OVER the last few weeks, there have been several high-profile exchanges between Pakistani and Afghan officials. These visits have been viewed as positive both for the improvement of bilateral ties between Islamabad and Kabul, as well as to ensure that a long-term Afghan peace settlement materialises soon.
However, the visit of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to this country was particularly interesting, especially to those who have been following the tricky path of Afghan politics over the past several decades, particularly the Pak-Afghan relationship. Mr Hekmatyar has worn many hats: Mujahideen warlord, former prime minister of his country and in his latest avatar, an elder statesman. While speaking at an Islamabad think tank on Wednesday, the Afghan veteran said peace in his country could be won if the Americans pulled out, and if there was a “non-aligned” government in Kabul, free from outside interference.
Mr Hekmatyar is a wily survivor of several Afghan conflicts, starting from just before the Soviet invasion, throughout the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan, and well after the American invasion of his country. As leader of the Hezb-i-Islami faction, he hobnobbed with world powers eager to use Afghanistan’s holy warriors to bring down the USSR’s ‘evil empire’.
Read: Pakistan stands by Afghan brethren in hard times, says Alvi
However, as the world witnessed, following the exit of the Soviets, Afghanistan saw anything but stability, as the Mujahideen factions started a brutal struggle for power amongst themselves. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was a key player in this power game, and was seen as close to this country’s establishment. He twice held the premiership of his country; it was during his second stint as prime minister in 1996 that Kabul fell to the Afghan Taliban, ushering in a new phase of the Afghan conflict. In the post-9/11 era, Mr Hekmatyar spent many years in the wilderness, living in exile and planning his next move on the battlefield, till Ashraf Ghani ushered him back into the mainstream through a peace deal.
Considering his proposals for peace in Afghanistan, by all means foreign forces must leave the country. However, as this paper has argued, this must be an orderly process. A sudden flight will leave the government in Kabul vulnerable to collapse, leading to another prolonged period of instability in Afghanistan. Mr Hekmatyar speaks from experience, considering the fact that he himself has participated in numerous violent attempts to capture Kabul from the government of the day. As for his advice about foreign non-interference in Afghan politics, it is difficult to argue with this.
While much of Afghanistan’s destruction can be credited to brutal power plays between local factions, global powers have been using the country as a chessboard for years. If a genuine peace agreement is to work, all of Afghanistan’s neighbours, regional powers as well as global actors must pledge not to interfere in the country’s internal matters, and leave the Afghans to chart out a peaceful future for their battle-scarred motherland.
Stunting challenge
IT is tragic that some of our biggest challenges remain unaddressed, caught in the maelstrom of power politics from which there is no escape. Hunger and food security are two such issues. According to the National Nutrition Survey 2018, 40pc children under the age of five years are stunted in the country. These children are not likely to reach their full cognitive and developmental potential due to inadequate and deficient nutrition. What is also tragic is that for most of these children, stunting begins even before they are born. Around 14pc of women of reproductive age are undernourished while half the population of adolescent girls in the country is anaemic. Given the number of early marriages in the country and a raft of social mores that disallow women from taking independent decisions concerning their own sexual and physical health, it is no surprise that these undernourished girls and women go on to bear children whose physical, biological and mental development is lagging from the moment they are conceived. This is not all; nearly 13pc of our children have some form of functional disability, and two out of every 10 children under five years also suffer from wasting — a condition in which part of the body is emaciated due to lack of nourishment.
Our future appears to be in double jeopardy — at one end, high politics seems to have overshadowed all aspects of public welfare, while at the other, hunger is damaging our children’s bodies. The cost of malnutrition is high and varies across the country — 48pc of children are stunted in KP, 45pc in Sindh, 46pc each in GB and Balochistan, 36pc in Punjab, 39pc in Azad Kashmir and 32pc in Islamabad — but no action is taken and children continue to suffer for no fault of their own. Prime Minister Imran Khan talked about the issue in his maiden speech after coming to office in August 2018. It took two years, however, for the government to launch the Ehsaas Nashonuma Programme in nine districts in August this year, while the first meeting of the Pakistan National Nutrition Coordination Council was held earlier in the month. Though these steps should be commended, a broad-based and holistic strategy with targeted execution is required to tackle this mammoth problem. All the officials have to do is take care of the people of the country. High politics will take care of itself.
Lahore smog
BREATHING the Lahore air is not without its risks. At a time when people are already grappling with the coronavirus that has continued into the flu season, the mist that is settling in has added to respiratory hazards. The air quality index in the city rose to 214 on Wednesday, indicating that the annual smog is on its way back to debilitate and disrupt. October marks the start of the period when the fall in temperature makes this ‘dusty’ sheet visible in the Punjab capital and some other parts of the adjoining plains up to Delhi. Otherwise, the air quality is bad the entire year and the presence of a relatively thinner smog layer this time, probably because of less activity in the preceding months on account of pandemic-related shutdowns, doesn’t ease apprehensions. Fears are that as the mercury goes down, the dirty blanket could get thicker. There has been plenty of nervous activity on display and an attempt is being made to take preventive measures. This won’t lead to a remedy since the cause of the smog is still by and large unrecognised.
The blame has been put on the poor and vulnerable country cousins who have been accused of releasing plumes of pollution into the atmosphere during stubble burning while preparing the fields for the next crop. Their contribution to the pollution ranks much lower than that of their urban counterparts who are forever in a hurry to go somewhere. The main contributors include industry, our power-making units and worst of them all, the transport sector. These have been listed in smog studies carried out or aided by groups such as the FAO and World Bank. This is exactly why any talk about controlling the traffic on Lahore roads, about finally switching over to petrol and substituting furnace oil with natural gas wherever possible generates so much interest among those who know and care. The change will hopefully come, but first, there has to be a better, long-term plan in place.
