Significantly, both the Assad regime and the ‘moderate’ opposition have also indicated support for the initiative, which is scheduled to go into effect this weekend. 

Of course, what fuels scepticism about the accord is the fact that numerous attempts to bring the Syrian conflict to a negotiated settlement have failed up until now. If the ceasefire succeeds, it can lead to much-needed humanitarian assistance reaching civilians trapped in war zones. 

It may also act as a confidence-building measure between Bashar al-Assad’s government and his opponents — till now both sides have shown little faith in each other. 

But if the ceasefire falls through, we may well see the Syrian civil war expand into a wider regional conflict, especially if Turkish and Saudi plans for a ground invasion materialise. That is why it is incumbent upon all internal and external players to support the peace deal.

It goes without saying that the major spoilers in this deal will be the militant Islamic State group, Al Nusra and other extremist concerns which, for obvious reasons, have not been included in the peace deal. 

It is a fact that some of these militant groups have had alliances with Mr Assad’s ‘secular’ opponents, and will not be very pleased at attempts to negotiate a settlement. 

Along with the Syrian regime and the country’s non-militant opposition, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran will have to play major roles in making the ceasefire work and convincing their allies inside the country to avoid violations of the truce.

This may well be the last chance to resolve the Syrian imbroglio before it transforms into something unmanageable involving powers in the region and beyond, while giving IS and other militant groups even more room to operate.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2016

SO what’s your racket these days? In case you haven’t noticed, some sort of a boom is under way in the country, and if you don’t have a place at the table, then you’re the sucker. Streets in my city are lined with new construction projects, tall buildings with cranes towering next to them, that speak of a boom in construction. Word has it money is flowing from Dubai real estate into Pakistan, and property prices are spiralling. The ads in the papers announce a new residential project every other week.

Meanwhile announcements roll out endlessly of a new Chinese project as part of the CPEC bouquet. A new road just inaugurated, a new power project just got financial close, a new industrial park just approved. 

It’s all brick and mortar these days. The Musharraf growth boom was about excess liquidity spilling into property and stocks, but also greasing the wheels of industry. It was accompanied by changing patterns of consumption — never have I seen so many foreign franchises appear so suddenly into our midst as in those years.

But the Nawaz Sharif economy, or perhaps we should call it the Ishaq Dar economy, is far simpler. It’s driven almost entirely through government spending on large projects and an overvalued exchange rate. 

The effect is a lot of dust and smoke, but the insides don’t look very nice. It almost appears as if there are no priorities for government beyond coal-fired power plants, roads and lots of photo ops with Chinese investors. 

Small, scalable schemes are either viewed through the lens of patronage, or bulldozed aside.

Consider, for instance, the dismal state of public health or education. It’s not even about the resources any longer. Any country that is spending less than a percentage point of its GDP on its public health infrastructure is living on borrowed time, and no amount of mega projects is going to change that. Education continues to sink deeper into its own quagmire, with the troubling new phenomenon of faculty members getting picked up by counterterrorism departments, or graduates from reputable universities becoming involved in heinous acts after finding inspiration from two-bit ideologues. Clearly there is something wrong with a curriculum that leaves young minds vulnerable to the lure of militant ideologies.

Even in the more bread-and-butter industries that are getting a lot of attention these days, like power, the focus remains on 19th-century technologies like coal-fired power plants. Other countries, with Bangladesh being a good example, have run very successful programmes using microfinance to help spread solar technology to households that are not on the grid. Going by the figures of the programme director there, almost 2,000 homes in Bangladesh go solar every day. Think about that for a moment.

They’re aiming to bring electricity to every household in the country by 2021, and thus far 10pc of that goal has been reached with more than 3.5 million households already on solar.

The idea is to think small and scale up, not the other way round. Bangladesh’s solar revolution is driven by a small 250W panel capable of running a couple of bulbs and a cell phone charger. The revolution begins in the margins, places where the national grid never reached, and starts by powering the homes of people who have been burning kerosene oil to light their homes for generations. It is powered by subsidised financing provided through a state-run programme, with help from the World Bank. 

This is the sort of thinking that is sorely needed in Pakistan, in all areas ranging from health and education to power and transport. Small, scalable projects that aim to provide a crucial service or product to those segments who could never have dreamed of it, and then scaling it up. 

But there is no room for this sort of thinking in Pakistan. Small, scalable schemes are either viewed through the lens of patronage, or bulldozed aside to make way for high-visibility projects alone. A billion and a half dollars would be enough to run a scheme of this sort to help spread solar technology to the outermost reaches of our power grid, those people whom the grid will either never reach. If it does, the electricity supply will be so intermittent and expensive as to be of little use for them. That would be the size of one mega project today. But because its benefits will take time to become visible and ripple through the rest of the economy, and we are in a terrible rush to show immediate results, even if they’re not of the kind that the country really needs, such thinking never finds traction in our policy environment.

The result is an economy geared almost exclusively to serve the needs of the rich. Steadily every aspect of our economy is swivelling around to serve elite needs alone.

The electricity in our system is being steadily diverted to elite neighbourhoods, public-sector health and education institutions rot and decay while elite schools and plush hospitals multiply. Land is eaten up to provide the housing needs of elites, gobbling up large chunks of prime agricultural land, or areas dedicated for the building of water reservoirs to provide the long-term drinking water requirements of cities like Rawalpindi are turned into elite housing colonies. Clean water has already become a luxury for many people in this country, as has a steady intake of nutrition, while bottled water companies grow and fancy restaurants sprout like mushrooms.

There is a very sad quality to the nature of the economic activity one sees with the naked eye these days. The same cranes lifting their cargo of concrete and steel to towering buildings of shiny glass are the perfect metaphor for the steely indifference of our policy machinery to the needs of the people that it should be serving. 

The writer is a member of staff.

khurram.husain@gmail.com

Twitter: @khurramhusain

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2016

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that Syria could be partitioned under a so-called “plan B”, if the current fighting continued much longer.

“It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer,” he told the US Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday. “There are certainly plan B options being considered.”

Plan A is an agreement the United States and Russia announced on Monday to end the fighting in Syria.

Under the plan, the ceasefire begins on Saturday and would extend to Syrian government forces and rebels but it excludes the Islamic State, Nusra Front, and other groups designated “terrorist” by the UN Security Council.

Secretary Kerry said that the White House had a backup plan in case the arrangement with Russia did not work and noted that the media was already calling it “Plan B”.

The committee’s chairman, Senator Bob Corker, however, reminded Mr Kerry that Russia and Iran, who are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would not accept this plan.

“I don’t think they think Plan B is realistic, and that makes it very difficult for you and your efforts,” the senator said. “I think you have a very tough hand of cards that you’re dealing with.”

Secretary Kerry did not specify the plan B and clarified that he was not advocating Syria’s partition as a solution.

But he added that it would be wrong to assume that President Barack Obama would not consider further action if plan A failed.

The United States, he said, would continue to support rebel efforts to overthrow President Assad if Russia abandons its obligation under the truce of implementing the ceasefire.

“This can get a lot uglier,” Secretary Kerry warned. “Even if Russia took Aleppo … holding territory has always been difficult,” he said. “Russia has to be sitting there evaluating that.”

The top US diplomat said that the United States, Russia, Iran and others “all … want a united Syria, … a non-sectarian, even secular Syria”. But this was not possible as long as President Assad was in power, he added.

“We believe deeply, and we have argued this to the Russians and to the Iranians and others, that … even if someone did strike an unholy alliance and suggested that Assad could be part of that future, the war will not stop,” he said. “If you want peace, by definition, we believe it has to be without Assad.”

Mr Kerry said that the proposed change in Syria must come within months “because there’s no way that people will be patient enough” to wait for years.

“If there’s no progress, if nothing happens, it could be very hard to keep people at the table. I have no illusions about that,” he warned.

Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked him if the US and Russia had reached any understanding for ‘impunity or actions’ against President Assad.

“No, there’s been no discussion of it, no determination of it,” Secretary Kerry replied. “Using gas against your own people is a war crime, starvation as a tool of war is a war crime. So these are pretty clear things.”

Secretary Kerry said he would meet Russia and other world powers in Geneva in the next few days to discuss the modalities of the ceasefire.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2016