Series loss
IT was England’s approach to which Pakistan had no answer — facing a side that was willing to risk losing in order to win. Pakistan have never had that mindset, and their first-ever whitewash in a Test series at home is indicative of the fact. It started with the loss in the first Test where Pakistan collapsed in the last session on a flat wicket at the Pindi Cricket Stadium after England captain Ben Stokes’ bold declaration. It set the momentum, and even though Pakistan hit back with spin in the second Test — Abrar Ahmed shining in his debut — England would go on to clinch the series as Babar Azam’ men fell to their narrowest loss of the series — 26 runs. It was teenager Rehan Ahmed who then put Pakistan in a spin in the final Test, England romping home by eight wickets with almost two days to spare and denying the hosts consolation in Karachi. Pakistan had gone into the series having lost the Twenty20 World Cup final to England and their Test side, too, proved brittle in the face of the tourists’ all-out attack game plan.
Babar Azam rued that his side had to make do with a number of inexperienced players, especially on the bowling front. Already without pace leader Shaheen Shah Afridi, speedsters Haris Rauf and Nadeem Shah fell to injuries in Rawalpindi. It’s led to justifiable calls over workload management. Pakistan’s pacers have been playing non-stop cricket. The bespectacled Abrar provided hope but it wasn’t enough. In batting, novice Saud Shakeel was a bright spot. Young players bring a fresher mentality, and with veteran Azhar Ali — who had been struggling for form — calling it a day, it offers a chance to blood new ones. England have shown that; they are providing the new blueprint to play the game’s longest format. Pakistan also need to reinvent themselves. That is likely be the job of the new management that will come in with the Pakistan Cricket Board set for a leadership change.
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022
CT strategy
AS an incipient wave of terrorism — fuelled primarily by the TTP — starts spreading across Pakistan, particularly affecting the settled and tribal districts of KP, the administration finally seems to have woken up to the grave nature of the threat. In a statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised to clamp down on terrorism, and pledged to “fully implement” the National Action Plan and equip KP’s Counter-Terrorism Department with the tools and facilities needed to fight militancy. Considering the steadily rising cases of terrorism over the last few weeks, it would be fair to ask why the civilian and military leaderships didn’t arrive at these conclusions earlier, when civil society, particularly the residents of the militancy-affected areas, were calling upon the state to protect them from the emerging threat. However, perhaps better late than never; there is still time to neutralise the monster of militancy before it spreads its tentacles any further. It took the deadly siege of the Bannu CTD facility by TTP fighters to apparently shake the state out of its lethargy, but there have been other worrying incidents, such as the militant raid on a police station in Wana early on Tuesday, as well as a string of grisly beheadings in Tank and Bannu, of security men and individuals dubbed government ‘spies’ by the terrorists.
Regarding the revival of NAP and counterterrorism bodies such as Nacta, it appears as if the state went into hibernation after the last wave of terrorism subsided and relative peace was restored. However, countering militancy in Pakistan is a continuing process, principally because — due to our own sins of omission and commission — the militant infrastructure in the country was never completely uprooted. In particular, after the Afghan Taliban took Kabul last year, and parleys were launched with the TTP, there were fears, which have now been realised, that the militants would stage a comeback. Yet the state played down the threat. Now, NAP has been retooled, and divided into kinetic and non-kinetic domains, while a new homeland security body has been proposed. As far as NAP’s implementation goes, the immediate priority should be to enforce the kinetic goals, while working on longer-term aims. And before creating a new security body, the role of the present institutions needs to be discussed and rationalised, as instead of creating multiple departments with overlapping domains, a more streamlined counterterrorism approach is required to deal with the militant threat.
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022
Too little, too late?
EXACTLY six months after it made a similar attempt, the government is back to checking off a familiar list of ‘austerity measures’ that it thinks will save the country countless billions every year.
The measures include shutting down markets and restaurants by 8pm, instituting a work-from-home policy for a fifth of the government workforce, introducing electric motorbikes and more energy-efficient lightbulbs and fans, moving government buildings to solar energy, conserving water and harvesting rain, and other measures to reduce energy wastage.
The similarity of this list to another list of measures announced in June — at that time, to conserve electricity during a deepening energy shortfall — is impossible to miss.
One wonders if the same files were dusted off and handed over to the honourable ministers of our government to present once again to the public, as they are certainly not the novel solutions to the crises we face as they have been made out to be.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the different measures themselves. The problem lies in implementing them, which the government seemed absolutely helpless in ensuring the last time around, and more than likely will this time, too, especially once the traders’ unions, market associations, and lobbyists start kicking up a fuss.
There is also the fact that most of these steps aren’t even drastic, and some won’t start bearing fruit until many months later. Consider, for example, the proposal for market closure by 8pm. While it may indeed save a few hours’ worth of electricity consumption, 8pm is still quite late considering that the sun sets hours earlier in the winter.
Likewise, phasing in electric bikes and more efficient lightbulbs or moving all government buildings to solar energy is not something that can be done overnight. Water conservation and rain harvesting again require extensive infrastructure investments that we may not even have the resources for at the moment.
One would almost feel sorry for the government representatives made to announce these measures had the stakes not been so high and Islamabad’s inaction over the past six months not so exasperating.
Circling back to the same policy measures six months after they were abandoned just shows that the government is all out of ideas and should never have strayed from the course it was set on.
If that isn’t enough of a damning indictment of its failure to prudently manage the economy, what is? Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also needs to find the courage to face the nation and make these announcements himself in the future.
His return to the country, endorsed and pushed by Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, has failed to yield any big change in economic conditions. Instead, with the government now reverting to the policies of his predecessor, his policies only seem discredited beyond repair.
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022