand@ gmail.com) Star
Wars Space travel as a means of
discovering new horizons has always had its place in the realm of science
fiction. Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey immediately spring to mind as
franchises that played on our fascination with distant galaxies and how they
might be conquered. But fiction first took
concrete form when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a Space
Race that spanned roughly from 1957 to 1975. It was a heated competition to
pioneer getting people and animals into space and then on to the moon and
beyond. The two parties embroiled
in this tussle boasted the two most formidable economies of the time. Their
ability to harness the forces of nature to journey through space became a
symbol of their respective might and they eagerly grasped the chance to
establish dominance. Both countries injected massive funding into their space
programmes and overhauled their educational setups to History proved that the
competitor credited with the lion's share of achievements in space was the
one with more viable economic resources who also managed to bring a greater
portion of the world into the fold of its ideology. The Soviet Union failed
to keep up just as its sources of funding dried up and its empire began to
crumble. Vladmir Putin, the
nationalistic leader of modern day Russia, has adopted an aggressive stance
towards the United States' plans to deploy a missile defence shield in
Eastern Europe. The shield is ostensibly a means to protect the West from
Iran's purported nuclear might. But Putin's opposition is grounded in the
fear that allowing the United States to intrude into the sovereignty of
foreign skies is a harsh reminder of the widening gulf between America and
Russia's relative prowess. Advancements in space
technology have consistently traced the global chart of economic growth. As
the European Union began to blossom as an economic entity near the end of the
twentieth century, it invested heavily in science and technology. This is the
very period in which the European Space Agency emerged as a dominant player
in the field of commercial space exploration, reflecting the fact that the EU
was the major institution that had any chance to compete with the United
States. In the early twenty-first
century, China and India have drawn more attention from economists than any
other nation. This is due to the belief that these are the tiger nations of
the modern world economy with their burgeoning middle classes and abundance
of technical resources and skilled labour. These nations are also
distinguished by their emphasis on the space sector. China launched its first
manned spacecraft into orbit in 2003. Official statements suggested the
objective of the exercise was simply to exhibit China's technological
capabilities. But this was followed up by a test that involved shooting down
a space satellite suggesting China has also honed tools that can benefit its
military. This is one factor in the increased recognition of China as a major
economic and political force of today. While India has engaged in
basic research relevant to the space sector for decades, it has only recently
become a global player in this enterprise. It has captured the United State's
attention with an upcoming project to explore the surface of the moon with
greater granularity than ever before. India has thus managed to enhance its
relationship with the United States by focusing on projects that ostensibly
have no military application. So where does Pakistan
stand in this intergalactic competition? Pakistan made a promising start by
being the third country in Asia and tenth in the world to launch a basic
satellite. Early satellites were launched with the assistance of the United
States, China and Kazakhstan, basically nations with which Pakistan had
forged stronger political ties. The currently operational Paksat1 satellite
is our first success at launching a geostationary satellite and is expected
to lead to additional government sponsorship of this sector. But careers in space
technology are a rare choice among our most accomplished graduates. "I
just didn't see any job advancement on the horizon, so I switched to a
managerial post with a mobile phone operator," explains a former SUPARCO
(Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission) employee. A visionary like Stephen
Hawking has expressed confidence that since we are depleting the resources of
the Earth, there is no way to go but up. Space travel is starting to emerge
as a major commercial enterprise in the developed world. Other myriad
applications of space technology include the ability to deploy advanced
telecommunications and monitor weather and vegetation. Thus if Pakistan hopes
to garner recognition in economic, political and military fields, it needs to
pursue the final frontier with the same zeal that it has embraced information
technology. health Epidemic proportion The world's first legally binding agreement on global health security, the International Health Regulations, 2005 has come into force. What must Pakistan do as a signatory... By Dr. Sania Nishtar For most
of us, disease pandemics are foregone history. We know through Jean Plaidy's
novel that plague killed 12 million people in 1855, and through references it
has come to our knowledge that Influenza claimed 25 million lives in 1918.
Much as we would like to disbelieve, we may, unfortunately, not be far from
another infectious disease pandemic given that the imprints SAARS and Avian
flu have left, epidemic outbreaks have many bearings, which can herald a
pandemic. If this happens now in the age of global communication and travel,
more than 60 million people can die worldwide -- affecting high population
developing countries such as ours more. Emerging
and reemerging infections are therefore, the foremost threats to global
health security with the potential to create catastrophic damage; however,
these are not the only threats. Public health emergencies of national and
international concern can be nuclear, biological or chemical in Despite
these realities, health has never been a big ticket item in discussions of
national interest -- and if contemporary events such as SAARS and Avian
influenza epidemics have changed the view, it is only by demonstrating the
potential that health has to incur 'economic losses', bringing serious social
and political consequences. The unprecedented losses that both these
outbreaks caused in a number of countries enabled health to achieve the
highest political profile whereas the transnational spread of these diseases
challenged the limits of state sovereignty and redefined national
responsibilities. Billions
of dollars were lost by countries in the tourism, hospitality and transport
industry. International trade and travel almost ceased, markets went into
slide, economies were crippled and public health systems buckled. High levels
of the governments got deeply involved and perhaps for the first time, a
global multisectoral response in many countries was galvanised into action in
an attempt to exploring ways of speedily ending the epidemic. Never before in
the history had the media been so involved in a public health emergency. However,
it must be noted that both SAARS and Avian influenza erupted in epidemic
proportions (sudden increase in the number of cases in a period of time);
mankind was lucky this time round. Some characteristics of the SAARS virus
made containment possible. Infected individuals usually did not transmit the
virus until several days after symptoms began and most were infectious only
by the 10th day or so of the illness when they developed symptoms. Therefore,
effective isolation was enough to control spread this time round. If cases
were infectious before symptoms appeared or if asymptomatic cases transmitted
the virus, the disease would have been more difficult, perhaps even
impossible to control -- and a pandemic (epidemic outbreak spreading across a
large region, world wide) could have been inevitable. Of
course there is no way of knowing what will come next, at what time, with
what severity. However, the probability that a pandemic may occur has
certainly increased. Understanding the role of migratory birds and viruses
also leads us to believe that the risk of a pandemic influenza is serious.
With the H5 N1 virus now firmly entrenched in large parts of Asia, the risk
that more human cases would occur will persist. Each initial human case gives
the virus an opportunity to improve its transmissibility in humans and thus
develop into a pandemic strain. The only safeguard at this point with
reference to preparedness is to ensure that we are better prepared than we
were, when SAARS was unleashed. The
international public health community has not been silent to these realities.
World Health Organization -- the only agency with a globally embracing
regulatory health mandate -- has developed the revised International Health
Regulations 2005 (IHR 2005); these came into force this week on June 15, 2007
marking a public health milestone and are the world's first legally binding
agreement in the fight against public health emergencies of international
concern. International Health Regulations 2005 are an update of the
International Health Regulations of 1969, which focused on cholera, plague
and yellow-fever. The revision was needed to address limitations in the IHR
of 1969 given that in recent decades cross-border travel, trade,
communication and technology have developed markedly and new challenges have
arisen in controlling the emerging and re-emerging infections. In addition to
this, the updated regulations also address all threats associated with acute
chemical or radio-nuclear origin. WHO has termed IHR 2005 as the 'pillar of
global health security' that will enable building and reinforcing effective
mechanisms for disease outbreak, alert and response at national and
international levels; additionally WHO also regards it essential that every
country fully implements these regulations. All 193
member states of the World Health Organization have agreed in principle to
the revised regulations. However as part of its stipulations, countries are
expected to build institutional capacity to strengthen global public health
security and management systems for addressing public health emergencies and
risks of international concern. Pakistan
has in place some measures to comply with international health regulations;
these include public health infrastructure for surveillance at ports,
airports and ground crossings and an Integrated Disease Surveillance Plan.
However, these suffer from several limitations. Furthermore, renewed
responsibilities of governments under IHR 2005 include setting up early
warning components of national surveillance, public health actions at points
of entry and responsibilities of national and international health focal
points. Specifically, under these regulations, countries are expected to
nominate international health focal points and mandate them with the task of
notifying all events that may constitute public health emergencies of
international concern and not just diseases. These focal points would be
expected to communicate detailed public health information to WHO including
case definitions, lab results, number of cases and deaths and conditions
affecting the spread of disease in case of an epidemic. Pakistan has
designated this role to the National Institute for Health (NIH) in Islamabad.
However the focal points are now expected to play the roles assigned to them
and it is here that their several limitations need to be addressed as a
priority. Augmenting
diagnostic and technical human resource capabilities within the Epidemic
Investigation Cell of the National Institute of Health would be a critical
first step. The recent Dengue outbreak outlined a number of weaknesses in the
resource level and capacity; it is important to use evidence from lessons
learnt to bridge gaps. In addition, information collection and analysis
functions need to be strengthened at the district level; in terms of capacity
building, existing initiatives such as the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory
Training Programme should be leveraged. It is also important to use
technology to bridge the currently unacceptable delays in information relay
through the Health Management and Information System (HMIS). In
addition, the existing infectious diseases surveillance systems need more
resource inputs to bridge gaps. These systems do not capture data from all
sources -- the private sector in particular. In addition, there is limited
capacity to confirm clinically diagnosed cases of reportable diseases because
a functional laboratory system does not exist outside urban areas. Limited
capacity is compounded by gaps in legal requirements to report noticeable
diseases. Therefore in addition, strengthening surveillance, legal and policy
requirements that can mandate the notification of priority diseases and
regulation of laboratory practices should also merit attention. Effective
surveillance is also particularly important in Pakistan because illnesses
with similar initial manifestations (malaria, influenza, typhoid fever,
hepatitis) are common in the country; surveillance protocols should take this
local reality into account. To
assist the implementation of the IHR 2005, WHO has created the Global Alert
and Response Network -- a technical collaboration of the existing
institutions and networks coordinated by WHO that can pull technical and
human resources for the rapid identification, confirmation and response to
outbreaks of international importance. For countries such as Pakistan with
limited capacity, it would be important to create active linkages with this
initiative and to assess how this resource can be tapped into. It would
also be important to create linkages between the IHR focal points and other
institutional arrangements relevant to 'emergency response', which are
currently being housed under the Earthquake Rehabilitation Authority, in the
aftermath of the October 8, 2005 earthquake. Both these should ideally be
reconfigured as a Health Incident Management System in Pakistan -- a system
which incorporates disaster planning within its realm with a focus on
preparedness, response, and recovery. Such an institutional entity should
foster collective responsibility to complex and unique emergencies -- natural
or manmade. The
context of the October 8 earthquake tragedy has an additional important
relevance here. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Pakistan received
considerable international assistance. However it must be appreciated that in
pandemics other countries are also likely to experience emergency conditions,
and therefore, opportunities for inter-country assistance such as those seen
during the October 8 earthquake or local disease outbreaks may be curtailed.
This is precisely why reliance on indigenous capacity is a prerequisite. Another
caveat here relates to the supply of medicines. It is now well established
that the world has very limited supply of anti-viral medication; and not just
that, global capacity to produce these medicines is also constrained. At
present, manufacturing capacity has recently quadrupled; it will take about a
decade to produce enough anti-viral medicines to treat 20 per cent of the
world's population. Mathematical modelling has shown that the use of these
drugs near the start of the endemic can reduce the risk of transmission;
therefore the WHO is currently stockpiling anti-viral medication. It is
important that the government of Pakistan should think in terms of earmarking
resources for procuring anti-viral drugs and placing its orders in the
pipeline. Contemporaneous
challenges related to global health security are a downside of globalisation.
The world community now expects accurate, complete and timely information
about diseases and events that threaten global health security and effective
action to control them. Pakistan must comply with its international
obligations. The budget of 2007-08 earmarks Rs. 100,000 million for the
surveillance of these diseases; it would be critical to use this budget
strategically to build infrastructure that is both sustainable and effective.
The
author is the founder and president of the NGO Heartfile. E
mail: sania@heartfile.org Perennial constraints The budget has sought to appease all the constituencies -- the armed forces, the industrialists, the farming and business communities and the masses. But has it? By Hussain H. Zaidi The
budget is a statement of the fiscal policy by which the government makes
decisions about public revenue and expenditure with a view to affect output,
employment, and inflation in the economy. However, these decisions are also
determined by the constraints within which the government works. The same is
true of the budget for the fiscal year 2007-08. In case
of Pakistan, the three perennial constraints which every government has to
face while budgeting are the massive public debt, the need to maintain a huge
military establishment, and the lack of tax culture. The first two
constraints dictate that a large portion of the public expenditure is
allocated to debt servicing and defence, while the third constraint ensures
that the public revenue, particularly from direct taxes, lags behind increase
in government expenditure and growth of GDP. The
government will be spending Rs 1. 874 trillion under the heads of current and
development expenditure. Whereas the current expenditure of Rs 1.353 trillion
accounts for 72.20 per cent (pc) of the total expenditure, the Rs 520 billion
development expenditure constitutes only 27.75 pc of it. A developing country
should spend far more on development projects. But the above mentioned
constraints do not allow the Pakistan government to do so. An amount of Rs
642 billion -- which makes up 34.26 pc of the current expenditure -- will be
spent on general public services the major portion of which will be allocated
to debt servicing, and Rs 275 billion -- which constitutes 15 pc of total
expenditure -- will be spent on defence-related products and services. Defence
spending for 2007-08 is 10 per cent higher than the previous year's Rs 250
billion. As in the past, this fiscal year as well, actual defence spending
may go up, as Pakistan will be under increasing pressure to step up fight
against international terrorism. Moreover, the Rs 275 billion defence
spending does not include Rs 40 billion, which will be disbursed to retired
servicemen as pensions. Taking this hefty amount into account, defence
spending accounts for 17 pc of total expenditure.
Thus
defence and general public service spending together account for 51.26 pc of
the total expenditure. According to The Economic Survey of Pakistan 2006-07,
public debt makes up 53.4 per cent of GDP down from 67.7 per cent of GDP in
2003-04 by 14.3 percentage points. But the public debt-GDP ratio still
remains high forcing the government to allocate a substantial portion of its
expenditure to debt retirement. The huge military expenditure, on the other
hand, is rooted in the country's political system which is dominated by the
armed forces no matter which party is in power or what robe -- democratic or
despotic -- the government puts on. It is easier for a party in opposition to
criticise massive military allocation. But the very first lesson the same
party learns when it enters the corridors of power is "don't mess with
the defence spending". The government's discretion regarding allocation
of resources starts only after meeting expenditure on these two heads. Scarcity
of resources necessitates a trade-off among competing needs. If a country
spends too much on producing or procuring defence goods and services, it will
have too little to spend on civilian goods and services. Hence, not
surprisingly governments, in Pakistan have been making meager allocations to
health and education-the two capital indicators of human resource development
(HRD). The 2007-08 budget allocates Rs 24.5 billion for education and Rs 14.3
billion for the health sector development. Taken together health and
education sectors will be receiving Rs 38.8 billion, which constitutes only
two per cent of the total expenditure! Poverty alleviation and employment
generation are among the basic policy objectives of the government, which
require substantial investment in HRD. Meager budgetary allocation for health
and education will impede the attainment of these objectives. Though,
according to The Economic Survey, per capita income has gone up to $925 from
$833 in 2005-06 by 11 pc, the increase is nominal rather than real. In fact,
high inflation has downed real incomes for the vast majority of people.
Official figures put inflation (general) at 7.9 pc and food inflation at more
than 10 pc during the fiscal year 2006-07. The government has tried to
downplay the inflation rate by maintaining that the price hike is mainly due
to interaction of the forces of supply and demand, as is the case in a market
economy. The increase in demand due to fast GDP growth, the argument goes has
driven up prices. However,
this is not a valid argument. Prices reflect interplay of the forces of
supply and demand only when markets are characterised by perfect competition
-- a situation in which no supplier is large enough to affect the price. But
in case of Pakistan where cartels rule the roost, inflation, particularly
food inflation, is mainly caused not by increased demand per se but by
artificial shortage created by the cartels, which by collusion can fix price
higher than the price which would prevail if markets were characterised by
perfection competition. In such
a situation, the government should not leave the consumer to the whims of the
market forces; rather it should step in to break these cartels. But the
government does not seem to have any such plans, because it does not admit
that cartels have anything to do with the high inflation. Though a
moderate degree of inflation may be necessary to maintain the high growth
momentum, a high rate of inflation is bad for the economy. Inflation diverts
economy's resources from productive to speculative and non-productive
activities like investment in real estate and stocks, as in case of Pakistan.
Inflation also disturbs the current account balance: Imports increase as
higher domestic prices mean that imports become cheaper. Exports decrease
because increase in input prices making it difficult for exports to compete
with like products from other countries in international market. Inflation
hits hard the public as businesses can pass the increase in input price to
consumers. The
budget provides for 15 pc increase both in salaries of government employees
and the minimum wage (from Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,600). If the purpose was to
mitigate the problems of the masses, then the salary and wage increase would
not deliver the goods unless inflation was brought down significantly; rather
it might aggravate their problem. The reason is simple: Any increase in
salaries and wages is likely to be offset by a proportionate, if not greater,
increase in prices. The result will be that the real incomes will further
come down, which will hit hard the poorer section of society. The 15 pc
increase in wages means that, people earning Rs 5,000 per month will get only
Rs 750 increase, while people earning Rs 30,000 per month will get Rs 4,500
increase. But prices will increase for both by the same margin. It is
pertinent to mention that lower income people spend a higher portion of their
total income on essential items than the people falling in the upper income
bracket. Thus increase in wages should be accompanied by price control of
basic commodities and services like transport by keeping an eye on cartels
and artificial shortages. Another
important feature of the budget is the provision for Rs 113.9 billion
subsidies. However, the bulk of the amount will be available as producer
subsidies, while only Rs 2.45 billion will be spent on providing essential
items at less than market rates at utility stores (consumer subsidy).
Producer subsidy is the price of inefficiency. The more an enterprise gets
it, the more inefficient it becomes. As for the consumer subsidy, it is
necessary to provide relief to the lower income groups in the face of
increasing inflation. But how effective it will be, remains to be seen. The
budget also provides for 25 pc subsidy on electricity charges on agricultural
tube-wells, which will obviously benefit the big landlords. The
government has introduced a new slab of zero rated duty in the custom
tariffs. The new slab covering about 400 tariff lines relating to raw
materials will lower government revenue but will also encourage exports by
reducing the supply of input. The withdrawal of capital value tax (CVT) on
imported vehicles was necessary as the CVT violated the national treatment
principle of the WTO, which prohibits discrimination between imported and
domestic products in terms of taxation and other regulations. The government
has also decided to impose 1 pc additional tax on imports. The decision is
prompted partly by the consideration to recover some of the revenue
sacrificed by the introduction of the zero rated slab and partly to narrow
the current account deficit, which was $6.2 billion (4.3 pc of GDP) in the
first 10 months of fiscal year 2006-07. While the revenue objective may be
achieved, the current account deficit instead of decreasing may increase,
because the levy will add to the cost of inputs thus making exports less
competitive. The increase in input prices will also add to inflation by
increasing cost of production. It would have been better had the government
imposed the import levy only on finished goods and not on intermediate goods.
Economic
theory tells us that in the wake of robust GDP growth, public revenue should
also register fast growth to reflect stepped up economic activity. Hence,
fiscal deficit should narrow. However, despite the average GDP growth in
excess of 7 pc during last four years, the fiscal deficit continues to grow
fast. For the financial year 2007-08, the fiscal deficit is estimated to be
$398 billion, which will be financed through external borrowing, bank
borrowing and private savings. As always, bank borrowing will be the most
convenient source. But bank borrowing, together with external borrowing, will
add to public debt as well inflation. Of Rs
1.025 revenue target, Rs 408 billion will come through direct taxes, while Rs
622 billion will be collected through indirect taxes with import duties
having the major share. The problem with indirect taxes is that the increased
cost is transferred to the consumer thus further pushing up inflation with
all its implications. In sum,
the budget by increasing the defence expenditure and wages (including
salaries), providing billions of dollars worth subsidies and not imposing any
new tax has sought to appease all the constituencies -- the armed forces, the
industrialists, the farming and business communities and the masses. But has
it? The masses may deem 15 pc increase in wages too little, while the
industry may regard the wage increase as contributing to the increased cost
of production. (E-mail: hussainhzaidi@yahoo.com) Extreme solutions The role of TNSM in Talibanising the Malakand -- a journey into history up to the present times By Zia-Ur-Rehman Tehreek
Nafaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM -- Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic
Laws, in English) came into being in 1992 with the appointing of the founding
member Maulana Sufi Mohammad as its amir (head). Sufi Mohammad started his
Islamist politics as a member of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) but left it in 1981
after creating harsh differences with JI central leadership and renounced
electoral politics. He declared that the politics of elections was haram
(forbidden under Islamic law). He also declared that the religious parties,
which take part in elections, were also un-Islamic. "We want to see the
imposition of shariah here and in the rest of the country and the rest of the
world....The Jamaat-i-Islami wants to come into power in Islamabad. They are
even ready to accept the American [brand of] Islam." Sufi stated in an
interview in 1995 to the press. There
is no doubt that the emergence of TNSM was a direct outcome of the jihad in
Afghanistan. The region of Dir/Malakand division where TNSM became popular in
the beginning abuts the province of Kunar in Afghanistan. The most important
demand of TNSM after formation was the imposition of Under
their growing pressure, the then Chief Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao (now
Federal Interior Minister) entered into an accord with TNSM to establish Qazi
Courts in replace of regular courts in Malakand Division and the NWFP
governor imposed sharia in the Malakand division in May 1994 through an
ordinance. However, the ordinance could not come into operation even after
the passage of four months. This provoked the TNSM activists and they
agitated all over the division, provoking widespread agitation. The group
started kidnapping government officials. During one such violent agitation,
they even occupied the Kanju airport and other government buildings. They
even killed Member of NWFP Assembly Badiuz Zaman. The government also
promised to impose sharia law in other parts of the area as well. The
rebellion and insurgence was brought under control after the loss of a number
of lives. Soon
after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in
September 2001, most of the Islamist and jihadist parties agitated against
the coming American attacks on Afghanistan. The TNSM was in the forefront of
agitation in their region. Sufi led thousands of his followers to Afghanistan
via Bajaur Agency with an array of weapons, including swords, axes and
bazookas where most of them died. To their total surprise, the Taliban
refused to welcome them and asked them to return to Pakistan after handing
their weapons over to them. In the meanwhile, the American war-crafts started
carrying out air strikes against the Al-Qaeda and their hosts, the Taliban.
The Taliban, who had some sort of plan to escape the bombardments,
disappeared and left the TNSM cadres to suffer heavy casualties. The new
Afghan government arrested most of them. The Pakistani government arrested
Sufi Mohammad on his return. A special court sentenced Sufi Mohammad and 30
others to seven years for leading thousands of his followers to Afghanistan
in spite of government restrictions. Local
political and social circles argue that thousands of mujahideen were killed
as a result of Sufi Mohammad's incompetence and lack of combat skills. As a
result, Sufi Mohammad lost much of his support. Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned
the TNSM as a terrorist organisation along with other militant organisations
on January 15, 2002. The organisation became inactive. As
a result of Sufi Mohammad's imprisonment, his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah is
leading the TNSM. Maulana Faqir Mohammed is one of the prominent leaders.
Maulana Liaquat, another of the prominent TNSM leaders, was killed during the
aerial strike claimed by the Pakistani security forces on a Madrasa
(seminary) in the Chingai village at Bajaur Agency on October 30, 2006. The
government has said that the Ziaul Uloom wa Taleemul Quran seminary, run by
Maulana Liaquat, was being used for training militants. At least 83 people
were killed in the aerial raid. Faqir Mohammad and Maulana Liaquat were
wanted by the government for harbouring Taliban operatives and training
militants. The executive body is the highest policy making organ of the TNSM.
The organisation has a large number of ex-servicemen, including many retired
Commissioned Officers, within its ranks, revealed by the information obtained
by the website of South Asia Terrorist Portal (SATP). When
an earthquake struck Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and parts of the NWFP in
October 2005, Sufi Mohammad's followers capitalised on the incident and are
using it to reorganise TNSM. There is a strong and growing belief among the
people of Swat and Malakand districts that the earthquake was punishment for
their misdeeds. Remnants of the TNSM have been encouraging them to burn their
valuable electronic equipment in order to avoid the sinful life and prevent
further retribution. The
magnitude of this movement can be gauged from news item reported by the
newspapers. According to the news report, on April 14, hundreds of people
gathered after Friday prayers at two different villages. Maulana Abdullah was
leading the procession at the Bilogram village in Malakand when he and his
followers gathered in a nearby area and set fire to thousands of audio and
videocassettes, televisions, computers and CDs. The same episode took place
simultaneously at Barikot village in Swat. Furthermore, the aftershocks from
the October 8 earthquake are still occurring and continue to frighten the
region's inhabitants. On April 11, for instance, another powerful aftershock
jolted the whole area. These aftershocks result in more determination by the
local populations in these districts to set their music-related appliances on
fire. TNSM also started to operate its FM radio. Thousands of people tune
into this radio programme transmissions. This radio station was recently
banned by the government and, as a result, thousands of people staged
demonstrations against this decision. Fazalullah
established this FM radio station at Imam-dairi, a small town in Swat
district. The station is used to deliver teachings of the Quran and persuade
people to destroy their musical appliances by arguing that listening to music
and performing other sinful acts caused the recent earthquake. According to
the broadcast, if believers do not give up their musical and electronics
equipment, it may invite the anger of God. As a result of these teachings,
thousands of inhabitants voluntarily destroyed their electronic goods in just
a few days and this chain of events has continued with short intervals.
Additionally, as a result of TNSM's religious urgings, 50 families announced
the end of their years-old rivalries, hundreds gave up the use of drugs and
unaccountable numbers disconnected their cable television connections. Religious
parties termed the government's decision to ban the radio station as a
conspiracy to prevent religious teachings, and accuse the Musharraf regime of
acting on the orders of the America .On April 20, the press reported that so
far 10,000 people have set their electronic goods on fire as a result of
motivation given by the FM radio station of Fazalullah, who declared that
watching television is un-Islamic. There are a number of worrisome events --
one being the attendance of more than 30,000 people at the Friday
congregation at Imam Dheri (headquarter of TNSM). Maulana
Fazalullah, popularly known as Maulana Radio, has a large admirers club. The
female listeners of this FM channel are making their husbands to grow beards
and abandon what the Maulana describes as 'un-Islamic'. Women in increasing
number attentively listen to the sermons of Maulana Fazlullah on 'illegal' FM
radio stations in and around Swat. Fazalullah speaks to his listeners
regularly via his FM radio and advocates against sending kids to schools for
attaining secular education, rather emphasises to train these little souls
for jihad against the infidels. He has made an impression of himself and
issues fatwa as and when he wishes to. According to the latest news reports,
the Lady Health Workers in Swat, Buner and Dir districts have refused to
administer polio vaccination to the children, solely because of their fear of
victimisation by the fanatic followers of Maulana Fazalullah. In
Swat, most of the people from Imams Dherai, Damghar, Kanju, Kabal, Matta,
Kuza bandi, Bara bandi, Mingora, Saidu Sharif , Charbagh, Shalpin, Fatehpoor
and from all over Swat valley have set the electronics goods on fire . Also
Nazim of Charbagh Union Council Behroom Khan announced to grow bread in a
public gathering under the pressure of this militant organisation. The
defunct TNSM and the MMA-led provincial government had struck many
'compromise' agreements to ease tension over the use of an illegal FM radio
station, and a campaign against TVs and VCDs in Swat. "A potential clash
between the TNSM and the provincial government has been prevented because of
the deal," provincial Minister Hussain Kanju and Jamaat-e-Islami leader
told the press, after a meeting with TNSM leader Maulana Fazlullah. According
to the agreement, the TNSM will end its drive against TVs and VCDs and, in
return, the government will release its activists. The government has also
allowed the TNSM to use an 'illegal' FM radio station and so far released its
79 activists, in the month of August 2006. Dr.
Fazal Rahim Marwat, a teacher at Pakistan Study Centre, Peshawar University,
states with regard to objectives of TNSM in said areas that "Swat and
Dir were formerly princely states of Indian Union and joined Pakistan after
decades of partition in 1947. In these princely states, the people were more
used to personal rule. It appears that it has been the mind of Sufi Muhammad
-- later Fazalullah -- that once having control over the hearts and minds of
innocent people of these areas, the next step would be to have a virtual
clerical state where he would rule as a dictator. The public support could be
used for bargaining chip to negotiate with the central government to
recognise his 'right' of governance over the said areas otherwise he has
other options." (Political Philosophy, TNS, June 3, 2007) If
we analyse the political scenario of TNSM-controlled areas, we see that Swat,
Malakand and Dir in the NWFP are politically motivated areas and as such are
greatly influenced by the country's mainstream political parties. Dir and
particularly upper Dir is a stronghold of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). Malakand and
Swat are jointly politically influenced by the Awami National Party (ANP),
Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and
Jammat-e-Islami (JI). If we analyse the results of recent local bodies'
elections, ANP, a progressive nationalist party, has become the party who has
won the highest number of Nazims and councillors in Swat and Buner. In Dir,
ANP has got surprising seats and interestingly won the Union Council and
Tehsil from which JI's provincial head and then Provincial Senior Minister,
Siraj-ul-Haq also hails. Also ANP has won its first National Assembly seat
from Bajaur Agency (a stronghold of TNSM and bordering area to Afghanistan)
in by-election. Ideologically, the masses in these towns are not committed to
the cause of the Taliban or religious extremist forces. Locals
said militants from Waziristan are present in Swat in great numbers. There
are reports that the region is fast becoming a source of manpower for
terrorist activities and getting people motivated and involved in incidents
like that of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad (The News, June 18,2007). Nazish
Brohi, author of 'The MMA offensive, Three years in powers', published by
Action Aid Pakistan, opined that MMA has lost its reputation during its five
years of provincial government and will use TNSM in upcoming general election
in Malakand Division in order to defeat progressive political forces. (The writer is a researcher, hails from
Swat and works with SDPI, Islamabad. Email: zia_red@hotmail.com) issue The real meaning of state failure The state is unable to prevent or at least respond adequately to such catastrophes because it is concerned with only one basic function -- protect its own interests By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar As if
more evidence of the state's complete incapacity to protect the basic rights
of the people of Pakistan was needed. That the weather in Karachi or on the
coast of Balochistan would have put the response mechanisms of many states to
the sword is not to be denied, but how can one explain the almost
matter-of-fact manner in which the government has dealt with the multiple
crises in the days that followed the initial disaster? The callousness on
show reminds one of the post-earthquake situation almost two years ago when
it took many, many days for the government to actually acknowledge the scale
of the tragedy. It is
perhaps more apt then to say that the state is unable or does not possess the
capacity to prevent or at least respond adequately to such catastrophes
because it is concerned with only one basic function which is to protect its
own -- and its cronies' -- interests. Incapacity or inability The
military top brass and those that are currently hanging on to their fauji
patrons' coattails for dear life could care less about the plight of millions
of people in and around Karachi or the coastal areas of Balochistan. They are
dealing with the small matter of diffusing a serious political crisis that
threatens their very existence at the top of Pakistan's vicious political
food chain. It matters little that a large majority of people in this country
-- silent or otherwise -- have clearly thrown their lot in with those that
are challenging the right of the incumbents to rule. It is apparently
immaterial that the junta is widely perceived to be catering exclusively to
the demands of Uncle Sam. The overwhelming priority remains saving itself. But this
pathology is not unique to this government. It is the defining feature of the
state itself. It is characteristic of virtually every regime that has existed
in this country's history, which further says a lot about the very nature of
the state itself -- as already stated here, it is a state that is concerned
only with self-preservation. Was this bound to happen when the new state came
into being 60 years ago? Perhaps not, but the peculiar coalition of forces
that assumed power at the outset has maintained a firm grip on it ever since,
at best accommodating new contenders for power within an ever expanding
circle, but never allowing power to slip from its grasp. The brief interlude
when the PPP assumed power in the 1970s was perhaps the best chance for this
structure of power to be fundamentally overhauled, but that elusive chance
was lost. It
should not be a surprise then to come across instance after instance of the
Pakistani state 'failing'. Not in the sense that ethnocentric analyses in the
western world mean when they lament the fact that third world states are not
parroting their own. But in the sense that the Pakistani state as constituted
was never going to be a state for its people. This is a fact of real history.
Given the nature of the state that we inherited at partition, and the fact
that this state was then captured by certain forces totally committed to
preventing it from metamorphosing into something that was at the very least
not anti-people, and the fact that our geographical location has mandated
that imperialist powers reinforce the repressive nature of the state, failure
was the only possible outcome. Does
this mean that we should therefore accede to what is considered conventional
wisdom these days and chime in with the anti-state chorus which incessantly
sings the praises of the market? In actual fact the dichotomy of state and
market is so misleading as to totally obscure the actual issues at stake. In
a world increasingly dictated by the wild orgies of borderless finance
capital, states such as Pakistan play a crucial role. Their repressive
functions are actually reinforced so as to suppress the various forms of
resistance that emerge to contest the hegemony of capital. Thus anti-people
states are endowed with even more power to take from the poor to feed the
rich. And all the while the dominant discourse claims that the era of
anti-people states is behind us. Marxists
would argue that so long as the state exists, it will inevitably visit terror
on the classes that it does not represent. Until such a time as the state
cannot be done away with altogether, it is definitely worth our while to
consider exactly if and how the Pakistani state can be stripped of its
historic neo-colonial garb. In the first instance this means admitting that
it cannot be made a pro-people state as it is currently constituted. Without
a fundamental overhaul in its mandate, its organisation and its ethos, the
Pakistani state will remain oppressive and committed to 'failure'. But
fundamental overhaul implies conflict of a fundamental nature. Almost four
months into the lawyer-led movement against dictatorship, many people have
lamented that the army will not relinquish power voluntarily. This is as
obvious a statement as could be made. Alongside the army, all social forces
that have conspired to keep the neo-colonial nature of the state intact will
also fight till the bitter end to prevent change. Thus change will come at a
price. This is not to suggest bloodshed and violence are inevitable, because
they are not. But if and when the state and its allies sense a growing danger
to their hegemony, one can rest assured that they will naturally resort to
repression. At a certain point, the question will arise whether the
structural violence that sees hundreds of people die and hundreds of
thousands displaced from their homes due to preventable consequences of
natural disasters is not a greater burden to bear than the wrath of a ruling
class that is willing to protect its privilege at whatever cost.
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century mercantilism. It makes the poor countries increasingly dependent on
the rich and ensures a system in which developing countries provide an
unending stream of cheap labour and resources to the developed West.
which we were to re-pay. Worse, no one in the ruling establishment had the
moral courage to tell the people that the loan had come at a big price -- in
the form of many conditions that our State would have to abide by. 
churn out the requisite armies of scientists and engineers. Under the guise
of their space exploration endeavours, they also developed tools with
military applications such as rocket launchers and missile shields. 
nature -- terrorism related or accidental; The Chernobyl disaster and the
Anthrax Scare being cases in point. Though conventionally, natural disasters
are not classified as threatening 'global health security', they too can
cause devastation of similar scale and warrant institutional responses, which
can be combined for disaster preparedness. 
The result is not only an increase in fiscal deficit but also misallocation
of resources. The fact that this is the last budget before general elections
has prevented the government from making hard choices with regard to both
spending and taxation. 
sharia in the Malakand division. TNSM has been waging an unrelenting struggle
for the imposition of sharia in the Malakand division. In 1990, they
announced that they had imposed the Islamic law and forbade the people from
going to courts of law. As TNSM grew in numbers and influence, they started
using violence for the acceptance of their demand. In one instance, tens of
thousands of its followers blocked the highway for nearly one week.
derives from the sheer lack of political will that is displayed by our rulers
time and again when it comes to providing to people what any and every state
in the modern world is obliged to do. This is as close to an absolute truth
in Pakistan as one can find. 