Is Iran On the Verge of Another Revolution?
Analysis by Bobby Ghosh | Bloomberg
December 30, 2022
What to expect in 2023:Going into the new year, I’ll be keeping my eye on two stories that could dramatically change the geopolitics of the Middle East: the protests in Iran and the general election in Turkey. I’ll focus on the former here, and come back to the latter in a column soon.
The most important question about the Iranian protests is whether they can evolve into a full-blown revolution capable of toppling the Islamic Republic. Some argue that bridge has already been crossed: What began as sporadic demonstrations against the restrictive dress code for women — sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police — has long since evolved into full-throated calls for the downfall of the regime.
Three months after Amini’s death, the protests have lasted longer than any previous expressions of public dissent since the 1979 Islamic revolution that led to the creation of the theocratic state. In the past four decades, the political system installed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has left Iran isolated in world affairs, debilitated its economy and denied its people both economic opportunities and a political voice.
Unsurprisingly, the mostly young protesters want the entire edifice of that state dismantled. The regime’s heavy-handed crackdown — including mass imprisonment, rape, torture and executions — has not cowed them. If anything, their voices have grown more strident, their demands more insistent. It is the regime that is showing signs of strain: Diverting an aircraft to prevent the family of a famous soccer player from leaving the country, apparently because he is a prominent supporter of the protests, smacks of desperation. Calls for the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are now routine, as are the destruction of statues and posters of the regime’s heroes, such as the military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Khamenei, having himself played an important part in the events of four decades ago, can hardly have missed the recent parallels. This may explain his vague offer of compromise: The possible suspension of the morality police. Just as in 1979, the protesters have rejected the ruler’s eleventh-hour olive branch.
But to bring him down, the protesters will need to coopt some elements of the state; Khomenei was able to overthrow the Shah of Iran only after large sections of the armed forces mutinied. There have as yet been few signs of disgruntlement within the security apparatus, which is comprised of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military, the paramilitary Basij and the police.
But if we’ve learned any thing from the history of revolutions — including Iran’s own — it is that change can come slowly, and then all at once.
From the year behind us:Pakistan’s Floods May Reveal China as a Fair-Weather Friend: Islamabad has tried to switch allegiance from Washington to Beijing, but when it came to the crunch Chinese assistance was conspicuously lacking. For one thing, the government of President Xi Jingping was beset with problems of its own. For another, China simply hasn’t developed the state infrastructure and bureaucratic system to respond quickly to disasters abroad
An Unarmed Putin Wants a Culture War With the West: With his troops suffering humiliating reversals in Ukraine, the Russian president has been trying to rally international opinion behind him by retreading old anti-Western tropes from the Soviet era. But if anything, Moscow had more pomp as a cultural beacon under the USSR than it has soft power with Putin now.
Tunisia’s Democracy Is Collapsing. Biden Shouldn’t Just Stand By: Kais Saied’s consolidation of power has gone unchallenged by Western powers and by an American president who promised to make the promotion of democracy the leitmotif of his foreign policy. It is not too late to undo the damage.
US Should Brace for More Pushback From Erdogan: With Turkey’s economy in tatters and an election looming, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will need every distraction he can engineer. Anti-Western foreign policies are red meat to his base, so the US and Europe should expect more provocations in the months ahead.
An Indian Restaurant’s Rise Mirrors Asheville’s: Chai Pani, which serves Indian street food, is the most outstanding restaurant in the US this year. This is a testimony to both the evolution of American tastes and the rise of small cities like Asheville, NC.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. Previously, he was editor in chief at Hindustan Times, managing editor at Quartz and international editor at Time.
Sunday, January 01, 2023
The 'King' and the Queen: Bewitched by Pele, Elizabeth II made him a Knight
DECEMBER 31, 2022
Pele celebrates a goal.
Reuters file
SAO PAULO — In 2022, Britain lost its queen and Brazil its soccer 'king' — two giant figures of the 20th century who crossed paths at least twice over the years.
Former Pele team mate Gerson recalled one of those times in an interview with Reuters this week. The year was 1968, and Elizabeth was guest of honour at a soccer match at Rio de Janeiro's monumental Maracana stadium during an official visit to Brazil.
After the game, she presented Pele with a trophy.
"I was there," said Gerson, who won the 1970 World Cup with Brazil and also played against Pele's side in the 1968 game.
"It was a remarkable moment, having the queen at a soccer match was not usual — and here in Brazil it happened only once, exactly that game."
Gerson appeared in pictures next to Pele, the queen and her husband Prince Philip, and said he had a photo of the moment framed and put on display in his home.
Known as "O Rei," or "The King," Pele died on Thursday at the age of 82 following a battle with colon cancer, less than four months after Britain's longest-reigning monarch passed away aged 96.
Pele, who scored a goal in the friendly match that brought together the top players from the state of Sao Paulo and the best players of Rio de Janeiro, recalled the game when the queen died on Sept 8.
He said on Twitter he had admired Elizabeth ever since the first time he saw her in person, when "she came to Brazil to witness our love for football and experienced the magic of a packed Maracana."
Years later, in 1997, the queen honoured Pele with an honorary knighthood of the British Empire. He remembered the moment in an Instagram post in 2017 when he thanked "all the British people for their affection".
After the news of his death on Thursday, London's Wembley Stadium was lit up in the yellow and green colours of Brazil with a sign reading his name. The Prince and Princess of Wales shared a picture of the tribute on social media.
'A lot of pain': The battle of firefighters on Ukraine's frontline
Cécile FEUILLATRE
Sat, December 31, 2022
In the war-torn Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the chief of a small group of firefighters lines up his small team in front of the national flag, and wishes them a happy new year.
For the nine stationed permanently in the city centre fire station, it has been a year of war and fire. They are posted in the eastern region of Donetsk where Bakhmut has become the epicentre of fighting.
But their chief Oleksiy Migrin, jovial and good-natured, does not often complain.
"The year 2022 has been tough on a personal level, and tough for Ukraine," he tells the team.
"Take care of yourself, remember that your families are waiting for you. Next year we will win."
He rounds off his speech with a "Slava Ukrani!" ("Glory to Ukraine").
The firefighters are in one of the hotspots of fighting in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces -- and the Russian paramilitaries of the Wagner Group -- have been trying to seize the city for the last six months.
Inside the station, the men drink coffee near humanitarian aid boxes delivered from Kyiv, which are filled with duvets, medical kits, and cake.
There have been heavy losses on both sides here, and enormous destruction in Bakhmut, which had a population of some 70,000 before the war started in February 2022.
What was once "a pretty town full of flowers of trees" now looks like a wasteland.
- 'All they have left' -
"There is no longer any civilisation outside," says Nadya Petrova, who has been living for months in the back of her cellar.
According to the fire chief, thousands of civilians are still hanging on there -- possibly as many as 10,000 living in terrible conditions.
"They don't have the means to leave," he said. "Their destroyed houses, their cellars, that's all they have left."
The nine firefighters in the barracks can describe their daily routine in a few words: "De-mine, evacuate, put out fires, provide water, clear the rubble," he said.
Others come in to reinforce from across the region, but they are apprehensive about having too many people based in the same place.
"It's too dangerous," explains Nikita Nedylko, the second-in-command at the fire station barracks.
Eleven firefighters have been killed in the Donetsk region since the beginning of the Russian invasion, he said.
In Bakhmut, one of his own men was killed when a wall collapsed during a clearing operation after a bombardment.
Now the team do two-day rotations and then take a day out in "safer" towns a few miles away from the frontline.
- 'The hardest thing' -
Thirty-year-old Nedylko -- who is originally from Bakhmut and has a one-year-old son -- says one of the hardest things is coping with the emotional weight of their work in wartime.
"We've had a lot of pain, and suffering. We had no experience of that," he told AFP.
His family has retreated to Dnipro, about 260 kilometres (161 miles) west by car, where he goes every two months to see them.
He recalls a mother and her daughter they found embracing, dead under the rubble, and how they had to break the news to the father.
He says they have had to listen to the cries of people calling for help.
For Nedylko, the "slightest wrong move on our part" could cost a life.
"The hardest thing is to see people die before your eyes," he says. "The saddest thing is to see the children who have remained here."
cf/rox-jj/dhc
Cécile FEUILLATRE
Sat, December 31, 2022
In the war-torn Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the chief of a small group of firefighters lines up his small team in front of the national flag, and wishes them a happy new year.
For the nine stationed permanently in the city centre fire station, it has been a year of war and fire. They are posted in the eastern region of Donetsk where Bakhmut has become the epicentre of fighting.
But their chief Oleksiy Migrin, jovial and good-natured, does not often complain.
"The year 2022 has been tough on a personal level, and tough for Ukraine," he tells the team.
"Take care of yourself, remember that your families are waiting for you. Next year we will win."
He rounds off his speech with a "Slava Ukrani!" ("Glory to Ukraine").
The firefighters are in one of the hotspots of fighting in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces -- and the Russian paramilitaries of the Wagner Group -- have been trying to seize the city for the last six months.
Inside the station, the men drink coffee near humanitarian aid boxes delivered from Kyiv, which are filled with duvets, medical kits, and cake.
There have been heavy losses on both sides here, and enormous destruction in Bakhmut, which had a population of some 70,000 before the war started in February 2022.
What was once "a pretty town full of flowers of trees" now looks like a wasteland.
- 'All they have left' -
"There is no longer any civilisation outside," says Nadya Petrova, who has been living for months in the back of her cellar.
According to the fire chief, thousands of civilians are still hanging on there -- possibly as many as 10,000 living in terrible conditions.
"They don't have the means to leave," he said. "Their destroyed houses, their cellars, that's all they have left."
The nine firefighters in the barracks can describe their daily routine in a few words: "De-mine, evacuate, put out fires, provide water, clear the rubble," he said.
Others come in to reinforce from across the region, but they are apprehensive about having too many people based in the same place.
"It's too dangerous," explains Nikita Nedylko, the second-in-command at the fire station barracks.
Eleven firefighters have been killed in the Donetsk region since the beginning of the Russian invasion, he said.
In Bakhmut, one of his own men was killed when a wall collapsed during a clearing operation after a bombardment.
Now the team do two-day rotations and then take a day out in "safer" towns a few miles away from the frontline.
- 'The hardest thing' -
Thirty-year-old Nedylko -- who is originally from Bakhmut and has a one-year-old son -- says one of the hardest things is coping with the emotional weight of their work in wartime.
"We've had a lot of pain, and suffering. We had no experience of that," he told AFP.
His family has retreated to Dnipro, about 260 kilometres (161 miles) west by car, where he goes every two months to see them.
He recalls a mother and her daughter they found embracing, dead under the rubble, and how they had to break the news to the father.
He says they have had to listen to the cries of people calling for help.
For Nedylko, the "slightest wrong move on our part" could cost a life.
"The hardest thing is to see people die before your eyes," he says. "The saddest thing is to see the children who have remained here."
cf/rox-jj/dhc
What Pakistan stands to gain if Google opens shop
Abdul Moiz Malik
Abdul Moiz Malik
Published January 1, 2023
KARACHI: Governments over the past years have attempted to have social media companies maintain an on-ground presence in Pakistan.
They employed a carrot-and-stick approach — offering incentives of increased revenue and, when that failed, drafting legislation to force them into opening offices.
Over the years, officials claimed multiple times that companies have agreed to establish their presence in Pakistan, but nothing substantial came out of it.
Last month, it was reported that Google has decided to open a liaison or representative office in Pakistan.
The move was unlike the past claims, as the California, US-based search engine giant also obtained a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).
The government believes that the office will be established — most likely in Karachi — within the next few weeks.
Govt sees the move as a game changer, but experts are wary
For IT and Telecom Minister Syed Aminul Haque, this was the result of his ministry’s efforts spanning over three years.
Talking to Dawn, Mr Haque said the government had devised social media rules in 2020 and 2021 after taking local and international stakeholders on board.
The rules — Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules, 2020, and Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules, 2021 — mandated social media companies with over 500,000 followers to open an office in Pakistan within six months.
The rules were severely criticised and the Islamabad High Court ordered the government to revise them.
Now, the mandatory timeline of six months has been removed and the drafts are in the final phase of revision, the minister said.
What to expect?
The government initially wants Google to establish liaison offices in Karachi and Islamabad, Mr Haque told Dawn.
He said that as things progress, further developments will follow, like maintaining a larger team and the relocation of servers.
However, experts believe that expecting anything more than a liaison office would be far-fetched at this moment.
“I expect this to be a minimal-presence liaison office,” said Habibullah Khan, founder and CEO of Penumbra, a Karachi-based experience design studio. “I expect them [Google] to take their time opening the office, hiring a few people and very gradually increasing to a full-fledged office. They will drag it as long as they can.”
For Mr Khan, this was a “strategic move” as Google was “facing the pressure of consequences” and decided to open the office.
Google was contacted but the company did not have an immediate comment on the developments and the nature of the office.
Concerns
As the government presents the move as a success, there are widespread concerns about how the a company’s local office will embolden the government to stifle free speech and increase its ability to remove content.
The IT minister said the government seeks the removal of only three types of content: anti-Pakistan, anti-Islam and pornography. “We convinced them [Google] that local presence will help better negotiate on these issues.”
Digital rights expert Asad Beyg said it was yet to be seen if the social media companies are being covered under rules that were framed to force them to come to Pakistan.
In that case, Mr Beyg said, Pakistan only needs to look towards its neighbour India where the BJP-led government managed to exert control over social media companies like Twitter after threatening them with criminal liability under the law.
“If these companies operate in Pakistan, it has to be seen under what laws they are regulated,” he said.
However, the IT minister dismissed the possibility of a blanket ban and said he “staunchly” opposed any such move that hampers progress.
Citing the ban on YouTube in 2012, the minister said it caused “irreparable” damage to Pakistan’s digital economy.
The ban — for allegedly hosting blasphemous content — also led to legal complications for Google, which owns the video platform.
When the ban was challenged in the Lahore High Court, Google was ordered to send its representative for proceedings. However, the company refused to comply with the orders.
Yasser Latif Hamdani, who represented the petitioner (NGO Bytes for All) in the case, said he was surprised that Google decided to “submit itself to Pakistani laws”.
He told Dawn that under the laws, Google would be asked to censor content, at least to the extent of Pakistan, which will result in a legal dilemma.
“For example, will Google censor websites that describe Ahmadis as Muslim?” he asked, adding that with its presence in Pakistan, Google will be opening itself up to prosecution.
Benefits for businesses, creators
The IT minister said that a localised Google would also benefit Pakistani creators and businesses.
He claimed that creators would “multiply” their revenue and even start earning in dollars which would boost not only the digital economy but also the overall economy of the country.
However, the minister’s enthusiasm failed to find traction among experts and local content creators.
For Mr Khan of Penumbra, the benefits for Pakistan are “absolutely none”. He said that Google earns $150m-300m a year from Pakistan in ad revenue and over $30m from App Store and cloud revenue.
The company gives back around $70m to large publishers, almost all of whom manage holding companies outside Pakistan.
For content creators as well, the hope of any increase in their revenue will be a fallacy.
Talking to Dawn, comedian and YouTuber Junaid Akram said the only foreseeable benefit for local creators was a “single-point” line of communication in case of any dispute or monetisation issues.
The few benefits Mr Khan sees are purely “strategic”.
“Pakistan needs to digitise government and some strategic revenue value chains like taxes. By having a firm but fair relationship, Pakistan has the leverage to get concessions from Google on strategic support for digitisation,” he explained.
“This can extend to supporting innovation in local start-up ecosystem by providing cloud credits and other support.”
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023
KARACHI: Governments over the past years have attempted to have social media companies maintain an on-ground presence in Pakistan.
They employed a carrot-and-stick approach — offering incentives of increased revenue and, when that failed, drafting legislation to force them into opening offices.
Over the years, officials claimed multiple times that companies have agreed to establish their presence in Pakistan, but nothing substantial came out of it.
Last month, it was reported that Google has decided to open a liaison or representative office in Pakistan.
The move was unlike the past claims, as the California, US-based search engine giant also obtained a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).
The government believes that the office will be established — most likely in Karachi — within the next few weeks.
Govt sees the move as a game changer, but experts are wary
For IT and Telecom Minister Syed Aminul Haque, this was the result of his ministry’s efforts spanning over three years.
Talking to Dawn, Mr Haque said the government had devised social media rules in 2020 and 2021 after taking local and international stakeholders on board.
The rules — Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules, 2020, and Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules, 2021 — mandated social media companies with over 500,000 followers to open an office in Pakistan within six months.
The rules were severely criticised and the Islamabad High Court ordered the government to revise them.
Now, the mandatory timeline of six months has been removed and the drafts are in the final phase of revision, the minister said.
What to expect?
The government initially wants Google to establish liaison offices in Karachi and Islamabad, Mr Haque told Dawn.
He said that as things progress, further developments will follow, like maintaining a larger team and the relocation of servers.
However, experts believe that expecting anything more than a liaison office would be far-fetched at this moment.
“I expect this to be a minimal-presence liaison office,” said Habibullah Khan, founder and CEO of Penumbra, a Karachi-based experience design studio. “I expect them [Google] to take their time opening the office, hiring a few people and very gradually increasing to a full-fledged office. They will drag it as long as they can.”
For Mr Khan, this was a “strategic move” as Google was “facing the pressure of consequences” and decided to open the office.
Google was contacted but the company did not have an immediate comment on the developments and the nature of the office.
Concerns
As the government presents the move as a success, there are widespread concerns about how the a company’s local office will embolden the government to stifle free speech and increase its ability to remove content.
The IT minister said the government seeks the removal of only three types of content: anti-Pakistan, anti-Islam and pornography. “We convinced them [Google] that local presence will help better negotiate on these issues.”
Digital rights expert Asad Beyg said it was yet to be seen if the social media companies are being covered under rules that were framed to force them to come to Pakistan.
In that case, Mr Beyg said, Pakistan only needs to look towards its neighbour India where the BJP-led government managed to exert control over social media companies like Twitter after threatening them with criminal liability under the law.
“If these companies operate in Pakistan, it has to be seen under what laws they are regulated,” he said.
However, the IT minister dismissed the possibility of a blanket ban and said he “staunchly” opposed any such move that hampers progress.
Citing the ban on YouTube in 2012, the minister said it caused “irreparable” damage to Pakistan’s digital economy.
The ban — for allegedly hosting blasphemous content — also led to legal complications for Google, which owns the video platform.
When the ban was challenged in the Lahore High Court, Google was ordered to send its representative for proceedings. However, the company refused to comply with the orders.
Yasser Latif Hamdani, who represented the petitioner (NGO Bytes for All) in the case, said he was surprised that Google decided to “submit itself to Pakistani laws”.
He told Dawn that under the laws, Google would be asked to censor content, at least to the extent of Pakistan, which will result in a legal dilemma.
“For example, will Google censor websites that describe Ahmadis as Muslim?” he asked, adding that with its presence in Pakistan, Google will be opening itself up to prosecution.
Benefits for businesses, creators
The IT minister said that a localised Google would also benefit Pakistani creators and businesses.
He claimed that creators would “multiply” their revenue and even start earning in dollars which would boost not only the digital economy but also the overall economy of the country.
However, the minister’s enthusiasm failed to find traction among experts and local content creators.
For Mr Khan of Penumbra, the benefits for Pakistan are “absolutely none”. He said that Google earns $150m-300m a year from Pakistan in ad revenue and over $30m from App Store and cloud revenue.
The company gives back around $70m to large publishers, almost all of whom manage holding companies outside Pakistan.
For content creators as well, the hope of any increase in their revenue will be a fallacy.
Talking to Dawn, comedian and YouTuber Junaid Akram said the only foreseeable benefit for local creators was a “single-point” line of communication in case of any dispute or monetisation issues.
The few benefits Mr Khan sees are purely “strategic”.
“Pakistan needs to digitise government and some strategic revenue value chains like taxes. By having a firm but fair relationship, Pakistan has the leverage to get concessions from Google on strategic support for digitisation,” he explained.
“This can extend to supporting innovation in local start-up ecosystem by providing cloud credits and other support.”
Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023
Rising costs, connectivity outages — a tough year for IT sector
Kalbe Ali Published January 1, 2023
ISLAMABAD: It was a tough year for the IT sector, with telecom operators and users taking the brunt, especially after a change of government in April and the belt-tightening that followed.
Call and internet rates jumped and yet the service quality worsened and speeds slowed in 2022. Network outages intensified thanks to ‘connectivity load-shedding’ in the wake of hours-long power outages and rising fuel costs.
Among the few silver linings was the cloud-first policy introduced in February that sought to shift federal public service entities away from on-premise infrastructure.
However, after hitting that cloud, the ministry asked for the moon when it set a $5 billion export target for IT exports, a figure stakeholders say seems to be anything but achievable.
One bright spot in the otherwise gloom-ridden IT landscape was the export of 120,000 mobile phone sets to various markets in the Middle East and Africa.
Telcos took the brunt in 2022 as rates jumped and service quality worsened
However, the CEO of Inovi Telecom, the company that shipped the consignment last month, said such one-time big-ticket orders wouldn’t work and stressed that regular export orders were essential for the sector’s growth.
To put it in context, out of the 31 mobile phone-making licence holders in Pakistan, Inovi is the only local company to have exported mobile sets.
Its CEO, Zeeshan Mian Noor, told Dawn that the mobile industry had been given a quota of letters of credit (LCs) amounting to $83 million a year to import key components for mobile phone set assembly.
However, “the fact is that raw material worth $185m is required to meet the demand for mobile sets in the Pakistani market”, he said, adding that exporting phones was a distant dream when manufacturers were unable to meet the demand from local buyers.
Telecom trouble
The telecom industry said it was the worst hit in 2022 as operating expenses jumped by around 20 per cent year-on-year, whereas the growth of the industry’s revenue failed to hit even double digits.
The sector has repeatedly insisted that Pakistan has one of the highest levels of taxation, interest rates and the rupee’s devaluation. All this, coupled with increased energy costs, resulted in more than Rs100 billion in unbudgeted costs for the industry in the outgoing year, it said.
With power outages of up to 12 hours a day in some parts of the country and the sharp increase in diesel rates that run the companies’ generators, large parts of the country lack network coverage during power outages.
“Diesel-run generators as well as the capacity of batteries at the towers were designed for two to three hours of outages,” Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim told Dawn.
He regretted that the average revenue per user (ARPU), a key tool to measure the financial health of cellular mobile operators, had fallen to less than a dollar from $9 in 2003-04 when only 2G services were available.
For each mobile call, Pakistanis pay 34.5pc taxes, including 15pc withholding tax and 19.5pc general sales tax. The increase in taxes by the incumbent government has led to higher calls and internet rates, reducing consumption and further declining the companies’ revenues.
On the other hand, consumers face a significant increase in “call latency and black holes in the networks”, where the calls or internet either slows or drops.
Telecom companies blame the government for not implementing the right policies and postponing the planned spectrum auction.
Telenor Pakistan CEO Irfan Wahab Khan said the country required more spectrum to improve the quality of service of the telecom sector, and the government should come up with the right kind of terms and conditions, including pricing.
IT exports
At the same time, due to several restrictions imposed by the central bank, the IT exports and the performance of the freelancers suffered, and the $5bn IT exports target for the current fiscal year seems unachievable.
Barkan Saeed, a former chairman of P@SHA, said exports of IT and IT-enabled services could only reach $2.6bn in the 2021-22 fiscal year against the $3.5bn target. “This year, even that figure seems difficult only due to inconsistent policies,” he said.
IT Minister Syed Aminul Haque acknowledged issues faced by the sector. Talking to Dawn, he said the IT sector needed “special attention, as it was not a standalone service or industry but a catalyst that could give a boost to all sectors through digitisation.
However, he added that the performance of his ministry “surpassed the output of other ministries” in 2022.
“The year had been challenging for the telecom sector due to various political and economic constraints, but all the four telcos in the country have continued to serve the public without passing on the complete rising cost of business,” Mr Haque said.
He highlighted that to provide telecom services to small towns and even the outskirts of major cities, significant progress has been made by the Universal Services Fund (USF), providing connectivity to around 4.5 million people.Among the achievement of the IT ministry, significant progress was made on the regulatory side as well, including approval of the country’s cloud-first policy.
Besides, the Personal Data Protection Bill and Digital Pakistan Policy, 2023, are with the cabinet for approval, and the artificial intelligence and freelancer policies are in their final stages, which are likely to boost IT support businesses in the country.
Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2023
Kalbe Ali Published January 1, 2023
ISLAMABAD: It was a tough year for the IT sector, with telecom operators and users taking the brunt, especially after a change of government in April and the belt-tightening that followed.
Call and internet rates jumped and yet the service quality worsened and speeds slowed in 2022. Network outages intensified thanks to ‘connectivity load-shedding’ in the wake of hours-long power outages and rising fuel costs.
Among the few silver linings was the cloud-first policy introduced in February that sought to shift federal public service entities away from on-premise infrastructure.
However, after hitting that cloud, the ministry asked for the moon when it set a $5 billion export target for IT exports, a figure stakeholders say seems to be anything but achievable.
One bright spot in the otherwise gloom-ridden IT landscape was the export of 120,000 mobile phone sets to various markets in the Middle East and Africa.
Telcos took the brunt in 2022 as rates jumped and service quality worsened
However, the CEO of Inovi Telecom, the company that shipped the consignment last month, said such one-time big-ticket orders wouldn’t work and stressed that regular export orders were essential for the sector’s growth.
To put it in context, out of the 31 mobile phone-making licence holders in Pakistan, Inovi is the only local company to have exported mobile sets.
Its CEO, Zeeshan Mian Noor, told Dawn that the mobile industry had been given a quota of letters of credit (LCs) amounting to $83 million a year to import key components for mobile phone set assembly.
However, “the fact is that raw material worth $185m is required to meet the demand for mobile sets in the Pakistani market”, he said, adding that exporting phones was a distant dream when manufacturers were unable to meet the demand from local buyers.
Telecom trouble
The telecom industry said it was the worst hit in 2022 as operating expenses jumped by around 20 per cent year-on-year, whereas the growth of the industry’s revenue failed to hit even double digits.
The sector has repeatedly insisted that Pakistan has one of the highest levels of taxation, interest rates and the rupee’s devaluation. All this, coupled with increased energy costs, resulted in more than Rs100 billion in unbudgeted costs for the industry in the outgoing year, it said.
With power outages of up to 12 hours a day in some parts of the country and the sharp increase in diesel rates that run the companies’ generators, large parts of the country lack network coverage during power outages.
“Diesel-run generators as well as the capacity of batteries at the towers were designed for two to three hours of outages,” Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim told Dawn.
He regretted that the average revenue per user (ARPU), a key tool to measure the financial health of cellular mobile operators, had fallen to less than a dollar from $9 in 2003-04 when only 2G services were available.
For each mobile call, Pakistanis pay 34.5pc taxes, including 15pc withholding tax and 19.5pc general sales tax. The increase in taxes by the incumbent government has led to higher calls and internet rates, reducing consumption and further declining the companies’ revenues.
On the other hand, consumers face a significant increase in “call latency and black holes in the networks”, where the calls or internet either slows or drops.
Telecom companies blame the government for not implementing the right policies and postponing the planned spectrum auction.
Telenor Pakistan CEO Irfan Wahab Khan said the country required more spectrum to improve the quality of service of the telecom sector, and the government should come up with the right kind of terms and conditions, including pricing.
IT exports
At the same time, due to several restrictions imposed by the central bank, the IT exports and the performance of the freelancers suffered, and the $5bn IT exports target for the current fiscal year seems unachievable.
Barkan Saeed, a former chairman of P@SHA, said exports of IT and IT-enabled services could only reach $2.6bn in the 2021-22 fiscal year against the $3.5bn target. “This year, even that figure seems difficult only due to inconsistent policies,” he said.
IT Minister Syed Aminul Haque acknowledged issues faced by the sector. Talking to Dawn, he said the IT sector needed “special attention, as it was not a standalone service or industry but a catalyst that could give a boost to all sectors through digitisation.
However, he added that the performance of his ministry “surpassed the output of other ministries” in 2022.
“The year had been challenging for the telecom sector due to various political and economic constraints, but all the four telcos in the country have continued to serve the public without passing on the complete rising cost of business,” Mr Haque said.
He highlighted that to provide telecom services to small towns and even the outskirts of major cities, significant progress has been made by the Universal Services Fund (USF), providing connectivity to around 4.5 million people.Among the achievement of the IT ministry, significant progress was made on the regulatory side as well, including approval of the country’s cloud-first policy.
Besides, the Personal Data Protection Bill and Digital Pakistan Policy, 2023, are with the cabinet for approval, and the artificial intelligence and freelancer policies are in their final stages, which are likely to boost IT support businesses in the country.
Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2023
SMOKERS’ CORNER: INVENTING PAKISTAN
This thesis was first formed by the British author Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who published it in the shape of a 1947 book, Pakistan as 5,000 Years Old. It was initially ignored. However, a decade or so later, when Indian culture and history began to be perceived as historically rich and ancient in Europe and the US, the Pakistani state dialled up the Indus thesis during the Gen Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69).
To frame Pakistan’s history as being equally ancient, IVC sites were turned into tourist spots. Artefacts from ancient sites along the Indus were placed in museums. The country began being explained as the evolutionary consequence of various ancient civilisations that had existed in the region that became Pakistan. Rather, West Pakistan, along the Indus.
However, the position based on the Indus thesis started to be sidelined when East Pakistan broke away in 1971. In 1972, a new government headed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto organised a conference to formulate a new raison d’être. Intellectuals, historians and artists were invited to come up with a new position.
A new position did emerge. It was influenced by a book written in 1964 by the scholar Jamil Jalibi. In it, he had concluded that there was no Pakistani culture as such, but it could be created if one was willing to see the country as a guldasta or a bouquet of different cultures. The Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz held similar views and was present at the conference.
But whereas Jalibi had put Urdu and Islam at the centre of his guldasta, Faiz saw Islam and Urdu as just two aspects of a larger national body that was made up of various equally significant ethnic and religious cultures and languages. Seeing the regime tilting towards adopting this position, those who opposed it began to publish a series of critiques of it in newspapers.
The regime backtracked. When noted historian Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi declared, in 1972, that “countries come and go, but religions stay”, it became clear that Pakistan was to return to the first position. But this time, Islam as the glue for cultural unity was not to be provided by South Asian history. The country’s existential roots were now to be looked for in Arabia.
Though some of Faiz’s ideas were incorporated by the Bhutto regime to appropriate ethnic cultures, the larger project was to gradually introduce ‘Islamic laws’. This project peaked in the 1980s during the Gen Ziaul Haq dictatorship, leading to the creation of a watered-down version of the once-dreaded ‘Islamic Leviathan’.
But once the project took root, it triggered the birth of problematic outcomes: the 1974 ouster of the Ahmadiyya from the fold of Islam, the controversial 1986 Blasphemy Laws, the unchecked growth of violent sectarian organisations and then of militant anti-state Islamist groups.
These have been pushing the state into a corner for quite some time now.
The third position that was rejected can still be relevant as an option. It needs to be re-looked at without the paranoid post-1971 eyes that suspected it of being ‘secular’ and overtly dependent on ethnic cultures. We urgently require a fresh point of view and this position just might be it.
Published in Dawn, EOS, January 1st, 2023
Nadeem F. Paracha Published January 1, 2023
Illustration by Abro
Pakistan’s raison d’être as a nation-state has three positions.
At the time of the country’s inception in 1947, the state sought to invent a history in which Islam had arrived in India in the 8th century and, therefore, Pakistan was an evolutionary outcome of that arrival. The country was thus said to be the result of ‘cultural unity’ — the culture being Islam (Shumaila Hemani, University of Alberta, 2011).
The founders of Pakistan and the leaders of the country’s fledgling state described Islam as a progressive faith with a universal culture. The founders were largely repulsed by the idea of an Islamic theocracy though, or an ‘Islamic Leviathan’ as senior judge Justice Muhammad Munir described it in 1954.
Nevertheless, the state was convinced that the universality of Islamic culture would keep the Muslim majority of Pakistan united, despite the ethnic, sectarian and sub-sectarian diversity present within this majority. But it was also necessary to rationalise the country’s existence in the context of the region that it was situated in.
Major symbols of Muslim rule in India, between the 13th and 19th centuries, were in regions that had become part of the Republic of India. According to Shumaila Hemani, in 1951, when an ancient site was discovered in Sindh, the state tried to resolve the dilemma by making a “nationalist use of archaeology”.
The site was called Bhanbhore. Those who discovered it claimed that it was the first Hindu region that was conquered by the Arab armies led by Muhammad bin Qasim in the early 8th century. The historian Manan Ahmed Asif sees this claim as a continuation of a distortion engineered by British scholars in colonial India. Qasim’s presence in Sindh was brief and he was largely forgotten until his resurrection in the 19th century as a ‘conqueror’.
Over the decades, leaders and scholars have attempted to formulate a central ethos which underpins and dictates the course Pakistan charts as a nation. After more than 75 years, this ethos still remains elusive
Manan posits that Qasim’s image as an Islamic conqueror vanquishing Hindus to lay the roots of Islam in India was largely derived from a flawed translation of the 13th century book Chachnama. According to Manan, the book “is less a history of the 8th century and more a political theory for the 13th century.” Yet, 19th century British historians treated it as ‘a book of conquest’. What’s more, Qasim really does not figure much in it.
Manan laments that Hindu and Muslim historians adopted distorted 19th century British accounts of Qasim. The British did it to portray the Muslims as a warrior race, Hindu nationalists did it to describe the Muslims as violent outsiders, and Muslim nationalists did it to establish Islam’s ancient presence in the region. The fact is, Qasim was largely an insignificant blip in the region’s history.
In the late 1950s, when the Bengalis of erstwhile East Pakistan began to demand majority rule in the country, a second position was shaped. Bengalis were in a majority compared to other ethnic groups. The early elites largely consisted of Punjabis and Urdu-speakers of West Pakistan.
According to Hemani, this is when the ‘Indus thesis’ was evoked. The thesis understood people settled along the River Indus (in West Pakistan) as descendants of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) that existed 5,000 years ago. The thesis postulated that the descendants had evolved into becoming different ethnic groups but, once they began to adopt Islam after the 13th century, they became culturally homogenous.
Illustration by Abro
Pakistan’s raison d’être as a nation-state has three positions.
At the time of the country’s inception in 1947, the state sought to invent a history in which Islam had arrived in India in the 8th century and, therefore, Pakistan was an evolutionary outcome of that arrival. The country was thus said to be the result of ‘cultural unity’ — the culture being Islam (Shumaila Hemani, University of Alberta, 2011).
The founders of Pakistan and the leaders of the country’s fledgling state described Islam as a progressive faith with a universal culture. The founders were largely repulsed by the idea of an Islamic theocracy though, or an ‘Islamic Leviathan’ as senior judge Justice Muhammad Munir described it in 1954.
Nevertheless, the state was convinced that the universality of Islamic culture would keep the Muslim majority of Pakistan united, despite the ethnic, sectarian and sub-sectarian diversity present within this majority. But it was also necessary to rationalise the country’s existence in the context of the region that it was situated in.
Major symbols of Muslim rule in India, between the 13th and 19th centuries, were in regions that had become part of the Republic of India. According to Shumaila Hemani, in 1951, when an ancient site was discovered in Sindh, the state tried to resolve the dilemma by making a “nationalist use of archaeology”.
The site was called Bhanbhore. Those who discovered it claimed that it was the first Hindu region that was conquered by the Arab armies led by Muhammad bin Qasim in the early 8th century. The historian Manan Ahmed Asif sees this claim as a continuation of a distortion engineered by British scholars in colonial India. Qasim’s presence in Sindh was brief and he was largely forgotten until his resurrection in the 19th century as a ‘conqueror’.
Over the decades, leaders and scholars have attempted to formulate a central ethos which underpins and dictates the course Pakistan charts as a nation. After more than 75 years, this ethos still remains elusive
Manan posits that Qasim’s image as an Islamic conqueror vanquishing Hindus to lay the roots of Islam in India was largely derived from a flawed translation of the 13th century book Chachnama. According to Manan, the book “is less a history of the 8th century and more a political theory for the 13th century.” Yet, 19th century British historians treated it as ‘a book of conquest’. What’s more, Qasim really does not figure much in it.
Manan laments that Hindu and Muslim historians adopted distorted 19th century British accounts of Qasim. The British did it to portray the Muslims as a warrior race, Hindu nationalists did it to describe the Muslims as violent outsiders, and Muslim nationalists did it to establish Islam’s ancient presence in the region. The fact is, Qasim was largely an insignificant blip in the region’s history.
In the late 1950s, when the Bengalis of erstwhile East Pakistan began to demand majority rule in the country, a second position was shaped. Bengalis were in a majority compared to other ethnic groups. The early elites largely consisted of Punjabis and Urdu-speakers of West Pakistan.
According to Hemani, this is when the ‘Indus thesis’ was evoked. The thesis understood people settled along the River Indus (in West Pakistan) as descendants of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) that existed 5,000 years ago. The thesis postulated that the descendants had evolved into becoming different ethnic groups but, once they began to adopt Islam after the 13th century, they became culturally homogenous.
This thesis was first formed by the British author Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who published it in the shape of a 1947 book, Pakistan as 5,000 Years Old. It was initially ignored. However, a decade or so later, when Indian culture and history began to be perceived as historically rich and ancient in Europe and the US, the Pakistani state dialled up the Indus thesis during the Gen Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69).
To frame Pakistan’s history as being equally ancient, IVC sites were turned into tourist spots. Artefacts from ancient sites along the Indus were placed in museums. The country began being explained as the evolutionary consequence of various ancient civilisations that had existed in the region that became Pakistan. Rather, West Pakistan, along the Indus.
However, the position based on the Indus thesis started to be sidelined when East Pakistan broke away in 1971. In 1972, a new government headed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto organised a conference to formulate a new raison d’être. Intellectuals, historians and artists were invited to come up with a new position.
A new position did emerge. It was influenced by a book written in 1964 by the scholar Jamil Jalibi. In it, he had concluded that there was no Pakistani culture as such, but it could be created if one was willing to see the country as a guldasta or a bouquet of different cultures. The Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz held similar views and was present at the conference.
But whereas Jalibi had put Urdu and Islam at the centre of his guldasta, Faiz saw Islam and Urdu as just two aspects of a larger national body that was made up of various equally significant ethnic and religious cultures and languages. Seeing the regime tilting towards adopting this position, those who opposed it began to publish a series of critiques of it in newspapers.
The regime backtracked. When noted historian Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi declared, in 1972, that “countries come and go, but religions stay”, it became clear that Pakistan was to return to the first position. But this time, Islam as the glue for cultural unity was not to be provided by South Asian history. The country’s existential roots were now to be looked for in Arabia.
Though some of Faiz’s ideas were incorporated by the Bhutto regime to appropriate ethnic cultures, the larger project was to gradually introduce ‘Islamic laws’. This project peaked in the 1980s during the Gen Ziaul Haq dictatorship, leading to the creation of a watered-down version of the once-dreaded ‘Islamic Leviathan’.
But once the project took root, it triggered the birth of problematic outcomes: the 1974 ouster of the Ahmadiyya from the fold of Islam, the controversial 1986 Blasphemy Laws, the unchecked growth of violent sectarian organisations and then of militant anti-state Islamist groups.
These have been pushing the state into a corner for quite some time now.
The third position that was rejected can still be relevant as an option. It needs to be re-looked at without the paranoid post-1971 eyes that suspected it of being ‘secular’ and overtly dependent on ethnic cultures. We urgently require a fresh point of view and this position just might be it.
Published in Dawn, EOS, January 1st, 2023
2022: The year of natural disasters, unfulfilled promises and dying hope
As Pakistan begs for climate compensation, flood-hit people across the country struggle to go back to "normal" life.
Published December 31, 2022
LONG READ
“There is infinite amount of hope in this universe … but not for us,” Franz Kafka told us years ago. The aphorism comes from a novelist whose stories include characters that aim for seemingly achievable goals, but almost tragically, never manage to get closer to them. In Pakistan today, Kafka’s quip seems to hold true — for there is hope aplenty in this world, only not for us.
The reference perfectly encapsulates the country’s climate crisis. Pakistan was hit by a number of major climate catastrophes this year, but the most horrifying and fatal of them all were the disastrous floods that engulfed a third of the country. The floods displaced millions of people, destroyed infrastructure spread over thousands of kilometres, wiped out livestock, and decimated crops.
However, five months on, the government’s struggle for rehabilitation, recovery, and reconstruction has the feel of Kafka’s fables.
According to a recent United Nations report, more than 240,000 people in Sindh remain displaced while satellite images show that around eight million people are still “potentially exposed to floodwater or live close to flooded areas”.
“There is infinite amount of hope in this universe … but not for us,” Franz Kafka told us years ago. The aphorism comes from a novelist whose stories include characters that aim for seemingly achievable goals, but almost tragically, never manage to get closer to them. In Pakistan today, Kafka’s quip seems to hold true — for there is hope aplenty in this world, only not for us.
The reference perfectly encapsulates the country’s climate crisis. Pakistan was hit by a number of major climate catastrophes this year, but the most horrifying and fatal of them all were the disastrous floods that engulfed a third of the country. The floods displaced millions of people, destroyed infrastructure spread over thousands of kilometres, wiped out livestock, and decimated crops.
However, five months on, the government’s struggle for rehabilitation, recovery, and reconstruction has the feel of Kafka’s fables.
According to a recent United Nations report, more than 240,000 people in Sindh remain displaced while satellite images show that around eight million people are still “potentially exposed to floodwater or live close to flooded areas”.
This map illustrates the cumulative satellite-detected flood water in Pakistan by UNOSAT from September to November
The report states that at least 10 districts in the province — Dadu, Kambar Shahdad Kot, Khairpur, Mirpurkhas, Jamshoro, Sanghar, Umerkot, Shaheed Benazirabad, and Naushero Feroze — still have standing flood water. Balochistan’s Sohbatpur and Jaffarabad have reported the same tale.
While receding water has allowed millions of people to return home, they continue to face shortages of essential items such as food and medicine coupled with other challenges brought about by the winter season.
“Flood-hit regions are now tackling health-related challenges,” it added.
Sindh
In Sindh, most people returning home have been forced to live either with their relatives or have found refuge on the roof of their demolished houses.
“We were living at the rehabilitation camp set up in Karachi,” Aftab, a resident of Sukkur told Dawn.com. The young man, who had left a demolished house, two daughters, and a young mother in August and migrated to the metropolis, returned to his hometown earlier this month.
“The state of my town is still the same. Our houses are demolished,” he said, adding that he was forced to live on the roof of his house, which according to him was the least damaged part of his home.
“The government had promised to rebuild our houses but, like always […] when do they ever keep their word,” Aftab added.
Aftab’s concern is not the only problem plaguing Sindh today — the standing floodwater in the province also gives rise to a lot of health issues.
The report states that at least 10 districts in the province — Dadu, Kambar Shahdad Kot, Khairpur, Mirpurkhas, Jamshoro, Sanghar, Umerkot, Shaheed Benazirabad, and Naushero Feroze — still have standing flood water. Balochistan’s Sohbatpur and Jaffarabad have reported the same tale.
While receding water has allowed millions of people to return home, they continue to face shortages of essential items such as food and medicine coupled with other challenges brought about by the winter season.
“Flood-hit regions are now tackling health-related challenges,” it added.
Sindh
In Sindh, most people returning home have been forced to live either with their relatives or have found refuge on the roof of their demolished houses.
“We were living at the rehabilitation camp set up in Karachi,” Aftab, a resident of Sukkur told Dawn.com. The young man, who had left a demolished house, two daughters, and a young mother in August and migrated to the metropolis, returned to his hometown earlier this month.
“The state of my town is still the same. Our houses are demolished,” he said, adding that he was forced to live on the roof of his house, which according to him was the least damaged part of his home.
“The government had promised to rebuild our houses but, like always […] when do they ever keep their word,” Aftab added.
Aftab’s concern is not the only problem plaguing Sindh today — the standing floodwater in the province also gives rise to a lot of health issues.
This photo shows a man and his daughter at a health camp in Sindh’s Bakhar Jamali. — Photo by Imdad Ali
According to a government report, dated Dec 19, nearly 10 million cases of chest infection, 11.7m cases of skin diseases, 1.05m cases of gastroenteritis, and more than 500,000 cases of malaria have been reported in the province since July 1.
The report showed that apart from roof collapse, electrocution and drowning, gastroenteritis has taken the lives of 23 people in the last six months.
Moreover, Imdad Ali — spokesperson of the Liaquat University of Medical Health Sciences — told Dawn.com that there are thousands of cases that go unreported.
Ali has visited nearly 100 medical camps set up by the government in flood-hit areas and has interacted with thousands of patients. “Two weeks back, we visited a camp in the Bakhar Jamali village. The area has reported 32 deaths in the last three months.
“We were sent there by the Sindh government to inspect the camps and investigate reasons for the increased fatalities,” he said.
According to a government report, dated Dec 19, nearly 10 million cases of chest infection, 11.7m cases of skin diseases, 1.05m cases of gastroenteritis, and more than 500,000 cases of malaria have been reported in the province since July 1.
The report showed that apart from roof collapse, electrocution and drowning, gastroenteritis has taken the lives of 23 people in the last six months.
Moreover, Imdad Ali — spokesperson of the Liaquat University of Medical Health Sciences — told Dawn.com that there are thousands of cases that go unreported.
Ali has visited nearly 100 medical camps set up by the government in flood-hit areas and has interacted with thousands of patients. “Two weeks back, we visited a camp in the Bakhar Jamali village. The area has reported 32 deaths in the last three months.
“We were sent there by the Sindh government to inspect the camps and investigate reasons for the increased fatalities,” he said.
Residents of Sindh’s Bakhar Jamali carry the body of a man who succumbed to an “unknown” disease. — Photo by Imdad Ali
The spokesperson recalled that when his team reached the site in Matiari district, they found out that the area did not have a single hospital. “The closest medical facility is located 80km away from the city — which is approximately 2 hours if one travels by car.
“So, most of the deaths that take place in the villages go unreported. Even the day we had reached Bakhar Jamali, a 35-year-old man had passed away because of an ‘unidentified disease’ […] the locals said they were taking him to a hospital, but he passed away on the way,” Ali added.
Balochistan
A similar situation, more or less, persists in Balochistan as well. According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), many people in the flood-affected districts of Killa Saifullah, Lasbela, and Jaffarabad are still living in tents set up by the government.
This is because there is still 2 to 3 feet of water standing in their villages and fields, Mir Behram — an activist in Naseerabad Division — told Dawn.com.
“The water in these areas is not drying up because the land is salty and beyond the government’s access,” he said.
Behram explained that most of the people living in tents had returned home. “But back in their hometowns, there is no food or clean water. They have all just gone back with the hope to start rebuilding their houses. Most of them are just literally lying under open skies and sleeping on charpoys.”
Meanwhile, back in the relief tents, a host of diseases have gripped the flood affectees, the most prominent of which are malaria, mumps, and cholera.
But the most cases were those of malaria, the activist said. “You can say there is an outbreak.
“Just 15 days back, I visited a flood camp in the Kachhi district. We conducted tests of 250 people — both children and adults — and the results showed that 95 people had tested positive for malaria.”
However, PDMA spokesperson Younas Mengal insists that the health situation in the province has “improved now”.
The spokesperson recalled that when his team reached the site in Matiari district, they found out that the area did not have a single hospital. “The closest medical facility is located 80km away from the city — which is approximately 2 hours if one travels by car.
“So, most of the deaths that take place in the villages go unreported. Even the day we had reached Bakhar Jamali, a 35-year-old man had passed away because of an ‘unidentified disease’ […] the locals said they were taking him to a hospital, but he passed away on the way,” Ali added.
Balochistan
A similar situation, more or less, persists in Balochistan as well. According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), many people in the flood-affected districts of Killa Saifullah, Lasbela, and Jaffarabad are still living in tents set up by the government.
This is because there is still 2 to 3 feet of water standing in their villages and fields, Mir Behram — an activist in Naseerabad Division — told Dawn.com.
“The water in these areas is not drying up because the land is salty and beyond the government’s access,” he said.
Behram explained that most of the people living in tents had returned home. “But back in their hometowns, there is no food or clean water. They have all just gone back with the hope to start rebuilding their houses. Most of them are just literally lying under open skies and sleeping on charpoys.”
Meanwhile, back in the relief tents, a host of diseases have gripped the flood affectees, the most prominent of which are malaria, mumps, and cholera.
But the most cases were those of malaria, the activist said. “You can say there is an outbreak.
“Just 15 days back, I visited a flood camp in the Kachhi district. We conducted tests of 250 people — both children and adults — and the results showed that 95 people had tested positive for malaria.”
However, PDMA spokesperson Younas Mengal insists that the health situation in the province has “improved now”.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Earlier this year, when the floods hit the country, it was the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that had first fallen prey to the gushing waters.
Videos in August and September had shown hotels, houses, roads and even bridges being gulped down by the gliding waves, one after the other. The infrastructural damage was massive.
Today, while there is no standing water in the province, cruel winters have made life difficult for the flood victims. Locals say most of the people who lost their houses are now forced to stay in tents in temperatures falling below freezing point.
Muhammad Ali Chapli, a resident of Khouzh village in Upper Chitral, told Dawn.com that during the floods, nearly 80pc of the infrastructure in his village was destroyed. “Dozens of houses were reduced to rubble and agricultural land spread across hundreds of acres was ruined.
“But no one came to help us. We did everything on our own, from rebuilding roads to our homes,” he said.
This photo shows people living in tents during freezing temperatures in Chitral.
— Photo by Sirajuddin
When the calamity hit the province, both the local and federal governments announced compensations for the people whose houses had been completely or partially damaged. As per statistics available on the KP government’s website, so far, Rs3.5bn have been dispersed.
However, residents complain that they haven’t received the money yet.
Zubair Torawali told Dawn.com that in his town of Bahrain, rehabilitation is “next to none”. “During the floods, 1,200 houses in our area were destroyed. Not even one of them has been repaired yet.
“The only thing that the government did was the reconstruction of the Bahrain-Kalam Road. But ever since those repairs have been done, we have seen an increase in accidents on the road,” he said.
But Torawali pointed out that it was the “terrifying scenes of the Bahrain Bazar” that “are killing us every day”.
When the calamity hit the province, both the local and federal governments announced compensations for the people whose houses had been completely or partially damaged. As per statistics available on the KP government’s website, so far, Rs3.5bn have been dispersed.
However, residents complain that they haven’t received the money yet.
Zubair Torawali told Dawn.com that in his town of Bahrain, rehabilitation is “next to none”. “During the floods, 1,200 houses in our area were destroyed. Not even one of them has been repaired yet.
“The only thing that the government did was the reconstruction of the Bahrain-Kalam Road. But ever since those repairs have been done, we have seen an increase in accidents on the road,” he said.
But Torawali pointed out that it was the “terrifying scenes of the Bahrain Bazar” that “are killing us every day”.
The photo shows Bahrain Bazaar post the floods. — Photo by Zubair Torawali
“Three months have passed. Every day we cross this place — which is one of the most beautiful markets in Pakistan — and see the devastation,” he said, recalling that the place was once nicknamed “Calle Barcelona”. “But now it looks like a scene from a Hollywood horror movie.”
He went on to say that this was not the first time a calamity of this magnitude had hit the province. This, he claimed, happened during the 2010 floods as well. “But it seems like the government has learned nothing. All it does is beg for money.”
Govt demands climate compensation
Torawali’s statement refers to the compensation that the government is seeking from the world to help Pakistan deal with the climate crisis.
In his debut speech at the UN General Assembly earlier this year, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif raised the concern that Pakistan was among the world’s top climate-vulnerable countries without contributing even 1pc to global emissions.
“Why are my people paying the price of such high global warming through no fault of their own?” he had said, simultaneously warning that “what happens in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan” in the coming years.
Meanwhile, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference — which was held in November — that “vulnerability shouldn’t be a death sentence” as she pleaded the case for a loss and damage fund for developing countries affected by the climate catastrophes.
The two-week convention, which was otherwise fruitless, saw the signing of an agreement to create a ‘loss and damage fund’, the purpose of which will be to help vulnerable countries combat the challenges of climate change.
Head of agriculture for the government’s climate change research centre and scientist Arif Goheer — who accompanied Rehman to COP27 in Egypt — told Dawn.com that Pakistan, through arduous efforts and consistent pushing, “remained successful in improvising the COP presidency and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in establishing the loss and damage fund.
He said that the fund will be used by the government to build more “climate-resilient” infrastructure and communities.
“This assistance can be earmarked for stronger river embankments, updated water infrastructure, more resilient building material, and early warning systems,” Goheer added.
While the development was hailed as “landmark” in Pakistan, for Torawali it was mere words that disappear in a puff of smoke. “What do I do with them? Will they bring back our dead? Will they repair our ravaged houses?”
Why does Pakistan flood so often?
Floods are a regular feature of Pakistan’s landscape. The first recorded super flood in the country was witnessed in 1950, followed by 1955, 1956, 1959, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1995, and then every year since 2010.
World Wildlife Fund Senior Director Mashood Arshad explained that riverine flooding —when the water level in a river, lake, or stream rises and overflows onto the neighbouring land — occurs in the country along major rivers every year.
The annual snow melt and monsoons contribute to this flooding.
“Secondly, we have flash flooding via hill torrents which particularly impacts areas such as Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, and parts of Balochistan along the Koh-i-Sulaiman mountain range,” Arshad told Dawn.com.
He said that in the last few years, flooding episodes have exacerbated due to climate change which results in intensified rainfall events in riverine watersheds as well as plains.
AN example of this, the WWF director went on to say, was evident from the exorbitant amount of rainfall Balochistan and Sindh received this year.
According to data from the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), Pakistan received 190pc more rainfall during the monsoon season this year; Balochistan and Sindh received 430pc and 460pc more than average rainfall, respectively.
Environmentalist Sara Hayat, while explaining the reasons for this change, told Dawn.com that Pakistan’s location in the Global South makes it vulnerable to the rapidly changing monsoon patterns.
“For example, this time, the monsoons came from a different direction and we really couldn’t have forecast them. And then there were so many more monsoon cycles; almost seven to eight as opposed to three to four that we generally get,” she elaborated.
But while climate change is to be blamed, undoubtedly, so are the government and people.
WWF’s Arshad believes that Pakistan’s development trajectory is “haphazard” in nature. “Our infrastructure development is not aligned with proper land use and planning and does not account for multi-hazard risk in vulnerable areas.
“From KP to Karachi, buildings and housing societies have crept up everywhere, often blocking the route of the water flow. And this results in increased losses when floods hit.”
Hayat concurred. She blamed illegal constructions on riverbeds. “If you are going to construct on riverbeds, and floods come or water levels rise, then naturally that construction will do damage […] the way you saw in Swat how entire rest houses and hotels came down this year.”
Another reason for the massive losses during floods that the environmentalist pointed out was Pakistan’s population.
“Natural disasters, themselves, are not harmful until and unless people, property and, in our case, agricultural land is affected. And this damage occurs because we don’t control our population, which makes us very vulnerable to natural disasters.”
Low literacy and poverty were also some of the factors highlighted by the environmentalists.
“Three months have passed. Every day we cross this place — which is one of the most beautiful markets in Pakistan — and see the devastation,” he said, recalling that the place was once nicknamed “Calle Barcelona”. “But now it looks like a scene from a Hollywood horror movie.”
He went on to say that this was not the first time a calamity of this magnitude had hit the province. This, he claimed, happened during the 2010 floods as well. “But it seems like the government has learned nothing. All it does is beg for money.”
Govt demands climate compensation
Torawali’s statement refers to the compensation that the government is seeking from the world to help Pakistan deal with the climate crisis.
In his debut speech at the UN General Assembly earlier this year, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif raised the concern that Pakistan was among the world’s top climate-vulnerable countries without contributing even 1pc to global emissions.
“Why are my people paying the price of such high global warming through no fault of their own?” he had said, simultaneously warning that “what happens in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan” in the coming years.
Meanwhile, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference — which was held in November — that “vulnerability shouldn’t be a death sentence” as she pleaded the case for a loss and damage fund for developing countries affected by the climate catastrophes.
The two-week convention, which was otherwise fruitless, saw the signing of an agreement to create a ‘loss and damage fund’, the purpose of which will be to help vulnerable countries combat the challenges of climate change.
Head of agriculture for the government’s climate change research centre and scientist Arif Goheer — who accompanied Rehman to COP27 in Egypt — told Dawn.com that Pakistan, through arduous efforts and consistent pushing, “remained successful in improvising the COP presidency and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in establishing the loss and damage fund.
He said that the fund will be used by the government to build more “climate-resilient” infrastructure and communities.
“This assistance can be earmarked for stronger river embankments, updated water infrastructure, more resilient building material, and early warning systems,” Goheer added.
While the development was hailed as “landmark” in Pakistan, for Torawali it was mere words that disappear in a puff of smoke. “What do I do with them? Will they bring back our dead? Will they repair our ravaged houses?”
Why does Pakistan flood so often?
Floods are a regular feature of Pakistan’s landscape. The first recorded super flood in the country was witnessed in 1950, followed by 1955, 1956, 1959, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1995, and then every year since 2010.
World Wildlife Fund Senior Director Mashood Arshad explained that riverine flooding —when the water level in a river, lake, or stream rises and overflows onto the neighbouring land — occurs in the country along major rivers every year.
The annual snow melt and monsoons contribute to this flooding.
“Secondly, we have flash flooding via hill torrents which particularly impacts areas such as Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, and parts of Balochistan along the Koh-i-Sulaiman mountain range,” Arshad told Dawn.com.
He said that in the last few years, flooding episodes have exacerbated due to climate change which results in intensified rainfall events in riverine watersheds as well as plains.
AN example of this, the WWF director went on to say, was evident from the exorbitant amount of rainfall Balochistan and Sindh received this year.
According to data from the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), Pakistan received 190pc more rainfall during the monsoon season this year; Balochistan and Sindh received 430pc and 460pc more than average rainfall, respectively.
Environmentalist Sara Hayat, while explaining the reasons for this change, told Dawn.com that Pakistan’s location in the Global South makes it vulnerable to the rapidly changing monsoon patterns.
“For example, this time, the monsoons came from a different direction and we really couldn’t have forecast them. And then there were so many more monsoon cycles; almost seven to eight as opposed to three to four that we generally get,” she elaborated.
But while climate change is to be blamed, undoubtedly, so are the government and people.
WWF’s Arshad believes that Pakistan’s development trajectory is “haphazard” in nature. “Our infrastructure development is not aligned with proper land use and planning and does not account for multi-hazard risk in vulnerable areas.
“From KP to Karachi, buildings and housing societies have crept up everywhere, often blocking the route of the water flow. And this results in increased losses when floods hit.”
Hayat concurred. She blamed illegal constructions on riverbeds. “If you are going to construct on riverbeds, and floods come or water levels rise, then naturally that construction will do damage […] the way you saw in Swat how entire rest houses and hotels came down this year.”
Another reason for the massive losses during floods that the environmentalist pointed out was Pakistan’s population.
“Natural disasters, themselves, are not harmful until and unless people, property and, in our case, agricultural land is affected. And this damage occurs because we don’t control our population, which makes us very vulnerable to natural disasters.”
Low literacy and poverty were also some of the factors highlighted by the environmentalists.
What are we doing wrong?
Dr Noman Ahmed, urban planner and chairman of the Department of Architecture and Planning at the NED University, said that the development of any infrastructure in Pakistan — from dams to roads and even bridges — is done in isolation of realities.
“Important considerations such as topography and drainage are not taken into account in most cases, leading to the failure of projects,” he told Dawn.com.
“Take our roads for example […] they are practically handicapped when it comes to water drainage. Most of our roads are built at a height and don’t have space for drainage.”
Similar was the case with the left and right bank outfall drains — the drainage canals that collect saline water, industrial effluents, and floodwater from the Indus River basin.
“Megaprojects built along the drain have caused enormous amounts of damage and become a barrier in drainage,” the NED professor said, adding that local influentials alter the infrastructure for their personal benefits, such as creating breaches in canals so that water flows into other fields.
Moreover, he went on to say, rivers have several edges or common wet paths. “People think edges can be used for construction, but they are wrong.
“A river’s highest edge point — the land affected during the highest level of flooding — should not be used. But unfortunately, people build houses there and other buildings,” Dr Ahmed explained.
He said that kachay ke ilaqay [riverbeds] should also not be used because they stop the water flow. But we see cultivation and settlement in these areas, the professor regretted, and held the authorities responsible for these shortcomings.
“They need to ensure that these areas are not used. However, here political influence is very visible. Instead of maintaining technical merit, authorities fall under the influence.”
What can we do right?
WWF’s Arshad believes that Pakistan does not need to reinvent the wheel, but just look at the recommendations that have emerged out of past climate catastrophes.
“We need to strengthen our Met department so that we can be more aware of the potentially extreme weather events, which will strengthen our early warning systems,” he told Dawn.com.
Most importantly, the environmentalist stressed, “we need to allow rivers to flow freely wherever possible”.
“The Indus River system has become an engineered system that is unfortunately not resilient enough to account for the climate crisis. We need to focus on nature-based solutions by allowing natural vegetation to serve as a buffer when flood waters rise.
“Our cities are turning into heat islands without tree cover and vegetation. Hence, there is a need to ensure that open spaces are present in our urban areas and where possible, indigenous trees and vegetation should be utilised,” he added.
Moreover, Arshad said that the government should conduct a risk assessment of all districts via geographic information systems and satellite imagery to identify points of possible intervention. “After that, hydrologists, geographers, and natural resources specialists should be involved in developing plans of action that cater to specific needs of each locale.”
Meanwhile, NED’s Dr Ahmed highlighted three primary steps that needed to be taken. Firstly, provincial authorities need to be equipped to identify areas where development and housing should be prohibited.
“Take Balochistan for example. During the floods this year, the authorities were helpless.”
Secondly, he pointed out, annual surveys should be conducted to identify buildings and structures that need support and rehabilitation.
Thirdly, the professor said that qualified and capable professionals should be brought into the picture. “The people working in these areas presently are not equipped with capacity building.”
Dr Ahmed elaborated that these people could include engineers and architects who could reach out to the local communities and work with them.
“You see, what we are talking about right now, a single government body or agency cannot do it alone,” he said, adding that here the chemistry between the federal government and provinces plays a big role.
“The centre acts as an adviser or policymaker, while provincial and local governments are empowered when it comes to working on the ground level. While differences may exist, we need better synergy in these areas.”
A very small example that the urban planner gave was that of the Council of Common Interests where he said chief ministers of all the provinces could be called to discuss climate-related rebuilding and rehabilitation.
Separately, the government could also take universities on board that have expertise in dealing with disasters and they can work under the planning commission.
Ahmed also criticised the government’s message to the international community. “It is just asking for money when most of the work that needs to be done is related to human resources.”
The way forward
However, apart from seeking climate compensation, the government has a number of plans up its sleeve to ensure the “greening” of development activities, scientist Goheer told Dawn.com.
“It is taking up all the possible intervention at policy, programme and grass-root level to minimise the carbon footprint of the country, besides improving its resilience to growing climate change challenges.
He listed some of Pakistan’s climate mitigation efforts:Transition to 60pc share from renewable energy by 2030 and efforts on increasing energy efficiency
By 2030, 30pc of all new vehicles sold in Pakistan will be electric
Continued investments in nature-based solutions through afforestation programmes and carbon sequestration projects
Global Methane Pledge — Pakistan signed the pledge during COP26, agreeing to cut methane emissions by 30pc by the end of this decade
Efforts on pollution control
Goheer also said that the government, with the support of developing partners, was developing a Resilient, Recovery, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (4RF) aiming to guide the recovery and reconstruction of Pakistan from the 2022 floods.
“As climate change accelerates the severity and frequency of disasters, institutional reforms and investments must go beyond business as usual and instead, build back better and build systemic resilience. The 4RF is a critical starting point to ensure transformational measures are taken for a resilient recovery, so the disaster will not have multi-generational impacts through the reduction of developmental gains,” he explained.
At the same time, he added that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was working on updating the national disaster management plan.
IRAN
Download Zamaneh’s 22nd Labor Rights Report
Zamaneh Media’s 22nd Labor Rights Report covering workers’ strikes and protests, arrest of labor activists, and issues related to unemployment, wage, workplace discrimination, and accidents in July and September 2022 is available for download. In this period, Iranian workers faced more economic pressure as rent, food, and healthcare prices increased. Despite Ebrahim Raisi’s cabinet announcing a ceiling of 25% for housing rent increases in major urban centers, deposit and monthly rents increased more than twice when compared to the previous year. As a result, there has been a significant increase in migration from urban areas to the outskirts of cities and informal settlements.
Download the Report: Download PDF/ Download EPUB
The removal of the subsidized currency exchange rate for two groups of food and health goods (known as a dollar for 4200 toman program) led to over 80% price increase in some food and drug items in July and August 2022. The increase in the price of dairy decreased per capita consumption by more than 111% as more households removed or reduced dairy consumption. The government, which was promised to stabilize food prices, backed out of this promise in the budget law amendment bill. Health goods and drugs inflation increased by 39.6% compared to August 2021.
The government’s large budget deficit led only to a 10% increase in the meager salaries of government employees since the beginning of this fiscal year in Iran (March 2022). The government has not yet fulfilled a promise to increase the salaries of Social Security pensioners. This promise is pending the budget review for the next fiscal year in Iran (March 2023).
The economic recession has increased the number of fired workers. Unemployed workers turn to “informal” jobs such as delivery for online service companies (i.e., Snap, Snapfood, Digikala, etc.), carrying goods in the market, peddling, and in border areas becoming human cargo mules (kulbars in Kurdistan and Sukhtbars in Baluchistan).
This summer, as the economic crisis increased pressure on the workers, the scope of union and labor protests became wider. Workers rallied or went on strike in dozens of large manufacturing and industrial units, including the oil and gas, steel, and mining industries. Contract workers at oil and gas and petrochemical projects went on strike in July and August 2022. They want to reduce working days to 20 per month and increase rest days to ten.
According to the Statistical Center of Iran between spring 2021 and spring 2022 more than 13% of workers in Iran’s industrial and mining sectors moved to the service sector. The mining industry is also facing chronic mismanagement and financial corruption at several institutions including at the level of Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO), a government institution, and the Welfare Development Investment Private Joint Stock Company affiliated with the Workers’ Welfare Bank, that are the principal shareholders of Mobarakeh Steel Company in Isfahan.
In this reporting period, at least four strikes and protests were reported in the mining and metal industries including of the workers of the Sungun copper mine, located in Varzaqan county in East Azerbaijan province. For several days the workers went on strike to protest low wages, exploitation by various contracting companies, and the non-implementation of the job classification plan. The security forces arrested at least 22 workers, related to this strike. Sungun copper mine laid off at least 30 workers in this period.
Municipal workers, mainly employed on temporary contracts and through contractors, have the highest unpaid wages compared to other sectors in Iran. Between July and September 2022, more than a dozen city workers rallied or went on strike to protest unpaid wages including municipal workers in the cities of Ahvaz, Andimeshk, Asalem, Ilam, Hoviza, Khorramshhr, Neyshabour, Roodbar, Sisakht, Shush, and Zarneh. Some municipal workers in these cities have not been paid salary for as much as seven months. Sisakht municipal workers in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province have the longest wage arrears and have not been paid for 13 months. The contractors of Khorramshahr municipality have not paid the employer’s share of the insurance premiums for nearly one year and six months.
Nurses and medical staff protested in several cities including at least nine hospitals and medical centers, for wage discrimination.
In the road and rail transportation sector, workers and unions reported delayed wages, downsizing and removal of employment benefits, and an increase in temporary contracts. These conditions have led to protests and strikes of at least nine workers’ independent unions or gatherings including that of Zarand maintenance workers of Railway Lines and Technical Buildings in Kerman Province, East Zahedan maintenance workers of Railway Lines, and Maintenance workers of Railway Lines in Qom and Hamedan.
All the while the Iranian workers were protesting during this period, Iran’s security institutions increased political repression, especially against workers, labor activists, leftist students, and labor journalists. Many striking and protesting workers were arrested. Several teachers who were indecent union members were arrested during this period. Several student and labor activists, including Yashar Dar al-Shafa, Abolfazl Nejadfateh, and Hasti Amiri, were summoned to prison. Leila Hosseinzadeh, an Iranian student and labor activist was arrested for the second time this year.
Visit Zamaneh Media’s Labor Rights Page to download more reports:
Zamaneh Media
Acting Brazil president criticises 'silent' Bolsonaro in New Year speech
Hamilton Mourao takes a dig at outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro who flew to US to avoid handing over presidential sash to leftist President-elect Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro's weeks of silence
Bolsonaro's exit follows weeks of near silence following his defeat in Brazil's most fraught election in a generation.
Some of his supporters have refused to accept Lula's victory, believing Bolsonaro's baseless claims that the October election was stolen and contributing to a tense atmosphere in the capital Brasilia, with riots and a foiled bomb plot.
Some hardcore Bolsonaro supporters have been camping outside army barracks since his defeat, calling for the military to stage a coup, while also railing against the country's Supreme Court, which Bolsonaro has accused of trampling on his executive power and censoring right-wing voices.
Mourao was elected in 2018 as Bolsonaro's running mate but was ditched in this year's election, with the outgoing president choosing former Chief of Staff Walter Braga Netto to join his defeated ticket.
Mourao instead ran for Senate and secured a spot in the upper house of Congress representing the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Hamilton Mourao takes a dig at outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro who flew to US to avoid handing over presidential sash to leftist President-elect Lula da Silva.
Supporters of President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cheer outside the hotel where he is staying on the eve of his inauguration. (AFP)
Brazil's acting President, Hamilton Mourao, has criticised outgoing far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro for allowing anti-democratic sentiment to thrive in the wake of this year's election, in a veiled dig in a New Year speech.
While defending some aspects of Bolsonaro's four years in power on Saturday, such as leaving behind a strong economy, Mourao also criticised environmental backsliding after deforestation in the Amazon reached a 15-year-high under his watch.
Vice president under Bolsonaro, Mourao delivered the New Year speech after taking over on Friday, when the outgoing president flew to Florida to avoid handing over the presidential sash to leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at his January 1 inauguration.
Mourao, who is also a retired army general, said leaders in the country - whom he did not name - "irresponsibly" left the armed forces exposed, noting some people had accused the military of encouraging protesters while others accused them of not doing enough to oppose such demonstrations.
"Leaders who were supposed to reassure and unite the nation around a project for the country allowed silence or inopportune and deleterious protagonism to create an atmosphere of chaos and social disintegration," Mourao said in a seven-minute address on television, in a thinly veiled dig at Bolsonaro.
In a surprisingly strong speech, Mourao praised democracy and said the country would just change governments, not regimes on January 1, adding that people must return to their normal lives.
"The alternation of power in a democracy is healthy and must be preserved," the acting president said, while recalling some accomplishments but recognising the Bolsonaro administration had some "mishaps" on the environmental front over the years.
While defending some aspects of Bolsonaro's four years in power on Saturday, such as leaving behind a strong economy, Mourao also criticised environmental backsliding after deforestation in the Amazon reached a 15-year-high under his watch.
Vice president under Bolsonaro, Mourao delivered the New Year speech after taking over on Friday, when the outgoing president flew to Florida to avoid handing over the presidential sash to leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at his January 1 inauguration.
Mourao, who is also a retired army general, said leaders in the country - whom he did not name - "irresponsibly" left the armed forces exposed, noting some people had accused the military of encouraging protesters while others accused them of not doing enough to oppose such demonstrations.
"Leaders who were supposed to reassure and unite the nation around a project for the country allowed silence or inopportune and deleterious protagonism to create an atmosphere of chaos and social disintegration," Mourao said in a seven-minute address on television, in a thinly veiled dig at Bolsonaro.
In a surprisingly strong speech, Mourao praised democracy and said the country would just change governments, not regimes on January 1, adding that people must return to their normal lives.
"The alternation of power in a democracy is healthy and must be preserved," the acting president said, while recalling some accomplishments but recognising the Bolsonaro administration had some "mishaps" on the environmental front over the years.
Bolsonaro's weeks of silence
Bolsonaro's exit follows weeks of near silence following his defeat in Brazil's most fraught election in a generation.
Some of his supporters have refused to accept Lula's victory, believing Bolsonaro's baseless claims that the October election was stolen and contributing to a tense atmosphere in the capital Brasilia, with riots and a foiled bomb plot.
Some hardcore Bolsonaro supporters have been camping outside army barracks since his defeat, calling for the military to stage a coup, while also railing against the country's Supreme Court, which Bolsonaro has accused of trampling on his executive power and censoring right-wing voices.
Mourao was elected in 2018 as Bolsonaro's running mate but was ditched in this year's election, with the outgoing president choosing former Chief of Staff Walter Braga Netto to join his defeated ticket.
Mourao instead ran for Senate and secured a spot in the upper house of Congress representing the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
גוט רידאַנסgut ridans
GONIF
Rabbi Haim Druckman: Israeli settler advocate and far-right spiritual leader dies at 90
Rabbi Haim Druckman was a mentor to Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich, chief of Israel's extreme-right Religious Zionism party.
The New Arab Staff & Agencies
26 December, 2022
For decades, Haim Druckman was the most important figure in the religious Zionist movement
[GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP/Getty]
Rabbi Haim Druckman, mentor to far-right Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich, advocate of Jewish settlements, and spiritual leader of the religious Zionist movement in Israel, died on Sunday aged 90 after contracting Covid-19, a Jerusalem hospital said.
For decades, Druckman was the most-important figure in the religious Zionist movement, which represents roughly 12 percent of Israel's Jewish population. He was one of the founders of Israel's settlement movement.
"The Hadassah hospital announces with sorrow the death of rabbi Haim Druckman," the facility said in a statement, adding that he had been hospitalised for 10 days. Hadassah had said in a previous statement that Druckman had contracted Covid-19. The hospital did not provide a cause of death.
The religious school he presided over said he was 90 years old.
Druckman, who was awarded the Israel Prize in 2012, was a mentor to Smotrich, chief of the extreme-right Religious Zionism political party.
Rabbi Haim Druckman, mentor to far-right Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich, advocate of Jewish settlements, and spiritual leader of the religious Zionist movement in Israel, died on Sunday aged 90 after contracting Covid-19, a Jerusalem hospital said.
For decades, Druckman was the most-important figure in the religious Zionist movement, which represents roughly 12 percent of Israel's Jewish population. He was one of the founders of Israel's settlement movement.
"The Hadassah hospital announces with sorrow the death of rabbi Haim Druckman," the facility said in a statement, adding that he had been hospitalised for 10 days. Hadassah had said in a previous statement that Druckman had contracted Covid-19. The hospital did not provide a cause of death.
The religious school he presided over said he was 90 years old.
Druckman, who was awarded the Israel Prize in 2012, was a mentor to Smotrich, chief of the extreme-right Religious Zionism political party.
MENAThe New Arab Staff
Smotrich is set to be finance minister in incoming premier Benjamin Netanyahu's new far-right government.
"The Jewish people have lost one of the spiritual giants of his generation, a just [person], an educator, a man who dedicated his life to the Torah, to the Jewish people and the land of Israel," Smotrich said in a statement.
Druckman was a major proponent of settler land grabs in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula after Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Settlements are illegal under international law and are viewed by most of the international community as a key barrier to peace in Palestine and Israel.
Druckman served several terms as a member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, with the forerunner of today's Religious Zionism party, a key ally of Netanyahu.
He acted for a long time as spiritual leader to religious nationalist politicians on Israel's far right.
Druckman called for the annexation of the occupied West Bank and its approximately 2.5 million Palestinians who live under Israel's illegal occupation alongside around 500,000 Jewish settlers.
Palestinians consider the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip to make up their future independent state. The United Nations views these areas as occupied Palestinian territory.
Druckman called on Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to dismantle settlements during Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and made similar remarks about Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He advocated that Jewish religious law govern the state of Israel, a position shared by his followers.
"There's no problem whatsoever with a state run by Jewish religious law," he told newspaper Israel Hayom in one of his final interviews last month.
"What you do in your home is your business, but outside – this is a Jewish state."
Netanyahu expressed his condolences to Druckman's family, saying that Israel "has lost a great spiritual leader".
"I have lost a personal friend whom I held in great esteem," he added.
Born in what was then Poland in 1932, Druckman escaped deportation during World War Two and in 1944 migrated to Palestine, which was under British mandate.
He was a student of Zvi Yehuda Kook, whose movement founded settlements after Israel began occupying the West Bank in the 1967 war. Druckman was considered one of Kook's successors from the 1990s.
Ties with extremists, rape-accused rabbis
As a serving MK in 1988, Druckman penned a letter of support to a released member of the Jewish Underground terrorist group convicted for his role in a deadly terror attack on Hebron's Islamic College.
The 1983 attack killed three Palestinian students and injured dozens more.
In 2012, Druckman organised a farewell party for Zvi Strock, the son of Religious Zionism MK Orit Strock who was convicted of torturing a Paletinian teenager, according to news website The Times of Israel.
In 2019, the rabbi spearheaded a fundraising campaign for a settler who was charged with killing a Palestinian mother of eight.
Druckman also caused controversy by standing with rabbis who had been accused of sexual abuse.
In 1999, Israel’s state attorney slammed the rabbi for failing to report sexual abuse by Ze'ev Kopolevitch, the dean of Netiv Meir Yeshiva.
Years later, Druckman admitted that he should have reported the abuse, however went on defend and associate with other rabbis accused of sexual abuse.
Rare Fatah rally in Gaza
In an address to the crowd, Fatah's Gaza chief, Ahmed Helles, called for reconciliation between the rival factions following the swearing in on Thursday of the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
The new coalition led by veteran hawk Benjamin Netanyahu "will go as other racist governments have gone and our people will remain," Helles said.
"The time has come to achieve national reconciliation."
Fatah spokesperson Monther al-Hayek told AFP that it was time for Palestinian "national unity to confront Netanyahu's extremist government."
Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met in Algiers in July for their first public meeting in more than five years. Yet the rare moment has so far failed to bring wider reconciliation.
In October, the two movements signed a reconciliation deal in Algiers, though Abbas was not present and the deal has not been implemented.
Gaza City's Al-Katiba square turned into a sea of Fatah flags, as crowds marked the 58th anniversary of Fatah foundation.
Palestinian take part in Fatah movement rally marking the 58th anniversary of the creation of the party. (Photo by Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Thousands in the Gaza Strip staged one of the biggest celebrations in years for the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday.
The demonstrators turned Gaza City's Al-Katiba square into a sea of yellow as they waved Fatah flags to mark the 58th anniversary of the party's foundation.
Fatah rallies on this scale have been a rarity in Gaza for the past decade and a half.
Fatah has been at odds with Hamas since the Islamist movement won an upset victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 but failed to form an administration acceptable to the international community.
The following year, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip beginning years of division, with Fatah administering Palestinian-run areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The New Arab Staff & Agencies
01 January, 2023
01 January, 2023
Palestinian take part in Fatah movement rally marking the 58th anniversary of the creation of the party. (Photo by Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Thousands in the Gaza Strip staged one of the biggest celebrations in years for the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday.
The demonstrators turned Gaza City's Al-Katiba square into a sea of yellow as they waved Fatah flags to mark the 58th anniversary of the party's foundation.
Fatah rallies on this scale have been a rarity in Gaza for the past decade and a half.
Fatah has been at odds with Hamas since the Islamist movement won an upset victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 but failed to form an administration acceptable to the international community.
The following year, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip beginning years of division, with Fatah administering Palestinian-run areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
PerspectivesJoseph Daher
In an address to the crowd, Fatah's Gaza chief, Ahmed Helles, called for reconciliation between the rival factions following the swearing in on Thursday of the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
The new coalition led by veteran hawk Benjamin Netanyahu "will go as other racist governments have gone and our people will remain," Helles said.
"The time has come to achieve national reconciliation."
Fatah spokesperson Monther al-Hayek told AFP that it was time for Palestinian "national unity to confront Netanyahu's extremist government."
Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met in Algiers in July for their first public meeting in more than five years. Yet the rare moment has so far failed to bring wider reconciliation.
In October, the two movements signed a reconciliation deal in Algiers, though Abbas was not present and the deal has not been implemented.
Huge Crowds of Palestinians Mark Fatah Anniversary in Gaza
December 31, 2022
Associated Press
December 31, 2022
Associated Press
Palestinian Fatah supporters chant slogans and wave the movement's flags during a rally marking the 58th anniversary of Fatah movement foundation in Gaza City, Dec. 31, 2022.
GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP —
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians thronged a Gaza City park Saturday to mark the 58th anniversary of the founding of the Fatah party, a rare show of popularity in the heartland of the militant Hamas group, Fatah’s main rival.
The crowds turned Katiba Park into a sea of yellow flags and pictures of Fatah founders and leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Hamas, which took over Gaza after routing pro-Abbas forces in 2007, permitted Fatah to hold the rally. In several past occasions following the 2007 takeover, Hamas had blocked or restricted activities for Fatah.
While polls indicate Fatah is not that popular, the huge turnout could be seen as a rare opportunity to protest Hamas’ heavy-handed rule in Gaza. The Islamic group has exhausted Gazans with heavy taxes amid record levels of unemployment and poverty. The 2.3 million residents live under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade that Israel says is necessary to stop Hamas from stocking up on weapons. Critics say the blockade amounts to collective punishment.
Founded by Arafat and other leaders in 1959, Fatah announced its birth when it launched the first armed attack against Israel from Lebanon on Jan. 1, 1965. In the 1990s, however, Arafat signed a peace deal with Israel and the Palestinian Authority was created to administer Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank.
The rally comes at a time of division between Palestinians. Fatah and Hamas, the largest Palestinian factions, remain bitter enemies and repeated Arab attempts to reconcile them have failed.
Over the years, Hamas has consolidated its control in Gaza and the internationally recognized PA is struggling to govern autonomous areas of the West Bank. Charges of corruption and mismanagement riddle the PA and Abbas is widely seen as an autocrat.
GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP —
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians thronged a Gaza City park Saturday to mark the 58th anniversary of the founding of the Fatah party, a rare show of popularity in the heartland of the militant Hamas group, Fatah’s main rival.
The crowds turned Katiba Park into a sea of yellow flags and pictures of Fatah founders and leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Hamas, which took over Gaza after routing pro-Abbas forces in 2007, permitted Fatah to hold the rally. In several past occasions following the 2007 takeover, Hamas had blocked or restricted activities for Fatah.
While polls indicate Fatah is not that popular, the huge turnout could be seen as a rare opportunity to protest Hamas’ heavy-handed rule in Gaza. The Islamic group has exhausted Gazans with heavy taxes amid record levels of unemployment and poverty. The 2.3 million residents live under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade that Israel says is necessary to stop Hamas from stocking up on weapons. Critics say the blockade amounts to collective punishment.
Founded by Arafat and other leaders in 1959, Fatah announced its birth when it launched the first armed attack against Israel from Lebanon on Jan. 1, 1965. In the 1990s, however, Arafat signed a peace deal with Israel and the Palestinian Authority was created to administer Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank.
The rally comes at a time of division between Palestinians. Fatah and Hamas, the largest Palestinian factions, remain bitter enemies and repeated Arab attempts to reconcile them have failed.
Over the years, Hamas has consolidated its control in Gaza and the internationally recognized PA is struggling to govern autonomous areas of the West Bank. Charges of corruption and mismanagement riddle the PA and Abbas is widely seen as an autocrat.
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