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| April 16, 2006 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 17, 1427 |
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A jirga’s rash edict
A welcome verdict
Changing equations in the new world order
IN the long history of political strife, a balance of power has always existed. The Achaemenian Empire of Persia, after it defeated Egypt in 525 B.C., was perhaps the first empire to think and operate in global terms as was understood 2,500 years later.
THE National Commission on Government Reform (NCGR) that has been set up by the president is welcome, though with a measure of caution. Designed to simplify the rules and procedures at every tier of government, this commission can make a positive contribution towards streamlining the administration and making it more accessible to the people at large. But if it fails to make proper recommendations and, more important, is unable to have its suggestions implemented, the commission will be another exercise in futility, and quite an expensive one at that. Since there is a dire need for reform in the administrative rules and procedures, the commission must be given full opportunity to carry out its work. Dr Ishrat Hussain, who is to head this body, successfully reformed the State Bank when he was its governor and proved beyond doubt that changes in the administrative structure, functions and financial organisation of an institution can significantly improve the level of its performance.
It is not known exactly what the terms of reference of the NCGR are, but one hopes that it will look into several aspects of governance that have a direct bearing on the government’s efficiency, accessibility, financial feasibility and integrity. It is important that the working of every ministry and department is simplified and streamlined, preferably having one window operations where possible, so that the services it provides are available without any hassle or delays. If the rules and procedures are clearly defined and clarified, transparency in operations made compulsory and the discretionary powers of functionaries at different levels of the administration reduced to the minimum, administrative efficiency will indeed be enhanced and the scope for corruption reduced. Experience shows that whichever department has had its working simplified, its performance has improved — be it the passport office or Nadra.
The NCGR must also look into the financial side of the administration. While streamlining its functions will certainly help in shedding the flab, it is also important to rectify the anomalies in the emoluments of the civil servants. The system that has for long been in operation costs the state heavily — in 2005-06 it was Rs 503 billion. Even though the senior-most officers are paid salaries that in monetary terms may look like peanuts, they are compensated by fantastic perks that are virtually unlimited. It is time the salaries of state functionaries were enhanced but monetised. The exorbitant perks and pelfs should be done away with. Moreover, the duplication in services — huge ministries in Islamabad as well as departments in every province for health and education that are handled by the provinces — need to be corrected. It is also important that the budgets of various departments are rationalised and a balance introduced between the salaried expenditure on the staff and the spending on the facilities provided, especially in the health and education departments.
If the reform proposals are drawn up logically and implemented in earnest, many advantages will accrue to the government. Its performance will improve. Greater transparency will help cut down corruption. Its financial burden will be reduced. Facilitating the public’s dealing with the government, especially the business sector’s, will draw investment to the country and spur economic growth. But, above all, the objective should be to make the government seem more caring and more conscious of the people’s difficulties.
IT is disappointing to hear that a jirga in the Upper Dir region of the NWFP has banned the registering of honour crimes on the pretext that they are part of local culture. In vowing to uphold their tradition, tribal elders have also warned of strict action against anyone who registers an FIR against an honour crime, adding that they would be equally harsh against those who “misused” the custom to settle feuds or financial disputes. That jirgas feel that they have the right to pass such sweeping edicts — which only serve to harm the people they claim to represent — is disturbing. The government should take notice of the matter and rectify the situation before more harm is done. It is imperative for the area’s elected representatives to talk to jirga members on the illegality of this edict.
Irrespective of how honour-related crimes are seen by locals, jirga members need to be made to realise that these are contrary to the law of the land and by passing arbitrary orders forbidding people from reporting a crime, they are in violation of the law and can be held legally answerable for that. Law enforcement agencies in that area will also need to make their presence felt by urging citizens to step forward and report on crimes, assured that their complaints will be dealt with according to the law. It should be handled as firmly as the matter of women being barred from voting during the last local body elections in Dir — a move that was also supported by local political parties. Then the Supreme Court had issued a strict warning to ensure that women were allowed to exercise their right of franchise. Now too, the government will have to exhibit strong will if it is to prevent such regressive steps. At the heart of the matter, however, is successive governments’ inability to integrate this region into the national mainstream — which is why much of the area is steeped in backwardness. The absence of the intelligentsia in such matters is deeply felt. Until they step forward and begin to engage the tribal society in an enlightened dialogue, things are not likely to change easily.
THE decision by a Supreme Court bench on Friday, directing the Punjab government to stop work on the commercialisation of an amenity plot in Lahore is welcome. The Punjab government had allowed a public-sector entertainment company to build a commercial plaza and a cinema hall on a portion of the ‘doongi’ ground in Gulberg, located in an area that has seen massive commercialisation in recent years. The ground was used by children for recreational activities, with local sport clubs holding cricket and football matches there on a regular basis. The area’s residents had gone to court, pleading for stopping the construction of yet another commercial plaza in the neighbourhood. Earlier, a lower court and the Lahore High Court had allowed the work to proceed. In its latest judgment, the apex court has noted that because rules and procedures have not been followed, work on the project has to stop. The Punjab government, however, has been given the right to appeal against the judgment, provided it and the several civic agencies involved follow the rules and procedures of commercialising amenity plots. The residents, for now, have heaved a sigh of relief.
Rampant commercialisation of open spaces or service amenities in our cities, especially Lahore and Karachi, in recent years has deprived citizens of their right to a quiet, civilized life. The demolition of a hospital in Clifton, Karachi, to build a commercial plaza in its place, a few months ago, is another case in point. As it is, there is already a dearth of open spaces, parks and recreational facilities in our cities. A policy of mindlessly allowing further commercialisation of residential areas is the last thing we need. The government must stop this madness forthwith.
It suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Alexander (the Great) of Macedonia in 331 B.C. at the battle of Gaugamela. That battle handed over most of the Near East to European rulers, till the coming of Arabs in the seventh century A.D.
Since then, each supremacy has generated its own counter-veiling power. Each power in its heyday was the cock of the hoop. Some empires contributed more than others to the civilization of man. The Chinese gave the world culture and the arts — artisan and martial; Egyptians divine worship of the ruler; the Persians state craft and bureaucracy; the Greeks, democracy and the Romans, law. Since about the middle of the 17th century, the centre of political dominion shifted to Europe. In the last four hundred years, we have seen the rise and fall of several vanquished supremacies.
The Iberian Peninsula colonized all of South America, the Dutch, British, Russian, French and Ottoman, most of Asia and Africa. And in the 20th century, for a short span Hitler’s Germany was the master of the world as was Japan in East Asia giving way to Soviet Russia and the United States after World War-II.
In the kaleidoscope of political supremacies and their ultimate splintering like porcelain pieces, we learn the only permanence of political supremacy is its impermanence. In this generation, we were witness to the fall of the Soviet empire in 1990; the emblem of its rise was the hoisting of the Soviet flag on the shattered Reichstag building in Berlin in 1945 and its fall when Berliners shattered the mighty Berlin wall in 1989 with bare hands.
The United States emerged as the sole great power. That there is no countervailing power to it so far leaves space for its emergence. Seldom has one supremacy occupied the world stage for long. Some historians like Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) were carried away by the flush of US supremacy in 1989. Samuel Huntington in his The Clash of Civilizations — Remaking of the World Order, conceived of a civilizational clash with the Muslim world — a theory now rejected by most critics. Be that as it may, jehadism has the power to be a serious irritant to the US and its allies, but, at present it has neither the intellectual nor material power to occupy the space available for a countervailing world power.
The US today is not happily placed. Its trade imbalance with the rest of the world currently is around $780 Billion and is likely to reach the astronomic figure of a trillion dollars by the time President George W. Bush leaves office. Its army is bogged down in Iraq in ways reminiscent of Viet Nam. It has antagonized the Muslim world by its brutal treatment of alleged Al Qaeda prisoners, and in the process, has given new life for the globalisation of Al Qaeda terrorism. Iraq is in a hopeless, no-win situation.
Before long the US, in response to its own public pressure, will have to recall its army from Iraq. This may lead to the split of Iraq.
If the US exits out of Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan, which is already bad for the West, will get far worse. A resurgent Taliban is already giving a tough time to the international security force there. Large swathes of Afghanistan change hands every so often as at the time of Soviet occupation.
Under Putin, Russia is the process of re-floating itself politically, distancing itself from the US — its virtual patron since 1990. Apart from an aging nuclear armoury — ICBMs, torpedo-fitted nuclear submarines, advanced nuclear-tipped missiles and other military hardware — it has two highly marketable assets: an underpaid pool of brilliant scientific talent, second to none, and the world’s second largest proven oil and gas reserves in frozen Siberia.
China, once bete noir of the West, is today the world’s fourth largest economy, with an ambition to be the world’s largest economy within the next two or so decades. It is an economic wonderland with its economy growing at an average annual rate of about 10 per cent for the past decade. With a population of over 1.3 billion, it has the world’s largest human reservoir; and the world’s largest pool of skilled labour. Brought up under the tutelage of Soviet Russia after 1949, it was the first Asian country to learn the secrets of the atom bomb. It turned against its mentor by early 1960s, defeated India in a border war in 1962, and then dramatically broke out of the US imposed isolation in 1970 when Nixon visited China.
According to Dmitry Trenin, director of Moscow’s Carnegie Fund “Russia is shifting from being a junior partner of the US to a junior partner of China”. According to a Newsweek report, “...Take Akademgorodok, a Soviet-era suburb of Novosibirsk, home to 52 scientific institutes and some 18,000 scientists, including half a dozen Nobel Prize winners. Already, estimates Novosibirsk councilor Aleksandr Lyulko, 80 per cent of Akademgorodok’s income derives from China...”
“...Chinese cash is actually kick-starting a rebirth of Russian science. Krasnoyarsk’s Institute of Solar-Earth Physics, for instance, has formed a joint venture with the Chinese Centre of Space Science; in Novosibirsk, the Institute of Precision Electronics now makes high-powered lasers together with the Shenyan Technological Institute... Chinese companies have been buying iron-ore mines in Australia, as well as Canada’s largest nickel and zinc mining company, Noranda...”
Half a million Chinese workers live in Siberia and provide the muscle needed to work the oil fields in temperatures ranging 30: below zero in winter. Siberia is in danger of being taken over demographically by China.
The latest entrant to the emerging ‘Great Game’ is India. It has developed a world class ‘knowledge industry’ which is at the cutting edge of various new technologies. It is also a player in the giant pharmaceutical industry. It has a credible medium-range engineering industry and is a centre for world tourism. However, India lacks modern infrastructure.
In a sudden turn of events, all very characteristic of President George W. Bush, the US has decided to set aside the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the constraints of the Nuclear Supplies Club (NSC) to give India de facto membership of the five-member Nuclear Power Club. There were two sticking points with India before Bush landed there last month. One, its fast breeder reactor programme, which is a virtual plutonium producing factory, to be outside IAEA inspection, and secondly, an agreement on “minimum” nuclear deterrent, which India wishes to retain. The US conceded on both issues. If the India-US nuclear cooperation agreement is approved by the US Congress, it is a mega-shift in the new ‘Great Game’.
At present China attracts annually about a hundred-billion-dollar worth of investment from the West and Japan — India, a fraction of this sum. The US, the EU and Japan are likely to boost investment in India. The EU and Japan are associate players in the New Great Game. Both are economic power houses, with low military resources. NATO is Euro-centric. With the demise of the Soviet Union; it has lost much of its focus: it is now used as a force to combat bushfires from Afghanistan to Bosnia and Kosovo.
Evidently, China is likely to enter into an entante with Russia. Both countries will likely confront the US on Iran and Iraq and most other global issues.
As the 21st century unfolds, the new balance of power is likely to be a Washington-Tokyo-New Delhi axis vs a Beijing-Moscow-Islamabad-Tehran axis.
The Chinese have not forgotten or forgiven the Japanese occupation of their country before and during World War II. The US and Japan have an interest in retaining the independence of Taiwan. New Delhi is the likely beneficiary of de facto nuclear status, thanks to the US which needs Indian markets and an Asian power to balance China’s growing power and influence. Tokyo, the world’s second biggest economy is a military dwarf. It needs the protection of a US nuclear umbrella against China and maverick North Korea.
On the other side of the political equation, needs are equally complimentary. The Russian economy, which is a sluggish (12th in the world order just above Mexico) with an export component solely dependent on energy and military sales, needs the Chinese economy which is poised to be bigger than Germany’s within the next five years. Russia is limp if oil prices drop. Another reason for the emergence of the new axis is that ex-Soviet satellites in Europe, such as the Baltic states and Poland, have joined Nato. The crunch is likely to come if Ukraine and Belarus, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, also join Nato. Russia is being encircled; it will need the human and material resources of China to respond to this challenge.
Pakistan as a nuclear power and Iran, a would-be nuclear power, and a major oil producer, will be in contention — one being Sunni and the other Shia states. The Beijing-Moscow axis is likely to ally the Muslim world, which is turning increasingly anti-West. If these speculations have provenance, profound implications are involved for Pakistan. For one, it will have to review its commitments to Afghanistan.
Between Mulla Omar and the pro-American regime in Kabul, there are shades of gray in between. We have to protect our economic and political sovereignty without fighting a war in our tribal areas at the behest of the US. A rival world order led by China is in the offing; how it develops in the next decade will determine the new kaleidoscope. As they say, the future is a land without any maps.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly.
E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk