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.

A system has crashed

Ahmed Quraishi

We’ve just seen the collapse of government and the helplessness of bankrupt political elite in Pakistan. Pakistanis have just seen one of the most defining moments in their political history. Almost the entire political system has been swept away with the floods. Those Pakistanis who were not directly hit by tragedy have been hit by the second worst thing that could have happened: possibly a total loss of faith and trust in a political system that has been tried, tested and failed. Our condition begs change. This is the stuff that revolutions are made of. Our rains and floods could never have turned into a tragedy worse than Haiti and Kashmir earthquakes and the Indian ocean tsunami combined if not for the manmade factors: an entire government and administrative structure that failed to offer any contingency planning before the tragedy or rapid response after. Village after village, Pakistanis saw how cardboard local administrations raised white flags and handed power over to the Pakistani military [army, navy, and air force] at the slightest hint of challenge. I still can’t get over the video footage of our Sindh chief minister who, having been alerted by the Punjab government about floods, headed his way, stood before a camera to laugh along with his aides at how Punjab opened the waterways now that there is a flood, a thinly-disguised reference to the water disputes among provinces. He and his aides thought it was funny to shirk responsibility in this fashion and play politics. Sure enough, days later his administration sat helpless as the army seized Sukkur Barrage and took responsibility for making the hard decisions. For two weeks now, victims and volunteers are yet to see a single elected representative out to help in post-disaster operations anywhere across flood-hit areas of Pakistan, especially in those areas where ‘dynastic’ elected politicians dominate. In fact, the most common complaint aid volunteers heard from the victims is that politicians have been busy worrying about their feudal landholdings. This is nothing to say of economic collapse and how most of the hundreds of millions of dollars that our government is soliciting from the world will disappear in private pockets a few years later leaving millions of flood victims fester into social wounds that will haunt Pakistan for decades to come. We’ve already seen how the Musharraf government fared in dealing with the 2005 Kashmir earthquake reconstruction. Between 2006 and now, we should have had in place a first class disaster management and rapid response system. Instead we have an agency called NDMA with a bulging bureaucracy whose seniors enjoy juicy perks and TV airtime and zero utility. This is a failed system because it is marked less by politics and organization and more by violence and chaos. For example, the monsoon rains could have been a boon had we built dams. But our current crop of politicians, knowing they have nothing else to attract voters, have been whipping up linguistic divisions among Pakistanis and raising hysteria over how one dam or the other would threaten the lives of this linguistic group or another in the country. Political parties have stolen the Pakistani state’s right to represent all citizens and instead have appointed themselves as sole representatives of entire linguistic groups [I won’t say ‘ethnic’ groups because it is absurd to talk about this imaginary division that no longer exists in the strict sense of the word but has been exploited by political parties for political gain]. The height of tragedy is that today some parties consider it legitimate to kill innocent Pakistani citizens based on their supposed linguistic affiliation to settle scores with another party that claims to represent them. Democracy cannot remain an excuse for these gigantic failures. And criticizing them should not be interpreted as an invitation to the military to stage a coup. We’ve experimented with a British-inspired political system after our Independence in 1947. We’ve experimented with an American-inspired political setup since 2007. It is time we introduced a Pakistani political system suited to us. And all options are fair if the job can be delivered. The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com