Pakistan's Political Instability

Pakistan, Waziristan.- the descent continues

Hope Vs Reason

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

The economy is in tatters, inflation and joblessness are stalking the landscape. Both western and eastern borders are insecure – a civil war is threatening to spill over one border while an invigorated predator is sizing up its prey on the other. Terrorism/insurgency in Balochistan is barely manageable even as another threatens to shatter the newfound peace of FATA. Hounded to the wall, the mainstream opposition is inching towards mass agitation. Yet the PTI government of the day – hanging by an arrogant and unaccountable puppeteer’s thread — is bent upon imprisoning popularly elected leaders of Sindh, Punjab and FATA, blackmailing the NAB Chairman to do its bidding, prosecuting an honourable judge who dares question the writ of the puppeteer, extinguishing a rising star from lighting the path of the opposition and gagging the media from speaking the truth. Under the circumstances, can we shut our minds to reason and hope that all will be well? Or will defiance trump logic and set things right?

The Afghan Taliban are not likely to concede core American demands. In time, the Americans will blame Pakistan for not doing more to bail them out. President Trump has already teamed up with PM Modi to contain, if not confront, Pakistan’s lifeline ally China. Before long, both will turn the screws on Pakistan, the former via the US Treasury’s manipulation of the IMF and FATF and the latter by priming its “offensive-defense” proxy war doctrine. This will transpire when the ruling Puppeteer–PTI clique stands totally alienated and isolated from most sections of state and society.

The confrontation in FATA between the “patriotic” army and “treasonous” populace may get worse. Both sides have wantonly crossed red lines. In the heat of the moment, the protestors tried to overrun a security check post. The army shot and killed several of them. Next time, the protesting crowds will be bigger. If a new insurgency is born, it will doubtless be aided and abetted on a bigger scale by hostile neighbours.

The NAB chairman was spoiling to be hoist on his own petard. But the PTI exploited his weakness to advance its anti-opposition agenda. Now, if he throws in the towel and the government is successful in empowering its hand-picked Deputy Chairman, then there will be more confrontation, more repression, more political instability, more economic chaos. It is remarkable, isn’t it, that the media managers of the government, in cahoots with a civilian intel agency, should have successfully staged such a coup? No wonder, the government is adamant in denying a proper investigation into L’Affaire Chairman!

The decision to target a Supreme Court judge and teach a suitable lesson to other wayward judges was expected. The good judge had dared to tick off the Intel Agencies and seemed inclined to read out the “democracy” sections of the constitution to them. Horror of horrors, he was also lined up in due course to rule as the chief justice of Pakistan for many years. Confronted by leaked reports of a Presidential Reference to the Supreme Judicial Council to defame him, he has demanded to know the veracity of the reports. The Additional Attorney General in Karachi has resigned in protest. If other judges don’t resist such machinations, the peoples’ struggle for an independent judiciary will be lost. Certainly, there is at least one other judge who may be on the hit-list for ruffling the untouchable feathers of certain VIP housing societies across the country.

Next in line is the Election Commission of Pakistan. Having advisedly taken a soft look at the shenanigans of the Prime Minister, it is now being pressured to take a hard stance against Mariam Nawaz Sharif. If it does the government’s bidding, it will join the queue of discredited state institutions that are paving the way for societal anarchy and states of siege.

The worrying future is already upon Pakistan. The US is gearing up India and others to confront and contain China in the Asia-Pacific and Asia-West region. China’s Road and Belt project, in general, and CPEC, in particular, will be targeted. It is also engaged, along with Saudi Arabia, UAE and others in trying to force regime change in Iran as a prelude to redrawing the map of the Middle-East. This makes Pakistan’s third southern border vulnerable. It also threatens to open deep sectarian divisions within the country.

Wiser counsel would surely advise a contrary path. A national all-parties government headed by a stolid prime minister who can disarm domestic critics, build trust with prickly neighbours, manage the economy dispassionately and herald certainty and stability would do Pakistan much good. Such a dispensation would heal the wounds between provinces, between state institutions, between political parties, between classes and ethnicities, between Pakistan and its neighbours while pulling the economy out of its current trough. A nation united and at peace with itself is bound to be a nation united and at peace with the rest of the world. More than anything else that is the need of the hour.

Will hope be rekindled at the altar of realism? Or will despair be our lot when reason is sacrificed?

Pakistan’s Economic & Political Crises / Islamists’ Politics in Canada

The spectre of partition haunts India and Pakistan

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times







As the month of December inches forward to herald a new year, we might pause to reflect on some issues that continue to pose existential problems for us as a nation.

The Federal Censor Board has not yet cleared a film on the life of famed writer Saadat Hasan Manto by Nandita Das, a renowned peace activist and producer/director in India. Apparently, the Censor Board is concerned about how some aspects of the “Partition” are depicted in the film. The sad ironies in this matter should not be missed. In India, too, the film was not selected for screening in an International Film Festival in Mumbai, despite being shown at the Film Festivals in Cannes and Toronto, because of sensitivities about “Partition”. Apparently, if Indians are inclined to object when Hindus are shown to rape and slaughter Muslims, Pakistanis are wont to protest when Muslims are depicted in much the same communal light. The bigger irony is that in both countries, Manto is celebrated by the writers and artists of the subcontinent as a great short story writer whose humanity soared above communal or ideological motives because he situated it in the agony, rage and sadness of both sides of the divide during the months leading to the “Partition”. The biggest irony is that Manto was persecuted and prosecuted for the same original sin in the “Purana Pakistan” of the 1950s for which he is posthumously paying the price in “Naya Pakistan”, despite being honoured with a Nishan-e-Imtiaz by the PPP government in 2012. It seems that, seventy years later, both countries are still trapped in the trauma of the “Partition” and constantly seek ways and means to reinforce its memory in our new generations instead of “moving on” to create fresh spaces for mutual welfare and growth.

Pakistan was itself “partitioned” in December 1971 with the bloody birth of Bangladesh. Unfortunately, most Pakistani writing on the subject is still focused on the role of India in the military debacle instead of the role of its own Punjabi civil-military oligarchy in creating the economic and political conditions that led to the acute alienation of East Pakistani Bengalis. In India, the same moment is rung up as an occasion to savour the Pakistani army’s “humiliating” surrender while in Dhaka it is time again to fuel rage against Pakistan for the “genocide” in 1971 and demand an “apology” and “reparations” for it. The collective hostile imagination of the “Partition” continues to sour the quest for peace in South Asia.

Tragically, however, Pakistan continues to be the most adversely affected country by the consequences of the original Partition. Its attempt to seize Kashmir from India – to redress a gross inequity of the division – by force shortly after independence sowed the seeds of a continuing confrontation that has crippled us politically, economically and socially. Enveloped in anxiety, fear and rage, we have ended up creating a “national-security state” that has, in the name of supreme national interest, trampled on civil freedoms, curtailed provincial autonomies, manufactured violent non-state actors, thwarted political leaders, fashioned parties, engineered anti-democratic political systems and dissembled “political Islam” as a legitimizing force for itself. This state continues to hog the budget and restricts regional development connectivity for “security” reasons. It constantly straitjackets the space for cultural freedom and social advancement. In short, it has stalled the development of a vibrant, pluralistic society at peace with itself and with the rest of the world.

The Taliban attack on the Army Public School in December 2014 in which over 149 children were martyred is another grim reminder of some of the painful consequences of the path taken by our national security state. The Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani offshoot are a direct consequence of our regional security policies centered on the “threat” from India. While the Afghans were given safe havens, the Pakistani Taliban were mollycoddled with one peace deal after another even as they were attacking girls’ schools and assassinating civilians with impunity. It is only after they attacked the APS that the national security state finally girded up its loins to go after them with a vengeance. Those who fled to Afghanistan have now become proxies against Pakistan in the new great game unfolding in the region.

This December we also should also expect a final denouement against the two mainstream parties of the country for whom most Pakistanis voted in the last elections. The PMLN leaders, Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, are already shackled, and more troubles are in store for the PPP’s leader Asif Ali Zardari. To be sure, both parties and leaders are partly responsible for their tribulations. Each governed callously in turns. Each joined hands with the Miltablishment to undermine the other and erode the credibility of the democratic system. Now they are lined up to pay for their sins.

Unfortunately, however, the most enduring legacy of the Partition, the national security state, that has re-engineered the political system yet again, has put all its eggs in Imran Khan’s basket. But he is fumbling and stumbling, leaving us wondering about our options in case he drops the ball.

The Sarkari Mussalman - Interview with Gen. Zameeruddin Shah

Lessons for all from the great Tarek Fatah

Pakistan: For whom the bell tolls?

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

The bell has begun to toll. Most people think it is tolling for the general elections. Although these are constitutionally scheduled to be held no later than September 2018, there are apprehensions these could be delayed. The bell could also be tolling for the House of Sharif, particularly Nawaz Sharif. Most people are convinced that the scales of justice are weighted against him. What are the odds, and consequences, of the tolling of the bell?

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has received over 2000 petitions against constituency delimitations. It has two months in which to appraise and redress them before the national and provincial parliaments are dissolved and electioneering begins in earnest. It is also certain that most decisions of the ECP will be challenged in the High Courts because constituency revisions are critically impacting the fate of traditional candidates. Some may even appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP). Unless some swift solutions are found by the ECP and courts, God alone knows how this matter will be resolved without postponing elections.

Then there is the matter of caretaker governments. Finding consensus candidates in Balochistan and Sindh should not be difficult because the major players there are openly aligned with the powerful Miltablishment that calls the shots. But Islamabad, Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa will be less soluble and the ECP may have to step in to clear the decks. There will be unsavoury controversy, conspiracies are bound to be imputed and the electoral waters will be muddied. To top it all, scores of candidates are likely to clutch at Constitutional Articles 62 and 63 or Iqama-type inconsistencies to challenge their opponents’ nomination papers.

The fate of Nawaz Sharif’s accountability trial will also impinge on elections. If he is knocked out, the PMLN will have to consider whether to boycott elections or go down fighting with one hand tied behind its back. In the immediate aftermath, there are bound to be defections from the PMLN. Their significance will depend on how successfully Nawaz Sharif can reinforce his perception as the victim of injustice, who is turning to the people for salvation. So far, going by the big crowds he is drawing to his jalsas in comparison with the rather indifferent showing of his political opponents, he is not doing badly. But the mood of his detractors is turning ugly, a sign of what lies ahead.

The Geo/Jang Group that is propping up the Sharifs’ narrative is for the chop. “Invisible” forces have leaned on cable operators across large swathes of the country, to shut down all the group’s channels. PEMRA is helpless in redressing their complaints. They are losing money because their ads are trailing off and have therefore delayed salaries to their employees. But the Supreme Court has ordered them to “beg or borrow” and cough up. The court accuses them of receiving the largest chunk of public sector ads because of their pro-government stance but is silent in the face of their higher ranking and ratings that attract these ads even from the private sector on commercial merit. Now Saleem Safi, a top GEO journalist, who continues to ask awkward questions about the direction in which Pakistan is being herded, has been targeted – some “invisible” goons attacked his home and beat up his guard for resisting them. And so it goes on.

We are told that any talk of a judicial martial law in the offing, is hogwash. This is reassuring. But one cannot help but compare today’s situation to what transpired in December 1997 when the then CJP, Sajjad Ali Shah, wrote to the then army chief for backing against, and protection from, the government of the day. The CJP’s order was not carried out. It was forwarded to the Defense Ministry on the plea that GHQ answers to it rather than to the SC. Today, we are informed, if any order is passed by the CJP, the army “will not remain in barracks” if it is resisted by the government or parliament.

In fact, an unprecedented alignment of political forces is now grouping to “reform the country”. The original child of the Miltablishment, Nawaz Sharif, has become a dangerous outcast. The original bête noir of the Miltablishment, Asif Zardari, has become its blue-eyed boy. The judiciary, which has historically been the handmaiden of the executive arm of government, has suddenly become “independent” with the backing of the Miltablishment even though its “independence” was won from the same Miltablishment not so long ago with the struggle of the Lawyers Movement and democratic political forces. And the media that fought to win its independence from the Miltablishment a decade ago has suddenly acquiesced in its favour without a whimper.

Under the circumstances, we are right to wonder for whom the bell tolls.

Pakistan and Accountability

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times






The split in the House of Sharif is in the open. Nawaz and Maryam Sharif stand apart from Shahbaz and Hamza Sharif. The former want to resist the forceful encroachments of the “Miltablishment” into the affairs of both state and government. The latter see this as a politically suicidal “confrontation” and are resigned to working within the parameters defined by Miltablishment.

The first public manifestation of this split came during the recent bye-elections in NA-120. Hamza exited the scene, leaving Maryam to campaign in a constituency nurtured by him in his capacity as manager of the PMLN electoral machine in the Punjab. The margin of victory – which was deemed critical to the political strategy of father and daughter who were hoping to build a narrative of martyrdom on it — seemed to prove Shahbaz’s point about the power of the Miltablishment. The PMLN vote was significantly eroded by three late developments: the birth of two pro-Miltablishment right wing religious parties that sliced off nearly 10% of the PMLN vote; the “disappearance” of a few core PMLN party workers tasked with galvanizing the voters on election day; and the eruption of over two dozen contenders with a few thousand votes among them that would have gone to the PMLN in normal circumstances.

Now Hamza has gone on TV to acknowledge the political differences in the House of Sharif. But both he and Maryam are now engaged in damage control. Hamza says that these political “differences” do not amount to an unbridgeable rift and he and his father are hoping to persuade Nawaz and Maryam to abandon the path of “confrontation” in the larger national interest. Maryam says she spent a delightful afternoon sipping tea with uncle Shahbaz and cousin Hamza and talk of a family rift is wishful thinking by detractors.

Meanwhile, the Miltablishment remains in an aggressive mood. Having come so far to knock out Nawaz Sharif, it is now silencing the voices of prominent television anchors and channels who are deemed “soft” on Sharif or don’t agree with its “state narrative”. Tactics range from pressurizing cable operators to take troublesome channels off air, calling up channel owners and ordering them to sack critical anchors and attacking dissidents on social media as unpatriotic agents of foreign powers.

Now, in an unprecedented intervention, the army chief has publicly dilated on the “ill-health” of the economy and expressed concern that this is hurting “national security”. Although doomsday scenarios of the economy have been floating around for decades and the situation today is not as bad as on several occasions in the past, this is another damning indictment of the Sharif regime and finance minister Ishaq Dar (he is also in the Miltablishment’s gunsights like his boss Nawaz Sharif). The PMLN prides itself with restoring growth and foreign investment. Ahsan Iqbal, the interior minister in charge of CPEC, has aggressively rebutted the charges, while Khaqan Abbasi, the prime minister, has hurriedly called a meeting to brief the army chief of the “true” situation and allay his fears. But it may be noted that this Miltablishment “intervention” is no less significant than its intervention some years ago in which unfounded allegations of multi-billion dollar “corruption” of the political elite in Sindh were linked to the growth of “terrorism”, paving the way for the arrest of key aides and confidantes of PPP leader Asif Zardari, the removal of a chief minister and the consolidation of unequivocal Miltablishment sway in the province.

But if the political outlook for Nawaz Sharif is not good, the fact remains that the Miltablishment is in no position to impose martial law or even install a hand-picked “technocratic” regime in Islamabad. The Miltablishment has alienated both mainstream parties PPP and PMLN without ensuring that the PTI will win the next elections or indeed play ball even if it does. In fact, it cannot even depend on the support of the two mainstream religious parties Jamaat I Islami and Jamiat I Ulema Islam. Its efforts to build an anti-Nawaz Forward Bloc in the PMLN are also floundering. Nor can it count on the judiciary to approve any such intervention. Indeed, the prospect of sitting in the hot seat with a bristling international community breathing down its neck must be very unsettling. Under the circumstances, martial law can be ruled out.

A technocratic government is also a non-starter. There is no constitutional way to bring it about or sanction it. The only situation in which it may be theoretically possible with the support of the judiciary is one in which elections have been called, parliament has been dissolved and a neutral federal interim government is in place which can be leaned upon to extend its existence and “clean up” the mess. But this would lead to a breakdown of federal-provincial relations and put unbearable strain on state, economy and society.

The tragedy of the nation is that those who would hold the Sharifs and Zardaris accountable are themselves unaccountable and don’t inspire confidence.

Pakistan's Floating World

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

We are informed that the army chief has held a seven-hour long corps commanders meeting. The generals discussed foreign policy issues following the Chief’s strategic discussions in Kabul with the Afghan President. There is no mention of any briefing to the Defense Minister, Foreign Minister or, indeed, the Prime Minister of the democratically elected government of Pakistan.

What’s the point, one might justifiably ask, since the brass is not inclined to brook any civilian interference in running foreign policy. Indeed, it seems that Nawaz Sharif is still paying the price for running afoul of the brass by trying to run India policy, and, despite the ministers’ occasional bravado for the sake of form, no one is inclined to follow suit vis a vis Afghanistan or America.

The second part of the meeting is more ominous. The generals vowed to play their role in making sure that the Constitution is implemented in the country, or words to that effect. This is rich. Parliament is supposed to be the repository of the Constitution and the elected government of the day along with the Supreme Court are jointly supposed to protect it from usurpers and states within states. Yet one usurper is visibly protected by the brass which will not let the law and constitution take their course under Article 6, while the DG Rangers has blithely flouted the writ of the very civilian ministry from which he is supposed to take orders under the Constitution.

By way of explanation – which subtly parades as justification – we are constantly reminded that the blundering civilians have only themselves to blame for this loss of constitutional authority. One argument points to “egg on the face of the interior minister” after his authority was flouted outside a NAB court by an officer of the Rangers and the wretched minister was provoked to fume about “resigning” his office if his constitutional authority was not upheld. (NB: the minister did not have the courage to even think for a minute about sacking the errant General). By this logic, all elected civilians go around doing their daily chores with permanent egg on their face because there is nothing they can do to effectively challenge the writ of the brass on any issue in everyday life. Isn’t it better, at least for the sake of the constitutional record, to protest even if there is nothing concrete one can do about it instead of hunkering down and meekly accepting the “reality”?

Chaudhry Nisar and Shahbaz Sharif are proponents of the “accept-the-harsh-reality” theory of politics. Mian Nawaz Sharif is not. What’s the point of elections and parliament, he argues, if elected representatives have to constantly kowtow to the brass on all matters big and small? The counter argument is that if the elected representatives did a better and cleaner job of government as envisaged in the Constitution, they would have greater political and moral legitimacy in exercising authority vis a vis the brass. In other words, there are usurpers and usurpers rather than usurpers and usurped, depending on who is judging.

Here’s the rub. Whichever way one looks at it, this is not good for the health of both the Constitution and the country. At some point, matters are bound to reach breaking point. When that happens in a hostile neighbourhood with bristling borders east and west, foreign players will be inclined to fish in troubled waters. Political uncertainty is also bad for the business of the economy. Harken the doomsday scenarios of a terrible balance of payments crisis (economic default) sketched by those who have never been in love with “Darnomics”. Now they’re even more worried about what would happen in a vacuum without Ishaq Dar.

Nawaz Sharif is refusing to throw in the towel. He has now become President of his Party by amending the law. If this is in-your-face-defiance of both the brass and the Supreme Court, he is poised to amend the Constitution in March to nullify his disqualification. How will both institutions of the state react to Nawaz Sharif’s capture of office?

It may be recalled that he reacted to his ouster in 1999 by General Pervez Musharraf by lodging a treason case against the general in 2013. This time he may be tempted to clip the wings of the Supreme Court so that it doesn’t usurp the power of an elected parliament.

But whatever one may think of Nawaz Sharif and his corruption, inefficiency and dynastic tendencies, one cannot absolve the brass and the court of their major role in the continuing crisis of state and society in Pakistan. What is more worrying is that neither institution is intellectually or legitimately equipped, singly or jointly, to rule Pakistan better. Indeed, righteous talk of stepping in “to save” Pakistan is misplaced concreteness, as the historical record shows.

There is no option but to let the water find its own level in the floating world of good and bad democracies.

Pakistan and Radd-ul-Fasaad

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times


The Pakistan Army has launched Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad across the country to “indiscriminately eliminate residual threat of terrorism, consolidate gains of operations made thus far and further ensure security of our borders”. The ISPR statement claims that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Civil Armed Forces (Rangers) and other LEAs (police, etc) will participate in this “Broad Spectrum Security/Counter Terrorism operation”.

The key words are, first, “indiscriminately”. This suggests that in earlier operations some terrorist groups and elements were spared for one reason or another but they will be targeted this time round. The second key word is “residual”. This suggests that much of the core work in eliminating terrorism has already been done in the past and only some “cleaning” or “mopping up” remains. The third key word is “Broad Spectrum”. This suggests that operations will be conducted across the country and not just in Fata and Karachi as in the past and that both small and big targets will be fair game. In other words, the operation aims to rid us of all internal and external elements which are creating terrorist anarchy in the country.

If this operation succeeds in even half its stated objectives it would be a great boon for Pakistan. Consider.

In earlier operations, the Pakistani Taliban in Fata and the criminal terrorizing cadres of the MQM in Karachi were targeted. Of late attempts were made to eliminate a handful of leading sectarian elements in the Punjab through police encounters but no systematic attempt was made to uproot the sectarian organisations spread across Southern Punjab. In other words, the actions were discriminatory. One reason may have had to do with the political affiliations of such elements with mainstream parties that stayed the hand of the local administrations. Another may be lack of will in local and provincial governments to face any violent or militant backlash. Are we to understand that now concerted action will be taken against these elements as well? And if action is taken, what sort of action will this be? If sweeping arrests are going to be made without adequately provisioning for successful prosecution, then this will be no more than a temporary palliative because the civil courts will set them free sooner or later. But if summary military courts are to sentence them, then a whole new upgraded legal edifice has to be constructed that is accorded approval by a consensus in parliament and which is not challenged by the superior judiciary. How this is to be accomplished remains to be seen because parliament is still debating the pros and cons of extending the legal cover of military courts for a limited period of time and the Supreme Court has stayed the executions of several terrorists convicted by military courts on one ground or another.

But the problem won’t end even if all this is accomplished quickly and another few hundred are executed or jailed for life. The roots of sectarianism go deep in society and are related to the narrative of “Islamic ideology” that underpins state and society in Pakistan and permeates the political parties, state institutions, education system and media. How on earth are we going to depoliticize Pakistan’s version of Islam in a few years when we have taken six decades to enshrine it as the be-all and end-all, and what it means to be a true Pakistani soaked in this ideology? Operation Radd-ul-Fassad may rid us of a score or two of potent sectarian troublemakers but it will not make a dent in the system that gives birth to and nurtures tens of thousands of such people every year in the bowels of its madrassahs.

The second word “residual” is clearly aimed at the tip of the terrorist iceberg. If the sectarian organisations are the “residual”, what about the jihadi organisations that are unable to stop their “members” from splitting and joining sectarian, IS or TTP groups or infiltrating militants across the border into Indian-held Kashmir? Is the military establishment ready to disband these jihadi groups that trigger the proxy terrorist wars between India and Pakistan? Equally, we may ask whether this operation that claims to secure our border with Afghanistan will target the Haqqani network based in Pakistan and drive it into Afghanistan so that the Afghan government will reciprocate and deny refuge to the TTP that is sending its terrorists across the border to wreak havoc in Pakistan? Like the sectarian organisations that feed off the “narrative” of Pakistan, the jihadis feed off the continuing conflict with India over Kashmir that has now become part and parcel of our national security narrative of India as the perpetual and existential enemy of Pakistan.

These are some of the many thorny questions that remain unaddressed by Radd-ul-Fasaad. Central to the theme of eliminating terrorism is the legitimizing “idea” or “narrative” of Pakistan that feeds into it. On that score, we have not seen any serious initiative by the civil-military establishment that fashioned it in the first place.

The Mohajirs in Pakistan

Munir Saami on the State of Pakistan

In Urdu language

The wars of Pakistan over India

The Tragedy of 1971 - explained in Urdu by Hamid Bhashani

The story behind the Kargil war - explained in Urdu by Hamid Bhashani

The 1965 War - explained in Urdu by Hamid Bhashani

The 1948 War - explained in Urdu by Hamid Bhashani

Pakistan Army Accounts - No Audit permitted

 

Accountability without exception Friday Night with Hamid Bashani Ep48 (in Urdu)




History of Pakistan's Foreign Policy - AApas ki Baat with Najam Sethi and Muneeb Farooq

Politician & Military in Pakistan Part II

The Untold and Unofficial History of Pakistan

By Hamid Bashani

Part 1 (In Urdu)

How corruption revealed in Panama Papers opened the door to Isis and al-Qaida

Patrick Cockburn in The Independent

Who shall doubt 'the secret hid

Under Cheops' pyramid'

Was that the contractor did

Cheops out of several millions?

The message of Rudyard Kipling's poem is that corruption is always with us and has not changed much down the ages. There is some truth in this, but degrees of corruption greatly matter, as the Cheops would have found to his cost if he tried to build his pyramid in modern Iraq instead of ancient Egypt. The project would cost him billions rather than millions - and he would be more likely to end up with a hole in the ground than anything resembling a pyramid.

Three years ago I was in Baghdad after it had rained heavily, driving for miles through streets that had disappeared under grey-coloured flood water combined with raw sewage. Later I asked Shirouk Abayachi, an advisor to the Ministry of Water Resources, why this was happening and she said that "since 2003, $7bn has been spent to build a new sewage system for Baghdad, but either the sewers weren't built or they were built very badly". She concluded that "corruption is the key to all this".

Anybody discussing the Panama Papers and the practices of the law firm Mossack Fonseca should think about the ultimate destination of the $7bn not spent on the Baghdad drainage system. There will be many go-betweens and middle men protecting anyone who profited from this huge sum, but the suspicion must be that a proportion of it will have ended up in offshore financial centres where money is hidden and can be turned into legally held assets.

There is no obvious link between the revelations in the Panama Papers, the rise of Islamic State and the wars tearing apart at least nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But these three developments are intimately connected as ruling elites, who syphon off wealth into tax havens and foreign property, lose political credibility. No ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians will fight and die for rulers they detest as swindlers. Crucial to the rise of Isis, al-Qaida and the Taliban in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan is not their own strength and popularity, but the weakness and unpopularity of the governments to which they are opposed.

Kipling was right in believing that there has always been corruption, but since the early 1990s corrupt states have often mutated into kleptocracies. Ruling families and the narrow coteries around them have taken a larger and larger share of the economic cake.

In Syria since the turn of the century, for instance, the rural population and the urban poor no longer enjoyed the limited benefits they had previously received under an equally harsh but more egalitarian regime. By 2011, President Bashar al-Assad's first cousin Rami Makhlouf was reported to be a dominant player in 60 per cent of the Syrian economy and to have a personal worth of $5 billion.

In Iraq earlier this year, a financial specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the government of prime minister Haider al-Abadi held files on corrupt individuals, including "one politician who has amassed a fortune of $6 billion through corrupt dealings."

The danger of citing extreme examples of corruption from exotic and war-ravaged countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria is that these may sound like events happening on another planet. But the political and economic systems in Iraq and Afghanistan were devised under the tutelage of the US and allies like Britain. They were proponents of free market economics which in the West may increase inequality and benefit the wealthy, but in Kabul and Baghdad were a license to steal by anybody with power.

Neo-liberal economists have a lot to answer for. A few days after Isis had captured Mosul in June 2014, I was in Baghdad and asked a recently retired four-star Iraqi general why the much larger and better-equipped Iraqi army had been defeated so swiftly and humiliatingly. He replied that the explanation was: "Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!"
He added that this was pervasive and had begun when the US was building a new Iraqi military after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, when the American commanders had insisted on out-sourcing food and other supplies to private contractors. These businessmen and the army officers soon determined that, if the Iraqi government was paying money to feed and equip a battalion of 600 men, but its real strength was only 150, they could pocket the difference. So profitable was this arrangement that by 2014 all officers' jobs were for sale and it cost $200,000 to become a colonel and up to $2m a general in charge of a division.

Blatant corruption at the top in Kabul and Baghdad has been frequently reported over the years, though nothing much seems to change. But it is a mistake to imagine that this was simply the outcome of a culture of corruption specific to Afghanistan and Iraq. The most corrupt ministers were appointed and the most crooked contracts signed at a time when US officials were the real decision-makers in Baghdad.

For example, the entire military procurement budget of $1.2 billion was effectively stolen in 2004/5 when the Defence Ministry was substantially under US control, raising questions of the competence, or even collusion, of the US authorities.

The situation has got worse, not better. "I feared seven or eight years ago that Iraq would become like Nigeria," said one former minister in 2013, "but in fact it is far worse."

He cited as evidence a $1.3bn contract signed by a minister with one foreign company that had only a nominal existence - and a second company that was bankrupt. This took place in a country in which one third of the labour force is unemployed, and, if the underemployed are taken into account, the figure rises to over half.
The use of offshore financial centres by the moneyed elite in the oil states and much of the rest of the world is not always to avoid taxes which they would not pay if they kept the money at home, but in some cases to conceal what they have stolen and later to legally launder it.
Some of this can be done by buying property in places like Baghdad, which explains why property prices in that dangerous city are as high as London. But it is safer and better to buy property in London itself, something that will ultimately require the services of a company like Mossack Fonseca - though these services will be far removed from the original toxic source of the investment.

The Panama Papers give insight into the names and mechanisms through which globalised elites hide their wealth and avoid paying tax on it. Commentators now predict that popular disgust with political establishments will benefit radical leaders like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

What they do not see is that the way in which the detachment of interests of elites from the countries they rule has already produced states that have failed or are failing, or are wracked by conflict and war.

Lecture on Nationalism at JNU #5 - Nivedita Menon

This attack on Nivedita Menon

Mary E John in The Hindu

A notable feature of the university protests that have rocked the nation in recent times is the prominent presence of women. Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula’s mother Radhika was hounded by the media, and her personal life vilified in the attempt to prove that Rohith was not a Dalit. The faculty members from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who came to the Patiala House courts for JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar’s bail hearing and were attacked by irate ‘patriotic lawyers’ were mostly women. In Allahabad, the first woman president of the Allahabad University Students’ Union, Richa Singh, has faced physical intimidation from her political opponents who are now seeking other ways to oust her from the university. The latest in this series is JNU professor Nivedita Menon against whom a concerted campaign seems to have been launched, including media attacks and malicious police complaints.

One of the events that JNU teachers conducted in solidarity with students in the course of the campaign against JNU as a supposed den of anti-nationals was a series of lectures on nationalism. Professor Menon delivered a lecture in Hindi called “Nation, a daily plebiscite” (see video above) in which she made the argument that the formation of one nation does not automatically end all nationalist aspirations. Drawing attention to histories of nation formation as crucial to understanding present-day conflicts, she also discussed Kashmir’s complicated history of accession to India.

These lectures are available on YouTube, and some days afterwards, a TV channel started a campaign, continuously playing video clips taken out of context (including a clip from a speech at a political event in 2014), calling Prof. Menon anti-national, and creating an atmosphere of threat, intimidation and incitement to mob violence. In addition, according to media reports, two police complaints have been filed against her in Delhi by organisations linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party, and a complaint lodged against her in a court in Kanpur. The complaints against her are, in effect, part of a right-wing offensive to lay claim to nationalism by attacking any mode of dissent as anti-national.

Does this mean that men are ‘patriots’ and women ‘dissenters’? Any such claim is immediately demolished, of course, by the powerful presence of militant right-wing women like Uma Bharti and generations of ‘sadhvis’ known for their incendiary demagoguery, from Rithambhara to Prachi. So there are plenty of women ‘patriots’. The real distinction is that it is those women who lay claim to the legacy of feminism who are being singled out as ‘dissenters’. Why is this happening? Why are feminist scholars like Prof. Menon being targeted? What exactly is Indian feminism and what are the forms of dissent that feminists in India have adopted? How have feminists become leaders in the present struggles over democracy in India and why is this being perceived as dangerous?

Feminism in India

First and foremost, feminism in India, going back to the nineteenth century, has never had the luxury to simply be about women. This is because the struggles over women’s wrongs and rights in the Indian context have always been tied to larger issues — to the histories of colonialism and nationalism before Independence; to the meanings of development after 1947; and to the conflicts over democracy today. Feminists have been demonstrating how the hierarchies of gender in India are intertwined with those of caste; how the promises of national development remained unfulfilled for the vast majority of women; and how families have often turned into sites of the worst violence against their very own women.

Second, we as feminists have had to learn over and over again that our movements can only grow if we do not claim immunity from our own tools of critique and dissent. Some of the fiercest debates witnessed in the Indian women’s movement have therefore been internal ones, addressed to each other. Prominent examples of such debates include those over a uniform civil code; over the need and direction for reserved seats for women in Parliament and legislatures; and over how best to combat the scourge of female foeticide.

It is therefore particularly shameful, but also revealing, that sections of the electronic media and countless vicious trolls on social media have tried to instil fear by singling out Prof. Menon among other teachers as an alleged ‘anti-national’. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with her writings should know better. Prof. Menon has drawn from prior scholarship (both in India and abroad) to lay out why, in fact, simple universal theories of women’s subordination will not work in contexts like India. By tracing the effects of colonial rule and the many responses to it, she has demonstrated how both community rights and individual rights have played themselves out in our history, and continue to have a massive impact on women’s equality and freedom to this very day. Some of her finest work takes issue with other feminists in offering a dissenting interpretation of the problems women face. Will a blanket demand for one-third reservation of seats actually be the best strategy for the women’s movement, or should we ‘call the bluff’ of those who demanded a sub-quota? Equally provocatively, might the sheer demand to combat sexual violence against women rebound against the basic freedom from violence that the women’s movement seeks to protect? Such examples could be multiplied. Lest anyone be misled, these are all feminist arguments that work through a form of dissent that simultaneously upholds feminist ways of seeing and feminist forms of struggle.

Does this mean that everything that a scholar like Prof. Menon writes or believes should demand our assent? Not at all. I cannot think of anyone who is more open to disagreement and welcoming of constructive dissent, and who, in fact, encourages this attitude from students and colleagues alike.

An undemocratic mindset 

That is precisely why we are outraged not by the fact that people disagree with Prof. Menon or want to question her views, but by the mode in which they are choosing to do so. The malicious campaign we have witnessed in recent days is not about expressing dissent; it is about bullying and intimidation. It reveals a deeply undemocratic mindset that offers no arguments of its own, but tries to capture public attention by repeated, sensationalised attacks that work by twisting statements and taking them out of their context. What is truly worrisome is that it does not just stop at this; this campaign goes far beyond the limits of public debate to make opponents fear for their lives by whipping up a frenzy and creating a situation where the laws of the land are seen as irrelevant. These are acts of cowardice, not bravery, least of all acts of heroism in the service of Mother India.

Such campaigns are also revealing because they inadvertently recognise the transformational potential of feminism in India today. For feminism believes that genuine gender equality can only come about where fundamental freedoms are guaranteed for all, and where no other forms of oppression can flourish. This is the legacy that feminists in India have been striving for so long to bring to fruition, and which is therefore perceived as being so dangerous. This is also the tradition that Prof. Menon has embodied with integrity and force. And if there are those who would attack such a feminism, they should at least have the courage to attack us all.

Jeremy Corbyn won't stop until everyone in Britain is offended

Mark Steel in The Independent


As he’s been leader for five days now, the press are calming down a bit. By tomorrow headlines will only say things like, “Cor-Bin Laden will force pets to be Muslim”, followed by an interview with 89-year-old Vera, who says: “It’s not fair because my hamster’s scared of burqas. That’s the last time I’ll vote Labour.”

The Telegraph will be even more measured, reporting: “Corbyn plans to introduce women-only gravity. Men will be left to float through space, making it harder to arrive on time for work, costing Britain £40bn.”

This could go alongside the genuine report in The Times on Monday, that Jeremy Corbyn’s neighbours “often see him riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle”. A less thorough reporter might only mention that he rides a bicycle. Luckily this one knew the country where lots of bicycles are ridden is China, which was once ruled by Chairman Mao, which means Corbyn is planning to force us all to work in rice fields and eat dogs.

One problem with this excitement is that it’s hard to increase the hysteria when they’ve gone so wild in the first week, but they’ll rise to the challenge. By November, we’ll be told he’s forced Mary Berry to eat an Arctic roll full of blackbird sick as revenge for selling her book about scones via corporate tax-avoiders Amazon.

Then Panorama will reveal Corbyn appeared at a conference with Satan, who he described as an “old pal”; the evidence is a dream their informant had after falling asleep in a cowshed after drinking a bottle and a half of Sambuca.

You could tell how chaotic his leadership would be from the start, when he gave some important jobs in his party to people he agrees with. This provoked outrage. If he was being inclusive, instead of appointing John McDonnell as shadow chancellor, he’d have given the job to Jeremy Clarkson.

The other complaint about his Shadow Cabinet was the low number of women appointed, only 16 out of 31 rather than the half he promised.

The Sun complained of an “equality blunder”, and you can understand their frustration as they’ve always been uncompromising with their feminist demands, devoting every day’s Page 3 to poems by Mexican women’s rights campaigners, no matter how strong the protests to stop.

He didn’t even give a job to Yvette Cooper, on the grounds that she’d said she wouldn’t take it. But if he really cared about women’s equality, he’d have said “you’ll do whatever job I bloody well give you, love”, and the problem would be solved.

But none of us can have guessed the unspeakable horror to come next, when he didn’t sing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial, ruining the efforts of everyone who fought in the Second World War. Commentators told us: “Those pilots did more than anyone to stop Hitler, and now Jeremy Corbyn has literally opened the cockpit of every Spitfire and smeared dog mess on the seats.”

It’s no wonder people called phone-in shows to make comments such as “I’ve taught myself to snore the national anthem, so I don’t insult the pilots during my sleep.”

It’s understandable for people to see it as an insult when someone didn’t sing “God Save the Queen” at the memorial, because the Queen played a major part in the battle, as a wing commander who shot down five enemy aircraft over Folkestone.

Even so, it’s hard to see how the national anthem is the song that most directly commemorates the RAF, so one suggestion to avoid a similar incident in future is to sing a different song at each memorial. Next year it could be “The Omen” by The Prodigy. Anyone not joining in by screaming “The writing’s on the wall” in St Paul’s cathedral will be arrested for treason.

Once again it was The Sun that seemed most furious about this lack of respect for dead servicemen. But if Corbyn gets his way it won’t even be possible to insult the armed forces, because, according to The Sun, he’ll “abolish the army”.

It didn’t make clear how he’d do that, especially when he appears at Prime Ministers’ Questions seeming mild and reasonable, reading out questions sent in from around the country. Most people seem to feel this was a healthy change, though it may be even better if he puts all the questions in a bucket and draws them out at random.

This would strengthen our democracy further. “Prime Minister, Tina from Exeter asks, who would win in a fight between Godzilla and a giant tarantula?” At first, Cameron would insist the mutant spider had no chance against a seasoned monster with wide experience of destruction, and his front bench would yell “hear hear hear” as usual. But eventually a calmer atmosphere would prevail, and Parliament would become a forum for reasonable debate. That’s when Corbyn will strike to abolish the army.

He’ll introduce a similar system, so instead of weapons, our soldiers will march to the front line of a battle, and call out to the enemy: “Alan from Doncaster has asked what are you going to do about all the fires in the city you’ve just demolished.” Then in 50 years’ time, when there’s a memorial for all our troops that are captured, he won’t even sing at it.

That’s how much of a danger he is.

Tarek Fatah - Latest

On Pakistan's ability to end terrorism

The discussion is in Urdu