Arab states, EU agree on need for two-state solution

Reuters Published November 28, 2023

US actress Cynthia Nixon (centre), accompanied by state legislators and activists, launches a hunger strike calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, in front of the White House in Washington, on Monday.—AFP

BARCELONA: Arab states and the European Union agreed at a meeting in Spain on Monday that a two-state solution was the answer to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell saying the Palestinian Authority should rule Gaza.

Borrell said all EU members attending the meeting of Mediterranean nations in Barcelona and almost all attendees had agreed on the need for a two-state solution.


The Palestinian Authority (PA) must hold elections as soon as possible to gain further legitimacy and improve its functioning, as the only “viable solution” to the future leadership of Gaza, currently run by Hamas, he said.







“I believe it is the only viable solution, but it will be viable if the international community backs it. Otherwise, we will see a power vacuum that will be fertile ground for all sorts of violent organisations,” Borrell said at a press conference.

An initial four-day truce has been extended by two days, mediator Qatar said, in the first halt in fighting in the seven weeks since the Hamas raid on Oct 7.

Some 14,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombing of Gaza and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said any talk of administration of Gaza after the conflict should focus on the West Bank and Gaza as one entity and that the Palestinian people should decide who rules them.







A two-state solution envisages a state for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside Israel.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al Maliki said the PA, which lost control of Gaza Strip in a 2007 power struggle with Hamas, had no need to return to Gaza, adding: “We have been there all the time, we have 60,000 public workers there.”

They were speaking at the conclusion of a meeting of the Forum for the Union of the Mediterranean in Barcelona, a 43-member grouping of European, North African and Middle Eastern countries. Israel did not attend the summit.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan spoke as a representative of a group of ministers from the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

“We delivered our message, it’s important that we have a ceasefire immediately, that we build on the current truce that is in place,” he told reporters after the conference.







German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the absence of Israel due to apparent concern over “one-sided hostility” underscored “deep rifts”.

“That is precisely why I am here today, even though these meetings were not previously given a high profile by Germany. Precisely because the rifts are getting deeper, we have to sit together, we have to talk and hear each other out,” she said.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

Freelance photojournalist’s drone confiscated in Gaza

Dawn Report 

Published November 28, 2023 

Palestinian men set up a structure amid the destruction caused by Israeli strikes in the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Yunis.—AFP

MOTAZ Azaiza, a freelance photo journalist, alleged that Israeli forces hacked his drone while he was documenting the events in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, during his coverage of the atrocities, he recorded a video showing his drone being seized. This information was shared through his Instagram story.

In a series of Instagram stories, the initial one depicts the drone being pulled towards the Israeli border, with Motaz and his colleague conversing and laughing.



In the second video, Motaz and his colleague Ahmed Al Danaf can be observed pursuing the drone amid a series of completely demolished buildings. In the third video, Ahmed is depicted attempting to trace the drone’s destination, and in the last video, Motaz affirms that his drone has been confiscated by the Israeli forces. “Israeli forces don’t allow drones,” he said in the video.

Motaz has been actively documenting the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. Additionally, he provided coverage of the Israeli aggression in both 2014 and 2021.

Motaz graduated from Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, which now lies in ruins due to Israeli bombings. Like many other graduates, he struggled to secure a job as a photographer after completing his education. Consequently, he opted to pursue a career as a freelance photojournalist, originally aspiring to showcase the beauty of Gaza — a dream now overshadowed by the continuous Israeli aggression.

“It was a paradise, now it is hell. I desperately dream of the days before, when I documented my people and my land. That’s all I can think about at the moment,” he said.

He has made statements like these on several occasions and he has been constantly trying to show how awful the situation has gotten for Gazans.

His account has pictures of Gaza that were taken before Israel took over and it is a combination of colours and life. He has taken pictures of markets, coffee shops and other beautiful places which are now a painful reminder of what this city used to be.

He recently also uploaded a video of himself, surrounded by kids who smile brightly for the camera. He captioned it, “We teach you life people”.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

PAKISTAN
Faults found in foreign-funded power projects

Khaleeq Kiani 

DAWN

Published November 28, 2023 

Senate Standing Committee on Power Chairman Saifullah Abro presides over the committee’s meeting at Parliament House, Islamabad on Nov 27. — Senate website

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel on Monday found fault with the procurement of foreign multilateral-funded projects in the power sector and ordered the National Engineering Services of Pakistan (Nespak) not to sign a final agreement with a local firm till a conclusion because of suspicious circumstances.

A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Power presided over by Saifullah Abro took up the matter of Nespak on non-implementation of its orders regarding the submission of a re-evaluation report and status for Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded project regarding ACSR Bunting Conductor.

A Nespak team told the panel that the domestic preference given in the financial evaluation was based on the EDB (Engineering Development Board) letter issued in February 2015. It conceded that the clarification should have been sorted out for the usage of the 2015 letter and the evaluation had been done for the year 2022, which was not an appropriate action. The committee was further informed that the said letter was valid for a period of six months.

The committee observed that Newage Cable was given domestic preferences on the basis of an outdated letter, which put the whole procurement process in doubt. The committee after deliberation at length unanimously resolved that the matter should be taken with the ADB and the Nespak in consultation with the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) should send a note to the ADB and inform them of the letter based on which the contractors were technically qualified.

It should be noted that the letter issued in 2015 was valid for only six months, and therefore held no ground as it became infructuous due to a lapse of five years.

The committee, however, deferred the matter with the directions that the Nespak and NTDC should share with it the draft note meant for the ADB within three days. It was also informed that though the ADB had issued a no-objection certificate to Newage Cables, the committee recommended that the agreement should not be signed until the reevaluation process is completed in light of the committee recommendations.

NTDC apology

In the matter of adverse remarks by NTDC and its board of directors against the Senate panel on non-implementation status and non-serious attitude on clear recommendations of the committee, the Power Division officers apologised for the inappropriate letter to the Senate Standing Committee on Power.

The officials further explained that the letter was written by the then NTDC chairman and the board did not approve the draft. The chairman later resigned from his position and the NTDC board members apologised for the previous letter and officially withdrew it.

The committee was told that members of the BoD highly valued the Senate panel’s input on the oversight of the ministries.

The committee also took up the Dasu Hydro Power Station to Islamabad transmission line contract funded by the World Bank. A Turkish company SA-RA Energy which was the second lowest bidder told the committee that the award of the contract to Chinese Sinohydro was not appropriate since it did not have any relevant experience and should have been disqualified.

“There are glitches and major mistakes in the submitted contract documents,” a representative of SA-RA Energy said. The panel was also informed that SA-RA had already held meetings with the NTDC and the Power Division and was ready to take the contract and complete it in time.

The committee was also informed that the matter was sub judice in the court. The committee deliberated at length the irregularities in the Transmission Line Contract of the Dasu Hydro Project and decided that NTDC should be allowed to give their point of view.

The SA-RA representatives said the company had also taken up the matter with the World Bank’s top management and established irregularities in the procurement.

The committee decided unanimously to hold an in-camera meeting soon with all the stakeholders on the issue because of the involvement of external factors.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

Sachs on Pakistan’s economy
Ashraf Jehangir Qazi

DAWN

Published November 25, 2023

‘Koi khwaab na ho to bataen kya?’ (When no dreams stay what can one say?) — Athar Nafees (sung by Farida Khanum)

ON Nov 21, Dr Jeffrey Sachs, the renowned development economist of Columbia University, addressed the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad. He began by referring to the general “failure of political systems to address people’s needs” and referred to the militarist global policy of the US as a prime example.

He noted US strategic policy was motivated more by “jealousy” towards China than concern for Americans. He observed if there was peace between India and Pakistan, the people of the subcontinent could benefit enormously.

Sachs noted that, according to IMF “diagnostics”, the Pakistan economy appeared “stuck” in low growth and that this year, negative growth was likely. Moreover, “there was no clear prosp­e­­ct of change”. Domestic investment at 14 per cent of GDP last year was “barely enough to co­­ver depreciation.”

The twin disasters of the devastating floods and the Covid pandemic had further exacerbated the situation. China, Pakistan’s gre­at friend and neighbour had, in contrast, sustained a domestic investment rate of 40 to 50pc since Deng Xiaoping’s Opening Up and Reform in 1978! Pakistan was simply “not investing in its future”.

As for school education, an essential ingredient of developing human capital, the situation in Pakistan was just as bad. The School Life Expectancy, ie, the number of years an average child spends in school in Pakistan, was just eight years according to the World Bank.

If technical and vocational education and training are also considered, the situation becomes much worse. Moreover, government revenue, which is the primary source of finance for development and human investments, was a mere 12pc of GDP.

If Pakistan is to achieve the educational and technical standards it absolutely needs to develop its economy, it would spend 83pc of its current government revenue. This would leave practically nothing for everything else.

Pakistan’s economic crisis is as much a political as it is an economic challenge.

Sachs noted that there was no way the private sector would or could make up the gap and the same held true for the healthcare sector — an equally vital ingredient of human development. To make matters still worse, the budget deficit of Pakistan in the fiscal year ending in 2023 was 7pc, contributing to an annual inflation rate of 30pc. In view of such statistics, Sachs bluntly observed, “a significant lifestyle change in Pakistan was required”.

Sachs also noted Pakistan had gone to the IMF for another bailout. And what did the IMF demand? Cut spending! At a time when Pakistan’s spending on critical ingredients of human and economic development was already too low!

In answer to Pakistan’s protests, the IMF command was: Be quiet! Don’t make a crisis! Austerity, Sachs admits, is needed, but it is not a solution. So what is to be done? A national investment plan is needed.

According to Sachs, the Chinese followed the right model, and as a result, have doubled their national income five times, resulting in a 32-fold increase in their GDP since 1978! While Sachs did not expect Pakistan to match China’s performance, he clearly suggested it should try to follow its example, even though “it won’t be easy”. Pakistan had no alternative but to make the attempt.

Where should Pakistan invest? Sachs reiterated his well-known six areas of education, healthcare, energy (decarbonised), sustainable land care use (land reforms), urban renewal (where half the population now resides), and digital transformation (5G is indispensable.) To even begin this odyssey, Pakistan would need to raise its revenue collection to 25 or 30pc of its GDP — essentially doubling its current rate.

This would require a similar raising of the savings rate, including household savings, even from poor households for which the banking system would need to be appropriately redesigned. Pakistan’s national debt at 35pc of GDP was not very high. But it was short-term rather than long-term debt, which created a liquidity problem and deterred international investment.

Accordingly, a debt management strategy was essential in order to attract public and private international lenders. All of the above, Sachs concluded, was difficult but possible. Pakistan’s performance needed to convey its development commitment to the global investment community.

Comment: One of Pakistan’s respected economists noted there was nothing “new or surprising” in what Sachs had said. This was not a criticism. It was a recognition that resolving Pakistan’s economic crisis was as much a political as it was an economic challenge. Textbook economics and IMF panaceas at best provided insufficient and short-term answers.

Other economists said the quality of investments was more important than the quantity of investment and the breaking of international production chains had disrupted Pakistan’s economic policies. There was a view that Sachs’ presentation was “too macro, as the devil lay in the details”.

Another view stressed that a significant percentage of Pakistan’s government revenue was spent in interest payments. As for foreign direct investment in Pakistan, it was observed that it was relatively short-term, the profits of which were repatriated in foreign currency. (In this regard, Sachs said Pakistan had to attract long-term loans and investments from international financial institutions and the global investment community, thereby suggesting the need for radical structural reforms. China is, in fact, the only country that has made long-term investments and granted longer-term loans to Pakistan. This upsets the US and it has, accordingly, put our ruling elites on notice.)

Conclusion: Prof Jeffrey Sach’s presentation was a breath of fresh air. The implications were clear. Pakistan has to first get out of the failing state syndrome before it can hope to respond to the challenges he identified. How will it do so? This can only be answered by actions, mobilisation, movements, organisation, pro-people governance, etc.

Our externally dependent, internally hostile, and fearful power and political elites, however, will never facilitate this. This is the challenge our middle classes have the primary and historic responsibility to confront. Otherwise, Pakistan is history.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.
ashrafjqazi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2023

Climate resilience

Editorial 

DAWN

Published November 28, 2023

THE IMF’s advice to Pakistan to use its resources more effectively and efficiently to build a climate-resilient infrastructure and strengthen its ability to attract climate finance is timely. Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change and the authorities are looking for international support to meet their climate finance targets.

Formulating sound public investment policies and aligning them with national climate adaptation and mitigation goals would be a step in the right direction. The Fund wants the next budget to be a “turning point” for planning mechanisms and investment portfolios based on climate adaptation. At the moment, Pakistan’s capital stock and efficiency of public investment are low.

The IMF has underscored the need for improving transparency on climate-related actions in the budget documents by providing information on key aspects of the public investment programme.

It wants the Planning Commission, together with the finance ministry, to come up with a proposal that, after approval, can be included in the next budget, and is encouraging the government to publish its climate-related spending for the ongoing fiscal year.

Pakistan has experienced several climate disasters caused by global warming. The World Bank’s Country Climate and Development Report has estimated that 6.5-9pc of GDP will likely be lost by 2050 to climate change, unless the challenge to lessen the impact of increased floods and heatwaves, which are reducing farm yields, destroying infrastructure and lowering labour productivity, is addressed.

Last year’s devastating floods, which displaced millions of people in the country and wiped out crops and infrastructure worth over $30bn, sharply demonstrate the need for greater investments in climate-resilient infrastructure.

With temperatures rising and unpredictable rainfall patterns increasing the risk of floods, cyclones, droughts and heatwaves, it is imperative our policymakers formulate sound development policies to mitigate the risk.

Transparent investments based on demonstrable needs in climate-resilient infrastructure are crucial to alleviating the impact of climate change and the increasing natural disasters the country is witnessing.

Unfortunately, in spite of significant understanding among policymakers about the threats presented by rapid global warming to economic and financial stability, it is disappointing to find that the country is least prepared to deal with the fallout of climate change.

Pakistan’s people and its economy have suffered massively due to bureaucratic inertia, policy ad-hocism, and a reactionary response to climate disasters. Notwithstanding the official claims, no concerted effort has thus far been made to plan and align public investments with national climate mitigation and adaptation goals.

With Pakistan just one more natural disaster away from yet another human and economic catastrophe, it is critical to ensure climate resilience of the economy through sound climate-related public investment management.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

PAKISTAN; FUEDALISTIC FEMICIDE
Condemned to die

Editorial 

DAWN

Published November 28, 2023 


ANOTHER day in Kohistan, another jirga-mandated murder of a girl. 

Her ‘crime’: dancing with boys in a video that went viral on social media. The harrowing incident bears a stark resemblance to the 2011 Kohistan case where five women were filmed clapping as a man danced. They were all reportedly murdered with a jirga’s approval. For such grisly crimes to continue more than a decade later raises alarming questions about parallel justice systems and the precarious state of women’s rights in Pakistan. The jirga, an assembly rooted in tribal traditions, operates outside the legal set-up, at times sanctioning murder. The state’s response often fails to make a lasting impact. The filing of an FIR in the recent case is a necessary step, yet is it sufficient to deter future killings? After all, the culprits of the 2011 crimes remain unpunished, while the man who brought the matter to light was gunned down, despite stating that his life was in danger. The plight of women in such scenarios is particularly distressing. Dubbed as ‘honour’ killings, these acts are, in fact, barbaric crimes that rob women of their dignity, agency, and ultimately, their lives. Women — in general, but particularly in these instances — are not seen as individuals with rights and freedoms but as mere bearers of communal honour, vulnerable to the most extreme forms of punishment for perceived transgressions.


The role of social media in exacerbating these situations cannot be overlooked. In an age where content can be rapidly disseminated and manipulated, the need for digital literacy and ethical standards in content sharing is more acute than ever. However, the solution does not lie in restricting digital freedoms but in educating and empowering communities to use these tools responsibly. Most importantly, there is a need for comprehensive reforms to ensure that jirgas, which have been upheld as illegal by the apex court, are replaced by state-sanctioned legal fora that uphold the principles of justice, human rights, and gender equality as enshrined in the Constitution. The state must assert its role in protecting its citizens, especially the most vulnerable, from parallel systems that perpetrate injustice and inequality. Our resolve must be to fight for a society where no individual lives in the shadow of an unjust verdict, and where the dignity and rights of every woman are upheld.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

GAZA WAR

Media giants’ tattered credibility

Abbas Nasir 

DAWN

Published November 26, 2023 

THE credibility of global media organisations such as the BBC, CNN, SkyNews and even progressive newspapers such as the UK’s Guardian appears to be in tatters as their editorial policies were found seriously wanting in the aftermath of Israel’s massively disproportionate response to the Hamas’s break-out last month from Gaza and attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, including some 400 soldiers.

Hamas militants also took some 250 hostages from Israel back to Gaza with them as, they said, they needed leverage to secure the release of some of the 8,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, over 1,000 of whom, mostly women and children, have never been charged and are detained — I’d say held hostage — on what are called ‘administrative orders’.

Israel’s enraged and blind carpet bombing of Gaza City and other northern parts of the Strip has seen a staggering 14,000 Palestinians killed, over 60 per cent of them women and children, while Western powers led by the US and dutifully followed by UK, Germany and others supported Israel’s mass murder, even genocide, by saying it was exercising its right to self-defence.

To start with, tragically, many of these organisations mirrored their governments’ view that see­m­­ed to suggest that the root of the Middle East conflict dated back to Oct 7, 2023, and not as far back as the Nakba in 1948 that saw the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral land.

Even colleagues are seen as children of a lesser god by some of our Western media outlets.

Since their own governments were endorsing the Israeli occupiers’ view, the media organisations ended up echoing the latter’s propaganda. Take, for example, the numbers of those killed in Gaza, which was always attributed to the ‘Hamas-controlled’ health authority, so as to create doubt about them. This when, from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to smaller organisations working in Gaza, all said Hamas figures were always accurate and not dodgy at all. Ironically, the only figure that was revised was the initial Israeli figure of 1,400 killed by Hamas to 1,200. The initial number as well as the revised one has been carried by the media without any attribution except for the day the revision happened.

This revision happened because the Israelis said that some of the charred bodies recovered from the kibbutz that Hamas attacked were assumed to be those of Israelis, but later, forensics tests and analyses made clear those belonged to Hamas fighters.

Despite this admission, the global media did little to cover stories on credible websites, even an eyewitness testimony on Israeli radio that Israeli tanks had fired at houses where Hamas were holding Israelis hostage and many died in such explosions and the resultant raging fires.

Similar treatment was reserved for Israeli Apache (gunship) helicopter pilots’ statements, in which one reserve lieutenant-colonel said they were following the ‘Hannibal directive’ whereby they fired at any vehicle they suspected of carrying hostages.

You only have to google some of these instances to learn more but you can be sure very little of it would have figured in Western mainstream media. This is not to say for a moment that Hamas militants did not attack, kill and take Israelis hostage, among them soldiers, civilians, elderly women and children. They did.

Also, look at the coverage of Israel’s targeting of journalists and their families in Gaza. Declan Walsh, the respected New York Times journalist, in a tweet called our Gaza colleagues ‘titans’ of the profession. They disregarded the danger to their lives and reported on the Gaza genocide.

You may have read/heard of the killing of the family of the stoic Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza. But, like me, you’d have learnt of the targeted killing of at least 60 journalists by Israel and some of their families in precision bombing runs by the occupation air force via social media. Even colleagues are seen as children of a lesser god by some of our Western media outlets.

With Israel’s wanton targeting of the civilian population in Gaza and the images of slaughtered, bloodied babies reaching the world only because of the heroic and selfless reporting by our valiant colleagues, the tide of blind Western governmental support to the genocidal ultra-right wing Netanyahu-led government is slowly turning.

The Spanish and Belgian prime ministers have categorically said enough is enough. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez appointed a Valencian-born Palestinian with family in the West Bank to his cabinet. Sira Abed Rego is on record saying after Oct 7 that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against occupation. Sánchez has called Israel’s response excessive and called for a two-state solution, while vowing to recognise Palestine.

Opinion polls in the US and UK are suggesting that parties and candidates who have given Israel carte blanche to carry out mass murder in Gaza are alienating a chunk of their voters. Given Joe Biden’s slim victory margin over Donald Trump in the last presidential election, if he does not address his ‘pro-ceasefire’ voters’ concerns and wins them back by this time next year, he will be in serious trouble.

Israel and its Western supporters both in and out of government, bring to bear enormous pressure on the media. It takes steadfast, surefooted editors and those running editorials in various organisations to steer a path based purely on objective considerations. Impartiality is vital to the long-term credibility and, therefore, good health of the media in a highly competitive marketplace.

As it is, social media is making inroads into the monopolistic space enjoyed by traditional media, and though each one of us has often complained about the volume of toxicity on social media platforms, there are many around the world who are grateful for these in this case because without them, perhaps, the full horror of the Gaza genocide may not have emerged.

Despite large and established media organisations’ dereliction of duty, notwithstanding occasional flashes of brilliance by conscientious journalists breaking their shackles and reporting facts, it was largely social media platforms that helped stem the tide and even turn it somewhat.

If we’re lucky we’ll see traditional media following suit for self-preservation, if nothing else.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2023

Villain of the piece

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi 

DWN

Published November 28, 2023 

A news item in Dawn’s issue of Oct 13 wasn’t really needed. It informed the readers that Britain had decided to send two naval ships and surveillance aircraft to the eastern Mediterranean to “support Israel and regional stability”.

As history tells us, if there is any country that is solely and unequivocally responsible for the slaughter that is going on in Gaza, it is Britain. By issuing the Balfour Declaration and handing over Palestine to the Jewish minority, Britain paved the way for the massacre happening now and has been ongoing since 1917, not just in the “Eastern Mediterranean” but also between the “river and the sea”, for that is how the Palestinians identify their country — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.

In elaborating the Balfour criminality, and dwelling on the crafty language, where every clause was duplicitous, I will be taking readers along the beaten track which scholars have traversed for more than a century.

There will be nothing new in what follows but it deserves to be repeated as long as Palestine remains in bondage. The most farcical part of the declaration is an ‘appeal’ that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

Normally, it is a majority to which pleas are made for safeguarding the interest of a minority, but here a minority — the Jewish minority — is being requested to safeguard the interests of the non-Jewish majority.

Over a century ago, Britain paved the way for the Gaza killings.

In 1917, the Jews formed six per cent of the Palestinian population. However, if you include foreign settlers, especially German who had settled in Palestine because of the friendly relations between the Ottoman and Germanmpires, the Jewish population comprised 13pc.

This means it had already been decided that Palestine would be turned into a Jewish majority territory under the British Mandate. (‘Mandate’ needs a separate discussion). In this appeal to a minority, concern is being expressed for the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities [read: Arabs] in Palestine”.

Here the words “political rights” have been avoided, but when it comes to the followers of the Judaic faith, the declaration makes clear that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the “rights and political status [emphasis added] enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

The declaration was made in the form of a letter by British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, who was requested by Balfour to “bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation”. (Incidentally, it was also a Rothschild who in the 19th century had given money to British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli to purchase shares of the Suez Canal).

Having secured Palestine by defeating the Turks militarily, Britain’s task was how to handle(read: dispose of) Hussain bin Ali, the Sharif (governor) of Makkah, who had revolted against Turks under the leadership of T.E. Lawrence and was now waiting for Britain to fulfil its promise and make him the king of the Ottoman Empire’s Arab territories. That he expected Palestine to be part of his kingdom was never accepted by Britain, because the British government insisted that they never promised Palestine to Hussain.

Getting rid of the former governor of Makkah was less problematic, because Abdul Aziz bin Saud knew well the British wanted Hussain out of the picture. The Saudis obliged, captured the Hejaz and made Hussain run. As a sop, however, Britain made one of his sons, Faisal, king of Iraq and Abdullah the king of a newly created country called Jordan.

Even though they installed two of Hussain’s sons as kings, Britain said they would stay on in Iraq because they had been given a mandate by the League of Nations to do so in order to prepare the natives for governance. Sidekick France applied the same principle with some variation and gobbled up Syria after taking Lebanon away from Syria and creating a country.

This was all part of the infamous Sykes-Picot treaty which Britain and France had kept secret to cheat their Arab allies.

That the spirit of the Balfour Declaration is alive was to be seen on London streets 106 years later when police warned pro-Palestinian demonstrators that anyone “showing support” for Hamas could be arrested.

The naval ships which Britain sent to the Eastern Mediterranean were of no military value; they were meant to remove any misgivings Israel and the powerful Zionist lobby back home might have with regard to Britain’s continued loyalty to Israel

It is America which is now Israel’s guardian angel; in reality though America has to obey what the powerful Zionist lobby in the US — nay in the West — orders.

The writer is Dawn’s external ombudsman and an author.
Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

Neocolonial agenda

Javid Husain

DAWN

Published November 25, 2023

UNDENIABLY, Israel was created primarily as an outpost of the US-led West in the heart of the Middle East for serving a neocolonial agenda aimed at projecting power in the region and maintaining a stranglehold on energy resources and vital trade routes.


The Zionist movement indeed played its role in the establishment of Israel. However, this goal would have remained a mere dream but for the political, military, and economic support of the US and other Western countries.

It was for this reason that the West, despite its strong commitment to the goal of nuclear non-proliferation, looked the other way while Israel was engaged in the development of its nuclear-weapon programme. It is against this background that the recent tragic developments in Gaza and the West Bank need to be analysed.

World War II, which caused unprecedented loss of human life and material destruction, also led to the unintended result of the dismantling of European colonial empires, resulting in the emergence of the former colonies as independent countries in Asia and Africa in the exercise of the right of self-determination of their peoples.

Thereafter, Western countries resorted to the use of political, economic, cultural, and covert means to control the policies of liberated countries and exploit their resources, giving rise to an era of neocolonialism. This phenomenon in different ways continues to inform the policies of the US-led West in its dealings with the Global South.

Developments in Gaza cannot be viewed in a vacuum.

The Middle Eastern countries, many of which had remained under the British and French control in the aftermath of World War I, have, in particular, been the victims of the neocolonial policies of the US-led West.

The US desire to dominate the region was reflected in the overthrow of the government of the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, support to Israel’s expansionism in and military occupation of Palestinian territories, its policies of ‘divide and rule’ in the Middle East, its overt and covert interventions in the region, and its military bases in various Middle Eastern countries.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the US was the first country in 1948 to recognise Israel, which is viewed by the US-led West as the most important asset for the protection of its interests in the Middle East. Additionally, Israel serves as an outpost of the Western civilisation in the region.

A recent example of the US support to Israel was the vote in the UN General Assembly last month on a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” in Gaza to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

The resolution was adopted by 121 votes in favour, 14 against and 44 abstentions. It is noteworthy that the US was among the small minority of nations which voted against the resolution.

Developments in Gaza cannot be viewed in a vacuum, as rightly pointed out by the UN Secretary General. The Hamas attack of Oct 7 was the direct consequence of the suffocating military occupation of Gaza by Israel for 56 years.

Israel’s genocidal response, which has inflicted collective punishment on the people of Gaza through indiscriminate bombings, military raids, and restrictions on the provision of humanitarian assistance, amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, besides being a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. Israel must be held accountable for the thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women and children martyred and the huge material destruction caused in Gaza by its criminal assaults.

The need of the hour is for the international community to take steps to provide badly needed humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, and initiate the process for a just peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

While a four-day truce is in place now, it is a pity that the US and some other Western countries prevented the UN Security Council from ordering an immediate ceasefire, betraying their double standards in dealing with human rights and humanitarian issues. However, it is not surprising, considering the umbilical relationship between Israel and the Western neocolonialism under the US leadership.

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the international community, especially the Arabs and the Muslim world, can generate enough pressure on the US-led West to modify its position in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the chances of that happening anytime soon are remote, primarily because of the weakness and disunity of the Muslim world as reflected in the irresolute outcome of the recent OIC-Arab League summit.

The writer is a retired ambassador and author of Pakistan and a World in Disorder — A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century.
javid.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2023

Smog season

Umair Javed 

DAWN

Published November 27, 2023

LARGE parts of Pakistan are currently engulfed by toxic air, amounting to nothing short of a public health catastrophe. The onset of ‘smog season’, Pakistan and north India’s substitute for autumn and early winter, seems to be worsening with each passing year, and cities in the region regularly top the charts for the worst air quality anywhere in the world.


For the first few smog seasons, public authorities chose not to pay much attention, instead highlighting their own ‘data’ that showed the air wasn’t actually as poisonous as environmentalists were making it out to be. Once this make-believe data was thoroughly debunked, authorities gradually stepped into action with a range of seemingly haphazard measures.

Clampdown on stubble burning during the Kharif season has reportedly produced some results. Data shared by environmental policy specialist Dawar Butt shows that till Nov 20, crop fires in Pakistani Punjab were down by nearly 60 per cent compared to the average for this period between 2016 and 2020.

Some of the punitive and administrative measures taken by local officials have induced behavioural change in farming populations, thus contributing to lower frequency of crop burning.


However, clamping down on crop burning addresses a relatively small segment of the problem, given the widespread and multifaceted nature of poor air quality. The fact of the matter is that crop fires only emerge ahead of winter sowing, while air quality is poor pretty much the year round. It becomes more visible during the last quarter of the calendar year because of changes in climatic and meteorological conditions.


Given what needs to be done to clean up Pakistan’s air, the scale of the task is daunting.

To date, all existing work on toxic air quality in Pakistan has shown that vehicular emissions are a central part of the problem. Even when smog is not functionally visible, air quality indicators continuously show high levels of particulate matter and toxicity. This means that any interventions designed to clean up the air will also have to address these year-round causes, rather than just tackling time-bound issues.

A recent article by Pakistani scientists Abdullah Bajwa and Hassan Sheikh, based at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, in the journal Air does a comprehensive job of summarising the literature and evaluating the contribution of road transport to urban air pollution.

Their analysis of existing source apportionment studies shows that vehicular emissions are responsible for anywhere between a third to more than half of poor air quality, depending on the parameters of evaluation.

While existing research may be insufficient to provide more precise estimates, there is a general consensus among environmentalists that a) vehicle emissions are a major part of the problem, and b) within emitting vehicles, two- and three-wheelers are likely responsible for most of the issue.

As per the authors mentioned, “The emissions profile presented for Pakistan’s urban automotive fleet identifies two-/three-wheelers, almost all of which are carburetted and a significant fraction are powered by 2SC engines, as the largest (36-64 per cent) vehicular pollution source.

High sulphur content in fuel (especially diesel) and lube oil, poorly tuned and maintained engines that burn rich, and lack of exhaust after-treatment systems are recognised as reasons for Pakistan’s disproportionately high vehicular emissions.“

Given what needs to be done to clean up Pakistan’s air, the scale of the task is daunting for several political and institutional reasons. It is true that many cities around the world have cleaned up their air, contributing to better public health outcomes for their citizens.

London, Chicago, Los Angeles, and a host of other Western cities have all done remarkably well on this front. Closer to home, the example of Chinese cities and their ability to improve domestic environmental conditions over the preceding three decades is frequently cited as an example worthy of emulation.

The issue of using China as a model for environmental policies is a complex one. Recent analyses by environmental economist Dr Sanval Nasim identifies exactly why: China is a high-capacity, well-resourced state, with a bureaucracy and local governance apparatus that can take a range of difficult, often very costly, steps to control local populations.

Given the political system in China, administrators have the capacity to absorb political and social blowback with little consequences. Simply put, they have a centralised, disciplined governance apparatus that can successfully ban old vehicles, sanction polluters, impose heavy fines etc.

While no system is entirely free from leakages, the Chinese have the ability to coordinate across multiple governing tiers and departments to produce desired outcomes.

The Pakistani state, on the other hand, is a low-capacity state with limited infrastructural power, ie, it has reduced the ability to coordinate across multiple state and societal actors; has a hard time getting orders implemented; and suffers from leakages and resource constraints that limit the effectiveness of field officers tasked with implementing legislation and policy directives. In other words, punitive and administrative steps to evaluate engine fitness, stop polluting vehicles or banning two-stroke engines from the road are unlikely to succeed.

Should Pakistanis then wait for a high-capacity, more disciplined governing system to emerge before thinking about a resolution to the smog issue? It is a luxury that citizens of the country unfortunately do not have.

Instead, as part of his analysis, Dr Nasim identifies pricing-based interventions for the short to medium term, such as congestion charges and subsidies that can help make transitions to better, cleaner technologies possible.

Ultimately, though, the issue of poor air quality can only be resolved by taking polluting vehicles off the road and by offering citizens the opportunity to meet their mobility requirements through public transport. And, unfortunately for Pakist­anis, progress on the latter seems to have stalled, with billions, instead, continuously being spent on private-vehicle-supporting infrastructure in cities such as Lahore.

With no change in priorities on this front, citizens will have to bear the toxic brunt of smog seasons for the foreseeable future.

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.
X: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2023

A billion Indians minus the four

Jawed Naqvi 

DAWN

Published November 28, 2023

ELECTIONS are underway in five Indian states. The BJP lost all five last time, though it has created the impression that it won the round hands down. Many see the races as the pre-finals before the general elections due in six months. Prime Minster Narendra Modi is seeking a third successive term and the BJP has cast the net wide, with its standard blend of religious polarisation, caste-based promises and claims of glitzy development.

The BJP faces the centrist Congress one on one in three states of the five — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — while in Telangana and Meghalaya the two national parties must challenge or woo local satraps. Though the BJP lost all five races, it wrested power in Madhya Pradesh after engineering defections from the Congress, which otherwise had a clear majority. The BJP also outfoxed the Congress by shoring up a coalition with local parties in Meghalaya where it secured all of two seats in the 60-member assembly!

Apart from its humongous financial clout, and its honed street power, albeit mostly in states it rules, the BJP has another arrow in its quiver — the federal police and tax sleuths that raid opposition leaders. It has all but decapitated the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) — which came to power on a platform of fighting corruption — with the arrest of key ministers from the Delhi government for alleged graft.

A criminal probe has been initiated against Mahua Moitra, the articulate opposition woman MP from West Bengal. Charges of corrupt practices against her are widely seen as spurious and contrived. A BJP MP has accused her of asking questions in the Lok Sabha on behalf of a businessman and taking money for it. A BJP-led house committee investigated the matter and recommended her removal as MP.

The BJP is whipping up a polarised campaign ahead of next month’s proposed inauguration of the Ram temple.

Ms Moitra and AAP ministers are leading voices in targeting tycoons close to Mr Modi, together with Rahul Gandhi of the Congress. He too was expelled from Lok Sabha for allegedly slurring the name ‘Modi’. The supreme court restored his membership although the case continues.

Gandhi, Moitra and AAP leaders are ferociously critical of Mr Modi’s proximity with the Adani Group. On the media front too, journalists filing unflattering reports on Gautam Adani have been targeted and threatened with arrest. A senior executive and the editor of the NewsClick news portal are currently in jail over allegations of accepting money from a businessman of Indian origin considered close to China. NewsClick has led a sustained campaign against crony capitalism, which it says deeply benefits the Adani Group.

On the communal front, the BJP is whipping up a polarised campaign ahead of next month’s proposed inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built at the site of the destroyed Babri Masjid. The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh has unleashed a range of measures to provoke communal backlash from Muslims, a pleasure thus far happily denied. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s government recently placed a ban on food products carrying the label of ‘halal’. It frowns on meat-eating even as many Hindus eat meat and eggs, foods shunned by puritans among them. A ‘halal’ label, in any case, not only enables practising Muslims to identify the food permitted by their religion, but also cautions Sikhs and other communities that avoid ‘halal’ food prohibited by their religion. The halal ban order wouldn’t stand scrutiny in a court of law, but it’s enough to create distractions from what are counted as Mr Modi’s failures in 10 years of his rule.

Another distraction is the proposal to rename Aligarh town, host to the fabled Aligarh Muslim University, to a Hinduised ‘Harigarh’. This is part of the campaign to change names of cities and avenues with a Muslim connection to Hindu names — Allahabad to Prayagraj, Mughalsarai Junction to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya station. Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi, where Mohammed Ali Jinnah had his classy home, is, however, Abdul Kalam Road, after the Muslim nuclear scientist.

Despite its indifferent electoral grades in recent years, the Congress party alone commands a reach right across the country, from the north to the south, and east to west. The BJP on its part is struggling to get a toehold in the south, and the northeast barring Assam. The pivotal role for the Congress in the newly minted INDIA opposition alliance in the campaign is to depose the Modi government in May thus makes the current state elections important.

The Congress has undergone a notable change from its pro-business Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh days to become a strong voice against the intrusive role for businesses in politics. It has also adapted to a new focus on social justice triggered by a caste census carried out by allies in power in Bihar. That’s a worry for Mr Modi whose claims of representing Hindu interests have been gobsmacked by revelations in the census.

Consider the example of four men who died in Gujarat in a septic tank that they were cleaning for a living when the rest of the state and the country were glued to TV sets, watching a cricket tournament. The headline after the finals said Australia broke a billion hearts in defeating India. A billion minus the four, perhaps, would have been a truer description. What should worry the BJP more is that of the four men, three were Hindus and the fourth a Muslim.

This was not a stand-alone tragedy as manual scavenging, although illegal, is rampant in states like Gujarat. There have been deaths in septic tanks in Ahmedabad too. What the tragedy illustrates is that Hindus are being exploited remorselessly by their own spokesmen. It also shows that Muslims are equal victims in the deeply unjust system. Here the picture of Modi hugging Indian bowler Mohammed Shami may not yield political dividends, even if it makes an unusual statement of the Muslim-baiting prime minister embracing a Muslim cricket star.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023

BALOCHISTAN/PAKISTAN

Sit-in against Turbat ‘killings’ enters fifth day

Behram Baloch 

Published November 28, 2023 

QUETTA: The sit-in against the alleged extrajudicial killing of Balaach Mola Bakhsh entered the fifth day on Monday as no headway was made in talks between protesters and authorities.


All shops remained closed due to a shutter down strike as family members, along with supporters of the Baloch Yakjehti Council (BYC) and political parties, held sit-ins at the D-Baloch China-Pakistan Economic Corridor road linking Turbat to Karachi and other areas, suspending all kinds of traffic.

The family members are holding the sit-in with the victim’s body.

The FIR into the killing, ordered by the Turbat session judge on Friday, has yet to be registered.

Baloch Yakjehti Council leaders and victim’s family members alleged that Najma Baloch, Mr Bakhsh’s sister, was taken to an unknown place by officials of the Kech District Council chairman’s office for talks.

“There was no contact as her mobile phone remained silent for many hours,” they alleged and added that on her return, Ms Baloch claimed that authorities were pressuring her to call off the sit-in and bury her brother.

The participants have, however, refused to call off the sit-in until the FIR was registered and a judicial inquiry was announced into the alleged extrajudicial killing of Mr Bakhsh in CTD custody.

“We will not come under any pressure to end the protest,” vowed BYC leaders.

They announced a complete shutter down and wheel jam strike across Makran division on Tuesday (today) and urged traders and transporters to observe the strike.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2023