Daily Times Editorial June 11, 2014

The aftermath The terrorist attack on Karachi airport that started on Sunday night appeared, at least according to official sources, to be over by Monday afternoon, when the military authorities declared the airport purged and flights resumed. However, on Tuesday there were unconfirmed reports of some more terrorists than the 10 killed being found and engaged within the airport complex. The total toll so far is 30 killed, including the 10 terrorists, and 26 injured. However, by all accounts at least seven more people died after being trapped in a cold storage facility where they had sought shelter, in the midst of a raging fire and the inability of rescue teams to reach them. The attack itself centred on a peripheral part of the airport complex, a terminal no longer used for passenger traffic except for VIP flights and largely for cargo operations. Perhaps that is why the security in that area had loopholes in it. The area in question may have been peripheral, but it gave the attackers access to the main terminals and planes parked on the tarmac. The attackers came armed with rockets that fortunately missed the planes. The ‘absent’ interior minister, when he finally surfaced in Karachi on Monday, said three planes had been slightly damaged, but by and large the assets of the airport were safe. The identity of the terrorists will be confirmed after tests, but visually they have been reported to have Central Asian features, and the first guess was they could be Uzbeks. This suggestion should be placed in the context of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) claim of responsibility, in which they said they had been aided in the attack by ‘allies’. If any further proof were needed, this incident highlights the existence of a ‘Terror International’ in our tribal areas, particularly North Waziristan (NW). Although the TTP claimed the attack was in revenge for their leader Hakeemullah Mehsud’s death in a drone strike, they added for good measure that it was also in retaliation for recent air strikes on their hideouts in FATA. Reports say further retaliatory air strikes were carried out in NW on Tuesday, in which nine hideouts were destroyed and 20-30 militants killed. Earlier reports that Indian-made arms and medicines had been recovered from the dead terrorists set off a chain of assumptions that our neighbour was behind the attack. This is just one more example of irresponsible media (particularly electronic) reporting. The Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad and the Indian External Affairs Ministry have denied any Indian role in these events and condemned the attack in no uncertain terms. Both Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar and Information Minister Pervez Rashid found it convenient to blame a ‘foreign hand’, a theory that usually means an attempt to shift the blame and escape responsibility. However, there is no escape from such situations. The interior minister in particular, and the federal government in general have been roundly criticised for their lack of visible presence and tackling the crisis in Karachi. This has set off the latest round of the blame game, with the Sindh and federal governments now at daggers drawn over the perceived lack of help from Islamabad. The opposition in parliament has decried the ‘paralysis’ of the federal government and asked for Chaudhry Nisar’s head. The prime minister on the other hand has called a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on National Security to address the situation arising from the Karachi events. The trajectory of events on the terrorist front since the PML-N government was elected to office last year makes an interesting study. The government had virtually hamstrung its policy options by putting all its eggs in the talks basket. Now when that approach appears all but dead in the water, the government appears confused, irresolute and directionless. As was our consistent analysis in this space since the talks process was mooted, it had little, if any, chance of success. Now that its failure is manifest, it appears that willy nilly the government is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into taking on the terrorists head on. In any case, this was likely to be the logical outcome of the government’s attempted nuanced policy of ‘restraint, containment and retaliation’, particularly the last part, which was bound to set in motion a dynamic that would burst these boundaries sooner or later. That moment has now arrived. There is therefore no time left for prevarication and policy paralysis. The government must itself take the initiative to mount a decisive offensive against the terrorists.

Daily Times Editorial June 9, 2014

Our Don Quixote One year after the May 2013 general elections, Imran Khan appears to be angry with the whole world. His bitterness stems from the perception, nay conviction, that his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), was robbed of its electoral victory last year. Throughout his life, Imran Khan can be accused of many things, but never any lack of confidence. If that stood him well on the cricket field and later in philanthropic ventures, no one could possibly object; on the contrary, these were grounds for admiring his accomplishments, raising his status to that of a national hero. It must be said, however, that Imran Khan’s foray into politics has proved trickier than negotiating any inswinger. After long years in the political wilderness and an abortive ‘back door’ deal with Musharraf to be catapulted into power on the basis of just his one seat (himself) in parliament, Imran Khan believed, and convinced his supporters, that his time had come. Starting from the ‘tsunami’ rally at Minar-e-Pakistan in December 2012, the PTI fell for its own propaganda that it would sweep the 2013 elections, flying in the face of a sober assessment of its strength, party machinery and constituency-based electable candidates. Measured against these ground realities rather than the PTI’s wishful thinking and flights of fancy, the results of the elections would have normally been considered a triumph for a party with hitherto zero representation in parliament. The PTI’s 35 seats in the National Assembly and becoming the largest party and therefore in a position to form a coalition government with the Jamaat-e-Islami in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) would by any criterion be considered a formidable performance. However, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see (the truth). The result of this false bravado centred on a self-perceived ‘stolen’ election victory has been to pitch Imran and the PTI on the path of a fool’s errand. The list of windmills our Don Quixote is tilting against has by now expanded to include the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), its election tribunals, the judiciary (including in particular former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry), the government, the two largest mainstream parties, the PML-N and PPP, and now a media group that is already in trouble. All these ‘nemeses’ of Imran and the PTI came in for a bit of stick in the party’s anti-rigging rally in Sialkot on Saturday. Calling the 2013 elections the “biggest fraud” in the country’s history, Imran Kan lashed out at the judiciary for allegedly covering up the rigged election and failing to provide his party justice. Citing odd instances of electoral mistakes by the ECP, involvement of a DPO in a by-election and admitted ‘typos’ in one constituency’s result, he tried to weave this flimsy evidence into a grand rigging conspiracy. He went so far as to argue that if ‘four boxes’ were opened up, the whole sham would be exposed (a reference to the four constituencies whose results the PTI has challenged). Throwing both logic and caution to the winds, he demanded action under Article 6 against the PML-N and former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry (once held in high esteem by Imran). Criticising the government on its economic policies (record breaking loans in one year, ‘pro-bandits’ budget, etc), Imran vowed he would tax the rich when he came to power and promised change was coming in KP (don’t hold your breath). Flailing around in search of a coherent critique, he touched on the curse of dynastic politics (‘monarchy’), food, shelter, clothes (the PPP’s slogan) for the poor not metro trains, and vowed to overcome the prevailing system of elections that otherwise would ensure the monopoly on power of the PML-N and PPP for the foreseeable future. Stung by criticism that his anti-rigging campaign was aimed at destabilising or toppling the present government, Imran was at pains to deny this in his rally speech as well as in interaction with reporters later. Denials notwithstanding, our Don Quixote’s tilting at so many windmills (with the conspicuous absence of mention of a powerful state institution) has given rise to, and continues to agitate perceptive observers regarding the real aims and objectives of what otherwise seems a case of ‘protesting too much’.

Daily Times Editorial June 8, 2014

Anti-terrorism landscape Amidst all the talk about an impending military operation in North Waziristan (NW), the authorities have opened the door to a resolution of the presence of foreign fighters in the Agency through the efforts of a tribal jirga. The 64-member jirga led by Haji Sher Muhammad, a grandson of the legendary anti-colonial fighter the Faqir of Ipi, comprises elders of the Uthmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribes of NW. The jirga had meetings on Friday in Peshawar with the Governor and Corps Commander on the issue. The authorities have reminded the jirga of the 2006-07 peace agreements between the government and the tribes, in which militant and of late estranged commander Gul Bahadur was included, and which laid the responsibility of ensuring no foreign fighters found refuge in NW. The charge against the tribes is that they had failed to fulfil their obligations on this count. The jirga pleaded with the authorities to hold off on the impending military operation, which they said in the past had never yielded the expected results, until they had had a chance to right the situation by expelling the foreign fighters, securing government installations and putting an end to attacks on the security forces’ convoys. They were given 15 days to implement the sense of the meetings, after which, the corps commander emphasized, all bets were off. The jirga told the governor that they would also try to intervene in the infighting between factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to pacify the situation. It may be noted that tit-for-tat killings and attacks are continuing between the rival Sajna and Shehryar Mehsud factions. Meanwhile the National Assembly on Friday passed the Anti-terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2014 with amendments. The most significant of these was rescinding the original bill’s provisions of shoot-on-sight powers to the security forces of terrorist suspects. The forces would have to seek the permission of a Grade-17 officer or magistrate before opening fire on suspects. The question whether such an officer or magistrate would be available in real time to seek such permission in engagements where seconds count remains unanswered. In this context, the declared intent of the government to restore the executive magistracy abolished by the Musharraf regime is a step in this direction. The amendments also lay emphasis on further legislation to make the law enforcement agencies more effective, including empowering the Rangers to conduct investigations, which at present is not within their purview. Statements of witnesses could be recorded in-camera to provide protection to them, whereas suspects could be held in detention for 90 days. While the provision that any officer found guilty of arrest of a suspect on false allegations could face two years imprisonment and a fine is intended to provide protection to the innocent, what is still missing from the bill is access to family and lawyers for the detained suspects. Given our culture of torture at the hands of the security forces, there are grave fears of the miscarriage of justice by extracting confessions under torture. In the Upper House on the other hand, the opposition Senators, led by the PPP, interrogated the government about its policy on the Taliban, given that two military officers were killed in a suicide attack the other day not far from Islamabad and the fact that the government’s policy still appears in a “state of flux” without clarity whether the talks process still had any steam left in it, and if not, what would be the next policy posture to be adopted. ANP Senators drew the attention of the house to the terrible conditions in which internally displaced persons from FATA were living and how Peshawar had become such an insecure city that traffic wardens had been instructed to don bulletproof vests. No one, they complained, could come out of their house in the evening in the capital city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). There are reports that extortion has arrived in full force in Peshawar, forcing many well off families to flee to the relative safety of Islamabad and elsewhere. When surveying the anti-terrorism landscape, it seems clear that the ambiguity in the government’s policy on the Taliban and related issues has caused at least partial paralysis. KP is particularly sensitive, not only because of adjoining FATA, the hotbed of terrorism, but also because the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf provincial government appears friendly to the terrorists and has thereby hamstrung the law and security enforcement agencies. No one is suggesting the federal government should run amok like a bull in a china shop in the province, but discussions with the KP government may yield cooperation. But even before that, the federal government itself needs to pluck its head out of the sand and firmly grasp the nettle of tackling terrorism.

Daily Times Editorial June 7, 2014

Out of Lahore Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, often accused during his last and present tenure of unduly favouring the capital of the province Lahore with financial allocations, big projects and development, has finally turned his attention to the relatively underdeveloped region of southern Punjab. On a whirlwind tour of Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Muzaffargarh on Thursday, the chief minister announced a number of decisions and projects that are bound to bring relief and even joy to the people of the area. Hitherto, with the announcement of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad metro bus service project (currently under construction), the chief minister was still being castigated for concentrating on the GT Road salient almost exclusively. Now the chief minister has sought to silence his critics by this initiative. Shahbaz Sharif announced that Multan would henceforth be considered in the category of a big city, with government employees thereby enjoying big city allowances. He also announced a metro bus project for the city of 30 kilometres length, costing Rs 30 billion, to be completed in the record time of one year, starting from the laying of its foundation stone on August 14 this year. The project would be constructed on the lines of the Dubai metro bus system. More than 150,000 people per day would benefit from it. Shahbaz Sharif said on the occasion that the sense of deprivation of the people of southern Punjab would be removed through the provision of modern health and educational facilities. In Muzaffargarh the chief minister announced the setting up of the Tayyip Erdogan Hospital (named after the Turkish prime minister), which would be a 500-bed facility. The hospital would become functional this month and Turk doctors and other staff would extend their services to it for one year. Extension work of the hospital would start this year and Rs 2 billion would be set aside in this year’s budget for the purpose. In Dera Ghazi Khan, the chief minister inaugurated the Ghazi Medical College. He also announced the setting up of a Daanish school in Taunsa that would throw open its doors to deserving boys and girls from the region, including students from the tribal areas (there is a provincially administered tribal area in the district). The development of Fort Munro, the only tourist spot in southern Punjab, was also addressed by the chief minister after a briefing on the project. Shahbaz Sharif ordered the installation of a chairlift and cable car service in two phases. The road from Muzaffargarh to Fort Munro would be expanded to a dual carriageway. In sum, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has brought his phenomenal energy and hardworking style to addressing the problems and sense of deprivation of the southern reaches of Punjab. It may be recalled that that sense of deprivation has led from time to time to the demand for a separate South Punjab province or its variant, two provinces of South Punjab and Bahawalpur. These variegated demands at various times since the provinces were restored in what was then West Pakistan in 1970, have essentially reflected the resentment of the people of this underdeveloped region at the neglect they blamed ‘Takht Lahore’ (the Lahore throne) for. Multan is arguably one of the oldest living cities in the country, with a rich culture and history, including a track record of pushing back against domination from Takht Lahore. It is indeed a welcome development and a sign of the political wisdom of the Punjab government that it has met head on the complaints of southern Punjab and the chief minister has promised more to the people of the region than they can even dream of. Dreams and hope are what can keep people’s faith in governments and the future alive. Now observers will keenly watch a process of development that could be a life and game changer for the hitherto neglected Lahenda (southern, downward sloping) area of Punjab, with the accusation of concentration solely on central Punjab becoming history.

Daily Times Editorial June 6, 2014

The Budget and the poor Stung by criticism that the Budget 2014-15 is tilted in favour of the rich and offers only scraps and crumbs from the table for the poor, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was at great pains to defend the Budget as not anti-poor during his post-Budget press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday. However, persistent questioning by media people on the concessions and relaxations to the business community and the impact, for example, of the withdrawal of subsidies on the electricity tariff put the minister on the mat. Dar admitted that over 50 percent (more than 90 million) people are below the poverty line of an income of $ 2 a day (some estimates put this figure at 69 percent). He claimed his government was committed to raising this huge mass of people out of poverty. However, the consensus on the Budget is that it is business-friendly, with hardly any relief for the poor, the youth loan schemes, Benazir (now National) Income Support Programme and educational facilitation for deserving students notwithstanding. Laudable as these schemes are in themselves, they are a drop in the ocean of poverty that laps our shores. Admittedly, the straitened finances of the state leave little if any room for meaningful interventions, innovations and creative measures to offer the people groaning from inflation, unemployment and insecurity anything meaningful except token sops. Dar threatened those intending to increase prices using the excuse of the budget with strict measures (“iron fist”) to control prices. It is strange to hear an advocate of the market economy as the panacea for all our woes speak in this language. How would this ‘iron fist’ control the market and its inherent dynamic was left to the imagination. The claim that the fiscal deficit, which panned out at 8.8 percent of GDP last year, would be incrementally reduced over some years to four percent was not fleshed out, while critics point out that the raise in salaries and pensions was likely to act in the opposite direction, with resort to borrowing to meet the gap the most likely course, having its own implications for inflation. The measure to impose higher taxes on non-registered non-filers of tax returns is both a punitive step as well as an incentive to document the informal economy, a laudable objective that seeks to broaden the tax net, a badly needed policy to raise revenues and lighten the burden as far as possible on the honest tax payer being treated as the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. Large scale retailers such as shopping malls and smaller retailers in the bazaar have been dealt with by imposing the condition of electronic sales registers for the former and a presumptive tax based on electricity consumption on the latter. Parliamentarians have been put on notice, quite rightly, that they would be deprived of all allowances if they fail to file tax returns by June 10. The finance minister may have bent his back to defend the budget from charges of being pro-business and anti-poor, but the reactions of the respective communities says it all. The business community has been full of praise for what they call a growth oriented budget, while the working classes see nothing in it for themselves. That perhaps is why the clerks and teachers protesting against the budget were dealt with harshly in Islamabad on Wednesday (beaten black and blue according to accounts). The trade unions are up in arms, the agriculture sector feels it has been treated like a poor relative and the apprehension that without some relief to the masses the government may face more than its share of protest over the coming fiscal year cannot be dismissed lightly. The problem with the government’s approach is that it still adheres to the theory that the business class will pull the economy out of the doldrums and the (discredited) trickle down theory will do the necessary for the people at large. A perceived business-friendly government may have the luxury of indulging in such flights of fancy that recent history belies even in stronger economies than ours. But the government will have to burn some midnight oil to find ways and means to lighten the crushing burden of the masses or face increasing trouble on the streets ahead.

Daily Times Editorial June 2, 2014

Chickens coming home to roost One soldier was killed and two wounded, against 16 Taliban attackers dead in an assault on border posts in Bajaur Agency on Saturday. Around 200 militants are said to have been involved in the attack, which was repulsed with helicopter gunship and artillery support. The attackers retreated across the Afghan border after a three-hour firefight. The Afghan province of Kunar is opposite the Bajaur Agency, where Mullah Fazlullah, originally of the Swat Taliban and currently chief of an increasingly divided and fractured Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is based. This is not the first time such a cross-border raid has been mounted. As recently as May 25, an assault took place in the Mano Zangal area. Previously, we have witnessed massed attacks across the border by as many as 500 militants, indicating their ability to muster big numbers for such forays. Inevitably in the case of such cross-border clashes, Pakistan summoned an Afghan envoy to protest the attack from its soil, while the Afghan authorities accused Pakistani forces of killing at least four Afghan civilians in indiscriminate shelling into Afghan territory, a charge denied by the Pakistan foreign office. This clash and the previous ones highlight the precarious security situation on the volatile Afghan-Pakistan border, particularly in the Bajaur salient. Mullah Fazlullah may have decided to overcome the fractious disputes between Mehsud factions in the TTP to concentrate on cross-border enhanced action. The influx of militants from Bajaur earlier and North Waziristan of late has obviously strengthened his hand in this endeavour. Also inevitably, such cross-border exchanges are more than likely to ratchet up tensions between the two neighbouring countries and the US/NATO forces on their way out of Afghanistan. Pakistan complains that previous such attacks from Afghan soil have not received the attention of the Afghan or western forces despite protests being lodged. One does not know the western forces’ attitude to the matter, but it would come as no surprise if the Afghans are not exactly unhappy to see Pakistan hoist by its own petard through its policy of creating and nurturing jihadi proxies, only to see such forces turning on and biting the hand that fed them for so long. Poetic justice, the Afghans could be saying with a quiet chuckle, for Pakistan’s interventions in Afghanistan over the last four decades. Whatever momentary satisfaction that may bring to the Afghans who feel hard done by at Pakistan’s hands, the inescapable fact is that it is in the interests of both sides to cooperate in the fight against their respective terrorists. One major obstacle to such cooperation is the continuing presence of the Afghan Taliban on Pakistan’s soil and their apparent freedom to mount attacks inside Afghanistan from such safe havens. We have argued for a long time in this space that Pakistan should seriously revisit its policy of using jihadi proxies for foreign policy objectives before the ‘reverse osmosis’ of Pakistani militants finding refuge across the border and mounting attacks on Pakistan comes to pass. Well, we seem to have arrived at that point by now. The critical policy reformulations that would see an abandonment of support to and the use of militant proxies is nowhere in the offing. Even if our security establishment has trimmed its sails to a more modest objective of ensuring the Afghan Taliban get a stake in power in Kabul rather than a total victory, this ‘reduced’ objective still pits us against the Afghans and their western backers. And arguably, the benefits of this policy have long ago been overtaken by its high costs (witness the emergence and growth of the home grown Taliban, who enjoy a nexus with foreign terrorists, al Qaeda, and the Afghan Taliban). To persist with a policy stance that has long ago been overtaken by developments in and around the region, is to repeat the folly until its serious consequences unfold. It is still not too late for Pakistan to see the wood, not just the trees, by becoming sensitised to the threat TTP terrorists based on Afghan soil will pose, particularly in the near future after the bulk of western forces have left Afghanistan by the end of the year. The window of opportunity to pre-empt and deal with this threat will not remain open forever, and may well snap shut by end-2014.

Daily Times Editorial June 1, 2014

The die is cast A top-level meeting of the civilian and military leadership was held on Friday, presided over by Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif. While the PM had things to share regarding his visit to India, COAS General Raheel Sharif briefed the meeting on his recent visits to Quetta and FATA. In Quetta, while addressing officers at the Staff and Command College, the COAS had reiterated his confidence that the Pakistan army was fully prepared to defeat any threat. The outcome of the top level meeting was to revisit the strategy against terrorism, particularly in the light of the situation in North Waziristan (NW), the split in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the reported ‘going rogue’ of a pro-government militant, Hafiz Gul Bahadur. On the first, recent air strikes and troop assaults on militants’ hideouts have yielded at least 70 militants and some of their commanders killed, while local reports say the casualties are closer to 100 and include women and children. Lack of media access to the area hinders independent confirmation of such contradictory claims. Nevertheless, the pain inflicted by the assaults in retaliation for terrorist acts has persuaded Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group to issue a pamphlet asking people to abandon contacts and links with the government authorities and move with their families closer to the Afghan border from where they will find easier escape in the event of what the group says is an expected military offensive on NW. It is interesting to note that Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who has traditionally been described as a pro-government militant, accuses the military of in all respects tearing up the 2007 peace accord through its recent attacks, some of which have clearly struck either members of his group or their sympathisers. Meanwhile Maulana Fazlur Rehman continues to plough his own furrow in not only predicting a military offensive in NW, which he says will lead to all out war, but plugging his favourite theme of peace talks with the militants through a tribal jirga. It was the government’s refusal to countenance this suggestion, he says, that persuaded his party to withdraw from the peace talks process between the government and the TTP. Of course, as we have argued consistently in this space, that talks process is arguably well on the way to hitting a dead end, if not already dead in the water. Inherently, the government’s strategy of putting all its eggs in the talks basket (backed, ironically it must be said, by the All Parties Conference consensus) failed to see or acknowledge the very real obstacles in the way of a negotiated peace settlement with the TTP since there was little if any common ground between the respective positions of each side, the government insisting on adherence to the constitution (and by implication the democratic system under its umbrella) and the TTP rejecting this and insisting on their version of sharia.