Is India ‘indispensable partner’ of US?

Mahmood Riazuddin

US President barack Obama’s visit to India coincides with four important developments: i) The third round of Pakistan-US strategic dialogue has just concluded; ii) Obama’s Democratic Party has faced a humiliating blow in the mid-term elections in United States; iii) India has launched an aggressive campaign to have permanent membership of the UN Security Council; and iv) Kashmiris are observing Jammu Martyrs Day [November 6] which is reminiscent of en bloc massacre of Kashmiris in 1947. Obama’s decision to prefer India for his visit to the region speaks volumes for the sort of relations between the sole superpower of the world and the mini-superpower in the region. This is despite the fact that Pakistan has been playing the role of a frontline state in the US-led war on terror for the last nine long years and it has suffered colossal losses in terms of men and material during this course, and is still facing the consequences of its being a non-NATO ally of the United States. However, the Americans ignoring this role have waged an undeclared war against Pakistan and the bane of US drone strikes have posed a grave challenge to the very sovereignty of the country. Some Pakistanis are of the view that enhancement of US-India relations is just a misgiving, but they must acknowledge that the two countries share many commonalities and the common objectives besides the ‘common enemy’ that is China. The chronologies of India and United States reveal that both of them have expansionist and hegemonic designs and they have frequently indulged in adventurisms not only against their neighboring states but also the countries in other regions to fulfill their designs. United States is the sole power which has so far used a nuclear weapon while India is the sole country which conducted a nuclear test in South Asia thereby igniting a nuclear race in the region. In the recent years, United States has executed a so-called civil nuclear cooperation accord with India but at the same time, it has frequently refused such an arrangement with Pakistan. Similarly, both the countries have constantly been stockpiling sophisticated weapons. They have conducted 50 joint military exercises during the last few years while India is going to purchase military [war] equipment worth $2.5 billion. President Obama has regarded India ‘an indispensable partner’ of his country while India takes United States as its natural ally. However, United States desires to see India not its indispensable partner, but an invincible partner against the emerging superpower China and the basic objective of Obama’s visit to India is to control the growing might of China. United States does not like any country to try to become a superpower and as regards China, it has proved itself a peace-loving country during its post-independence history. The United States claims that China’s attitude is becoming ‘nationalist’ and its leadership shows unexpected assertiveness which reveals their ‘arrogance and belligerence’. That is why, United States has adopted a more forceful attitude towards China and has been encouraging India, Vietnam and other countries in South East Asia. As stated President Obama considers India an indispensable partner of his country, but at the same time, he appreciates the indispensability of a Pakistani role in a settlement in Afghanistan. However, in practical terms, he seems to be in no mood for a settlement nor is he ready to assign such a role to Pakistan, a fact which is evident from additional US deployments in the war-torn country. Similarly, Obama is also in no mood to address India’s growing presence in Afghanistan. Rather he welcomes its involvement in the economy of the war-ravaged country. In his electoral campaign, Barack [then Hussain] Obama had talked of peace and stability in different regions of the world particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. He had also promised to facilitate an amicable solution to the lingering Kashmir issue which he had realized to be a bone of contention between Pakistan and India. It is high time that Obama involves himself in the resolution of differences particularly the core Kashmir issue between the nuclear armed rivals. It is crystal clear that during talks, the Indian leadership will approach President Obama for help to promote Delhi’s bid to become a permanent UN Security Council member even without veto power. But it will be advisable that President Obama links the issue to India’s worst record of human rights abuses in Occupied Kashmir. The fact remains that India has waged a genocidal war against the Kashmiris and has martyred in just four months over 150 defenseless inhabitants of the territory it has been illegally occupying for the last 63 years. It is pertinent to mention here that since October 1989, the 700,000 strong Indian forces have martyred 100,000 Kashmiris – many more scarred and wounded, to silence the people’s demand for justice, respect for human rights, freedom and the right of self-determination. The occupation troops continue to carry out arbitrary detentions, summary executions, custodial killings, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rapes, sexual exploitation, torture and fake encounters. Generations of Kashmiris have grown up under the shadow of the gun; not a single family is unaffected; and the suffering and devastation continues unabated that has inflicted loss of life and destruction on an unprecedented scale, drawing no significant attention from the international community particularly the United States. The perception that the Kashmir is a bilateral matter between Pakistan and India is unfounded because since the adoption of the UN resolutions in 1948, Kashmir is no longer a bilateral or territorial dispute between the two countries but has become an international obligation. The prospect of peace and progress in South Asia is inseparably linked with the recognition of the right of self-determination of the Kashmiris, and thus rests upon the willingness of the world community particularly the United States to make positive contribution towards resolving the Kashmir conflict. The high scale of brutalities in the held territory suggests that India is poised to avoid implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir. If President Obama wants to see his name written in the history in golden letters or as a global leader, he should not only raise the Kashmir issue during his visit to India but should also facilitate its resolution through a plebiscite in accordance with the UN resolutions, and urge India to respect the UN resolutions on Kashmir to become a permanent member of the world body. Obama’s failure to do so will further weaken credibility and standing of the United States.

The franchise of Al-Qaeda

I M Mohsin

John Brennan, the US president’s top counterterrorism expert believes, as per The New York Times, that Yemen is a typical ‘franchise of Al-Qaeda’. The remark was occasioned by the recent seizure in Britain/ Dubai of two shipments containing explosives. These were sent from Yemen to synagogues in Chicago. The way the US media, as usual, have exploited the story to spread fear is a familiar tactic by now. Unfortunately, the American politics also appears to benefit from such questionable tactics. If one has the patience to watch Fox News for while, one runs in to very vicious propaganda financed by the Right-wing Republicans etc. It is meant to Castigate the Obama Administration on all pretexts. This is so as they make their living out of special interests under the cover of ’freedom of expression’. Their mandate is clearly dictated by their pay-masters. Hence they can’t dare to even mention atrocities committed in Gaza etc. It should be no surprise how they hammered in the latest incident. Such an approach could also be induced by the mid-term polls wherein the Republicans of all shades are running down their rivals. Prima facie, the alleged-attempt is regrettable as it poses a threat to air-travel as well as the intended-recipients. As only a media-version of the occurrence has been flashed, it is too early to assess the actual course of events. However, till the time a fair investigation can establish the prosecution-story, it will remain a moot-point. One can’t help thinking of the neo-con tactics like American Airlines bombing-plan discovered in UK under Blair and the ‘Anthrax’ scandal in US which were, reportedly, meant to mislead the public opinion at home for electoral success. No wonder both those incidents got buried for good once they had served the interests of the sponsors had been fully served. Nobody appeared to bother, generally, about the loss to US-credibility it provoked the world over. The surge of fear through media appears to have made drawn attention of Govts to their vulnerability in the field of handling of air-cargo which may turn out to be a welcome development. In view of the prevailing insecurity, genuine or induced, it be highly beneficial if fool-proof system are adopted to strengthen operations which regulate important sectors like the carriage/communication of passengers/cargo by air-lines. As regards the branding of Yemen as a franchise of Al-Qaeda, this may not help the US or her friends. The Middle East is facing a very uncertain situation following the way Netan yahu rebuffed President Obama on the issue of Settlements. After Israeli insult to US President, the Jewish lobby has been going out of the way to help the rightwing Republicans in the mid-term elections to undercut the Democrats. The results indicate what a potential for mischief the lobby has acquired. If the US is seen to be so helpless in relation to Israeli land-grabbing in West Bank of Palestine besides the criminal occupation of Gaza, it is bound to incite a reaction in the Muslim world. The intransigence of Israel supported by the US Jewish- lobby would generate forces which would marshal resources for fighting against the injustice done to Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir etc. Inspired by a mission of religious significance and bolstered by the concept of the right to freedom, such groups could destabilize the status quo badly. If they choose to join Al-Qaeda they will become its lifeline as well as out-posts for winning justice.US is badly stuck in Iraq and the situation is much worse for in Afghanistan. The spate of vicious bombing on Afghans, who have no air-force, can be termed an atrocity at some stage. If history is any guide, such atrocious indiscriminate killings can’t ensure a win. As civilian casualties mount, so do the number of people who would take up arms against the foreign forces as it becomes their religious/traditional duty to avenge such deaths. One would have thought that Gen Petraeus, being a highly-educated man, would always keep this factor in defining his policy to be followed by his troops. ISAF must appreciate that such tactics worked temporarily in Iraq where the US exploited Shia-Sunni divide to weaken resistance to their occupation. Now, despite the US forces, Iraq is becoming a hell is let loose on its people and this won’t go to US’ credit. Afghanistan is a different ballgame as the Pashtuns are up in arms against the foreign forces, generally. Initially the Northern warlords sided with the US, Russia etc when they conquered Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. Only firepower would not help the US against the Al-Qaeda syndrome, force of goodwill and inter-dependence with the Muslim world appears to be the way-out. —The writer is a former Secretary Interior

Obama’s visit: Indian economy

Asif Haroon Raja

After the end of Cold War while Pakistan-US relations soured, Indo-US relations warmed up. The foundation of Indo-US strategic relations laid in 1990 prospered throughout the 1990s despite certain irritants such as nuclear non-proliferation, Russian origin missile technology and human rights violations. Huge investments were made to boost sagging economy of India . Software industry and agriculture sector in particular was given greater attention thereby enabling Indian economy to shrug off its sluggishness and become vibrant. Indo-US conjugation climaxed when Bill Clinton accompanied by extraordinarily large contingent of over 2000 businessmen and others visited India from 21-25 March 2000 and their relationship blossomed into solid strategic partnership. Besides removing sanctions imposed in the wake of India ’s nuclear explosions in May 1998, and turning a blind eye to the existing irritants, India was cajoled, pampered and showered with heavy investments worth billions of dollars. An atmosphere of festivity and rejoicing pervaded the Indian horizon throughout the period of visitors stay. In contrast to high profile visit to India , Clinton ’s five-hour visit to Islamabad was a non-event. Ouster of democratic regime of Nawaz Sharif by Gen Musharraf had not gone down well in Washington . Accompanied by his personal staff and contingent of security goons, his attitude throughout his brief stay was curt and officious. He preferred to meet President Rafiq Tarar and completely ignored Musharraf. He came with an empty bag and had nothing to offer to Pakistan except to lecture Pakistani nation. What he conveyed was that Pakistan should agree to return to civilian rule, rollback nuclear program, eliminate terrorism, accept Line of Control as permanent border in Kashmir , rein in fundamentalist elements and accept India as a regional power. He added that unless Pakistan agreed to these proposals, it would not qualify itself for the restoration of US economic and technical assistance that had been severed in October 1990. He cautioned that failing to fulfill the stated pre-conditions, not only 1990 and 1998 sanctions would remain operative, other financial institutions and world bodies would be asked to tighten the economic screws on Pakistan . In other words, Pakistan would be declared a pariah and a failed state. Needless for me to recount how George Bush led Republicans after coming to power twisted the arm of Musharraf suffering from legitimacy bug and made him agree to promote US interests in the region at the cost of national interests. Bush era promoted India as a counterweight to China . It helped India in consolidating its influence in Afghanistan . We also distinctly recall Bush’s visit to India in March 2006. Other than tens of defence and economic agreements worth billions of dollars, biggest trophy awarded was the lucrative civil nuclear deal. After this hi-fi visit, expectations in Pakistan were sky high. Reasons for such optimism were that Pakistan had acted as the frontline state and was playing a key role in US war on terror, had arrested and handed over more than 700 Al-Qaeda operatives to USA, and Musharraf had become the blue-eyed boy of Bush. High hopes crashed when Bush said that he had come on an inspection tour to check progress of Pakistan on ground. Not only request for a nuclear deal similar to India was brusquely turned down, no worthwhile defence or economic agreement was inked. Even direly needed counter terrorism equipment was denied due to Indian fears. Concerns of Pakistan about covert operations by RAW from Afghan soil were also not heeded to since he had approvingly listened to complaints made against Pakistan by Karzai at Kabul . Bush sympathized with perpetrators of cross border terrorism against Pakistan but he turned a deaf ear to Pakistan ’s pleadings that it was victim of cross border terrorism. It was understandable for Bush to pretend deafness since he knew that CIA was the chief coordinator of covert operations launched against Pakistan from Afghan soil. After Bush’s tour of this region, US attitude against Pakistan stiffened and became more and more aggressive. In his last year in power, Pak-US relations had dipped low because of unsubstantiated accusations made against Pakistan and Washington’s dissatisfaction over performance of Pak Army in war on terror. Mumbai attacks on 26/11 not only strained Indo-Pak relations but also had an adverse impact on Pak-US relations. Barack Obama from whom better response was expected did not prove any better from his predecessor. Rather, he shifted the weight of war on terror entirely towards Afghanistan and Pakistan thorough his ill-conceived Af-Pak policy. He brought no change in US tilt towards India and continued to prepare it as a bulwark against China and to make it a key player in Afghan affairs. Pakistan bashing continued unabated and drone strikes were accelerated. Propaganda against Pakistan ’s nuclear program and its alleged linkage with Taliban and Al-Qaeda became malicious. He also ignored Pakistan ’s request for award of US nuclear technology on the plea that it had not proven itself to be a responsible state. Attitude of Obama and his administration towards Pakistan became less vituperative at the dawn of 2010 because of brilliant performance of Pak Army in Malakand, Swat and South Waziristan and also due to worsening security situation in Afghanistan . The US wanted Pakistan to help in dividing the Taliban and isolating the hardliners led by Mullah Omar since neither Karzai regime, or India , or CIA, or Saudi Arabia could do so. A need for a political solution to Afghan imbroglio was direly felt since this was the only plausible way to ensure an honorable exit. Kerry Lugar Bill followed by strategic dialogue was aimed at bridging the trust deficit and creating better understanding between the two countries. Confidence building measures and carrots in no way match the endowments doled out to India , which is being continuously rewarded despite having done nothing in fighting war on terror. It neither sent any military contingent in Iraq nor in Afghanistan . Despite this glaring dichotomy, India is presented the cake and leftover crumbs are given to Pakistan which has given sacrifices more than any other country. After Clinton and Bush, it is now Obama’s turn to visit India for three days from 6-8 November in order to further cement Indo-US strategic ties. Principally speaking Obama should have visited Afghanistan and Pakistan where war is raging and not India which is covertly fuelling flames of war. Since economics override politics and strategic considerations, India has been preferred. Other reason for not including Pakistan in his itinerary was the heightened bitterness between two archrivals, both carrying host of grouses against each other. Obama was faced with a dilemma since on one hand India is indispensable to US, on the other Pakistan ’s significance in context with endgame of Afghanistan could not be overlooked. Obama was not in a position to offer goodies in equal proportion to both or to play one against the other. He also knew that presently anti-Americanism in Pakistan is on the peak and his own popularity is down because of high spate of drone strikes in Waziristan . Explosive situation in occupied Kashmir due to massive unarmed uprising and gross human rights violations by Indian security forces was another pressure point which he wanted to avoid. These considerations constrained Obama to take off Pakistan from his itinerary, but he hastened to compensate it by pledging to make an exclusive trip to Pakistan next year. Obama can ill-afford at this critical juncture to please India at the cost of Pakistan. Unlike his two predecessors who were in a stronger position, he will be cautious and will take extra care not to offend the sensibilities of Pakistan and risk losing its critical support. Obama’s visit to India will be outweighed by economic considerations. It will be more of a business oriented tour to promote US exports and less of politics. —The writer is a defence, political analyst.

Conflict resolution — I

The writer served as director-general of the ISI from 1990-92 asad.durrani@tribune.com.pk

It would be nice if we could resolve our conflicts without recourse to war. The problem is that hardly ever have warring parties, out of the goodness of their heart, sat down face-to-face and left in abiding friendship. Disputes may indeed ultimately be settled through negotiations, but only after the belligerents have exhausted all other options, or concluded that the price of conflict was exceeding that of peace. To secure the best possible position on the table, the adversaries should use all elements of national power to their optimum advantage.
India and Pakistan tried that for 50 years. During this period, they developed internal strength and sought external support, acquired unconventional capabilities and used sub-conventional means and fought wars. Finally in 1997, in the belief that they were now well-positioned, the two countries evolved a framework for peace.
The first challenge was to create the right conditions for a dialogue on Kashmir, the bone of contention between them right from their inception. It had now become so complex that a meaningful discourse seemed nearly impossible. In Pakistan, securing the right of self-determination for the Kashmiris is a national passion. It could not, therefore, embark upon a dialogue that was not seen to be addressing Kashmir. India, on the other hand, having declared the disputed state as its integral part, could not be seen negotiating its status. The foreign secretaries meeting of June 1997 found an ingenuous method to circumvent the dilemma.
The recipe, now known as the “composite dialogue”, was to form a number of working groups to discuss bilateral issues more or less concurrently. Peace, security and Kashmir were to be dealt with by foreign secretaries; others like trade, terrorism, and some territorial disputes by ministries or departments concerned. Pakistan could now claim that its “core issue” would be handled at an appropriately high level, and the Indians were free to explain that the forum was primarily to redress matters like cross-border infiltration. A clause in the agreement, however, could cease the process in its tracks.
A good number of people in Pakistan have always believed that if the two countries settled peripheral disputes before addressing Kashmir, India would have no incentive in its resolution. To assuage that concern, a clause in the joint communiqué (4.2) stated that the dialogue would be conducted as an “integrated” whole — implying that progress on all issues would have to be in tandem. That sounded fine — except for the problem that if there was little or no movement on one track, one would have to slow down on all the others. The favourable environment needed to deal with the more complex problems was thus contingent upon progress on all. This was exactly the catch-22 situation that the authors of the formula had set out to avoid.
The “integrated” part was, therefore, quietly dropped (though not from the official text). The process was now more like moving with our disputes on parallel tracks and settling them according to their degree of difficulty. No longer “composite”, the dialogue retained its politically correct adjective. What we now had was a “multiple-track, multiple-speed” formula.
Evolution of this concept was purely a civilian sector enterprise. However, since it is the military that prides itself in the study and development of strategic wisdom, it may be gratifying to note that a military strategist too would have supported the model. When operating along multiple axes, forces that meet less resistance continue their momentum, thus creating a synergetic effect. In due course, some critical fronts can be reinforced to achieve a breakthrough and capture the main objective — in this case, durable peace in the subcontinent.
Good concepts and sound strategies are indeed not enough. Execution and oversight is the real thing. How the composite dialogue fared on that account will be discussed in subsequent serials.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2010

Reconstruction for economic democracy — II

The writer is distinguished professor of economics at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore

I propose that post-flood reconstruction be used as an opportunity to initiate the reconstruction of our social order for economic democracy.
The institutional structure for economic democracy would provide opportunities to all citizens of Pakistan, rather than a few, to have access to overproductive assets. By bringing the middle class and the poor into the process of investment, there would be a much broader base of investment, competition, efficiency increase and innovation, thereby achieving a sustained and more equitable GDP growth. Three policy initiatives could be considered for initiating a process of sustained economic growth on the basis of economic democracy:
(1) Land for the tiller: a small farmer-based agriculture growth strategy. The government has 2.6 million acres of cultivable state land. It is proposed that this land be distributed amongst current landless tenant farmers, in packages of five acres each. This land for the tiller policy would need to be backed up by establishing what I have called a small farmer development corporation (SFDC) which would provide small farmers with facilities for land development, access over new agriculture technologies (such as tunnel farming, drip irrigation etc.), extension services for developing high value crops, livestock development and production of milk and milk products. The SFDC ought to be owned by small farmers who could buy equity in this corporation through government loans, but would be managed by high quality professionals.
The proposed land for the tiller policy with institutional support of the SFDC would provide small farmers with both the incentive and the ability to increase agriculture productivity. The small farm sector (farms below 25 acres) constitutes a substantial part of the agrarian economy and possesses the greatest potential for productivity increase. Small farms constitute 94 per cent of the total number of farms and 60 per cent of the total farm area. Therefore the proposed land for the tiller policy could enable a shift from the ‘elite farmer strategy’ of the last four decades to a new ‘small farmer strategy’. Small farmers could thus become the subjects of a new trajectory of a faster and more equitable agriculture growth.
(2) For inclusive growth through equity stakes for the poor, the poor can be included in the process of investment and economic growth not merely through micro enterprises, but can be engaged into the mainstream corporate sector as well. The idea here is to establish large corporations, owned by the poor and managed by professionals, in a number of strategic sectors such as milk and milk products, livestock, telecommunications, information technology services, construction and automotive parts production. These corporations could be set up through loans to the poor for purchasing equity stakes in these corporations, and the loans could be returned through dividends earned.
(3) Small scale manufacturing industries require lower capital investment and generate higher employment per unit of output and also have shorter gestation periods compared to the large scale manufacturing sector. Therefore an increased share of investment in this sector could enable a higher GDP growth for given levels of investment as well as higher employment generation for given levels of growth. At the same time if the institutional conditions could be created for enabling small scale industries to move into high value added components for both import substitution in the domestic market and for exports, Pakistan’s balance of payments pressures could be eased. The key strategic issue in accelerating the growth of SSEs is to enable them to shift to the high value added, high growth end of the product market. These SSEs include high value added units in light engineering, automotive parts, moulds, dyes, machine tools and electronics and computer software.
These initiatives for economic democracy constitute a strategy for higher GDP growth through equity. The people would thus become both the subjects as well as the beneficiaries of GDP growth. It would be economic democracy because it would enable growth for the people and by the people. Such an economy could become the basis of sustaining Pakistan’s political democracy for which the people have struggled so long and for which Mohtarama Shaheed Benazir Bhutto gave her life. The best homage to her memory would be to strengthen the foundations of democracy by giving a stake in the country to the poor.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2010.

Reconstruction for economic democracy — I

The writer is distinguished professor of economics at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore

Consider the scale of the destruction resulting from the great flood: over 20 million people affected, homes destroyed, livelihoods lost, canals, barrages, water courses, tube wells and electricity stations damaged, roads and bridges wiped out. My own rough estimate of the reconstruction cost is about $18 billion.
The scale of the required reconstruction effort, while it presents a formidable challenge, also provides a great opportunity. The opportunity is to undertake the structural reforms necessary to place Pakistan’s economy on a new path of sustained and equitable growth. Such a growth process, if achieved, could give a stake in the economy to all of the people rather than a small elite and thereby lay the basis of what in my recent work I have called economic democracy. In this part of the article, I will indicate some of the immediate policy initiatives required, and in the second part, an outline of strategy to achieve economic democracy will be articulated.
For short-term policy imperatives, four immediate economic policy measures may be considered in the context of the reconstruction effort:
1. If the winter (rabi) crop is to be planted and a serious food deficit next summer is averted, immediate measures must be undertaken to provide farmers in the flood affected areas, good quality seed, fertiliser and pesticides together with timely provision of tube well water to enable the planting of wheat in the month ahead.
2. It is time now to consider shifting away from the IMF approach of economic contraction to a new policy of economic stimulation that aims to revive economic growth. Pakistan’s GDP growth has declined sharply to two per cent this year and the per capita income growth has become negative. Not only has this sharply increased poverty and unemployment, it will also result in a slowdown in the growth of government revenues. The former will place further stresses on the fragile democratic structure and the latter will increase the budget deficit. The earlier attempts to cut down the budget deficit (6.3 per cent of GDP this year) through expenditure reduction have failed, and in the years ahead the only viable policy of controlling the budget deficit is by increasing revenues through accelerated GDP growth. Infrastructure projects in the flood affected areas provide an opportunity of doing so.
3. Just before the flood, the food insecure population had been estimated at about 77 per cent, it may now have reached over 85 per cent. There is clearly an urgent need to provide food security to the people of Pakistan in general and in the flood-affected areas of the country in particular, where food insecurity is most intense. In this context the coverage of the social protection measures needs to be enlarged, and the identity and locations of the flood-affected population quickly established so that ATM cards under the Benazir Income Support Programme can be issued as soon as possible.
4. At the same time an employment guarantee scheme in the form of a cash for work programme ought to be launched in the flood-affected areas in the first instance, followed by the rest of the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2010

Changing the social order

The writer is distinguished professor of economics at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore

The problem with ongoing discussions in the spheres of economic and political policies is that policy options for change in one sphere are being considered in isolation of the other. Thus issues of corruption, democracy and the rule of law are being divorced from the issues of reviving the economy on a sustainable basis, overcoming poverty and providing basic services to people. When the required changes involve not just tinkering with policy but rather fundamental changes, we must consider an important proposition: Political and economic systems are organically linked within the social order and are subject to what has been called the theory of ‘double balance’: Sustaining fundamental changes in the political system requires changes in the economic sphere and vice versa.
The New Institutional Economics suggests that a social order encompasses the political, economic, cultural, religious, military and educational systems. Therefore, changing the social order involves changes in each of these elements and the relationship between them. There are two kinds of social orders in the contemporary world. The Limited Access Social Order of the undeveloped countries and the Open Access Order of the developed countries. The institutional structure of the former is characterised by a coalition of elite that excludes the majority of the population from the process of governance and growth. On the basis of this exclusion, it generates unearned income for itself, uses its power to structure markets in its favour and creates wide interpersonal and inter regional inequalities. Poverty is endemic in such a social order because it precludes thriving markets and sustained long-term growth. By contrast, the Open Access Social Order exhibits systematic competition in both economic and political spheres, free entry and mobility and hence long-term development.
The policy issue in Pakistan is not merely which sector to select as a ‘driver of growth’, or ending corruption by making an example of a few, but must address the question of why attempts at such policies in the past have failed. Changing the social order is the central challenge for both democracy and development in Pakistan.
The essential feature of this change process, as shown by Douglass C North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R Weingast (in Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History), is that it initiates “a series of reinforcing changes in institutions, organisations, and individual behaviour such that incremental increases in access are sustained by the existing political and economic systems at each step along the way”.
Let us indicate the doorstep conditions for initiating the process of changing Pakistan’s social order: (1) Rule of law. This involves subordinating individual or party interests to the obligation of maintaining the balance between various organisations of the state as specified in the constitution. The rule of law also requires the development of new norms that can underpin and are consistent with the formal rules specified in the constitution. (2) The military must maintain the integrity of the state by subordinating itself, in actual practice, to elected civil authority as stipulated in the formal rules of the constitution. This change could be facilitated, if elected governments enlarged their space within the power structure, by delivering economic and social justice to the people who are the source of legitimacy. (3) Foreign policy must be driven not by a ‘national security paradigm’ but by Pakistan’s economic interests and the logic of human security. (4) Social and political organisations that align themselves behind the Change Agenda need to develop democratic rules and norms in their organisational structures and should network amongst themselves to create a mutually reinforcing momentum.
In the present critical crisis, creating the basis of a fundamental change in the social order is necessary if state and society are to survive and prosper.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2010.

India in Afghanistan — I

The writer is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and author of Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (The Lyons Press, August 2003) christine.fair@tribune.com.pk

India’s profile in Afghanistan has been a looming concern for New Delhi, Washington, Brussels and, of course, Islamabad with all wondering what the optimal role for India in Afghanistan’s reconstruction is, in light of the security competition between India and Pakistan. Some want to expand India’s presence in Afghanistan through Indian training of Afghan civilian and military personnel, development projects and economic ties. Others caution against such involvement. Others yet see Indian and Pakistani competition in Afghanistan as a new “Great Game” and argue that Afghanistan can be pacified through a regional solution that settles the Kashmir dispute.
India’s interests in Afghanistan are not only Pakistan-specific but also tied to India’s desire to be seen as an extra-regional power moving toward great power status. While India’s presence in Afghanistan has Pakistan-specific utility, India’s interests in Afghanistan can be seen as merely one element within India’s desire to be able to project its interests well beyond South Asia.
India has three principal aims in Afghanistan. First, it faced security threats from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s which provided training opportunities and safe havens for several Pakistani groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which operate in India. India insists that Afghanistan should not again become a terrorist safe haven.
Second, India wants to retain Afghanistan as a friendly state from which it can monitor Pakistan and, where possible, cultivate assets to influence activities in Pakistan. Naturally, Pakistan seeks to deny India such opportunities.
Third, developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan have a negative effect on India’s domestic social fabric. Hindu nationalists and their militant counterparts live in a violent symbiosis with Islamist militant groups operating in and around India. Islamist terrorism in the region provides grist for the mill of Hindu nationalism and its violent offshoots.
Contrary to some Pakistani views, India’s ties to Afghanistan are not new. In 1950, Afghanistan and India signed a “Friendship Treaty.” Prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979, New Delhi formalised agreements with various pro-Soviet regimes in Kabul. During the anti-Soviet jihad, India expanded its development activities in Afghanistan.
After the Taliban consolidated their hold on Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, India struggled to maintain its presence. It aimed to undermine the Taliban by supporting the Northern Alliance in tandem with other regional actors.
Working with Iran, Russia and Tajikistan, India provided important resources to the Northern Alliance, the only meaningful challenge to the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to journalist Rahul Bedi, India also ran a 25-bed hospital at Farkhor (Ayni), Tajikistan, for more than a year and supplied the Northern Alliance with high altitude warfare equipment worth around $8 million. India also based several ‘defence advisers’ in Tajikistan to advise the Northern Alliance in their operations against the Taliban.
Since 2001, India has relied upon development projects and other forms of humanitarian assistance. To facilitate these projects and to collect intelligence (as all embassies do), India now has consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, in addition to its embassy in Kabul. There are also a number of smaller-scale activities throughout Afghanistan. According to the US, British, and Afghan officials that I interviewed over the last several years, India’s activities are not isolated to the north, where it has had traditional ties, but also include efforts in the southern provinces and in the northeast, abutting the Pakistani border.
This is a condensed version of an article that was first appeared on Foreign Policy’s Af-Pak Channel on October 26, 2010
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2010.

Revisiting Pakistan’s ‘Strategic Depth’

Syed Nadir El Edroos 1 month ago

We need to engage with both Afghanistan and India to leverage our geographic position to develop strategic depth with positive connotations.

Two words that hold our country hostage is our policy of maintaining ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan. Apart from referring to a poorly titled adult film, the policy envisages to protect Pakistan’s eastern borders from unwanted Indian influence.
However, the consequences of continuing with this policy and differentiating between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Taliban, has led to accusations of Pakistan playing a ‘double-game’ in Afghanistan. For many the accusation has become quite stale and repetitive. It seems to have become an open secret, with many accepting it as a reality, a part of the status-quo for dealing with the troubles in the region.
Whether the policy has been successful is debatable. The military’s and the ISI’s continued links with the Haqqani network ensures that they are a sought after broker for any back channel attempt to woo the Taliban.
The strategy aims to maintain Pakistani influence in/over Afghanistan, and to thwart alleged Indian designs. However, the policy has at the same time made Pakistan quite unpopular with large segments of the Afghan establishment. Interfering in Afghanistan’s affairs, while demanding an end to foreign influence in Pakistan is met with much ridicule in foreign capitals; it reeks of hypocrisy.
The policy is also questionable, as it breeds violence, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As the violence continues, Pakistan is sure to be in the news, accused for fostering, abating or at the very least tolerating continued bloodshed to maintain its interests.
The result is the ‘image deficit’ that haunts Pakistan. The dismal public response to the floods in Pakistan for example was attributed to this effect. It has also been more difficult for our economic managers to garner favourable trade concessions and development grants. Winning over wider public support remains a problem, as Pakistan remains associated with fostering rather than curtailing violence in Afghanistan. Politicians in the west are portrayed as weak by the right-wing media, such as Fox News in the US, for taking initiatives to support Pakistan.
Look at any article posted on any western news outlet. The comments question the calls for sympathy for Pakistan as we are branded as supporters of terrorism, who inflict material and physical damage on their interests.
An alternative strategy
There needs to be an alternative to our current strategy. The alternative need not be between defending Pakistan from India or bowing before it and allowing it a free hand in Afghanistan. We need to engage with both Afghanistan and India to leverage our geographic position to develop strategic depth with positive connotations.
The US, Afghanistan and India have been pressing Pakistan to allow the transit of Indian goods over Pakistan through to Afghanistan and vice versa for years. I say, let the goods pass, hell put them on the trains. That will help to give our faltering railways a financial shot in the arm. Extend the Iran-Pakistan pipeline into India, let the gas flow. Transit fees galore! Rather than questioning Indian development aid to Afghanistan we should support it. Geographically it’s more of an advantage for us, as any increase in economic activity in Afghanistan will immediately suck in Pakistani exports.
What would the advantages be? Imagine the headlines. Pakistan would look like the peace builder, shunning international criticism and situating itself as committed to the development of an Afghan state. We would also be seen on the diplomatic offensive vis-à-vis India. With Pakistan offering so many incentives, India will have to respond in the affirmative. After all India is cultivating its image as a regional and global superpower, the ball will firmly be in India’s court. It cannot be seen rebuffing genuine gestures from its old foe.
Importantly, a policy that leverages our geographic position economically rather than militarily negates any association with violence.  We would be treated as victims rather than the guilty.
If India is indeed developing consulates across Afghanistan housing RAW agents that ferment trouble in Pakistan, improved economic ties will help shed a spotlight on the functioning of these consulates. As Pakistan becomes vital for transporting Indian-Afghanistan exports and imports to each other, minimising any threat to these links will become a primary concern for Indian traders. This will build added pressure on those who dare concoct nefarious designs to fuel militancy in Balochistan for example.
India can switch on and off the belligerent rhetoric as India’s economy has little or no interests in Pakistan. However, a Pakistan which is vital for Indian trade, supply of resources etc will have no choice but to tone down any sabre rattling that seems to be a cyclical part of Pakistan-India relations.
So where does Pakistan’s security come in?
In any period of belligerent hostility Pakistan will have the ability to cut of energy and trade links. Containers can be seized, Indian traders in Pakistan arrested, and diplomatically we can garner support by portraying ourselves of peace. We have gone the extra mile to foster our relations with India and support a viable Afghanistan. India would be seen as the aggressor. How is that for maintaining strategic depth?
Our present policy allows for India’s security establishment to deal with her interests in Afghanistan ignoring any media or public scrutiny. A policy that places economic links at its foundations will open up Indian policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan and the actions of its security agencies to wider scrutiny. The competition between competing interests will insure that whatever policy is actually implemented is a watered down compromise that is not a real threat to Pakistan.
We have to find alternatives to the status-quo. With the nation reeling under flooding, terrorism and economic stagnation we are more dependent on foreign assistance than at any point in our history. They are not many variables that we can control for. We can’t control how the foreign press paints us, how we are perceived abroad etc. However, what little we can do to help alter these perceptions, we must. And this does not have to lead to subjugation to Indian influence that many right wing commentators would suggest.
If we are to continue with our obsession with thwarting Indian designs, can we please do it in a manner that doesn’t hold us all hostage to violence and paint us as terrorist?
Shaping global opinion is a long term effort which must start sooner than later. Our challenges for the future, access to water, natural disasters caused by climate change and development depends in a large part to interaction and support of our neighbours and the international community. Politics and security needs are always a concern, but we must get society at large, the world over on our sign. We are not the cause but the victims. Strategic depth? Sure, but by other means.

A dangerous narrative

Rafia Zakaria
(21 hours ago) Today

By Rafia Zakaria

THE evening after the conclusion of the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, soon after the Pakistani delegation had said its goodbyes and boarded the flight home, President Obama`s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke gave an interview to a major American news channel.

During the interview, Holbrooke was asked whether Pakistan had given the US “a commitment that they would go after sanctuaries on their own territory”. He replied: “We urge them to do more. And they are gradually doing more, not as much perhaps as we would want.” While he went on to recognise that Pakistan was doing more than it had in previous years, the tone and content of the statement largely defined the public construction of both Pakistan`s role and the point of the dialogue in the American media.
The construction of Pakistan as a complicated country with shifty interests and many secret agendas has thus continued even after the strategic dialogue, which was sold as a much-touted trust-building measure. On television again on Sunday Holbrooke deflected a question about why Pakistan always seemed to have excuses when asked to take on the insurgent groups on its own territory by saying that he was “not there to defend Pakistan or the Pakistani Army”.
The tone and tenor of all these statements, and the recurrent characterisation of the US as a patient, cajoling ally heaping billions of dollars in civilian and military aid on a shadowy Pakistan, is notable for several reasons. It provides an indication of how the image of Pakistan continues to be created before the American public.
During his campaign, and continuing through these first years, the Obama administration has adeptly begun to deflect the failures of Afghanistan on not itself but on Pakistan. To substantiate this claim, administration officials including Holbrooke have become adept at counting down the number of terrorist groups currently operating with impunity in that country. Nearly every debate focusing on Afghanistan ends with a discussion of how American forces in the region are routinely and continually undermined by their attackers` ability to run off across the border into Pakistan.
In this latest instance, Holbrooke did mention that thousands of Pakistanis have been killed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, but this integrally important fact was presented, as always, as a convenient aside — the preface to allegations that reiterate the fact that the Pakistani agenda remains at best murky and at worst downright antithetical to American interests.
There are other advantages to the construction of Pakistan as a shady villain. The Obama administration is well aware of the fact that inevitably, some nefarious plot to conduct a terrorist attack in the US will eventually be successful. Given that terrorists routinely strike soft targets and aim to cause civilian casualties, it is a virtual impossibility to prevent such an eventuality.
If Pakistan has already been defined as a murky place, consisting largely of terrorist hideouts and a population that continues to hate the United States regardless of its benevolence, there is unlikely to be much political opposition to an aerial bombing campaign that in the words of President Obama would “disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat” Al Qaeda in Pakistan. While the American public is largely war weary, a new terror attack could well provide the impetus to conduct an operation that would use massive American airpower to take care of the Pakistan problem.
Strategic relationships are constructed largely by the party that controls the narrative. In the case of Pakistan and the US, it is undoubted that the latter is involved in just as many shadowy negotiations and multiple games as Pakistan. Even as the Obama administration impressed upon Pakistan the necessity of an operation in North Waziristan, Nato airplanes were reportedly transporting various members of the Afghan Taliban for discussion with the Karzai administration. Similarly, an important issue that officials of the Obama administration brought to the table during the talks was the granting of visas to several hundred CIA operatives that the US wants to send to Pakistan to carry out covert operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
This then is the central contradiction that remains invisible to the American public. While the US engages in talks and deals with the same Taliban that Pakistan is accused of canoodling with, and the CIA carries out security operations and extra-judicial killings with impunity, the facts are never allowed to impact the narrative of the Af-Pak war.
Pakistan`s loss in these negotiations is thus not the failure to procure a civilian-nuclear energy deal similar to the one provided to India, nor the inability to get some reassurance from the United States to mediate in the Kashmir issue. Pakistan`s trouncing is comprised of its complete failure to provide its side of the story to any degree of prominence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan narrative.
The challenge before Pakistan`s civilian and military leadership vis-à-vis its relationship with the US thus does not pivot on the commitments of aid or the energy projects it can negotiate before it loses its strategic bargaining chips. Instead, it should focus on gaining some control over the narrative of the Af-Pak conflict and positioning Pakistan on the world stage as a victim rather than a perpetrator of terrorism. n
During a week when much of Pakistan`s civilian and military leadership was in Washington, not a single American media outlet focused on the over 300 suicide bombings that have taken place in Pakistan this year, nor the thousands of innocent Pakistanis that have been killed at the hands of terrorist groups. The world`s blindness to Pakistan`s pain leaves the country vulnerable to invasion and attack in the unfortunate event of another terrorist attack on American soil.
The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Democracy & development

Democracy & development

Iran`s legitimate concerns

Iran`s legitimate concerns

Can we change our ‘hate-India’ mindset?

ayesha.siddiqa@tribune.com.pk

I must confess that the title of Air-Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry’s piece “Can we change our ‘hate-India’ mindset?” was deceptive as it was more about Bangladesh than India. It also raised expectations, that perhaps the retired air marshal had re-thought the basic framework which drives hatred for India in this country. Instead, I came across a rambling piece regarding the use of a Bangladesh model, which is very popular amongst the Pakistani pro-establishment circle, to bring about internal changes in the country.
The article inferred that development in the country, as in the case of Bangladesh, would help get rid of our anti-India policy. To say the least, this sounds like an absolutely incorrect reading of the past, present and even the future. Bangladesh and Pakistan are different — as one of the main political players in Dhaka, the Awami League, traditionally has good ties with India. This is mainly because part of the Bangladeshi military, the Mukti Bahini freedom fighters, is indebted to India. Ziaur Rehman’s BNP under the leadership of his wife Khalida Zia, on the other hand, had relatively better ties with Pakistan. This could also be due to the fact that Bangladesh’s General Zia was part of the repatriated officers who form a bulk of Bangladesh military’s officer corps.
In Bangladesh, the common man, especially those in the border areas, dislikes India more than Pakistanis due to border skirmishes between the two neighbours, and other issues including smuggling of cattle and water. The reason such popular opinion does not translate automatically into more conflict is because, unlike in Pakistan, Bangladeshi governments are not willing to use this negative opinion to their political advantage.
As for the Bangladeshi model of political change that Mr Chaudhry and others of his ilk so like, it was a top-down change envisioned by the country’s middle class. However, it did not manage to weed out the political actors it so wanted to. Nor has the Grameen Bank model brought real change in Bangladesh. In fact, it was later discovered that the bank was deceptive in reporting its financial performance. More recent research, some of which can be read in the autumn issue of the South Asian magazine Himal, shows that Yunus’s was a neo-liberal approach which increased indebtedness of the local community without increasing profits because too many people were doing the same thing through micro-credit loans. However, since the collateral was indirect, people tended to waste money rather than put it to good use.
Had Mr Chaudhry looked deeper, he might have discovered two broad reasons for why Bangladesh has performed better than Pakistan. Despite the high polarisation of the Bangladeshi state and society, they are largely committed to a secular identity. Although the majority of people are Muslims there have never been claims of the country being the fortress of Islam which can only be defended militarily. The separation of religion from politics provides a healthy space in which faith can grow and allow people to coexist.
To Bangladesh’s advantage, its military’s initial structure was not professional despite the fact that the bulk of its officers were those repatriated from Pakistan. This meant that the military continued to be less Machiavellian in the initial part of the country’s history. Although the army conducted two coups, it could also be pushed out because it had not managed to create a powerful national narrative that was based on inciting fear and gathered people around the armed forces.
The fact of the matter is that India-hatred is the raison d’être of Pakistan’s security apparatus. This, in isolation, is not wrong since all militaries are designed to respond to an external threat. The main problem is that like the Prussian army, our military has become larger than life and continues to paddle anti-Indianism as the nation’s driver. Under the circumstances, many like Shahzad Chaudhry may privately or publicly confess to anti-Indianism, posing a problem for economic growth, but fail to offer a solution. Settlement of outstanding disputes alone may not solve the problem — the solution of disputes itself is linked with a change in perception.

The Realist Prism: U.S.-India Partnership Needs Substance, not Rhetoric

Nikolas Gvosdev | 15 Oct 2010

In advance of President Barack Obama's visit to India next month, the administration is sending signals about great and wondrous changes ahead in the Indo-American relationship. But in reading Lalit K. Jha's dispatch from Washington, a term I have come to dread in foreign policy rhetoric made its predictable appearance: Obama's visit is supposed to herald the establishment of a "true strategic partnership." "Strategic partnership" entered the U.S. diplomatic lexicon as a way to find a halfway house between those countries that are formal American allies -- especially those for whom this status is a matter of treaty and Congressional statute -- and countries that might otherwise not be hostile to Washington but who did not enjoy any special or privileged relationship with the United States. The problem, however, is that "strategic partnership" was often applied as a catch-all diplomatic term devoid of real practical applications. The concept was originally drafted into service in the context of post-Soviet U.S.-Russia relations, to provide a basis for cooperation between Washington and Moscow. But comforting talk about Russia and the United States being "strategic partners" often vanished when the relationship ran into real difficulties, particularly after Russia's power began to resurge. Similarly, Georgia's status as a "strategic partner" was a way to promote the illusion that Tbilisi was joining the Euro-Atlantic world. But Georgians keenly felt the absence of concrete security guarantees in the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. The other tendency is for the term to be so widely applied that any real importance or significance of the designation is lost. The U.S. is a strategic partner with both Russia and China, who themselves enjoy a strategic partnership as well. Meanwhile, Russia and India also consider themselves strategic partners, while Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Does this imply any sort of a Quintuple Alliance between Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Islamabad and New Delhi? Certainly not. Behind all of the vague protestations of friendship, the reality is that "strategic partnerships" do not carry the same weight as actual, concrete, defined interstate agreements. The relationship between Moscow and Beijing, for instance, is undergirded by a raft of intergovernmental contracts as well as joint participation and leadership of a regional organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- not just by the rhetoric of "strategic partnership." So the optics of Obama's India visit may be quite positive, and the rhetoric celebrating the ties between the world's oldest democracy and its largest one might be positively glowing. What's more, Washington and New Delhi have a clear set of common interests that should drive a closer political, economic and strategic relationship between the two powers. But the question remains, What will this trip actually change? What actual agreements on economic relations or on security cooperation are likely to be reached between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? And what sort of private, bilateral "understandings" on Afghanistan are likely to emerge? Indian analyst B. Raman recently expressed concern about a "paucity of ideas" regarding what India and the U.S. can accomplish together: "Apart from the Joint Counter-Terrorism Initiative launched by the two countries during the visit of the Indian prime minister to the U.S. in November 2009, there has been hardly any new idea which could be called Obama's own and over which India could feel excited." He's right. The problem is that Washington is in no position at this point to make any grandiose steps towards New Delhi. Given the state of the U.S. domestic economy, and continued outrage over the "export" of American jobs, any sort of free trade pact is out of the question. The current U.S. strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan to allow for the gradual disengagement of the United States from that conflict rests upon the active cooperation of Pakistan, and Washington cannot take steps to formalize its security ties to India without seriously jeopardizing its relationship with Islamabad. Moreover, the United States' tacit encouragement of Chinese investment in Afghanistan as a way to provide jobs and income to dry up popular support for the insurgency also raises New Delhi's hackles, as did a 2009 statement about the positive role the United States hoped China would play in the South Asian region. The U.S. has tried to focus Pakistan's attention on combating al-Qaida and other militant groups on its territory that plan terrorist attacks against targets in the West. But as Raman points out, Washington's anti-terror strategy is less concerned with "Pakistani Punjabi terrorists posing a threat to Indian nationals and interests, whether in India or in Afghanistan." In fact, both Islamabad and New Delhi have grown impatient with Washington's attempt to placate both sides as "good friends" of the United States. And if the president decides to raise the sensitive issue of Kashmir in his talks with Singh -- even by couching such a discussion within the larger context of the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan theater -- it might create some friction, because India is not interested in having the U.S. serve any sort of mediator role in a process that New Delhi feels might compromise its territorial integrity. We must also be realistic about the many remaining areas of divergence between Washington and New Delhi that prevent the contemplation of any real alliance. As Richard Haass has noted, "Alliances require predictability: of threat, outlook, obligations. But it is precisely these characteristics that are likely to be in short supply in a world of shifting threats [and] differing perceptions . . . " Raman and others, however, have highlighted one promising area for Indo-U.S. cooperation: expanding the two countries' naval relationship. Given the growing importance of the Indian Ocean as a central sea lane of communication for the global economy, this would provide a way for the American and Indian militaries to work more closely together. As Raman notes, "U.S. policymakers and public opinion would be comfortable with naval cooperation with India, but might not like to get involved with India in its territorial conflicts with China and Pakistan." A stronger naval relationship also avoids the pitfalls of the terminology of "strategic partnerships" by setting down concrete areas for U.S. and Indian security cooperation. For instance, the U.S. and India could conceivably reach an agreement about shared operations as defined in a specific geographic zone, just as the NATO treaty specified the area of the world where the alliance was operative. NATO allies in Europe, for instance, need not worry that U.S. security problems in the Pacific region, or Britain's dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, will involve them, allowing for genuine security cooperation within the actual framework of the alliance. Agreements on naval cooperation might also break existing logjams in the types of high-technology goods and services that U.S. defense and civil contractors can export to India, currently a sticking point in the relationship. Giving India a special status as a non-NATO naval ally of the United States might allow for greater technical cooperation in certain designated military fields. The United States has a delicate balance to navigate in seeking closer ties with India without torpedoing already difficult relations with Pakistan and further complicating an increasingly problematic relationship with a rising China. Moving the discussion of the U.S.-India relationship away from a zero-sum approach that portrays India as either ally or non-ally would open the door to creative thinking about how to forge U.S.-India ties in the coming decade. And that will prove far more valuable than the bland, inoffensive but ultimately meaningless rhetoric about "strategic partnership." Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest, and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government. His weekly WPR column, The Realist Prism, appears every Friday. Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a G-20 leaders working dinner, Pittsburgh, 2009 (White House photo by Pete Souza).

Fault Lines in Focus

Fault lines in focus
The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.
The epic proportions of the floods and sheer scale of the displacement and destruction would have stretched the capacity of any government. But there is also little doubt that the government has been unable during this unfolding disaster to show the leadership that the crisis called for.
Six weeks after the floods struck the government still conveys an impression of being rudderless and lacking direction-other than in dispatching ministers to drum up international assistance.
This activism on the international stage does not mask the ill-focused and inchoate efforts on the domestic front. The resolve and resolution that the catastrophe demands of its leaders is nowhere in sight. If anyone has been setting a national example it is citizens and voluntary organisations engaged in heroic efforts to assist the flood victims.
Where the government needed to rally the nation, it only made exhortations. Where it needed to set a direction it fumbled and made gaffes that included misstating the estimated flood damage and accusing humanitarian organisations from overseas of not spending most of their funds for relief purposes. Where it needed to bring all political forces on a single platform in a show of unity-in-crisis, it baulked at constructive suggestions from opposition leaders and reneged on assurances given to them. As opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan recently affirmed before parliament the opposition did not receive any message of national consensus from the government.
Far from offering reassurance about its competence to steer the country in a moment of peril, officials conveyed a sense of helplessness. This has also eroded public confidence in the government's ability to responsibly administer the gigantic task of rehabilitation and reconstruction that lies ahead once the floodwaters recede.
The government's poor management is not all that this disaster has exposed. It also laid bare three longer-standing faultlines, which merit wider discussion.
The first relates to the dual society that the country has increasingly become. That it is the very poor who are most vulnerable and affected by a natural disaster is an ineluctable reality. But what the floods exposed was the abject poverty and sub-human conditions in which millions of people have been condemned to live from neglect by successive governments-people whose destiny is forfeited to the crushing burden of their daily lives. Before the floodwaters washed away all that they had, their life was a daily struggle against poverty and adversity, a silent emergency that seemed not to concern the country's privileged elite, much less its rulers.
The prolonged and unprecedented spotlight shone on how more than the other half lives-in an extreme state of deprivation and misery-is testimony to the monumental failure of the state under different managements to provide for their basic needs. That the rest of society has found this acceptable is telling commentary on the nation's collective conscience and values.
The wages of official neglect are reflected in the multiple deprivations faced by the rural inhabitants of the areas hit by the floods, especially in south Punjab and Sindh, which are among the country's most underdeveloped and where the vestiges of an anachronistic feudalistic order, including bonded labour, still survive. Images of impoverished flood victims battered as much by the raging waters as the rigours of their meagre living served as a reminder of the vast inequities that blight 21st-century Pakistan.
This makes even more compelling the need for reform and an urgent reordering of national priorities. Rather than issue warnings about a "bloody revolution" if flood victims do not receive help, political leaders should be thinking about reforms that can mitigate their suffering on a more enduring basis. People want solutions, not dire forecasts of a looming implosion triggered by a powder keg of social discontent.
The second of the faultlines highlighted by the tragedy are the bitter political and provincial divisions that have accompanied every phase of the widening disaster. This has not only hobbled a robust national response but indicates deep schisms in the body politic. Political feuding has marked-or marred-relief disbursement and has often assumed provincial or regional overtones.
The inability to forge political unity even in the face of such a catastrophe underscores how partisan interests and divisive politicking continues to trump a national approach. This is illustrated by the government's refusal to set up an independent commission comprising neutral and credible figures to raise and oversee relief funds despite initially agreeing to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif's proposal.
Allegations and counter-allegations about the politicisation of flood relief first sparked by Awami National Party leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the hardest hit by the disaster, have continued to echo across the country. Charges have been traded between the Centre and the Punjab government, with the latter complaining of not receiving any money-as distinct from material help-for relief efforts. Fierce quarrels have raged over provincial shares in flood relief spending. A sense of unease has been created by the ethnic politics accompanying the influx of flood victims to cities in Sindh. This has added a new dimension to an already fraught environment. Fractious politics and provincial tensions have offered an unedifying spectacle of how public representatives carry out their responsibilities at crisis time.
For its part, the government in Islamabad has not been able evolve any mechanism for coordination with the provinces to deliver relief in a more organised manner. It has also been unable to regulate relief work undertaken by voluntary organisations. This has resulted in duplication of effort in some areas and under-focus in others.
The third faultline exposed and reinforced by the disaster is the deepening trust deficit that permeates the governance and the administrative system. This has been evidenced in the public doubts voiced about the government's ability to administer relief funds fairly and efficiently. It is also reflected in the modest amount of money contributed to official relief funds. The business community, for example, has preferred to donate to voluntary organisations rather than to the government.
Perhaps the most telling demonstration of this loss of faith is the readiness with which people have believed accusations that have swirled in the past six weeks that politically-connected landed notables in Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan have diverted the raging waters to save their land, imperilling the lives of the poor.
So serious have these allegations become that officials have been forced to concede to popular demands for an inquiry that the powerful deliberately breached embankments to protect their estates and crops. Punjab's chief minister has already ordered a judicial probe into these complaints, with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani now following suit.
Whether or not anything comes of these inquiries and any allegation is proven, the public view that has gained ground is that this has happened on a significant scale due to collusion between prominent landowning politicians and the local administration. This has driven public confidence in public office-holders to a new low. In this toxic milieu nobody seems to be able to trust anyone.
But in every national tragedy is embedded an opportunity. This dire situation should act as a spur for reform rather than empty lamentation or hand-wringing. In this regard the resolution adopted by the National Assembly calling for land reforms to end the feudal system is a step in the right direction. But words will have meaning only when they are translated into practical policy measures.
Political leaders also need to reflect on how they can mend the broken public trust in official representatives. A good place to start is to forge a consensus on a minimum agenda of critical socio-economic reforms, including measures to mobilise domestic resources. This will also serve to demonstrate that political forces can unite for, and not just against, something.

Who benefits by higher interest rates?

Who benefits by higher interest rates?

A chance to build a new Pakistan

A chance to build a new Pakistan

Islamabad diary

Ayaz Amir

In the waters of the devastation hitting Pakistan lies a chance to reinvent our condition by washing away the regrets of the last 63 years and laying the foundations of a new temple. But only if we have the courage and vision to think on these lines. What would Maoist China have done? It would not have moped or looked to foreigners for help. It would have acted out the cliché of turning grief into strength. What did the Japanese and Germans after suffering unspeakable destruction in the Second World War? They picked up the pieces and from the ruins came resurrection. A similar chance awaits us provided we can muster the same resolve. We keep on saying that this disaster is unprecedented, the havoc wrought beyond imagining. True, but then shouldn't our response too be unprecedented? First should come a moratorium on all useless statements, a resolve to eschew needless talk and concentrate on essentials. Then should come immediate steps to mobilise domestic resources. Others have talked of a flood surcharge on goods and services. Much better to levy it immediately on property. What's stopping the government from imposing a property charge -- it could be anything from five to ten lakhs -- on houses in the posher sectors of the following cities: Islamabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Peshawar and Karachi? Shops and department stores in luxury markets in the same cities should have a similar tax imposed. We talk of the diminishing writ of government. More to the point is the diminishing writ of the tax authorities in whose remit, for all practical purposes, big shops and department stores no longer remain because they pay no taxes. Of course there will be an uproar, the mercantile classes not known for such willing sacrifices. They would even take to the streets. But this would just be the stimulus and the sense of crisis the country needs. If the business and propertied classes -- living off the fat of what is still a bounteous land -- howl, that would be the sign to the millions hit by the raging waters that others are sharing their plight. If Pakistan is to be remade, as the more unhinged among us think it should, then there should not be a return to the old ways. This is too much of an unequal society, an Islamic Republic only in name, its highs too high, its lows down in the depths. Not only have we defended the status quo, we have made it more uneven. Mention not President Asif Zardari, a commodity incurable and irredeemable. Afflictions such as him have to be endured until the furies above think fit to bring about a different order of things. But why can't Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani exert himself a bit? We know he is as much an accident of history as the president. We know he was always inadequate for the greatness thrust on him. But is even symbolism beyond him? Since becoming prime minister, no one in the Republic with normal eyesight has seen him wearing the same suit twice. Why doesn't he put up for sale a part of his wardrobe and donate the proceeds to flood relief? Hands-on leadership no one expects from him, not even his fiercest partisans. He has visited two relief centres and both turned out to be fake affairs. That's how seriously he is taken. But his suits are in danger of becoming a national eyesore, a rag in red to a nation in an increasingly ugly mood. Or is this asking for too great a sacrifice? Do we even remember the meaning of the word self-reliance? In a country as precariously placed in an economic sense as ours what earthly justification is there for the import of luxury goods and expensive consumer items? Let there be heavy taxes on them and let there also be a ban on the import of luxury vehicles. BMW and Mercedes showrooms in Pakistan? How absurd can we get. As for the domestic manufacture of Japanese cars, it would be far better to set up plants for the manufacture of buses and trucks. Public transport, transport for the masses rather than the favoured few, is what we need. Our priorities have been skewed. Now is the time to set them right. Now is also the time to think afresh about our railways, in a pitiable state and a burden on the public purse. But the answer is not heedless privatisation. Serious money needs to be poured into this sector, with the ultimate aim of having trains cover the distance from Peshawar to Karachi or Quetta in less than a day. The floodwaters should not be an excuse to shelve the taking of big decisions. Indeed, they should be a spur to national thinking. Even as relief and rehabilitation are underway, a national education conference must be convened, charged with the taking of two decisions: abolishing our multiple education system and revamping our textbook boards. These decisions must be implemented on an urgent basis and our best minds should be put to the task. We should say no to the Kerry-Lugar bill which, judging by past experience, will do us no good. We have nothing to show for American money coming to us in the Zia and Musharraf years. Contractors, NGO analysts and auditors benefit the most from such deals. Kerry-Lugar will be no different. Much better to ask our American friends to help build us the one or two big dams that we need or, if they balk at that, to ask them to help revive our railways. Our American friends have come to our help in our hour of need and we should be grateful to them. Their helicopter teams are doing excellent work. But there is the larger issue of renegotiating our terms of engagement with them. The lease for Jacobabad airport, if there is such a lease, should immediately be rescinded and the airport returned to Pakistani control. Reports in the press suggest that we couldn't use this airport for flood relief because the American presence there was a problem. Nothing can be more embarrassing than this. If the CIA is to continue flying its drones, it should do so from Bagram airbase or similar facilities. We can no longer carry the burden of this privilege. And we should renegotiate the terms for allowing the use of our soil for supplying American and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Our infrastructure and roads have been degraded and what have we got for our pains? We are very tough negotiators when it comes to India but pudding and jelly when it comes to the US. Down the years we have been America's leading frontline warriors, ready to engage in any American enterprise around our borders, but lousy when it comes to protecting our interests. The American connection has made Pakistan's elites happy but it has not been good for the country. We don't need to court American hostility but friendship should not mean sentry duty in costly adventures. One of the things washed away by these floods is our front in the war against the Taliban. Or at least this war has been put on hold which may not be a bad thing entirely. We have done enough and suffered enough. The Taliban remain a problem but the crisis on our hands gives us the time to rethink many of the things associated with this endless war. What we have gained let us consolidate. But let us be wary of opening fresh fronts in this war. The army has done an excellent job in flood relief but just when its role has received plaudits comes word that the Defence Housing Authority Islamabad -- an army enterprise -- is in a serious financial mess. If anything, this is a reminder of just what the army should do and what it should avoid. The real estate culture has done the army serious harm. Just as the nation needs to reset its priorities, the army too faces a similar task.

Profile Pictures

Profile Pictures

The burden of history

The burden of history

Dr Maleeha Lodhi

The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News. Anniversaries are moments for national reflection. General Ziaul Haq's death anniversary today provides just such an opportunity. Why should an era matter that ended over two decades ago? Because the country's longest-serving ruler left the most enduring and troublesome legacy. A review of that period helps to understand the roots of many of the imposing challenges that Pakistan is struggling with today. So much of what happened during 1977-1988 shaped the country's political and social landscape and cast a shadow on subsequent years. Four aspects of Zia's legacy had deleterious long-term consequences for the country. One, the external and internal policies he pursued led to the growth of religious extremism and inducted militancy into the country. Pakistan's long and deep engagement in the US-led campaign to roll back the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan mired the country in a war of unintended consequences from which the entire region was to reap a bitter harvest. Two, it was in the Zia era that the roots of the country's chronic fiscal crises, financial imbalances and indebtedness are to be found. Three, his eleven years in power left Pakistan institutionally impoverished, undermining the foundation for later democratic rule. Four, the parochialisation of politics during his era left society deeply fragmented and a polity defined more by patronage than by policy or issues. Zia would not have survived in power so long if he hadn't been such a wily manipulator who vigorously exploited opportunities to his political advantage. He leveraged western support for his role as a 'frontline' leader to consolidate his initially shaky position. Using classic divide-and-rule tactics, he manipulated the polarisation between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's followers and opponents – that had paved the way for the 1977 coup – to orchestrate the execution of the country's first popularly-elected prime minister. He turned his ostensible 90-day operation into a long career, twice promising and cancelling elections, in 1977 and 1979. Combining the post of army chief with that of president gave him virtually unfettered power. More instructive than a chronology of his political manoeuvres are the four aspects of his rule that have left such a toxic legacy. The repercussions of Pakistan's geo-political engagements in the region turned out to be the most explosive. The Afghan enterprise, in partnership with the United States, was marked by a series of strategic mistakes the most spectacular of which was to deploy religious militancy to fight communism. This unleashed the blowback of militant radicalisation that engulfed the neighbourhood and eventually came to endanger Pakistan itself. A willing recruit to the western-led coalition's campaign to defeat the Russians, Zia failed to anticipate how this involvement would import diverse sources of instability and compromise Pakistan's own security. Other than militancy the witches' brew of problems the country inherited from its complex involvement in Afghanistan included the weaponisation of society (spawning a 'Kalashnikov culture'), proliferation of drugs, the exponential growth of madressahs, and the influx of millions of Afghan refugees. Some 20,000 to 30,000 nationals from about 20 Muslim countries were encouraged by the US-led coalition to train and fight in the 'jehad'. Several of these Mujahideen were to morph into Al Qaeda. The last of the Cold War conflicts was to lead to the first military intervention of the 21st century in reaction to 9/11. Zia's external policies were accompanied by domestic measures aimed at "Islamising" society and patronising the religious Right. The use of Islam to legitimise his rule fanned the growth of religious extremism, fostered the forces of intolerance in society, and unleashed passions that polarised as well as pulverised the nation. Violent sectarianism had its roots in these policies. As also in the state's deliberate patronisation of countervailing groups to undercut and weaken certain religious sects and ethnic groups. The consequences of the economic mismanagement of the Zia years were equally disastrous. Annual GDP growth averaged six per cent in the 1980s. But this statistically impressive growth rate was achieved by running down physical and social assets and through higher levels of borrowing. A unique opportunity was squandered to translate a combination of fortuitous factors – significant western aid and inflows of remittances from overseas Pakistanis – into investment in productive sectors, infrastructure and human development, including education. Instead, this windfall was used to finance consumption. The profligacy and fiscal indiscipline of the regime's economic policies touched new heights when in 1984-85, current expenditure exceeded total revenue, becoming a turning point in the country's budgetary history. Unwilling to broaden the tax base or curb spending, the regime began to borrow excessively to finance not only development expenditure but also consumption. The crisis of an unsustainable resource imbalance, reflected in the twin deficits of the budget and balance of payments, was firmly rooted in the Zia era. This also inaugurated an inglorious tradition, followed by both his civilian and military successors, of using economic largesse from overseas to avoid or postpone structural reforms that could place the economy on a viable footing. The costs of delayed or no reforms have since trapped the country in a vicious cycle of external dependence, fiscal imprudence and financial crisis, over and over again, necessitating one IMF bailout after another. The third pernicious aspect of the Zia legacy was the political and institutional erosion bequeathed by the country's longest period of martial law. The prolonged prohibition on political activity, ban on political parties, assault on the independence of the judiciary, curbs on press and academic freedom, all served to undermine the institutions of civil society. Weakened institutions in an increasingly fragmented society made governance a much more formidable challenge in the post-Zia era. Although politicisation of the civil bureaucracy had begun under his predecessor, Zia's actions hastened the descent into administrative chaos. Political manipulation of the institutions that had long provided administrative order produced a predictable erosion of authority. With the administrative and police machinery increasingly denuded of any 'neutrality' and distorted to serve political ends, its efficiency underwent precipitous decline. Finally, there were a complex array of consequences that ensued from Zia's policies of depoliticisation and parochialisation. This meant several things. Parochialising politics implied encouraging and channelling the expression of civic demands and grievances in ethnic or sectarian terms. This was accompanied by efforts to promote countervailing political and ethnic groups to undercut support for opposition parties not amenable to the regime's control. These policies fostered parochial trends that divided and atomised society. With national issues deliberately eclipsed by the promotion of local politics, a new genre of politician was spawned. This patronage-seeking politician was tied to the regime by new, 'clientelist' networks resting on the distribution of state largesse: urban land, bank credit and 'development' funds. This set in train a process that opened up vast opportunities of loot and plunder of state resources. This patronage-driven, local influential in turn ensured that the controlled politics of the Zia period was devoid of any issue orientation. This changed the very complexion of politics, as well as the country's political culture. Seeking elected office to leverage state resources became the name of the political game. This produced a range of perverse effects: the triumph of politics without public purpose, the abuse of public office for private gain, the draining of state coffers, the haemorrhaging of state-run banks and corporations, and ultimately the pervasiveness of corruption throughout the system. What Pakistan's most accomplished historian Ayesha Jalal calls "the monetisation of politics" was born in the Zia period. Supporters of the late President Zia often point to economic growth and political stability as the ostensible achievements of his years in power. But that claim is contradicted by the facts: an official economy left in ruins, society more violent, intolerant and fragmented than ever before and state institutions with much weaker capacity to govern.