Afghan funding cut
AS the world grapples with multiple crises, the miseries of the people of Afghanistan seem to have been relegated to the margins. According to the UN’s World Food Programme, rations are being cut for millions of Afghans due to a funding shortfall. As it is, the impoverished, isolated nation is heavily dependent on outside aid to feed its population. The UN estimates that 90pc of Afghans cannot afford food, with around 28m in need of humanitarian assistance. There are multiple reasons for Afghanistan’s dire predicament. The foremost is the fact that the country has been destabilised by decades of foreign-sponsored wars, as well as the associated internal strife. Moreover, although Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, the international community has yet to recognise the ruling regime, mainly because of the latter’s stringent curbs on fundamental rights, particularly women’s freedoms. This has left Afghanistan largely isolated and cut off from international financial systems, with only limited engagement with the outside world. If donor fatigue and the global economic situation are factored in, the outlook for the Afghan people is quite grim.
While many nations may be hesitant to channel funds through the Taliban, the Afghan people should not be made to pay for the hard-line group’s sins. It is a moral imperative for the world community to ensure basic humanitarian supplies — food, medicine, etc — keep flowing into Afghanistan. If the US, for example, can spend over $2tr on making war in Afghanistan, and the West can funnel billions of dollars to arm Ukraine, a few million dollars required to keep food on Afghans’ tables should not be a difficult ask. Moreover, Muslim states, particularly the energy-rich petro-monarchies, need to chip in to ensure Afghans have enough to eat. Making sure funds do not end up in the Taliban’s hands is a valid concern, but this can be addressed by channelling aid through the UN or established humanitarian groups.
Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2023
Country on edge
THE country is tearing itself apart. With politics being conducted with unprecedented venom and vitriol, there is constant danger that someone, somewhere, will make a grave mistake. Even a momentary lapse of judgement could trigger a series of events that could cause irrevocable damage to the country.
Yet, as the political climate grows increasingly febrile, the federal government, the caretaker set-up in Punjab as well as the PTI leadership continue to show a dangerous and disturbing lack of responsibility in their conduct.
As the parties currently in power, the greater burden lies with the PML-N and the caretaker government in Punjab. They ought to be demonstrating restraint, yet, both either continue to provoke the PTI’s already paranoid leadership or repeatedly go overboard in the exercise of their authority.
The Lahore and Islamabad administrations’ actions last week suggest that PTI vs PML-N is no longer being viewed simply as politics, but as an all-out turf war. What do they want? Do they really think that unleashing the state’s force on what, at least at the moment, appears to be the most popular political party in the country is a way out of the mess they have steered the country towards? At this critical juncture, does Pakistan really need another crop of young men and women internalising that violence is the language of conversing with the state? Have they weighed what the long-term consequences of these terribly shortsighted policies will be for themselves?
Likewise, has former prime minister Imran Khan completely lost his grip on reality? Can he not see that the hysteria he is projecting regarding the perceived threats to his life — threats that he sees in almost every corner these days — is driving his well-wishers and supporters into dangerous and volatile confrontations with law enforcers who may be simply doing their job? Does he realise that, whether he intends it or not, his actions are causing his party to take on the characteristics of a mob? What kind of self-centred leadership is it that would imperil the lives of young men and women in meaningless stand-offs with the state?
The silent majority has had enough. In this war of petty egos, ordinary people cannot continue to suffer. The two parties should reconsider their intransigence, lest they be left with nothing but ashes to rule after all is said and done.
Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2023
Petroleum subsidy
THE proposed petroleum subsidy programme intended to provide relief to low-income segments of the population appears to be a last-ditch effort by a politically embattled government to regain lost space as it faces both pressure from the opposition and high inflation which could harm its electoral prospects.
On the face of it, the move is likely to prove a non-starter; it will be difficult, if not impossible, to pursue it under the IMF should Islamabad strike the long-awaited deal with the Fund despite this new plan.
The scheme presupposes that the subsidy will reach every targeted individual, will not be misused and that its cost — estimated at Rs120bn — can be cross-subsidised by charging an additional tax of Rs100 per litre on petrol consumed by ‘affluent’ sections. The designers of the programme have yet to explain their definition of ‘affluent’.
Details of how the scheme is going to be implemented remain sketchy. If the idea is to give the fuel subsidy to BISP beneficiaries, the government had a more practical way of increasing their stipend under the social protection programme, rather than creating new market distortions and risking the IMF programme.
After all, how many BISP beneficiaries own motorbikes, rickshaws or small cars? Even if the proposal is implemented without hiccups, it will not help the ruling set-up recoup its political capital.
At the most, the Robin Hood effect the move may create will retrieve only narrow space for the PML-N and its allies — definitely not enough to improve their electoral chances. The move is going to strengthen the impression that the coalition partners are sinking deeper into the political quagmire.
The proposed plan underlines the fact that the present government is no different from its predecessor. Like the previous PTI government, it seems more interested in reviving its political capital through ad hoc, short-term measures rather than implementing sound economic policies to fix the collapsing economy, executing governance reforms, expanding the tax net and cutting wasteful expenditure. It is common for politicians to pursue populist policies closer to the elections.
The PML-N has a long history of offering such ‘relief’ — at a cost to the economy. The massive tax cuts announced by the party’s then finance minister Miftah Ismail in its last budget before the 2018 polls are just one example.
The decision did not help the party return to power. It also proved quite costly to the economy just like the PTI decision to cut fuel and power prices and freeze them to improve its government’s rating ahead of the vote of no-confidence against Imran Khan a year ago.
Past experience underscores the fact that populist solutions to the problems faced by the people always prove untenably expensive for the economy and those who are supposed to benefit from them.
Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2023