PAKISTAN

Twitter slams the government's decision to send the domestic violence bill to the CII

(Council of Islamic Ideology)

IMAGES STAFF


Users don't understand the objections to the bill and criticise the lack of women representation in the council.

Twitter is in an uproar after news broke that the government has sent the Domestic Violence Protection and Prevention Bill, 2021 to the Council of Islamic Ideology for review.

In a letter dated July 5, 2021, Babar Awan, the adviser to the prime minister on parliamentary affairs, pointed out that the bill, initially passed by the National Assembly in April, was referred back to the Lower House of Parliament after the Senate suggested amendments to the proposed law.

The letter states that concerns have been raised "regarding various definitions and other contents of the bill."

The bill defines domestic violence as "all acts of physical, emotional, psychological, sexual and economic abuse committed by a respondent against women, children, vulnerable persons, or any other person with whom the respondent is or has been in a domestic relationship that causes feat, physical or psychological harm to the aggrieved person". On Twitter, it has been praised for being wide-ranging and extensive.

The bill was initially moved by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari on April 19 and is only going to apply to Islamabad. Sindh, KP and Punjab all have their own laws against domestic violence.

The news that the bill was being sent to the CII sent shockwaves across Twitter as people couldn't understand why.

Many took issue with the fact that there is no female representation on the CII, despite it being mandated by Article 228 of the Constitution.

There was little women representation throughout the process, except Mazari who put forward the bill.

Many people believed the bill was comprehensive enough to terrify men.

Others took on the notion that it was "against Pakistan's culture" and gave the internet a wakeup call.

Some believe the law may be weakened by any further amendments.

One Twitter user wanted to know what was so objectionable about the bill in the first place.

Actor Osman Khalid Butt was left nonplussed by the news.

Model Eman Suleman had a lot to say on the topic too.

“Okay let me clarify, imagine a country that hates its women so much that a bill to protect them from violence needs to be proposed only to be rejected,” she wrote on her Instagram Story with the hashtag #LoveMyCountry.

“Let this be a reminder to us that laws are made by men to protect men and to help them maintain their power over women/gender minorities. Our country literally refused to pass a bill to keep women and children safe from physical violence," she wrote in a second story.

"So the next time you put your faith in [the] law, think twice. And shut up with your innocent until proven guilty. Powerful men will get away with pretty much anything because the law is on their side. I am especially talking to other women.”

Actor and author Mira Sethi believed the government does not prioritise protecting women.

What do you think about the bill and its criticism?

Govt recommends referring domestic violence bill to Council of Islamic Ideology

Dawn.com

  Published July 6, 2021 - Updated

The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2021 was initially moved

in the NA by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari  on April 19, 2021. — AP/File

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan has written a letter to National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, seeking a review of the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2021, by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) — a constitutional body that advises the legislature on whether or not a certain law is repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.

In the letter dated July 5, 2021, Awan has pointed out that the bill, initially passed by the National Assembly (NA) in April this year, was referred back to the Lower House of Parliament after the Senate suggested amendments to the proposed law.

The letter further states that concerns have been raised "regarding various definitions and other contents of the bill."

It adds: "Most importantly it is being highlighted that the bill contravenes the Islamic [injunctions] and way of life as enshrined in responsibility of the state in Article 31 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan".

Citing Article 230 (1) (b) of the Constitution, the letter says it "empowers the Islamic Council (CII) to advise a House, a Provincial Assembly, a President or a Governor on any question referred to it as to whether proposed law is or is not repugnant to the [injunctions] of Islam".

Moreover, under Article 230 (1) (a), the body can make recommendations to parliament regarding ways and means to encourage Muslims in Pakistan to lead their lives, individually and collectively, in accordance with the principles of Islam, Awan has stated in the letter.

On these grounds, he wrote, it is advisable that the bill be referred to the CII.

Passage of the bill

The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2021, was initially moved in the NA by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari on April 19, 2021, and was passed by the Lower House the same day.

Through this act, a legal and institutional framework had been proposed for the territorial jurisdiction of Islamabad to ensure that victims of domestic violence were provided legal protection and relief and the perpetrators of this offence were punished, Mazari had said.

The bill was then referred to the Senate, where the opposition had defeated the government by one vote to block the immediate passage of the proposed law, insisting that the bill be referred to the relevant standing committee for further deliberation.

View from the courtroom: KP domestic violence bill a diluted version of previous drafts

At the time, PPP's Yousuf Raza Gilani, the leader of opposition in the Senate, had argued that while the bill was an important legislation that had taken months to be cleared from the NA, it needed to be referred to the standing committee.

A voice vote was then suggested to decide on the matter and when the opposition had defeated the government by 35-34, the Senate chairperson had directed the then yet-to-be-formed committee to present its report to the House on the matter two days after its formation.

Senate committee report

The Senate Committee on Human Rights had later submitted the report on June 18, mentioning that the bill aimed to "establish an effective system for the protection, relief and rehabilitation of women, children, elders and other vulnerable persons against domestic violence in the territorial jurisdiction of Islamabad Capital Territory".

According to the report, the law will empower courts to grant interim orders, protection custody and residence orders and award monetary relief to victims at the expense of respondents, and lead to the establishment of a protection committee to assist aggrieved persons and process their applications in court.

The report, however, had proposed multiple amendments to the draft as well, following which the bill was again referred to the NA.

'Disappearing into a black hole'

Last month, the opposition in the Senate had raised alarm over the bill, along with other key human rights legislations it had sponsored, disappearing into a black hole to emerge in the form of government bills.

“A wrong practice is going on for quite some time which is a disincentive for members of the Senate who work hard on the bills with the civil society and their colleagues,” PPP parliamentary leader Senator Sherry Rehman had said while raising the issue in the house.

She had regretted that instead of using parliamentary committees for scrutinising and reviewing bills, countless progressive bills had just vanished from parliamentary agendas under the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government.

“It is shocking how my Bill, ‘Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2020’, has been silently omitted from the agenda," Rehman had added.

CII's earlier ruling on domestic violence

In 2016, the CII had proposed a bill that allowed a husband to "lightly" beat his wife "if needed" and prohibited mixing of the genders in schools, hospitals and offices.

That proposal had come under fire by rights activists.

Farzana Bari, human rights activist and academic at Quaid-i-Azam University, had termed the proposed bill unconstitutional.

“Allowing a husband to beat his wife, in any way, is against Pakistan’s Constitution and the international laws and treaties that Pakistan has signed and is bound by. This Council is a burden on the Pakistani taxpayer and bringing a bad name to Muslims throughout the world,” she had said, warning that the bill “will take Pakistan further into ignorance.”

PAKISTAN

Workplace harassment law limited in scope: SC

Nasir Iqbal

“When the PAHWWA is examined as a whole, it does not live up to expectation as titled and preamble of the act suggests,” Justice Mushir Alam wrote in a judgement. — Online/File

ISLAMABAD: The Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010 (PAHWWA) surprisingly in its present form is just another piece of cosmetic legislation that is blinkered in its application, the Supreme Court has regretted.

“When the PAHWWA is examined as a whole, it does not live up to expectation as titled and preamble of the act suggests,” Justice Mushir Alam wrote in a judgement on a petition moved by a former employee of the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV).

A three-judge SC bench that heard the case of Nadia Naz regarding harassment at workplace, however, observed that the petitioner failed to establish the case of sexual harassment within the contemplation of the Act.

Nadia Naz was appointed as resource person (camera department) at PTV on Sept 4, 2007. She was proceeded against departmentally, charge-sheeted, show caused and consequently her service was terminated on May 13, 2017 during the pendency of her complaint before the Federal Ombudsman for Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace.

Justice Alam observed that anyone could be subject to sexual harassment though in a culture and society like Pakistan women were the distressing majority of victims. Harassment in any society or organisation was a testament to regressive behaviour that created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment that had a devastating effect on any society or organisation by adversely affecting its overall performance and development, the SC judge noted.

According to the judgement, the harassment, in all forms and manifestations, may it be based on race, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, age related, an arrangement of quid pro quo, and/or sexual harassment affects and violates the dignity of a person, as guaranteed under the Constitution.

Elaborating on the scope of PAHWWA, the judgement explained that rather than addressing issues of harassment in all its manifestation in a holistic manner, the Act was a myopic piece of legislation that focused only on a minute faction of harassment.

The Act confined or limited its application to sexualised forms, including orientation of unwanted or unwelcome behaviour, or conduct displayed by an accused person towards a victim in any organisation, Justice Alam observed, highlighting that insulting modesty or causing sexual harassment at workplace or public place had also been criminalised under Section 509 of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860 that was punishable for a term that may extend to three years, or with fine up to Rs500,000 or both.

The judgement explained that the definition of harassment under the Act suggested that any misdemeanour, behaviour, or conduct unbecoming of an employee, or employer at the workplace towards a fellow employee or employer in any organisation — may it be generically classifiable harassment — was not actionable unless such behaviour or conduct was shown to be inherently demonstrable of its ‘sexual’ nature.

Any other demeaning attitude, behaviour, or conduct which might amount to harassment in the generic sense of the word, as it was ordinarily understood, howsoever grave and devastating it might be on the victim, was not made actionable within the contemplation of actionable definition of harassment under Section 2 (h) of the Act.

Giving such restricted meaning to “actionable” harassment, by the legislature in its wisdom, impinges the very object and purpose for which the Act was promulgated, the judgement regretted, adding that the impact of harassment, as generically understood, and how restrictive its application had been made was very well articulated and thrashed out by the Islamabad High Court in the Shahida Masood case.

The Act was specifically legislated to protect not only working women but also men against “harassment having sexual nature” at workplace and, therefore, any conduct amounting to harassment of any other kind and nature, despite howsoever distasteful and injurious, was not made cognizable before the federal ombudsman, the judgement deplored.

The meaning of the term harassment as given in Section 2(h) of the Act could not be stretched to other conduct being not of sexual orientation, according to the verdict. Apparently, it noted, the reason for limiting the actionable offence of harassment could be its serious impact on all those involved, including both the potential ‘harasser’ and the potential victims, and the responsibility for avoiding instances of harassment on workplace regulators.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2021

Yahya’s enablers

Mahir Ali

THE hill station Nathiagali was abuzz with unusual activity in early July 50 years ago. There was a visible military and police presence, notably on the road that led to Government House. It was widely rumoured, and reported, that the elegant colonial-era mansion was hosting a VVIP — none other than Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, supposedly recuperating from a digestive ailment acquired during his subcontinental sojourn.

So when a helicopter unusually hovered nearby, my pre-teen eyes followed its progress, possibly through a pair of binoculars. Government House was at least partially visible from a somewhat higher vantage point behind my family’s rented summer abode. And as the helicopter attempted a landing in the conifer-surrounded lawns, its propellers got entangled in the greenery and the flying machine crash-landed with an almighty thud.

I imagine I raced back home to convey the breaking news to my parents. Had the Pakistani military inadvertently killed Henry Kissinger?

No such luck. No one was harmed in the crash, and Kissinger wasn’t even there. Reports of his evacuation to Nathiagali were part of an elaborate charade. Hardly anyone in the government or among the US embassy staff was privy to what was actually going on.

The bloodshed of 1971 had US backing.

Kissinger by then was well on his way to Beijing, to spearhead a historic breakthrough in international relations. The US had been late to wake up to the growing hostility betw­e­­en China and the USSR in the post-Stalin era. Nixon recognised the breach as an opportunity.

Things have come full circle in the intervening half century: the US today sees China as its primary adversary. In 1971, though, there was a realpolitik logic in Washington’s response to Beijing’s overtures — and Pakistan’s military dictator, Yahya Khan, was delighted to serve as a personal emissary. There were alternative avenues open to the US, but it’s unlikely any other head of state would have been quite as eager to serve as a messenger boy.

The White House had few, if any, qualms about reciprocating with backing for Yahya’s gruesome military misadventure in East Bengal, despite the fact that it was increasingly being seen as an attempted genocide.

The US consulate in Dhaka was witness to the outrageous brutality, and many of the diplomats were eager to enlighten Washington, but their protestations fell on deaf ears in the State Department.

Geopolitics ruled supreme, and it stretched from India’s strengthening alliance with the Soviet Union — partly a reaction to America’s refusal to nudge Pakistan towards accepting the outcome of the 1970 elections — to Nixon’s personal antipathy towards Indira Gandhi, which was reflected, absurdly, in a broader hostility towards India and Indians.

The obsequious Kissinger went along with that, as Gary J. Bass meticulously illustrates in his 2013 book The Blood Telegram. The title is a reference to a key missive signed by Archie Blood, the US consul-general in Dhaka, that was among the first-hand information the State Department felt obliged to ignore.

The US ‘tilt towards Pakistan’ in the context of 1971 has long been common knowledge, but what the Bass book — relying to a considerable extent on the Nixon tapes ie White House recordings, the bulk of which remained secret for 20 years after a small, Watergate-related portion of them rendered the Nixon presidency untenable — reveals is a bend-over-backwards tendency that stretched to efforts to illegally supply weapons to Islamabad through Uncle Sam’s deviously devoted Middle Eastern proxies such as the king of Jordan and the Shah.

What’s more, Kissinger — in the wake of Operation Marco Polo on July 8-9, 1971, the surreptitious journey to Beijing that incorporated his fictitious trip to Nathiagali as a cover story — attempted to persuade China to mount a show of force on its Indian border as a distraction. Thankfully, Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong did not take the bait, despite their thoroughly misguided backing for Yahya and, by extension, his military’s atrocities in East Pakistan.

It is perfectly likely that Operation Searchlight and its even bloodier aftermath would have been pursued even without the backing of Beijing and Washington. It is equally possible, though, that the carnage might have been curtailed much quicker without direct and indirect US and Chinese support for the Yahya regime’s vile democracy-thwarting enterprise.

At that stage of its diplomatic trajectory, China was absurdly keen to back anything the USSR opposed, and its empathy for military dictators is a tendency that both preceded and outlived Pakistan’s Yahya phase. For the US, the self-proclaimed beacon of Western democracy, to more or less follow suit might seem hypocritical, but in fact was pretty much par for the course across much of the world.

The blame for Bangladesh’s antenatal bloodbath rests squarely on Pakistan’s shoulders. But Yahya’s collaborators and enablers, both domestic and international, must not be ignored.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2021

Looming Afghan disaster

Abbas Nasir

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.


AFGHANISTAN is heading towards a full-blown civil war, following the US-led troop pullout and, with Pakistan fearing the inevitable fallout of that slide into chaos, the military and intelligence chiefs briefed a parliamentary committee, notably including opposition members, this last Thursday.

In the words of Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, the meeting marked the beginning of a national consensus where all political parties shunned their differences and decided ‘to stand behind the army’ on this issue critical to national security.

Although bound by in camera rules and, therefore, unwilling to share many details of the briefing, all that some other participants were willing to say was that the meeting was marked by the bonhomie one parliamentarian attributed to a ‘timid’ opposition. Barring one nobody raised any thorny issue.

And the reported response to the member asking a difficult question or two or merely sharing an unwelcome observation perhaps deflated all others who might have been clenching their fists and convincing themselves to muster the courage to share their thoughts with candour. One clear message: institutional supremacy and interests trump all.

What was once seen as ‘strategic depth’ is threatening to turn into a nightmare.

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, one of the PML-N leaders said to be firmly in the ‘vote ko izzat do’ camp, told a journalist later what they did for some ‘five hours was indeed vote ko izzat do’, as a parliament that has largely remained ineffective for three years debated such a vital issue.

This was indeed a brand new meaning to the slogan ‘vote ko izzat do’. It remains to be seen if PML-N leaders Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz Sharif endorse this new definition. One is left wondering if their near-total current silence, while the Shehbaz Sharif school is ascendant, is a tell-tale sign.

Little surprise then a lot of pointless ‘I am also here’ half volleys were bowled which were played back with a gentle straight bat and the process continued for several hours before shifting to a dinner hosted by the speaker. The one or two substantive issues that were raised, like Ali Wazir’s release, were reportedly dismissed.

Whatever reality unfolds in the long run, for now the opposition is content to play within the existing scheme of things and the demand of the PML-N for a new social contract seems like nothing more than a dream abandoned. The PPP, for its part, hasn’t even had that dream of late.

In any case, the Afghan Taliban seem in a hurry to extend their control to more and more parts of their country and, while the ‘troika’ (US, China and Russia) meeting in March that included Pakistan agreed that the Afghan Taliban will not be allowed to establish an Islamic emirate, it is not clear how they can stop the Taliban if that were to happen.

In 1996, after the Taliban took Kabul in a lightning offensive, the declaration of the establishment of an Islamic emirate headed by the ‘amir’ Mullah Omar followed. And then came two decades of a US-led Nato military presence in Afghanistan — first to degrade Al Qaeda, which took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on American soil, and then to prop up West-friendly governments.

Over the period, the US reportedly spent a trillion dollars and took heavy military casualties. An untold number of Afghans, including innocent civilians, lost their lives in the conflict. That dark, bloody night may be coming to an end, but the country is accelerating towards another.

Of course those at the helm in Kabul as we speak have air assets that could slow down or halt the Taliban march on the capital. They have also enlisted the help of the ‘warlords’ of yesteryear to come together to try and stop the resurgent Taliban, raising the spectre of a full-blown civil war.

From my memories of visiting Afghanistan in 1971 with my parents as a child and driving from Quetta-Chaman to Kandahar and on to Herat and across the border into Iran on a journey that ended in Beirut, the country I remember is long gone.

Kabul, friendly, calm, open, tolerant and incredibly cosmopolitan, is etched in my mind from our return journey that year and then the drive back home via Jalalabad-Torkham where I can never forget the joy that gripped me when I saw the Pakistan flag fluttering atop the FC fort, a picture of towering tranquillity.

Afghan war closet: 'US had decided to overthrow Taliban regime a month before 9/11'

That serenity is long gone. As are Pakistan’s hopes that the Taliban will always be a trusted ally who will pay heed to Islamabad’s concerns and never turn on Pakistan. What was once seen as ‘strategic depth’ by our military commanders is threatening to turn into a nightmare.

Ironically, it was Pakistan that served as the strategic depth for the Taliban. Many of their leaders, their families and even foot soldiers sheltered across Pakistan, and their war wounded were extended medical help as their forces faced a US-led onslaught.

Even in the past, when so much of their well-being depended on Pakistan’s goodwill, the Afghan Taliban refused to publicly condemn the terrorist activities of the TTP or to do anything to stop them. With the foreign forces gone, and much greater freedom of movement in Afghanistan one wonders what policy they’ll have towards their counterparts in Pakistan.

In recent weeks, there has been a spurt in attacks — whether via IEDs or direct fire — on Pakistani security forces. Shaikh Rashid says that 88 per cent of the border (Durand Line) has been fenced which should enhance security. Some of the attacks seem to be coming from within Pakistan.

This is a huge foreign security policy challenge. Let there be no mistake that an opposition treated with contempt by the hybrid government for the past three years is now suddenly being embraced by the former.

Is that happening because with an imminent policy disaster on the cards more and more bodies are needed to share the blame? Even if those being roped in had no role in the making of this fiasco? One of the main ‘knowns’ is that a compromised, defeated opposition is willing to play the game on any terms.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2021

The demons of conflict
Zahid Hussain

Published July 7, 2021

The writer is the author of No-Win War — The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow.


IT was not just the optics but also the substance that marked the national security briefing last week. The atmosphere in the National Assembly hall was completely different that day to the mayhem witnessed at the budget session recently.

Lawmakers from both the treasury and opposition benches sat for almost eight hours as the military leadership briefed them about the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan and its impending fallout on Pakistan. The discussion was substantive given the seriousness of the matter.

It was a rare change of atmosphere in the current parliament that has failed to be a forum for serious policy debate over the past three years. Ironically, it was the presence of the military leadership that, probably, brought harmony to the House. The prime minister who is also the leader of the House was conspicuous by his absence. He was addressing the National Kissan Convention that day, raising questions about his ability to provide leadership at this critical juncture.

While the intelligence briefing may have helped in understanding the developing situation in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the foreign forces, there is still the question of whether we have a clear policy on the effects of the exit. One is not sure given the confusing and contradictory statements from the prime minister and his team. Foreign policy chaos has seldom been so stark.

How prepared the authorities are for the expected refugee inflow is still not clear.

Bizarre rhetoric does not inspire much confidence in the PTI government’s ability to navigate the country through challenges. The leadership’s twisted worldview and half-baked understanding of history and poor grasp of evolving geopolitics are scary.

More alarming is its divisive approach even on critical national issues. That could become the biggest impediment to developing a national policy with the opposition’s consensus.

One wonders if the same kind of serenity will prevail in parliament during the foreign and national security debate that must surely follow the intelligence briefing. It depends on whether the government and opposition demonstrate the same kind of discretion they showed during the national security briefing.

The situation is perhaps more serious than what the country faced in the 1990s following the Soviet withdrawal and the subsequent outbreak of civil war in Afghanistan. While the lawmakers were being briefed on the fast-unravelling situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban offensive in the northeast and south of the country was bringing the country ever closer to a fully fledged civil war. The fighting spread from north to the south as US forces vacated their largest military base in Bagram.

The Afghan Taliban’s military blitz has been more spectacular than was expected. It has been in the northeast where the insurgent forces have gained more ground in recent days though the region has never been considered their stronghold. There has been a near meltdown of Afghan government forces. Hundreds of soldiers have fled to Tajikistan and many others have surrendered.

But the Taliban forces have achieved their most symbolic, if not the most important, victory in southern Kandahar province as they establish their control over Panjwai district. The region, which is the birthplace of the Taliban movement, has also been the venue of fierce battles against Nato forces for more than a decade. It fell to the Taliban hours after the Americans vacated the Kandahar military base.

The capture of Panjwai has helped the Taliban consolidate their hold over the southern Pakhtun-dominated areas. It has put Kandahar, the second biggest town in Afghanistan, under siege. The Taliban now claim to have control over 150 out of 460 districts. Most of them have fallen to the insurgents in the last one month after the withdrawal of the residual US forces began.

Recent setbacks in the battlefield have exposed the vulnerability of the Afghan security forces without the support of the foreign forces. Reports of soldiers surrendering to the Taliban without fighting in many places seem to have further dampened the morale of the Afghan security forces.

Some other developments such as the emergence of regional militias under different warlords have also raised the spectre of civil war, with many predicting the fragmentation of Afghanistan along ethnic lines thus sucking neighbouring countries into the conflict. It’s almost back to the Afghan situation in the 1990s.

In a recent statement, a Taliban spokesman said the group would present its peace proposal to the Kabul government next month but there is no indication as yet of the insurgents agreeing to a reduction in violence.

Panjwai is located just across the border and the Taliban control there brings the war closer to Pakistan’s frontiers. There have been reports of an exodus of Afghans as fighting intensifies. That could also lead to an influx of refugees into Pakistan. It may have already started and there is no way it can be stopped.

Pakistani authorities said they would confine the refugees to certain areas and not allow their free movement. While that kind of containment of the refugee population was possible in Iran, it may not work in Pakistan with the same tribes straddling the border. How prepared the authorities are for the expected refugee inflow is still not clear.

But the influx of refugees is only one of the challenges that Pakistan would be facing with the outbreak of a new Afghan civil war. The fallout of the conflict is ominously evident inside our borders with the rise of militant activities in parts of former Fata. The rising power of the Afghan Taliban across the border and the very real danger of civil war in Afghanistan presents a serious threat to Pakistan’s stability.

Last week’s intelligence briefing to the lawmakers may have covered all these issues but now it is the responsibility of the civilian leadership to put together a coherent strategy and a clear policy to deal with the situation. It’s not enough to say that Pakistan will not take sides in the Afghan conflict. There is a need for a more proactive approach to minimise the effects of its fallout. Can the prime minister rise to the challenge?

The writer is the author of No-Win War — The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow.

zhussain100@yahoo.com

Twitter: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2021

The roots of hate

Zarrar Khuhro



The writer is a journalist.


THE brutal murder of a Pakistani-origin family in the city of London, Ontario, by 20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman caused a wave of outrage in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau openly condemned it as an act of terror and thousands rallied to pay respects to the slain members of the family and to pray for the health of nine-year old Fayez, the sole survivor of this hate crime. There is no doubt this was a genuine outpouring of revulsion at the crime, and of sympathy for those so brutally slain.

But beneath the surface is a miasma, the odour of which leaked out even during this time of tragedy.

Soon after the attack, a TikTok video was uploaded in which a man records three Mus­lim women walking down the road. As they stroll down the sidewalk, the man is heard saying: “Where’s Nathaniel Veltman when you need him?” Then a truck passes by and the man exclaims: “Buddy, you missed them. Back up,” before bursting into laughter.

In another video, a man named Craig Harrison said “he was surprised it [the attack] hasn’t happened sooner”, adding that “Canadians are rightfully getting upset about being out-populated in their own country by people from different cultures who don’t respect Western values”. Harrison, who has a criminal history that includes racially motivated attacks, was once the mayoral candidate for Georgetown, Ontario.

Anti-Muslim sentiments are on the rise.

The reference to being ‘out-populated’ is a popular theme in modern neo-Nazi and white supremacist thought, and revolves around the belief that white people are being ‘outbred’ by other races in the West, and that this is both part of and a precursor to what they call the ‘Great Replacement’. This was also the title of the manifesto published by Brenton Tarrant, the terrorist who massacred 51 worshippers at a Christchurch mosque in New Zealand in 2019.

As investigations continue, one question that will be asked is ‘where was Nathaniel Veltman radicalised?’ And one can safely surmise that perhaps more so than his immediate ‘real-world’ social circles, he was introduced to and indoctrinated by white supremacy online. That was the case with Alexander Bissonnette, who shot and killed six people at a Quebec City mosque in 2017, and was known to be a right-wing troll in online spaces.

How poisonous is this online discourse? In an analysis for the Globe and Mail, Amarnath Amarasingam and Jacob Davey write that in 2020 they examined close to 2,500 accounts, channels and groups on various social media platforms that disseminated extremist right-wing propaganda, producing “nearly four million pieces of individual content”, that were spread far and wide.

These groups, they concluded, were resistant to attempts to de-platform them and were incredibly resilient and determined in their effort to “drive hatred against minority communities and polarise Canadian society”.

More, despite their ideological differences, these groups converge on their shared hatred from immigrants, and in particular, their hate for Muslims. And they are increasing in both number and appeal.

Much like a plant needs suitable soil and conditions in order to be able to thrive, so too does the seed of hate need an enabling environment to be able to bloom into a bloody harvest. Across the Western world, we have seen a steady rise in right-wing ideology to the extent that many of the talking points of what was once the extremist fringe have become part of mainstream political discourse, which in turn legitimises the views of the (once) far right, bringing them closer to the centre and thus to wider acceptability. This, in turn, drives more and more people into their ranks, and by and large they avoid the label of ‘terrorist’ even when they carry out politically motivated attacks, simply because the diffused nature of the white supremacist movement means that individuals may not subscribe to, or be members of, specific organisations.

Canada is no exception; In Canada, as in much of the West, Muslims remain the most common target of online hate, outstripping any other group and the attacks are increasingly moving from online spaces to real life. This isn’t taking place in a vacuum: a 2020 report on Islamophobia in Canada submitted to the UN revealed that 46 per cent of Canadians have an ‘unfavourable’ view of Islam — more than for any other group. More than half of the people living in Ontario felt that Muslim doctrines ‘promote violence’ while 42pc of Canadians think that discrimination against Muslims is ‘mainly their fault’.

The report also points out the role of the media in creating this environment, noting that while negative stories about Muslims abound in Canadian media, attacks on Muslims receive relatively less coverage; the Quebec mosque shooting for “five minutes of airtime” on CBC the night it occurred while the 2017 London Borough attacks in the UK were covered for hours with live commentary. No wonder, then, that for too many Nathaniel Veltman is not someone to condemn, but to emulate.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2021

Kashmir dilemma

Owen Bennett-Jones

The writer is author of The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan.


IN the darkest days of the conflict in Northern Ireland, there seemed to be no imaginable solution. The centuries-old dispute between the Catholics and Protestants — those who wanted to be part of Ireland and those who wanted to remain with the UK — was just too deep. But in 1998 Tony Blair did secure a peace deal and even though that historic achievement is now threatened by Brexit, it nonetheless prompts the question: might a deal on another apparently irresolvable dispute — Kashmir — be possible too?

Two Pakistani leaders — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf — have considered making the sort of compromise that might have led to a breakthrough. In the early 1960s, the US used the leverage over New Delhi it had acquired by supporting India vis-à-vis China, to tell Nehru he should be willing to hold direct talks with Pakistan on Kashmir. The first round of discussions took place in Rawalpindi in December 1962, followed by four more rounds in Delhi, Karachi (twice) and Calcutta.

Few thought that much would come of the negotiation but the dialogue revealed that Bhutto was capable of being more flexible than might have been expected. The young foreign minister indicated that Pakistan might be willing to settle for some adjustments to the ceasefire line in Kashmir — indeed, he asked India to make some suggestions for adjustments — and he also considered the idea that the issue at the heart of the dispute, the status of the Kashmir Valley, could be blurred by demilitarisation, soft borders, joint administration, free movement or Kashmir’s status being internationalised in some way. But by the time the talks reached a sixth round, both sides were reverting to their established positions and US pressure in Delhi softened, meaning Nehru saw no need to compromise.

Half a century later, Musharraf, after backchannel talks, proposed a package with some similarities to what was discussed by ZAB. First, there was agreement in principle on demilitarisation. Pakistan would withdraw troops from Azad Kashmir and reduce cross-border militancy if India took troops out of the Kashmir Valley. Furthermore, Pakistan would be willing to deepen the degree of self-governance in Azad Kashmir if India made similar arrangements on its side of the LoC. But alongside the self-governance there would be a joint mechanism involving the governments of India and Pakistan which would meet two or three times a year to facilitate issues such as trade, free movement and, crucially, water. The proposals eventually collapsed in the face of nationalist opposition in India.

Is some backchannel diplomacy exploring the options?

A comparison of the two sets of talks shows that the process became far more detailed under Musharraf than had been the case with the ZAB-led talks. As for the substance, some elements were clearly different. In the 1960s talks, the ceasefire line would remain important whereas in the Musharraf period the whole effort was to reduce the significance of the LoC. Nevertheless, there were also many shared elements including demilitarisation and the idea of a blurred constitutional status.

When Narendra Modi won his first election in 2014, some Pakistani military strategists argued that his coming to power could work to Pakistan’s benefit. They argued that the very fact that Modi was a hard-liner would mean he would be in a position not only to do a deal but also deliver it. Similarly, it would be difficult to imagine any civilian politician in Pakistan securing a settlement on Kashmir because the army would doubtless accuse them of selling out. Only the army could deliver the army.

Read: Kashmir question

On the face of it, however, Modi seems even less likely than his predecessors to do a deal. Not only is he a more nationalist politician but he has also, if anything, advanced India’s demands. His removal of Article 370 represented a hardening of India’s position. And the idea that India might accept the LoC as an international border has given way to suggestions that India is interested in advancing its claims on Azad Kashmir.

For all of that, some of those who have worked with Gen Bajwa say the army leader believes that there is little point in continuing with a strategy in Kashmir that doesn’t work. And President Alvi recently hinted to TV host Adil Shahzeb that Imran Khan is prepared to adapt his thinking on Kashmir. All of which raises the question: is something going on? Is some backchannel diplomacy already exploring the options? If that is the case, then when it comes to the nature of any possible deal, the history of the ZAB and Musharraf initiatives suggests some of the elements have probably already been discussed by the two countries and are, in a sense, already out there.

A deal may look impossible. But that was what they said about Northern Ireland too.

The writer is author of The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2021

Houses of horror

Death came in many forms for the Native Americans.

Zarrar Khuhro

The writer is a journalist.


OF all the many genocides that history has witnessed, perhaps the most successful was the one perpetrated on Native Americans, entailing as it did not just the physical elimination of the original inhabitants of North and South America, but also the erasure and commodification of their culture.

Exactly how many died remains a subject of debate, but a recent study estimates that in 1492 the indigenous population of the Ameri­cas was around 60 million. This figure was arrived at by calculating the amount of agricultural land needed to sustain one person and then applying that to the total area far­med in the Americas. By way of comparison, Europe’s population at the time was 70m to 88m.

Once the Europeans reached the Americas the situation changed and data models tell us that by 1600, about 56m Native Americans had died. That means the wholesale elimination of 90 per cent of the American population, and about 10pc of the global population at the time. In absolute terms, this slaughter is second only to that of the European power struggle known as World War II, in which some 80m people died. The scale of this depopulation was such that global cooling took place.

Death came in many forms for the Native Americans, who saw their settlements and civilisations destroyed by murder, slavery and, most of all, disease. Smallpox, measles and the bubonic plague cut a swathe through the natives who, unlike the Europeans, had no immunity to such diseases. Once the colonialists figured this out, smallpox especially was used as a weapon against the natives in what is perhaps the first widespread modern usage of biological warfare.

Death came in many forms for the Native Americans.

Those that survived were herded off to ‘reservations’ far from their ancestral lands to eke out whatever existence they could, and thousands more died from exposure, hunger and exhaustion during these treks.

But it’s not enough to simply murder a people, one must also break them by erasing their very identity so that they can be recast in the mould of their oppressors and made ‘useful’, and so was launched a massive campaign to ‘civilise’ these ‘savages’.

Across North America, native children were forcibly removed from their parents and imprisoned in Indian Residential Schools where they were made to convert to Christianity, wear only Western clothes and were forbidden to speak their native languages. If they were to be caught speaking any language other than English, punishments ranged from beatings to having pins stuck in their tongues. These schools, run by the state and the church, were rife with physical, sexual and psychological abuse and countless children who entered them never came out again. In Canada, this continued until the mid-1970s. Repeated claims of abduction, abuse and murder were ignored.

But truth does not stay buried for long. Recently, a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years, was discovered on the grounds of what was once the largest such school in Canada, the Kamploops school in British Columbia.

How many more are out there? In 2008, a truth and reconciliation committee was founded to probe these accusations. It concluded that Canada’s abduction and education policy amounted to “cultural genocide”. It estimated that in the over 120-year history of this project, at least 3,200 children had died in these mini-concentration camps for children and countless thousands had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse.

But here’s the catch: the commission was only allowed to investigate 139 of the over 1,300 such schools that existed across Canada. When it asked for funding to probe allegations of mass graves, the government refused

and the commission was wrapped up after presenting its findings in 2015. The commission’s report on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials reads: “The most basic of questions about missing children — Who died? Why did they die? Where are they buried? — have never been addressed or comprehensively documented by the Canadian government.”

And the genocide of the native population, both physical and cultural, continues in other, more subtle ways. Broken and bleeding after centuries of state-sponsored abuse, rates of crime and alcoholism are far higher in indigenous communities than any other ethnic group in Canada. Also consider that while indigenous children make up less than 8pc of Canada’s child population (according to 2016 census data), they make up a staggering 52pc of all children in foster care. The murder and disappearance rate for indigenous women (twice marginalised by their ethnicity and gender) is 12 times that of other women in Canada thanks to entrenched systemic white supremacy and a police force that looks the other way when indigenous women and abducted, raped and murdered. All too often the police themselves are the abusers, a logical outcome when it comes to a state that was founded on genocide. The past isn’t another country; all too often, the past isn’t even past.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2021

Why markets exist

Samir Ahmed

Published July 5, 2021 - 

The writer is a financial markets professional and a teacher.


GEORGE Akerlof won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. His paper, The Market for Lemons, is a seminal work in the discipline. He wrote it in 1967 as a fresh assistant professor at Berkeley, having completed his PhD at MIT in 1966. The paper was rejected by three prestigious journals, by two on the grounds of triviality and by the third on the grounds that it would upend the then prevailing understanding of economics. It was finally published by the Quarterly Journal of Economics, in 1970. The Market for Lemons is about markets and transactions. In Akerlof’s own words “It concerns how horse traders respond to the natural question: ‘if he wants to sell that horse, do I really want to buy it?’”

Akerlof uses the example of the used car market to illustrate the point. In any given market, some cars will inevitably be of bad quality (lemons, in the slang) and some of good quality (peaches).

Any seller, as the current owner of the car, always has better information about the quality and inherent value of the car than any buyer. A buyer contemplating a purchase does not know if the car is a peach or a lemon. Let us say the fair value of a peach is Rs2,000,000 and that of a lemon Rs1,000,000. The buyer, under the circumstances, can expect equally to get either a peach or a lemon and will therefore offer an average of the two prices ie Rs1,500,000. At this price the owners of the lemons will be happy to sell but the owners of the peaches will withhold their cars from the market since the price offered is less than the fair value. There is thus a market malfunction.

We can take it a step further. If a certain number of peaches are withheld by the sellers, buyers will revise their expectations of the average proportion of lemons to peaches and will bid even lower than Rs1,500,000. The malfunction intensifies. The root cause of the problem is of course the existence of unequal information. Economists have a fancy phrase for it — information asymmetry.

Information asymmetry may make the investor hesitant and therefore the transaction less likely.

Any market malfunction is serious because it results in a loss of economic efficiency — transactions which could have added value to both parties do not happen. In response, markets — the institutions, rules and regulations which govern them — have evolved over time to become more efficient with positive repercussions for economic growth and development.

Let us take a leap from the used car market to financial markets to see this more closely. Financial transactions are highly susceptible to information asymmetries because of their inherent complexity. Financial markets, for all of their considerable sins, offer insights into the nature and role of markets in general by virtue of their size, scope and sophistication.

Financial markets, at their most basic, provide a mechanism to move money from those who have a surplus to those who have a productive need for money but do not have a surplus. Financial markets, as any other market, are a central meeting place for buyers and sellers (of funds). These meeting places can be physical or — increasingly — virtual. The presence of a large number of participants ensures that buying and selling is easier. Liquidity — the quantum and value of transactions that take place — is an important aspect of markets. The more liquidity you have, the more efficient the market.

Transparency is another key factor. Transactions in financial markets are recorded and the information disseminated. Information asymmetry is to a large extent mitigated. Since each transaction takes place at a certain price at a certain time, markets give critical information about the value of traded assets. This information is more valuable since it is arrived at, not in isolation, but as the net result of the aggregate buying and selling decisions of multiple participants. Economists have a fancy phrase for this too — price discovery.

Let us take a basic financial transaction. Say there is an entrepreneur who is looking to sell shares in her company to outside investors for fresh capital. The entrepreneur will always possess more information on the health of the company than any potential investor will. The position is exactly the same as the seller and buyer in the used car example. The entrepreneur may offer the shares of her company at a certain price. The potential investor has no way to judge the fair value. The information asymmetry may make the investor hesitant and therefore the transaction less likely.

Let us now contrast this with a share transaction at a formal financial market like the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Any company listed on the PSX is required by law to disclose certain information publicly. This includes quarterly financial results, an annual audited result, and all material information which can have an impact on the business and its value. The requirement for information disclosure and its mandatory dissemination by the exchange mitigates the information asymmetry problem. It enables investors to make informed investment decisions.

Furthermore, the share price information is publicly available, indeed during PSX trading hours it is available in real time. There can be no disagreement between a buyer or seller over its price at a given time. The buyer and seller may differ on whether the price is a fair valuation, in which case either may decide not to do the transaction. However, this will not be due to a lack of information.

Markets promote greater economic activity. If markets are non-existent or inefficient, such activity is starved, with consequences for economic development. This holds true for financial markets, goods markets and commodity markets. The latter are a particularly vexatious issue at present in Pakistan, their malfunction due largely to government intervention. One of the historical lessons from centrally planned economies — and why they failed — is that there were no markets and thus not enough information to make optimal economic decisions.

The writer is a financial markets professional and a teacher.

Twitter: @samirahmed14

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2021