Ending sense of deprivation

Prime Minister Shujaat Hussain says the government would do its best to wipe out the sense of deprivation from the country. We do not know whether he comprehends the magnitude of the problem, the measures essential to wipe that out, and its high cost.

He says the people have been exploiting the issue of the sense of deprivation, "but we will take all steps to resolve the issue." The opposition or critics of the government have not been exploiting the issue of deprivation.

The issue is there in a country with massive unemployment and in which one-third of the people live below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Even the middle class has been under constant economic squeeze as it has been deprived of many essential things.

It is far better for the government to acknowledge the existence and dimension of the problem, devise effective solutions and implement them earnestly instead of debunking those who try to draw official or public attention to the problem.

Meanwhile, the report of the task force on poverty reduction and increasing employment has been submitted to the government by its chairman, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh; but the prime minister who set up that task force with a one-month deadline initially, Mir Zafarullah Jamali, is no longer in office.

Yet the government is committed to reducing poverty and increasing employment substantially as early as possible. After a visit to Thar area, the poorest area in the country, prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz, who is contesting for the NA seat from there, has said that "alleviation of poverty, checking unemployment and controlling inflation are the top priorities of the government."

When he visited the other NA constituency at Attock, the local leaders, one after another, urged him to increase employment and decrease inflation to fight poverty. He also wants to concentrate on good governance, he says.

Good governance is imperative if he wants the benefits of the economic reforms to reach the people. Good governance means an administration which reaches out to the people, and serves them promptly, and an administration without corruption.

The World Bank in a recent report says that services meant for the poor often do not reach them and are grabbed by the middlemen. That includes the services generated through foreign aid.

The Annual Report of the IMF for 2003 also talks of "making the global economy work for all." Can the government in Pakistan do that in reality, after the serious setbacks to the Social Action Programmes I and II, and other misused or wasted aid?

Good governance also means a helpful police force who gives a fair treatment to the people and protects them from the excesses of the feudal lords and tribal chiefs.

For long the people have been feeling the deprivation of their basic rights at the hands of the judiciary where corruption is excessive in the lower ranks, while the senior ranks are too slow to deliver judgment.

Justice delayed is justice denied, which has become a cliche in the country where the people try to buy quick justice or the kind of verdict that suits them.

Today, people fear the police more than they fear the criminals because of collusion between them. In fact, it has often been proved that where a police station is established the crimes increase far more than before.

Now prime minister Shujaat Hussain suggests that the process of accountability should be undertaken by the judiciary instead of the military and police officials under the National Accountability Bureau. In that case the people would expect the judiciary cleansed of all corrupt and inefficient elements with a bad record first.

By now prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz must have come to realize that it is not enough to provide for a record development outlay of Rs 202 billion. Equally important is how well it is used, and that the outlay meets its primary purpose.

There is a large difference in Pakistan between sanctioning the amount and making it meet its purpose. And that is all the more essential in the areas of irrigation, education and medical facilities where corruption is rampant.

Mr Shaukat Aziz has so far been relying more on official feedback on implementation of the projects and delivery of promised services to the poor than on non-official field studies.

Now is the time to give due importance to non-official studies so that the information gap is bridged and the development funds are made far more effective. That is all the more essential when such investment comes in the form of interest-carrying long term loans.

Look at what happened at national workshop on better strategies and increased profits held by the USAID mission in Pakistan and SMEDA. While the purpose of the workshop was to improve industrial efficiency of Pakistan, the small industry representatives came up with very harsh attacks on the officials and held them responsible for the sad state of the industry in Pakistan.

While the language used by the private sector chiefs was abrasive it was not wholly baseless. One of them said that in the livestock sector 20 out of 27 areas were inactive.

The foreign aid officials were convinced the culprits were the officials who stood in the way of the private sector particularly the small and medium scale industries.

Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh who inaugurated the workshop called for improving profitability, productivity and competitiveness to stimulate growth and employment, particularly at the SME level but what the audience heard was a full scale attack on the bureaucracy dealing with the small and medium scale industries.

At a time when the demand for lowering inflation, particularly of food prices, is high, the federal food and agriculture minister Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind told the conference that the government might increase wheat support price before the next wheat sowing season.

He said last year the wheat support price was raised by Rs 50 to Rs 350 for 40 kilograms and it might do the same before the next crop. He said support prices of basmati and irri varieties were raised in June.

There are two approaches for increasing foodgrains output: lower the cost of agricultural inputs or raise the support prices. The government has invariably relied on raising the support prices, as has been done this year too.

As a result, the people in the cities and towns, the marginal farmers and those in the rural areas who do not raise their own crops, pay far higher prices for their food beginning with wheat.

In fact, the taxes on agricultural inputs like fertilizers and pesticides should have been reduced. But that would have meant less revenue. So the government prefers to raise the support prices of wheat, rice, etc.

But noticeable is the fact that in spite of increase in support prices the total cotton production this year has not exceeded 10 million bales in a country which a few years ago produced 13 million bales of cotton. Wheat too is in short supply and we are hence importing 1.25 million tonnes of wheat initially.

There is clearly something wrong with our agricultural policy. Yar Mohammad Rind says the government has provided for Rs 7.4 billion in the annual development programme for agriculture which is 3.5 per cent of the development outlay of Rs 202 billion.

An allocation of 3.5 per cent of the Annual Development plan has been made for a sector that yields 25 per cent of the GDP. Compared to that, Punjab government has done better. It has provided for Rs 3 billion for agriculture in its budget for this year from Rs 740 million - a four-fold increase.

Certainly the federal allocation for agricultural development should be far more in the enlarged development outlay of Rs 202 billion, if agriculture is to make a far larger contribution to the economy.

But clearly the traditional approach to agriculture is too slow to change. Or we may be told the large funds earmarked for the major dams are also a contribution to agriculture.

Prime Minister Shujaat Hussain surprises the country by coming up with half-baked or hastily thought ideas. He now says the development of each area will be determined not through the allocation of development funds to the members of the assemblies and the Senate but by a Muslim League committee. And where there are no elected members from the PML, a party committee would decide about the welfare projects for such areas.

Of course, the move will be opposed by the opposition who would want their own committees to decide about the development projects in areas where their legislators dominate.

In addition, the coalition partners of the PML in the government would also want to have their say in the choice and execution of the projects. It would have been far better for him to wait for public reaction to his ideas and then take the decision on the basis of the consensus instead of opening another Pandora's box needlessly.

We are now told WAPDA may face a shortage of 1,000 mw to 10,000 mw of power over a period of time. The safer assertion appears to be 5,000 mw shortage by 2006, which is only two years from now.

WAPDA at present loses 26 to 30 per cent of the power it produces through theft and system's loss and KESC's losses are 40 per cent. The real loser is, in fact, the people who have to endure the oppressive heat for long and not the officialdom which is given power generators by the government and the rich who can afford their own generators and bill them to their companies.

The sense of deprivation of the people on this score is great and there seems to be no end to their misery while the electricity rates are raised high to make up for the stolen or lost power.

The prime minister says that when Mr Shaukat Aziz becomes prime minister he would look after the economy and good governance. And that means that President Musharraf, and himself as the PML chief would look after the political side.

Economics is the forte of Shaukat Aziz, but how much he is able to improve governance in an exceedingly corrupt environment remains to be seen. It can prove to be an uphill task.

But without good governance all the benefits of his economic reforms can go waste. If the government wants to wipe out the enduring sense of deprivation on a permanent basis it has to spend far more on education, up to five per cent of the GDP instead of two per cent with large foreign assistance.

And it has to spend at least two per cent of the GDP on public health. He has to mobilize far more revenues than now available and spend the money judiciously. Can the members of the assemblies undertake to make the people of their constituencies literate within a period of ten years through their development schemes? Let them make a try, and try hard.

Who after Mubarak?

Last week, President Husni Mubarak returned to Egypt after 17 days in a German clinic. His unprecedented absence from Egypt raised two important questions: why was Mubarak unable to find capable doctors in Egypt for what was described as 'minor surgery'; and who will succeed him when he eventually retires or dies?

For the Arab world's leading nation, which spends US $3.3 billion annually on its 450,000-man military, but does not have a decent surgeon, sounds incredible and shameful. Or else, Mubarak was secretly treated by German specialists for some grave disease.

In 1800, Egypt had three million people. When I lived in Egypt in 1957, its population was 24 million. Today, its 71-73 million impoverished people are crammed into the 2.8 per cent of Egypt's land that is arable. Cairo has nearly 10 million inhabitants.

Egypt comprises 30 per cent of the Arab World's total population and 40 per cent of the non-North African Mideast, or 'Mashriq.' When the back of the man who rules four out of ten Arabs aches, all need pay attention.

While eyes are fixed on the bloody mess in Iraq and Saudi Arabia's growing instability, Egypt is beginning to tremble as its people worry who will succeed Mubarak's unchallenged, 22-year rule.

There is no clear line of succession; Mubarak has never even named a vice-president. The nominal successor, the Speaker of the powerless, token parliament, would be swept aside in any post-Mubarak power struggle.

Mubarak, an able air force general, was engineered into power by the US after the 1981 assassination of Egypt's ruler, Anwar Sadat. My mother, journalist and author Nexhmie Zaimi, interviewed Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Sadat in the mid-1950s.

I remember her calling Nasser a 'person of character' and 'a true man,' while she dismissed Sadat as a 'phony,' and 'an actor.' Egyptians heartily shared this view.

The great Nasser, whom the Egyptians adored, died in 1970 of a heart attack. Or, he may have been poisoned, as many Egyptians believe. Former CIA Cairo station chief Kermit Roosevelt confirmed in his memories at least one failed US assassination attempt against Nasser.

The US quickly manoeuvred Sadat into power as military strongman after Nasser's death. The 1978 Camp David Accords soon followed, history's biggest bribe, in which Sadat took Egypt out of the confrontation with Israel and abandoned the Palestinians, in exchange for a massive increase in annual aid to US$2.2 billion, some of which went into the pockets of Sadat's family, his generals, and cronies.

In the 20 years before Camp David, US aid to Egypt totalled $4.7 billion. In the 14 years after Camp over $50 billion, not counting secret CIA payments to Sadat and members of Egypt's ruling elite.

In sharp contrast to President George Bush's sermons about bringing democracy to the Arab world, America's most important Arab ally, Egypt, remains an old-fashioned military-authoritarian state behind a fig-leaf of make-believe democratic institutions.

Egypt's press, the Arab world's media centre, is heavily censored and self-censored; its judiciary a punitive organ of the regime. Egypt remains a repressive state with a brutal secret police where the use of torture against political opponents and Islamic militants is routine.

Annual US military aid of $1.3 billion keeps the armed forces and security apparatus loyal to Mubarak. CIA, FBI and the communications-intercepting national security agency run major operations in Egypt to protect Mubarak's regime from domestic opponents. The US tightly controls the military's communications and limits stocks of spare parts and munitions. A similar model, by the way, is planned for Pakistan.

Sadat's Faustian Camp David deal left Washington and, curiously, Israel, gripping Egypt's food jugular. The US supplies Egypt four million tons of wheat annually, mostly under various aid programmes that must be approved by the US Congress.

But the Congress is under the thumb of the powerful Israel lobby, meaning that Israel indirectly controls the flow of vital food to Egypt. Without this wheat, Egypt, which cannot feed its surging population, and lacks the money to buy enough wheat on the open market, would starve.

Now, as Egypt faces a succession crisis, Mubarak has been grooming son Gamal to be leader, but the Egyptians strongly oppose this idea as unworthy of their important nation.

When Mubarak goes, Washington will discreetly instal a new leader from the pro-US elite - unless there is a massive uprising against foreign domination by nationalist-Nasserites and Islamists ('terrorists' in Bush-talk). But if the nationalists somehow oust US influence, how will they feed the Egyptians?

The Bush administration's 'crusade for freedom' in the Mideast has reportedly already selected intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Defence Minister Muhamed Tantawi, or another senior army general, to be Egypt's next 'democratic' ruler. But, as Iraq shows, things can go terribly wrong.- Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004

A partial but still damning verdict

The US Senate intelligence committee this week delivered a partial verdict on the intelligence that led to the war in Iraq. It was a partial verdict because, while it pointed out the failures of the intelligence community (notably the CIA), it let the administration that was so clearly pulling the strings off the hook.

A second report will examine the role of the administration but - very conveniently for George Bush - is not expected to deliver its findings until after November's Presidential elections.

Those seeking electoral accountability must, therefore, make the most of this first report. Fortunately, the combination of what it says and what it implies - reading between the lines - provides ample ammunition to attack the Bush presidency.

"The administration, at all levels... used bad information to bolster the case for war, and we in Congress would not have authorized that war if we know what we know now... Leading up to September 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed."

In simple language, that translates into: 'Iraq never had any weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence to suggest it did and thereby make the case for war was false, erroneous or manipulated.'

As this newspaper stated in its editorial on Monday, that is a 'damning indictment for any administration'. Its implications - in terms of governmental wrongdoing - are enormous.

To begin with, there is the lying to the Congress, the American people and the international community. Statements made ad nauseum about Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda and then (when these patently lacked credibility) that the regime had WMD which posed an 'imminent threat', were all false.

Statements, it should be stressed, made by the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the defence secretary and many other senior officials. This was no off-the-cuff, isolated falsehood: this was a systematic and prolonged phenomenon of deception.

Then there are the consequences of that falsehood. War on another country, in defiance of the UN and international law; thousands of Iraqis killed and injured; many thousands more rendered homeless, jobless or with their lives in tatters; hundreds (now heading into thousands) of American troops killed and injured; shocking prisoner and human rights abuse; a country plagued by terrorism and instability; a country with a very uncertain future.

These are incredibly serious consequences. They take the intelligence failure out of the category of mistakes about which you can say 'Whoops, sorry, we got it wrong' and go on as normal.

Telling just one American parent that their son died for nothing in Iraq would be bad enough. But here you have to tell thousands of American parents, spouses and children, and many millions more Iraqis. The 'mistakes' made in Iraq's case fall into the category where those responsible have to face equally serious consequences.

Who was responsible? The report clears the administration of applying pressure on the intelligence community. That conclusion is highly questionable. But even if, for a minute, one accepts that the CIA alone got it wrong - and the administration did not interfere in intelligence assessments - the latter is still to blame.

For when making a decision about something as important as going to war, the onus is on the policy-makers to ensure - to check, double-check and hundred-check - that the information on which they are basing their decision is correct. Immense power carries with it immense responsibility.

The Bush administration clearly failed to exercise any of the care and rigour it should have in the exercise of the immense power at its command. "The committee's report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which the intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly."

While the report blames the intelligence community, it is clear to anyone reading between the lines that the CIA's failure stemmed - at least in part - from the desire of its political bosses for a particular outcome: Iraqi possession of WMD.

Why did so much wrong information pointing to Iraqi WMD come forward? Why wasn't that information rigorously examined and challenged? Why was it passed on as fact? Why did the US' allies accept that information and provide other 'corroborating evidence'? The explanation for all this is to be found not in the CIA but in the peculiar context in which the CIA and wider intelligence community was operating.

The context was an administration that was making full use of the horror and tragedy of 9/11 to silence domestic and (albeit with less success) international questioning and criticism of its policies.

The context was an administration that used 9/11 to execute a strategy it had been scheming since it assumed power. The context was that of an administration straining at the leash to go to war against Iraq.

This contextual reality - that the White House and Pentagon wanted the intelligence community to give them an excuse to attack Saddam Hussein - without a shadow of doubt influenced the thinking and judgments of the intelligence community.

To argue otherwise is analogous to a school bully who forces another pupil to spray graffiti on the school wall and then, when confronted by the teachers, heaps all the blame on the weaker pupil. Administration pleas of innocence and 'poor intelligence' are disingenuous in the extreme.

"..this group think also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well...This was a global intelligence failure." Again, when translated into simple language, this reads as: 'The US persuaded/bullied other countries - notably Britain - into following its pro-war agenda, and copying its manufacture of intelligence to justify war.'

[The Butler Report out this week will make interesting reading on the intelligence used by Prime Minister Blair to take his country to war.] The fact that so many other countries went along with the Bush administration's intelligence subterfuge is testimony to the effective way it used 9/11 on the international community as well as the domestic audience.

"Our credibility is diminished, our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of the Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow."

There have already been consequences of the administration's 'mistake' - described above - but there are many more to come. The suffering imposed to date will, sadly, not end with the Senate Committee's Report. US soldiers continue to die in Iraq.

Iraqi civilians continue to die. An increasing number of foreigners are being made hostage and executed. The overall security situation continues on a downward spiral.

The chances of a genuine, representative Iraqi government coming to power and bringing order, stability and prosperity remain slim. The anger in the Muslim world referred to by Rockefeller - continues to get worse. Viewed overall then, even the partial verdict delivered by the senate intelligence committee is enough to condemn the Bush administration.

Resistance to Turkey's EU membership

The issue of Turkey joining the EU club has resurfaced and was a point of contention between the transatlantic allies. During the visit of the heads of state for the recent NATO summit in Istanbul President George W. Bush urged the European Union to begin talks that would lead to full EU membership for the Republic of Turkey.

The decision to start membership negotiations with Turkey is a sensitive issue facing the EU leaders and poses a haunting spectre to the EU. In December 2004, at the climax of the Dutch presidency of the EU, it would be decided whether or not to start accession negotiations with Turkey and whether Turkey has met the EU's criteria for human rights and democracy.

If agreed, within a decade or so Turkey's population of nearly 70 million would make it the second largest country in the EU and the first Muslim nation to join the European bloc.

With a new voting system based in part on the size of population due to come into effect under Europe's constitution, Turkish membership would have profound implications for the EU's power balance.

For almost four decade, Turkey has sought membership in the European club, which has changed names, forms and objectives since its creation in the 1950s. It first applied to join the EU, then known as the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1959. It signed a customs agreement with the bloc in 1995 and became a candidate for membership in 1999.

Over the years, Turkey has taken a number of steps to meet the political accession criteria, especially in the areas of democratization and human rights. There raft of constitutional changes included the introduction of a national security court, the abolition of the death penalty, the removal of all military representatives from higher education organizations and a free press.

It has also lifted some curbs on freedom of expression, association and religion. It helped reduce the influence of the military in politics and increased cultural rights for Turkey's 12 million Kurds.

Turkey also played an important role in urging the populace of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to back the United Nations plan to unify the island of Cyprus.

The reunification plan was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots but rejected by the Greek Cypriot majority, which led to Greek Cyprus to join the EU alone in May 2004. Over the past two decades the Turks have patiently worked on package of economic reforms, starting with a large dose of economic liberalization under Turgot Ozal.

The process has continued under the current centre-right government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan with even greater determination. The EU concern is that Turkey is not doing enough to stamp out the use of torture in jails, harassment of human rights activists and violations of the rights of non-Muslim minorities.

To disqualify Turkey from becoming a member, the EU has mentioned certain factors, including its weak economy, its inefficient bureaucracy, its rampant corruption and its poor record of human rights. Some countries with similar problems, such as Eastern European states, joined the EU club on May 1, 2004.

One argument is that Turkey has a large peasantry that could bankrupt the union by demanding subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But that argument fades away when we note that the CAP has already reached a dead-end with the admission of new members from Central and Eastern Europe and mounting pressure for the removal of farm subsidies as the last impediment to global free trade.

Another argument is that Turkey is not democratic enough to enter the union and the question of the implementation of the adopted reforms. This is true. It may take Turkey many more decades before it can be regarded as a mature democracy.

But one must also note that membership of the EU could accelerate the process of democratization as it did in Portugal and Greece and is doing in the formerly Communist states.

The positive and negative points about Turkey's inclusion in the EU need to he studied in detail. One cannot ignore the fact that for almost half a century Turkey has served as Europe's first line of defence against Soviet Union.

(The Turkish Army was, and remains, the second largest within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after the United States.) If the EU aspires to have a strong military muscle to complement its political weight on international stage, Turkey's inclusion would be a necessity and would help in complementing the European defence.

Now that NATO's European members regard Afghanistan as their top priority, Turkey can play an important role. On the economic front, Turkey has now reached the stage where more economic improvement is to a certain extent dependent on the launch of formal EU accession talks.

The beginning of negotiations would of itself provide a "stabilizing anchor" for Turkey's economic policy. Turkey was the only non-EU country with a full customs union agreement with the EU.

Full membership would enhance its trade and investment opportunities even further, boosting Europe's competitiveness at the same time. The start of accession negotiations would draw foreign investment to the country and help lower yields on the nation's $204 billion debt.

For the EU, access to energy sources from the Caspian Sea basin can solve lot of energy problems for the Europe. Also the ideological argument advanced by some in Europe against the inclusion of an Islamic state in a Christian club does not hold water.

This argument is rooted in the historical experience of the Europeans but then if historical experience is the driving force then the Franco-German alliance would not have been possible, for that matter.

To start with the claim that the EU is a Christian club is both false and dangerous. In the 25 member states of the union, no more than 30 per cent of the population describe themselves as practising Christians.

If the religion of one's birth is the yardstick, the union is home to some 20 million Muslims. In fact, Islam is the second largest religion throughout the union. There are also almost two million Jews and millions of European converts to a variety of other creeds, from Buddhism to the many currently fashionable sects.

Europe today is one big supermarket of religions and political ideologies. Europe is secular and the Turkish republic has been a secular state for almost eight decades, much longer than many members of the EU.

Turkish entry into the EU seems to be more a power sharing problem than an ideological one because Turkey as a member of the EU club would have the same, if not more, votes than Germany, given that its population could rise to 80 million over the next decade.

This signifies that Turkey would have a big say in European matters. So at the end of the day it is all about power sharing. It will depend on how the ideological card is going to be played in this regard to keep Turkey away from the EU.

There is a whole spectrum for Turkey's membership to the EU ranging from full support from European leaders like British PM Tony Blair, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende to resistant approach of French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, to fears experienced particularly among the smaller countries, which believe that European integration could become paralyzed if such a country as large as Turkey is admitted to the other extreme with countries like Austria which believe that Europe would lose its Christian identity.

The recent EU parliamentary elections gave a majority of 732 seats to conservatives and Eurosceptics, both of whom do not want Turkey in the EU. The 732 MEPs will vote in December on Turkey's accession date. After that, veto from individual countries will be taken into account.

Austria is already threatening a veto, since no party in Austria wants Turkey in the EU. Opposition is also visible in other countries like France and Germany and a Cyprus veto is also a possibility and probably there would be others in line to adopt the same approach.

Internal opposition in most of the European countries and the coming to power of the conservatives shows a bleak chance for Turkish membership of the EU. The hunch is that the October report would not give a positive picture regarding Turkey.

But if it is the other way round, it would be a big achievement for the Dutch presidency to be able to convince the European leaders to agree on starting negotiations with Turkey. It will be a win-win situation for both sides.