Crimes of sardars
EVEN though most of Pakistan is a stranger to human rights, Balochistan is particularly dispossessed. With scores of missing persons, bomb attacks, targeted murders, destroyed public property and gas installations, the province has been entombed in poverty for decades, paying the added social, human and fiscal price of military operations. While the Baloch people have endured brutal exploitation at the hands of successive civilian and military regimes, the deeply embedded sardari system in the province, a residue of colonial times, that was formally abolished by the System of Sardari (Abolition) Act, 1976, is still a powerful element that survives on repression and stifled economic growth. Illiteracy and indigence prevent the people from challenging fierce chieftains. Yesterday’s investigative story in this paper cracked the system wide open, exposing the sardars’ private jails. “The phenomenon of private jails,” it says, “is especially entrenched in eastern and central Balochistan where the sardars wield the power of life and death over their tribesmen.”
The rulers and sardars operate on an agenda of continuous domination over a province rich in copper, gold and precious minerals. The report reveals “a few months ago, an ISI officer who wanted to crack down against the sardar’s excesses in Barkhan district was transferred by his superiors. Such institutional support continues to enable the Baloch sardars’ impunity: “…law enforcers are well aware that the sardars maintain private jails in their tribal territories, not to mention other criminal actions committed by these powerful feudals.” Therefore, it is time nationalist parties heaped scorn on sardars, when the latter raise Baloch rights issues, and, instead of keeping silent, these parties should demand greater control of Balochistan’s economy with the annihilation of the cruel sardari system. This controversial tribal structure has had its day; political interests must now make way for reforms. Or the people of the province should know that their rights, resources and development funds will not come to them.
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2023
Shifting goalposts
ALL over the world, where it concerns matters of the law, the rule usually goes that what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander. Not so in Pakistan, where the powerful have the option of simply rewriting their own laws whenever it becomes inconvenient for them to be applied without prejudice. Almost a year after the PDM government made sweeping changes to the NAB Ordinance to protect its own from the accountability watchdog’s often overreaching arms, it has had a change of heart. By dint of an ordinance, passed by the acting president, several key changes, made through a set of amendments last summer that had almost completely gutted the NAB law, now stand reversed. It appears that someone belatedly realised that the powers taken away from the accountability watchdog were, in fact, rather useful towards keeping ‘undesirables’ in check. After the new ordinance, the NAB chairman can once again have someone arrested even if the case against them is still in the ‘inquiry’ stage. Not only that, such a person can then be remanded to NAB custody for 30 days instead of the 14 under the amendments made last year.
This ordinance, passed in the dead of the night after the National Assembly was conveniently prorogued earlier in the day, smacks of both rank hypocrisy and malicious intent. One doesn’t need to do a lot of math to figure out who the intended target of this fresh amendment is. It may be recalled that this government, when criticised last year about the manner in which it had set about ‘fixing’ the NAB laws, had justified itself by arguing that the accountability body had traditionally been used as a tool of coercion and victimisation against politicians. Why, then, is it now weaponising NAB for precisely the same ends? It must also be asked why the government dispensed with parliamentary procedure to have the fresh amendment enforced through a presidential ordinance, especially when this same parliament had approved the amendments made last year. What reasoning could possibly justify the haste? It appears that no lesson has been learnt from the controversies that marred the 2018 elections. With all manner of pre-election engineering tricks being brought back into play, the country seems doomed to repeat a political cycle that will ultimately culminate in a fresh social crisis.
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2023
SCO anticlimax
THE SCO has the potential to become one of the world’s most prosperous and powerful economic and geopolitical blocs, considering its vast geographic scope and the large population of its member states. However, to achieve these goals, irritants between member states must be resolved in a satisfactory manner.
Clearly, as the virtual SCO Council of Heads of State summit, hosted by India on Tuesday showed, there are many miles to go before the bloc can achieve its full potential. Bilateral disputes overshadowed the promise of multilateral cooperation, with the host nation using the platform to take a swipe at geopolitical adversaries within the SCO.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s thinly veiled critique of both Pakistan and China during his address was a reminder of the internal challenges that confront the bloc.
There was, of course, little hope that the SCO summit could have provided a platform for Pakistan-India dialogue on the sidelines. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s frosty reception in Goa earlier in the year under the aegis of the SCO foreign ministers’ moot was a sign that the welcome for Shehbaz Sharif was unlikely to be any warmer.
Perhaps that is one reason why India chose to go virtual and avoid any personal interaction between Mr Sharif and Mr Modi, though there is also widespread conjecture that India opted to hold the summit online to avoid hosting Vladimir Putin.
Mr Modi sang a familiar tune, calling for an end to ‘cross-border terrorism’, while also targeting CPEC by saying that connectivity schemes should “respect sovereignty”, in an oblique reference to the megaproject’s passage through Gilgit-Baltistan.
PM Sharif paid Mr Modi back in the same coin, cautioning against the dangers of “violent ultra-nationalism” and criticising the use of terrorism for diplomatic point-scoring.
It is a rule of thumb that multilateral fora should not be used to settle bilateral scores. If anything, these bodies should provide a conducive atmosphere that can help resolve stubborn regional disputes.
Unfortunately, India’s current leadership has shown that both bilaterally and at multilateral platforms, it is not serious about engaging Pakistan in a dialogue for peace. Instead, the BJP regime is more interested in isolating this country by using familiar, tired tropes.
If this attitude persists, little will change where hostility in the subcontinent is concerned, and perhaps another generation will be condemned to live in perpetual confrontation. Terrorism, climate change, poverty and disease are all common problems that can be confronted bilaterally and through the SCO, if India chooses to shun its rigidity.
Where the SCO itself is concerned, it can be turned into a Eurasian behemoth driving growth in the entire region and the wider world. However, unless the irritants between its member states are resolved, it will remain but a talk shop, much like Saarc has become.
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2023