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Selected News/Columns/Editorials of 22.02.2016
Mon-22Feb-2016
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LOOKING across Syria’s killing fields, it’s impossible to say who the good guys are anymore. When the anti-Assad protests broke out in 2011, we all cheered the pro-democracy demonstrators, specially after security forces cracked down hard, killing, jailing and torturing thousands.
But it wasn’t long before these moderate activists were elbowed aside by extremists. Soon, armed by the Turks and Saudi Arabia, they became the most effective of the groups fighting Assad. Stories of atrocities committed by even moderates began filtering into the media; but it was the Al-Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda franchise holder, that gained the most fearsome reputation.
Soon, a breakaway group, initially calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), overtook Al-Nusra in sheer barbarism as well as in the scope of its ambition. This became apparent when its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, crowned himself the Caliph of what he dubbed the Islamic State. Its online propaganda machine has posted many videos demonstrating its bloodthirsty nature. All along, these fanatics have maintained covert links with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, recent reports have surfaced indicating that the Turkish border is open to jihadis joining the battle against the Assad regime.
Currently, however, IS has been pushed off the front page by the fierce fighting around Aleppo, Syria’s second city. Devastated by years of bombardment by Assad’s forces, this key rebel stronghold is in danger of falling into regime hands. The Syrian army’s recent successes owe much to the aerial support they are receiving from Russian aircraft.
Inevitably, this campaign has caused tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the Turkish border. The Turks and their Saudi allies, watching their proxies in retreat, have accused Russia of war crimes, but Putin remains unmoved. The EU, fearing yet more refugees on its doorstep, has appealed to Moscow for restraint. But with the momentum and traction the Russian-led alliance — which includes Syria and Iran, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah — has gained, it is doubtful if humanitarian concerns will halt the attack. And Saudi Arabia, with its murderous attacks on civilian targets in Yemen, is hardly in a position to accuse others of indiscriminate bombardment.
The American role in recent events has been highly equivocal: although it has protested against open-ended Russian support for Assad, the US-led aerial campaign has shifted its focus entirely to the IS, while the Russians pound targets close to Aleppo, and also provide support to the Syrian Kurds as they attack IS forces. This division of labour reveals a tacit agreement, as well as a more nuanced American position.
Earlier, the Americans were on the same page as the Saudis and the Turks in demanding the immediate exit of Bashar al-Assad. But they now realise that with the backing of Iran and Russia, Assad could be around for a long time; the fighting will go on, and the refugees will continue to flee to Europe. One reason talks have not succeeded is that all sides in the conflict fancied their chances of outright victory. Usually, negotiations succeed when one side is winning, and the losers are given the opportunity to declare victory and go home.
Washington can see that if it opposes Moscow to placate its Turkish and Saudi allies, this devastating conflict could last for years. Only if one side or the other loses can hostilities end. But the line along which the bombing campaign has been divided would indicate an unspoken partition of Syria, with Assad’s forces retaining the Western part running south from Aleppo along the Mediterranean coast. Eastern Syria, consisting mostly of desert, would be fought over by IS and other Islamist groups. The north of Syria is already in Kurdish hands.
Of course, such an arrangement — if and when formalised — would be resisted tooth and nail by Turkey and Saudi Arabia because it would leave the hated Bashar al-Assad in power. For Turkey, the presence of a quasi-Kurdish state on its border with Syria is unthinkable as it would encourage Turkish Kurds to seek independence, specially as the Iraqi Kurds have already carved out their own autonomous region. For the Saudis, the presence of an Alawite regime — albeit in a truncated Syria — would spell a defeat in its campaign to reduce Iranian influence in the region.
The Russians would see this redrawing of borders as a victory as they would be able to retain the naval base at Tartus, as well see a client hang on to power. It would gain respect in a part of the world where strength and the ability to keep one’s word matters greatly. And having seen the consequences of toppling dictators in Libya and Iraq, Moscow would wish to avoid an even more chaotic scenario than the one we have now in Syria.
And those wishing to see Bashar Al-Assad give up and walk away forget what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghaddafi when they were toppled. Syrian minorities continue supporting Assad because he protects them, and if he goes, they fear a bloodbath. After all, they saw what happened to Christians and Yazidis at the hands of Muslim extremists after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
So many motives, so many players: no wonder there’s still no solution in sight, and the carnage continues. And as the two bomb attacks on Turkish forces recently showed, the conflict has the potential to spread and suck other regional powers into its furnace. Already Turkey has threatened retaliation against Syrian Kurds, holding them responsible for the Ankara bombing, a charge they have denied. The Saudis have threatened to send troops to Syria, something most observers dismiss as hot air.
Unless Russia and America can sit down and work out a realistic, durable solution, the Syrian blood will continue to flow.
Twitter: @irfan_husain
Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2016
COMPLAINING is easy; finding solutions is hard. Take world hunger for example: yes, we know that at this point in time, close to 800 million people are chronically malnourished.
We know that one out of nine people on this planet go to bed hungry each night. We know that, with the world’s population likely to hit the nine billion mark by 2050, it’s only going to get worse, causing social and political upheaval that may make Syria look like a picnic and Donald Trump reasonable and moderate.
We know this because we have defined and debated the problem umpteen times, but what do you hear when you ask for a solution? Crickets, that’s what. Actual, chitinous, completely non-metaphorical, protein packed crunchy crickets, the eating of which may actually end (or curtail) world hunger. Oh, and one also hears of mealworms meals, grilled grasshoppers and the occasional skewered scorpion.
One out of nine people go to bed hungry. What’s the solution?
Here’s the math: 100 grams of crickets contain 121 calories, 5.5 grams of fat and 18.9 grams of protein while 100 grams of beef contains 298 calories, 21.2 grams of fat and 23.5 grams of protein. Caterpillars do even better, providing more protein and iron as the same quantity of minced beef. Then consider that, according to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, it takes 2,900 gallons of water, 11 kilograms of feed and 410 square metres of land to produce half a kilo of beef.
In contrast, it takes only a gallon of water, 1 kg of feed and about 40 square metres of land to produce a pound of crickets. Other insects, like mealworms that subsist on wheat waste chaff, are even more low maintenance. No wonder then that in 2013 the FAO released a 200-page report on the benefits of entomophagy, the eating of insects, and called for restaurants, chefs and food writers to promote it.
It’s no millennial fad; Roman author Pliny wrote that the ancient Romans enjoyed eating beetle larvae and Aristotle wrote with great enthusiasm on the perfect time to harvest cicadas. The Aztec emperor Montezuma breakfasted on fly eggs, while the Paiute Indians harvested crickets and pupae the way other native North American tribes would hunt bison.
Locusts have always been a dietary (if seasonal) staple in many lands, including Sindh, until fairly recently and it is estimated that two billion people actively eat insects, not counting all those who didn’t notice the fly in their soup.
Commercial cricket farms have already been set up, and enterprising individuals and companies have launched ranges of edible bugs all wrapped up in pretty packaging. There’s Green Kow’s salty and sweet mealworm spread, there’s Thailandunique’s mixed edible insects bag (yours for the low price of $3.99), a whole range of powdered bugs, and of course, cricket-based protein shakes for bodybuilders.
In short, what we thought of as pests may prove a panacea. Which begs the question: what other simple solutions have we missed out on?
While you chew on that, let’s talk about Dr Claire Guest. Six years ago one of her pet dogs, a docile Labrador named Daisy, started behaving strangely by repeatedly nudging Dr Guest and lunging at her chest. Finding a tender area where the dog had pawed her, she went to the doctor and found a cancer hidden deep in the breast tissue. For Dr Guest, who had already published research claiming that it was possible to train dogs to detect cancer, it was proof positive.
In 2004, Japanese research proved that dogs can detect colorectal cancer from breath samples, and eight years later the European respiratory journal did the same for lung cancer. Just last year, Britain’s NHS approved the use of dogs in cancer-sniffing trials, and one of those dogs is Daisy, who has since gone on to detect over 500 cases of cancer after saving her owner’s life.
As celebrated as the sense of smells that dogs possess is, rats score even higher in the sniff test. Thus, a Belgian nonprofit has successfully used trained giant Gambian rats to detect landmines in Angola, Mozambique and Cambodia. In Cambodia alone there are still four to six million mines buried under the soil, which continue to maim and kill.
Using its sense of smell to detect TNT, a mine-detecting rat can clear an area of 200 square metres in 35 minutes. On the other hand, a standard metal-detecting deminer can take up to three days to clear the same area. Buoyed by this success, the rats’ super-powered noses are now being used to double-check tuberculosis samples in 21 medical centres in the Tanzanian capital of Dar-es-Salaam. Meanwhile, over in Croatia they’re experimenting with using bees as landmine detectors.
The lesson to be drawn from these seemingly unconnected stories is that the simplest and most effective solutions do not have to be technology-intensive ones requiring massive funding and foreign consultants. Sometimes, the answers to our problems are right under our noses, or being scraped off the bottoms of our shoes.
The writer is a journalist.
Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro
Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2016
 Trend indicator values of 10 largest arms importers globally.
BEIJING: Pakistan was the tenth largest arms importer in the world in 2015, down one spot from number nine the previous year, a military think tank database reveals, while Saudi Arabia was the leading arms importer in the world, followed closely by India.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database shows India was the top arms importer in 2014.
 Trend indicator values of imports of arms in Pakistan 2014 and 2015 in millions of dollars at constant prices.
Pakistan spent $735 million on arms imports in 2015. In comparison, India imported arms worth $3,078m.
Read: India should not be concerned over F-16 sale to Pakistan, says Pentagon
The largest exporter of arms to Pakistan in 2015 was China, with arms transfers worth $565 million, followed by the United States (US) with $66m in arms transfers.
Pakistan is also China's largest buyer for arms, accounting for 35 per cent of total arms sales in the country, followed by Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Close military ties between Pakistan and China have sometimes stoked tensions with India, which is seeking to boost its own homegrown weapons industry and has long objected to other countries forging defence deals with Pakistan.
 Trend indicator values of imports of arms in India 2014 and 2015 in millions of dollars at constant prices.
Earlier this month, India raised concerns regarding the sale of eight F-16 fighter jets from the US to Pakistan, saying, "We disagree with their rationale that such arms transfers help to combat terrorism".
The US rejected India's concerns, claiming the transfer was made in the interest of regional stability and counter-terrorism efforts.
The largest exporter of arms to India is Russia with arms transfers worth $1,964m, followed by Israel and the United States (US) with $316m and $302m in transfers respectively.
Know more: 'Disappointed' India summons US ambassador over sale of F-16s to Pakistan
Chinese arms exports surge
A SIPRI report on global arms transfers shows China has almost doubled its weapons exports in the past five years as the world's third-largest weapons exporter poured capital into developing an advanced arms manufacturing industry.
Chinese exports of major arms, which excludes most light weaponry, grew by 88pc in 2011-2015 compared to the earlier five-year timeframe, SIPRI said.
The country still accounted for only 5.9pc of global arms exports from 2011-2015, well behind the US and Russia, by far the world's two largest arms exporters. The US exported $10,484m in arms in 2015, while Russia exported $5,483m during the same time period.
The US and Russia saw weapons exports grow by 27pc and 28pc respectively, while exports of major arms by France and Germany, the fourth and fifth largest weapons exporters, fell over the same period.
"The Chinese until ten years ago were only able to offer low-tech equipment. That has changed," said Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. "The equipment that they produce is much more highly advanced than ten years ago, and attracts interest from some of the bigger markets."
China has invested billions developing its homegrown weapons industry to support its growing maritime ambitions in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and also with an eye toward foreign markets for its comparatively low cost technology.
Its total military budget in 2015 was 886.9 billion yuan ($141.45 billion), up 10pc from a year earlier.
In 2011 to 2015, China's arms imports fell 25pc compared with the previous five year period, signalling a growing confidence in the country's homegrown weaponry despite key areas of weakness, the report said.
China still needs to import weapons including large transport aircraft, helicopters as well as engines for aircraft, vehicles and ships, according to the report.
China, the world's second largest economy, signed deals in 2015 to buy air defence systems and two dozen combat jets from Russia, its largest arms supplier.
Nothing intrigues me more than the power of our security establishment. National interest is shorthand for the interests of an institution that reigns supreme. Let us consider the recent news that has gone largely unnoticed or has been deliberately ignored. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign received a jolt when the State Department confirmed she had used her personal server to send some top secret emails.
Our present envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi apparently acted as an informal messenger between the US administration and former army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani, going by the contents of an email to secretary Clinton from Vali Nasr, then a senior adviser. However, the entire message that Ms Lodhi shared with Mr Nasr was edited out of the text. It was sent three days after Raymond Davis’s arrest in Lahore on Jan 17, 2011, on charges of killing two men. The incident had caused a serious rift in US-Pakistan ties.
While the US authorities have so far kept the Pakistani general’s message secret, may we in Pakistan ask our military authorities and the Foreign Office what information or message was conveyed by the chief through non-diplomatic and informal channels days after the Raymond Davis incident in Lahore? Our political and diplomatic authorities had cried themselves hoarse over the American’s non-diplomatic status and a murder case was registered by Lahore Police. What happened after some time was a compromise surreptitiously achieved before a court of law invoking provisions of ‘diyat’ or compensation money and the killer was whisked away by our spooks to a plane waiting to take him back to the US.
No one had the courage to ask the military elite some tough questions.
It was the same army chief during whose tenure US Navy SEALS conducted a raid in May 2011 in Abbottabad — near a military academy and garrison stationed nearby — and reportedly found and killed Osama bin Laden. After that, the civilian political authorities allegedly used informal means through a serving ambassador in Washington to send a message across to the US military chief to use his influence to persuade his Pakistani counterpart and ‘buddy’ not to overthrow the inept political leadership in the wake of the resultant public outcry.
If a military chief resorts to informal diplomacy through a former diplomat, it is kosher; if the political leadership tries to convey a message through informal sources, the establishment cries ‘foul’.
Remember Memogate? Let us briefly recapitulate. An op-ed in the Financial Times on Oct 10, 2011 created a furore in Pakistan. Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistani ancestry, wrote a damning indictment of the ISI, stating that after the raid, “a senior Pakistani diplomat telephoned me with an urgent request”. He wrote: “Asif Ali Zardari … needed to communicate a message to White House national security officials that would bypass Pakistan’s military and intelligence channels”. He said that “the president feared a military takeover was imminent. He needed an American fist on his army chief’s desk to end any misguided notions of a coup….”
The memorandum was reportedly delivered to Adm Mike Mullen on May 10, 2011 requesting his “direct intervention in conveying a strong, urgent and direct message to Gen Kayani that delivers Washington’s demand for him and Gen Pasha to end their brinkmanship aimed at bringing down the civilian apparatus — that this is a 1971 moment in Pakistan’s history”.
This was explosive stuff. Who in his right mind would offer such terms of abject surrender to the US interests and that too in writing? What was the Zardari-Haqqani duo up to? Could a Pakistani ambassador ever write such a petition? Was he representing Islamabad or Washington? Ambassador Haqqani was recalled from Washington.
The real target of petitions moved before the Supreme Court by Mian Nawaz Sharif and others became apparent. A full bench conducted a hearing on Dec 1, 2011. Nawaz Sharif himself appeared in court and spoke. The registrar called me during the proceedings to say the court was considering my name as independent investigator in the memo case. I told him I first wanted to see the court order and the terms of reference.
Meanwhile, the order was announced the same day. Why this haste? Why no notice to the state and respondents before appointing a commission? I thought I would be called to court at the next hearing and my consent would be sought. Instead, I received a court order on Dec 2 seeking my consent “with respect to performing national duty as head of the commission”.
What was it all about? Was it a ‘national duty’ that I was being called upon to perform or act as a hatchet man on behalf of the security establishment who were gunning for Zardari and his henchman in Washington? What was Nawaz Sharif doing in court looking like an advocate? What happened to the Charter of Democracy? Was he being used by the establishment? Why was I being dragged into political intrigue or a case in which I might have questioned the motives of the clandestine meetings between the former ISI chief and a man with alleged links to Washington? Memogate smacked of intrigue. I responded immediately and expressed my inability to undertake the assignment as head of the memo commission.
Memogate was no Watergate. Like Nixon, Zardari did not have to resign. It got one scalp — that of Hussain Haqqani, who was alleged to have had the memo written and conveyed to Mike Mullen. No heads rolled after the OBL raid; no one had the courage to ask the military elite some tough questions.
The establishment has acquired the art of turning its strategic follies to triumphs. It is this deep state that has curtailed and trimmed democracy, ensuring the country stays rigged in favour of a small but self-aggrandising elite. And until that changes, democracy in Pakistan will remain imperiled.
The writer is former DG, FIA.
Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2016
PRIME MINISTER Nawaz Sharif has declared developing Pakistan’s external economy a national priority. He should be applauded for focusing on tackling a major weakness. However, Pakistan’s interest in trade is not new, and is a case study in lost opportunities.
Pakistan was less than a year old when in 1948 it became a founding member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with just 22 other countries. Aside from influencing global policy when the foundations of the modern global economy were being built, Pakistan enjoyed access to the most important developed economies — the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada, for example. Privileged access to these markets today is highly competitive.
When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) replaced GATT in 1995, Pakistan was again a founding member. Like GATT, the WTO then was still a relatively exclusive club with 76 members. China only joined the WTO in 2001, a decision that transformed China and the global economy. Today, the WTO has 163 members and supplementing it are dozens of bilateral or regional arrangements. Aside from the WTO, Pakistan is a member of one of the least successful and most politically toxic groups, the South Asia Free Trade Agreement, and has a smattering of other bilateral agreements that add little export value.
Pakistan has remained, for half a century, a ‘parchoon ki dukaan’.
Pakistan’s position is even more dire given that over the decades, the global economy has become highly connected and interdependent with international merchandise trade rising to $19 trillion in 2014 from $5.168tr when the WTO was created. Irrespective of the current slowdown, the global economy will continue to become more interconnected.
So, how has this particular founding member of GATT and the WTO fared from this international architecture it helped create? Not so well.
Pakistan’s share of this $19tr worth of global merchandise exports is a tiny 0.13pc and its share of global imports is 0.25pc, according to WTO data. More worryingly, exports remain concentrated in sectors where competition is increasing — textiles — and a majority of imports are either energy-related or simply for domestic consumption. Latest official data from July 2015 to January 2016 show exports fell 14.4pc to just $12.1 billion. Meanwhile, a new three-year trade policy is already late.
Know more: Cloud looms over textile exports
Trade policy is a political issue worldwide — just mention rice to the Japanese — and is subject to exchange rate, red tape and other factors. There’s a more fundamental problem: Pakistan is unconnected to all the major — and valuable — export value chains such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, auto, construction and building materials and consumer goods, for example.
In the global marketplace, Pakistan has remained, for half a century, a parchoon ki dukaan where customers can buy some rice, new underwear, fresh bedsheets and maybe a nice football. No surprise then that Pakistan’s entire annual exports of about $25bn is about half of China Telecom’s annual revenue. To add perspective, China Telecom is only the 16th largest Chinese company by revenue.
Where Pakistan currently sits — somewhere inconsequential — it has no other option but to look up. While working on improving the enablers — safety in the country, weak revenue collection, poor education — Pakistan can consider framing developing the external economy in three “plays.”
The China play: Pakistan does have a competitive advantage, thanks to its long-standing close relationship with the world’s second-largest economy, most recently solemnised by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
For CPEC to be a success — for Pakistan — its explicit goals must include:
— A substantial increase in Pakistan’s domestic manufacturing capabilities, and minimising the hollowing out that has been experienced when trade ties with China deepened.
— New manufacturing capability must include an export element and linking Pakistan to not just the Chinese but also the China-linked global supply chains. Non-Chinese companies must be included in industrial infrastructure that is being developed with Chinese loans.
CPEC would be another missed opportunity if all it does is turn Pakistan into a highly barricaded truck ka adda.
The MNC play: Along with capitalising the China linkage, Pakistan has some 200 global companies already operating in Pakistan. Many have served the domestic market for decades and also benefited from tax and other incentives — and paid taxes.
Most importantly, their supply chains are global – if not regional — and highly sophisticated, focused on delivering quality goods and services. Other countries have taken advantage of that connectivity by plugging into these supply chains. Turkey, for one, used the Customs Agreement with Europe to become a major exporter of vehicles and auto parts. Recently, Toyota said it will make hybrid cars in Turkey for export to 58 markets.
Beyond just seeking feedback from MNCs — feedback that at times is simply ignored — the government should incentivise the MNCs to export from Pakistan. Every time Mr Sharif travels abroad, he should engage the CEOs of MNCs operating in Pakistan and seek solutions to boost the external economy.
The private equity play: While the supply chain issues can be addressed, how can Pakistan upgrade manufacturing to make things people overseas would buy?
Private equity is one business model that can help resolve this issue. Private equity works because their financial returns and their ability to raise funding — and the bonuses of their managers — are directly aligned to how quickly the companies they acquire improve and increase sales of product and services.
In China, when state-owned companies were being sold or shut down, many private equity players purchased small state-owned companies, kept existing staff and turned these companies into medium-sized companies that became suppliers to larger companies. Once out of the government’s control and in a commercial environment, many of these companies flourished. In Turkey, private equity helped consolidate sectors too fragmented to be efficient by buying controlling stakes and giving the founder-owners good financial returns once the companies were subsequently sold or listed on the stock market.
China, MNCs and private equity are not the only options to boost exports. But Pakistan doesn’t have the luxury of time to sit back and continue to watch the world pass it by.
The writer is founder & MD of a Singapore-based investment and country assessment advisory company.
Hasan.Jafri@hjadvisory.com
Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2016
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