Showing posts with label agency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agency. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 May 2023
Wednesday, 12 December 2018
How one man’s story exposes the myths behind our migration stereotypes
Robert, a Romanian law graduate, didn’t come to the UK to undercut wages. But he ended up in insecure low-paid work writes Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian
The best way to defeat a crass generalisation is with specifics, and what Robert’s story tells you is it’s not the migrant worker doing the undercutting here. He even tries to get his British-born workmates to join him in a class action for what’s rightfully theirs. The real problem is instead the imbalance of power between the worker and the employer, which is happily maintained by the same politicians today who claim they want to help the “left behind”.
PMP and the 18,000 or so other employment agencies in Britain are overseen by a government inspectorate of just 11 staff. The director of labour market enforcement in the UK, David Metcalf, admits that a UK employer is likely to be inspected by his team only once every 500 years. Were I an unscrupulous boss, I would take one look at those numbers and ask myself: if I do my worst, what’s the worst that can happen?
What keeps Robert here now is those weekends with his daughter. But after 10 years in Britain he’s learned something else too, about the reality of a country that claims to welcome foreigners, even as they punish them. An economy that promises a better life to those it then sucks dry. A society that kids itself that it’s a soft touch when really, it is as cold and hard as any interminable overnight shift.
Anti-Brexit protesters in November. ‘The likes of Robert make the easiest human punchbags. You rarely see him or the millions of other EU citizens living in Britain on your TV.’ Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
Amid all the true-blue backbench blowhards and armchair pundits who will occupy the airwaves this Brexit week, one thing is guaranteed: you won’t hear a word from Robert. Why should you? He commands neither power nor status. He has hardly any money either. And yet he is crucial to this debate, because it is people like him that Brexit Britain wants to shut out.
Robert is a migrant, under a prime minister who keeps trying and failing to impose an arbitrary cap on migrants to this country. Born in Timişoara, Romania, he now lives in a democracy that barely batted an eyelid when Nigel Farage said it was OK to be worried about Romanian neighbours. And Robert gets all the brickbats hurled at foreigners down the ages – that he’s only here to take your jobs and claim your benefits (at one and the same time, mystifyingly), to undercut your wages and give nothing back.
What’s left is a 38-year-old tearing himself apart over his broken life. ‘I’m an idiot,' he says. ‘I’ve wasted myself.'
The likes of Robert make the easiest human punchbags. You rarely see him or the millions of other EU citizens living in Britain on your TV. Nor do you hear about them from a political class forever chuntering on about the will of the people, yet too aloof from the people to know who they are or what they want, and too scared of them to engage in dialogue.
Yet Robert (he’s asked that his surname be withheld) is no caricature. It’s not just how he dotes on his daughter and has a streak of irony thicker than the coffee he serves up. It’s also how his life in Britain proves that those declaimed causes of Brexit are both too easy and too far off the mark. However sad his story, it also shows where our economy really is broken – and how it will not be fixed by kicking out migrants.
We met a few weeks ago at his flat on the outskirts of Newcastle upon Tyne. Too bare to be a home, its sole reminder of his old family life is a little girl’s bedroom, kept in unchildlike order for his daughter’s weekend visits. He and his wife split a few months ago, he says, when the family’s money ran out. What’s left now is a bank account in almost permanent overdraft and a 38-year-old man tearing himself apart over his broken life here. “I’m an idiot,” he says. “I’ve wasted myself.”
But please, spare him the migrant stereotypes. Low-skilled? Robert came to the UK in 2008 with a law degree and speaking three languages. Low aspirations? Even while grafting in restaurants and hotels, he fired off over 100 applications for a solicitor’s training contract. That yielded just one interview, in Leeds. Local firms that were happy to have him volunteer for free proved more reluctant to give him a paying job. He ended up in a part of the country that has spent most of the past 40 years trying to recover from Thatcherism’s devastation, and which is even now paying the price in cuts for the havoc wreaked 10 years ago by bankers largely based hundreds of miles away. In a country where relations between regions are as lopsided as they are between workers and bosses, the odds were stacked against him from the start.
Finally, Robert signed with a temp agency, PMP Recruitment, which in August 2012 placed him with the local Nestlé factory. And that’s where trouble really began.
He had just enrolled in the precarious workforce, which at the last count numbered just over 3.8 million workers across the UK. Never guaranteed work, he had to wait for the offer of shifts to be texted to him a few days beforehand. He did days, nights, whatever was given, and started on the minimum wage in Nestlé’s Fawdon plant – a giant place churning out Toffee Crisps and Rolos and Fruit Pastilles. It was no Willy Wonka-land.
Robert began by “spotting” – standing on a podium overlooking the Blue Riband production line and pulling out imperfect chocolate bars. Seeing the conveyor belt spool along for hours on end made him dizzy, and another recently departed worker tells me he couldn’t bear to do it for long (Nestlé says it has “rotation processes for work that is particularly repetitive”). Stubborn pride made him stick it out for 12-hour shifts. “Leave your head at home,” workmates would advise and, amid the exhaustion of shifts and raising a family, that’s what he did. But bit by bit he noticed things were wrong.
As an agency worker, he says he was doing the same tasks as Nestlé staff, but for less money. They got a pay rise, he alleges, that agency workers didn’t. He would do work classed by the company as “skilled” but instead got “unskilled” rates. His former workmate, who doesn’t wish to be named, tells me this was common practice: “If Nestlé wanted you to come in at an awkward time, they’d say, ‘We can pay you skilled rates’.” Over the years, Robert estimates that he lost out on about £26,000 of income.
Robert was in no man’s land. He was spending his days working for Nestlé but was not their direct employee – even though he gave five years of service at Fawdon. Nor did he have much to do with his recruiters at PMP, a nationwide agency. As for the plant’s trade unions, he saw them as “a waste of space”. He was trapped in an institutional vacuum. The chair of the Law Society’s employment law committee, Max Winthrop, describes such arrangements – working for one company while on the books of another for years on end – as a “fiction”. “The most generous way you can look at it is, it’s a confusing situation. The least generous is that it’s a deliberate attempt to throw sand in everyone’s eyes so we can’t see the true nature of the relationship.” Nestlé says that of its 600 staff at Fawdon, 100 are agency, all via PMP. Over the years, Robert says he saw hundreds of agency staff come and go.
When Robert raised the issue with Nestlé managers, he alleges that shifts were no longer given to him. Finally, just before last Christmas, he resigned. He then tried to get other agency workers to join him in taking Nestlé to court, but they were, he says, “too nervous”. So he launched an employment tribunal case alone and, a few weeks after we met, Nestlé settled out of court. One of the conditions of the settlement is that he cannot discuss it, but Robert knows this article will appear. Citing confidentiality, Nestlé did not want to comment directly on his case but says that, since 2014, all staff in its factories get the living wage, and “we refute any allegation that working conditions at our Fawdon factory are below standard”.
On his PMP payslips Robert also noticed that – as a result of the “recruitment travel scheme” in which the agency had enrolled him – some months he was getting less than minimum wage, a situation for which Winthrop says he “cannot find any justification”. He took PMP to court too, and a couple of months ago was awarded over £2,000 in back pay. PMP wouldn’t comment for this piece, other than to say it is appealing the verdict.
Amid all the true-blue backbench blowhards and armchair pundits who will occupy the airwaves this Brexit week, one thing is guaranteed: you won’t hear a word from Robert. Why should you? He commands neither power nor status. He has hardly any money either. And yet he is crucial to this debate, because it is people like him that Brexit Britain wants to shut out.
Robert is a migrant, under a prime minister who keeps trying and failing to impose an arbitrary cap on migrants to this country. Born in Timişoara, Romania, he now lives in a democracy that barely batted an eyelid when Nigel Farage said it was OK to be worried about Romanian neighbours. And Robert gets all the brickbats hurled at foreigners down the ages – that he’s only here to take your jobs and claim your benefits (at one and the same time, mystifyingly), to undercut your wages and give nothing back.
What’s left is a 38-year-old tearing himself apart over his broken life. ‘I’m an idiot,' he says. ‘I’ve wasted myself.'
The likes of Robert make the easiest human punchbags. You rarely see him or the millions of other EU citizens living in Britain on your TV. Nor do you hear about them from a political class forever chuntering on about the will of the people, yet too aloof from the people to know who they are or what they want, and too scared of them to engage in dialogue.
Yet Robert (he’s asked that his surname be withheld) is no caricature. It’s not just how he dotes on his daughter and has a streak of irony thicker than the coffee he serves up. It’s also how his life in Britain proves that those declaimed causes of Brexit are both too easy and too far off the mark. However sad his story, it also shows where our economy really is broken – and how it will not be fixed by kicking out migrants.
We met a few weeks ago at his flat on the outskirts of Newcastle upon Tyne. Too bare to be a home, its sole reminder of his old family life is a little girl’s bedroom, kept in unchildlike order for his daughter’s weekend visits. He and his wife split a few months ago, he says, when the family’s money ran out. What’s left now is a bank account in almost permanent overdraft and a 38-year-old man tearing himself apart over his broken life here. “I’m an idiot,” he says. “I’ve wasted myself.”
But please, spare him the migrant stereotypes. Low-skilled? Robert came to the UK in 2008 with a law degree and speaking three languages. Low aspirations? Even while grafting in restaurants and hotels, he fired off over 100 applications for a solicitor’s training contract. That yielded just one interview, in Leeds. Local firms that were happy to have him volunteer for free proved more reluctant to give him a paying job. He ended up in a part of the country that has spent most of the past 40 years trying to recover from Thatcherism’s devastation, and which is even now paying the price in cuts for the havoc wreaked 10 years ago by bankers largely based hundreds of miles away. In a country where relations between regions are as lopsided as they are between workers and bosses, the odds were stacked against him from the start.
Finally, Robert signed with a temp agency, PMP Recruitment, which in August 2012 placed him with the local Nestlé factory. And that’s where trouble really began.
He had just enrolled in the precarious workforce, which at the last count numbered just over 3.8 million workers across the UK. Never guaranteed work, he had to wait for the offer of shifts to be texted to him a few days beforehand. He did days, nights, whatever was given, and started on the minimum wage in Nestlé’s Fawdon plant – a giant place churning out Toffee Crisps and Rolos and Fruit Pastilles. It was no Willy Wonka-land.
Robert began by “spotting” – standing on a podium overlooking the Blue Riband production line and pulling out imperfect chocolate bars. Seeing the conveyor belt spool along for hours on end made him dizzy, and another recently departed worker tells me he couldn’t bear to do it for long (Nestlé says it has “rotation processes for work that is particularly repetitive”). Stubborn pride made him stick it out for 12-hour shifts. “Leave your head at home,” workmates would advise and, amid the exhaustion of shifts and raising a family, that’s what he did. But bit by bit he noticed things were wrong.
As an agency worker, he says he was doing the same tasks as Nestlé staff, but for less money. They got a pay rise, he alleges, that agency workers didn’t. He would do work classed by the company as “skilled” but instead got “unskilled” rates. His former workmate, who doesn’t wish to be named, tells me this was common practice: “If Nestlé wanted you to come in at an awkward time, they’d say, ‘We can pay you skilled rates’.” Over the years, Robert estimates that he lost out on about £26,000 of income.
Robert was in no man’s land. He was spending his days working for Nestlé but was not their direct employee – even though he gave five years of service at Fawdon. Nor did he have much to do with his recruiters at PMP, a nationwide agency. As for the plant’s trade unions, he saw them as “a waste of space”. He was trapped in an institutional vacuum. The chair of the Law Society’s employment law committee, Max Winthrop, describes such arrangements – working for one company while on the books of another for years on end – as a “fiction”. “The most generous way you can look at it is, it’s a confusing situation. The least generous is that it’s a deliberate attempt to throw sand in everyone’s eyes so we can’t see the true nature of the relationship.” Nestlé says that of its 600 staff at Fawdon, 100 are agency, all via PMP. Over the years, Robert says he saw hundreds of agency staff come and go.
When Robert raised the issue with Nestlé managers, he alleges that shifts were no longer given to him. Finally, just before last Christmas, he resigned. He then tried to get other agency workers to join him in taking Nestlé to court, but they were, he says, “too nervous”. So he launched an employment tribunal case alone and, a few weeks after we met, Nestlé settled out of court. One of the conditions of the settlement is that he cannot discuss it, but Robert knows this article will appear. Citing confidentiality, Nestlé did not want to comment directly on his case but says that, since 2014, all staff in its factories get the living wage, and “we refute any allegation that working conditions at our Fawdon factory are below standard”.
On his PMP payslips Robert also noticed that – as a result of the “recruitment travel scheme” in which the agency had enrolled him – some months he was getting less than minimum wage, a situation for which Winthrop says he “cannot find any justification”. He took PMP to court too, and a couple of months ago was awarded over £2,000 in back pay. PMP wouldn’t comment for this piece, other than to say it is appealing the verdict.
The best way to defeat a crass generalisation is with specifics, and what Robert’s story tells you is it’s not the migrant worker doing the undercutting here. He even tries to get his British-born workmates to join him in a class action for what’s rightfully theirs. The real problem is instead the imbalance of power between the worker and the employer, which is happily maintained by the same politicians today who claim they want to help the “left behind”.
PMP and the 18,000 or so other employment agencies in Britain are overseen by a government inspectorate of just 11 staff. The director of labour market enforcement in the UK, David Metcalf, admits that a UK employer is likely to be inspected by his team only once every 500 years. Were I an unscrupulous boss, I would take one look at those numbers and ask myself: if I do my worst, what’s the worst that can happen?
What keeps Robert here now is those weekends with his daughter. But after 10 years in Britain he’s learned something else too, about the reality of a country that claims to welcome foreigners, even as they punish them. An economy that promises a better life to those it then sucks dry. A society that kids itself that it’s a soft touch when really, it is as cold and hard as any interminable overnight shift.
Friday, 15 September 2017
Pakistan's Intelligence Agencies: The Inside Story
Abbas Nasir from the Dawn archives of 1991
Over the last two decades, the role and scale of Pakistan's intelligence agencies has grown over and above their prescribed functions, to the extent that their operations, often undercover and at odds with even each other, have earned them the reputation of being a "State within a State".
Expanding the theatre of their operations to cover major foreign and domestic policy areas, the workings of the three key intelligence agencies, the ISI, the MI and the IB, have assumed more controversial proportions than ever before.
On a freezing December day in Islamabad, MNA Dr Imran Farooq, ordered the maintenance staff of the MNA hostel to service his room heater. The staff took down the gas heater, only to discover a device that didn't belong there taped to its back. Noticing that there were batteries attached to it, they immediately became alarmed and summoned the bomb disposal squad.
Being experts at their job, the members of the bomb squad soon allayed the perturbed MNA's fears that the device was not a bomb of any sort. Instead, they said, they had discovered a powerful transmitter that was being used to bug the MQM MNA's room.
While the federal interior minister was quick to order an inquiry into the affair, the MQM blamed the former PPP government for bugging Dr Farooq's room. The real culprit, however, is still to be identified.
A few days earlier, a heated debate in parliament had focused on the activities of our intelligence agencies as being "rather over-extended”. As the range of intelligence operations came under discussion, the fact that their agencies were maintaining files and tapes – not only on all politicians in the country, but many non-political civilians as well – drew the wrath of many MNAs of all political shades. Finally, Speaker Gohar Ayub tried to round up the debate, not only by ordering a select committee to look into the matter, but also admitting that “we have all been the target of intelligence agencies.” He even quipped that in the seventies, he knew that he had been code-named ‘Sabra-7’, by the intelligence agencies, which were constantly shadowing him.
Clearly, one constant factor emerged from all the grievances aired in parliament — everyone, under every regime, had either ordered spying on the opposition or had themselves been the target of such ‘special attention’. What was debated in the open forum of the National Assembly, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, as far as the scope and direction of the operation that the intelligence units now take under their purview.
The other thing that can be said with certainty about them is that the intelligence set up in the country is one of the best organised in the business, functioning like a well-oiled, super-efficient machine.
National security theorists in Rawalpindi argue that such a setup is vital to any country which is placed in Pakistan’s strategic geo-political situation. “Given the hostility that the very creation of the country generated and the consequent environment in the subcontinent, Pakistan’s security concerns are legitimate and genuine,” says a retired officer who has served in one of the key intelligence cells of the country.
While this view links the country’s security, and even survival, to the efficiency of its intelligence agencies, it is becoming increasingly clear that the civilian psyche on the other hand, can never appreciate the thorough institutionalisation of these agencies in the running of foreign and domestic policies. One of the reasons for this is because, by their very definition, secret intelligence agencies do not subscribe to the open way of consultative or accountable operation that is central to any democratic system.
The mushroom growth in the size and scope of intelligence agency activities may be linked, to some extent, to the role they have been assigned in Pakistan’s short but eventful history. The events of the last 43 years teach us that the line between the concession of an inch and the taking of a mile has become very thin in this country.
The evolution of the ISI (the Inter-services Intelligence Directorate) in its present form can be traced to the assumption of office by former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He took over power after the disastrous 1971 war with India, which saw the Pakistan defence forces take a humiliating beating, followed by the creation of Bangladesh.
"You see, Bhutto had served as Ayub’s foreign minister. His education and orientation made him develop an international vision. He realised that an intelligence agency organised on modern scientific lines would enhance foreign policy options at his command,” says an ex-army officer, as he explains the rise of the ISI from his viewpoint.
“Although the ISI existed well before Bhutto came to power, it grew tremendously at that point, because the prime minister sought a greater role in the region for Pakistan. In fact, as the country embarked on its nuclear programme, more and more funds and leeway came the ISI's way," says another officer who served in a senior position during the Bhutto years before retiring in the late seventies.
Another interesting insight is offered by a defence expert. According to him, Bhutto chose the ISI to be the premier agency because he could accomplish two tasks with it. The first related to the country's foreign policy and the second to self preservation, as only a services intelligence agency could look into the army itself and keep Bhutto abreast with the mood and the sentiment in the forces.
This part of history also had its ironical twists. It is widely believed that Bhutto promoted General Zia as the army chief, superseding several far more senior and well-reputed lieutenant generals, because the DG of the ISI had recommended him as the most “reliable and loyal” choice for the coveted post.
It was no coincidence then, that when Bhutto was overthrown, Lt General Ghulam Jilani was retained as the DG of the ISI. Jilani remained one of the most trusted Zia lieutenants for a number of years, both as DG and later as the governor of Punjab.
While Jilani was the governor of Punjab, he made a decision that would create obstacles in the path of the PPP for years to come. He plucked a young industrialist from relative obscurity and nurtured him as a civilian alternative to the PPP leadership. The young man would be prime minister one day. To this day, Jilani remains Nawaz Sharif’s key mentor.
However, many army officers agree that much of the disrepute that came the ISI's way also dates back to the post-Bhutto years. General Zia naturally saw the PPP as an arch enemy which had to be contained at all costs.
Consequently, the whole state apparatus, and the key intelligence agencies in particular, were all geared up to attain this objective. To this end, the agencies were given a full clearance to operate as they chose, so that very soon their reputation as 'surveillance agencies' catapulted to that of a much higher-profile operation that came to be labelled and feared as 'the state within a state'. Midnight knocks, arrests, extorted confessions and phone taps became the order of the day.
The man who directed a major part of this operation from his relatively modest and obscure office in the ISI headquarters in Islamabad in the eighties was a certain Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmad, better known in the army circles both for his cunning and the colour of his eyes, as 'BiIIa' (the cat).
As a young colonel, Imtiaz Ahmed was in charge of the ISI Karachi Det (detachment) when Bhutto was overthrown. He led the famous raid on Bhutto’s 70 Clifton residence, which led to the discovery of some ‘‘important and incriminating” documents. Imtiaz, belonging to a family from Mianwali that was close to General Jilani, reportedly soon earned Zia's admiration and trust.
He was elevated to the influential position of assistant director-general (internal security) at the ISI and headed the dreaded political cell there for several years. Imtiaz wielded enormous power and at times was said to have even bypassed his own DG to report directly to Zia.
Knowledgeable quarters credit Imtiaz with masterminding the idea that would later cause irreparable damage to the PPP. Slowly but surely, he built up an image of the PPP that would convince the whole defence set-up that the Benazir Bhutto-led party was a national security threat. In fact, it has often been said in army circles that it was his national security threat perception, coupled with the blundering style of government, that resulted in Benazir's sacking as the prime minister years later.
ISI observers claim that for many years Imtiaz remained the eyes and the ears of the establishment and watched every move that Benazir made. In fact, sources close to General Zia say that Imtiaz, a master at fabricating evidence, once even sought the general's permission to plant certain photographs in the newspapers that would bring the PPP leader into disrepute. Despite his known antipathy for the PPP, Zia was reportedly firm in denying permission for this excess and did not allow manufactured photographs to be published.
The growth of tile ISI, however, did not remain restricted to the regional role that Bhutto sought for it, nor did it expand solely on the basis of the role that Zia assigned to it in domestic politics. In 1979, Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan, and Pakistan suddenly found itself as a frontline state in the US-Soviet Cold War.
With the exit of Democratic President Jimmy Carter and the arrival on the scene of Republican Ronald Reagan, the US stepped up a covert operation to organise resistance in Afghanistan. By the mid-eighties, this operation had become a multibillion dollar exercise. Although the CIA was solely handling the Washington end, the ISI became actively involved at the Pakistan end of it and neatly transformed itself into a major conduit for arms and money earmarked for the mujahideen.
But again, it was not only these changed circumstances that propelled the ISI into this task. To some extent, the agency was prepared for it already. During the Bhutto years, for instance, after the prime minister had identified the western neighbour as a threat that had to be addressed, the ISI had found and nurtured a young Kabul engineering graduate named Gulbadin Hekmatyar. The ISI not only funded and armed Hekmatyar, but also organised his line of communication inside Afghanistan.
All this manoeuvring was to be used to exert pressure on any Kabul government that harboured any wish of rekindling the Pakhtunistan issue. And these pressure tactics had worked wonders when they were applied to President Daud in the seventies. In a quick volte-face from the belligerent posture he had adopted, Daud had rushed to Murree for talks with Bhutto and had promptly made very conciliatory noises.
However, when the CIA-ISI tie-up went into effect, the Pakistani agency slowly acquired a far more sophisticated and scientific outlook. It is said that some officials, including the then DG, Lt General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, benefited in more than one way from the covert operation. In fact, the explosion at Ojhri camp (the munitions depot for the Afghan resistance in Rawalpindi) was described by some quarters as having occurred because 'stock taking' measures were on their way after charges of pilferage.
The inquiry ordered by the then prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, into the incident, according to knowledgeable quarters, was one of the reasons for his undoing. The major factor, perhaps, was the very system that General Zia had visualised for the country in the mid-eighties. This system not only created friction between the parties that shared power in the country, but also contributed to the growth of intelligence agencies which worked at cross purposes with one another.
Although Junejo was handpicked by Zia to be the prime minister, the man soon showed that he had a mind of his own. As Junejo's ambitions grew, so did the Directorate of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB), the civilian intelligence agency which had previously played second fiddle to the ISI. Although the stated functions of the DIB assign it an important role, for years it had suffered neglect both in terms of staffing, funding and orientation. All that the rulers, including Bhutto, assigned to the DIB was the policing of opposing politicians.
Under Junejo, the DIB chief, Rathore turned the once sleepy agency into a vibrant organisation, but all its counter-intelligence was restricted to looking out for anti-Junejo government moves rather than anti-state actions. The irony, of course, with intelligence agencies the world over, is that, though they work for the same country, they often become each other's bitterest rivals. The same was the case with the DIB. It embarked on an ambitious exercise in which it started tapping the telephones of the Army House – where General Zia lived – to the extent that the DIB was monitoring every move made by Zia and the members of government close to him.
For its part, the ISI was monitoring Junejo and his cronies. And though by the time the Ojhri blast took place, General Rehman was serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, he still wielded considerable influence over the ISI. Even though Major General Hamid Gul had been appointed as DG of the ISI, General Rehman was still running the Afghan wing of the ISI. Therefore, Junejo’s inquiry into the Ojhri explosion so angered Rehman that, apparently, he presented Zia with doctored tapes of Junejo’s alleged phone conversations. Sources say that despite the fact that until then Zia had been willing to tolerate Junejo, these tapes quickly changed his mind and he finally decided to get rid of his prime minister.
Months after Junejo's sacking, both Zia and Rehman died in the Bahawalpur crash. But their legacy remained, to the extent that the system that Zia had evolved continued to remain intact, in the sense that the intelligence agencies continued to transcend the parameters of the growing role assigned to them.
Although Brigadier Imtiaz had operated in obscurity until then, his name exploded to the fore as he became instrumental in the formation of the IJI before the 1988 polls and pioneered the concept of one-to-one contests in the elections. An expert in ‘psych-war ', he was the main architect of the IJI election strategy, to the extent that image-building slogans such as “jaag Punjabi jaag, teray pag noon laga daag” were attributed to his genius.
When Ms Bhutto took over as prime minister, she insisted on the removal of Brigadier Imtiaz from the ISI. Naively perhaps, she forced the appointment of a retired Lt. General, Shamsur Rehman Kallue, in place of Hamid Gul, who was promoted and given command of the prestigious armoured corps in Multan. Having a man of her choice posted as DG of the ISI and naming a retired major, Masud Sharif — who was described as a "blundering fool" — to head DIB, she relaxed. Obviously, she had not realised that the agencies that had been described as a 'state within a state' could hardly be neutralised through a couple of postings and transfers.
Moreover, she was never even chastened by the fact that, instead of her nominees, a couple of serving officers nominated by the COAS General Mirza Aslam Beg, remained in charge of the Afghan and Kashmir policies.
Subsequently, whatever was removed from the jurisdiction of the ISI after Kallue took over, was soon thrown into the lap of the military intelligence. The military intelligence immediately expanded its theatre of operations, as Benazir sought to cut the ISI to size. In effect, therefore, no qualitative change really occurred in the system of the intelligence units that had become used to conducting independent foreign, and to some extent, domestic policy operations.
However, the Benazir Bhutto government did make one decision of real consequence. It appointed a committee headed by a former chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal (retd) Zulfikar Ali Khan, to look into the working of the intelligence agencies, and to suggest measures to delink them from politics as well as to improve their functioning. But the report of this committee, which was reportedly compiled after the air marshal interviewed scores of intelligence personnel, is now unlikely to see the light of day in the changed circumstances.
In the present situation, however, it is not clear what roles are being assigned to the three major agencies. But with the appointment of Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmad as the chief of the IB, it can be surmised that the establishment still sees the PPP as a major threat.
What one can hope for is that the days of the midnight knock do not return to Pakistan. The intelligence agencies, which now have to counter the Raw-Mossad nexus – particularly in the regional nuclear context – could do well to draw a clear distinction between anti-government and anti-state activities.
The crucial question that still needs to be addressed is whether these agencies operate under the watchful eyes of an elected government or are they still so strong that they are themselves instrumental in installing or toppling such governments.
Over the last two decades, the role and scale of Pakistan's intelligence agencies has grown over and above their prescribed functions, to the extent that their operations, often undercover and at odds with even each other, have earned them the reputation of being a "State within a State".
Expanding the theatre of their operations to cover major foreign and domestic policy areas, the workings of the three key intelligence agencies, the ISI, the MI and the IB, have assumed more controversial proportions than ever before.
On a freezing December day in Islamabad, MNA Dr Imran Farooq, ordered the maintenance staff of the MNA hostel to service his room heater. The staff took down the gas heater, only to discover a device that didn't belong there taped to its back. Noticing that there were batteries attached to it, they immediately became alarmed and summoned the bomb disposal squad.
Being experts at their job, the members of the bomb squad soon allayed the perturbed MNA's fears that the device was not a bomb of any sort. Instead, they said, they had discovered a powerful transmitter that was being used to bug the MQM MNA's room.
While the federal interior minister was quick to order an inquiry into the affair, the MQM blamed the former PPP government for bugging Dr Farooq's room. The real culprit, however, is still to be identified.
A few days earlier, a heated debate in parliament had focused on the activities of our intelligence agencies as being "rather over-extended”. As the range of intelligence operations came under discussion, the fact that their agencies were maintaining files and tapes – not only on all politicians in the country, but many non-political civilians as well – drew the wrath of many MNAs of all political shades. Finally, Speaker Gohar Ayub tried to round up the debate, not only by ordering a select committee to look into the matter, but also admitting that “we have all been the target of intelligence agencies.” He even quipped that in the seventies, he knew that he had been code-named ‘Sabra-7’, by the intelligence agencies, which were constantly shadowing him.
Clearly, one constant factor emerged from all the grievances aired in parliament — everyone, under every regime, had either ordered spying on the opposition or had themselves been the target of such ‘special attention’. What was debated in the open forum of the National Assembly, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, as far as the scope and direction of the operation that the intelligence units now take under their purview.
The other thing that can be said with certainty about them is that the intelligence set up in the country is one of the best organised in the business, functioning like a well-oiled, super-efficient machine.
National security theorists in Rawalpindi argue that such a setup is vital to any country which is placed in Pakistan’s strategic geo-political situation. “Given the hostility that the very creation of the country generated and the consequent environment in the subcontinent, Pakistan’s security concerns are legitimate and genuine,” says a retired officer who has served in one of the key intelligence cells of the country.
While this view links the country’s security, and even survival, to the efficiency of its intelligence agencies, it is becoming increasingly clear that the civilian psyche on the other hand, can never appreciate the thorough institutionalisation of these agencies in the running of foreign and domestic policies. One of the reasons for this is because, by their very definition, secret intelligence agencies do not subscribe to the open way of consultative or accountable operation that is central to any democratic system.
The mushroom growth in the size and scope of intelligence agency activities may be linked, to some extent, to the role they have been assigned in Pakistan’s short but eventful history. The events of the last 43 years teach us that the line between the concession of an inch and the taking of a mile has become very thin in this country.
The evolution of the ISI (the Inter-services Intelligence Directorate) in its present form can be traced to the assumption of office by former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He took over power after the disastrous 1971 war with India, which saw the Pakistan defence forces take a humiliating beating, followed by the creation of Bangladesh.
"You see, Bhutto had served as Ayub’s foreign minister. His education and orientation made him develop an international vision. He realised that an intelligence agency organised on modern scientific lines would enhance foreign policy options at his command,” says an ex-army officer, as he explains the rise of the ISI from his viewpoint.
“Although the ISI existed well before Bhutto came to power, it grew tremendously at that point, because the prime minister sought a greater role in the region for Pakistan. In fact, as the country embarked on its nuclear programme, more and more funds and leeway came the ISI's way," says another officer who served in a senior position during the Bhutto years before retiring in the late seventies.
Another interesting insight is offered by a defence expert. According to him, Bhutto chose the ISI to be the premier agency because he could accomplish two tasks with it. The first related to the country's foreign policy and the second to self preservation, as only a services intelligence agency could look into the army itself and keep Bhutto abreast with the mood and the sentiment in the forces.
This part of history also had its ironical twists. It is widely believed that Bhutto promoted General Zia as the army chief, superseding several far more senior and well-reputed lieutenant generals, because the DG of the ISI had recommended him as the most “reliable and loyal” choice for the coveted post.
It was no coincidence then, that when Bhutto was overthrown, Lt General Ghulam Jilani was retained as the DG of the ISI. Jilani remained one of the most trusted Zia lieutenants for a number of years, both as DG and later as the governor of Punjab.
While Jilani was the governor of Punjab, he made a decision that would create obstacles in the path of the PPP for years to come. He plucked a young industrialist from relative obscurity and nurtured him as a civilian alternative to the PPP leadership. The young man would be prime minister one day. To this day, Jilani remains Nawaz Sharif’s key mentor.
However, many army officers agree that much of the disrepute that came the ISI's way also dates back to the post-Bhutto years. General Zia naturally saw the PPP as an arch enemy which had to be contained at all costs.
Consequently, the whole state apparatus, and the key intelligence agencies in particular, were all geared up to attain this objective. To this end, the agencies were given a full clearance to operate as they chose, so that very soon their reputation as 'surveillance agencies' catapulted to that of a much higher-profile operation that came to be labelled and feared as 'the state within a state'. Midnight knocks, arrests, extorted confessions and phone taps became the order of the day.
The man who directed a major part of this operation from his relatively modest and obscure office in the ISI headquarters in Islamabad in the eighties was a certain Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmad, better known in the army circles both for his cunning and the colour of his eyes, as 'BiIIa' (the cat).
As a young colonel, Imtiaz Ahmed was in charge of the ISI Karachi Det (detachment) when Bhutto was overthrown. He led the famous raid on Bhutto’s 70 Clifton residence, which led to the discovery of some ‘‘important and incriminating” documents. Imtiaz, belonging to a family from Mianwali that was close to General Jilani, reportedly soon earned Zia's admiration and trust.
He was elevated to the influential position of assistant director-general (internal security) at the ISI and headed the dreaded political cell there for several years. Imtiaz wielded enormous power and at times was said to have even bypassed his own DG to report directly to Zia.
Knowledgeable quarters credit Imtiaz with masterminding the idea that would later cause irreparable damage to the PPP. Slowly but surely, he built up an image of the PPP that would convince the whole defence set-up that the Benazir Bhutto-led party was a national security threat. In fact, it has often been said in army circles that it was his national security threat perception, coupled with the blundering style of government, that resulted in Benazir's sacking as the prime minister years later.
ISI observers claim that for many years Imtiaz remained the eyes and the ears of the establishment and watched every move that Benazir made. In fact, sources close to General Zia say that Imtiaz, a master at fabricating evidence, once even sought the general's permission to plant certain photographs in the newspapers that would bring the PPP leader into disrepute. Despite his known antipathy for the PPP, Zia was reportedly firm in denying permission for this excess and did not allow manufactured photographs to be published.
The growth of tile ISI, however, did not remain restricted to the regional role that Bhutto sought for it, nor did it expand solely on the basis of the role that Zia assigned to it in domestic politics. In 1979, Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan, and Pakistan suddenly found itself as a frontline state in the US-Soviet Cold War.
With the exit of Democratic President Jimmy Carter and the arrival on the scene of Republican Ronald Reagan, the US stepped up a covert operation to organise resistance in Afghanistan. By the mid-eighties, this operation had become a multibillion dollar exercise. Although the CIA was solely handling the Washington end, the ISI became actively involved at the Pakistan end of it and neatly transformed itself into a major conduit for arms and money earmarked for the mujahideen.
But again, it was not only these changed circumstances that propelled the ISI into this task. To some extent, the agency was prepared for it already. During the Bhutto years, for instance, after the prime minister had identified the western neighbour as a threat that had to be addressed, the ISI had found and nurtured a young Kabul engineering graduate named Gulbadin Hekmatyar. The ISI not only funded and armed Hekmatyar, but also organised his line of communication inside Afghanistan.
All this manoeuvring was to be used to exert pressure on any Kabul government that harboured any wish of rekindling the Pakhtunistan issue. And these pressure tactics had worked wonders when they were applied to President Daud in the seventies. In a quick volte-face from the belligerent posture he had adopted, Daud had rushed to Murree for talks with Bhutto and had promptly made very conciliatory noises.
However, when the CIA-ISI tie-up went into effect, the Pakistani agency slowly acquired a far more sophisticated and scientific outlook. It is said that some officials, including the then DG, Lt General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, benefited in more than one way from the covert operation. In fact, the explosion at Ojhri camp (the munitions depot for the Afghan resistance in Rawalpindi) was described by some quarters as having occurred because 'stock taking' measures were on their way after charges of pilferage.
The inquiry ordered by the then prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, into the incident, according to knowledgeable quarters, was one of the reasons for his undoing. The major factor, perhaps, was the very system that General Zia had visualised for the country in the mid-eighties. This system not only created friction between the parties that shared power in the country, but also contributed to the growth of intelligence agencies which worked at cross purposes with one another.
Although Junejo was handpicked by Zia to be the prime minister, the man soon showed that he had a mind of his own. As Junejo's ambitions grew, so did the Directorate of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB), the civilian intelligence agency which had previously played second fiddle to the ISI. Although the stated functions of the DIB assign it an important role, for years it had suffered neglect both in terms of staffing, funding and orientation. All that the rulers, including Bhutto, assigned to the DIB was the policing of opposing politicians.
Under Junejo, the DIB chief, Rathore turned the once sleepy agency into a vibrant organisation, but all its counter-intelligence was restricted to looking out for anti-Junejo government moves rather than anti-state actions. The irony, of course, with intelligence agencies the world over, is that, though they work for the same country, they often become each other's bitterest rivals. The same was the case with the DIB. It embarked on an ambitious exercise in which it started tapping the telephones of the Army House – where General Zia lived – to the extent that the DIB was monitoring every move made by Zia and the members of government close to him.
For its part, the ISI was monitoring Junejo and his cronies. And though by the time the Ojhri blast took place, General Rehman was serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, he still wielded considerable influence over the ISI. Even though Major General Hamid Gul had been appointed as DG of the ISI, General Rehman was still running the Afghan wing of the ISI. Therefore, Junejo’s inquiry into the Ojhri explosion so angered Rehman that, apparently, he presented Zia with doctored tapes of Junejo’s alleged phone conversations. Sources say that despite the fact that until then Zia had been willing to tolerate Junejo, these tapes quickly changed his mind and he finally decided to get rid of his prime minister.
Months after Junejo's sacking, both Zia and Rehman died in the Bahawalpur crash. But their legacy remained, to the extent that the system that Zia had evolved continued to remain intact, in the sense that the intelligence agencies continued to transcend the parameters of the growing role assigned to them.
Although Brigadier Imtiaz had operated in obscurity until then, his name exploded to the fore as he became instrumental in the formation of the IJI before the 1988 polls and pioneered the concept of one-to-one contests in the elections. An expert in ‘psych-war ', he was the main architect of the IJI election strategy, to the extent that image-building slogans such as “jaag Punjabi jaag, teray pag noon laga daag” were attributed to his genius.
When Ms Bhutto took over as prime minister, she insisted on the removal of Brigadier Imtiaz from the ISI. Naively perhaps, she forced the appointment of a retired Lt. General, Shamsur Rehman Kallue, in place of Hamid Gul, who was promoted and given command of the prestigious armoured corps in Multan. Having a man of her choice posted as DG of the ISI and naming a retired major, Masud Sharif — who was described as a "blundering fool" — to head DIB, she relaxed. Obviously, she had not realised that the agencies that had been described as a 'state within a state' could hardly be neutralised through a couple of postings and transfers.
Moreover, she was never even chastened by the fact that, instead of her nominees, a couple of serving officers nominated by the COAS General Mirza Aslam Beg, remained in charge of the Afghan and Kashmir policies.
Subsequently, whatever was removed from the jurisdiction of the ISI after Kallue took over, was soon thrown into the lap of the military intelligence. The military intelligence immediately expanded its theatre of operations, as Benazir sought to cut the ISI to size. In effect, therefore, no qualitative change really occurred in the system of the intelligence units that had become used to conducting independent foreign, and to some extent, domestic policy operations.
However, the Benazir Bhutto government did make one decision of real consequence. It appointed a committee headed by a former chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal (retd) Zulfikar Ali Khan, to look into the working of the intelligence agencies, and to suggest measures to delink them from politics as well as to improve their functioning. But the report of this committee, which was reportedly compiled after the air marshal interviewed scores of intelligence personnel, is now unlikely to see the light of day in the changed circumstances.
In the present situation, however, it is not clear what roles are being assigned to the three major agencies. But with the appointment of Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmad as the chief of the IB, it can be surmised that the establishment still sees the PPP as a major threat.
What one can hope for is that the days of the midnight knock do not return to Pakistan. The intelligence agencies, which now have to counter the Raw-Mossad nexus – particularly in the regional nuclear context – could do well to draw a clear distinction between anti-government and anti-state activities.
The crucial question that still needs to be addressed is whether these agencies operate under the watchful eyes of an elected government or are they still so strong that they are themselves instrumental in installing or toppling such governments.
Friday, 17 February 2017
Revenge of America’s deep state
Stanly Johny in The Hindu
Not many had foreseen such an abrupt end to Michael Flynn’s role in the Donald Trump presidency. Mr. Flynn, who was Mr. Trump’s National Security Adviser for 24 days, the shortest stint for anybody since the post was created over 60 years ago, was seen as a key architect of the new administration’s foreign and security policies. He was one of the first military figures to endorse Mr. Trump and had been closely associated with him through his rise to the White House.
Still he was forced to leave amid a growing scandal over his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador in Washington. While the sudden resignation may be surprising, for those who closely watch the events that led to Mr. Flynn’s downfall, it’s not difficult to see an underlying pattern in them, which points to a growing tussle between the Trump team and U.S. intelligence agencies. The U.S. deep state, a web of military (intelligence), political and other interests operating behind the scene to ensure the status quo prevails, may not be as visible to the public as in dictatorships. That’s mainly because its interests have always been taken care of by the political leadership. However Mr. Trump’s attack on the establishment and his seemingly friendly approach towards Russia, the arch enemy of the U.S. in Washington parlance, clearly upset the deep state.
The Russia factor
So the tussle between Mr. Trump and intelligence agencies dates back to the billionaire property mogul’s surprising election victory on November 8, 2016. Within a month, the American media carried reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help Mr. Trump become President. The finding was that Russian hackers attacked Democratic campaign servers, stole emails and gave them to WikiLeaks, which released them to the public apparently hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances in the election. Barack Obama, by then a lame-duck President, quickly acted on the intelligence reports, imposing fresh sanctions on Russia and expelling 35 Russian diplomats. Clearly, it made any reset in ties difficult for his successor.
Another report that came a month later, again leaked by intelligence officials, claimed that Russia had “compromising personal and financial” information about Mr. Trump.
There were even allegations in Washington by influential people such as Strobe Talbott, a former Deputy Secretary of State, and Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director, that Mr. Trump is a “Kremlin stooge” and a “Putin recruit”. The leaks did not stop after Mr. Trump assumed office or his nominees took over the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. Mr. Flynn’s fall is a case in point. To bring him down, intelligence officials have leaked the contents of intercepted communication, something which is seen as one of the most serious felonies among crimes involving leaking classified information. Mr. Flynn talked to the Russian Ambassador multiple times on the phone on December 29, the day Mr. Obama imposed fresh sanctions on Russia and sacked the diplomats. He first denied having spoken of sanctions. So did the White House. But the Ambassador had been wiretapped and the intelligence community had the details of what was discussed. Once the media got hold of these details, the White House had no option but to give up on Mr. Flynn.
What connects all these exposés and allegations is the Russia factor. Mr. Trump had sought better cooperation with Moscow in the war against the Islamic State. He had also challenged certain accepted notions among the Washington establishment such as the role and relevance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). This was unacceptable for the deep state, for which the presidency is temporary and the system permanent. The first major leak by the CIA on the Russian involvement in the cyberattack on Democratic campaign servers was a declaration of war. This doesn’t mean that the leaks are bad. Any attempt to make information public, irrespective of its cause and effect, is welcome. But in this case, information is being used as a weapon in a battle between powerful groups. It’s also to be noted that the establishment doesn’t have a problem with Mr. Trump’s more dangerous (for both the U.S. and the world) and provocative policy measures. The Republican leadership, including Paul Ryan, defended his Muslim ban. His belligerence on West Asia is unlikely to invite significant opposition. The opposition comes only over the red line, and that’s Russia.
Mr. Trump could either fight back or make peace. Two days after Mr. Flynn’s resignation, he has signalled both. He attacked the intelligence agencies on Twitter on Wednesday, while the White House indicated that the promised détente with Russia was over. But Mr. Flynn has set in motion a process that is unlikely to be controlled by a seemingly incompetent administration like Mr. Trump’s. With chaos engulfing his government, Mr. Trump will be forced to conform.
Not many had foreseen such an abrupt end to Michael Flynn’s role in the Donald Trump presidency. Mr. Flynn, who was Mr. Trump’s National Security Adviser for 24 days, the shortest stint for anybody since the post was created over 60 years ago, was seen as a key architect of the new administration’s foreign and security policies. He was one of the first military figures to endorse Mr. Trump and had been closely associated with him through his rise to the White House.
Still he was forced to leave amid a growing scandal over his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador in Washington. While the sudden resignation may be surprising, for those who closely watch the events that led to Mr. Flynn’s downfall, it’s not difficult to see an underlying pattern in them, which points to a growing tussle between the Trump team and U.S. intelligence agencies. The U.S. deep state, a web of military (intelligence), political and other interests operating behind the scene to ensure the status quo prevails, may not be as visible to the public as in dictatorships. That’s mainly because its interests have always been taken care of by the political leadership. However Mr. Trump’s attack on the establishment and his seemingly friendly approach towards Russia, the arch enemy of the U.S. in Washington parlance, clearly upset the deep state.
The Russia factor
So the tussle between Mr. Trump and intelligence agencies dates back to the billionaire property mogul’s surprising election victory on November 8, 2016. Within a month, the American media carried reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help Mr. Trump become President. The finding was that Russian hackers attacked Democratic campaign servers, stole emails and gave them to WikiLeaks, which released them to the public apparently hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances in the election. Barack Obama, by then a lame-duck President, quickly acted on the intelligence reports, imposing fresh sanctions on Russia and expelling 35 Russian diplomats. Clearly, it made any reset in ties difficult for his successor.
Another report that came a month later, again leaked by intelligence officials, claimed that Russia had “compromising personal and financial” information about Mr. Trump.
There were even allegations in Washington by influential people such as Strobe Talbott, a former Deputy Secretary of State, and Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director, that Mr. Trump is a “Kremlin stooge” and a “Putin recruit”. The leaks did not stop after Mr. Trump assumed office or his nominees took over the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. Mr. Flynn’s fall is a case in point. To bring him down, intelligence officials have leaked the contents of intercepted communication, something which is seen as one of the most serious felonies among crimes involving leaking classified information. Mr. Flynn talked to the Russian Ambassador multiple times on the phone on December 29, the day Mr. Obama imposed fresh sanctions on Russia and sacked the diplomats. He first denied having spoken of sanctions. So did the White House. But the Ambassador had been wiretapped and the intelligence community had the details of what was discussed. Once the media got hold of these details, the White House had no option but to give up on Mr. Flynn.
What connects all these exposés and allegations is the Russia factor. Mr. Trump had sought better cooperation with Moscow in the war against the Islamic State. He had also challenged certain accepted notions among the Washington establishment such as the role and relevance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). This was unacceptable for the deep state, for which the presidency is temporary and the system permanent. The first major leak by the CIA on the Russian involvement in the cyberattack on Democratic campaign servers was a declaration of war. This doesn’t mean that the leaks are bad. Any attempt to make information public, irrespective of its cause and effect, is welcome. But in this case, information is being used as a weapon in a battle between powerful groups. It’s also to be noted that the establishment doesn’t have a problem with Mr. Trump’s more dangerous (for both the U.S. and the world) and provocative policy measures. The Republican leadership, including Paul Ryan, defended his Muslim ban. His belligerence on West Asia is unlikely to invite significant opposition. The opposition comes only over the red line, and that’s Russia.
Mr. Trump could either fight back or make peace. Two days after Mr. Flynn’s resignation, he has signalled both. He attacked the intelligence agencies on Twitter on Wednesday, while the White House indicated that the promised détente with Russia was over. But Mr. Flynn has set in motion a process that is unlikely to be controlled by a seemingly incompetent administration like Mr. Trump’s. With chaos engulfing his government, Mr. Trump will be forced to conform.
Tuesday, 9 February 2016
This NHS crisis is not economic. It's political
Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian
As the health services endures its biggest squeeze, talk of it being unviable is wide of the mark. We cannot afford to do without it
David Cameron addresses the Tory conference in October 2014. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
As the health services endures its biggest squeeze, talk of it being unviable is wide of the mark. We cannot afford to do without it
Patients wait for spaces in A&E at Royal Stoke university hospital in Stoke-on-Trent. A&E waiting time targets have been watered down in recent years. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian
How many times have you read that the NHS is bust? No need for answers on a postcard: I can tell you.
Over 2015, the number of national newspaper headlines featuring “NHS” alongside the words bust, deficit, meltdown or financial crisis came to a grand total of 80. Call this the NHS panic index – a measure of public anxiety over the viability of our health service. Using a database of all national newspapers, our librarians added up the number of such headlines for each year. The index shows that panic over the sustainability of our healthcare isn’t just on the rise – it has begun to soar.
During the whole of 2009, just two pieces appeared warning of financial crisis in the NHS. By 2012 that had nudged up a bit, to 12. Then came liftoff: the bust headlines more than doubled to 30 in 2013, before nearly tripling to 82 in 2014. Newspapers such as this one now regularly carry warnings that our entire system of healthcare could go bankrupt – unless, that is, radical change are made. For David Prior, the then chair of the health watchdog the Care Quality Commission - and now health minister, that means giving more of the system to private companies.
This means that the press and political classes are now discussing a theoretical impossibility. Think about it for a moment, and you realise the NHS can’t go broke. It’s not an endowment with a set pot of cash, but a giant service with a yearly budget. Unlike a business, it doesn’t need to raise money from sales – as taxpayers and voters, we have the final say over how much funding it gets. This panic isn’t economic at all, but politically created.
The balance to be struck with the NHS, as with all public services, is between how much cash we sink into it and how much we expect in return. Give the NHS less money, get less healthcare. Give it more, and the opposite happens. As Rowena Crawford at the Institute for Fiscal Studies says: “Financial stability just requires that healthcare demand and expectations are constrained to match the available funding.”
And that right there is the rub. Because the NHS is enduring the sharpest and most prolonged spending squeeze in its history – even while the government pretends no such thing is happening and the public expect the same service. Our health service is where all the paradoxes of austerity come home to roost.
This may seem an odd thing to say. Isn’t the NHS one of the very few parts of the public realm to be sheltered from this decade’s cuts? Didn’t David Cameron promise before the last general election to “protect the NHS budget and continue to invest more”?
How many times have you read that the NHS is bust? No need for answers on a postcard: I can tell you.
Over 2015, the number of national newspaper headlines featuring “NHS” alongside the words bust, deficit, meltdown or financial crisis came to a grand total of 80. Call this the NHS panic index – a measure of public anxiety over the viability of our health service. Using a database of all national newspapers, our librarians added up the number of such headlines for each year. The index shows that panic over the sustainability of our healthcare isn’t just on the rise – it has begun to soar.
During the whole of 2009, just two pieces appeared warning of financial crisis in the NHS. By 2012 that had nudged up a bit, to 12. Then came liftoff: the bust headlines more than doubled to 30 in 2013, before nearly tripling to 82 in 2014. Newspapers such as this one now regularly carry warnings that our entire system of healthcare could go bankrupt – unless, that is, radical change are made. For David Prior, the then chair of the health watchdog the Care Quality Commission - and now health minister, that means giving more of the system to private companies.
This means that the press and political classes are now discussing a theoretical impossibility. Think about it for a moment, and you realise the NHS can’t go broke. It’s not an endowment with a set pot of cash, but a giant service with a yearly budget. Unlike a business, it doesn’t need to raise money from sales – as taxpayers and voters, we have the final say over how much funding it gets. This panic isn’t economic at all, but politically created.
The balance to be struck with the NHS, as with all public services, is between how much cash we sink into it and how much we expect in return. Give the NHS less money, get less healthcare. Give it more, and the opposite happens. As Rowena Crawford at the Institute for Fiscal Studies says: “Financial stability just requires that healthcare demand and expectations are constrained to match the available funding.”
And that right there is the rub. Because the NHS is enduring the sharpest and most prolonged spending squeeze in its history – even while the government pretends no such thing is happening and the public expect the same service. Our health service is where all the paradoxes of austerity come home to roost.
This may seem an odd thing to say. Isn’t the NHS one of the very few parts of the public realm to be sheltered from this decade’s cuts? Didn’t David Cameron promise before the last general election to “protect the NHS budget and continue to invest more”?
David Cameron addresses the Tory conference in October 2014. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
The figures suggest otherwise. True, the NHS is seeing a rise in its funding. Between 2010 and 2014, health spending went up 0.8% each year, adjusting for inflation. A plus sign in front, granted, but a teeny-tiny one – since its creation in 1948, the health service has never had it so bad. Over this decade as a whole, that allocation will amount to 1.2% a year, which is way down on the average 3.7% that health spending grew each year between 1949 and 1979. And, coming after the 6.7% extra that Gordon Brown was shovelling in annually by the time of the banking crash, it feels like a recession.
So on the one hand, you have a healthcare system that can cause even the most secular of Brits to get religion, that can drive Telegraph-reading colonels to channel their inner Nye Bevan – hell, that even beats Justin Bieber to a Christmas No 1. And on the other you have a Tory prime minister who wants to cut public spending but knows that harming the NHS will be electoral poison.
Put the two together and what do you get? A dangerous muddle of overspending, frontline service cuts and political self-denial.
Cameron pretends the NHS isn’t on austerity rations and expects it to do the same work to pretty much the same targets. The various parts of the NHS try to do just that with a budget smaller than they need, with the result that they begin missing targets and making cuts even while breaking their budgets.
Take the A&E waiting times. Under Labour, the old rule was that 98% of patients must be seen within four hours. Soon after Cameron moved into Downing Street in 2010, the target was watered down to 95% of patients – even so it is now routinely missed. The number of patients stuck on trolleys in A&E, while staff try to find them beds is now at levels that “no civilised society should tolerate”, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine .
Even while falling short, arm after arm of the NHS is now in the red: 95% of hospital and other acute care providers in England plunged into deficit in the first half of the financial year starting in April, joining 80% of ambulance providers and 46% of those in mental health.
Demoralised staff can resign, go on an agency book, pick their shifts and earn more
You might treat all this as argument for NHS staff to be more productive. Except that, as John Appleby of the King’s Fund thinktank argues, they are. He calculates that, had NHS activity only gone up in line with government money, between 2010 and 2015 it would have treated 3.7 million fewer outpatients and 4.5 million fewer A&E patients than actually got seen.
This is productivity as doing more with less, which is almost always unsustainable. A real increase in productivity would come from doing things differently. There’s certainly scope to do that – by doing more phone consultations with GPs, perhaps, or upgrading technology. One joke among NHS professionals runs that, in all of China, there’s but one factory left still making fax machines, and that its only client is the NHS. But this sort of change is never going to come in an organisation now in a frenzy of cost-cutting.
One example of NHS austerity’s screwy logic is its sudden reliance on expensive agency staff. This, says Anita Charlesworth of the Health Foundation charity, is a direct result of staff pay freezes and overwork: “If you’re a permanent member of staff and you’ve had no pay rise and you’re demoralised and disengaged you can resign from the NHS, you can go on an agency book, you can pick your shifts, you can pick your wards and you earn more.”
The result is that agency staff costs are rising at over 25% a year.
Meanwhile, NHS England pretends it can cap hospital deficits for the year at £2.2bn – even though in the first six months alone that had already hit £1.6bn . Some of Britain’s biggest and most renowned hospitals are now actively planning on ending the year in the red. And Appleby points out that everything from patient time with doctors and nurses to repairs of your local hospital’s roof is being sacrificed in order to do the same work with less money.
“I can see another Jennifer’s ear coming,” Appleby says, referring to the five-year-old with glue ear who waited a year for a simple operation and ended up being used by Neil Kinnock to attack John Major on health spending. “Only this time it probably won’t be something as innocuous as glue ear. It might be a child who dies of cancer because their medical care has been so drastically cut.”
As societies get richer and older, they spend more on healthcare. Compared with nearly everyone else in western Europe, the UK spends much less of its national income on health. By the end of this decade, we will be even further behind. Meanwhile, pundits will continue to claim the entire system is unaffordably expensive, even while the public still want and need doctors and nurses, their medicines and operations.
This is the paradox of austerity: pretending that you can scrap and scrimp on the services and institutions that make you a civilised country, without making your country less civilised.
So on the one hand, you have a healthcare system that can cause even the most secular of Brits to get religion, that can drive Telegraph-reading colonels to channel their inner Nye Bevan – hell, that even beats Justin Bieber to a Christmas No 1. And on the other you have a Tory prime minister who wants to cut public spending but knows that harming the NHS will be electoral poison.
Put the two together and what do you get? A dangerous muddle of overspending, frontline service cuts and political self-denial.
Cameron pretends the NHS isn’t on austerity rations and expects it to do the same work to pretty much the same targets. The various parts of the NHS try to do just that with a budget smaller than they need, with the result that they begin missing targets and making cuts even while breaking their budgets.
Take the A&E waiting times. Under Labour, the old rule was that 98% of patients must be seen within four hours. Soon after Cameron moved into Downing Street in 2010, the target was watered down to 95% of patients – even so it is now routinely missed. The number of patients stuck on trolleys in A&E, while staff try to find them beds is now at levels that “no civilised society should tolerate”, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine .
Even while falling short, arm after arm of the NHS is now in the red: 95% of hospital and other acute care providers in England plunged into deficit in the first half of the financial year starting in April, joining 80% of ambulance providers and 46% of those in mental health.
Demoralised staff can resign, go on an agency book, pick their shifts and earn more
You might treat all this as argument for NHS staff to be more productive. Except that, as John Appleby of the King’s Fund thinktank argues, they are. He calculates that, had NHS activity only gone up in line with government money, between 2010 and 2015 it would have treated 3.7 million fewer outpatients and 4.5 million fewer A&E patients than actually got seen.
This is productivity as doing more with less, which is almost always unsustainable. A real increase in productivity would come from doing things differently. There’s certainly scope to do that – by doing more phone consultations with GPs, perhaps, or upgrading technology. One joke among NHS professionals runs that, in all of China, there’s but one factory left still making fax machines, and that its only client is the NHS. But this sort of change is never going to come in an organisation now in a frenzy of cost-cutting.
One example of NHS austerity’s screwy logic is its sudden reliance on expensive agency staff. This, says Anita Charlesworth of the Health Foundation charity, is a direct result of staff pay freezes and overwork: “If you’re a permanent member of staff and you’ve had no pay rise and you’re demoralised and disengaged you can resign from the NHS, you can go on an agency book, you can pick your shifts, you can pick your wards and you earn more.”
The result is that agency staff costs are rising at over 25% a year.
Meanwhile, NHS England pretends it can cap hospital deficits for the year at £2.2bn – even though in the first six months alone that had already hit £1.6bn . Some of Britain’s biggest and most renowned hospitals are now actively planning on ending the year in the red. And Appleby points out that everything from patient time with doctors and nurses to repairs of your local hospital’s roof is being sacrificed in order to do the same work with less money.
“I can see another Jennifer’s ear coming,” Appleby says, referring to the five-year-old with glue ear who waited a year for a simple operation and ended up being used by Neil Kinnock to attack John Major on health spending. “Only this time it probably won’t be something as innocuous as glue ear. It might be a child who dies of cancer because their medical care has been so drastically cut.”
As societies get richer and older, they spend more on healthcare. Compared with nearly everyone else in western Europe, the UK spends much less of its national income on health. By the end of this decade, we will be even further behind. Meanwhile, pundits will continue to claim the entire system is unaffordably expensive, even while the public still want and need doctors and nurses, their medicines and operations.
This is the paradox of austerity: pretending that you can scrap and scrimp on the services and institutions that make you a civilised country, without making your country less civilised.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant
Coachloads of jobless people brought in to work unpaid on river pageant as part of Work Programme
Call for inquiry into use of unpaid jobseekers as jubilee stewards
Call for inquiry into use of unpaid jobseekers as jubilee stewards
Some of those hired as stewards had to spend the night before the pageant sleeping under London Bridge.
A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.
Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.
Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.
One young worker said she was on duty between London Bridge and Tower Bridge during the £12m river spectacle of a 1,000-boat flotilla and members of the Royal family sail by . She said that the security firm Close Protection UK, which won a stewarding contract for the jubilee events, gave her a plastic see-through poncho and a high-visibility jacket for protection against the rain.
Close Protection UK confirmed that it was using up to 30 unpaid staff and 50 apprentices, who were paid £2.80 an hour, for the three-day event in London. A spokesman said the unpaid work was a trial for paid roles at the Olympics, which it had also won a contract to staff. Unpaid staff were expected to work two days out of the three-day holiday.
The firm said it had spent considerable resources on training and equipment that stewards could keep and that the experience was voluntary and did not affect jobseekers keeping their benefits.
The woman said that people were picked up at Bristol at 11pm on Saturday and arrived in London at 3am on Sunday. "We all got off the coach and we were stranded on the side of the road for 20 minutes until they came back and told us all to follow them," she said. "We followed them under London Bridge and that's where they told us to camp out for the night … It was raining and freezing."
A 30-year-old steward told the Guardian that the conditions under the bridge were "cold and wet and we were told to get our head down [to sleep]". He said that it was impossible to pitch a tent because of the concrete floor.
The woman said they were woken at 5.30am and supplied with boots, combat trousers and polo shirts. She said: "They had told the ladies we were getting ready in a minibus around the corner and I went to the minibus and they had failed to open it so it was locked. I waited around to find someone to unlock it, and all of the other girls were coming down trying to get ready and no one was bothering to come down to unlock [it], so some of us, including me, were getting undressed in public in the freezing cold and rain." The men are understood to have changed under the bridge.
The female steward said that after the royal pageant, the group travelled by tube to a campsite in Theydon Bois, Essex, where some had to pitch their tents in the dark.
She said: "London was supposed to be a nice experience, but they left us in the rain. They couldn't give a crap … No one is supposed to be treated like that, [working] for free. I don't want to be treated where I have to sleep under a bridge and wait for food." The male steward said: "It was the worst experience I've ever had. I've had many a job, and many a bad job, but this one was the worst."
Both stewards said they were originally told they would be paid. But when they got to the coach on Saturday night, they said, they were told that the work would be unpaid and that if they did not accept it they would not be considered for well-paid work at the Olympics.
Molly Prince, managing director of Close Protection UK, said in a statement: "We take the welfare of our staff and apprentices very seriously indeed.
"The staff travelling to the jubilee are completing their training and being assessed on the job for NVQ Level 2 in spectator safety after having completed all the knowledge requirements in the classroom and some previous work experience. It is essential that they are assessed in a live work environment in order to complete their chosen qualifications.
"The nature of festival and event work is such that we often travel sleeping on coaches through the night with an early morning pre-event start – it is the nature of the business … It's hard work and not for the faint-hearted.
"We had staff travel from several locations and some arrived earlier than others at the meeting point, which I believe was London Bridge, which was why some had to hang around. This is an unfortunate set of circumstances but not lack of care on the part of CPUK."
The company said it had spent up to £220 on sponsoring security training licences for each participant and that boots and combat trousers cost more than £100.
The charity Tomorrow's People, which set up the placements at Close Protection under the work programme, said it would review the situation, but stressed that unpaid work was valuable and made people more employable. Tomorrow's People is one of eight youth charities that were supported in the Guardian and Observer's Christmas appeal last year.
Abi Levitt, director of development services at the charity, said: "We have been unable to verify the accuracy of the situation with either the people on work experience or the business concerned.
"We will undertake a review of the situation as matter of urgency. Tomorrow's People believes strongly in the value of work experience in helping people to build the skills, confidence and CV they need to get and keep a job and we have an exemplary record going back nearly 30 years for our work with the long-term unemployed."
Saturday, 29 October 2011
NGOs, Kiran Bedi, The Media: Who’s The ‘Farest Of Them All?
By Farzana Versey
27 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Countercurrents.org
Kiran Bedi is indeed
wrong, but when media persons sit to judge her it is a bit of a laugh.
Clearly, they do not look in the mirror.
Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to question
all sorts of voluntary agencies and their modus operandi, we have a
situation where a person is pinned down for wrongdoing without a
backward glance at how the whole NGO business works, often with the
media’s involvement.
Kiran Bedi has been fudging her bills, where she
charged inflated amounts from her hosts. The main source was airline
tickets. She would travel by economy class, that too at a discount
because of her gallantry award, and charge business class fares. We now
have these sanctimonious NGOs tell us that they took it at “face value”.
Most NGOs send the tickets themselves. So, why did they let her use her
travel agent? And what sort of auditing departments do they run? The
reason for keeping quiet is not that they were afraid of Ms. Bedi’s
wrath – they obviously did not mind shelling out Business Class fares –
but because their finances will lead to many question marks.
This is my point. The media and certain activists
have taken a convenient yo-yo stand on the Jan Lokpal Bill campaign.
They propped him up and were completely besotted by Team Anna. After
they were done with the photo-ops of the caps and the fasting and
dancing, they realised that there were chinks in the armour. No one was
interested in the deeper questions – it came down to superficial
put-downs.
Let us get this fudging business clear. Kiran Bedi
has admitted to it and says she will return the excess money that she
wanted to use for her own NGO. Where do the NGOs get this kind of money
that they can afford to invite people from different cities for
seminars? I have often posed this query when we rubbish other
institutions. Do you know that most of the activists themselves travel
Business Class, stay at fancy hotels, and order the best food – for
what? To gupshup about the state of the nation, the homeless, female
foeticide, dowry, terrorism, communalism?
Check out the number of people who have left their
high-paying corporate and bureaucratic jobs to “serve the nation” or
“become useful members of society” or, “fight communalism”. They could
do all of these by continuing to work. The reason is that activism has
become a paying proposition. Have you seen the huge ads put up in
newspapers inviting you to attend some conclave or the other? Is it
affordable or even appropriate to shell out this kind of money on
overheads? Besides government grants, there is a good deal of foreign
sponsorship and donations from industrial houses. While the
international ‘intervention’ often comes with some amount of
side-effects (pushing of substandard products and services clubbed with
the do-good, feel-good stuff), some of the Indian business black money
that is not stashed away in banks abroad is routed to charitable
organisation, with income tax exemption.
Why does the media not raise a voice about this? Has
the media ever questioned journalists who attend these same seminars?
Oh yes, the same journalists who give inflated bills to their accounts
departments for their travels and hotel stays and “related expenses”.
Journalists who sit at the desk and make phone calls but charge taxi
fare for the quotes. Journalists who try to get tickets and freebies
because they think they are in a position to ‘arrange something’.
Journalists who do not have to spend a paisa at restaurants and spas
because they just might mention it, in passing, in their next column.
Journalists who give us scoops that are fed to them by interested
parties or who conduct sting operations that are again paid for by
interested parties.
Of course, it is not only the media at fault, but
also those who host such talks. Corporate India’s ladies who lunch get a
big high when they invite a person who can indeed talk and add to their
resume. They flash such people as trophies to display their own worth
as ‘aware citizens’. That some media people are doing their evening show
with this group should be an eye-opener rather than a can-opener.
If, as some commentators wish to know, why people
from public office enter the fray late in the day to become part of
NGOs, then one might wish to ask them why they have timed their queries
now and not for all these years. Do they ponder about it when they go on
government-sponsored junkets?
The problem is that this whole Anna Hazare campaign
has been a sham, and revealed more shams both on the inside as well as
on the outside. It showed us how the ruling party and the opposition got
to pay politics; the arrests also reveal a lot about those who got away
without a scratch to their reputations. It is rather disingenuous of
Digvijay Singh to say that if Kiran Bedi can offer to return the money,
then every bribery case can be closed by saying the bribe-taker will
return the money, including, A. Raja.
This is some gumption. A minister in the government
of India is caught in a scam of frightening proportions and another
government person uses this as an analogy. He is also quite gung-ho
about such a thing happening at the highest level. The 2G Spectrum scam
is not just about bribes, but also about how the nation was taken for a
ride with the government, big industrialists and lobbies involved. It is
about how the government functions and not merely who took how much.
This case has come under scrutiny; many others do not.
If political agencies get a chance, they try to
co-opt the activist groups. Most are willing to go along because it is
the easy option. In some cases where they need the government to act, it
does become a crucial mutual involvement. Therefore, if a political
party invites activists, and they fudge figures about travel expenses,
then what will the political parties do? Why not question the complete
lack of balance by media groups? One can understand individual
commentators taking a particular position, but why do they blatantly
follow the newspaper/TV channel line? Where is their independence? Those
who talk about objectivity should really look in their own backyards.
There is favouritism everywhere and the media indulges in it as much as
politicians, and the ‘activist’ role of the media should also come under
scrutiny.
Tavleen Singh, Indian Express columnist, while
raising some important points, makes a rather shocking comment: “My own
observation is that many NGOs working in India appear to be funded by
organisations bent on ensuring that India never becomes a developed
country… In order for India to become a halfway developed country, we
need new roads, airports, ports, modern railways and masses more
electricity. In addition, according to experts, we need 500 more cities
by 2050. The odd thing is that the NGOs who oppose steel plants, nuclear
power stations, dams and aluminum refineries in India never object to
the same things in China.”
Is this the definition of development, and the only
model? As I have already said, many NGOs do have an agenda, but not only
if they are funded by organisations that do not wish to see a developed
India. By this logic, Gujarat should have no NGOs. And why must Indian
NGOs object to what happens in China? Has the Indian government opposed
the self-immolation of Tibetan monks and nuns in support of the Dalai
Lama’s return? Has the BJP done so? Has the media done so?
Forget the NGOs for a while. Think about how these
plants were to come up, who was to be uprooted and how it would affect
the environment. If this development is only for those setting up
factories and making India technologically advanced, then why are we
still the hub of western-powered outsourcing? Are the NGOs involved
here?
Why absolve the fat cats of business only to hit out
at the NGOs unless they are specifically playing dirty? How many media
people have taken free jet rides, attended fancy wedding functions
abroad and written glowing accounts of them? Will they be sanctified as
the facilitators of development? Or do they need to get closer to the
seats of such power or perhaps such development? These are trick or
treat queries. Ask them we must, for there is much beyond Kiran Bedi,
whose banshee persona was in fact given a boost by the media when they
needed her sound bytes. They were birds of a feather, until she was
grounded.
The still-feathered ones have taken wing and are giving us a bird’s eye-view.
Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer.
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