The government has decided to impose a nine-day countrywide lockdown from May 8. However, before finaIising the decision, it should give serious thought to a report by an international humanitarian agency that shows the dreadful state of hunger in the world in 2020 and predicts that the situation might worsen this year. It has identified the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts as the main causes of the growing food insecurity confronting the common people in developing countries.
There are two major differences as regards the Covid-19 pandemic between last year and this year. In the previous year, countries tackled the crisis in a hopeless situation when treatment for the coronavirus was not available and governments and welfare organisations helped the people with food rations and cash hand-outs during the prolonged shutdowns. This year the government has so far not announced either food rations or cash hand-outs for the needy during the planned lockdown. The gap left by the government is not being adequately filled by NGOs. It is being feared that during the lockdown daily-wagers and their dependents might face starvation. The decision-makers should also take into account the reality that more than 75% people in the country cannot afford to buy food ration for even a week. Lack of work for so many days and the weak purchasing power would be devastating for the labour class.
The Global Network Against Food Crises, whose report has been mentioned above, says more than 155 million people faced acute food insecurity last year and the number might rise if remedial measures are not taken. Acute food insecurity has been deteriorating since 2017, and in 2020 it touched the lowest level. The agency has been preparing its report for the past five years. Acute food insecurity is a term used for describing a situation when lives or livelihoods are threatened due to lack of food. Should it not prick the world’s conscience that starvation threatens so many; and people are dying in large numbers from Covid-19 even when the cure is available?
Cross-border attack
Anti-Pakistan elements continue to use the Afghan soil for carrying out terrorist activities inside Pakistan. On Wednesday, four soldiers were martyred and six others injured in Zhob district of Balochistan when some 20 terrorists based in Afghanistan opened fire at them. When attacked, the soldiers — all belonging to the Frontier Corps — were working on a part of a fence being erected along the Pak-Afghan border. A soldier each had been martyred in two similar attacks in the last two months.
These attacks were meant to deter the soldiers from building the border fence which will make it difficult for members of Afghan-based terrorist outfits to sneak inside Pakistan and carry out their nefarious acts. Pakistan is building the fence along its 2,640km long border with Afghanistan so as to check the smuggling of goods and weapons, and deny cross-border movement of terrorists and other criminals.
The work on the border barrier continues uninterrupted over the past four years despite the threat of deadly attacks as well as other irritants like a non-performing economy, exacerbated further by the coronavirus onslaught. About 90 per cent of the fencing work, according to the ISPR, has been completed. The border fencing, meanwhile, becomes all the more relevant given the scheduled withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan by the end of next month, as it would stop the spillover of a potential turmoil into Pakistan.
In the wake of the Wednesday’s attack, Islamabad has once again asked Kabul to rein in the organised terrorists groups operating from its soil. The Afghan mission in Islamabad has been told to convey the concerns to relevant Afghan officials, according to the Foreign Office spokesperson. The Afghan government must get serious about following the mutually agreed protocols and SOPs to avoid recurrence of such incidents.
Mistreating missions
Prime Minister Imran Khan has slammed the performance of Pakistani diplomats and embassy staff in various countries during a recent virtual address. It was a rare occasion where nobody would oppose Imran’s opinions. Ask any Pakistani abroad about their interactions with embassy staff, and the answer will be a horror story. Yes, there are rare exceptions, but even in these cases, a disproportionate number of people who did not go through hell also have instantly recognisable last names or crushingly heavy pockets.
The brunt of Imran’s ire was reserved for embassy staff in the Middle East. The PM spoke of how he has been told of embassy staff in Kuwait taking bribes and forging documents, while the ambassador did not even bother to identify the suspect. He also referred back to the much-publicised bribery scandal that caused a big shake-up at the embassy in Saudi Arabia. In many of the incidents reported to the government, the victims were labourers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This may explain why at least some embassy staffers were so keen to ‘lean’ on them. Like many ‘babus’, they think they are the public’s masters rather than public employees. This attitude only worsens when obnoxious babus interact with poor people.
Imran reminded the envoys that the expats that they have been holding in such disdain are the same people who are keeping the country afloat through their remittances. We must also remind them that none of Pakistan’s embassies or consulates are net income generators, which means that the same labourers that the diplomats are mistreating are the ones paying their salaries. The PM noted that instead of serving Pakistanis abroad, ambassadors and their staff appeared to be behaving the way Raj-era British officials behaved with the local populace.
Imran also called out diplomats for failing to market Pakistan as an investment destination, which is unsurprising, considering how rare it is to hear of Pakistani envoys interacting in any meaningful way with local business leaders in their assigned countries. But this probably goes back to the widespread belief about foreign service among CSS applicants. “You get paid better” and “you can see the world” are the selling points. “You get to represent Pakistan to the world” never seems to attract applicants.
