Business Recorder Editorial May 19, 2020

An unending war

Two brutal attacks in recent days in Afghanistan have laid bare the fragility of the so-called peace agreement struck between the US and the Taliban in Doha in January 2020. The first attack was on a hospital in Kabul that specifically targeted the maternity ward run by Doctors Without Borders and in which 24 people, mostly mothers of newborn infants, and two children were killed. The second was a suicide bombing on a funeral in eastern Afghanistan that killed 32 people. Horrible as these barbarous massacres are, what has transpired afterwards is cause for greater disquiet. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Special Envoy who negotiated the deal with the Taliban, felt constrained to deflect responsibility, especially for the horrendous attack on the maternity hospital in Kabul, from the Taliban. Instead, he asserted, the US’s assessment was that it was ISIS-K that was responsible, given the target chosen, the mode of the attack, and the fact that the Taliban have denied responsibility. The Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani, however, did not buy into this ‘soft peddling’ the Taliban’s possible role, and ordered the Afghan forces to go onto offensive mode against the insurgents. Even before the ink had dried on President Ashraf Ghani’s announcement, the Taliban carried out a truck bombing on a military courthouse in Gardez, killing five people. The war that may have seemed heading for a peaceful end after the Doha agreement therefore seems set to continue indefinitely.

The reasons why things have come to such a pass are not difficult to discern. In an eerie reminder of the manner in which the US ditched its ‘ally’ the South Vietnam government during what was till then the US’s longest war (the Afghan conflict has since replaced Vietnam for that honour), the Doha negotiations and final agreement did not even include a bare nod towards the Afghan government. The reason is that the US is, as anticipated at the start of the invasion and occupation following 9/11 by informed observers, tired of committing troops and huge resources to what has clearly by now emerged as an unwinnable war. Not only have the Taliban, despite the bigger US troop presence earlier, captured or controlled huge swathes of the countryside in classic guerrilla fashion, they clearly have eroded through their resistance the will of the US administration and people to continue what increasingly appears a futile effort. Critics of the Doha agreement, including some Democratic legislators, have pointed to the one-sided nature of the deal. The Taliban have obtained through it their most earnest wish: the withdrawal of US troops. In return, they have put their signature to conditions whose letter, as admitted even by Zalmay Khalilzad, does not commit them to much in return. Reducing violence was a prime condition amongst those, but if anything the agreement seems to have freed the Taliban’s hands to refrain from attacking the US-led foreign forces while stepping up their attacks on the Afghan security forces. The reduction in Taliban violence against the Afghan government forcers was supposed to pave the way for talks between them, a prisoner exchange, and discussions about Afghanistan’s future. When the first, primary condition, a reduction in violence, has been breached freely, how can the rest follow smoothly? For US President Donald Trump, the Doha agreement was intended to boost his re-election chances in November 2020. However, since the Afghan government was not even at the negotiating table, it was effectively told to take it or lump it. This is the same pattern as in the past of the risks and limitations of relying on the US to ensure any allied government’s survival. Effectively, the Doha deal has ensured a Taliban victory and exclusive capture of power, given the momentum of the US withdrawal will not be reversed despite the truth staring everyone in the face. A fresh debacle a la Saigon awaits the Afghan people, with troubling implications for their future.

The May 2020 issue of PMR is out

The May 2020 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Rashed Rahman: Marxist strategy today.

2. Paul Le Blanc: Vladimir Lenin 150.

3. Dr Maqsudul Hasan Nuri: Cuban response to COVID-19 global pandemic.

Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR)
Director, Research and Publication Centre 

Business Recorder Editorial May 16, 2020

Premature lockdown easing

Since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the debate about the correct course to follow to meet the challenges thrown up by the crisis has been bogged down in uncertainty, confusion, contradictory policies, political point scoring and an absence of a coherent national policy. If proof were required for the above statement, the easing of the lockdown provided it in ample measure. As soon as smaller bazaars and shops opened countrywide, people and the traders threw all caution to the winds and crowded public places with no facemasks, social distancing or any of the government’s prescribed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) anywhere in sight. This outcome was not unpredictable. First and foremost, from day one, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government have been guilty of putting out mixed messages, underlying which was their lack of conviction that a strict lockdown could be sustained in a poor country like ours. This ‘lives versus livelihoods’ debate has bogged down the country in mass confusion and the risk of an exponential explosion of Covid-19 infections. The obvious corollary of any such development is that our wholly inadequate healthcare infrastructure could collapse under such pressure. The PTI government has been arguing all along that the poor and daily wagers cannot sustain a lockdown for long. Agreed. But other than closing down businesses that employ such communities and disbursing appreciable but starkly insufficient cash dollops to the deserving, the government appeared clueless and rudderless in its approach. At a time of such national crisis that cuts across class, gender, ethnic identity and religious affiliation, it was expected that the otherwise combative approach of the PTI government would be toned down to reach out to the opposition, thereby providing the climate for a national coming together to tackle the common affliction. Unfortunately, this has been far from the case. The reason why the Sindh government appears to have been singled out and lambasted by PTI government spokesmen morning, noon and night is because it is a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government. All the other provincial governments are either headed by the PTI or its allies.

Imagine if the PTI federal government, particularly the PM, had kept their political likes and dislikes aside in the interests of a consistent, coordinated national effort to combat the pandemic, things may have turned out differently. As it is, and given the mixed messaging, confusion and adversarial attitude to the Sindh government, the PTI federal government and PM Imran Khan in particular missed the opportunity the crisis presented of truly leading the country on a common, agreed path. The actual manner in which the crisis has unfolded shows a steady (but not yet explosive) rise in the number of confirmed cases and fatalities. The lockdowns imposed so far have been somewhat loose, with Sindh perhaps standing out in degree rather than any qualitative difference. However, when the easing of the lockdown was announced despite the contrary advice of medical experts, a people not educated about the pandemic and the necessary restrictions to combat it poured out into the streets and bazaars as though things had returned to normal. Had the government/s carried out an imaginative campaign from day one to educate the public on this score, a partnership against the pandemic amongst the authorities and citizens could have been envisaged, with its concomitant benefit of adherence to the agreed SOPs. As it is, however, the ‘easing’ has wrought such chaos on the very first day that the federal as well as the provincial governments have all declared in a chorus within one day that if the SOPs are not adhered to by the people and businesses, the lockdown would have to be tightened up again. This has been followed by the Punjab and Sindh governments sealing quite a few markets and shopping centres in their respective provinces where the SOPs were not being adhered to. Whereas the government and its ministers are fond of quoting the experience of western developed countries, perhaps they would be better served by the example and advice of our friend China from where the pandemic is said to have started. China shut down epicentre Wuhan and the country as a whole until the curve not only flattened out, new cases began to dwindle to virtually zero. Now Wuhan has seen a few cases re-emerge and the Chinese authorities have announced their intent to test the entire Wuhan populace over again. We may not be able to emulate China one hundred percent in this regard, but can certainly learn valuable lessons from China’s success in quelling the pandemic.

Business Recorder Editorial May 15, 2020

Business-as-usual in parliament

After an almost two-month break because of the Covid-19 pandemic, parliament convened after some difficulty and amidst concerns about the safety of parliamentarians during the sessions. The expectation generally may have been that the opposing sides of the political divide in both houses would soberly adhere to the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) agreed before the sessions were called. Instead, many members were seen violating the facemasks, social distancing, etc, protocols. But that was only a trailer of what followed. As usual, throwing the seriousness of the situation facing the country to the winds, a business-as-usual fracas was witnessed. Although there are a few villains of the piece in this sorry tale, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi outdid himself in both the National Assembly (NA) and Senate in throwing spiked barbs at the opposition in general, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in particular. For reasons that are no longer so obscure, the controversy started by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) federal government regarding the 18^thAmendment got unnecessarily dragged into the melee. It was left to Shah Mahmood Qureshi to try and pour oil on the troubled waters through the assurance from the floor of the Senate on May 12, 2020 that his government had no plans to scrap the 18^thAmendment. He only left room for revisiting the ‘weak’ parts of the Amendment, by which is meant essentially the distribution of divisible pool finances between the Centre and the provinces, an issue related less to the Amendment and more to the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award. To cap the argument, Shah Mahmood Qureshi reminded the opposition that the PTI did not enjoy a two-thirds majority and therefore the opposition need not worry on this score. While he was at pains to refute the opposition’s argument that there had been no discrimination against Sindh in disbursements to combat the pandemic, he could not resist repeating the canard he had flung earlier in the NA about the PPP having been reduced from a federal-oriented to a provincial party exploiting the ‘Sindh card’.

Inevitably, this acted as the proverbial red rag to the PPP bull and Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who used his press conference to question this categorisation and charge. He was supported by PPP Senate leader Sherry Rehman, who took Shah Mahmood Qureshi and the federal government to task for missing out on the words of unity and healing the country needed to hear. She argued that the provinces (particularly Sindh) had been left to fend for themselves, thereby depriving the country of a uniform national strategy to tackle the situation. Both Ms Rehman and Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Raja Zafar-ul-Haq of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lambasted the federal government for its confusion, mixed messages and decision to ease the lockdown against expert medical advice.

Be that as it may, for the citizens of Pakistan, the ‘debates’ in the NA and Senate remained within the bounds of the usual squabbling and point scoring of the two sides of the political divide. This would prove highly disappointing for the people expecting their elected representatives to rise above themselves and conduct a serious discussion on the pandemic. If all parliament can do is exhibit the usual run-of-the-mill exchanges and point scoring across the aisles, some may be forgiven for wondering what the point of calling parliament back into session was.

Business Recorder Column May 12, 2020

Soviet role in WWII

Rashed Rahman

Rising coronavirus infections forced Russia on May 9, 2020 to curtail its celebrations marking the 75^thanniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. Russia usually holds grand military parades to commemorate the event. This year’s 75^thanniversary was planned on an even grander scale. Alas, the commemoration had to be limited to a fly-past by Russian aircraft over Moscow’s Red Square. The only other signs on the deserted streets of the capital because of the lockdown were copies of the red banner that was raised above the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945. Ironically, Facebook in its infinite wisdom took down or deleted posts showing the iconic photograph of that event, both original black and white and coloured versions.

But Facebook is not the only culprit guilty of attempting to deny or downplay the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in WWII. Russia on May 10, 2020, accused the US of the same, asking for a “serious conversation” on the matter with its US counterparts. Russia’s foreign ministry voiced extreme indignation at the attempt to distort the effect of the country’s decisive contribution to victory in WWII at great human and material cost. A White House statement on Facebook last week to mark the 75^thanniversary of VE Day only mentioned the US and Britain. In response, the Russian statement said US officials had neither the courage nor the will to pay homage to the undeniable role and huge death toll suffered by the Red Army and the Soviet people in the name of all humanity. Denigrating the US statement as “particularly petty”, Moscow urged Washington not to make the memory of 1945 a new problem for already difficult bilateral relations.

The history of WWII is particularly sensitive in post-Soviet Russia because of the devastating loss of 27 million people killed during the war (the highest toll of all countries). It is also a source of immense pride because arguably, it was the Soviet Union that prevailed over Hitler’s cruel hordes on its own territory first, later in eastern Europe all the way to Berlin. In the post-Cold War world, the US-led west has been resorting to all sorts of tricks to downplay this glorious chapter in the Soviet Union’s history in an attempt to sabotage or hinder Russia’s rebuilding of its prestige and power under President Vladimir Putin.

Enormous as the contribution of the Soviet Union to the victory over fascism was, it was presaged by the necessity to make huge sacrifices and suffer immense pain even before WWII. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the almost inevitable result of the almost total breakdown of faith and trust in an absolutist Tsarist monarchy exposed for its inept conduct of WWI. The February 1917 democratic revolution was followed by the socialist takeover in October, led by V I Lenin’s Bolshevik Party. The crisis of Tsarist Russia compounded by WWI led to the ‘breach’ of the imperialist countries’ front in one of the most backward countries of Europe (in fact spanning Euro-Asia). Hopes for similar revolutions in Germany (relatively advanced) and Hungary (less so) having been drowned in blood in 1918 and 1919 respectively, the Soviet Union stood alone ringed by hostile capitalist states. These states (22 of them) intervened in the civil war that followed the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks on the side of the monarchists. After a life-and-death struggle at great cost, the revolution defeated its internal and external enemies and proceeded to construct socialism for the very first time in extremely difficult circumstances, isolation and the backwardness of Russian society being the main obstacles. Nevertheless, as fascism rose in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s respectively, the Soviet Union felt it had no choice but to industrialise on a war footing (which exacted a toll in the shape of forced collectivisation of agriculture) or else the fascist hordes gathering strength in Germany and Italy would wipe out the revolution. Along with war footing-industrialisation, the Soviet Union first attempted diplomatic outreach to the western bourgeois democratic powers for a joint front against fascism. This was rebuffed, with appeasement of Hitler in the hope he would turn his guns against the Soviet Union and destroy it proving the great illusion of western European statesmen, particularly Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. To protect itself, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact to try and stave off a German invasion.

Taking advantage of western appeasement, Hitler invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in the first of a rolling series of assaults on western Europe, ending in the occupation of France. In the process, the allies led by Britain had to beat an ignominious retreat from Dunkirk. The air war known as the Battle of Britain followed and although Hitler’s ambition to invade Britain was thwarted, he now turned his attention to the Soviet Union to crush communism once and for all.

To this end, Hitler unleashed his huge forces on the Soviet union in July 1941 under the rubric “Operation Barbarossa”. Germany’s surprise attack with a superior sophisticated military force and blitzkrieg (total war) tactics initially inflicted heavy defeats on the relatively poorly equipped Soviet forces, capturing wide swathes of territory, arriving within striking distance of Moscow and laying siege to Leningrad and Stalingrad. Much to Hitler’s surprise though, the Soviet resistance was so fierce despite the death and destruction visited on the Soviet people that eventually the tide turned at Stalingrad by 1943, followed by a massive rollback of Nazi Germany’s forces all the way to Berlin in 1945.

In the same year that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union after conquering western Europe, Imperial Japan surprise-attacked the US at Pearl Harbour in December 1941, destroying a major part of the US naval fleet stationed there and thereby dragging the hitherto neutral US into the world war. Apart from Britain’s dogged air defence in the Battle of Britain and the incremental entry of the US into the theatres of war in the Pacific (anti-Japan), north Africa, Italy and the main European theatre through the D-Day landings in 1944, it was the Soviet Union that through its resilient struggle against Hitler’s fascist hordes turned the tide of WWII by 1943 and followed it up by liberating its own and occupied eastern European territory through an utter and devastating defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies.

The sacrifices in the war changed the Soviet Union in ways that would only reveal themselves over time. The desire for peace became paramount, and after Stalin’s death in 1953, the world having already entered into the Cold War, the Soviet leadership under Khrushchev in 1956 denounced Stalin’s excesses, declared the Soviet Union a ‘state of the people’ (implicitly abandoning any notion of continuing the class struggle) and sued the US-led west for ‘peaceful coexistence’ under the shadow of mutually assured destruction through nuclear weapons. The Soviets also signalled their resolve to keep the socialist community in Eastern Europe intact through military invasions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). They continued to support national liberation struggles in the Third World (notably Vietnam) but their revolutionary credentials had by now been dented by the image of a grey, bureaucratic, geriatric leadership. It took Gorbachev’s quixotic attempt to reform the Soviet Union from 1985 onwards to unleash the anti-communist forces nestling in the bosom of the original revolutionary socialist state. The rest, as they say, is history.

Whatever may have been the final outcome of the Russian Revolution, there is no gainsaying the central and critical role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascism in WWII. Let us not attempt to distort or rewrite history in favour of other participants in this global conflict. Let the Soviet Union and all others be honoured as they deserve for the great sacrifices that contributed to the defeat of fascism. In that victory, let us be large-hearted and truthful enough to acknowledge the role of the Soviet Union as central and critical.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial May 12, 2020

Xenophobic hate tsunami

In the midst of the myriad tragedies unfolding the world over because of the Covid-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made a heart-rending appeal (without naming specific countries) for all-out efforts to end the tsunami of hate, xenophobia, scapegoating and scaremongering that seems to have been sparked off by the coronavirus crisis. He went on to point out that anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and on the streets. Worse still, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred. The UN Secretary-General said migrants and refugees have been vilified as a source of the virus and subsequently denied access to medical treatment. Contemptible memes have emerged, he reminded us, that suggest older people, some of the most vulnerable to the virus, are also the most expendable. Additionally, journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply because they are doing their jobs at great risk to themselves. The UN chief appealed for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally, singling out educational institutions to teach digital literacy to young people, whom he called “captive and potentially despairing audiences”. Guterres called on the media, especially social media, to do much more to flag and remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content.

While the UN Secretary-General’s appeal comes during the pandemic and in response to some of the unacceptable behavioural trends that have emerged in this context, it must be said that it is not the Covid-19 pandemic that has given birth to them but in fact exacerbated already existing excesses of this sort. We would do well to remember that contempt and hatred for the people of conquered lands over the last four centuries or so accompanied colonialism and imperialism. Independence came to such countries partly because of their struggles for freedom from colonial occupation but also because the colonial empires weakened due to the strife between developed and developing capitalist countries in the shape of the two World Wars in the 20^thcentury. But if anyone was optimistically hoping that the end of colonial empires would restore the respect and dignity of the erstwhile ‘natives’, they were in for a rude shock. Not only did contempt and hatred for the newly independent peoples of the former colonies continue, it took on new forms. One context for this was the fact that because of manpower losses in the World Wars, the developed countries faced a labour shortage. Perforce then, the gates were opened to immigrant labour, largely from Asia, Africa and Latin America, to travel to the developed countries and take up the low paying menial jobs the white ‘natives’ refused to do. Over time, this initial need was added to by the relatively low birth rates (two children or less per family) in the developed countries. This produced another reason for opening the gates for immigrant labour even further. One more category of immigrant labour can be added to the tally: those who manned the construction and development boom in the oil-rich Arab states. But the story does not end there. Colonialism may have been buried, but a new hydra replaced it: neo-colonialism and imperialism. This is a far more complex international system whereby powerful countries subjugate and keep under their thumb the rest of the world as part of the global surplus extractive process of modern capitalism. Recalcitrant or ‘disobedient’ countries in the erstwhile Third World have been the victims of regime-change oriented imperialist military interventions repeatedly. Sometimes these interventions are less direct and more through proxies. The results of all these wars, especially in recent years, has been a flood of refugees fleeing conflict, accompanied by economic migrants attempting to escape poverty at home. The sum total of these developments has been xenophobic hatred and scapegoating of such communities in the host countries. Ironically, whether immigrant labour, war refugees or economic migrants, these communities are the most vulnerable to pandemics like Covid-19 because of poverty, crowded living, menial but essential jobs, etc. So both history and current times work against them. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres may not have wanted to ruffle feathers by naming the ‘guilty’ societies where such xenophobic hatred is widespread, but his appeal really should be directed at them and not couched in diplomatic vagueness in the hope of arriving at a global consensus on the issue that seems, for the reasons adumbrated above, a tall ask.

Business Recorder Editorial May 8, 2020

Supreme Court’s dismay

A five-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed, while hearing the suo motu case on May 4, 2020 regarding measures taken by the federal and provincial governments for preventing the spread of COVID-19, expressed its dissatisfaction and even dismay on a number of issues surrounding the matter. The SC wondered whether the shutting down of businesses paying taxes to the federal government by the provincial governments without the permission of the President was a violation of the Constitution’s Federal Legislative List and Articles 18 and 151(4). Nor was the court satisfied with the National Coordination Committee’s April 14, 2020 meeting that only identified the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to be followed by citizens instead of framing a proper policy. The SC expressed the hope that all the respective governments would sit together to frame a uniform national policy within one week, otherwise the court may be constrained to issue an interim order on the same. The unending war of words between the federal and Sindh governments (both before and after the pandemic struck) troubled the court on the one hand, while the almost complete standstill in economic activity imposed by all governments to a greater or lesser degree seemed to the SC as if all the governments had been conspiring against the people’s welfare and fundamental rights. The SC was also not happy with the Sindh government’s allegedly allowing businesses to open if applied for, implying kickbacks or corruption may be involved. Attorney General of Pakistan Khalid Jawed attempted a respectful argument to remind the court that the country was passing through an extraordinary situation and such matters were best left to parliament and the executive to sort out. On the other hand, industrialists and exporters in Karachi refuted any implication of bribery or corruption in the matter of allowing exporting units to restart operations while adhering to all necessary SOPs.

The problem with the SC’s suo motu intervention in arguably the greatest health and economic crisis Pakistan, and indeed the world, is facing is the tendency, based on past experience, of such interventions exceeding the constitutional separation of powers amongst the judiciary, legislature and executive. Not only that, there have been instances when the respect and dignity of the apex court was affected negatively when its orders could not be implemented for being inherently difficult if not impossible. A prominent example is the order of the CJP Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry court in a suo motu case to reduce the prices of sugar. Since the commodity’s price was determined by a host of market factors, the order proved infructuous. It was his court that could be said to have set the judicial precedent of more or less abandoning the time-honoured principle of judicial restraint and embarking onto the terra incognita of judicial intervention. In the present suo motu case too, while it is easy to appreciate the SC’s concern about the manner in which the pandemic challenge is being met and admittedly, the confused, hesitant approach of the federal government and its perceived hostility towards the Pakistan People’s Party government in Sindh has produced even more difficulties in an already difficult crisis but to go from there to an attempted intervention into the matter runs the risk of embarrassing the court if its orders cannot practically be followed or implemented. With the utmost respect, the SC may be better served generally by a return to the principle of judicial restraint.

Business Recorder Column May 5, 2020

Lives versus livelihoods

Rashed Rahman

The great dilemma for all governments in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic is how to balance lives versus livelihoods. This dilemma is particularly acute for countries such as Pakistan, where the absence of universal healthcare and a social security system poses unprecedented challenges on this score. It is no surprise therefore that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has from the day the pandemic struck, been portraying itself as committed to finding the right balance in this crisis.

Federal Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, during a media briefing at the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on May 3, 2020, quoted the figures and predictions of various organisations and think tanks regarding the economic fallout of the lockdowns (however leaky) on businesses, employment and poverty. He conceded that the tally of COVID-19 cases has more than doubled in less than two weeks, but ‘balanced’ that by citing the findings of these think tanks that the pandemic could cause the closure of one million businesses, rendering 18 million people unemployed and pushing 70 million people below the poverty line (to add to the 25 percent or about 55 million already there).

The minister was making the case for relaxing the lockdown, an issue he said would be decided in the meeting of the National Coordination Committee on May 9, 2020. This decision has to be weighed against the latest reports that reveal the confirmed COVID-19 confirmed cases have crossed the 20,000 mark countrywide, with 459 deaths so far. In two days, May 2-3, 2020, the virus claimed 55 lives. The graph of deaths has gone up from an initial average of two deaths per day to now nearly two dozen per day. And this is in only two months since the lockdown was imposed.

The minister found comfort in the fact that Pakistan’s tally of confirmed cases and deaths has been relatively low, although he himself was unable to explain why this is so. He quoted the ratio of deaths per million population in Europe and the US to substantiate a claim that could be questioned on the touchstone of scientific or medical knowledge as well as the possibility of under-reporting because of our inadequate monitoring system. However, he also attempted to be too clever by half by quoting the higher figure of 4,800 deaths per month due to traffic accidents, which did not mean road traffic should be banned. The analogy is inapt because traffic accidents are not a contagious disease.

The real basis of Asad Umar’s case was revealed when he said the collection of taxes by the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) had gone down by Rs 119 billion in April 2020. As it is the FBR was struggling to meet its targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The pandemic has put paid to whatever hopes there may have been of catching up with those targets. Hence the argument that businesses needed to open, perhaps not all as that may lead to the already inadequate healthcare system collapsing under the weight of exponentially increasing cases of infection, but gradually, to strike an ‘acceptable’ balance between confirmed cases and economic activities.

Asad Umar went on to reveal some interesting statistics. He said Pakistan has 5,000 intensive care beds in its existing and newly set up hospitals, of which 1,500 would be used for COVID-19 patients and (or but) only 23 of them are being used. Now unless he has been misquoted, this makes for sorry reading, except that he also revealed that the country has 5,000 ventilators, of which 1,400 will be used for COVID-19 patients and currently 35 patients are on ventilators. One wonders if this sparse use of intensive care beds and ventilators was a factor in the death of a doctor in Karachi on May 4, 2020, reportedly because no ventilator was available for him despite taking the rounds of various hospitals in the city. The question arises, why this small number of beds and ventilators are being put to use when the number of confirmed cases is over 20,000, according to the minister, amongst whom must be a considerable number of serious cases needing isolation hospitalisation and perhaps the aid of ventilators?

While all eyes are focused on the fight against the pandemic, a discernible uptick in terrorism in erstwhile FATA has been in evidence. The latest reports say a bomb was defused in Bajaur and the rail track blown up in Dera Ghazi Khan on May 3, 2020. This follows almost daily clashes with terrorists in the tribal area leading to soldiers’ and terrorists’ deaths in recent days. These developments may well be the thin edge of the wedge of a revival of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other terrorist groups ‘exported’ to Afghanistan as a result of military operations in the tribal areas.

A different kind of terrorism has been witnessed in the assassinations of Arif Wazir of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in South Waziristan the other day, and the recovery of the dead body of missing journalist Sajid Hussain Baloch in Sweden. The latter had gone ‘missing’ on March 2, 2020. The finger of suspicion in both cases points to the continuing shenanigans of the deep state against dissident and critical opinion, even if such opinion belongs to a journalist or a peaceful PTM leader. Ironically, we have just commemorated World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2020.

The scenario sketched out by Asad Umar is echoed in the declared intent of the body of Lahore’s trading community to open their shops on May 10, 2020 perforce as they are in dire straits. Of course they say they will run education campaigns and ensure the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) regarding social distancing, face masks, etc. But going by the experience of the lockdown so far, the public lacks the enlightened discipline required for this (witness the scenes in our bazaars despite so-called lockdowns) and the adversarial relationship between people and the police makes implementing such SOPs a tall order that may, if strictly attempted, lead to clashes and violence.

The real storm though, if Asad Umar’s figures are correct, is the one likely to emerge as the ‘balance’ (skewed or otherwise) between lives and livelihoods plays out in the days ahead. It promises to be a long, hot summer.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial May 5, 2020

Lockdown controversy

Since the coronavirus pandemic struck, the controversy over what kind of lockdown was necessary, affordable, and viable has continued to rage. Two protagonists on opposite sides of the debate have been the federal and Sindh governments. The latter kicked off the campaign against the pandemic by imposing a stricter lockdown than the federal government or the rest of the provinces. This became a bone of contention between Islamabad and Karachi, although the way things were playing out on the ground cut both ways and arguably weakened both sides’ positions. Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has made no bones from day one regarding his reluctance to impose a total or even overly strict lockdown on the argument that this would leave the poor daily wagers and even other deprived sections of society without the means to sustain themselves. Tacitly, this was an admission and acknowledgement of the fact that Pakistan lacks a social security system that could help citizens in trouble ride the crisis out. Nor it transpires does the country have a reliable data base that could help identify and bring to the needy amongst us whatever the state and private philanthropy could muster in the way of cash, food, and other essentials. On April 30, 2020, while addressing a ceremony in Islamabad regarding the production of ventilators, sanitisers, safety kits, testing kits and masks, Imran Khan delivered a swinging yorker against the ‘elite’, accusing it of being responsible for the decision to impose the lockdown without a thought for the poor. Unfortunately, the PM did not elaborate who he meant by the ‘elite’, considering if by that term was meant the rich and powerful, the ranks of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) are not without such worthies in their midst. Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in fact gained appreciation throughout the country for his policy of a strict lockdown to avoid the kind of exponential explosion of the tally of cases that has been experienced in some developed countries of the world. However, despite their differences, both sides of the argument soon were confronted with the dilemma that desperate people were still pouring out into the streets and bazaars to fulfil their everyday needs, rendering the lockdowns, strict or relatively loose, more or less infructuous. Long and loud though the remonstrances by the federal and Sindh governments were urging the people in their own interest to follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) regarding only necessary exit from home, keeping social distancing intact, wearing facemasks, etc, this appeared to fall on deaf (or desperate) ears. Ordinarily, the continuing exchange on a daily basis between the two sides in this controversy may have been put down to nothing more than ‘normal’ politics, but too much was at stake to simply ignore the whole matter.

The results of conflicting policies on the lockdowns in Sindh and the rest of the country have not turned out very differently, unfortunately. The latest reports indicate a sharp spike in the number of infections, and a steadily growing tally of fatalities amongst them. Sindh has now overtaken Punjab, where the majority of people live, with Karachi, the thickly populated metropolis, suffering by now a quarter of Sindh’s total cases. Sindh has been leading the rest of the country in the number of tests undertaken, accompanied by the inexplicable drop in Punjab’s tally on this score in the last week of April. With the pressure of possible mass unrest looming on the horizon, the federal government is now contemplating easing the lockdowns in Islamabad and the rest of the country under its sway. We can only hope this otherwise creditable concern for the fate of the poor, as argued by Imran Khan, does not turn out to be a factor in the lengthening of the affliction and eventually result in neither lives not livelihoods being saved as far as humanly possible.

Sorry, Editorial for voicepk.net April 29, 2020

Information reshuffle yet again

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has seen fit to remove Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan from the position of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) for Information and replace her with Lt-General (retd) Asim Bajwa. Leader of the House in the Senate Shibli Faraz has been appointed Federal Minister for Information almost a year after Fawad Chaudhry was removed from that post. The latter change is nothing out of the ordinary but bringing former DG ISPR Lt-General (retd) Bajwa into the slot of SAPM is bound to raise eyebrows. As it is the PTI government is accused of being a ‘selected’ government because of the controversial 2018 general elections. Now the induction of Bajwa, responsible for building up COAS General (retd) Raheel Sharif’s image and turning ISPR into a media empire able to control and dominate the national narrative raises fresh questions about which hands the reins of power actually lie in. Many retired military generals have been inducted into heading various state institutions during the PTI’s incumbency, continuing and even accelerating a long-standing trend. Bajwa’s media handling skills could be expected to bolster the rather poor image of the PTI government in the media and repair the acrimonious state of relations between the government and the press. However, Bajwa will only be able to achieve these objectives if he can persuade Prime Minister Imran Khan to desist from lambasting the media for being remiss with facts and even paid agents of some vested interest, in sharp contrast to Imran Khan’s reliance on, and praise of, the media while he was in opposition.

The newspaper bodies, APNS and CPNE, have welcomed the reshuffle at the top of the Information pyramid, perhaps in the hope of relief from the government’s restrictions on advertisements that have caused a serious financial and jobs crisis in the media. Only time will tell whether the hopes from the new Information czars will yield what the various stakeholders hope and wish for.

Editorial for voicenet.pk April 29, 2020

Information reshuffle yet again

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has seen fit to remove Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan from the position of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) for Information and replace her with Lt-General (retd) Asim Bajwa. Leader of the House in the Senate Shibli Faraz has been appointed Federal Minister for Information almost a year after Fawad Chaudhry was removed from that post. The latter change is nothing out of the ordinary but bringing former DG ISPR Lt-General (retd) Bajwa into the slot of SAPM is bound to raise eyebrows. As it is the PTI government is accused of being a ‘selected’ government because of the controversial 2018 general elections. Now the induction of Bajwa, responsible for building up COAS General (retd) Raheel Sharif’s image and turning ISPR into a media empire able to control and dominate the national narrative raises fresh questions about which hands the reins of power actually lie in. Many retired military generals have been inducted into heading various state institutions during the PTI’s incumbency, continuing and even accelerating a long-standing trend. Bajwa’s media handling skills could be expected to bolster the rather poor image of the PTI government in the media and repair the acrimonious state of relations between the government and the press. However, Bajwa will only be able to achieve these objectives if he can persuade Prime Minister Imran Khan to desist from lambasting the media for being remiss with facts and even paid agents of some vested interest, in sharp contrast to Imran Khan’s reliance on, and praise of, the media while he was in opposition.

The newspaper bodies, APNS and CPNE, have welcomed the reshuffle at the top of the Information pyramid, perhaps in the hope of relief from the government’s restrictions on advertisements that have caused a serious financial and jobs crisis in the media. Only time will tell whether the hopes from the new Information czars will yield what the various stakeholders hope and wish for.

News on Sunday Article May 3, 2020

Clerics’ obstinacy

Rashed Rahman

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has given in to the clerics’ demands that religious congregations in mosques for prayer and Taraweehbe allowed during Ramazan despite the risks this entails during the coronavirus pandemic. This is in sharp contrast to what most Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, have done to forbid such congregations in the interests of public health and safety. In the holiest of holy months, Saudi Arabia has gone so far as to close the Ka'aba.The conditions agreed with the clerics to practice social distancing, ablution at home, bringing personal prayer mats to the mosques, no collective sehrior iftar,aetakafat home, etc, are already proving infructuous just days after this agreement. A survey reveals 80 percent of the mosques in the Punjab are violating these conditions. It remains to be seen now whether in the light of these reports, President Dr Arif Alvi, who negotiated the agreement with the clerics, will follow through on his assertion that if the clerics failed to adhere to these conditions and the incidence of infected cases rises, these concessions may be revisited. But don’t hold your breath on this one. Only time will tell what havoc this may reap in the form of an uptick in coronavirus infections as a result.

The PTI government’s mixed messaging since the start of the coronavirus pandemic almost two months ago has fed into an atmosphere of seeming to be dithering on the issue. The whole debate about protecting lives versus livelihoods misses the point that lives have to be saved first before livelihoods are even possible. But between the PTI government’s contradictory pronouncements and the hardline clerics calling the shots on issues of their concern, the outcome was perhaps inevitable. The clerics were already restive about the restrictions on religious congregations imposed by the government in March 2020. This restiveness resulted in the clerics demanding on April 14, 2020 that these restrictions be lifted. Certain clerics, notably Maulana Abdul Aziz of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid fame, defied all restrictions and continued to welcome Friday prayer congregations. It took the government days if not weeks to finally stop this by surrounding Lal Masjid to prevent devotees congregating for Friday prayers. Elsewhere, particularly in Karachi, there were clashes between devotees and the police when the latter tried to stop prayer congregations in the southern metropolis.

With the advent of Ramazan, to the clerics’ concern about losing their ‘constituency’, clout and power was added a very material interest. Ramazan is when the mosques collect the maximum donations that allow their ‘businesses’ to continue throughout the year. The clerics’ community was not likely to yield this ‘bonus’ easily, coronavirus pandemic risks notwithstanding.

The interesting question to be asked is how and why the hardline clerics are able to defy successive governments regarding their own pet interests. The roots of this mullah power are traceable to the period when religious parties and sects proved invaluable for the state’s establishment for manning jihad in the neighbourhood, west and east. The chickens of this 1980s-onwards jihad project finally came to roost when it began to appear as though the state had become subservient to the clerics. Even after the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan ended in the late 1980s, the establishment continued to use hardline clerics and their followers as tools of foreign and domestic policy.

But as often happens with proxies (always a double-edged sword), once they have tasted ‘power’, autonomy if not independence from the original mentors follows. Defiance of the lockdown (however partial and full of holes) has exposed the limits of the establishment’s control of these erstwhile obedient proxies. It is the old metaphor of the tail eventually ending up wagging the dog.

The clerics’ power rests centrally on the mosque and the pulpit, reinforced over time by the street power they have accumulated while their mentors looked the other way (deliberately, critics would argue). In the controversy over the need for social distancing and other precautions versus the clerics’ insistence on ‘business as usual’ and invoking ‘God’s wrath’ if religious congregations were disallowed, the implied threat from the clerics was the use of their street power to create political and social chaos unless their irrational demands were acceded to. In this obstinacy, our enlightened clerics have even chosen to blithely ignore the advice and warnings of doctors and medical experts regarding the risk of our bare bones healthcare system being overwhelmed if coronavirus pandemic infection cases explode exponentially as has happened in several countries around the globe that have struggled despite much better healthcare systems. As it is, our inadequacies in this regard have been badly exposed by lack of protective clothing for doctors and medical staff that has resulted in several of them being infected and some deaths, not to mention our dearth of testing kits and ventilators. Yet our clerics insist on ignoring the experts’ perspicacious projections about large Ramazan congregations increasing the risk and likelihood of infections on a much larger scale than we have witnessed so far.

The writer is a veteran journalist who has held senior editorial positions in several newspapers

Business Recorder Editorial May 1, 2020

Mysterious drop in number of tests

The Ministry of National Health Services’ data showed on April 28, 2020 that the number of tests for the coronavirus pandemic had inexplicably come down in all the provinces, with the notable exception of Sindh. The southern province reported 341 of the 751 new cases detected on that day. The ministry’s graph reveals that for almost a week, Sindh has conducted the most tests, i.e. around 3,000 a day. In comparison, Punjab, with over 60 percent of the entire country’s population, has only managed 2,000 tests per day. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa comes in at 1,000 tests per day, while 300 tests per day is the score for Balochistan and 400 for Islamabad, the federal capital. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah was able, perhaps because of these facts, to treat us to the good news on April 29, 2020 that the incidence of infected cases had fallen to almost half in the province compared to the previous days. Inevitably almost, this discrepancy elicited a fresh war of words between the ruling party in Sindh and the federal government that has been the norm since the crisis began. On April 28, 2020, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) central information secretary, Nafisa Shah, wondered aloud whether the fewer tests in the rest of the country since April 24, 2020 was intended to ‘artificially flatten the curve’ of infections, thereby fostering a false sense of security (and hope) amongst the people of the other provinces. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza, while talking to the press, responded by denying this was a deliberate attempt to keep the figures artificially low. While admitting the tests for Punjab were reduced, Dr Mirza tried to extend the assurance that this was just for a few days. He asserted that since the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government was going to implement the Tracking, Testing and Quarantining (TTQ) policy, the number of tests would increase manifold in coming days. But he then tried to slip in the (dubious) argument that the number of tests could have decreased because of a lesser number of suspected infections (an assertion not backed by any factual data).

One train of thought has it that the PTI government may well have reduced the number of tests in the rest of the country (barring Sindh) in order to ‘save’ the relatively few testing kits for use by its much touted Corona Tiger Force that Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced some days ago but which has yet to be seen taking practical shape. Whether there is any truth to this speculation or not, concern cannot be avoided over the unexplained (satisfactorily, at least) drop in the levels of testing. As it is, Pakistan’s creaking healthcare system is under stress because of the growing number of infections throughout the country. If tests are being avoided or reduced for some spurious objective such as the launch of the Tiger Force, this provides little comfort to a concerned citizenry battered by (partial) lockdowns, unemployment, inflation (especially food items) and uncertainty about the future. Surely the government should be pulling out all the stops to test (whether under TTQ or otherwise) in order to reassure the populace that the government is sparing no effort in its battle against the coronavirus pandemic. As it is, the perception has taken hold in the public mind that the mixed, confused messaging of the government since the crisis started reflects confusion, hesitation and floundering at a moment requiring decisive policy and action. The PTI government is not helping its own case by its dithering attitude. It must be seen to be and to actually be leading the fight against the pandemic, not trailing behind the deadly virus’ march.