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Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry Published June 11, 2022
FOR decades, the territories comprising Gilgit-Baltistan have remained under the administrative control of the Pakistan government. Its political destiny has been linked to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Pending a final settlement of the dispute, successive Pakistani governments have focused on granting maximum possible administrative autonomy to GB, whereas the people of GB have consistently expressed their desire to join Pakistan as a regular province.
Three developments in recent years kindled [روشن کی] a ray of hope for the people of GB. First, the GB committee set up by prime minister Nawaz Sharif recommended in March 2017 that GB be accorded a status akin to a Pakistani province. The provincial status was to be provisional so that Pakistan’s principled position on the Kashmir dispute was not undermined[کمزور ہو].
Second, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in its judgement of January 2019, ordered conferral [ادائیگی] of constitutional status and rights to GB residents at par with other citizens of Pakistan.
Third, the government of prime minister Imran Khan announced in 2020 its decision to grant provisional provincial status to GB. The people of GB were excited at the prospect of finally fulfilling their aspirations of joining Pakistan as a province of the country. However, despite the best of intentions, the status quo could not be broken.
We shouldn’t adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to GB.
The Kashmir dispute is an unfinished agenda of the partition of British India. As per the provisions of the Independence Act, the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir should have been a part of Pakistan. However, India occupied the state pursuant [پیروی کرتے ہوئے] to a controversial instrument of accession [ الحاق کی دستاویز]. Pakistan does not regard that accession to be legal and insists that the matter should have been referred to the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide if they wished to join Pakistan or India.
The second legal basis for Pakistan’s stance [موٴقف] is that under the UNSC resolutions, there should be a plebiscite [رائے دہی] administered under UN auspices [زیر سرپرستی] to ascertain the wish of the Kashmiris. Regrettably, India has refused to accord the people of occupied Kashmir their inalienable right to self-determination provided for in the UNSC resolutions.
Meanwhile, the constitutional status of GB as a part of Pakistan has remained in limbo[تعطل کا شکار رہنا]. The prospects of India implementing the UNSC resolutions are slim because it has leveraged its size, military muscle, and economic weight to resist pressures from the international community to grant Kashmiris the right to self-determine their destiny. The emboldened Indian leadership has gone a step further and embarked on [بیڑہ اٹھایا] demographic and electoral engineering to modify the very identity of Kashmir. Under these circumstances, it is worth pondering [قابلِ غور]whether the status of GB should remain a victim of India’s intransigence [ہٹ دھرمی] and unwillingness to follow international law.
Those arguing for integrating GB with Pakistan contend that the suzerainty [کسی ملک کی دوسرے ملک پر بالا دستی] of the maharaja of Kashmir over the territories of GB was at best notional. Further, the people of these territories had never accepted Dogra rule, and in 1947, they wasted no time in pronouncing their verdict to join Pakistan. The then Gilgit Agency, for instance, formally acceded [الحاق کیا] to Pakistan in November 1947, and the government of Pakistan even appointed a political agent to take over in Gilgit.
Yet, it can be argued that integrating GB could have implications for Pakistan’s legal position on the Kashmir dispute. So, it would be prudent [دانشمندانہ] to keep the integration of GB with Pakistan provisional and subject to a final settlement of the dispute. The moot point here is that the people of GB have been living practically as Pakistanis for seven decades and justifiably expect their rights as citizens of Pakistan formally recognised. Further, to avert any misunderstanding, Pakistan would need to assure the Kashmiri leadership on both sides of the LoC that granting full rights of citizenship to the people of GB is an interim measure and without prejudice [تعصب]to the final settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
What we cannot and should not do is to adopt a ‘wait and see approach’. In the evolving regional geopolitics, GB not only provides the vital geographical link to China but is also central to the implementation of CPEC. Formal integration of GB into Pakistan will not only give full constitutional protection to CPEC-related investments in GB but also attract other international investments to GB, especially in the hydropower sector. Lest we forget, there are forces at play to disrupt China’s link with Pakistan through GB. It is, therefore, a strategic imperative that GB be integrated with Pakistan as a provisional province without further delay and its people be recognised as citizens of Pakistan with full rights admissible under the Constitution of Pakistan.
The writer, a former foreign secretary, is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad and the author of Diplomatic Footprints.
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2022
Pervez Hoodbhoy Published June 11, 2022
AFTER the PTI-army ‘same-page’ relationship turned into a raging and ugly divorce, one expected some reluctance from Shahbaz Sharif’s PML-N government in contracting yet another fishy [مشتبہ مشکوک] civil-military cohabitation [ایک ساتھ رہنا] arrangement. Instead, last week the prime minister upped the military’s role in national affairs by another notch [اگلے درجے پر]. Henceforth all potential candidates for government posts, including civil service officers awaiting promotions, must have their credentials check-marked by the ISI. To be screened are Supreme Court judges, top-level civil servants, university professors, and many others.
Every intelligence agency — CIA, KGB, RAW, and Mossad included — provides intelligence on foreign operations, does counterintelligence operations, identifies sleeper cells, etc. Everywhere there is a temptation to use them against domestic opponents by casting them as anti-state. Although robust[مضبوط] political systems can resist this, Pakistan’s has certainly not. The government’s new directive formalising the role of a military intelligence agency opens a can of worms.
Nabbing[دھر لینا] a mischievous Kulbhushan Jadhav from here or there is relatively easy — an Israeli-made Pegasus system can do wonders. But evaluating the patriotism of those who were born and live within Pakistan — and consider themselves loyal but free citizens — is complicated.
Certainly no intelligence agency is empowered to invent its own definition of patriotism. Instead it must follow the Constitution as interpreted by parliament and judiciary. But in practice, one question leads to the next.
Is an ‘anti-Pakistan element’ someone acting against the people of Pakistan or, instead, someone opposed to a particular state policy? The visible usurpation [کسی اور کی چیز پر قبضہ یا ناجائز استعمال]of resources by the country’s ultra-rich and ultra-powerful elite has blurred the boundaries separating national interests from personal or organisational interests. That thieves run Pakistan is now a thoroughly mundane [عام], boring, universal accusation. Nevertheless, journalists or insiders exposing the theft of public resources are branded unpatriotic instead of being celebrated as exemplary.
Still more problematic is the identification of individuals charged with being ‘anti-Pakistani’ because they oppose certain postures of the state. Pakistan’s political parties regularly accuse each other of being traitorous and puppets of foreign masters. On matters of religiously inspired militancy we have internal splits within the military, judiciary, and between politicians. How is some poor mid-level intelligence officer, whether uniformed or civilian, to know what is patriotic and what is not? This lies way above his pay grade.
Some examples show just how horribly complicated it can get:
Example: In a string of speeches, ex-PM Imran Khan claims the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will shatter into three pieces unless the military establishment — which catapulted [زور لگا کر داخل کرنا] him into power — reverses its new-found neutrality and places him back on top. He hints the army’s rank and file should disobey its top leadership and has asked families of military personnel to join his ‘million-man’ rallies. Some call it sedition[غداری پر اکسانا]. Should Khan — together with his minions [غلام] and toadies[خوشامدی ٹولہ] — be given a clean chit? Or, instead, declared traitor?
Example: It was recommended in December 2019 through court papers submitted by the UK’s National Crime Agency that Shahbaz Sharif be investigated for money-laundering, fraud and corrupt practices. Three years later, NCA decided not to prosecute. This made PML-N crow victory. But PTI says that withdrawal of the case does not constitute exoneration[بریّت]. It plausibly [بظاہر] points to other parts of Mr Sharif’s considerable wealth outside Pakistan. Until those allegations have been cleared, should the current prime-minister be certified as a patriot?
Example: The security establishment is tasked to safeguard the life and property of Pakistanis but some insiders are allied with terrorist groups. The case of Ehsanullah Ehsan — who oversaw the horrific slaughter of hundreds of civilians and soldiers — is noteworthy. Have our intelligence agencies successfully ferreted out [ڈھونڈ نکالنا] those from within who allowed this captured terrorist to escape to Turkey from a top security prison facility? Do the agencies have the capacity to police themselves? Or prove that only true patriots fill their ranks?
Read: Screening civil servants
Example: The Baloch belong to a multi-ethnic state but have long claimed mistreatment by a Punjab-dominated centre. This led to four insurgencies in which thousands died. Some Baloch resentment is based on facts, the rest is imagined. As for PTM, the tribals of Fata who asked for humane treatment and protested discrimination were deemed traitors and stomped upon[بھاری قدموں تلے روند ڈالے گئے]. In ascertaining the patriotism of Pakistan’s “peripheral” nationalities [اضافی قومیتیں], is it wise to use an intelligence agency that is widely perceived as being staffed mostly by Punjabis? Will this help or hinder the creation of a Pakistani national identity?
Seventy-five years from Pakistan’s creation, except for within Punjab, there is a widespread feeling that Pakistanis have not gelled together as a nation. That thousands have gone missing is a stain on the national conscience. While Imran Khan’s antics are generating unprecedented polarisation, fault lines are everywhere — religious, ethnic, and political. As in the TLP’s march on the capital, extreme violence has been normalised.
In contrast, although Bangladeshi groupings are far from friendly with each other, they are much less violent. There, a national consensus exists on larger goals. Bangladesh could therefore concentrate on manufacturing, trade, and greater opportunities for its citizens. As thick clouds of doom and gloom envelop Pakistan, its former ‘colony’ exudes [کھل کر راہ دینا] a sense of positivity and optimism about its future.
This is so because Bangladesh is not a security-obsessed state. It openly prefers a strong country over a strong army. People there don’t have their patriotism challenged at every corner by security agencies. After some hiccups during the first four to five years, less military interference in daily affairs translated into greater national cohesiveness and a greater sense of well-being for its citizens.
There are important lessons here for Pakistan. We cannot afford to keep the bulk of our national energies focused on checkmating India and liberating Kashmir. This has allowed the security state to dominate our lives. Human development and economic growth have been pushed into the margins.
The ISI is a much vaunted [جسکی بہت زیادہ تعریف کی گئی] and efficient organization. However, it is not trained or equipped to help Pakistan attain prosperity and international competiveness. To burden it with new tasks is unfair and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif should undo his orders. The ballot box — with votes cast responsibly and counted fairly — remains the best bet for Pakistan’s future.
The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2022
(Does our constitution really safeguard the people's interests?)
Adeel Wahid Published June 11, 2022
THE preamble of our Constitution contains the words: “Now, therefore, we the people of Pakistan … Do hereby … adopt, enact and give to ourselves, this Constitution”. In the Federalist No. 84, Alexander Hamilton, had peddled these vital words, giving them a form, they now take in the US Constitution: “WE THE PEOPLE … to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution”.
The architects of the US constitution had enunciated a potent idea — an idea that has travelled not only distance but also time. The constitution and every institution that the constitution envisions and creates are subservient to ‘We the People’.
Despite all their other glaring flaws, particularly the unforgivable sanctioning of slavery as an institution, the founding fathers of the US constitution got at least one thing absolutely right. Their disdain for the British monarchy and the entire concept of centralised power, convinced an entire generation to imagine a form of government, where ‘We the People’, as a theoretical concept, was to take centre stage.
Read: An empowered public
Radically for those times, ratification of the US constitution involved a much larger participation from the people, even when slaves, women and most of the non-propertied men were not initially part of the compact. It took subsequent amendments for “We the People’ of the US to rectify these flagrant deficiencies.
In Pakistan, the concept of ‘We the People’ has not really taken root, that it is we who gave ourselves the Constitution, and everything that comes from it. This includes the central legislature, the provincial legislatures, the courts, the executive, the armed forces, and the entire governmental machinery, put in place through legal instrumentalities, all tracing their genesis, or at least, legitimacy to the Constitution. These creations of the Constitution have come into being because ‘We the People’ gave them to ourselves, and they can only continue to exist as long as we want them to exist.
This conceptual clarity is required primarily to safeguard ourselves from the way these creations of the Constitution sometimes end up functioning. Our society operates as if ‘We the People’ are mandated to serve these institutions along with the fallible and fragile mortals occupying positions of power within these institutions. Put in more reductionist terms, our Constitution seems to have given birth to Frankensteins, untethered and unmoored by any real purview of ‘We the People’.
It is ‘we’ who gave ourselves the Constitution, and everything that comes from it.
Through this reversal of roles comes another dangerous notion, that our representatives, that we put in the assemblies to pursue our ends and objectives, are, in fact, our ‘leaders’, to be followed, venerated and idolised. These leaders are to lead ‘We the People’ to some nebulous, far-off destination, where things are a lot better, and all that is required is for us to be transported there. These simplistic notions, in turn, open up space for demagogues, mavericks, radicals and dictators, selling cheap dreams, and cheaper governance.
And more fatally, these ideas keep ‘We the People’ from devising mechanisms to protect ourselves from self-dealing by those who traverse the corridors of power in these institutions, that are creatures of the Constitution given to us by ourselves. While we often pursue co-option to get access to these institutions, seeking to make those institutions serve us through our network of friends and family, we have not seriously put much thought into structural tightening of the screws. Some institutions arguably may have become too massive, powerful and deeply entrenched to now be tamed and curtailed, operating outside any real control from ‘We the People’. But even the representatives that we send to the assemblies are free to indulge in self-dealing without any real mechanisms in place to keep them in check.
Read: Institution vs the individual
By way of example, there is nothing in the law restraining our elected representatives from jacking up their salaries and remunerations while in power. In juxtaposition, the US constitution, under the 27th Amendment, requires that for an increase in salaries of the Congressmen to take effect, there has to be an intervening election, so that it is never their own salaries that the representatives increase but those of the representatives to be elected after an intervening election.
Similarly, Franklin Roosevelt’s flouting of the tacit principle established by George Washington himself, that one particular individual elected as president was not to serve more than two terms, ended up mobilising ‘We the People’ of the US, to constitutionalise that principle in the form of the 22nd Amendment, capping the term of the president to two four-year terms at maximum, irrespective of whether a Lincoln had been elected or a Trump.
Here in Pakistan, though, ‘We the People’ have not even contemplated and put together a working framework of campaign finance laws, that allows ordinary members of ‘We the People’ to come to power. Only powerful local and national hegemons, with massive resources, often accumulated through illicit means, occupy public elected office, keeping the real bulk of ‘We the People’ from occupying elected positions. Breakthroughs have only come from nationally acclaimed figures, which were already household names, or from those who cultivated deeper relationships with the military strongmen in power, or both. To ensure that political parties and politics in general, are not monopolised by either select monarchical families operating under the crass divine right to rule framework, or a charismatic self-proclaimed messiah, it is imperative that ‘We the People’ take charge.
And ‘We the People’ must seek to take charge because we gave ourselves the Constitution, not to serve and bow to monarchical families, or to self-anointed messiahs, or to the top personnel of other constitutionally created institutions, but to serve our own ends and objectives. This is our Constitution, and we have got to make it work for us.
The writer is a litigator based in Islamabad.
awahid@umich.edu
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2022
AFP Published June 11, 2022
SINGAPORE: Beijing will “not hesitate to start a war” if Taiwan declares independence, China’s defence minister warned his US counterpart on Friday, the latest salvo between the superpowers over the island.
The warning from Wei Fenghe came as he held his first face-to-face meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore.
Beijing has vowed to one day seize Taiwan, by force if necessary, and US-China tensions over the issue have soared in recent months.
Wei warned Austin that “if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost”, defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian quoted the minister as saying during the meeting.
The Chinese minister vowed that Beijing would “smash to smithereens any `Taiwan independence’ plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland”, according to the Chinese defence ministry.
He “stressed that Taiwan is China’s Taiwan... Using Taiwan to contain China will never prevail”, the ministry said.
Lloyd Austin “reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability across the (Taiwan) Strait, opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo, and called on (China) to refrain from further destabilising actions toward Taiwan”, according to the US Department of Defence.
Tensions over Taiwan have escalated in particular due to increasing Chinese aircraft incursions into the island’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ).
Strategic ambiguity
The White House has since insisted its policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether or not it would intervene has not changed.
Austin is the latest senior US official to visit Asia as Washington seeks to shift its foreign policy focus back to the region from the Ukraine war.
As well as on Taiwan, China and the United States have been locked in a range of other disputes.
They have been at loggerheads over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Washington accusing Beijing of providing tacit support for Moscow.
China has called for talks to end the war, but has stopped short of condemning Russia’s actions and has repeatedly criticised American arms donations to Ukraine.
China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea have also stoked tensions with Washington.
Beijing claims almost all of the resource-rich sea, through which trillions of dollars in shipping trade passes annually, with competing claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Austin arrived in Singapore late on Thursday, and held a series of meetings with his counterparts on Friday.
At a meeting with Southeast Asian defence ministers, he spoke about Washington’s “strategy in maintaining an open, inclusive and rules-based regional security environment”, according to a statement from the Singapore government.
Published in Dawn,June 11th, 2022
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