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Faisal Bari // DAWN: 17 January 2025
WHY is this country so against its own children and its own future? Are you sur-prised by this question? Look at some of the statistics and facts below and see if the question is still surprising.
Some 40 per cent of our children are said to be malnourished, that is, four out of 10 children are starving. We are not even able to give polio drops to all our children. We have had more than 70 cases of polio since last year: Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries that still have polio cases.
Around 26 million five-to-16-year-olds are out of school. Most of the children who are in school receive an education of poor quality. In fact, the World Bank puts learning poverty in Pakistan at 77pc!
We are also reproducing at more than 2.5pc per annum. Given the statistics above, should we be having so many children every year? Around 6m children are born in Pakistan every year. Investments in nutrition, health and education are needed for children for the first 15 to 20 years of their life. Given where we stand, should we be producing so many children? At the moment, there is no conversation in policy circles on population control, and it is unlikely that we will have any in the near future.
Our infant mortality rates are at 52 per 1,000 live births. The same number is around 22 in Bangladesh and six in Sri Lanka. And the rates in Pakistan have not come down a lot for quite some time now.
Birth registration is completed for only 40pc or so of children born in Pakistan. It means that we do not actually know how many children are born in the country each year, and it is only through the population census — that is carried out every 10 years or whenever we are able to have one — that we find out how many people there are in Pakistan.
Early initiation of breastfeeding is estimated to be only about 18pc in the country and less than 40pc of mothers continue to exclusively breastfeed their child for six months. If there was early initiation, exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and complementary breastfeeding for two years, these on their own could significantly reduce malnutrition and stunting among Pakistani infants. But this, again, is not really on our policymaking and policy implementation agenda.
It is not only that we are failing our children by not providing them with educational opportunities, we are not even giving them a chance to acquire skills that would be of use to them to lead a productive life. Less than a million-odd youth are trained in Pakistan by all training institutes across the country. When the population increases by some 6m individuals every year, not giving all of them an opportunity to get an education or acquire skills is a surefire way of creating problems for the country in the years ahead.
Even before children were exposed to the kind of smog levels that we saw last year, especially in Punjab, an estimated 12pc of deaths among children under the age of five years was linked to environmental pollution. In 2024, and continuing into 2025, we seem to have broken all sorts of records in terms of the levels of pollution that we hit and the length of time for which we were forced to inhale the toxic air. The government had to close down schools for a couple of weeks to reduce the exposure of children to pollution. Air pollutants have a grave impact on the developing lungs of infants and even on brain and cognitive development, while the exposure of pregnant women to air pollutants can result in premature or low-weight births. Children also have smaller lungs and they breathe faster as well so their absorption of pollutants can be greater than others’.
In any population, about 10pc to 12pc of children have special needs. Pakistan is no exception. In fact, with all the difficulties that have been mentioned in this column, it would not be a surprise if the percentage of children needing more support is actually higher. But the children of a lesser god are at best ignored in Pakistan. Given the lack of birth registration and the non-availability of early diagnostics, early interventions are not possible. This lack of intervention limits the potential of children with special needs and hampers and delays their development. Children with special needs are overrepresented in the out-of-school children population; they are at a higher risk of dropping out of school if they happen to be enrolled and are given, in general, a lot less attention in households, schools and larger society than their peers.
In a paper in 2001, William Easterly showed that Pakistan, even when compared to countries with the same level of development as itself, had always invested less in human development — health and education in particular. His data went up to 1999 or 2000. But the story has been the same or even worse since then. We had many years of good GDP growth up to 2000.
In recent years, even growth has gone away and investments, in human development, especially health and education, have become even less of a priority.
Here is a country that keeps making the argument that the youth of Pakistan are what is going to give us the ‘demographic dividend’. Yet, it is clear that we are doing our best not to invest in the children of today. We are shortchanging our children in every way possible. What sort of dividends should we expect from the young people of tomorrow?
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
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Asim Sajjad Akhtar // DAWN: 17 January 2025
AFTER prosecuting the most intense ethnic cleansing exercise in modern history for 15 months, Tel Aviv and Washington have finally agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. The pact, brokered by Qatar’s emirs, provides for temporary cessation of hostilities, alongside vague claims that a permanent settlement will be worked out.
However uncertain, the ceasefire deal has stoked celebrations amongst Gaza’s 2.5 million residents. The world’s largest concentration camp has been largely reduced to rubble, with almost 50,000 Palestinians killed and many more maimed. Even imagining a silencing of guns feels liberating.
For all of the Zionist war crimes perpetrated since October 2023, the Palestinian people continue to exist. Their struggle to survive has been supported by a wide cross-section of people globally, many of whom have been on the streets, putting up encampments and organising other solidarity protests. The ceasefire, then, is not just relief from the brutalisation inflicted by Israel, it is in fact a victory of popular resistance to Zionism and imperialism.
However, there can be no romanticising the lived reality of what remains an ongoing colonial occupation. Over the past 15 months, the Israeli war machine has taken the carte blanche it received from the ‘free world’ after Oct 7, 2023, to intensify its apartheid rule in Gaza and the West Bank, and then extend its violence to Lebanon, and most recently, post-Assad Syria. No friend of the Palestinians should harbour any delusion that Israel and its imperialist patron will relinquish the military gains they have made following the ceasefire.
Indeed, all indications are that the Netanyahu regime will do all it can to displace Hamas as the main arbiter of power in Gaza, a position the organisation has occupied for the best part of two decades. It should not be forgotten that Israel has waged war on Gaza numerous times since the turn of the century. It has repeatedly tried to cut Hamas down to size and turn it into something akin to the Palestinian Authority which meekly accedes to relentless settlement-building in the West Bank.
So while the ceasefire may bring a halt to explicit, genocidal violence, the everyday violence of the occupation will remain as exacting as ever. Check-posts to police the mobility of Palestinians litter the occupied territories. The Zionist regime continues to manipulate the supply of essential goods and services to Gaza and the West Bank alike. And huge numbers of Palestinians are still forced into dehumanising forms of labour serving Israeli capital.
Seasoned observers of Palestinian politics have understood Hamas’ actions on Oct 7, 2023, as an audacious attempt to dramatically reconfigure the relationship between the colonised subject by the colonising power. Hamas and the Palestinian resistance at large knew they could not defeat Israel and that the Netanyahu government would respond with excessive, brutal force. But thrusting the cause of Palestinian liberation back into the global consciousness was imperative.
Time will tell whether Hamas and the resistance at large will emerge stronger or weaker than the pre-Oct 7 conjuncture. Either way, the last 15 months have given a fresh lease of life to the project of Palestinian national liberation so no matter which Palestinian faction rules Gaza, it will not be the pliant puppet Israel craves.
Meanwhile the legitimacy of the so-called US-led ‘rules-based order’ now lies in tatters, with more and more people around the world opposed not only to the occu-pation of Palestine but also to their own ruling classes and increasingly bankrupt forms of representative ‘democracy’.
It is, of course, also true that the disillusionment with the international system as well as the contemporary nation-state is not translating into the emergence of progressive alternatives at a global scale. It is the right wing that largely benefits from the excess liberal imperialism and its lackeys. Will this change? Can the solidarity that so many people have expressed with Palestine become the lightning rod for a broader shift in the tone and tenor of politics? Could a new non-aligned movement be on the cards? Might we see the emergence of a genuine alternative to the global capitalist order?
Even if the current state of the world engenders intellectual pessimism, history can still be shaped by people’s will over and above the military-industrial-media establishments that over-determine the mainstream political sphere. In the first instance, this means recognition that the ceasefire is a temporary respite, and that we must in fact double down in support of Palestinian liberation as well as the struggle of oppressed peoples everywhere. We can still build an emancipatory future beyond the rule of capital, imperialism and ecological breakdown.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
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Editorial
AFTER 15 long months, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been put on hold. Whether this will lead to a permanent end to hostilities in the occupied Palestinian territories is anyone’s guess. But for the time being, the battered people of Gaza can mourn their dead — over 46,000 of them, and more likely buried under the rubble — without the threat of Israeli bombs falling on them, and tend to their wounded.
The three-stage ceasefire deal reached on Wednesday, overseen by Qatar, Egypt and the US, envisions an exchange of prisoners between Hamas and Israel, as well as the provision of aid to Gaza’s people, and an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, among other points. Much will depend on Tel Aviv’s sincerity towards honouring the deal. Even after the truce — which takes effect on Sunday — was announced, Israel continued its killing spree in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier boasted that the fight would continue till the destruction of Hamas. That obviously did not come to pass; instead, Tel Aviv has signed a truce with the Palestinian armed group. This shows that even the world’s best-equipped militaries, armed with advanced American weaponry, cannot break the will of an occupied people, who have sacrificed thousands of lives, but have refused to give up their land.
While it is hoped that the peace deal matures into a permanent ceasefire, and the people of Gaza are provided urgent succour, the world must not forget what Israel has done in this tiny coastal Strip. The thousands of deaths; the reports of rape and abuse of prisoners; the babies freezing to death, a population starved and denied access to clean water — all these war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, and the criminals brought to book. The war crimes proceedings at the ICC, and South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ, must be brought to their logical conclusion so that Israel is never again able to commit these monstrous crimes against the Palestinian people.
Regarding the ‘day after’ the war, many plans are being proffered, but the only long-term solution to the Palestine question is a viable and independent Palestinian state. For this to happen, Israel must vacate all occupied Palestinian territories, and agree to a contiguous Arab state capable of supporting itself. Palestinian Bantustans [کسی غلام قوم کا چھوٹا سا اپنا علاقہ جس میں ان کو ایسا معلوم ہوتا ہو کہ وہ آزاد ہیں], surrounded by Israel and vulnerable [ جس کو نقصان پہنچ سکتا ہو] to its barbaric onslaughts [وحشیانہ حملے], will not solve the problem. The Gaza genocide has also revealed the utter helplessness of the Palestinian Authority in projecting Palestine’s case globally.
All Palestinian factions — principally the PLO and Hamas — will have to put up a united front, and face the occupation with solidarity. If Israel goes back to its murderous ways, shielded by its close friends in Washington, the Palestinians will have no choice but to resist.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
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Editorial
THE latest inflammatory remarks by India’s military brass about Pakistan mark a troubling departure from the professional restraint expected of senior defence officials. Gen Upendra Dwivedi’s labelling of Pakistan as an “epicentre of terrorism” and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s thinly veiled threats regarding Kashmir suggest a worrying politicisation of India’s armed forces. The timing is particularly awkward. Just as Western media uncovers India’s hand in assassination plots against Sikh activists in North America, and the Washington Post details a systematic campaign of extrajudicial killings on Pakistani soil, New Delhi’s military leadership launches into theatrical accusations. It is rather like a burglar crying theft while clutching a stolen wallet.
One can only describe these outbursts as attempts to deflect attention from India’s brutal oppression in occupied Kashmir. The defence minister’s claim that “Jammu and Kashmir is incomplete” without what he calls “PoK” not only dismisses UNSC resolutions but also reveals India’s expansionist mindset. Meanwhile, the presence of Kulbhushan Jadhav — a serving Indian military officer caught red-handed orchestrating terrorism within Pakistan — is proof of India’s deceit. As the Foreign Office notes, India must address its own documented involvement in orchestrating targeted assassinations before levelling accusations at others. The world response has been telling. Western nations, hesitant to criticise India, find themselves increasingly uncomfortable with New Delhi’s aggressive posturing and covert operations. The exposure of India’s transnational assassination programme has stripped away the veneer of respectability it cultivated. Such politically motivated statements from India’s military leadership not only undermine professional conduct but also pose a serious threat to regional stability. For the sake of peace in South Asia, India’s generals would do well to stay away from engaging in provocative rhetoric. The path to regional stability lies through dialogue and respect for international law, not dangerous sabre-rattling and unwarranted accusations.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
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Editorial
THAT the World Bank will give $20bn to Pakistan in the next 10 years to address some of the country’s most acute development challenges, including but not limited to stunting, learning poverty, climate change, and a collapsing energy sector, is a promising development for our struggling economy. The funding, says the bank, “aims to support inclusive and sustainable development through a strong focus on building human capital; fostering durable private sector growth; and building economic, social and environmental resilience in the country”. However, the lending, which includes $14bn in concessional debt, will start from next year and likely depend on the execution of the IMF-mandated reforms to correct structural imbalances in the economy.
The promised loan is part of the multilateral lender’s Country Partnership Framework, a document that sees the growing militant violence in Balochistan and KP as a major risk to investment under this package in the targeted areas of the economy in those provinces. The bank may not have directly mentioned unresolved political tensions as a risk to the execution and outcomes of its future interventions in the country in so many words, but does appear concerned about it. “The economy has been subject to successive boom-and-bust cycles driven by structural imbalances and unsustainable fiscal policies, which invariably resulted in ... short-lived reform episodes. The most recent [reform] cycle was exacerbated by political instability... .” the CPF document reads. The new funding package is a major opportunity for Pakistan to “durably take another course” and catch up with its peers in key development metrics by investing in health, education, water and sanitation, and other public services. Nevertheless, success in this endeavour will depend on removal of the causes of low investment and growth: shifting macroeconomic policies fuelled by a volatile polity, a complex and inconsistent business environment, and distortive trade and investment policies that benefit few and limit productivity and exports. The question is, do our politicians and policymakers have the will and patience to undertake the required reforms? Pakistanis have suffered a lot in the last few years and paid a huge price for the failures of our ruling elite. Failure to build on the hard-won, and still fragile economic stability will mean that despite going through long and harsh economic measures, the people would have suffered for nothing.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
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Dawn.com | Abdullah Momand Published January 15, 2025
The military on Wednesday strongly reacted to the Indian army chief calling Pakistan the “epicentre of terrorism”, saying that instead of trying to “conjure up non-existent terror infrastructure in Pakistan, it would be wise not to indulge in self-delusion”.
The statement from the the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) came in response to Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi’s remarks during a press conference on Monday, ahead of India’s Army Day, when he claimed that in 2024, “60 per cent of the terrorists eliminated” in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK) were allegedly of Pakistani origin.
General Dwivedi further alleged that “80pc of the remaining fighters in IoK were of Pakistani origin”, according to the Press Trust of India.
In a strongly-worded response today, the Pakistani military said: “Insinuating Pakistan as the epicentre of terrorism by the Indian Army chief is not only contrary to facts but also an exercise in futility to beat the dead horse of India’s default position — blaming Pakistan for indigenous reaction to state-sponsored brutality. It is a classic case of extreme duplicity.”
The statement added that the remarks were being made in an “attempt to deflect the world’s attention from India’s brutality in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), repression of minorities internally and India’s trans-national repression”.
It continued: “The general officer, in his earlier stint in llOJK personally oversaw the most brutal repression of Kashmiris. Such politically motivated and fallacious statements reflect the extreme politicisation of the Indian Army.”
General Upendra Dwivedi officially took over as the Indian Army chief on June 30, 2024. His command appointments include leading the 18 held-Jammu and Kashmir Rifles regiment, the 26 Sector Assam Rifles brigade, and serving as inspector general of Assam Rifles and the Indian Army’s 9 Corps.
He has also served as Northern Army Commander for the Indian army where he oversaw the Indian Army Corps in Occupied Kashmir and the Chinese border and played an important role in India’s ongoing negotiations with China to resolve border issues.
The statement further mentioned that the world was witness to India’s “hate-speech conclave that provoke genocide against Muslims”, adding that the international community was “not oblivious to India’s trans-national assassinations and Indian Security Forces’ oppressive use of force against innocent civilians and gross human rights violations against unarmed Kashmiris”.
“Such oppression has only served to strengthen the resolve of Kashmiris for their right of self-determination, enshrined in the UN Security Council Resolutions,” it said.
The ISPR said that “instead of trying to conjure up a non-existent terror infrastructure in Pakistan, it would be wise not to indulge in self-delusion, and appreciate the ground reality.”
Referring to Indian spy agent Kulbhushan Jadhav’s 2016 arrest, who confessed to fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi, the military said: “The sobering fact that a senior serving Indian military officer is in Pakistan’s custody, caught red-handed while orchestrating acts of terror against innocent civilians inside Pakistan, seems to have been conveniently ignored by the general.
“Pakistan takes strong exception to such baseless and unfounded statements.”
The statement concluded by saying that Pakistan “empathised with the victims of the Indian Army’s brutality”.
“It is hoped that civility, professionalism and norms of state-to-state behaviour would guide the conduct of Indian Army’s leadership, rather than pandering to political exigencies.”
Baseless accusations, unfounded assertions: FO
Separately, the Foreign Office (FO) also issued a statement today saying that Pakistan “strongly rejected” the remarks issued by India’s defence minister and chief of army staff on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday that India must “dismantle Pakistan’s terror infrastructure” in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), The Hindustan Times reported. Addressing an Army Day event in Akhnoor, Singh had said IoK was “incomplete” without AJK, calling it “the crown jewel of India”.
The minister made these remarks in response to AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, who said last week that his government would “redirect all available resources towards ousting Indian forces from occupied Kashmir”.
The FO stressed that IoK remained an “internationally recognised disputed territory, whose final status is to be determined in accordance with relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people”.
“In this context, India has no legal or moral grounds to assert fictitious claims over the territories of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan,” the FO asserted.
It further said, “Such rhetoric from the Indian leadership cannot divert international attention from the grave human rights violations and oppressive measures being carried out in IIOJK,” noting that India’s actions “suppress the legitimate and just struggle of the Kashmiri people for their inalienable right to self-determination”.
“Pakistan also underscores that provocative statements of this nature are counterproductive to regional peace and stability,” the FO statement said.
It highlighted the issue of extra-territorial killings — including in Pakistan — which, according to multiple reports by international media outlets, were carried out by the Indian government.
“Instead of levelling baseless allegations against others, India must introspect and address its own documented involvement in orchestrating targeted assassinations, acts of subversion, and state-sponsored terrorism in foreign territories,” the FO said.
Covert Indian assassinations
A recent report in the Washington Post has laid bare the ins and outs of an Indian intelligence campaign, which has been orchestrating killings — on Pakistani soil — of individuals it deems a threat to its national interests
According to WaPo, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has been running an assassination campaign in Pakistan since 2021, an operation that shares similarities with covert actions recently attributed to Indian agencies in North America.
Based on interviews with Pakistani and Indian officials, militant associates, family members, and a review of police documents, the report documents six killings in Pakistan that are allegedly part of this coordinated effort.
The report notes that India extended this campaign beyond Pakistan, employing similartactics in North America against Sikh activists, including Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and Gurpatwant Pannun in the United States.
The report draws comparisons between the tactics used in Pakistan and similar Indian operations against Sikh activists in Canada and the US. In both cases, Indian operatives allegedly relied on local criminal networks and poorly trained contractors.
However, these operations faced significant setbacks in North America, including the plot to assassinate Sikh activist Gurpatwant Pannun in New York. The assassination attempt failed when an intermediary unknowingly approached a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant posing as a hitman.
Canadian officials have also accused Indian diplomats of surveilling, intimidating and plotting to assassinate Sikh activists. Electronic communications reportedly linked these diplomats to such activities, further straining relations between India and Western nations.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment on the report, maintaining its longstanding position of neither confirming nor denying involvement in specific killings, but Indian officials have previously justified their actions.
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DO YOU KNOW
US GOVERNMENT'S TIK TOK BAN BACKFIRE AS USERS HEAD TO ANOTHER CHINESE APP
Read:https://images.dawn.com/news/1193144/us-govt-tiktok-ban-backfires-as-thousands-of-users-head-to-chinese-owned-app-xiaohongshu
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