Daily times, April 1, 2005
VIEW: Are Pakistanis less prejudiced than Indians? —Muqtedar Khan
India is a democracy and given its long history of religious pluralism it is surprising that when it comes to respecting the other, India, or at least Bangalore, is found wanting, compared to Pakistan
I read that when Pakistan beat India in a cricket match in Bangalore, they were met with silence, of the thousands of cricket fans in the stadium. I was disappointed. In contrast when India beat Pakistan in Karachi, the crowds roared with approval for the Indian team’s performance. A recurrent theme of India’s tour to Pakistan was the great welcome they received; the hospitality of the local people and the general love and adulation that the Indian team received in Pakistan. The silence in Bangalore in contrast seemed shameful.
India is a democracy and given its long history of religious pluralism it is surprising that when it comes to respecting the other, India, or at least Bangalore, is found wanting, compared to Pakistan. I do not wish to make too much out of this. The poor Bangaloreans were stupefied by the declining batting prowess of the Indian captain Ganguly (who aggregated 48 in his last five innings), but I think that the silence is indicative of how nationalism undermines good nature, and in this case sportsmanship.
Going back, let’s see what Indians had to say about their trip to Pakistan. An Indian visitor to Pakistan last year wrote (Business Line, April 5, 2004):
“It was an overwhelming experience at Karachi’s National Stadium where the Pakistanis were throwing chocolates at the Indian fans cheering their team. Quite a few were carrying the flags of both countries imaginatively stitched together. The guy on the street selling bhuttas refused to accept money from us and so did some restaurant owners saying that we were their guests!”
She was amazed by people on the streets wanting to shake the hands of Indian visitors and “asking us to come home for dinner. Everybody we met had some relative in India. Star Plus is Karachi’s most favourite channel. Shops gave us 40 to 50 per cent discount and again it was the India factor. Taxis, autos, army guys... the list is endless... everywhere we got loads of courtesy and respect; more than we would get in our own country. It is really sad that we consider ourselves ‘secular’ and yet have such a negative perception of Pakistan.”
A report in The Telegraph (March 6, 2005) said: “Almost each of the 8,000 Indians who went to Pakistan for the 2004 cricket series had a story to tell — of a shop-keeper who wouldn’t take money, a taxi-driver who refused the fare and the perfect stranger who called them home for dinner.”
Stories about Pakistani hospitality proliferated in the media last year. I hardly see any such reports this time. I hope many Pakistani tourists too will go back with similar appreciation of Indian hospitality.
But even as the present series began, the Indian media was observing that Pakistanis would not be met as warmly as Indians were in Pakistan. According to The Telegraph, Ali, a restaurant owner in Calcutta, said Pakistanis would not be received with the same fervour because Indians lacked the heart to do so (Kaleja nahin hai).
How should we understand this disparity in the conduct of Pakistanis towards Indians and of Indians towards Pakistanis? Are Pakistanis less prejudiced than Indians or just more capable of rising above hatred and mutual distrust? Does this comparison suggest that the Wahhabi teachings supposedly so widespread in Pakistan are no match for the capacity of Hindutva to sow hatred among Indians.
Pakistanis who live in a supposedly non-secular, non-democratic society do not fear to reveal that they are fans of Indian cricket and hockey teams and Indian movie stars. But apparently in secular and democratic India, showing appreciation for Pakistan is a potential act of treason; one could be labelled a spy!
Amin, a Kashmiri exporter settled in Calcutta says: “There’s no such thing as a Pakistani fan. All Pakistani fans are spies”.
It is a shame that in the new, more confident, more successful India, nationalism and communalism are depriving people of values such as hospitality, often associated with Indian culture. In recent years Indian nationalism has used Pakistan as ‘the enemy’ to explain many Indian problems, providing a justification and cover for the rising Hindutva movement and its egregious anti-Muslim politics.
Indian movies, discourse during elections, the media all focus on how Pakistan’s hand is behind everything, from Godhra to Kashmir. This culture of blaming Pakistan for India’s problems and the deep-seated hatred and intolerance which often does not distinguish between Pakistanis and Indian Muslims may one day cause a terrible holocaust in India which will make the genocide in Gujarat 2002 look like an appetiser.
Dr MA Muqtedar Khan is a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution and the author of American Muslims and Jihad for Jerusalem. His website is www.ijtihad.org
Thursday, March 31, 2005
US risks fuelling militant Islam: study
Daily Times, April 1, 2005
US risks fuelling militant Islam: study
* ICG says Western and African intelligence considers Tablighi Jamaat a threat
DAKAR: The United States will only fuel a rise in Islamic militancy in countries bordering the Sahara desert if it takes a heavy-handed approach to fighting terrorism in the region, an influential think tank said on Thursday.
Proselytising Pakistani clerics, an Algerian fundamentalist group allied to Al Qaeda and growing resentment of US foreign policy were causes for concern but did not make West Africa a hotbed of terrorism, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
“There are enough indicators to justify caution and greater western involvement out of security interests, but it has to be done more carefully than it has been so far,” ICG’s West Africa project director Mike McGovern said in a report.
Mindful of the Al Qaeda training camps that emerged in Afghanistan, some US officials say countries like Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania, which are among the world’s poorest, make similarly fertile hunting ground for militants seeking recruits. US Special Forces and military experts have trained soldiers in all four countries as part of efforts to help them fight the threat in the region’s vast swathes of desert.
But a military policy that offers no alternative livelihoods to already marginalised nomadic populations risked causing resentment and radicalising locals further, ICG said.
Preachers, most of whom are Pakistani, from Jamaat al-Tabligh have been converting former Tuareg rebels in Mali, it said.
Although the movement itself was staunchly apolitical, its converts included British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, captured in 2001 during the war in Afghanistan, ICG said.
“Both Western and African intelligence services consider them a significant potential threat,” it said. “Many analysts agree that a turn toward Tablighi ‘fundamentalism’ is sometimes a first step toward a career in violent Islamist militancy,” the group said.
The Tuaregs, a pale-skinned minority who live and work in the Sahara, launched insurgencies in Niger and Mali in the early 1990s because they felt persecuted by a black elite governing far away in the countries’ capital cities.
Resentment remains high among former fighters in the ancient Saharan trading towns of Kidal and Timbuktu in Mali and Agadez in Niger. They say too little has been done to integrate them. US policy in the Sahara has so far focused on fighting smuggling networks and stopping Algeria’s last powerful rebel force, the Al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), from gaining a foothold outside its homeland. Many Tuaregs in Timbuktu and Agadez viewed the presence of elite US forces in their towns with suspicion during training exercises last year, seeing them as a threat to the delicate balance of power that has lasted for generations in the Sahara. reuters
US risks fuelling militant Islam: study
* ICG says Western and African intelligence considers Tablighi Jamaat a threat
DAKAR: The United States will only fuel a rise in Islamic militancy in countries bordering the Sahara desert if it takes a heavy-handed approach to fighting terrorism in the region, an influential think tank said on Thursday.
Proselytising Pakistani clerics, an Algerian fundamentalist group allied to Al Qaeda and growing resentment of US foreign policy were causes for concern but did not make West Africa a hotbed of terrorism, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.
“There are enough indicators to justify caution and greater western involvement out of security interests, but it has to be done more carefully than it has been so far,” ICG’s West Africa project director Mike McGovern said in a report.
Mindful of the Al Qaeda training camps that emerged in Afghanistan, some US officials say countries like Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania, which are among the world’s poorest, make similarly fertile hunting ground for militants seeking recruits. US Special Forces and military experts have trained soldiers in all four countries as part of efforts to help them fight the threat in the region’s vast swathes of desert.
But a military policy that offers no alternative livelihoods to already marginalised nomadic populations risked causing resentment and radicalising locals further, ICG said.
Preachers, most of whom are Pakistani, from Jamaat al-Tabligh have been converting former Tuareg rebels in Mali, it said.
Although the movement itself was staunchly apolitical, its converts included British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, captured in 2001 during the war in Afghanistan, ICG said.
“Both Western and African intelligence services consider them a significant potential threat,” it said. “Many analysts agree that a turn toward Tablighi ‘fundamentalism’ is sometimes a first step toward a career in violent Islamist militancy,” the group said.
The Tuaregs, a pale-skinned minority who live and work in the Sahara, launched insurgencies in Niger and Mali in the early 1990s because they felt persecuted by a black elite governing far away in the countries’ capital cities.
Resentment remains high among former fighters in the ancient Saharan trading towns of Kidal and Timbuktu in Mali and Agadez in Niger. They say too little has been done to integrate them. US policy in the Sahara has so far focused on fighting smuggling networks and stopping Algeria’s last powerful rebel force, the Al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), from gaining a foothold outside its homeland. Many Tuaregs in Timbuktu and Agadez viewed the presence of elite US forces in their towns with suspicion during training exercises last year, seeing them as a threat to the delicate balance of power that has lasted for generations in the Sahara. reuters
What's happening in Gwadar
GWADAR: CHINA'S NAVAL OUTPOST ON THE INDIAN OCEAN
By Tarique Niazi
CHINA BRIEF
The Jamestown Foundation
Volume 5 , Issue 4 (February 15, 2005)
Four months after the U.S. ordered its troops into Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime, China and Pakistan joined hands to break ground in building a Deep Sea Port on the Arabian Sea. The project was sited in an obscure fishing village of Gwadar in Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan to the northwest and Iran to the southwest. Gwadar is nautically bounded by the Persian Gulf in the west and the Gulf of Oman in the southwest.
Although the Gwadar Port project has been under study since May 2001, the U.S. entrée into Kabul provided an added impetus for its speedy execution. Having set up its bases in Central, South, and West Asian countries, the U.S. virtually brought its military forces at the doorstep of China. Beijing was already wary of the strong U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, which supplies 60% of its energy needs. It was now alarmed to see the U.S. extend its reach into Asian nations that ring western China. Having no blue water navy to speak of, China feels defenseless in the Persian Gulf against any hostile action to choke off its energy supplies. This vulnerability set Beijing scrambling for alternative safe supply routes for its energy shipments. The planned Gwadar Deep Sea Port was one such alternative for which China had flown its Vice Premier, Wu Bangguo, to Gwadar to lay its foundation on March 22, 2002.
Pakistan was interested in the project to seek strategic depth further to the southwest from its major naval base in Karachi that has long been vulnerable to the dominant Indian Navy. In the past, it endured prolonged economic and naval blockades imposed by the Indian Navy. To diversify the site of its naval and commercial assets, Pakistan has already built a naval base at Ormara, the Jinnah Naval Base, which has been in operation since June 2000. It can berth about a dozen ships, submarines and similar harbor craft. The Gwadar port project, however, is billed to crown the Pakistan Navy into a force that can rival regional navies. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as a "sensitive defense zone." Once completed, the Gwadar port will rank among the world's largest deep-sea ports.
The convergence of Sino-Pakistani strategic interests has put the port project onto a fast track to its early completion. In three years since its inauguration, the first phase of the project is already complete with three functioning berths. The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will be on hand to mark the completion of this phase in March this year. Although the total cost of the project is estimated at $1.16 billion USD, China pitched in $198 million and Pakistan $50 million to finance the first phase. China also has invested another $200 million into building a coastal highway that will connect the Gwadar port with Karachi. The second phase, which will cost $526 million, will feature the construction of 9 more berths and terminals and will also be financed by China. To connect western China with Central Asia by land routes, Pakistan is working on building road links to Afghanistan from its border town of Chaman in Baluchistan to Qandahar in Afghanistan. In the northwest, it is building similar road links between Torkham in Pakhtunkhaw (officially known as the Northwest Frontier Province) and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Eventually, the Gwadar port will be accessible for Chinese imports and exports through overland links that will stretch to and from Karakoram Highway in Pakistan's Northern Areas that border China's Muslim-majority Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. In addition, the port will be complemented with a modern air defense unit, a garrison, and a first-rate international airport capable of handling airbus service.
Pakistan already gives China most favored nation (MFN) status and is now establishing a bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA), which will bring tariffs between the two countries to zero. Over the past two years, the trade volume between the two countries has jumped to $2.5 billion a year, accounting for 20% of China's total trade with South Asia. Informal trade, a euphemism for smuggling, however, is several times the formal trade. The proposed FTA is an implicit acceptance of the unstoppable "informal" trade as a "formal" one. More importantly, Chinese investment in Pakistan has increased to $4 billion, registering a 30% increase just over the past two years since 2003. Chinese companies make up 12% (60) of the foreign firms (500) operating in Pakistan, which employ over 3,000 Chinese nationals.
The growing economic cooperation between Beijing and Islamabad is also solidifying their strategic partnership. Before leaving for his visit to Beijing this past December, Pakistani Prime Minister Aziz told reporters in Islamabad: "Pakistan and China are strategic partners and our relations span many areas." The rhetoric of strategic alignment is duly matched by reality. Last year, China and Pakistan conducted their first-ever joint naval exercises near the Shanghai coast. These exercises, among others, included simulation of an emergency rescue operation. Last December, Pakistan opened a consulate in Shanghai. The Gwadar Port project is the summit of such partnership that will bring the two countries closer in maritime defense as well.
Initially, China was reluctant to finance the Gwadar port project because Pakistan offered the U.S. exclusive access to two of its critical airbases in Jacobabad (Sind) and Pasni (Baluchisntan) during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. According to a Times of India report on February 19, 2002, Gen. Musharraf had to do a lot of explaining for leasing these bases to America. China, the Times of India reported, was also upset with Pakistan for allowing the U.S. to establish listening posts in Pakistan's Northern Areas, which border Xinjiang and Tibet. When China finally agreed to offer financial and technical assistance for the project, it asked for "sovereign guarantees" to use the Port facilities to which Pakistan agreed, despite U.S. unease over it.
In particular, the port project set off alarm bells in India which already feels encircled by China from three sides: Myanmar, Tibet, and Pakistan. To counter Sino-Pak collaboration, India has brought Afghanistan and Iran into an economic and strategic alliance. Iranians are already working on Chabahar port in Sistan-Baluchistan, which will be accessible for Indian imports and exports with road links to Afghanistan and Central Asia. India is helping build a 200-kilometer road that will connect Chabahar with Afghanistan. Once completed, Indians will use this access road to the port for their imports and exports to and from Central Asia. Presently, India is in urgent need of a shorter transit route to quickly get its trade goods to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
These external concerns are stoking internal challenges to the port project. Baluchistan, where the project is located, is once again up in arms against the federal government. The most important reason for armed resistance against the Gwadar port is that Baluch nationalists see it as an attempt to colonize them and their natural resources. Several insurgent groups have sprung up to nip the project in the bud. The three most popular are: the Baluchistan Liberation Army, Baluchistan Liberation Front, and People's Liberation Army. On May 3, 2004, the BLA killed three Chinese engineers working on the port project that employs close to 500 Chinese nationals. On October 9, 2004, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped in South Waziristan in the northwest of Pakistan, one of whom was killed later on October 14 in a botched rescue operation. Pakistan blamed India and Iran for fanning insurgency in Baluchistan.
Moreover, the Chinese in Pakistan are vulnerable because of their tense relationship with the Uighur Muslim majority of Xinjiang. Stretched over an area of 635,833 square miles, Xinjiang is more than twice the size of Pakistan, and one-sixth of China's landmass. However, it dwarfs in demographic size with a population of 19 million people. Beijing is investing 730 billion yuan (roughly $88 billion USD) in western China, including Xinjiang, which opens it up to the six Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Despite this massive investment, displacement of Uighers from Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, is drawing fire, where the population of mainland Chinese of Han descent has grown from 10% in 1949 to 41% in 2004. In direct proportion, the population of native Uighurs has declined from 90% in 1949 to 47% in 2004. Tens of thousands of displaced Uighurs have found refuge in Pakistan where the majority of them live in its two most populous cities: Lahore and Karachi.
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is fighting against Chinese attempts at so-called "Hanification" of Xinjiang. Pakistan, which along with China and the U.S. lists the ETIM as a terrorist organization, killed the ETIM's head, Hasan Mahsum, in South Waziristan on October 2, 2004. Seven days after, two Chinese were kidnapped from the area, one of whom was killed in a rescue operation. The thousands of Chinese working in Pakistan make tempting targets for violent reprisals by the ETIM or Baluch nationalists.
The realization of economic and strategic objectives of the Gwadar port is largely dependent upon the reduction of separatist violence in Baluchistan and Xinjiang. Chinese response to secessionism is aggressive economic development, which is driving the Gwadar port project also. The port is intended to serve China's threefold economic objective:
First, to integrate Pakistan into the Chinese economy by outsourcing low-tech, labor-absorbing, resource-intensive industrial production to Islamabad, which will transform Pakistan into a giant factory floor for China; Second, to seek access to Central Asian markets for energy imports and Chinese exports by developing road networks and rail links through Afghanistan and Pakistan into Central Asia; Third, to appease restive parts of western China, especially the Muslim-majority autonomous region of Xinjiang, through a massive infusion of development funds and increased economic links with the Central Asian Islamic nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The port, by design or by default, also provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, although to the alarm of India and the unease of the U.S. sitting opposite the Strait of Hurmoz, through which 80% of the world's energy exports flow, the Gwadar port will enable China to monitor its energy shipments from the Persian Gulf, and offer it, in the case of any hostile interruption in such shipments, a safer alternative passage for its energy imports from Central Asia. Its presence on the Indian Ocean will further increase its strategic influence with major South Asian nations, particularly Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, which would prompt the Indians in turn to re-strengthen their Navy.
Tarique Niazi teaches Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. He specializes in Resource-based Conflicts. He may be reached via email: niazit@uwec.edu
By Tarique Niazi
CHINA BRIEF
The Jamestown Foundation
Volume 5 , Issue 4 (February 15, 2005)
Four months after the U.S. ordered its troops into Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime, China and Pakistan joined hands to break ground in building a Deep Sea Port on the Arabian Sea. The project was sited in an obscure fishing village of Gwadar in Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan to the northwest and Iran to the southwest. Gwadar is nautically bounded by the Persian Gulf in the west and the Gulf of Oman in the southwest.
Although the Gwadar Port project has been under study since May 2001, the U.S. entrée into Kabul provided an added impetus for its speedy execution. Having set up its bases in Central, South, and West Asian countries, the U.S. virtually brought its military forces at the doorstep of China. Beijing was already wary of the strong U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, which supplies 60% of its energy needs. It was now alarmed to see the U.S. extend its reach into Asian nations that ring western China. Having no blue water navy to speak of, China feels defenseless in the Persian Gulf against any hostile action to choke off its energy supplies. This vulnerability set Beijing scrambling for alternative safe supply routes for its energy shipments. The planned Gwadar Deep Sea Port was one such alternative for which China had flown its Vice Premier, Wu Bangguo, to Gwadar to lay its foundation on March 22, 2002.
Pakistan was interested in the project to seek strategic depth further to the southwest from its major naval base in Karachi that has long been vulnerable to the dominant Indian Navy. In the past, it endured prolonged economic and naval blockades imposed by the Indian Navy. To diversify the site of its naval and commercial assets, Pakistan has already built a naval base at Ormara, the Jinnah Naval Base, which has been in operation since June 2000. It can berth about a dozen ships, submarines and similar harbor craft. The Gwadar port project, however, is billed to crown the Pakistan Navy into a force that can rival regional navies. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as a "sensitive defense zone." Once completed, the Gwadar port will rank among the world's largest deep-sea ports.
The convergence of Sino-Pakistani strategic interests has put the port project onto a fast track to its early completion. In three years since its inauguration, the first phase of the project is already complete with three functioning berths. The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will be on hand to mark the completion of this phase in March this year. Although the total cost of the project is estimated at $1.16 billion USD, China pitched in $198 million and Pakistan $50 million to finance the first phase. China also has invested another $200 million into building a coastal highway that will connect the Gwadar port with Karachi. The second phase, which will cost $526 million, will feature the construction of 9 more berths and terminals and will also be financed by China. To connect western China with Central Asia by land routes, Pakistan is working on building road links to Afghanistan from its border town of Chaman in Baluchistan to Qandahar in Afghanistan. In the northwest, it is building similar road links between Torkham in Pakhtunkhaw (officially known as the Northwest Frontier Province) and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Eventually, the Gwadar port will be accessible for Chinese imports and exports through overland links that will stretch to and from Karakoram Highway in Pakistan's Northern Areas that border China's Muslim-majority Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. In addition, the port will be complemented with a modern air defense unit, a garrison, and a first-rate international airport capable of handling airbus service.
Pakistan already gives China most favored nation (MFN) status and is now establishing a bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA), which will bring tariffs between the two countries to zero. Over the past two years, the trade volume between the two countries has jumped to $2.5 billion a year, accounting for 20% of China's total trade with South Asia. Informal trade, a euphemism for smuggling, however, is several times the formal trade. The proposed FTA is an implicit acceptance of the unstoppable "informal" trade as a "formal" one. More importantly, Chinese investment in Pakistan has increased to $4 billion, registering a 30% increase just over the past two years since 2003. Chinese companies make up 12% (60) of the foreign firms (500) operating in Pakistan, which employ over 3,000 Chinese nationals.
The growing economic cooperation between Beijing and Islamabad is also solidifying their strategic partnership. Before leaving for his visit to Beijing this past December, Pakistani Prime Minister Aziz told reporters in Islamabad: "Pakistan and China are strategic partners and our relations span many areas." The rhetoric of strategic alignment is duly matched by reality. Last year, China and Pakistan conducted their first-ever joint naval exercises near the Shanghai coast. These exercises, among others, included simulation of an emergency rescue operation. Last December, Pakistan opened a consulate in Shanghai. The Gwadar Port project is the summit of such partnership that will bring the two countries closer in maritime defense as well.
Initially, China was reluctant to finance the Gwadar port project because Pakistan offered the U.S. exclusive access to two of its critical airbases in Jacobabad (Sind) and Pasni (Baluchisntan) during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. According to a Times of India report on February 19, 2002, Gen. Musharraf had to do a lot of explaining for leasing these bases to America. China, the Times of India reported, was also upset with Pakistan for allowing the U.S. to establish listening posts in Pakistan's Northern Areas, which border Xinjiang and Tibet. When China finally agreed to offer financial and technical assistance for the project, it asked for "sovereign guarantees" to use the Port facilities to which Pakistan agreed, despite U.S. unease over it.
In particular, the port project set off alarm bells in India which already feels encircled by China from three sides: Myanmar, Tibet, and Pakistan. To counter Sino-Pak collaboration, India has brought Afghanistan and Iran into an economic and strategic alliance. Iranians are already working on Chabahar port in Sistan-Baluchistan, which will be accessible for Indian imports and exports with road links to Afghanistan and Central Asia. India is helping build a 200-kilometer road that will connect Chabahar with Afghanistan. Once completed, Indians will use this access road to the port for their imports and exports to and from Central Asia. Presently, India is in urgent need of a shorter transit route to quickly get its trade goods to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
These external concerns are stoking internal challenges to the port project. Baluchistan, where the project is located, is once again up in arms against the federal government. The most important reason for armed resistance against the Gwadar port is that Baluch nationalists see it as an attempt to colonize them and their natural resources. Several insurgent groups have sprung up to nip the project in the bud. The three most popular are: the Baluchistan Liberation Army, Baluchistan Liberation Front, and People's Liberation Army. On May 3, 2004, the BLA killed three Chinese engineers working on the port project that employs close to 500 Chinese nationals. On October 9, 2004, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped in South Waziristan in the northwest of Pakistan, one of whom was killed later on October 14 in a botched rescue operation. Pakistan blamed India and Iran for fanning insurgency in Baluchistan.
Moreover, the Chinese in Pakistan are vulnerable because of their tense relationship with the Uighur Muslim majority of Xinjiang. Stretched over an area of 635,833 square miles, Xinjiang is more than twice the size of Pakistan, and one-sixth of China's landmass. However, it dwarfs in demographic size with a population of 19 million people. Beijing is investing 730 billion yuan (roughly $88 billion USD) in western China, including Xinjiang, which opens it up to the six Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Despite this massive investment, displacement of Uighers from Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, is drawing fire, where the population of mainland Chinese of Han descent has grown from 10% in 1949 to 41% in 2004. In direct proportion, the population of native Uighurs has declined from 90% in 1949 to 47% in 2004. Tens of thousands of displaced Uighurs have found refuge in Pakistan where the majority of them live in its two most populous cities: Lahore and Karachi.
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is fighting against Chinese attempts at so-called "Hanification" of Xinjiang. Pakistan, which along with China and the U.S. lists the ETIM as a terrorist organization, killed the ETIM's head, Hasan Mahsum, in South Waziristan on October 2, 2004. Seven days after, two Chinese were kidnapped from the area, one of whom was killed in a rescue operation. The thousands of Chinese working in Pakistan make tempting targets for violent reprisals by the ETIM or Baluch nationalists.
The realization of economic and strategic objectives of the Gwadar port is largely dependent upon the reduction of separatist violence in Baluchistan and Xinjiang. Chinese response to secessionism is aggressive economic development, which is driving the Gwadar port project also. The port is intended to serve China's threefold economic objective:
First, to integrate Pakistan into the Chinese economy by outsourcing low-tech, labor-absorbing, resource-intensive industrial production to Islamabad, which will transform Pakistan into a giant factory floor for China; Second, to seek access to Central Asian markets for energy imports and Chinese exports by developing road networks and rail links through Afghanistan and Pakistan into Central Asia; Third, to appease restive parts of western China, especially the Muslim-majority autonomous region of Xinjiang, through a massive infusion of development funds and increased economic links with the Central Asian Islamic nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The port, by design or by default, also provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, although to the alarm of India and the unease of the U.S. sitting opposite the Strait of Hurmoz, through which 80% of the world's energy exports flow, the Gwadar port will enable China to monitor its energy shipments from the Persian Gulf, and offer it, in the case of any hostile interruption in such shipments, a safer alternative passage for its energy imports from Central Asia. Its presence on the Indian Ocean will further increase its strategic influence with major South Asian nations, particularly Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, which would prompt the Indians in turn to re-strengthen their Navy.
Tarique Niazi teaches Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. He specializes in Resource-based Conflicts. He may be reached via email: niazit@uwec.edu
Pakistan's Military Budget on the rise
Dawn, March 31, 2005
Defence spending may exceed allocation
By Khaleeq Kiani
ISLAMABAD, March 30: Pakistan's defence expenditure, which amounted to more than 52 per cent of the total annual allocation, has outpaced development expenditure which stood at about 40 per cent during the first half (July-December) of the current fiscal year.
At this pace, the defence spending is expected to go up to Rs205-210 billion at the end of the year against a budgetary allocation of Rs194 billion, sources in the finance ministry told Dawn.
Last year, the defence budget had increased by Rs20 billion to Rs180 billion against a budget allocation of Rs160 billion and the increase was regularized through post-facto parliamentary approval as part of the budget 2005-06, they said.
The sources said the defence expenditure during the first six months of the fiscal year amounted to Rs101.237 billion compared with development expenditure of Rs81.6 billion.
The federal government had allocated Rs193.9 billion and Rs202 billion for defence and public sector development programme (PSDP), respectively, under 2005-06 budget approved by parliament.
The defence spending has increased by about 16 per cent or Rs13.75 billion over Rs87.319 billion expenditure of the same period last year, although budgetary allocation was only seven per cent higher than last year's revised defence expenditure.
The sources said the real defence expenditure was quite higher than represented in the budgetary operations because a major part of receipts from the United States' activities along the Afghan border (Waziristan) remain off-budget. Pakistan receives on an average $70 million per month on this account.
The defence budget as a percentage of total federal budget has been increasing for the last three years, although development allocation for the current year was higher than defence for the first time in many years, the sources said.
They said the defence budget which constituted 18 per cent of the total budget in 2001-02, rose to 20 per cent in 2002-03 and 2003-04 and 21 per cent in the current year's allocations. The defence-related pensions were removed from the total allocation in 2002-03 budget and since then these were not reflected in the defence budget, the sources said.
The PSDP utilization in the first six months of the current fiscal year has amounted to about 40 per cent of the total annual allocation when compared with 35.5 per cent utilisation during the same period last year. The utilisation pace of PSDP was still much lower than desired.
"At the current pace of spending, the government would hardly be able to utilize Rs160-165 billion by end of the fiscal year against a PSDP allocation of Rs202 billion while defence spending would end up in the vicinity of Rs205 billion instead of Rs194 billion budgetary allocation," said a senior government official.
He said the slow PSDP utilization during earlier part of the year would force the authorities to make hasty releases in the last quarter thus compromising the quality of project implementation.
The public sector spending have remained slow despite the fact that principal accounting officers of ministries and divisions have been authorized to draw up to 45 per cent of development and 50 per cent of social sector allocation without prior approval to ensure maximum utilization, quality implementation and timely completion of projects.
Official figures duly verified by the Auditor General of Pakistan Revenue and the State Bank of Pakistan also suggest that total expenditure during the first six months stood at 8.3 per cent of GDP and outpaced revenue collection which was recorded at 6.87 per cent of GDP.
The total public sector expenditure during the six months stood at Rs513.768 billion while current expenditure amounted to Rs427.479 billion against a full year target of Rs903 billion and Rs701 billion, respectively.
Defence spending may exceed allocation
By Khaleeq Kiani
ISLAMABAD, March 30: Pakistan's defence expenditure, which amounted to more than 52 per cent of the total annual allocation, has outpaced development expenditure which stood at about 40 per cent during the first half (July-December) of the current fiscal year.
At this pace, the defence spending is expected to go up to Rs205-210 billion at the end of the year against a budgetary allocation of Rs194 billion, sources in the finance ministry told Dawn.
Last year, the defence budget had increased by Rs20 billion to Rs180 billion against a budget allocation of Rs160 billion and the increase was regularized through post-facto parliamentary approval as part of the budget 2005-06, they said.
The sources said the defence expenditure during the first six months of the fiscal year amounted to Rs101.237 billion compared with development expenditure of Rs81.6 billion.
The federal government had allocated Rs193.9 billion and Rs202 billion for defence and public sector development programme (PSDP), respectively, under 2005-06 budget approved by parliament.
The defence spending has increased by about 16 per cent or Rs13.75 billion over Rs87.319 billion expenditure of the same period last year, although budgetary allocation was only seven per cent higher than last year's revised defence expenditure.
The sources said the real defence expenditure was quite higher than represented in the budgetary operations because a major part of receipts from the United States' activities along the Afghan border (Waziristan) remain off-budget. Pakistan receives on an average $70 million per month on this account.
The defence budget as a percentage of total federal budget has been increasing for the last three years, although development allocation for the current year was higher than defence for the first time in many years, the sources said.
They said the defence budget which constituted 18 per cent of the total budget in 2001-02, rose to 20 per cent in 2002-03 and 2003-04 and 21 per cent in the current year's allocations. The defence-related pensions were removed from the total allocation in 2002-03 budget and since then these were not reflected in the defence budget, the sources said.
The PSDP utilization in the first six months of the current fiscal year has amounted to about 40 per cent of the total annual allocation when compared with 35.5 per cent utilisation during the same period last year. The utilisation pace of PSDP was still much lower than desired.
"At the current pace of spending, the government would hardly be able to utilize Rs160-165 billion by end of the fiscal year against a PSDP allocation of Rs202 billion while defence spending would end up in the vicinity of Rs205 billion instead of Rs194 billion budgetary allocation," said a senior government official.
He said the slow PSDP utilization during earlier part of the year would force the authorities to make hasty releases in the last quarter thus compromising the quality of project implementation.
The public sector spending have remained slow despite the fact that principal accounting officers of ministries and divisions have been authorized to draw up to 45 per cent of development and 50 per cent of social sector allocation without prior approval to ensure maximum utilization, quality implementation and timely completion of projects.
Official figures duly verified by the Auditor General of Pakistan Revenue and the State Bank of Pakistan also suggest that total expenditure during the first six months stood at 8.3 per cent of GDP and outpaced revenue collection which was recorded at 6.87 per cent of GDP.
The total public sector expenditure during the six months stood at Rs513.768 billion while current expenditure amounted to Rs427.479 billion against a full year target of Rs903 billion and Rs701 billion, respectively.
Revisiting 1971 tragedy
Dawn, March 31, 2005
'Had Yahya heeded sane advice'
By Raja Tridiv Roy
On December 16, 1971, East Pakistan's Commander Lt. Gen. A.A.K. "Tiger" Niazi surrendered to an overwhelmingly larger invading Indian force under Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Arora. Pakistan was sundered. East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Pakistani forces had been concentrating at various points along the border and were ready to give the Indians a good fight.
However, the Indian army bypassed these pockets of concentrations and seeped through the extensive and porous 2,500 mile (4,000 km) border between East Pakistan and India.
Some strategists are of the view that instead of dispersing our troops so far away from the capital, we should have concentrated on the defence of Dhaka. This stratagem would have given us more time and permitted Pakistan at the United Nations to bring about a cease fire and withdrawal of Indian forces across the international border.
Another disingenuous view is that the Polish resolution at the UN should have been accepted by Pakistan and it would have saved the country from being dismembered.
In early March this year Agha Shahi, our permanent representative at New York then (1971), openly stated in an interview on a private TV channel that the resolution might have delayed matters by a few days but would not have changed the political outcome.
In the General Assembly, 204 countries, actually 205, (one representative was not familiar with the voting procedure) had voted for the integrity (and not dismemberment) of Pakistan.
However, the General Assembly resolutions have moral value but are not militarily or politically enforceable. The former USSR (which had a veto in the Security Council) and India had concluded a mutual defence treaty a few months earlier. They had a common objective: the break-up of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.
President Yahya Khan should have viewed this treaty as ominous. However, he seems to have failed to take effective measures to counter or neutralize its portent and relied more on international norms about the inviolability of state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
His public response was mere bluster. The much trumpeted Chinese attack on India in support of Pakistan remained a mirage, a fevered mind's wishful thought. China could help with arms but not with armed intervention. And a single American warship's cruise to the Bay of Bengal could hardly be interpreted as a deterrent to the massive Indian invasion.
The US advised Gen Yahya Khan from time to time to pursue the path of negotiated peace but he could not or would not relent. The Nixon administration had a soft corner for Pakistan and Yahya but the politicians and the American people at large were for the oppressed Bengalis, the much publicized victims of ravaging West Pakistan forces.
In February 1971 there was talk of Sheikh Mujib's forming two committees for drafting Pakistan's future constitution - one for East and another for West Pakistan. And if the Awami League with its majority had passed a resolution declaring East Pakistan a sovereign independent Bangladesh, what then? In such an event, if after efforts at persuasion by politicians as well as international friends the Awami League would prove adamant? Even in such an event other options could perhaps have been sought rather than the pre-emptive military occupation of March 25, 1971.
President Yahya's stance was: 'Political dialogue has failed. Mujib has defied the central government and declared a civil war. It is my duty to save the country so I must militarily occupy East Pakistan.'
Consequently, from early March he started sending troops to Dhaka via Colombo; India had banned over flights after a red herring airplane hijacking drama enacted at the Lahore airport.
Bhutto's stance was: East Pakistan, because of its simple majority in parliament, cannot impose its six point-based constitution on Pakistan because the country was a federal republic and the western provinces also had to have their say in the future constitution.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi posed as the economically burdened protector of the Bengalis. Her grievance was: Pakistan was not taking back the millions of its persecuted citizens who had fled for their lives and taken shelter in India.
She had been housing and feeding them for months on end. They did not want to go back for fear of their honour and of their lives. Therefore all Pakistani military must return to West Pakistan first and Mujib must be allowed to return from incarceration in West Pakistan and to form his civilian government without West Pakistan pressure.
If he had permitted the first session of the elected assembly to meet on March 3, 1971, could President Yahya have averted the dismemberment of Pakistan? Each of the protagonists envisioned a solution that was a chimera to the other two or at best a will-o-the-wisp.
Each wanted his pound of flesh but there was no debtor. Should Yahya have allowed the National (Constituent) Assembly to convene on March 3 as scheduled? If then two constitutional committees brought forward two drafts, one for East and one for West Pakistan - what then? Would it be one Pakistan? A number of possibilities with consequent actions can be envisaged ex post facto but all in the realm of conjecture.
According to Yahya's Legal Framework Order, the constitution had to be produced for the President's authentication within 120 days from the first sitting of the National Assembly. The question whether a simple or a two-thirds majority was required was left hanging in the air.
For this reason PPP Chairman Bhutto had asked for relaxation of the 120-day deadline but his demand received a stony silence from Yahya as well as Mujib. Despite a series of parleys, there was no agreement between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto. Somewhere along the line in March 1971, President Yahya reinforced his apparent earlier inclination into a firm decision for military action in East Pakistan.
The governor of East Pakistan then was Admiral Ahsan. In August 1947 Viscount Montgomery reportedly said to Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on installing him as the Governor General of Pakistan - "You are lucky to have achieved Pakistan but luckier in inheriting Ahsan" (his naval aide-de-camp). Governor Ahsan felt the impasse, if such a mild word would convey the approaching cataclysm in March, advised President Yahya Khan against attempting military solution.
His view: only a negotiated political solution was the answer. When his advice was ignored, he resigned and returned to West Pakistan. The military commander Sahabzada Yaqub Khan also advised against deployment of troops against the civilian Bengalis. He was relieved of his command. He wished to leave Dhaka immediately but was asked to stay on for a few more days for the arrival of his successor Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan.
Notwithstanding all sane advises to the contrary, military action did take place. By the middle of May 1971 the rebellion had more or less been crushed and the army had taken physical control of East Pakistan. Could a series of effective measures taken then have averted the loss of East Pakistan?
By the autumn of 1971 four factors weighed heavily against President Yahya. Firstly, the Bengalis had been totally alienated; secondly, Indira Gandhi (with a superpower backing her) was determined to create Bangladesh; thirdly, world opinion supported independence for East Pakistan; and fourthly, Pakistan could not muster sufficient military support from its allies to take on and overcome the impending Indian invasion.
'Had Yahya heeded sane advice'
By Raja Tridiv Roy
On December 16, 1971, East Pakistan's Commander Lt. Gen. A.A.K. "Tiger" Niazi surrendered to an overwhelmingly larger invading Indian force under Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Arora. Pakistan was sundered. East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Pakistani forces had been concentrating at various points along the border and were ready to give the Indians a good fight.
However, the Indian army bypassed these pockets of concentrations and seeped through the extensive and porous 2,500 mile (4,000 km) border between East Pakistan and India.
Some strategists are of the view that instead of dispersing our troops so far away from the capital, we should have concentrated on the defence of Dhaka. This stratagem would have given us more time and permitted Pakistan at the United Nations to bring about a cease fire and withdrawal of Indian forces across the international border.
Another disingenuous view is that the Polish resolution at the UN should have been accepted by Pakistan and it would have saved the country from being dismembered.
In early March this year Agha Shahi, our permanent representative at New York then (1971), openly stated in an interview on a private TV channel that the resolution might have delayed matters by a few days but would not have changed the political outcome.
In the General Assembly, 204 countries, actually 205, (one representative was not familiar with the voting procedure) had voted for the integrity (and not dismemberment) of Pakistan.
However, the General Assembly resolutions have moral value but are not militarily or politically enforceable. The former USSR (which had a veto in the Security Council) and India had concluded a mutual defence treaty a few months earlier. They had a common objective: the break-up of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.
President Yahya Khan should have viewed this treaty as ominous. However, he seems to have failed to take effective measures to counter or neutralize its portent and relied more on international norms about the inviolability of state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
His public response was mere bluster. The much trumpeted Chinese attack on India in support of Pakistan remained a mirage, a fevered mind's wishful thought. China could help with arms but not with armed intervention. And a single American warship's cruise to the Bay of Bengal could hardly be interpreted as a deterrent to the massive Indian invasion.
The US advised Gen Yahya Khan from time to time to pursue the path of negotiated peace but he could not or would not relent. The Nixon administration had a soft corner for Pakistan and Yahya but the politicians and the American people at large were for the oppressed Bengalis, the much publicized victims of ravaging West Pakistan forces.
In February 1971 there was talk of Sheikh Mujib's forming two committees for drafting Pakistan's future constitution - one for East and another for West Pakistan. And if the Awami League with its majority had passed a resolution declaring East Pakistan a sovereign independent Bangladesh, what then? In such an event, if after efforts at persuasion by politicians as well as international friends the Awami League would prove adamant? Even in such an event other options could perhaps have been sought rather than the pre-emptive military occupation of March 25, 1971.
President Yahya's stance was: 'Political dialogue has failed. Mujib has defied the central government and declared a civil war. It is my duty to save the country so I must militarily occupy East Pakistan.'
Consequently, from early March he started sending troops to Dhaka via Colombo; India had banned over flights after a red herring airplane hijacking drama enacted at the Lahore airport.
Bhutto's stance was: East Pakistan, because of its simple majority in parliament, cannot impose its six point-based constitution on Pakistan because the country was a federal republic and the western provinces also had to have their say in the future constitution.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi posed as the economically burdened protector of the Bengalis. Her grievance was: Pakistan was not taking back the millions of its persecuted citizens who had fled for their lives and taken shelter in India.
She had been housing and feeding them for months on end. They did not want to go back for fear of their honour and of their lives. Therefore all Pakistani military must return to West Pakistan first and Mujib must be allowed to return from incarceration in West Pakistan and to form his civilian government without West Pakistan pressure.
If he had permitted the first session of the elected assembly to meet on March 3, 1971, could President Yahya have averted the dismemberment of Pakistan? Each of the protagonists envisioned a solution that was a chimera to the other two or at best a will-o-the-wisp.
Each wanted his pound of flesh but there was no debtor. Should Yahya have allowed the National (Constituent) Assembly to convene on March 3 as scheduled? If then two constitutional committees brought forward two drafts, one for East and one for West Pakistan - what then? Would it be one Pakistan? A number of possibilities with consequent actions can be envisaged ex post facto but all in the realm of conjecture.
According to Yahya's Legal Framework Order, the constitution had to be produced for the President's authentication within 120 days from the first sitting of the National Assembly. The question whether a simple or a two-thirds majority was required was left hanging in the air.
For this reason PPP Chairman Bhutto had asked for relaxation of the 120-day deadline but his demand received a stony silence from Yahya as well as Mujib. Despite a series of parleys, there was no agreement between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto. Somewhere along the line in March 1971, President Yahya reinforced his apparent earlier inclination into a firm decision for military action in East Pakistan.
The governor of East Pakistan then was Admiral Ahsan. In August 1947 Viscount Montgomery reportedly said to Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on installing him as the Governor General of Pakistan - "You are lucky to have achieved Pakistan but luckier in inheriting Ahsan" (his naval aide-de-camp). Governor Ahsan felt the impasse, if such a mild word would convey the approaching cataclysm in March, advised President Yahya Khan against attempting military solution.
His view: only a negotiated political solution was the answer. When his advice was ignored, he resigned and returned to West Pakistan. The military commander Sahabzada Yaqub Khan also advised against deployment of troops against the civilian Bengalis. He was relieved of his command. He wished to leave Dhaka immediately but was asked to stay on for a few more days for the arrival of his successor Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan.
Notwithstanding all sane advises to the contrary, military action did take place. By the middle of May 1971 the rebellion had more or less been crushed and the army had taken physical control of East Pakistan. Could a series of effective measures taken then have averted the loss of East Pakistan?
By the autumn of 1971 four factors weighed heavily against President Yahya. Firstly, the Bengalis had been totally alienated; secondly, Indira Gandhi (with a superpower backing her) was determined to create Bangladesh; thirdly, world opinion supported independence for East Pakistan; and fourthly, Pakistan could not muster sufficient military support from its allies to take on and overcome the impending Indian invasion.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Pakistan-Moscow secret channels!
The News
March 31, 2005
Khokhar holds secret meeting with Moscow
Mariana Baabar
ISLAMABAD: President General Pervez Musharraf's special envoy and former foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar has met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, reports quoting Russian "sources" said.
Islamabad has kept the visit secret till reports came from Moscow. All attempts failed to reach Jalil Abbas Jilani, spokesman at the Foreign Office Wednesday evening. Other officials at the ministry said they did not want to comment on this visit, but confirmed it took place.
Khokhar, who retired recently, was likely to be given important assignments from time to time given his long and rich experience as country's top diplomat. However, the government is keeping mum over what exact message Pakistan had sent to the leadership in Moscow.
According to reports from Russia, Alexander Saltanov told Pakistan that India is a "deserving candidate" for an expanded UN Security Council on the basis of consensus. In the context of an upcoming UN reform, the consistent and principled position of Russia on the enlargement of the membership of the UN Security Council is well known. "Moscow sees India as a deserving candidate," Russian "sources" said, echoing President Putin's statement in New Delhi in December last expressing Moscow's unequivocal backing for a permanent berth for India in the UNSC.
During talks with Khokhar, the Russian deputy minister, however, underscored the need for securing a consensus on UNSC reform, as provided for in the resolutions of the UN General Assembly.
Saltanov and Khokhar also spoke in favour of coordinated efforts by Russia and Pakistan on the anti-terror front, aimed, inter alia, at perfecting the international legal base for combating terrorism and countering the new challenges to international security.
March 31, 2005
Khokhar holds secret meeting with Moscow
Mariana Baabar
ISLAMABAD: President General Pervez Musharraf's special envoy and former foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar has met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, reports quoting Russian "sources" said.
Islamabad has kept the visit secret till reports came from Moscow. All attempts failed to reach Jalil Abbas Jilani, spokesman at the Foreign Office Wednesday evening. Other officials at the ministry said they did not want to comment on this visit, but confirmed it took place.
Khokhar, who retired recently, was likely to be given important assignments from time to time given his long and rich experience as country's top diplomat. However, the government is keeping mum over what exact message Pakistan had sent to the leadership in Moscow.
According to reports from Russia, Alexander Saltanov told Pakistan that India is a "deserving candidate" for an expanded UN Security Council on the basis of consensus. In the context of an upcoming UN reform, the consistent and principled position of Russia on the enlargement of the membership of the UN Security Council is well known. "Moscow sees India as a deserving candidate," Russian "sources" said, echoing President Putin's statement in New Delhi in December last expressing Moscow's unequivocal backing for a permanent berth for India in the UNSC.
During talks with Khokhar, the Russian deputy minister, however, underscored the need for securing a consensus on UNSC reform, as provided for in the resolutions of the UN General Assembly.
Saltanov and Khokhar also spoke in favour of coordinated efforts by Russia and Pakistan on the anti-terror front, aimed, inter alia, at perfecting the international legal base for combating terrorism and countering the new challenges to international security.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Human Rights situation in Pakistan
Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2004 - 2005
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Pakistan
Pakistan is a federal republic. President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, who assumed power following the military's 1999 overthrow of elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has repeatedly stated his intention to transform Pakistan into a moderate, democratic Muslim state. In December 2003, the National and Provincial Assemblies passed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which transferred a number of powers from the Office of Prime Minister to the President and exempted Musharraf from a prohibition on holding two offices of state until the end of the year, allowing him to remain as Chief of Army Staff. In October, over opposition protests, parliament passed another bill which extended this exemption until 2007. Local elections in 2000 and 2001 and national and provincial parliamentary elections in 2002 established functioning civilian legislatures. While domestic and international observers criticized the elections for being seriously flawed, the resulting bodies are beginning to engage in national political debate and are working to develop mechanisms to check the power of the executive. The Assembly has required senior civil servants to appear before committees to testify on government actions, and held hearings on the defense budget and military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Senate convened a special committee on Balochistan and produced a critical report on Okara Farms. The Government has committed that new local elections will be scheduled for 2005 and national elections to be held no later than 2007 will be free and fair. The United States will continue to encourage the Government to adhere to this commitment and will provide needed support. Both contests will be important indicators of the political will for democratization.
The Government's human rights record remained poor, although there were some improvements in several areas. Constitutional amendments passed by the Government have strengthened the powers of the President at the expense of the National Assembly. The military remains heavily engaged in politics, and President Musharraf's decision to continue as Chief of Army Staff has spurred political debate. Political parties are generally weak, undemocratic institutions centered on personalities instead of policies. The judiciary is corrupt, inefficient, and malleable to political pressure. Politically motivated prosecutions of opposition figures continue, as do concerns that opposition leaders or their parties are not always allowed to function freely. Leaders of three major parties remained outside the country, and the leader of one opposition party in parliament remained in prison appealing a conviction for sedition. Despite its increasing freedom, the media lacks journalistic standards and continues to practice self-censorship in some areas. Security forces have committed numerous human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings and torture. Societal discrimination and violence against women and religious minorities persist.
The Pakistani Government has over the last year increasingly opened the landscape for political debate. Opposition parties and civil society are beginning to criticize the Government and its policies, however, some political opposition leaders remained in prison or in exile abroad. While the Government has loosened restrictions on the right to assembly, it still denied permits or imposed restrictions on certain groups, such as the Ahmadis. Measures against terrorist and extremist groups advocating and perpetrating sectarian and religious violence have continued, as have efforts to reform the education system. The Government has passed new legislation to address honor killings and to prevent abuse of laws against blasphemy, adultery, and fornication. Human rights groups remained concerned that perpetrators of honor crimes, in a limited number of cases, could still be pardoned by the victim or heirs. Strategies to combat child labor and trafficking in persons have been accelerated in cooperation with international donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The United States believes that the success of Pakistan's democratization efforts is critical to the strength of our long term relationship and will positively contribute to its effective participation in the Global War on Terrorism. The U.S. strategy has focused on the promotion of free and fair local and national elections, the strengthening of the capacity of the National Assembly; democratization and institutional strengthening of political parties, improved local governments that are functioning and accountable, and increased respect for the rule of law, including professionalizing law enforcement personnel, and promoting an appropriate role for the military. Senior U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Powell underscored with the Pakistani leadership the need to press forward on democratization and to prepare the groundwork for free and fair parliamentary elections not later than 2007. United States officials also urged respect for human rights by security force personnel, improved legal and judicial systems, and continued actions to curtail the activities of extremist groups. In their public statements, both then Ambassador Powell and Ambassador Crocker stressed the importance the United States attaches to building a fully functioning democracy in Pakistan and the need to continue to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the rule of law.
On the human rights front, the United States continued to work with the Pakistani Government, civil society institutions, and international organizations to combat religious discrimination and violence, trafficking in persons, child labor and legalized discrimination against women. For example, when opposition leader Javed Hashmi was sentenced in April for sedition, the United States expressed concern with the closed nature of proceedings against him, and urged that the case be handled in a fair and transparent manner. In May, when the Government did not allow member of the opposition Shahbaz Sharif and brother of deposed former Prime Minister to enter Pakistan, the United States encouraged the Government to resolve the matter in a transparent manner, within the context of Pakistan’s legal system. The United States also urged the Government to release or charge journalists held in incommunicado detention.
The United States, through USAID is actively engaged in a multi-year strategy to strengthen Pakistani democratic institutions. Through its legislative strengthening program, the United States provides training to national and provincial parliamentarians that strengthens their secretariats and research capacity; helps to develop a functioning committee system; and promotes regular dialogue between constituents and civil society organizations.
Through its political party strengthening program launched in 2004, USAID worked with the leadership of all major political parties to train future political leaders in campaign finance, platform development and candidate selection. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) is complementing these efforts by working with the National Democratic Institute to train emerging female political party leaders and improve their capacity to campaign for elected office, serve the public as elected officials, and develop the local capacity of women political leaders to train other women members and elected officials. The United States continued to advocate for the adoption of internally democratic mechanisms in political parties as a way to promote greater government accountability. At the local level, USAID supported the National Reconstruction Bureau in establishing and strengthening local government institutions and encourages cooperation between communities, the private sector, and local governments through district grants.
The United States believes that the strengthening of media institutions and civil society is critical for the long-term development of Pakistani democracy. Under its media support program, USAID worked to develop improved journalistic training in journalism departments at two leading universities and to provide alternative sources of information to media outlets. The United States, through DRL also worked to train broadcast journalists to improve their capacity for investigative reporting. The U.S. Embassy and Consulates maintained an active dialogue with journalists and advocates for an improvement in their standards of journalism. Moreover, the Embassy regularly nominated journalists as participants in the State Department's annual International Visitors Program. Senior U.S. officials have regularly raised the need to respect press freedom with the Government and have raised specific, high-profile violations of press freedom and pressed for redress.
During the year, the United States concluded a multi-year assistance program to civil society organizations. Under this program, USAID provided assistance to train leading civil society organizations in effective advocacy tools and to organize dialogues with the Government on key policy issues. The program has greatly expanded civil society capacity and led to increased and regularized engagement with the Government.
The United States continued to encourage the Pakistani military to play an appropriate role in the emerging democratic set-up and to refrain from interference in domestic politics. Through the International Military Education and Training Program, the United States continued to provide emerging military leaders with professional development opportunities that emphasize the importance of improved civil-military relations and civilian control of the military. During the year, the United States continued a dual strategy to combat human rights violations by security forces, combining direct training with advocacy and victim assistance. The United States has worked with the National Police Academy and Police College Sihala to develop and implement new training curricula for law enforcement personnel. The curricula focus on criminal investigation techniques, strategic planning and law enforcement management. Courses incorporate elements that stress the rule of law and respect for human rights.
The United States continues to advocate for the elimination of discrimination against women and children. The United States has remained engaged with local women's rights NGOs and has provided support for their advocacy efforts to strengthen penalties for domestic violence and honor killings and to reform the discriminatory provisions of the nation's legal system. The United States, through DRL provided support to a U.S.-based NGO working with a local women’s organization in Pakistan to promote respect for international human rights norms and women’s rights advocacy amongst legal aid practitioners and human rights advocates. Local program partners are conducting training courses for lawyers, judges, civil society activists and other opinion makers to offer support to victims of human rights abuses. Partners are researching and tracking human rights abuses and creating a Human Rights Action Forum in collaboration with other human rights NGOs to further their advocacy efforts.
The United States has continued efforts to combat religious discrimination in Pakistan. The U.S. Embassy has pressed the Government to reform discriminatory legislation such as the so-called anti-Ahmadi laws and has encouraged its efforts to prevent abuse of the blasphemy laws. United States officials have spoken out against sectarian violence within the country’s Muslim community and urged the Government to continue its efforts to dismantle organizations responsible for such violence. The U.S. Embassy maintains close ties with the Christian, Ahmadi, Shi’a, and Hindu communities and raised cases of discrimination and violence against such groups with the Government. In addition, the Embassy has actively engaged with the country's religious leadership, advocating tolerance and promoting President Musharraf's vision of enlightened moderation. The United States continued cooperative efforts with the Government as part of the Global War on Terrorism to apprehend terrorist suspects and curtail the activities of terrorist groups. Pakistani law enforcement implicated such groups in sectarian and extremist violence against religious minorities by arresting a few of these perpetrators.
As part of its education program, USAID assisted the Government in its reform efforts and in school construction. The Federal Minister of Education, Javed Ashraf Qazi, vigorously promotes the philosophy of enlightened moderation. At a USAID sponsored education policy dialogue workshop with senior education officials he stated that "the root cause of terrorism in Pakistan is the lack of quality education." The Minister also challenged senior staff members to do away with irrationality and extremism and to modernize Pakistan’s curriculum for the benefit of the nation and its children.
Similarly, the United States maintained close contact with local NGOs working on behalf of children. During 2004, the Untied States continued to support the International Labor Organization's International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor in Pakistan. This project targets working children and children at risk of entering the work force by placing them in non-formal education centers to learn basic literacy and numeric skills with the goal of mainstreaming them into the government school sector. United States officials have continued to press for revision of labor legislation to ensure its compliance with international standards. During the year, the United States funded work with local labor unions to strengthen their ability to advocate effectively for increased labor rights and to protect workers' interests more ably.
During the year, the United States established a program to assist the Pakistani Government in combating trafficking in persons. This program utilizes a three-pronged approach emphasizing prevention, prosecution and protection of victims. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is concluding a U.S.-funded study on the nature and extent of the trafficking problem in Pakistan and has conducted a series of awareness-raising activities in collaboration with the Interior Ministry and local and provincial officials. With U.S. assistance, Pakistan has established a dedicated Anti-Trafficking Unit and finalized implementing regulations for its Anti-Trafficking Ordinance. The United States, IOM, and the Pakistani Government are finalizing the establishment of a model shelter to protect and assist victims of trafficking.
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Pakistan
Pakistan is a federal republic. President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, who assumed power following the military's 1999 overthrow of elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has repeatedly stated his intention to transform Pakistan into a moderate, democratic Muslim state. In December 2003, the National and Provincial Assemblies passed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which transferred a number of powers from the Office of Prime Minister to the President and exempted Musharraf from a prohibition on holding two offices of state until the end of the year, allowing him to remain as Chief of Army Staff. In October, over opposition protests, parliament passed another bill which extended this exemption until 2007. Local elections in 2000 and 2001 and national and provincial parliamentary elections in 2002 established functioning civilian legislatures. While domestic and international observers criticized the elections for being seriously flawed, the resulting bodies are beginning to engage in national political debate and are working to develop mechanisms to check the power of the executive. The Assembly has required senior civil servants to appear before committees to testify on government actions, and held hearings on the defense budget and military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Senate convened a special committee on Balochistan and produced a critical report on Okara Farms. The Government has committed that new local elections will be scheduled for 2005 and national elections to be held no later than 2007 will be free and fair. The United States will continue to encourage the Government to adhere to this commitment and will provide needed support. Both contests will be important indicators of the political will for democratization.
The Government's human rights record remained poor, although there were some improvements in several areas. Constitutional amendments passed by the Government have strengthened the powers of the President at the expense of the National Assembly. The military remains heavily engaged in politics, and President Musharraf's decision to continue as Chief of Army Staff has spurred political debate. Political parties are generally weak, undemocratic institutions centered on personalities instead of policies. The judiciary is corrupt, inefficient, and malleable to political pressure. Politically motivated prosecutions of opposition figures continue, as do concerns that opposition leaders or their parties are not always allowed to function freely. Leaders of three major parties remained outside the country, and the leader of one opposition party in parliament remained in prison appealing a conviction for sedition. Despite its increasing freedom, the media lacks journalistic standards and continues to practice self-censorship in some areas. Security forces have committed numerous human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings and torture. Societal discrimination and violence against women and religious minorities persist.
The Pakistani Government has over the last year increasingly opened the landscape for political debate. Opposition parties and civil society are beginning to criticize the Government and its policies, however, some political opposition leaders remained in prison or in exile abroad. While the Government has loosened restrictions on the right to assembly, it still denied permits or imposed restrictions on certain groups, such as the Ahmadis. Measures against terrorist and extremist groups advocating and perpetrating sectarian and religious violence have continued, as have efforts to reform the education system. The Government has passed new legislation to address honor killings and to prevent abuse of laws against blasphemy, adultery, and fornication. Human rights groups remained concerned that perpetrators of honor crimes, in a limited number of cases, could still be pardoned by the victim or heirs. Strategies to combat child labor and trafficking in persons have been accelerated in cooperation with international donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The United States believes that the success of Pakistan's democratization efforts is critical to the strength of our long term relationship and will positively contribute to its effective participation in the Global War on Terrorism. The U.S. strategy has focused on the promotion of free and fair local and national elections, the strengthening of the capacity of the National Assembly; democratization and institutional strengthening of political parties, improved local governments that are functioning and accountable, and increased respect for the rule of law, including professionalizing law enforcement personnel, and promoting an appropriate role for the military. Senior U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Powell underscored with the Pakistani leadership the need to press forward on democratization and to prepare the groundwork for free and fair parliamentary elections not later than 2007. United States officials also urged respect for human rights by security force personnel, improved legal and judicial systems, and continued actions to curtail the activities of extremist groups. In their public statements, both then Ambassador Powell and Ambassador Crocker stressed the importance the United States attaches to building a fully functioning democracy in Pakistan and the need to continue to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the rule of law.
On the human rights front, the United States continued to work with the Pakistani Government, civil society institutions, and international organizations to combat religious discrimination and violence, trafficking in persons, child labor and legalized discrimination against women. For example, when opposition leader Javed Hashmi was sentenced in April for sedition, the United States expressed concern with the closed nature of proceedings against him, and urged that the case be handled in a fair and transparent manner. In May, when the Government did not allow member of the opposition Shahbaz Sharif and brother of deposed former Prime Minister to enter Pakistan, the United States encouraged the Government to resolve the matter in a transparent manner, within the context of Pakistan’s legal system. The United States also urged the Government to release or charge journalists held in incommunicado detention.
The United States, through USAID is actively engaged in a multi-year strategy to strengthen Pakistani democratic institutions. Through its legislative strengthening program, the United States provides training to national and provincial parliamentarians that strengthens their secretariats and research capacity; helps to develop a functioning committee system; and promotes regular dialogue between constituents and civil society organizations.
Through its political party strengthening program launched in 2004, USAID worked with the leadership of all major political parties to train future political leaders in campaign finance, platform development and candidate selection. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) is complementing these efforts by working with the National Democratic Institute to train emerging female political party leaders and improve their capacity to campaign for elected office, serve the public as elected officials, and develop the local capacity of women political leaders to train other women members and elected officials. The United States continued to advocate for the adoption of internally democratic mechanisms in political parties as a way to promote greater government accountability. At the local level, USAID supported the National Reconstruction Bureau in establishing and strengthening local government institutions and encourages cooperation between communities, the private sector, and local governments through district grants.
The United States believes that the strengthening of media institutions and civil society is critical for the long-term development of Pakistani democracy. Under its media support program, USAID worked to develop improved journalistic training in journalism departments at two leading universities and to provide alternative sources of information to media outlets. The United States, through DRL also worked to train broadcast journalists to improve their capacity for investigative reporting. The U.S. Embassy and Consulates maintained an active dialogue with journalists and advocates for an improvement in their standards of journalism. Moreover, the Embassy regularly nominated journalists as participants in the State Department's annual International Visitors Program. Senior U.S. officials have regularly raised the need to respect press freedom with the Government and have raised specific, high-profile violations of press freedom and pressed for redress.
During the year, the United States concluded a multi-year assistance program to civil society organizations. Under this program, USAID provided assistance to train leading civil society organizations in effective advocacy tools and to organize dialogues with the Government on key policy issues. The program has greatly expanded civil society capacity and led to increased and regularized engagement with the Government.
The United States continued to encourage the Pakistani military to play an appropriate role in the emerging democratic set-up and to refrain from interference in domestic politics. Through the International Military Education and Training Program, the United States continued to provide emerging military leaders with professional development opportunities that emphasize the importance of improved civil-military relations and civilian control of the military. During the year, the United States continued a dual strategy to combat human rights violations by security forces, combining direct training with advocacy and victim assistance. The United States has worked with the National Police Academy and Police College Sihala to develop and implement new training curricula for law enforcement personnel. The curricula focus on criminal investigation techniques, strategic planning and law enforcement management. Courses incorporate elements that stress the rule of law and respect for human rights.
The United States continues to advocate for the elimination of discrimination against women and children. The United States has remained engaged with local women's rights NGOs and has provided support for their advocacy efforts to strengthen penalties for domestic violence and honor killings and to reform the discriminatory provisions of the nation's legal system. The United States, through DRL provided support to a U.S.-based NGO working with a local women’s organization in Pakistan to promote respect for international human rights norms and women’s rights advocacy amongst legal aid practitioners and human rights advocates. Local program partners are conducting training courses for lawyers, judges, civil society activists and other opinion makers to offer support to victims of human rights abuses. Partners are researching and tracking human rights abuses and creating a Human Rights Action Forum in collaboration with other human rights NGOs to further their advocacy efforts.
The United States has continued efforts to combat religious discrimination in Pakistan. The U.S. Embassy has pressed the Government to reform discriminatory legislation such as the so-called anti-Ahmadi laws and has encouraged its efforts to prevent abuse of the blasphemy laws. United States officials have spoken out against sectarian violence within the country’s Muslim community and urged the Government to continue its efforts to dismantle organizations responsible for such violence. The U.S. Embassy maintains close ties with the Christian, Ahmadi, Shi’a, and Hindu communities and raised cases of discrimination and violence against such groups with the Government. In addition, the Embassy has actively engaged with the country's religious leadership, advocating tolerance and promoting President Musharraf's vision of enlightened moderation. The United States continued cooperative efforts with the Government as part of the Global War on Terrorism to apprehend terrorist suspects and curtail the activities of terrorist groups. Pakistani law enforcement implicated such groups in sectarian and extremist violence against religious minorities by arresting a few of these perpetrators.
As part of its education program, USAID assisted the Government in its reform efforts and in school construction. The Federal Minister of Education, Javed Ashraf Qazi, vigorously promotes the philosophy of enlightened moderation. At a USAID sponsored education policy dialogue workshop with senior education officials he stated that "the root cause of terrorism in Pakistan is the lack of quality education." The Minister also challenged senior staff members to do away with irrationality and extremism and to modernize Pakistan’s curriculum for the benefit of the nation and its children.
Similarly, the United States maintained close contact with local NGOs working on behalf of children. During 2004, the Untied States continued to support the International Labor Organization's International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor in Pakistan. This project targets working children and children at risk of entering the work force by placing them in non-formal education centers to learn basic literacy and numeric skills with the goal of mainstreaming them into the government school sector. United States officials have continued to press for revision of labor legislation to ensure its compliance with international standards. During the year, the United States funded work with local labor unions to strengthen their ability to advocate effectively for increased labor rights and to protect workers' interests more ably.
During the year, the United States established a program to assist the Pakistani Government in combating trafficking in persons. This program utilizes a three-pronged approach emphasizing prevention, prosecution and protection of victims. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is concluding a U.S.-funded study on the nature and extent of the trafficking problem in Pakistan and has conducted a series of awareness-raising activities in collaboration with the Interior Ministry and local and provincial officials. With U.S. assistance, Pakistan has established a dedicated Anti-Trafficking Unit and finalized implementing regulations for its Anti-Trafficking Ordinance. The United States, IOM, and the Pakistani Government are finalizing the establishment of a model shelter to protect and assist victims of trafficking.
Questioning the F-16 deal
Daily Times, March 30, 2005
VIEW: Questioning the F-16 deal —Ahmad Faruqui
Someone with the job of convincing Congress that simultaneously selling F-16s to India and Pakistan is not a bad idea has come up with the argument that no two countries armed with F-16s have ever gone to war. One could use the same logic to sell nuclear weapons to every state
The Bush administration’s decision to sell 25 F-16s to Pakistan was balanced by its decision to offer India 125 upgraded F-16s or F-18s and broader cooperation in systems for military command and control, early-warning detection, and missile defence. Washington said it was creating “a decisively broader strategic relationship” with India that might even encompass the sale of nuclear power plants.
Even then, there was jubilation in Islamabad. In theory, the F-16 can prevent the intrusion of hostile aircraft into Pakistani territory, engage enemy army formations on the ground and carry out long-range offensive missions. It is one of the best multi-role combat aircraft in the world and 4,400 of them fly in two dozen air forces. They are even flown by the USAF aerobatics team, the Thunderbirds.
But everyone has a different interpretation of the F-16 deal with Pakistan. Commenting on the sale, Condi Rice said, “What we are trying to do is solidify and extend relations with both India and Pakistan... at a time when they have improving relationships with one another.”
Stephen P Cohen of the Brookings Institute argued that the deal would give Bush more influence in Pakistan. “This gives us leverage on Musharraf in pushing him in the direction of accommodation over Kashmir and other disputes,” Cohen said. Pakistan, he added, remained a top priority for Washington: “It’s got nuclear weapons, it’s in a critical part of the world, and we can’t afford to let it go down the drain.”
The chief of the PAF, Air Chief Marshal Saadat, saw it is as a symbolic victory that would help stem the tide of growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan. From day one, he said, Pakistan had been impressing upon the US government that by selling F-16s to Pakistan, the Americans would convince the Pakistani people of their sincerity. He said the number of the aircraft was irrelevant since “10, 15, 20 aircraft would not make a world of difference in our operational capability.”
But are the people of Pakistan that emotional? They know that war is a numbers game. True, the acquisition of 25 F-16s represents a boost of some 80 percent in the PAF’s current inventory of frontline aircraft, which is limited to 32 F-16s. The PAF is outnumbered by the Indian Air Force (IAF) by about 6:1 in the ratio of frontline aircraft, which include about 195 SU-30s, Mirage 2000s, MiG-29s and Jaguars.
But 25 F-16s will not make a dent in this adverse combat ratio. To place Pakistan’s deal in perspective, even the tiny nation of Bahrain has 22 F-16s in its inventory. Thailand has more than 50, Singapore has about 70, UAE 80, Taiwan 150, Turkey 240 and Israel 362.
A serious commitment by the US to Pakistan’s air defences would require the sale of a hundred aircraft. In the 1950s, the US sold Pakistan 120 F-86 Sabre aircraft, which were frontline fighters in those days. The 14 Starfighters that came later were a token. The small number of Mirage IIIE’s in Pakistan’s inventory during the 1971 war became a liability as the PAF ended up husbanding them rather than risking them in combat.
A total of 40 F-16s were inducted into the PAF between 1983-87, during which time Pakistan fought Washington’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. These deliveries comprised the A/B Block 15 variants equipped with short-range Sidewinder missiles. Through attrition and combat, the number is now down to 32 aircraft, flown by Squadrons 9 and 11. Incidentally, the Jordanian Air Force flies the same F-16s.
Pakistan ordered 71 copies of the advanced C/D derivative in the late 1980s/early1990s. The aircraft were expected to cost about $25 million a piece but the Pressler Amendment blocked their delivery. By the end of 1994, 17 of these planes had been built and were placed in storage. The rest were never produced.
Pakistan, which had already paid $685 million on the contract for the first 28 F-16s, insisted on either having the planes delivered or getting its money back. It is unclear what happened. There are rumours that the US has now paid varying amounts back to Pakistan in cash and in kind (white wheat).
In the mean time, the PAF was forced to deploy the F-7P, a Chinese variant of the Soviet MiG-21 and a decidedly inferior to the F-16. The PAF also operates some 185 F-7s equipped with the Sidewinder missile.
The F-16 deal raises five questions. First, why has Washington changed its mind about supplying F-16s to Pakistan? As noted by Cohen, it has pegged Pakistan as a state with nuclear weapons that is brimming with jihadis and a rogue scientist nuclear proliferation network. Only the military can keep the baddies in check. India, on the other hand, is the world’s largest democracy and an enlightened state. It has been charged with keeping the Chinese in check, in a replay of the post 1962 India-China war strategy on a grander scale.
Second, against whom will the planes will be used and for what purpose? They cannot be used to fight non-state actors like Al Qaida. And since Pakistan has no external enemies anymore, to quote General Musharraf, they are not needed against India.
Third, should there be another India-Pakistan war, will America not impose an arms embargo on the belligerents, as it did in 1965? This will hardly affect India, which has a domestic production capability, but it will cripple Pakistan’s war-fighting capability.
Fourth, who will gain from the sale of the F-16s? Clearly, Lockheed Martin that builds the plane in Texas. And, of course, the military rulers of Pakistan who can claim that they have negotiated a strategic breakthrough with the Americans. Fifth, who will lose from it? The people of Pakistan, for whom the prospect of democracy has been pushed further off in the future. Millions will go hungry to bed and remain illiterate since their government thought it better to spend $60 million a copy on the F-16s.
The people of South Asia are the losers as well, now that the India-Pakistan arms race has been rekindled with gusto. China will step up its military modernisation programme, creating more pressures on everyone.
Someone with the job of convincing Congress that simultaneously selling F-16s to India and Pakistan is not a bad idea has come up with the gratuitous argument that no two countries armed with F-16s have ever gone to war. One could use the same logic to sell nuclear weapons to every state, since no two nuclear-armed states have ever gone to war.
Dr Ahmad Faruqui is an economist and author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net
VIEW: Questioning the F-16 deal —Ahmad Faruqui
Someone with the job of convincing Congress that simultaneously selling F-16s to India and Pakistan is not a bad idea has come up with the argument that no two countries armed with F-16s have ever gone to war. One could use the same logic to sell nuclear weapons to every state
The Bush administration’s decision to sell 25 F-16s to Pakistan was balanced by its decision to offer India 125 upgraded F-16s or F-18s and broader cooperation in systems for military command and control, early-warning detection, and missile defence. Washington said it was creating “a decisively broader strategic relationship” with India that might even encompass the sale of nuclear power plants.
Even then, there was jubilation in Islamabad. In theory, the F-16 can prevent the intrusion of hostile aircraft into Pakistani territory, engage enemy army formations on the ground and carry out long-range offensive missions. It is one of the best multi-role combat aircraft in the world and 4,400 of them fly in two dozen air forces. They are even flown by the USAF aerobatics team, the Thunderbirds.
But everyone has a different interpretation of the F-16 deal with Pakistan. Commenting on the sale, Condi Rice said, “What we are trying to do is solidify and extend relations with both India and Pakistan... at a time when they have improving relationships with one another.”
Stephen P Cohen of the Brookings Institute argued that the deal would give Bush more influence in Pakistan. “This gives us leverage on Musharraf in pushing him in the direction of accommodation over Kashmir and other disputes,” Cohen said. Pakistan, he added, remained a top priority for Washington: “It’s got nuclear weapons, it’s in a critical part of the world, and we can’t afford to let it go down the drain.”
The chief of the PAF, Air Chief Marshal Saadat, saw it is as a symbolic victory that would help stem the tide of growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan. From day one, he said, Pakistan had been impressing upon the US government that by selling F-16s to Pakistan, the Americans would convince the Pakistani people of their sincerity. He said the number of the aircraft was irrelevant since “10, 15, 20 aircraft would not make a world of difference in our operational capability.”
But are the people of Pakistan that emotional? They know that war is a numbers game. True, the acquisition of 25 F-16s represents a boost of some 80 percent in the PAF’s current inventory of frontline aircraft, which is limited to 32 F-16s. The PAF is outnumbered by the Indian Air Force (IAF) by about 6:1 in the ratio of frontline aircraft, which include about 195 SU-30s, Mirage 2000s, MiG-29s and Jaguars.
But 25 F-16s will not make a dent in this adverse combat ratio. To place Pakistan’s deal in perspective, even the tiny nation of Bahrain has 22 F-16s in its inventory. Thailand has more than 50, Singapore has about 70, UAE 80, Taiwan 150, Turkey 240 and Israel 362.
A serious commitment by the US to Pakistan’s air defences would require the sale of a hundred aircraft. In the 1950s, the US sold Pakistan 120 F-86 Sabre aircraft, which were frontline fighters in those days. The 14 Starfighters that came later were a token. The small number of Mirage IIIE’s in Pakistan’s inventory during the 1971 war became a liability as the PAF ended up husbanding them rather than risking them in combat.
A total of 40 F-16s were inducted into the PAF between 1983-87, during which time Pakistan fought Washington’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. These deliveries comprised the A/B Block 15 variants equipped with short-range Sidewinder missiles. Through attrition and combat, the number is now down to 32 aircraft, flown by Squadrons 9 and 11. Incidentally, the Jordanian Air Force flies the same F-16s.
Pakistan ordered 71 copies of the advanced C/D derivative in the late 1980s/early1990s. The aircraft were expected to cost about $25 million a piece but the Pressler Amendment blocked their delivery. By the end of 1994, 17 of these planes had been built and were placed in storage. The rest were never produced.
Pakistan, which had already paid $685 million on the contract for the first 28 F-16s, insisted on either having the planes delivered or getting its money back. It is unclear what happened. There are rumours that the US has now paid varying amounts back to Pakistan in cash and in kind (white wheat).
In the mean time, the PAF was forced to deploy the F-7P, a Chinese variant of the Soviet MiG-21 and a decidedly inferior to the F-16. The PAF also operates some 185 F-7s equipped with the Sidewinder missile.
The F-16 deal raises five questions. First, why has Washington changed its mind about supplying F-16s to Pakistan? As noted by Cohen, it has pegged Pakistan as a state with nuclear weapons that is brimming with jihadis and a rogue scientist nuclear proliferation network. Only the military can keep the baddies in check. India, on the other hand, is the world’s largest democracy and an enlightened state. It has been charged with keeping the Chinese in check, in a replay of the post 1962 India-China war strategy on a grander scale.
Second, against whom will the planes will be used and for what purpose? They cannot be used to fight non-state actors like Al Qaida. And since Pakistan has no external enemies anymore, to quote General Musharraf, they are not needed against India.
Third, should there be another India-Pakistan war, will America not impose an arms embargo on the belligerents, as it did in 1965? This will hardly affect India, which has a domestic production capability, but it will cripple Pakistan’s war-fighting capability.
Fourth, who will gain from the sale of the F-16s? Clearly, Lockheed Martin that builds the plane in Texas. And, of course, the military rulers of Pakistan who can claim that they have negotiated a strategic breakthrough with the Americans. Fifth, who will lose from it? The people of Pakistan, for whom the prospect of democracy has been pushed further off in the future. Millions will go hungry to bed and remain illiterate since their government thought it better to spend $60 million a copy on the F-16s.
The people of South Asia are the losers as well, now that the India-Pakistan arms race has been rekindled with gusto. China will step up its military modernisation programme, creating more pressures on everyone.
Someone with the job of convincing Congress that simultaneously selling F-16s to India and Pakistan is not a bad idea has come up with the gratuitous argument that no two countries armed with F-16s have ever gone to war. One could use the same logic to sell nuclear weapons to every state, since no two nuclear-armed states have ever gone to war.
Dr Ahmad Faruqui is an economist and author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net
Simple facts about Balochistan's state of unrest
The News, March 30, 2005
PLAIN WORDS
Simple facts about Balochistan's state of unrest
M B Naqvi
The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist.
Many explanations are being offered for the Balochistan situation, some of them commendable. Most such efforts are, however, partisan and not free from their own spin. A simple political geography of Balochistan, seen objectively, should provide a balanced perspective.
Let's begin with what has been grabbing the headlines first: trouble in Sui and Dera Bugti. The March 17 clash in which 10 soldiers and allegedly as many as 60 civilians died and many more injured was a major tragedy. Damage to property in Dera Bugti was, in view of general poverty of its populace, considerable. That was supposedly the retaliation to what the Bugtis had done in menacingly surrounding the Frontier Constabulary's camp -- housing some 300 soldiers who were being supplied by air. This action and an ambush of LEAs were in retaliation to what the FC had done to protesting tribesmen, angered by the gang rape inside the hospital run by the gas company in its Sui installations.
In addition, there is a regular campaign of sabotage and ambush while bomb blasts continue in many places. A shoddy Balochistan Liberation Army is claiming credit for the attacks on infrastructure -- railway tracks, gas pipelines and governmental symbols. Trouble in Sui and Dera Bugti is not an isolated event, sparked either by the rape incident or by the revolt of Sardar Akbar Bugti. The situation on the whole is one of a slow burning of the fuse of a Baloch nationalist revolt, with occasional spectacular flare-ups like the Dera Bugti one. Such incidents are symptomatic. The central reality of a nationalist struggle, at the end of its tether, must be grasped.
To continue with the map of Balochistan politics, the second major force is extreme Islamicist forces; they comprise, in addition to many militant Islamic outfits, various jihadists who participated in the two Afghan jihads, viz. of 1980s. After 1992, various jihadi organisations that waged jihad in the Indian controlled Kashmir. There are, of course, Taliban and their protectors. These forces include religiously oriented political parties, now constituting MMA, especially JUI with its splinters that provide a broad-spectrum political cover to all these jihadists. Contrary to the normal view of Pakistan politics that Islamicist parties were no more than of marginal importance, they now control one third of the parliament and two out of four provincial governments. They have to be taken seriously, more so for the future because of the 2002 poll results.
The obvious significance of this force is the presence of Taliban in fairly large numbers that led the American ambassador to Afghanistan and the top US general there to complain publicly that President Musharraf is not showing equal diligence in arresting or killing Taliban, mainly in Balochistan. And that he is displaying regard to al-Qaeda fugitives. But for Pakistanis, there are more worrying facets of this force.
The first, and hopefully temporary facet, is the interpenetration of these Islamicists with the Pakistan Army, especially its intelligence agencies; anyone can make the connection. If there are so many Taliban in Pakistan and the Army has not done to them what it has done to al Qaeda, an obvious conclusion follows. Either it has strong sympathies with Taliban or it is afraid of the reaction of their friends and protectors. The controllers of Pakistan's policy may wish to retain the option to reactivate the jihad in Kashmir when necessary, but they would scarcely want to decimate their old and would-be recruits.
The jihadists' ideological physiognomy is relevant. They may have originated in the Deobandi seminaries (being an offspring of JUI) but have sharply veered from the historical legacy of Deoband's Darul Uloom: in pre-independence India Shia-Sunni riots never involved Deobandi Sunnis. In Pakistan one face of all these jihadis is their intense hatred of Shias. The same person can in one phase be a Taliban and in another be a freedom fighter in Kashmir and in yet another phase be a sectarian terrorist. Also, the post-Zia Army's and Jamaat-e-Islami's ideological contributions have gone into the making of their current political philosophy.
Some point out the strange phenomenon of the current riches of Islamicist parties; to all appearances money is no problem for any religious party or leader. Earlier there was an easy explanation: ample funding from American CIA and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Libya etc. But that phase ended by about 1990, though some may still be coming from the Arab sources. After 2001 the Americans have not, for some odd reason, focused on the funding of MMA parties' and their spiritual offsprings who have escaped all serious scrutiny. That is strange and needs study. One big rally today costs two to three crore rupees. Where are their billions coming from? From the measly contributions of their members?
In the Balochistan context, it is necessary to note two or three circumstances. Balochistan is an arid desert with a sparse, extraordinarily poor population. But there are also some extraordinarily rich individuals. The mainstay of the province's economy is patches of agriculture and fruit growing, some minerals -- sparsely exploited, except of course the natural gas. But smuggling, narcotics and gun running trades, with Afghanistan and NWFP connections, have flourished and generated a lot of money. The profits from heroin and cannabis trades are massive: western estimates are $3 to 4 billion, pocketed largely by a small number of the politically important individuals. Could it be that these super-rich buy respectability here as well as the prospect of lenient treatment from the Almighty on the Day of Judgement, if they fund Islamicists?
The third major force in Balochistan is of course the Pakistan state that operates largely through the army and paramilitary forces. It has both money and overwhelming force. From the viewpoint of an ordinary Baloch, this state takes from him too many (indirect) taxes but delivers -- what? Its record in establishing schools, hospitals and providing jobs in Balochistan is worse than that in any other province. It just shows a stern face. It has left large swathes of territories to be governed at the tribal Sardars' will; the human rights of these people are not equal to those in Punjab or Sindh.
This state has never bothered to develop the area despite its resources; if the poor have no realistic prospect of finding a job, who should take the rap? Authority has deliberately neglected and occasionally it propagates against the Sardars, while the fact is that this pre-independence arrangement has been carefully preserved as a matter of policy. Why? Is it because bureaucracy has more opportunities to do, as it will without any accountability?
One fact needs underlining: the province has been neglected while some improvements are visible elsewhere. Given its clear-cut ethnic identities, different from a non-democratic Centre where all power, money and authority resides, is it strange that nationalism, conscious of injustices done to it, has arisen?
Once this is grasped, what is to be expected is the working out of the dynamic of a deprived nationality's struggle -- with its ups and downs -- for attaining power for itself. How much power do they want to reorder their lives, much will depend on how central authorities handle the issue now. Watching Islamabad's past and current mindset -- reliance on a clever half tactic of stern military action followed by sweet talk with some money to go on buying time for the status quo -- is profoundly distressing.
Email: mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk
PLAIN WORDS
Simple facts about Balochistan's state of unrest
M B Naqvi
The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist.
Many explanations are being offered for the Balochistan situation, some of them commendable. Most such efforts are, however, partisan and not free from their own spin. A simple political geography of Balochistan, seen objectively, should provide a balanced perspective.
Let's begin with what has been grabbing the headlines first: trouble in Sui and Dera Bugti. The March 17 clash in which 10 soldiers and allegedly as many as 60 civilians died and many more injured was a major tragedy. Damage to property in Dera Bugti was, in view of general poverty of its populace, considerable. That was supposedly the retaliation to what the Bugtis had done in menacingly surrounding the Frontier Constabulary's camp -- housing some 300 soldiers who were being supplied by air. This action and an ambush of LEAs were in retaliation to what the FC had done to protesting tribesmen, angered by the gang rape inside the hospital run by the gas company in its Sui installations.
In addition, there is a regular campaign of sabotage and ambush while bomb blasts continue in many places. A shoddy Balochistan Liberation Army is claiming credit for the attacks on infrastructure -- railway tracks, gas pipelines and governmental symbols. Trouble in Sui and Dera Bugti is not an isolated event, sparked either by the rape incident or by the revolt of Sardar Akbar Bugti. The situation on the whole is one of a slow burning of the fuse of a Baloch nationalist revolt, with occasional spectacular flare-ups like the Dera Bugti one. Such incidents are symptomatic. The central reality of a nationalist struggle, at the end of its tether, must be grasped.
To continue with the map of Balochistan politics, the second major force is extreme Islamicist forces; they comprise, in addition to many militant Islamic outfits, various jihadists who participated in the two Afghan jihads, viz. of 1980s. After 1992, various jihadi organisations that waged jihad in the Indian controlled Kashmir. There are, of course, Taliban and their protectors. These forces include religiously oriented political parties, now constituting MMA, especially JUI with its splinters that provide a broad-spectrum political cover to all these jihadists. Contrary to the normal view of Pakistan politics that Islamicist parties were no more than of marginal importance, they now control one third of the parliament and two out of four provincial governments. They have to be taken seriously, more so for the future because of the 2002 poll results.
The obvious significance of this force is the presence of Taliban in fairly large numbers that led the American ambassador to Afghanistan and the top US general there to complain publicly that President Musharraf is not showing equal diligence in arresting or killing Taliban, mainly in Balochistan. And that he is displaying regard to al-Qaeda fugitives. But for Pakistanis, there are more worrying facets of this force.
The first, and hopefully temporary facet, is the interpenetration of these Islamicists with the Pakistan Army, especially its intelligence agencies; anyone can make the connection. If there are so many Taliban in Pakistan and the Army has not done to them what it has done to al Qaeda, an obvious conclusion follows. Either it has strong sympathies with Taliban or it is afraid of the reaction of their friends and protectors. The controllers of Pakistan's policy may wish to retain the option to reactivate the jihad in Kashmir when necessary, but they would scarcely want to decimate their old and would-be recruits.
The jihadists' ideological physiognomy is relevant. They may have originated in the Deobandi seminaries (being an offspring of JUI) but have sharply veered from the historical legacy of Deoband's Darul Uloom: in pre-independence India Shia-Sunni riots never involved Deobandi Sunnis. In Pakistan one face of all these jihadis is their intense hatred of Shias. The same person can in one phase be a Taliban and in another be a freedom fighter in Kashmir and in yet another phase be a sectarian terrorist. Also, the post-Zia Army's and Jamaat-e-Islami's ideological contributions have gone into the making of their current political philosophy.
Some point out the strange phenomenon of the current riches of Islamicist parties; to all appearances money is no problem for any religious party or leader. Earlier there was an easy explanation: ample funding from American CIA and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Libya etc. But that phase ended by about 1990, though some may still be coming from the Arab sources. After 2001 the Americans have not, for some odd reason, focused on the funding of MMA parties' and their spiritual offsprings who have escaped all serious scrutiny. That is strange and needs study. One big rally today costs two to three crore rupees. Where are their billions coming from? From the measly contributions of their members?
In the Balochistan context, it is necessary to note two or three circumstances. Balochistan is an arid desert with a sparse, extraordinarily poor population. But there are also some extraordinarily rich individuals. The mainstay of the province's economy is patches of agriculture and fruit growing, some minerals -- sparsely exploited, except of course the natural gas. But smuggling, narcotics and gun running trades, with Afghanistan and NWFP connections, have flourished and generated a lot of money. The profits from heroin and cannabis trades are massive: western estimates are $3 to 4 billion, pocketed largely by a small number of the politically important individuals. Could it be that these super-rich buy respectability here as well as the prospect of lenient treatment from the Almighty on the Day of Judgement, if they fund Islamicists?
The third major force in Balochistan is of course the Pakistan state that operates largely through the army and paramilitary forces. It has both money and overwhelming force. From the viewpoint of an ordinary Baloch, this state takes from him too many (indirect) taxes but delivers -- what? Its record in establishing schools, hospitals and providing jobs in Balochistan is worse than that in any other province. It just shows a stern face. It has left large swathes of territories to be governed at the tribal Sardars' will; the human rights of these people are not equal to those in Punjab or Sindh.
This state has never bothered to develop the area despite its resources; if the poor have no realistic prospect of finding a job, who should take the rap? Authority has deliberately neglected and occasionally it propagates against the Sardars, while the fact is that this pre-independence arrangement has been carefully preserved as a matter of policy. Why? Is it because bureaucracy has more opportunities to do, as it will without any accountability?
One fact needs underlining: the province has been neglected while some improvements are visible elsewhere. Given its clear-cut ethnic identities, different from a non-democratic Centre where all power, money and authority resides, is it strange that nationalism, conscious of injustices done to it, has arisen?
Once this is grasped, what is to be expected is the working out of the dynamic of a deprived nationality's struggle -- with its ups and downs -- for attaining power for itself. How much power do they want to reorder their lives, much will depend on how central authorities handle the issue now. Watching Islamabad's past and current mindset -- reliance on a clever half tactic of stern military action followed by sweet talk with some money to go on buying time for the status quo -- is profoundly distressing.
Email: mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk
Monday, March 28, 2005
'US had detention centres in Pakistan'
Dawn, March 29, 2005
'US had detention centres in Pakistan'
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, March 28: The United States has secretly operated several detention facilities in Pakistan where suspected terrorists were kept before being transferred to prison camps in Cuba and other places, reports Human Rights First.
Quoting from recently released government documents, the US-based rights group reports that most of these detentions facilities were operated along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
A document summarizing the findings of a US Army criminal investigation, which was provided to Human Rights First under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that US forces were holding suspects at a secret facility in Peshawar through at least July 2002.
Besides Peshawar, the United States also maintained detention facilities at Kohat and Alizai. Although reports in the US media have often mentioned these two facilities, the US administration has never denied their existence.
"This new information (about the US detention centre in Peshawar) raises questions about how far reaching the US programme of secret detentions has been in Pakistan and continues to be," said Priti Patel, an attorney with Human Rights First.
'US had detention centres in Pakistan'
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, March 28: The United States has secretly operated several detention facilities in Pakistan where suspected terrorists were kept before being transferred to prison camps in Cuba and other places, reports Human Rights First.
Quoting from recently released government documents, the US-based rights group reports that most of these detentions facilities were operated along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
A document summarizing the findings of a US Army criminal investigation, which was provided to Human Rights First under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that US forces were holding suspects at a secret facility in Peshawar through at least July 2002.
Besides Peshawar, the United States also maintained detention facilities at Kohat and Alizai. Although reports in the US media have often mentioned these two facilities, the US administration has never denied their existence.
"This new information (about the US detention centre in Peshawar) raises questions about how far reaching the US programme of secret detentions has been in Pakistan and continues to be," said Priti Patel, an attorney with Human Rights First.
Betrayal Over and Over Again
Daily Times
March 29, 2005
VIEW: Betrayal over and over again —Arifa Noor
The media wasn’t far behind. In their eagerness to disallow a cover-up they positively identified the victim. In the righteous enthusiasm for the ‘cause’, every one forgot the victim’s rights. We were so busy protesting the attempt at cover-up that we forgot that the public declamations on rape constituted a rape of sorts
A few years ago Hollywood produced a film, The General’s Daughter. It focused on the rape of a woman officer in the US army to highlight discrimination against women in the US military. The gang-rape in the film was brutal but covered up with remarkable ease. The only victim, the raped woman, pretty much becomes a psychological case and — till her murder — an embarrassment for her father and the army.
I remember particularly vividly the scene where the investigator trying to uncover the facts of the crime and the subsequent events asks a close friend of the raped woman. “What could be worse than rape?” The answer, theatrical and affected in true Hollywood style, is “Betrayal”.
It stuck in my mind because it was kitschy and corny in the way that only Hollywood is. But Hollywood apparently is not a patch on real life.
The rape in Sui, Balochistan, too, unfolded like a predictable and hackneyed film — a rape followed by betrayal.
A young woman is raped in a state-owned facility guarded by the army — the only institution trusted to run the affairs of the country. She is sedated, discouraged from contacting her relatives and surreptitiously flown to Karachi where she is admitted to a mental hospital. The police in Sui are forcibly prevented from investigating. Is it too hard imagining a scene similar to the one from The General’s Daughter at the PPL offices? The camera zooms in through a window to an ill-lit room in the middle of a stormy night. Inside, a group of men, senior officials, agree to brush the incident under the carpet — to protect the reputation of an institution.
From here one, however, the two stories diverge. Unlike Hollywood films, politics in Pakistan does not always follow approved scripts. The cover-up, it seemed initially, was not going to be easy. But those who took up cudgels on behalf of the raped woman had more at heart than her interest or that of justice. The people and the leaders who first took up arms against suspected oppressors soon forgot the woman. The focus shifted to their own grievances.
Others joined them in expressing outrage at the cover-up. The democracy-lovers found the ‘shameful’ act a convenient stick to beat the military dictator with. The opposition parties also went to town.
The media wasn’t far behind. In their eagerness to disallow a cover-up they positively identified the victim. In the righteous enthusiasm for the ‘cause’, every one forgot the victim’s rights. We were so busy protesting the attempt at cover-up that we forgot that the public declamations on rape constituted a rape of sorts.
They say that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. In the last couple of months it was one woman in Pakistan.
And what about the state — the elephant that prevailed? While it claimed to have taken the principal suspect into custody, the president of the country himself proclaimed his (the suspect’s) innocence. Did any one really expect the official investigations to reveal anything after that? When the script is written and the film directed by the armed forces, its triteness is foregone. The moments where the story appears to stray from the beaten path are few and far between. Like a B-grade murder mystery that sustains interest by more murders, we were to witness one more rape in the finale.
It came in the form of the report of the inquiry tribunal set up to look into the incident. It held the raped woman to be negligent — as guilty possibly as the individuals and the institutions that tried to cover up the crime. While the entire world believed that the woman had not been allowed to reveal the rape and prevented even from contacting her family, the report concluded differently. Apparently this conclusion was sufficient. Why try to find clues to the culprits? Why try even to fix responsibility for the negligence that gave the rapist his chance? Perhaps the director deemed it unnecessary. There wasn’t even an attempt at a cover-up!
How would Hollywood categorise this? As a rape or a betrayal? An irrelevant question as the final betrayal was yet to come. The victim left the country — aided purportedly by some NGO — in the dead of night. Even the Sharifs had not left so anonymously and ignominiously. No government official saw her off or considered it necessary to meet her. Perhaps they were all busy trying to provide succour to another raped woman, Mukhtar Mai.
The end came a bit abruptly. Since then no one has said anything and no questions have been asked. The silence is deafening if one would just care to listen. Will Hollywood films still seem far-fetched? Only because they insist on ‘justice done’ endings?
The writer is a staff member
March 29, 2005
VIEW: Betrayal over and over again —Arifa Noor
The media wasn’t far behind. In their eagerness to disallow a cover-up they positively identified the victim. In the righteous enthusiasm for the ‘cause’, every one forgot the victim’s rights. We were so busy protesting the attempt at cover-up that we forgot that the public declamations on rape constituted a rape of sorts
A few years ago Hollywood produced a film, The General’s Daughter. It focused on the rape of a woman officer in the US army to highlight discrimination against women in the US military. The gang-rape in the film was brutal but covered up with remarkable ease. The only victim, the raped woman, pretty much becomes a psychological case and — till her murder — an embarrassment for her father and the army.
I remember particularly vividly the scene where the investigator trying to uncover the facts of the crime and the subsequent events asks a close friend of the raped woman. “What could be worse than rape?” The answer, theatrical and affected in true Hollywood style, is “Betrayal”.
It stuck in my mind because it was kitschy and corny in the way that only Hollywood is. But Hollywood apparently is not a patch on real life.
The rape in Sui, Balochistan, too, unfolded like a predictable and hackneyed film — a rape followed by betrayal.
A young woman is raped in a state-owned facility guarded by the army — the only institution trusted to run the affairs of the country. She is sedated, discouraged from contacting her relatives and surreptitiously flown to Karachi where she is admitted to a mental hospital. The police in Sui are forcibly prevented from investigating. Is it too hard imagining a scene similar to the one from The General’s Daughter at the PPL offices? The camera zooms in through a window to an ill-lit room in the middle of a stormy night. Inside, a group of men, senior officials, agree to brush the incident under the carpet — to protect the reputation of an institution.
From here one, however, the two stories diverge. Unlike Hollywood films, politics in Pakistan does not always follow approved scripts. The cover-up, it seemed initially, was not going to be easy. But those who took up cudgels on behalf of the raped woman had more at heart than her interest or that of justice. The people and the leaders who first took up arms against suspected oppressors soon forgot the woman. The focus shifted to their own grievances.
Others joined them in expressing outrage at the cover-up. The democracy-lovers found the ‘shameful’ act a convenient stick to beat the military dictator with. The opposition parties also went to town.
The media wasn’t far behind. In their eagerness to disallow a cover-up they positively identified the victim. In the righteous enthusiasm for the ‘cause’, every one forgot the victim’s rights. We were so busy protesting the attempt at cover-up that we forgot that the public declamations on rape constituted a rape of sorts.
They say that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. In the last couple of months it was one woman in Pakistan.
And what about the state — the elephant that prevailed? While it claimed to have taken the principal suspect into custody, the president of the country himself proclaimed his (the suspect’s) innocence. Did any one really expect the official investigations to reveal anything after that? When the script is written and the film directed by the armed forces, its triteness is foregone. The moments where the story appears to stray from the beaten path are few and far between. Like a B-grade murder mystery that sustains interest by more murders, we were to witness one more rape in the finale.
It came in the form of the report of the inquiry tribunal set up to look into the incident. It held the raped woman to be negligent — as guilty possibly as the individuals and the institutions that tried to cover up the crime. While the entire world believed that the woman had not been allowed to reveal the rape and prevented even from contacting her family, the report concluded differently. Apparently this conclusion was sufficient. Why try to find clues to the culprits? Why try even to fix responsibility for the negligence that gave the rapist his chance? Perhaps the director deemed it unnecessary. There wasn’t even an attempt at a cover-up!
How would Hollywood categorise this? As a rape or a betrayal? An irrelevant question as the final betrayal was yet to come. The victim left the country — aided purportedly by some NGO — in the dead of night. Even the Sharifs had not left so anonymously and ignominiously. No government official saw her off or considered it necessary to meet her. Perhaps they were all busy trying to provide succour to another raped woman, Mukhtar Mai.
The end came a bit abruptly. Since then no one has said anything and no questions have been asked. The silence is deafening if one would just care to listen. Will Hollywood films still seem far-fetched? Only because they insist on ‘justice done’ endings?
The writer is a staff member
Kashmir: The paradise lost
Nation, Lahore
March 28, 2005
The paradise lost
By Ghulam Farooq Lone
For the last five decades, the Kashmiris have been demand-ing their right of self-determination by peaceful means. But in return, the government of India let loose a reign of terror, whereby thousands of people have been killed, injured and tortured. The atrocities like torture, rape, confinement, arson, loot, custodial deaths, inhuman and degrading treatment, killings, etc., committed by Indian forces have not quelled the general uprising in favour of independence from the Indian occupation.
The children of the valley appear to be the most affected class by the ongoing violence. Children constitute about 38 percent of J&K’s population. Out of these six percent children are either orphans, destitute or neglected ones, whose basic needs go unfulfilled. The right to development of such children calls for meeting basic needs for protection, health care, food and education as well as love and affection, security, learning through exploration and safe environment. A child’s family is a primary institution for their development.
Due to increasing number of orphans in the state and alarming situation prevailing, one has to think seriously over the rights, protection and liberties of orphans. Children have been tortured and ill-treated by the Indian law enforcement agencies. Their parents were killed during the ongoing turmoil and they are the victims of circumstances.
The majority of orphans are children of civilians systematically slaughtered by the Indian army or caught in crossfire. UNICEF study (The impact of armed conflict on children) supports this. Accordingly in recent decade the proportion of war victims who are civilians has jumped dramatically from 5 to over 90 percent. The number of those children killed in crossfire is less than those whose parents have been killed by any of the agencies.
The state’s response to the orphan problems is a relief package under which the family of each killed would receive Rs 1 lakh as ex-gratia relief. More so, there are plans to provide monthly assistance to widows above 40 years of age.
Remarriage of the younger ones and educational schemes for the children but only those children are eligible for these relief packages who can produce non-involvement certificate from the state police absolving that their parents were not associated with any militancy and this rules out many orphans created by the security forces. But even for the rest, the children of innocent civilians, the relief is a mirage today.
No compensation has been paid out in the last one and a half years due to non-availability of funds and no new cases are registered. Even the backlogs, some as far back as 1992, have been kept pending. In the year 1999 all the Deputy Commissioners of the state were assigned the survey of militancy hit victims in their respective districts but till date nothing was done.
In a land where gun is the law and molestation and rape are common, a widow is more worried about seeing her orphan daughters married of safely, but being an orphan it carries its own social stigma in Kashmir. In Kashmir, every one knows that everything can happen at any time. The orphanage run by the NGOs and other agencies, has also been raided by the security forces and the orphans have not been spared. Many children are missing and have disappeared in the situation of conflict.
Thousands of orphans are being exploited, particularly the girl orphans, even by their relatives. The number of orphans is increasing day by day and in this behalf, some two years ago, a survey was conducted by an NGO J&K Yatteem Trust Srinagar, and it was found that during past 10 years, the number of orphans has gone to 15,000, district Kupwara (border district). Of around 100,000 children orphaned by the current crisis, most are forced to fend for themselves as child labours.
To cope with the alarming situation of orphans in the state, it needs peaceful atmosphere, bulk of funds and long term projects. Community based awareness should be launched and community based participation for social action is also the need of the time.
The neglected orphans demand immediate rehabilitation and help. Prior to the ongoing turmoil in Kashmir there was only one orphanage in the valley run by an NGO and only two homes run by the social welfare department. Now the Indian occupied Kashmir has more orphanages and Bal Ashrams, which caters to only 800 orphans out of 15,000 identified destitute orphans.
The facility is extremely inadequate. Indian government owes certain duties towards this class of society which has got certain rights, as the rights of the children have been recognised at the international level, such as Universal Children Day 1959, international year of the child 1979, and the UN conceptions on the rights of the child 1998.
All over India, it appears that there are 30,000 NGOs working for women and children, but unfortunately no one has come forward with special or certain programmes for these neglected orphans of Kashmir. The state as well as the Indian Central Government is not serious about the problem.
The government institution’s role along with the civil society is very important in protecting the child from deprivation of childhood experience. From the ongoing Kashmir conflict the children should be declared as peace zone chapter. Indian government should make mandatory on its security agencies to discriminate children, women and old ones from the adults while conducting their operations.
The Kashmiri child has also developed some psychological problems as they are deeply traumatised and frightened of the Indian security forces, who kill their parents before their eyes. Chronic violence and stress – can result in aggression. Since the children in Kashmir have not experienced peace and are exposed to chronic violence, they are more likely to be violent.
March 28, 2005
The paradise lost
By Ghulam Farooq Lone
For the last five decades, the Kashmiris have been demand-ing their right of self-determination by peaceful means. But in return, the government of India let loose a reign of terror, whereby thousands of people have been killed, injured and tortured. The atrocities like torture, rape, confinement, arson, loot, custodial deaths, inhuman and degrading treatment, killings, etc., committed by Indian forces have not quelled the general uprising in favour of independence from the Indian occupation.
The children of the valley appear to be the most affected class by the ongoing violence. Children constitute about 38 percent of J&K’s population. Out of these six percent children are either orphans, destitute or neglected ones, whose basic needs go unfulfilled. The right to development of such children calls for meeting basic needs for protection, health care, food and education as well as love and affection, security, learning through exploration and safe environment. A child’s family is a primary institution for their development.
Due to increasing number of orphans in the state and alarming situation prevailing, one has to think seriously over the rights, protection and liberties of orphans. Children have been tortured and ill-treated by the Indian law enforcement agencies. Their parents were killed during the ongoing turmoil and they are the victims of circumstances.
The majority of orphans are children of civilians systematically slaughtered by the Indian army or caught in crossfire. UNICEF study (The impact of armed conflict on children) supports this. Accordingly in recent decade the proportion of war victims who are civilians has jumped dramatically from 5 to over 90 percent. The number of those children killed in crossfire is less than those whose parents have been killed by any of the agencies.
The state’s response to the orphan problems is a relief package under which the family of each killed would receive Rs 1 lakh as ex-gratia relief. More so, there are plans to provide monthly assistance to widows above 40 years of age.
Remarriage of the younger ones and educational schemes for the children but only those children are eligible for these relief packages who can produce non-involvement certificate from the state police absolving that their parents were not associated with any militancy and this rules out many orphans created by the security forces. But even for the rest, the children of innocent civilians, the relief is a mirage today.
No compensation has been paid out in the last one and a half years due to non-availability of funds and no new cases are registered. Even the backlogs, some as far back as 1992, have been kept pending. In the year 1999 all the Deputy Commissioners of the state were assigned the survey of militancy hit victims in their respective districts but till date nothing was done.
In a land where gun is the law and molestation and rape are common, a widow is more worried about seeing her orphan daughters married of safely, but being an orphan it carries its own social stigma in Kashmir. In Kashmir, every one knows that everything can happen at any time. The orphanage run by the NGOs and other agencies, has also been raided by the security forces and the orphans have not been spared. Many children are missing and have disappeared in the situation of conflict.
Thousands of orphans are being exploited, particularly the girl orphans, even by their relatives. The number of orphans is increasing day by day and in this behalf, some two years ago, a survey was conducted by an NGO J&K Yatteem Trust Srinagar, and it was found that during past 10 years, the number of orphans has gone to 15,000, district Kupwara (border district). Of around 100,000 children orphaned by the current crisis, most are forced to fend for themselves as child labours.
To cope with the alarming situation of orphans in the state, it needs peaceful atmosphere, bulk of funds and long term projects. Community based awareness should be launched and community based participation for social action is also the need of the time.
The neglected orphans demand immediate rehabilitation and help. Prior to the ongoing turmoil in Kashmir there was only one orphanage in the valley run by an NGO and only two homes run by the social welfare department. Now the Indian occupied Kashmir has more orphanages and Bal Ashrams, which caters to only 800 orphans out of 15,000 identified destitute orphans.
The facility is extremely inadequate. Indian government owes certain duties towards this class of society which has got certain rights, as the rights of the children have been recognised at the international level, such as Universal Children Day 1959, international year of the child 1979, and the UN conceptions on the rights of the child 1998.
All over India, it appears that there are 30,000 NGOs working for women and children, but unfortunately no one has come forward with special or certain programmes for these neglected orphans of Kashmir. The state as well as the Indian Central Government is not serious about the problem.
The government institution’s role along with the civil society is very important in protecting the child from deprivation of childhood experience. From the ongoing Kashmir conflict the children should be declared as peace zone chapter. Indian government should make mandatory on its security agencies to discriminate children, women and old ones from the adults while conducting their operations.
The Kashmiri child has also developed some psychological problems as they are deeply traumatised and frightened of the Indian security forces, who kill their parents before their eyes. Chronic violence and stress – can result in aggression. Since the children in Kashmir have not experienced peace and are exposed to chronic violence, they are more likely to be violent.
Pakistan – a dream gone sour
Nation, Lahore
March 28, 2005
Pakistan – a dream gone sour
By Roedad Khan
47 years after the first military coup, we are back to square one. The country is under military rule for the fourth time and going down the tubes. When I heard Secretary Rice, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It is not the Pakistan of September 11, 2001”, she said and, “not even the Pakistan of September 11, 2002”. It is a ghost of its former self. If Pakistan were to look into a mirror, it won’t recognise itself.
Today say: “Pakistan” and what comes to mind: sham democracy, fraudulent referendum, rigged elections, a General in uniform masquerading as the President of this sad country, a rubber stamp parliament, a pliant judiciary and a figurehead Prime Minister. “Pakistan”, Dr Rice said, “Is in transition to a democratic future”. Sadly, our democratic future is not in front of us.
It is far behind us. Democracy in the west means a political system marked not only by free, fair and impartial elections, but also by rule of law, a strong, independent judiciary and an independent Election Commission. All these institutions are non-existent in Pakistan today. Since the days of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and foremost, rule of the people. In Pakistan, the people do not rule. The sovereign power of the state does not reside with the people. “Where ought the sovereign power of the state to reside”? Ask Aristotle. “With the people? With the propertied classes? With the good? With one man, the best of all, the good? With one man, the tyrant”? One thing is clear. The sovereignty of the people is a myth. To apply the adjective sovereign to the people in Pakistan is a tragic farce.
Whatever the constitutional position, in the final analysis defacto sovereignty in Pakistan (Majestas est summa in civas ac subditoes legibusque soluta potestas i.e. ‘highest power over citizens and subjects unrestrained by law in the words of French Jurist Jean Bodin’) resides neither in the electorate, nor the parliament, nor the judiciary, nor even the Constitution which has superiority over all the institutions it creates. It resides, where the coercive power resides.
It is the ‘pouvoir occulte’ which is the ultimate authority in the decision making process in Pakistan. Even when an elected government is in power, it is the COAS who is the ultimate authority in decision-making. He decides when to abrogate the Constitution, when it should be held in abeyance, when an elected government should be sacked and when democracy should be given a chance. Behind the scenes, it is he who decides whether an elected Prime Minister shall live or die. No wonder, General Musharraf is clinging to the post of COAS and refuses to doff his uniform.
“Ruin comes”, Plato said in 347 BC, “When the General uses his army to establish a military dictatorship”. The army of Pakistan struck Pakistan’s nascent democracy four times and has been in power for nearly half the country’s existence. It has cast a long shadow over politics in Pakistan even during the period of civilian rule. Repeated army intervention in the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe for disaster.
It has thwarted the growth and development of parliamentary democracy and destroyed whatever little faith people had in their political institutions. What is worse, it has eroded people’s faith in themselves as citizens of a sovereign, independent, democratic country. The country is in a mess. Today Pakistan presents an image of a country plagued by political, ethnic and sectarian conflicts. The country appears to be adrift, lacking confidence about its future. Never before has public confidence in the country’s future sunk so low.
The army has shown a greater willingness to grasp power than to give it up. None of the first three army chiefs who ruled Pakistan gave up power voluntarily. There is no reason to believe that General Musharraf will act differently. A few days after the 1999 coup, his spokesman insisted that: ‘while others may have tried to hang on to power, we will not. We will make history’.
Gen Musharraf agreed: ‘All I can say’, he assured a television interviewer in January 2000, ‘Is that I am not going to perpetuate myself … I can’t give any certificate on it but my word of honour. I will not perpetuate myself’. Later in 2000, Musharraf went a stage further and said, he would respect a Supreme Court judgment that stated he would remain in office for just three years. In June 2001, Musharraf performed a complete U-turn. Following the examples of Ayub, Yahya and Zia, he made himself President. And in May 2002, he held a dubious referendum that is the basis of his rule today.
It is not morning in Pakistan. It will take us more than faith to get us through this dark night. All the trappings of democracy are there but everyone knows where vital decisions are made. All the pillars of state have collapsed. One of the most serious injuries the state can inflict on its subjects is to strip the country of its Constitution, aptly described as a “transparent garment clinging to the body politic”, and commit the people to lives of perpetual uncertainty. This kind of existence, as we know very well, is like a journey full of dangerous obstacles and risks undertaken in total darkness.
General Musharraf, following the example of his military predecessors, has defaced, disfigured and decimated the Constitution. The result is what we have today. One doesn’t have to be a great constitutional expert to realise that we are back to pre-independence government of India Act 1935 with a powerful President, a non-sovereign parliament and a puppet Prime Minister. Parliament is one of the chief instruments of our democracy. Is it consistent with the principle of parliamentary democracy to empower the President at the expense of the Prime Minster? And is it consistent with the principle of parliamentary democracy to divest the parliament and pass on its functions to an un-elected body like the NSC dominated by the armed forces.
Not surprisingly, the parliament is cowed, timid, a virtual paralytic, over paid and under employed. In Pakistan political principle is a flexible commodity. Pragmatism and artful dodging are not seen as flip-flopping. They are savored far more than loyalty, consistency and steadfastness. Parliamentary membership is the key to material success, a passport and a license to loot and plunder. No wonder, it is not a check on the arbitrariness of the executive and nobody takes it seriously.
Today judiciary is the weakest of the three pillars of state. It has suffered a steady diminution of power and prestige. Its image is tarnished. Things have been downhill ever since the infamous Munir judgment. Regrettably, judiciary has been turned into a fig-leaf for unconstitutional and illegal practices. It is a matter of great regret that judges have been collusive in the erosion of the Constitution and the rule of law in this country. Today nothing prevents the executive from court-packing and appointing party loyalists with limited knowledge and experience.
If the idea was to degrade the superior courts and to find the worst men, some of our governments succeeded brilliantly in doing so. “The President may slip”, Tocqueville wrote in 1837, “without the state suffering, for his duties are limited. Congress may slip without the Union perishing, for above the Congress there is the electoral body, which can change its spirit by changing its members. But if ever the Supreme Court came to be composed of corrupt or weak or rash persons, the Confederation would be threatened by anarchy or civil war”.
One of the lessons of history is that when judiciary functions at the behest of authority and allows itself to be used against the citizens, the dykes of law and justice break and revolution begins. The history of Pakistan might have been different if judges of the superior courts had stood their ground and refused to collaborate with the usurper. Pakistan will be Pakistan again the day a judge of the superior court, in exercise of his awesome powers, interposes the shield of law in defense of the Constitution.
General Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, far from being temporary, is acquiring the mantle of permanence. Unless checked, the country will settle into a form of government with a democratic façade and a hard inner core of authoritarianism – an iron hand with a velvet glove.
This is not what Mr Jinnah envisaged for Pakistan. If anybody in this country or abroad thinks that General Musharraf will hold free, fair and impartial elections in this country in 2007 and retire; that a genuine transfer of power to a civilian government will follow the election and the army will return to the barracks, he must think again and have his head examined. The lesson of history is that a person who possesses supreme power, seldom gives it away voluntarily. “No devil”, Trotsky wrote long ago, “has ever cut its claws voluntarily”. “No man”, President Roosevelt once remarked, “ever willingly gives up public life – no man who has ever tasted it”.
As the public mood shifts from fearful to defiant, the 1999 coup seems more of a farce than a tragedy. Our window of opportunity is getting narrower by the day. I believe that if only all the intellectuals could get together and blow their trumpets, the walls of ‘Jericho’ would crumble. The walls of autocracy in Pakistan will not crumble with just one good push. The present order will not go quietly. It will be an uphill struggle to redeem our democracy and fashion it once again into a vessel to be proud of.
If democracy is good for Georgia, Ukraine and now Krygyzstan, why is it not good for Pakistan? Why is Secretary Rice asking the people of Pakistan to be patient and wait for elections in 2007? America gave its full support to pro-democracy Orange and Velvet revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. Why is it perpetuating authoritarianism in Pakistan? Why this double-talk? Why this double standard? Isn’t it shrieking hypocrisy? Isn’t it just Realpolitik? Isn’t it sacrificing democracy, freedom, supremacy of civilian rule on the altar of self-interest? Isn’t it a repudiation of everything America claims to stand for?
March 28, 2005
Pakistan – a dream gone sour
By Roedad Khan
47 years after the first military coup, we are back to square one. The country is under military rule for the fourth time and going down the tubes. When I heard Secretary Rice, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It is not the Pakistan of September 11, 2001”, she said and, “not even the Pakistan of September 11, 2002”. It is a ghost of its former self. If Pakistan were to look into a mirror, it won’t recognise itself.
Today say: “Pakistan” and what comes to mind: sham democracy, fraudulent referendum, rigged elections, a General in uniform masquerading as the President of this sad country, a rubber stamp parliament, a pliant judiciary and a figurehead Prime Minister. “Pakistan”, Dr Rice said, “Is in transition to a democratic future”. Sadly, our democratic future is not in front of us.
It is far behind us. Democracy in the west means a political system marked not only by free, fair and impartial elections, but also by rule of law, a strong, independent judiciary and an independent Election Commission. All these institutions are non-existent in Pakistan today. Since the days of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and foremost, rule of the people. In Pakistan, the people do not rule. The sovereign power of the state does not reside with the people. “Where ought the sovereign power of the state to reside”? Ask Aristotle. “With the people? With the propertied classes? With the good? With one man, the best of all, the good? With one man, the tyrant”? One thing is clear. The sovereignty of the people is a myth. To apply the adjective sovereign to the people in Pakistan is a tragic farce.
Whatever the constitutional position, in the final analysis defacto sovereignty in Pakistan (Majestas est summa in civas ac subditoes legibusque soluta potestas i.e. ‘highest power over citizens and subjects unrestrained by law in the words of French Jurist Jean Bodin’) resides neither in the electorate, nor the parliament, nor the judiciary, nor even the Constitution which has superiority over all the institutions it creates. It resides, where the coercive power resides.
It is the ‘pouvoir occulte’ which is the ultimate authority in the decision making process in Pakistan. Even when an elected government is in power, it is the COAS who is the ultimate authority in decision-making. He decides when to abrogate the Constitution, when it should be held in abeyance, when an elected government should be sacked and when democracy should be given a chance. Behind the scenes, it is he who decides whether an elected Prime Minister shall live or die. No wonder, General Musharraf is clinging to the post of COAS and refuses to doff his uniform.
“Ruin comes”, Plato said in 347 BC, “When the General uses his army to establish a military dictatorship”. The army of Pakistan struck Pakistan’s nascent democracy four times and has been in power for nearly half the country’s existence. It has cast a long shadow over politics in Pakistan even during the period of civilian rule. Repeated army intervention in the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe for disaster.
It has thwarted the growth and development of parliamentary democracy and destroyed whatever little faith people had in their political institutions. What is worse, it has eroded people’s faith in themselves as citizens of a sovereign, independent, democratic country. The country is in a mess. Today Pakistan presents an image of a country plagued by political, ethnic and sectarian conflicts. The country appears to be adrift, lacking confidence about its future. Never before has public confidence in the country’s future sunk so low.
The army has shown a greater willingness to grasp power than to give it up. None of the first three army chiefs who ruled Pakistan gave up power voluntarily. There is no reason to believe that General Musharraf will act differently. A few days after the 1999 coup, his spokesman insisted that: ‘while others may have tried to hang on to power, we will not. We will make history’.
Gen Musharraf agreed: ‘All I can say’, he assured a television interviewer in January 2000, ‘Is that I am not going to perpetuate myself … I can’t give any certificate on it but my word of honour. I will not perpetuate myself’. Later in 2000, Musharraf went a stage further and said, he would respect a Supreme Court judgment that stated he would remain in office for just three years. In June 2001, Musharraf performed a complete U-turn. Following the examples of Ayub, Yahya and Zia, he made himself President. And in May 2002, he held a dubious referendum that is the basis of his rule today.
It is not morning in Pakistan. It will take us more than faith to get us through this dark night. All the trappings of democracy are there but everyone knows where vital decisions are made. All the pillars of state have collapsed. One of the most serious injuries the state can inflict on its subjects is to strip the country of its Constitution, aptly described as a “transparent garment clinging to the body politic”, and commit the people to lives of perpetual uncertainty. This kind of existence, as we know very well, is like a journey full of dangerous obstacles and risks undertaken in total darkness.
General Musharraf, following the example of his military predecessors, has defaced, disfigured and decimated the Constitution. The result is what we have today. One doesn’t have to be a great constitutional expert to realise that we are back to pre-independence government of India Act 1935 with a powerful President, a non-sovereign parliament and a puppet Prime Minister. Parliament is one of the chief instruments of our democracy. Is it consistent with the principle of parliamentary democracy to empower the President at the expense of the Prime Minster? And is it consistent with the principle of parliamentary democracy to divest the parliament and pass on its functions to an un-elected body like the NSC dominated by the armed forces.
Not surprisingly, the parliament is cowed, timid, a virtual paralytic, over paid and under employed. In Pakistan political principle is a flexible commodity. Pragmatism and artful dodging are not seen as flip-flopping. They are savored far more than loyalty, consistency and steadfastness. Parliamentary membership is the key to material success, a passport and a license to loot and plunder. No wonder, it is not a check on the arbitrariness of the executive and nobody takes it seriously.
Today judiciary is the weakest of the three pillars of state. It has suffered a steady diminution of power and prestige. Its image is tarnished. Things have been downhill ever since the infamous Munir judgment. Regrettably, judiciary has been turned into a fig-leaf for unconstitutional and illegal practices. It is a matter of great regret that judges have been collusive in the erosion of the Constitution and the rule of law in this country. Today nothing prevents the executive from court-packing and appointing party loyalists with limited knowledge and experience.
If the idea was to degrade the superior courts and to find the worst men, some of our governments succeeded brilliantly in doing so. “The President may slip”, Tocqueville wrote in 1837, “without the state suffering, for his duties are limited. Congress may slip without the Union perishing, for above the Congress there is the electoral body, which can change its spirit by changing its members. But if ever the Supreme Court came to be composed of corrupt or weak or rash persons, the Confederation would be threatened by anarchy or civil war”.
One of the lessons of history is that when judiciary functions at the behest of authority and allows itself to be used against the citizens, the dykes of law and justice break and revolution begins. The history of Pakistan might have been different if judges of the superior courts had stood their ground and refused to collaborate with the usurper. Pakistan will be Pakistan again the day a judge of the superior court, in exercise of his awesome powers, interposes the shield of law in defense of the Constitution.
General Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, far from being temporary, is acquiring the mantle of permanence. Unless checked, the country will settle into a form of government with a democratic façade and a hard inner core of authoritarianism – an iron hand with a velvet glove.
This is not what Mr Jinnah envisaged for Pakistan. If anybody in this country or abroad thinks that General Musharraf will hold free, fair and impartial elections in this country in 2007 and retire; that a genuine transfer of power to a civilian government will follow the election and the army will return to the barracks, he must think again and have his head examined. The lesson of history is that a person who possesses supreme power, seldom gives it away voluntarily. “No devil”, Trotsky wrote long ago, “has ever cut its claws voluntarily”. “No man”, President Roosevelt once remarked, “ever willingly gives up public life – no man who has ever tasted it”.
As the public mood shifts from fearful to defiant, the 1999 coup seems more of a farce than a tragedy. Our window of opportunity is getting narrower by the day. I believe that if only all the intellectuals could get together and blow their trumpets, the walls of ‘Jericho’ would crumble. The walls of autocracy in Pakistan will not crumble with just one good push. The present order will not go quietly. It will be an uphill struggle to redeem our democracy and fashion it once again into a vessel to be proud of.
If democracy is good for Georgia, Ukraine and now Krygyzstan, why is it not good for Pakistan? Why is Secretary Rice asking the people of Pakistan to be patient and wait for elections in 2007? America gave its full support to pro-democracy Orange and Velvet revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. Why is it perpetuating authoritarianism in Pakistan? Why this double-talk? Why this double standard? Isn’t it shrieking hypocrisy? Isn’t it just Realpolitik? Isn’t it sacrificing democracy, freedom, supremacy of civilian rule on the altar of self-interest? Isn’t it a repudiation of everything America claims to stand for?
Musharraf says:"Kashmir resolution must to avoid Kargil"!!
Nation, Lahore
March 28, 2005
Kashmir resolution must to avoid Kargil
ISLAMABAD (Online) - Pakistan and India should adopt a “positive” attitude toward resolving the Kashmir issue to prevent repetition of Kargil-type incidents, President Musharraf has said.
In a detailed reply to an e-mail query sent by an Indian to his presidential website asking his views on reunification of India and Pakistan as well as his “silence” on the Kargil war, Musharraf said the reunification was not possible but the two countries could establish close ties if the Kashmir issue was resolved.
Denying that he was shy of speaking about Kargil, he said, “I do not want to enter into debate that who won and who lost. Neither your people will accept nor ours, we will end up debating it.”
Claiming that India had “misquoted” the casualty figures, which, according to him, was “very high”, he said the media reports spoke of several “problems” faced by the Indian army during the Kargil conflict.
Musharraf said the two countries should see the Kargil conflict in its entirety. “I would like to say you must never see Kargil alone.
See Kargil in entire complexity of the Kashmir dispute,” he said, claiming that Kargil was the result of several “intrusions” by India after Simla Accord.
“Let us take an optimistic and positive attitude toward it. Stop discussing who won and who lost.
What is the future. Resolve disputes so that Siachen, Kargil, Marpola and Chorbatla does not happen again. Let us resolve the dispute of Kashmir then I am sure it will not happen again,” he said.
March 28, 2005
Kashmir resolution must to avoid Kargil
ISLAMABAD (Online) - Pakistan and India should adopt a “positive” attitude toward resolving the Kashmir issue to prevent repetition of Kargil-type incidents, President Musharraf has said.
In a detailed reply to an e-mail query sent by an Indian to his presidential website asking his views on reunification of India and Pakistan as well as his “silence” on the Kargil war, Musharraf said the reunification was not possible but the two countries could establish close ties if the Kashmir issue was resolved.
Denying that he was shy of speaking about Kargil, he said, “I do not want to enter into debate that who won and who lost. Neither your people will accept nor ours, we will end up debating it.”
Claiming that India had “misquoted” the casualty figures, which, according to him, was “very high”, he said the media reports spoke of several “problems” faced by the Indian army during the Kargil conflict.
Musharraf said the two countries should see the Kargil conflict in its entirety. “I would like to say you must never see Kargil alone.
See Kargil in entire complexity of the Kashmir dispute,” he said, claiming that Kargil was the result of several “intrusions” by India after Simla Accord.
“Let us take an optimistic and positive attitude toward it. Stop discussing who won and who lost.
What is the future. Resolve disputes so that Siachen, Kargil, Marpola and Chorbatla does not happen again. Let us resolve the dispute of Kashmir then I am sure it will not happen again,” he said.
The debate on madressah enrolment
Dawn, March 27, 2005
Education Edition
The debate on madressah enrolment
By Omar R. Quraishi
A recently released report funded by the World Bank and co-authored by an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has put a very different perspective on madressah enrolment in Pakistan than the generally prevalent view.
Titled Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data, the report by Tahir Andrabi of Pomona College, Jishnu Das of the World Bank and (assistant professor) Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University takes a detailed look at the number of students enrolled in Pakistani madressahs, examines their accuracy and comes to the conclusion that the data sharply contradicts the figures quoted in the press on just how many students are enrolled in Pakistan.
It says that articles in various international newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, have quoted figures for madressah enrolment in Pakistan that are much higher than what seems to be the reality. 'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan' argues that the over-exaggeration of the figures is on a very big scale. It also cites a report on madressah education by a Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group, saying that its figure of 33 per cent for the number of students enrolled in seminaries was quoted in six of eleven articles that appeared in international newspapers as interest in this subject grew after September 11, 2001.
The authors of the report say that given the sensitive nature of this issue, especially the link between the former Taliban rules of Afghanistan and seminaries and the current belief that such institutions are ideal breeding ground for extremists and terrorists, the issue of enrollment has surprisingly been given cursory treatment. Figures have been bandied about with little or no substantiation and in the absence of any verifiable data on actual enrolment figures.
"Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies.
This paper uses published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated," the report says. The authors go on to claim that enrolment in madressahs in Pakistan accounts for "less than one percent of all enrolment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years".
To closely examine and try to grasp the estimates quoted in various newspaper articles and even in the ICG report, the authors say that when they examined school choice they could find no explanation that could fit the data. For example, one of the reasons cited to explain rising madressah enrolment is poverty or lack of other schooling options.
The authors, however, found that the data showed that among households with at least one child in a madressah, three-quarters send their "second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both". They say "widely promoted theories, among them a growing preference for sending children to schools, simply do not explain this substantial variation within households" in Pakistan.
The report's authors say that the data available on the subject shows that 200,000 students are enrolled in madressahs full-time, a far cry from the 33 per cent of total student enrolment as claimed by the ICG or even a 10 per cent figure quoted in a recent Los Angeles Times article on the issue. Expressed as a ratio, the difference becomes even more stark, the authors say, pointing out that this means that a mere 0.3 per cent of all students between the ages of five and 19 are enrolled in a madressah.
However, since the enrolment rate for this age group is estimated to be 42 per cent, the number of students enrolled in a madressah expressed as a proportion of total student enrolment between the ages of 5-19 rises to 0.7 per cent, which is still a far cry from the kind of figures quoted in the international, and sometimes even national, newspapers. The report also concludes that there was no evidence of a "dramatic increase in madressah enrolment in recent years.
All this is in sharp contradiction to published newspaper reports on the issue, a reason that the authors cite in their report for undertaking the study. For example, an article in the Washington Post in July 2002 said that as many as 1.5 million schoolchildren were enrolled in madressahs in Pakistan. Even the 9/11 Commission report quoted the same high and unreliable figures when it discussed the issue of terrorism and ways and means to curb it by monitoring madressahs in countries like Pakistan.
The authors of 'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan' further state that even in areas bordering Afghanistan, where the madressah enrolment is said to be relatively higher, the number of children in such institutions is a mere 7.5 per cent of total student enrolment.
In fact, if anything, recent debate and discourse on the state and quality of education in Pakistan, the writers of the study argue, has completely overlooked another important development: the rapid rise and availability of mainstream private schools. The report says that Pakistan's he report does acknowledge that the country's "educational landscape" has changed "substantially in the last decade" but points out that this is due to an "explosion of private schools", something which it says has been left out of the debate on education in Pakistan. The authors do acknowledge that the country's "educational landscape" has changed "substantially in the last decade" but point out that this is due to an "explosion of private schools", a phenomenon whose impact has both been largely ignored and underestimated.
The ICG, whose figure of 33 per cent was questioned by the World Bank-funded Harvard report, has come out in defence of its work. In fact, in a statement on its website, the ICG has accused the Harvard report of "juggling" numbers to prove its point. It says: "If the findings of this paper are to be taken at face value, then Pakistan and the international community have little cause to worry about an educational sector that glorifies jihad and indoctrinates Pakistani children in religious intolerance and extremism."
Clearly, this particular line of defence does not take away from the fact that the Harvard study is questioning the enrolment figure and is making a reasonably good case of putting doubts over the figures that have been mentioned on this issue in the media. What the ICG has implied, that there is a correlation between madressah education and rising intolerance and extremism, might not be wrong, but that does not seem to be what the Harvard report's authors are saying.
The ICG said that the report's main finding, that madressah enrolment is less than one per cent of all student enrolment between the ages of five and 19, is "directly at odds" with the education ministry's 2003 directory of madressahs, which says that the number of madressahs has increased from 6,996 in 2001 to 10,430. It says that madressah organizations have put the figure at 13,000 with total enrolment between 1.5-1.7 million. This is however not an official estimate, and the ministry's madressahs directory does not quote any exact enrolment figure either.
The ICG also quotes the religious affairs minister to dispute the figure claimed in the Asim Ijaz Khwaja et al report saying that the minister had publicly said that madressahs were imparting education to 1,000,000 children. However, no substantiation has been provided for this figure, either by the ICG or by the religious affairs ministry. In fact, the government's failure to press ahead with the madressah registration drive means that official figures on enrolment and even on the total number of madressahs might be misleading and inaccurate.
The ICG response also came in the form of criticism on the sources used by the authors of the Harvard study. Calling them (the sources) "questionable", the ICG said that the 1998 census was "highly controversial", that the household surveys were "neither designed nor conducted to elicit data on madressah enrolment" and that the authors had concentrated on rural areas, assuming that madressahs were more a rural phenomenon.
As far as the last point is concerned, the ICG does seem to have a valid objection because much of the rise in religiosity and with it in madressah enrolment has been seen in Pakistan's urban areas, especially the larger cities. However, the ICG is unable to explain how it came to the conclusion in its own report on religious education in Pakistan that up to a third of total student enrolment in the country was in madressahs.
Specifically speaking, the Harvard report's authors say that they looked at articles and reports: articles in mainstream American and international newspapers; reports and articles by American and international scholars affiliated with international think tanks, institutes, and the government (including the 9/11 Commission Report); and studies by Pakistani scholars working in Pakistan and abroad.
The report says that the sources for all these reports are either newspaper accounts of police estimates or interviews with policymakers and that not a single article tried to "validate these numbers using established data sources". The analysis showed that there was quite a vast range for the enrolment figure - varying between 500,000 and 1.5 million - and that this lack of inconsistency was sometimes found in the same newspaper. The newspapers that were examined included the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times and the Washington Post from the period from January 2001 to June 2004.
The report noted that even a document as seemingly informed and important for US policymakers as the report of the 9/11 Commission made sweeping generalizations on the madressah enrolment issue by saying that "millions of families, especially those with little money, send their children to religious schools, or madressahs". It also quoted a senior police official in Karachi as saying that in the city alone, 200,000 children were studying in 859 madressahs.
Even the claim that "millions of families" send their children to such schools seems a bit far-fetched given that the number of household in the whole country, assuming a conservative estimate of six people per household, would be in the region of 25 million. The Harvard report also links the probable source for the inflated figures as two articles and the ICG report. The articles were by Jessica Stern in 2000 in Foreign Affairs, by Jonathan Singer in 2001 for the Brookings Institution, and the ICG report published in 2002. Stern said in her article that there were between 40,000 and 50,000 madressahs in Pakistan while Singer put the figure at 45,000, both without quoting a credible source or any data.
The ICG might be right in its criticism of the Harvard study in that it seems to overlook the increasing popularity of madressahs in Pakistan's urban areas. However, no substantiation is presented, other than reports collected from newspaper articles or quoting government or intelligence officials (all of these are uncorroborated by any official data), for the claim that madressah enrolment is what the ICG or the international press says it is.
It might be rising and it might be linked to the incidence of intolerance, bigotry and terrorism in this part of the world, but how many children are exactly enrolled in madressahs? Any conclusive or definitive answer to this question can be given only once the government undertakes its initially much-publicized and now much-delayed initiative on the registration of madressahs in the country.
Writer's email: omarq@cyber.net.pk
Education Edition
The debate on madressah enrolment
By Omar R. Quraishi
A recently released report funded by the World Bank and co-authored by an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has put a very different perspective on madressah enrolment in Pakistan than the generally prevalent view.
Titled Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data, the report by Tahir Andrabi of Pomona College, Jishnu Das of the World Bank and (assistant professor) Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University takes a detailed look at the number of students enrolled in Pakistani madressahs, examines their accuracy and comes to the conclusion that the data sharply contradicts the figures quoted in the press on just how many students are enrolled in Pakistan.
It says that articles in various international newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, have quoted figures for madressah enrolment in Pakistan that are much higher than what seems to be the reality. 'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan' argues that the over-exaggeration of the figures is on a very big scale. It also cites a report on madressah education by a Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group, saying that its figure of 33 per cent for the number of students enrolled in seminaries was quoted in six of eleven articles that appeared in international newspapers as interest in this subject grew after September 11, 2001.
The authors of the report say that given the sensitive nature of this issue, especially the link between the former Taliban rules of Afghanistan and seminaries and the current belief that such institutions are ideal breeding ground for extremists and terrorists, the issue of enrollment has surprisingly been given cursory treatment. Figures have been bandied about with little or no substantiation and in the absence of any verifiable data on actual enrolment figures.
"Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies.
This paper uses published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated," the report says. The authors go on to claim that enrolment in madressahs in Pakistan accounts for "less than one percent of all enrolment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years".
To closely examine and try to grasp the estimates quoted in various newspaper articles and even in the ICG report, the authors say that when they examined school choice they could find no explanation that could fit the data. For example, one of the reasons cited to explain rising madressah enrolment is poverty or lack of other schooling options.
The authors, however, found that the data showed that among households with at least one child in a madressah, three-quarters send their "second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both". They say "widely promoted theories, among them a growing preference for sending children to schools, simply do not explain this substantial variation within households" in Pakistan.
The report's authors say that the data available on the subject shows that 200,000 students are enrolled in madressahs full-time, a far cry from the 33 per cent of total student enrolment as claimed by the ICG or even a 10 per cent figure quoted in a recent Los Angeles Times article on the issue. Expressed as a ratio, the difference becomes even more stark, the authors say, pointing out that this means that a mere 0.3 per cent of all students between the ages of five and 19 are enrolled in a madressah.
However, since the enrolment rate for this age group is estimated to be 42 per cent, the number of students enrolled in a madressah expressed as a proportion of total student enrolment between the ages of 5-19 rises to 0.7 per cent, which is still a far cry from the kind of figures quoted in the international, and sometimes even national, newspapers. The report also concludes that there was no evidence of a "dramatic increase in madressah enrolment in recent years.
All this is in sharp contradiction to published newspaper reports on the issue, a reason that the authors cite in their report for undertaking the study. For example, an article in the Washington Post in July 2002 said that as many as 1.5 million schoolchildren were enrolled in madressahs in Pakistan. Even the 9/11 Commission report quoted the same high and unreliable figures when it discussed the issue of terrorism and ways and means to curb it by monitoring madressahs in countries like Pakistan.
The authors of 'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan' further state that even in areas bordering Afghanistan, where the madressah enrolment is said to be relatively higher, the number of children in such institutions is a mere 7.5 per cent of total student enrolment.
In fact, if anything, recent debate and discourse on the state and quality of education in Pakistan, the writers of the study argue, has completely overlooked another important development: the rapid rise and availability of mainstream private schools. The report says that Pakistan's he report does acknowledge that the country's "educational landscape" has changed "substantially in the last decade" but points out that this is due to an "explosion of private schools", something which it says has been left out of the debate on education in Pakistan. The authors do acknowledge that the country's "educational landscape" has changed "substantially in the last decade" but point out that this is due to an "explosion of private schools", a phenomenon whose impact has both been largely ignored and underestimated.
The ICG, whose figure of 33 per cent was questioned by the World Bank-funded Harvard report, has come out in defence of its work. In fact, in a statement on its website, the ICG has accused the Harvard report of "juggling" numbers to prove its point. It says: "If the findings of this paper are to be taken at face value, then Pakistan and the international community have little cause to worry about an educational sector that glorifies jihad and indoctrinates Pakistani children in religious intolerance and extremism."
Clearly, this particular line of defence does not take away from the fact that the Harvard study is questioning the enrolment figure and is making a reasonably good case of putting doubts over the figures that have been mentioned on this issue in the media. What the ICG has implied, that there is a correlation between madressah education and rising intolerance and extremism, might not be wrong, but that does not seem to be what the Harvard report's authors are saying.
The ICG said that the report's main finding, that madressah enrolment is less than one per cent of all student enrolment between the ages of five and 19, is "directly at odds" with the education ministry's 2003 directory of madressahs, which says that the number of madressahs has increased from 6,996 in 2001 to 10,430. It says that madressah organizations have put the figure at 13,000 with total enrolment between 1.5-1.7 million. This is however not an official estimate, and the ministry's madressahs directory does not quote any exact enrolment figure either.
The ICG also quotes the religious affairs minister to dispute the figure claimed in the Asim Ijaz Khwaja et al report saying that the minister had publicly said that madressahs were imparting education to 1,000,000 children. However, no substantiation has been provided for this figure, either by the ICG or by the religious affairs ministry. In fact, the government's failure to press ahead with the madressah registration drive means that official figures on enrolment and even on the total number of madressahs might be misleading and inaccurate.
The ICG response also came in the form of criticism on the sources used by the authors of the Harvard study. Calling them (the sources) "questionable", the ICG said that the 1998 census was "highly controversial", that the household surveys were "neither designed nor conducted to elicit data on madressah enrolment" and that the authors had concentrated on rural areas, assuming that madressahs were more a rural phenomenon.
As far as the last point is concerned, the ICG does seem to have a valid objection because much of the rise in religiosity and with it in madressah enrolment has been seen in Pakistan's urban areas, especially the larger cities. However, the ICG is unable to explain how it came to the conclusion in its own report on religious education in Pakistan that up to a third of total student enrolment in the country was in madressahs.
Specifically speaking, the Harvard report's authors say that they looked at articles and reports: articles in mainstream American and international newspapers; reports and articles by American and international scholars affiliated with international think tanks, institutes, and the government (including the 9/11 Commission Report); and studies by Pakistani scholars working in Pakistan and abroad.
The report says that the sources for all these reports are either newspaper accounts of police estimates or interviews with policymakers and that not a single article tried to "validate these numbers using established data sources". The analysis showed that there was quite a vast range for the enrolment figure - varying between 500,000 and 1.5 million - and that this lack of inconsistency was sometimes found in the same newspaper. The newspapers that were examined included the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times and the Washington Post from the period from January 2001 to June 2004.
The report noted that even a document as seemingly informed and important for US policymakers as the report of the 9/11 Commission made sweeping generalizations on the madressah enrolment issue by saying that "millions of families, especially those with little money, send their children to religious schools, or madressahs". It also quoted a senior police official in Karachi as saying that in the city alone, 200,000 children were studying in 859 madressahs.
Even the claim that "millions of families" send their children to such schools seems a bit far-fetched given that the number of household in the whole country, assuming a conservative estimate of six people per household, would be in the region of 25 million. The Harvard report also links the probable source for the inflated figures as two articles and the ICG report. The articles were by Jessica Stern in 2000 in Foreign Affairs, by Jonathan Singer in 2001 for the Brookings Institution, and the ICG report published in 2002. Stern said in her article that there were between 40,000 and 50,000 madressahs in Pakistan while Singer put the figure at 45,000, both without quoting a credible source or any data.
The ICG might be right in its criticism of the Harvard study in that it seems to overlook the increasing popularity of madressahs in Pakistan's urban areas. However, no substantiation is presented, other than reports collected from newspaper articles or quoting government or intelligence officials (all of these are uncorroborated by any official data), for the claim that madressah enrolment is what the ICG or the international press says it is.
It might be rising and it might be linked to the incidence of intolerance, bigotry and terrorism in this part of the world, but how many children are exactly enrolled in madressahs? Any conclusive or definitive answer to this question can be given only once the government undertakes its initially much-publicized and now much-delayed initiative on the registration of madressahs in the country.
Writer's email: omarq@cyber.net.pk
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