Report: ‘Insufficient evidence’ to prove whistleblower’s claim state manipulated COVID data

Mary Ellen Klas, 

McClatchy Washington Bureau - Yesterday 


A claim by data expert Rebekah Jones that her bosses at the Florida Department of Health intentionally falsified COVID case data as Gov. Ron DeSantis was attempting to reopen the state is unfounded, according to an internal inspector general’s report conducted by her former agency.

“Based upon an analysis of the available evidence, the alleged conduct, as described by the complainant, did not occur,” the report said, referring to that allegation in Jones’ whistleblower complaint.

Two other allegations by Jones, that directives were issued by higher-ups to falsify COVID-19 positivity rates, were deemed “unsubstantiated” because “based upon an analysis of the available evidence, there is insufficient evidence to clearly prove or disprove the alleged conduct.”

The report, released this week, does acknowledge that the evidence supports Jones’ separate claim that two of the agency’s top doctors ordered Jones and others to restrict public access to COVID case data after the Miami Herald asked a question about it. However, the report indicates the data was later restored after concerns about exposing private information were allayed.

Removing the data from public access did not violate “any governing directive,” the report said, so the officials she accused of wrongdoing were “exonerated.”

Jones, who was responsible for maintaining the COVID-19 data dashboard for the Florida Department of Health, was fired in May 2020 for insubordination after going public with her concerns.

At the heart of Jones’ claim was that the data collected by epidemiologists was accurate and adequate, but the information was not being communicated to the public in the midst of a public health crisis.

Jones did not submit to an interview by IG investigators but answered the inspector general’s questions in writing and provided the agency with a 530-page written rebuttal to the report’s preliminary findings.

“If ordering a state employee to hide data during a crisis for the sole purpose of the public and media to not hold them accountable is not against the policy or rule, then it needs to be,’’ she told the Miami Herald.

The 27-page IG investigation, which involved interviewing 13 current and former DOH officials and contractors, took place between January 2021 and March 2022. It included no policy recommendations.

Asked to comment on whether the report would lead to any changes in providing access to public information during a public health emergency, both Jeremy Redfern, chief public information officer for DOH, and the governor’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, replied: “The report speaks for itself.”

National profile

At the end of her tenure, Jones became a controversial public figure, attacked by DeSantis by name. For some time afterward, she became a frequent guest on cable news outlets. She also became an aggressive Twitter combatant until her account was suspended in June 2021 for allegedly violating Twitter rules.

Earlier that year, in January, armed officers of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement raided her house and seized her electronic devices, alleging she had broken into a state messaging system and encouraged her former co-workers to “speak up.”

The controversies brought Jones national media attention, allowed her to raise substantial amounts of money through a Gofundme campaign, and fueled the governor’s dissatisfaction with the mainstream media. At the same time, she created her own COVID-19 dashboard using state data that competed with the state’s dashboard.

Jones’ attorney, Rick Johnson of Tallahassee, said Friday the IG “could not conclude that the evidence proves or disproves the two main allegations” — that Jones’ bosses directed falsification of data and pressured her to falsify Covid positivity rates. He said his client intends to continue to pursue her wrongful termination claim before the Florida Council on Human Relations.

“Unfortunately, this neutral finding is labeled ‘unsubstantiated’ but they explain that really means too close to call, not a win for DOH,’’ Johnson said. “And a neutral finding from DeSantis’ own team is as good as a win for us.”

He added that even though the IG found the state suppressed some COVID data, “It is not technically illegal, but it is clearly wrong.”

The investigation is the latest development in a two-year battle involving Jones, now a long-shot Democratic candidate for Congress running against Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Shalimar in North Florida.

Jones had worked at the Department of Health since September 2018 and began work on the COVID-19 dashboard in early March 2020.

In late April of that year, DeSantis brought a slideshow to a news conference to announce that all counties but three in South Florida would lift stay-home orders for many nonessential businesses.

As DeSantis was preparing to end COVID-19 restrictions in order to reopen the state for business, Jones alleged that Shamarial Roberson, the now-former deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Health, had directed her to “manipulate” data on the state’s COVID-19 digital dashboard to downplay the high case count in rural counties. A low positivity rate in each county was needed to satisfy the White House benchmarks for reopening the state.

Roberson denied she ordered Jones to manipulate data and, after Jones allegedly threatened to file a whistleblower complaint, DeSantis accused Jones of insubordination and fired her.

“Our data is transparent,’’ DeSantis said on May 20, 2020, with Vice President Mike Pence standing silently beside him, in a denunciation of the news media that went viral on Twitter.

‘Take it down’

The events that culminated in Jones’ dismissal began with an email from a Herald reporter on May 4, 2020. Reporters were inquiring about something they had seen in DOH’s published data: a variable that indicated illnesses dating back into late December 2019 and evidence of community spread earlier than previously reported.

According to internal DOH emails obtained by the Herald, the Herald’s question was referred from the communications director to Carina Blackmore, the director of disease control, who emailed that it should be answered by someone “high level.” It then bounced around the team of epidemiologists and, when no one wanted to answer, landed on Jones’ lap.

The Herald’s question had been prompted by a discrepancy it found in the COVID Open Data hub, an open source site that has long been run by the state to house de-identified individual cases of tracked diseases. It contains limited demographic information as well as dates associated with each case and is widely used by researchers, epidemiologists and journalists.

“This whole site needs to come down,” DOH epidemiologist Scott Pritchard wrote in an email to Blackmore after receiving the question about the data hub.

Blackmore said in her statement that’s when she gave the order — “take it down.”

“This is the wrong call,” Jones wrote in an email to her IT supervisor, Craig Curry, before doing as she was told.

The next day, Jones’ managers removed the dashboard’ from her control and accused her of publishing “unauthorized” data, according to the emails provided to the Herald that were not included in the IG report.

Blackmore said in her sworn statement that Jones was fired for having had “extensive, unauthorized communication with dashboard users, including reporters, about the data on the dashboard and the case-line data.”

In July 2020, Jones filed a whistleblower complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and that led to the IG investigation.

The IG report was completed and signed on March 9 by Michael Bennett, the DOH inspector general. He reports to the state surgeon general and the Florida chief inspector general, who works for the governor.

‘Insufficient evidence’

Bennett concluded there was no evidence that Roberson or Courtney Coppola, the former DOH chief of staff, ordered Jones or other staff to falsify new COVID case positivity rates, as Jones claimed, and the report suggests her claim is therefore “unsubstantiated.”

“Based upon an analysis of the available evidence, there is insufficient evidence to prove or disprove that Dr. Roberson ordered a subordinate to misrepresent positivity rates or that that subordinate then relayed the order down to Jones,’’ the report states.

In her rebuttal, Jones disputed a claim that she did not have access to the raw data on the state’s disease reporting system known as Merlin, stating that she “worked with an extracted copy of all raw data from Merlin, and wrote the code to independently aggregate it herself.”

Jones provided the IG with a process by which investigators could test her claim but there is no indication in the report it was done.

Data briefly removed

Regarding the claim that Jones’ bosses were involved in withholding the information from the public, the report confirms it happened, albeit briefly.

The IG report echoes the DOH position statement and states that data from the open data hub was removed only “temporarily” for a quality assurance check.

Emails, not included in the report and reviewed by the Herald, show that Blackmore considered republishing the case line data after realizing that the removal of the public data caused the case numbers to disappear from the DOH website. Even then, she didn’t want the information public, she said in a May 5 email.

“I had great concerns these could be used to violate patients’ privacy,” Blackmore said in her statement in Jones’ whistleblower case, also obtained by the Herald. “I also had great concerns about external users manipulating Florida data without guidance on the strengths and limitations of these data.”

Jones confirmed to the OIG “that COVID-19 data was not deleted; rather, access to the dashboard’s underlying data was temporarily removed and then restored,’’ the report said.

Roberson, Blackmore, and Pritchard each testified during their sworn OIG interviews that they “were unaware the dashboard contained an open ‘data hub’ when the dashboard was first activated,’’ the OIG report said.

Jones disputes that and, in her response, produced emails that she says contradict those claims.

“Dr. Roberson, Dr. Blackmore, and Mr. Pritchard directed the complainant to restrict access to underlying data that supported what appeared on the COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard,’’ the report concluded. But the IG said the verdict is that they are “Exonerated.”

Miami Herald reporters Sarah Blaskey contributed to this report.Mary Ellen Klas can be reached by meklas@miamiherald.com and @MaryEllenKlas

©2022 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Meet Ms Marvel from Pakistan

Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy believes the show is a moment of celebration for Pakistan.

Mohammad Kamran Jawaid   

This writer is envious of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. No, not because she has two Oscars, four Emmys and a Marvel series to her credit; that’s something to be proud about. I’m envious of something else: Sharmeen’s stamina.

Flying in and out of cities and countries, Sharmeen is either on a plane, in a car, at an event, on the sets, producing, and now directing. Although prompt when replying to messages, Sharmeen’s management often shifts our phone calls and interviews anywhere between minutes to hours later. That she’s busy is an understatement.

Sharmeen laughs when I mention her schedule. It will get rougher still, one assumes, with the release of her live-action directorial debut on Marvel’s next high-profile series, Ms. Marvel — a six-episode Disney+ series that makes its Pakistan-exclusive cinema release via Pakistani distributor HKC as three, two-hour-long movies.

While the show debuts on June 8, Pakistani audiences can see the movies on June 16 (episodes 1 and 2), June 30 (episodes 3 and 4) and July 14 (episodes 5 and 6), Hammad Chaudhry, the chief of HKC, tells Icon. The move, as anyone can guess, stems from the fact that Disney+ has still to make its Pakistan debut (the service is in India as Disney-Hotstar).

Ms Marvel is not just about cheering for a brown-skinned super-heroine; it’s about representing a culture and country to the world

Ms. Marvel is a relatively new superhero in Marvel comics’ catalogue of superpowered humans. The brainchild of Marvel editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie, Kamala is Marvel’s first Muslim character to headline her own comic book.

Originally, the moniker of Ms. Marvel belonged to Carol Danvers. However, she is not the same character, or has the same power-set as Carol, who is played in the cinematic universe by Brie Larson. Making her debut in Captain Marvel, issue 14 in 2013, and six months later, starring in her solo comic, Ms. Marvel, Kamala is a polymorph — she can elongate her body, change her size and even morph into people. Think of her as a blend of Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four and Ant-Man from Avengers.

What makes Kamala truly distinct is that she is a teenager with an American-Pakistani heritage. Living in Jersey City, Kamala is an equivalent of Peter Parker — she’s a young girl from middle class/lower-middle class society (Parker was from Queens), who has yet to figure herself out, and who is thrust into the world of super-heroics.

Also, for once, the character’s religion and ethnicity are not used as a crux or impediment.

Amanat, herself an American-Pakistani, was born in Jersey City and, given the character’s comic-book history, the relevance of having a Muslim and Pakistani creative pool was not lost on Marvel Studios.

The show pushes the envelope when it comes to racial diversity; it’s not just about “brown skins”. Ms. Marvel has a strong representation of Pakistani talent.

Other than Sharmeen, who is helming two episodes (the other four episodes are directed by other directors), the series is ‘created’ (ie. developed) for Disney+ by Bisha K. Ali, a British-Pakistani comedian and screenwriter (she wrote Loki’s episode Lamentis), and headlines Iman Vellani, a Canadian-Pakistani, as Kamala.

Pakistan’s own homegrown talent also has quite a bit of visibility in the marquee, Icon has learned through official and unofficial sources.

Receiving official press statements by HKC, Icon has proof that the roster includes Vellani, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Fawad Khan, Laurel Marsden, Arian Moayed, Adaku Ononogbo, Alysia Reiner, Azhar Usman, Laith Nakli, Nimra Bucha, Travina Springer and Aramis Knight.

The list almost kills speculations by officially acknowledging Nimra Buccha and Fawad Khan’s involvement in the series. Mehwish Hayat’s involvement, however, has not been acknowledged nor denied by either Sharmeen or Hammad, and no actor, be it Mehwish Hayat, Fawad Khan or Nimra Buccha, have gotten back to Icon with any confirmation, presumably because of the studio’s iron-clad contracts.

A little legwork (well, phone work) via this writer’s own sources have verified that Mehwish has a prominent role in the series — so, count this as an unofficial confirmation, until the actress finally shows up in an episode. Nimra Buccha apparently has an even more juicy role, we hear, as the main villain.

What characters these actors — officially announced, or otherwise — are playing, remain ambiguous, and again, neither Sharmeen nor Hammad have given an iota of information to this publication (because of the iron-clad contracts, one assumes).

Sharmeen and Hammad, however, believe that this is a moment of celebration for Pakistan. With Ms. Marvel, Pakistan is finally represented in a fair, unpolitical, uncontroversial light. Like this writer wrote above, the project is not just about the celebration of a racial inclusivity — it is about the inclusivity of a country. The opportunity to be a part of such a project was just too good to pass, Sharmeen tells Icon.

Primarily a documentary filmmaker, Sharmeen has been dabbling a little bit with narrative-work since the 3 Bahadur films and Sitara, she explains, but for the most part the producer-director wanted to “stay true to my ethos” by telling stories that matter, that make people think, and change the way we see issues.

Then sometime in 2020, she found out that Ms. Marvel was looking for directors.

“For the first time I thought to myself: this is a project I would love to be a part of because it is a story that matters. [Kamala] is brown, she is South Asian, she has Pakistani roots and she’s a Muslim,” Sharmeen said, adding that Marvel’s decision to add a superhero like Kamala gives “brown girls, minorities, and so many people around that world a chance to see a reflection of themselves in the character.”

“More importantly,” Sharmeen adds, “as a Pakistani woman I know the importance of having representation of language, food, clothes, music [in a big project like Ms. Marvel], and how that can help shape the world’s perspective of a culture and country.”

In a big studio enterprise, where everything is planned to a T, how does one find their voice, I enquire.

As far as creative inputs go, Marvel Studios gave her carte blanche, she tells me. The director scouted her locations, worked with VFX, stunt crews and second unit directors when it came to the look and feel of her scenes, and how she saw a particular power play out.

“The most important thing that Marvel did was put me with a team of extremely talented people who had worked in the business, who knew Marvel really well,” Sharmeen explains (her second unit director was Gary Powell, whose filmography includes Morbius, Ready Player One, Spectre and Skyfall).

Her “orientation” with Marvel came in the three-month long pre-production stage, where she spent a lot of time with each production department, informing them about what she thought they should do in terms of representing Pakistani culture and, in turn, being informed on what was possible, and how her ideas could be incorporated.

From the get-go, production designer Christopher Glass was very attuned to the differences between Pakistani and Indian cultures, even though the cultures overlap in South Asian homes in places such as Jersey City.

“The colours in the wall-hangings, the decor that exist on sets, that is what you find in the Pakistani middle class living in New Jersey,” Sharmeen explains. The costumes, by Arjun Bhasin, are also extremely authentic to Pakistani, and Pakistani immigrants’, culture.

“Arjun has done a wonderful job in creating that sort of dichotomy. Once you are an immigrant and living in Jersey, you are also influenced by cultures from India and Bangladesh. You pick up your sweets from Bengali sweet makers, you buy something from an Indian shop, and I think that authentic depiction of cultures is beautiful, because this is a story about being a Muslim, Pakistani immigrant in Jersey, but it’s also about being South Asian.”

Talking about Iman Vellani, Sharmeen says that “she is Kamala Khan — she lights up the screen when you see her. She brings an authentic voice as a first-generation Pakistani immigrant to North America, and her experiences are very similar to Kamala’s experiences.”

Readers of the comic-book can understand that aspect, but viewers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can appreciate the details when the series comes to Pakistani cinemas. For once, the story is not just about cheering for the heroes; it’s about representing a culture and country to the world.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, May 22nd, 2022

CANNES QUEER PALM AWARD

Saim Sadiq's Joyland wins Pakistan's first-ever Cannes honour with Un Certain Regard Jury Prize

This is Pakistan's first-ever competitive entry at Cannes.




Joyland, a Pakistani movie featuring a daring portrait of a transgender dancer in the country, on Friday won the Cannes Queer Palm prize for best LGBT, “queer” or feminist-themed movie, the jury head told AFP. The film also won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard segment.

Joyland by director Saim Sadiq, a tale of sexual revolution, tells the story of the youngest son in a patriarchal family who is expected to produce a baby boy with his wife but joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for the troupe’s director, a trans woman.

It is the first-ever Pakistani competitive entry at the Cannes festival where it is part of the Un Certain Regard segment that focuses on young, innovative cinema talent. Un Certain Regard is a competition focused on art-house films that runs parallel to the main competition, the Palme d'Or, which will be announced on Saturday.

“It’s a very powerful film, that represents everything that we stand for,” jury head, French director Catherine Corsini said.

“Joyland will echo across the world,” Corsini said. “It has strong characters who are both complex and real. Nothing is distorted. We were blown away by this film.”

Joyland beat off several other strong entries, including Close by Belgian director Lukas Dhont and Tchaikovsky’s Wife by Kirill Serebrennikov, both hot contenders for the Cannes Festival’s top award Palme d’Or which will be announced on Saturday.




Joyland left Cannes audiences slack-jawed and admiring and got a standing ovation from the opening night’s crowd.

The film stars Sarwat Gilani, Sania Saeed, Ali Junejo, Alina Khan and Rasti Farooq.“It felt like the hard work that people do, the struggles that we face as artists in Pakistan, they’ve all come to be worth it,” Gilani told Reuters on Tuesday after the standing ovation.

“It’s not just about a love story anymore. It’s about real-time issues, real life issues that we all go through,” she said. “Having a woman, a trans, represent that sector of the society, I think it’s a really good step in the direction where we can say we can write progressive stories.”

Here's what the international press has to say about Pakistani film Joyland

PUBLISHED 24 MAY, 2022

Photo: Saim Sadiq/Instagram


Saim Sadiq’s Joyland, the first Pakistani film to be screened at Cannes, is riding a success high. The selection alone was enough of an achievement but the movie worked its magic and received a standing ovation at the premiere. And the international media has great things to say about it.

Described as a "daring" film, Joyland was picked for the Un Certain Regard category at the film festival. It is the story of an effeminate married man who falls for a transgender woman, which raises the tension between the conventional image his family wants him to fall into and the freedom he discovers to live a life of his choosing.

The movie has gained positive reviews by international publications. Here are some excerpts from those reviews.

Cannes Review: Saim Sadiq’s Joyland — Deadline

"Joyland has a vivid sense of place, created not so much by its geographical backdrop as its characters. There’s an attention to detail in the rituals of daily life, whether it’s family celebrations or the rehearsals of the dance group. Mostly restrained emotionally, this packs an unexpected gut punch towards the end of the film, where it shifts focus to a deserving subject and drops another key character.

Presumably that’s meant to reflect the perspective of the protagonist, though it does leave some stories up in the air. But Joyland remains a thoughtful, well performed and engrossing drama set in a culture that’s shifting, and not always with ease."

To read more, click here.

Joyland: Film Review | Cannes 2022 — The Hollywood Reporter

"Joyland is a family saga, one that Sadiq uses to observe how gender norms constrict, and then asphyxiate, individuals. The Ranas feel trapped — by respectability, by family, by vague notions of honour. Bound by their duty to roles they quietly question, the members of this clan slowly suffer under the weight of obligation and expectations. What happens to them — individually and collectively — is a process that Sadiq’s film chronicles with aching consideration.

As Joyland heads toward its end, the film grows increasingly moving. Secrets and their attendant lies collapse under pressure. The weight of what’s left unsaid strangles interactions. The Ranas can no longer afford to be delusional — their survival depends on it."

To read more, click here.

Joyland Review: A daring queer Pakistani drama about desire — The Indie Wire

"The film’s 4:3 aspect ratio forces them into each other’s orbits in carefully composed tableus, and forces them to exist not just as individuals — whose joys and suppressed sorrows define them in equal measure — but as parts of a larger, fragile social fabric that feels like it could snap at any moment.

The frame moves slowly, if at all, but it always brims with physical and emotional energy; in Joyland, there’s always something in the ether, whether embodied by dazzling displays of light as characters move across stages and club floors, or by breathtaking silences as they begin to figure each other out, and figure out themselves."

To read more, click here.

Joyland: Cannes Review — Screen Daily

"Transgression becomes a means of liberation in Joyland, writer-director Sadiq’s assured first feature which explores the tensions within a Pakistani family enslaved by old-fashioned notions of gender and duty. Sadiq’s screenplay navigates a complex web of secrets and lies, pressures and prejudices to create a soulful human drama intent on challenging narrow minds. Said to be the first Pakistani film to play at Cannes, Joyland should make an emotional connection with audiences on the Croisette and far beyond."

To read more, click here.

BACKGROUNDER

OVER 20 YEARS OF NUKES: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?

Ejaz Haider 


LONG READ

This article was originally published in Dawn on May 27, 2018.

A score and day ago from today, Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests at Ras Koh, Chagai, codenamed Chagai-I. Two days later, Pakistan conducted another test, this time in Kharan, codenamed Chagai-II. With six tests done on May 28 and May 30, 1998, Pakistan completed its hot-test validation of devices of different designs.

Since then, Pakistan has not hot-tested any other nuclear device, though it has steadily improved its missile capability, the most reliable carriers for nuclear warheads.

Earlier, on May 11 and 13, India had conducted five tests. Codenamed Pokhran II, India tested three devices: Shakti 1, 2 and 3. The world was shocked while India celebrated. India’s home minister L.K. Advani warned Pakistan that the strategic balance in the region had changed. Another leader, Krishan Lal Sharma, was quoted as saying that India was “now in a position to take control of Azad Kashmir.”

Pakistan’s decision to test was made after a flurry of meetings over several days, involving the military leadership and civilian principals. There was immense pressure from the United States for Pakistan not to carry out tests. There were some small carrots and there was the big stick. Pakistan’s economy was fragile with just three months of import cover. Questions were raised about how sanctions would impact the economy. Testing was a choice between taking an economic hit for responding to Indian tests or losing the credibility of Pakistan’s deterrent by staying the hand. It was a Catch-22 situation.

May 28 marks a full two decades since Pakistan became a declared nuclear weapons state

Several factors at the time made it a far from easy choice. There were sublime moments where issues of higher strategy were discussed, and there were ridiculous moments where decision-makers had to carry the cross of nuclear metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s ambition and ego.

Pakistan eventually detonated the bombs and the sanctions regime automatically kicked into play against both countries.

But we were told that Pakistan was now secure and invincible. The cost, in the near-term, was worth it.

Fast forward to May 4, 2011. A group of journalists met then-Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Kayani was accompanied by the Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Waheed Arshad, DG-ISI Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha and DG-ISPR Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. Two days earlier, US Navy Seals had raided a compound in Abbottabad, flying in on stealth helicopters, found and killed Osama bin Laden and returned without the radars picking up their ingress and egress.

We were seething. Kayani had to field tough, angry questions. But one response has since stayed with me. When asked pointedly what his first thoughts were when he got to know of the American raid, he replied, “I thought they had come to get our nuclear weapons.”

The capability that was supposed to have secured Pakistan, had become insecure itself. It did not prevent the Americans from violating Pakistan’s sovereign air and land space. Since 1998, there have been other crisis points between India and Pakistan. Three stand out: Kargil (1999), the Twin Peak crisis (2001-02) and the Mumbai attack (2008).

There are two obvious questions. Are we more secure now than we were before we credibly tested our nuclear weapons capability? Has the possession of nuclear weapons added value to Pakistan’s strategic importance?

How Have We Fared?

There are two ways of answering these questions. One is to focus purely on nuclear weapons and the deterrence they offer. The other is to take a more holistic approach to security. One can either stick to these two frameworks as two different ways of looking at the issue or, having defined and analysed security in and through the respective frameworks, attempt to reconcile them: i.e., look at nuclear weapons in a broader perspective. If by deterrence we mean preventing an all-out, inter-state war, it will be safe to assert that the capability has managed it well — so far.

There’s general agreement among deterrence-optimists that despite some very serious crises between India and Pakistan since May ’98, there has been no all-out war, and that is a testament to the viability of deterrence in South Asia.

This view was also voiced by Indian General Shankar Roy Chaudhry who said that if Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons, on at least two occasions — the parliament attack in 2001 and Mumbai attacks in 2008 — India would have attacked Pakistan. It’s quite another thing that India did mobilise in December, 2001 for 10 months, and then war-gamed the scenarios to realise that an offensive would not gain its objectives.

Also, while India took the lead in mobilising, Pakistan had already mobilised because of shorter interior lines. That said, to quote a former Strategic Plans Division (SPD) official, nuclear weapons are “no panacea for all situations that could destabilise societies.”

Most experts agree with the proposition that deterrence in South Asia is no different from traditional deterrence, i.e., in the absence of effective diplomacy, engagement and resolution of disputes, the increasing frequency of sub-conventional conflict is a consequence of stability at the strategic level. As Dr Naeem Salik, former brigadier and second director of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at Strategic Plans Division — which looks after Pakistan’s nukes — put it, “India has not been able to actualise the conventional war option although they have toyed with limited war scenarios.” Salik also flagged the point in my question: “While some people may not concede this, the classic stability-instability dilemma is at play in South Asia as well.”

Read: Pakistan, India expanding nuclear arsenals as global stockpiles decrease: report
Deterrence Stability Vs. Crisis Instability

One of the paradoxes of stability at the strategic level is that it provides the space to adversaries to create instability at lower levels of conflict.

The history of warfare is the story of the victor winning through better weapons, better operational strategies or a combination of both.

Bernard Brodie opens his Strategy in the Missile Age with a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost. After the first day of the great war in Heaven, the rebellious angels gather for the next move. Satan is convinced that the grievous injury they have suffered is owed to inferiority in weapons: “... Perhaps more valid armes/Weapons more violent, when next we meet/May serve to better us, and worse our foes/Or equal what between us made the odds/In Nature none...”

It’s an apt beginning to a book about nuclear weapons and missiles. After hearing of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Brodie is reported to have said to his wife, “Everything I have written so far has become redundant.” Later, in The Absolute Weapon, he summarised the situation in these words: “Thus far, the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on, its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other purpose.”

This is terribly important to understand and underpin because the acquisition and possession of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems are wedded to the concept of deterrence. At its very basic, deterrence is about mutual vulnerability. Both sides are vulnerable to unacceptable punishment and, therefore, neither must do or attempt to do something that would mean annihilation. This is what Satan means when he says, “Or equal what between us made the odds…”

One should think that the possession of nuclear weapons, by the logic of the balance of terror, should put an end to conflict by ending the possibility of war. But it doesn’t work that way.

Military personnel stand beside short-range surface-to-surface missile Nasr

 during the Pakistan Day parade in Islamabad in 2015 | AFP

During the Cold War, while the Permanent Five, also the nuclear-haves, were attempting to curb horizontal proliferation, the two superpowers, the US and the USSR, had embarked on vertical proliferation which saw them develop weapons and missiles in the thousands.

Both attempted, initially, to devise strategies to win a nuclear war. By the ‘70s, however, they had realised that direct confrontation was inadvisable. So, while the centre in Central Europe held, they fought each other through proxies in the periphery: Africa, Latin America, Indo-China etc. This is what threw up the term ‘instability-stability paradox’, the concept that when States X and Y have nuclear weapons, they will avoid direct hot confrontation but find space for minor, conventional or sub-conventional conflicts.

India and Pakistan have evidenced the same trajectory since May 1998. Scholars such as Lebow, Stein and Jervis believe that, “When discussing deterrence, it is important to distinguish between the theory of deterrence and the strategy of deterrence.” In other words, while the theory posits that “deterrence is an attempt to influence another actor’s assessment of its interests,” the strategy works in and through the idea that the adversary is hostile and will likely act if an opportunity arises.

This then requires plugging all the gaps: improving and diversifying warhead designs, miniaturising them, testing different missiles that will carry the warheads, improving the accuracy of missiles and putting multiple warheads on them to move from countervalue targeting (a euphemism for destroying cities) to counterforce strategies (hitting hard military targets accurately), devising strategies to fight in ways that will not force the adversary to raise the stakes, and so on.

Unsurprisingly, strategies to fight wars under the nuclear overhang have generated a large corpus of literature. But for a Pakistani (and Indian) citizen, the question of security and deterrence rests outside the strict confines of nuclear deterrence theory. Thousands of civilians have either died or been injured or maimed in the war the state has been fighting since 2002. Telling them that nuclear weapons have secured them by deterring India is a tough sell.

What good is deterrence if people die every day and commuters have to encounter checkpoints everywhere?

In other words, what does deterrence mean in the case of South Asia, especially if it has failed to constrain the two sides in exploring conflict options at the conventional and sub-conventional levels?

This is an interesting point because it serves to distinguish ‘deterrence stability’ from ‘crisis stability’. Put another way, while nuclear weapons have served to create top-line stability, they have also created the space for India and Pakistan to resort to other modes of conflict that threaten to destabilise them.

Corollary: Nuclear weapons will fail to create overall stability if a state seeks to resort to conflict at a level below the nuclear threshold. There will be no big wars but small fires can be lit, taking advantage of top-end stability induced by nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Deterrence and Non-linear Conflict

Both India and Pakistan are embroiled in non-linear wars, waged on their soils and fought through proxies. India has also been preparing for short, sharp conventional strikes through concepts such as Cold Start Doctrine (CSD) — since renamed Pro-Active Operations (PAO). The idea is to blunt Pakistan’s advantage of shorter interior lines by placing independent battle groups (fighting and support arms) in forward locations so they can be launched quickly and at short notice. India has also conducted exercises to validate the concept. It’s still not fully capable of launching such operations but is working towards it. Pakistan, for its part, has prepared itself by placing some fighting formations in forward locations and by validating its air-land response through a series of military exercises codenamed Azm-e Nau [a new beginning].

Simultaneously, Pakistan has developed for quick induction a nuclear-capable Nasr missile to plug the gap. The SPD came up with the term “full-spectrum deterrence.” Debating the utility of Nasr is outside the scope of this essay but suffice to say that some of us remain unconvinced about its employment. Nonetheless, SPD claims that Nasr is not a war-fighting tactical nuclear delivery system but part of the strategic deterrent at the tactical level, given India’s CSD/PAO concepts.

In other words, a state fighting low-intensity conflict cannot secure itself against those threats by developing and advancing its nuclear-weapons capability. Its soldiers and citizens will continue to die fighting a different kind of war. In fact — and that is deeply ironic — such internal instability can also threaten the security of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Measures will have to be taken to ensure the physical security of weapons and their storage sites. At that point, nuclear weapons add another dimension to the security dilemma.

The SPD has a dedicated force of nearly 25,000 personnel to secure nuclear sites and other infrastructure. The safety of the warheads is built into their design. Even so, it is clear that we now need to safeguard the weapons that are supposed to have freed us from the worry of another state aggressing against us.

Yet another issue pertains to numbers. How much is enough? Pakistan describes its programme as aiming for ‘credible minimum deterrence’ (CMD). Put this way, it should be obvious that CMD is a fluid concept and responds to what the adversary is doing. In other words, it’s the credible part that’s important.

Former Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, here witnessing training activities of Army Air Defence units at Muzaffargarh Ranges, initially thought the Abbottabad raid was about grabbing Pakistan’s nukes | AFP

But that also means that “minimum” would be any number that’s considered credible at any given point on the trajectory.

So, how does one cap numbers, evolving technologies and their demonstration?

Put this question to SPD and they will say that there has been a conscious effort to keep the numbers in accordance with assessed needs and there is indeed an emphasis on ‘minimum’ in the Pakistani notion of CMD. That said, Pakistan is compelled to react to developments on the Indian side. SPD officials also point to the fact that Pakistan is not resorting to Ballistic Missile Defence technology even though India has already embarked on developing and procuring such a shield. Pakistan also proposed a Strategic Restraint Regime in South Asia in 2004. “That remains on the table and includes nuclear and missile restraint regimes and conventional balance,” says a former senior SPD official.

Salik, however, thinks the biggest practitioner of minimum deterrence, China, has maintained a steady level of 250 warheads. “I don’t think Pakistan would need to cross 200,” he says. “Moreover, the addition of a maritime leg, with all its attendant complications, would ease pressure on the need to build up numbers to cater for preemptive strikes.”

What does this mean?

A few things are obvious: deterrence stability remains hostage to crisis instability. Both India and Pakistan think there’s space below the nuclear umbrella for other modes of conflict. Both are engaged in non-linear war that has its own costs. Deterrence itself could fail if one adversary miscalculates the commitment of the other, which is also tied up with domestic political compulsions. Nuclear weapons can deter a bigger war, all other things being equal, but offer no defence against other types of violence that can increase insecurity to a prohibitive level.

Going back to the two levels of analysis, it appears that for the common citizen, that is a far more important concern than Pakistan’s ability to deter India from embarking on a larger military adventure.

Moeed Yusuf has argued in his recent book, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia that traditional deterrence models are limited in regional nuclear contexts where crises will always pull in third parties. His book validates its finding through case studies of Kargil, the Twin Peak crisis and the Mumbai attack.

But that again leads to the problem of the regional adversaries continuing to operate below the nuclear level, confident that (a) deterrence will hold at the top and (b) third parties will intervene early into a crisis situation.

It should be clear that while experts will insist on looking at deterrence strictly in and through the nuclear framework, citizens are more concerned about the costs of non-linear war. Any credible analysis, therefore, must reconcile the two frameworks. Nuclear weapons can only do so much, but no more.

What was supposed to give Pakistan a psychological assurance has ended up making it psychologically vulnerable. It has the warheads and the delivery vehicles, but the sense of vulnerability remains. If we want to add any value to the capability, that mindset must undergo a change, resulting in policies that seek to enhance security through non-military strategies.

Also, while India has added value to its capability by getting into a strategic partnership with the US and has secured a berth in three of the four international export control regimes — Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group (AG) and the Wassenaar Arrangement — and is de facto also close to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (ironically, put together after India’s ’74 test), Pakistan remains outside of these arrangements. Reason: Entry into these regimes are benchmarked for reasons other than nuclear-weapons capability. Corollary: nukes alone do not make a state interest the world. If anything, they make the world worry more about a state that already worries the world.

Pakistan needs to retain its nuclear capability, for sure. But, equally, it needs to appreciate that nuclear capability works in tandem with other elements of national power. The Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons when it came apart because nukes were just a fraction of what had kept it together. The SPD has become a club that discourages outside debate. That must change. Club-ness is incestuous and must never be encouraged.

As in the case of the US and the USSR, technology begins to derive strategy. This point was flagged as early as 1970 by Ralph Lapp in his book, Arms Beyond Doubt: The Tyranny of Weapons Technology. Although much more slowly, but that is happening here, too. SPD and the scientific enclave cannot be allowed to carry on without external conceptual auditing. There’s also the need to revisit the National Command Authority Act for more civilian oversight. The last time someone tried to table a bill to tweak the NCA Act, he was pressured to the point where he gave up. He was a senator and his name is Farhatullah Babar.

Having reached the 20th year from the moment we took out our capability from the basement and put it on the shelf, we are at a stage where we need to debate what value has been added in terms of improving overall security and what significance can be assigned to the nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

Finally, though not least, we need to be aware of what Charles Perrow called the ‘normal accidents’ theory, a concept that began with his investigations into the Three Mile Island Reactor accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. High-end, tightly-coupled technologies are prone to normal accidents. No one seems to be aware of this and there’s no discussion of this. That must change.

The world is also now exposed to cyber attacks. Cybersecurity expert Adam Segal calls it ‘the hacked world order’. The threat has already spawned cybersecurity literature and it is growing. Whenever India and Pakistan begin to deploy their nuclear arsenals, they will be exposed to cyber threats, the rising costs of deployment and sea-based second strike capabilities. This is the next phase, but so far, there’s not much debate about it. One reason for that is the narrative built around the nuclear capability: it’s something to be celebrated, not discussed. That is very different from how these issues were debated in the United States.

Today, Pakistan is a certified nuclear-weapon state. But policies from the past have added to other vulnerabilities, even as nuclearisation has sought to address the overarching concern of India attacking and defeating Pakistan. To that extent, nuclear weapons have done their job. But more needs to be done, given other threats, and that is beyond the remit and effectiveness of nuclear weapons. In fact, the fragility of the state serves to pose a threat to the very arsenal that is supposed to keep the state secure.

We have reached a point where the nuclear capability secures us from all-out aggression, but precisely for that reason, exposes us to low-intensity violence at levels below the nuclear threshold. In other words, we have to understand clearly the limits of this capability: it can secure us from a certain kind of violence but is unable to stem violence altogether. If anything, it might actually encourage conflict at the lower rungs while holding the balance of terror at the top-end. Such are the ironies we have to live with.

The writer is executive editor at Indus News and writes on defence and security. He tweets @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 27th, 2018

Speech and censorship

Usama Khilji

Published May 28, 2022 - 

PAKISTAN’S ranking fell a further 12 places on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index released earlier this month. This has to be a point of introspection for Pakistanis, especially those who wield power in the civil-military bureaucracy as well as political leaders in the recent merry-go-round of governments.

The state of the press during the rule of the PTI was dismal, to put it mildly. Attacking journalists with impunity was routine; legal proposals such as the PMDA Ordinance and Peca Amendment Ordinance were draconian in content; and the online disinformation and hate campaigns egged on by the PTI’s official accounts as well as its leaders were condemnable.

The only good move was the National Assembly’s passage of the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals’ Act, 2021. The bill had been put forward by the Ministry of Human Rights, which had held consultations with media stakeholders. However, it was countered by draconian measures through ordinances that put into question the overall intent of the government, especially the former law ministry.

The positive part was the vocal condemnation of these measures by opposition parties that form the government now. They engaged with civil society and the media and invoked the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution in their speeches, press releases, parliamentary engagements as well as on social media.

It is now time for the self-described national government, especially the PML-N and PPP, to walk the talk.

It is time for the government to walk the talk and show that it supports media freedom.

The attempts by the deep state to bring back draconian legal instruments that the Islamabad High Court had struck down in February are clear. The FIA has been persistent in its demand for more powers to take action under the draconian Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. This was obvious in the surprise appeal from the FIA in the Supreme Court against the Islamabad High Court order quashing the Peca Amendment Ordinance and the criminal defamation clause of Peca 2016.

However, the coalition government was quick to instruct the FIA to take back the appeal and assert its authority over the investigation agency, with Federal Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb swiftly issuing a statement reaffirming the government’s commitment to not appeal the IHC judgement. Such steps are encouraging, and perhaps indicate that the PML-N is learning from its mistake of not conducting meaningful stakeholder consultations when it first promulgated Peca in 2015/2016.

What is still awaited is consistent biannual reporting on the progress made on the implementation of Peca by the FIA to parliament. This reporting has apparently taken place three times despite six years having passed since the law came into effect. There should have been at least 11 progress reports by now. If the FIA has the resources and time to challenge a high court decision on Peca in the Supreme Court, perhaps it should also have the capacity to submit the reports to parliament that it is bound to do under the law. Perhaps further amendments to the law should also include penalties for the FIA in case of failure to fulfil its duty of reporting to parliament. The oversight of civilian and military agencies is critical for there to be democratic accountability.

Editorial: Revisiting media laws

The next challenge is the welcome decision by the Islamabad High Court to suspend social media rules and recommend to parliament to revisit Section 37 of Peca as well as the rules under it that were promulgated by the PTI-led government. The rules were prima facie unconstitutional. They went beyond the ambit of what the primary Peca legislation required. They empowered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority disproportionately by assigning to it the role of judge, jury and executioner, and gave it unnecessary and overbroad powers of censorship whereby it could censor a vast range of content under very vague definitions that could be excessively abused. The abuse was already apparent in the transparency reports of social media companies in terms of censorship requests sent by the PTA.

During the past two months, the PTA has also been exerting undue pressure on social media companies to open up local offices in Pakistan, which is clearly intentioned to be a way through which maximum pressure can be exerted on social media companies to censor content on platforms the state finds ‘objectionable’. It is also important to notice the consistent kind of pressure for censorship from the state despite the change in government, and perhaps advantage being taken of the power vacuum created by the transition of government.

There have also been troubling measures taken by the state related to the media and political parties amidst PTI’s attempts to march to the capital against what it sees as collusion between the establishment and the new government led by the PML-N.

A game of musical chairs appears to be going on, not only with respect to political parties wanting to gain the favour of the establishment, but also media groups that are critical of the political party in power. Geo was relegated to virtually last position in the channel lists when the PTI was in power, and now ARY is facing a similar dilemma.

Cases have been registered against journalists who are critical of the state; several journalists were taken off air when the PTI was in power for being critical of the state, while some were temporarily ‘disappeared’ and several activists and journalists forced into exile.

There is also confusion as to who is calling the shots: is it the establishment or the current civilian set-up? Are civilian law-enforcement institutions being used by the establishment to cover up its persecution of critics, or is the PML-N-led government leading this exercise in harassment? Who is directing the cable operators? Who is leading the blockading of protest routes? There is only one beneficiary of this confusion — and it is not the civilian political parties that must draw collective red lines on engagement with the establishment.

The writer is director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.
Twitter: @UsamaKhilji
Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2022

G7 nations vow to stop fossil-fuel financing abroad by end of year
AFP Published May 28, 2022 -

Representatives of member countries attend a news conference during the meeting of the G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers during the German G7 Presidency at the EUREF-Campus in Berlin, Germany on May 27, 2022. — Reuters

BERLIN: Japan for the first time has joined fellow members of the Group of Seven industrialised nations in pledging to end public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of the year to help combat global warming.

“We commit to end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022,” G7 energy and climate ministers said in a joint statement following talks in Berlin on Friday.

The term “unabated” refers to projects that do not employ techniques to offset some of the pollution caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

Ending subsidies for the international fossil fuel energy sector was already part of a series of commitments agreed to by around 20 countries at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Six of the G7 club of rich nations were among the signatories at the time -- Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the United States -- but Japan had resisted until now.

“It is good that Japan, the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, has now joined the other G7 countries in making a shared commitment to end overseas fossil fuel financing,” said Alden Meyer, senior associate at climate policy think tank E3G.

Friday’s pledge still allows for some “limited” exceptions of fossil-fuel financing so long as they are consistent with the 2015 Paris pact to curb global temperature increases. But Meyer said countries wishing to do so would face “a very stiff bar to clear”.

At their G7 talks, ministers also committed to largely end the use of fossil fuels in their electricity sectors by 2035, despite heavy tensions in the power market over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We further commit to a goal of achieving predominantly decarbonised electricity sectors by 2035,” they said.

To achieve this, member states promised to ramp up “the necessary technologies and policies for the clean energy transition” and accelerate the phase-out of coal.

The pledge was welcomed by environmental campaigners, at a time when the war in Ukraine has sent energy prices soaring and Western countries are scrambling to wean themselves off Russian imports.

“In a very difficult geopolitical situation, the G7 are united behind an end to fossil fuels by 2035 in the power sector. This is significant progress,” said David Ryfisch of the Germanwatch environmental group.

Speaking at the closing press conference, German Energy Minister Robert Habeck welcomed the pledges made by G7 nations, saying they sent a “strong signal for more climate protection”.

As well as a pledge to stop bankrolling fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of the year, Habeck highlighted the club’s agreement to ditch all “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by 2025.

“That we reward climate-damaging behaviour, either through direct subsidies or through tax advantages... is absurd and this absurdity has to stopped,” he told reporters.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in order to maintain the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, all financing of new fossil fuel projects must be stopped immediately.

The Oil Change International campaign group has calculated that between 2018 and 2020, G20 countries alone provided $188 billion in financing for overseas oil, coal and gas projects.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2022

G-7 pledges to phase out coal power but without fixing date

REUTERS
May 28, 2022 

From left, Kenichi Hosoda, Japan’s state minister of economy, trade and industry, Toshitaka Ooka, Japan’s state minister of the environment, German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, German Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck and Alok Sharma, president of the U.N. climate change conference COP 26, attend the closing news conference of the meeting of the G-7 Ministers for Climate, Energy and Environment in Berlin on May 27. (dpa via AP)

BERLIN--Ministers from the world's richest democracies agreed on Friday to work to phase out coal-powered energy, although they failed to set a date for doing so, and said the energy crunch brought on by Russia-Ukraine war should not derail efforts to fight climate change.

The commitment, published at the end of three days of Group of Seven (G-7) talks in Berlin, was weaker than a previous draft of the final communique seen by Reuters, which had included a target to end unabated coal power generation by 2030.

Sources familiar with the discussions said Japan and the United States had both indicated they could not support that date.

But the pledge still marked the first commitment from the G-7 countries to quit coal-fueled power. Coal is the most CO2-emitting fossil fuel and use of it needs to plummet if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The group met against the backdrop of spiraling energy costs and fuel supply worries due to the war in Ukraine. The conflict has triggered a scramble among some countries to buy more non-Russian fossil fuels and burn coal to cut their reliance on Russian supplies.

"Replacing fossil fuels from Russia has dominated the political debate and the actions of the government in the past weeks and months," German economy minister Robert Habeck said at a news conference.

"But it must be clear to us that the challenges of our political generation, limiting global warming, won't go away if we just concentrate on the present," he said. "Time is literally running out."

The G-7 also agreed to largely decarbonize their power sectors by 2035, and to stop public financing for "unabated" fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of this year, except in limited circumstances. "Unabated" refers to power plants that do not use technology to capture their emissions.

The communique made a commitment to a highly decarbonized road sector by 2030, including significantly increasing the sale, share and uptake of zero emission light duty vehicles.

The G-7 also aimed to start reporting publicly next year on how the countries are delivering on a past commitment to end "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.

SIGNIFICANT SHIFT

All G-7 countries except for Japan had made the finance pledge at the COP26 climate summit last year, and campaigners said it would be a significant shift if Japan - one of the world's biggest providers of finance for fossil fuel projects abroad - came on board.

Japan provided $10.9 billion for such projects on average per year from 2018 to 2020, with most of that spent on oil and gas, according to analysis by non-profit Oil Change International.

"If Japan implements this commitment with integrity, it will directly shift $11 billion a year from fossil fuels to clean energy and have a much larger indirect impact given Japan’s influence on other financiers in Asia and around the world," said Susanne Wong, Asia program manager at Oil Change.

By covering all fossil fuels, including oil and gas, the agreement goes further than a pledge made by G-20 countries last year to halt overseas financing for just coal.

The G-7 also pledged to take ambitious action against plastic pollution and to increase national efforts to conserve or protect at least 30% of their own coastal and marine areas by 2030.