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Khurram Abbas // DAWN: 24 January 2025
ON January 8, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met the Afghan Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai. Although the two sides had been engaging for more than 14 months, the recent meeting is so far the highest-level encounter between the two countries.
In March 2024, the Indian joint secretary, ministry of external affairs, also met Afghan Taliban officials in Kabul.
Soon after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, New Delhi abandoned its diplomatic and development activities in Afghanistan due to security concerns. However, India continued to engage the Afghan interim government on two fronts.
First, India used humanitarian assistance as a tool to open communication channels with the Afghan regime. Second, it engaged with Afghan officials in the UAE for diplomatic outreach.
New Delhi gradually but carefully started its engagement with the Afghan Taliban in November 2023. These meetings witnessed significant progress in terms of bilateral engagement, with Indian officials agreeing to increase humanitarian assistance.
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, India has sent more than 47,000MT wheat. Moreover, Delhi has supplied 200 tons of medical aid.
Similarly, backchannel diplomacy between India and the Afghan Taliban resulted in the permanent closure of the Ghani administration’s embassy in New Delhi. Subsequently, the Taliban’s charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi was invited by the Indian embassy in the UAE for the Republic Day celebrations in the Emirates’ capital.
There are several reasons for India’s outreach to the Afghan Taliban. First, the international community has been continuously engaging with the Taliban government. The US has been talking to the Taliban in Qatar.
China has been expanding its relationship with Kabul in the security, economics and political realms. Regional countries as well as the Arab world have been carefully engaging with the Afghan interim government. Therefore, India does not want to be seen as ‘strategically excluded’ from Afghanistan.
Secondly, soon after Kabul fell, the Indian media and opposition parties tried to portray the victory of the Afghan Taliban as a ‘victory of Pakistan’. The Indian opposition criticised Narendra Modi’s Afghanistan policy.
Moreover, the BJP government has been criticised for its weak neighbourhood policy due back-to-back setbacks in the Maldives and Bangladesh. Re-engagement with the Afghan Taliban is partly an attempt of the Modi government to silence critics on his Afghanistan policy.
Third, there are significant economic considerations that have pushed New Delhi closer to the Taliban. Prior to the fall of Kabul, India was carrying out around $3 billion infrastructure and energy projects in Afghanistan.
Soon after the Taliban takeover, Indian engineers abandoned the projects and diplomatic staff as well other officials vacated diplomatic premises primarily due to security concerns. India might be interested in resuming those activities.
Moreover, lithium has become an in-demand commodity for the world. There are several studies that have projected the potential of Afghanistan’s minerals at more than $1 trillion.
The major mineral resources include chromium, copper, gold, iron ore, lead and zinc, lithium, marble, precious and semiprecious stones, among others. Already, the BJP-led NDA government has been pushing for production of electric vehicles (EVs) in India.
Many Western firms have been setting up businesses in India for this reason. Lithium will be required for EVs’ batteries. Hence, Afghanistan can fulfil India’s demand for these critical minerals through Iran’s Chabahar port.
However, there are limitations to New Delhi’s engagement with the Afghan Taliban government. For instance, there is no possibility in near future that India might break with international and regional consensus regarding the Taliban’s policies, especially their policies related to girls’ education and women’s rights.
Officials as well as the Indian strategic community and civil society have consistently criticised and raised concerns about the Taliban’s decisions related to girls’ education, women in the workforce and exclusion of ethnic minorities in the government.
Hence, Modi’s government will not take any drastic steps, including de jure recognition of the Afghan Taliban. Therefore, despite its political and economic engagement with Kabul, New Delhi will continue to voice its concerns about the Afghan Taliban’s policies towards women, girls’ education and ethnic minorities.
Also, India will have a muted role in the domestic political affairs of Afghanistan. For instance, despite having cordial relationship with the Tajik and Uzbek leadership prior to the fall of Kabul, New Delhi has shown no enthusiasm to play a reconciliatory role between the Afghan Taliban and Afghan ethnic minorities.
At best, India can enhance its diplomatic staff in numbers as well as appoint a charge d’affaires in Kabul. Moreover, India will likely allow Taliban officials to operate Afghanistan’s embassy in New Delhi.
Similarly, Delhi-Kabul cooperation could lead to enhancing issuance of visas for Afghan students and patients. New Delhi can also restart development activities which were abandoned due to the fall of the Ghani administration.
India is also pushing the Taliban interim government to use Chabahar port as an alternative to Karachi port to reduce Kabul’s reliance on Islamabad. Strategically, it is logical for India to increase Afghanistan’s stakes in Chabahar, as higher stakes will compel the Afghan Taliban to provide security to Indian goods passing through Afghanistan to Central Asia.
It is New Delhi’s long-term desire to develop sustainable access to Central Asia for its trade activities. Similarly, India has echoed condemnation of Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan, a gesture which will further embolden the Afghan Taliban to resist Islamabad’s pressure to take action against the TTP.
It seems India — despite remaining cautious — has decided to abandon its previous approach of limited engagement with the Afghan Taliban. For the past three years, Indian emphasis has been on humanitarian assistance.
However, New Delhi seems quite eager to expand its bilateral cooperation with the Afghan Taliban based on its strategic, economic and political considerations.
The writer is director, India Study Centre, Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.
directorisc@issi.org.pk
X: @itskhurramabbas
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025
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Abdullah Khalid // DAWN: 24 January 2025
{The writer gives an overview of how women evolved their importance in different governments from 1947 to date.}
IN the boiling summer of 1947, as Pakistan took its first breaths as an independent nation, women stood alongside men in the corridors of power, though few could have predicted how their role would transform in the decades to come. The story of women’s political participation in Pakistan is not just a chronicle of laws and reforms; it’s a narrative of resilience, adaptation, and gradual transformation that has fundamentally reshaped the nation’s political DNA.
In the early years, Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan understood that independence meant more than territorial freedom. When she established the All-Pakistan Women’s Association in 1949, she wasn’t just creating another organisation; she was laying the foundation for women’s political inclusion that would influence generations to come. The presence of Madar-i-Millat Fatima Jinnah in these formative years also sent a powerful message: women belonged in the nation’s political narrative.
The winds of change took an unexpected turn when Gen Ayub Khan took power in 1958. His era, marked by the paradox of modernisation under military rule, saw women’s political participation evolve in a surprising way. While his ‘basic democracy’ system restricted overall political freedom, it created unexpected spaces for women’s engagement at local levels. When Fatima Jinnah challenged his presidency in 1965, she wasn’t just contesting an election; she was challenging both military authority as well as gender norms in one bold stroke.
The path through Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s era to Gen Ziaul Haq’s regime marked contrasting chapters in women’s political evolution. Bhutto’s 1973 Constitution promised equal political rights, bringing women into the judiciary and bureaucracy, fundamentally altering the landscape of public service. Under Zia’s Islamisation policies, the Women’s Action Forum emerged in 1981, transforming opposition into organised activism and proving that restrictive environments could spark powerful resistance movements.
Women’s collective journey mirrors Pakistani democracy’s transformation.
Benazir Bhutto’s rise to prime ministership in 1988 marked a revolutionary moment, redefining possibilities for women in the Muslim world. Walking into Prime Minister’s Office, she carried with her the dreams of millions of Pakistani women. Her government opened new doors, though the path remained challenging. Across the political divide, other women began to emerge as leaders, though often still tethered to family networks.
The Musharraf years brought their own revolution in women’s political participation. The Local Government Ordinance wasn’t just legislation; it was a tool for transformation, mandating women’s representation in local governments. Moreover, Dr Fehmida Mirza’s election as the first female speaker demonstrated women’s ability to command democracy’s highest fora.
Today’s landscape reveals how far Pakistan has come: Maryam Nawaz as Punjab’s Chief Minister, PTI’s Dr Yasmin Rashid’s political rise, and Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari’s PPP leadership role demonstrate the evolution of women’s political agency. The transformation within political parties tells its own story — from the PPP’s structural integration of women leaders to PML-N’s policy-driven approach in Punjab, and PTI’s inclusion of professional women in core positions.
This evolution has transformed Pakistan’s policy landscape. Women’s issues now permeate mainstream discussions, from economic inclusion to security frameworks. Cross-party consensus on domestic violence legislation and property rights shows how women’s leadership drives substantive policy change. Yet, challenges persist in remote villages where women still struggle to vote, and in party offices where the fight for decision-making seats continues. The Elections Act 2017 addresses these challenges, mandating a mi-nimum number of women candidates and voter turnout.
From parliamentary caucuses to local councils, a new generation emerges — some carrying family legacies, others blazing new trails.
The journey from 1947 to 2024 reflects a continuous negotiation between tradition and change, as each generation balances cultural expectations with political ambitions. Their collective journey mirrors Pakistani democracy’s transformation.
As one senior parliamentarian noted, “We’re not just participating in politics anymore; we’re redefining what politics means in Pakistan.”
The challenge ahead isn’t merely maintaining these gains but transforming them into lasting cultural change. Women in power, once extraordinary, are becoming increasingly normal.
In party offices, council chambers, and parliament halls, they continue reshaping Pakistan’s political landscape, writing new chapters in a story that began with independence but has no end in sight.
The writer is a researcher associated with Sustainable Development Policy Institute.
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025
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Zafar Mirza // DAWN: 24 January 2025
{Knowledge gleaned from this article will help the reader write on corruption in the medical profession.}
AS part of a researchers’ team we have recently published a paper on ‘Doctors taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies is common and not substantially reduced by an educational intervention: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial in Pakistan’. It was published last week in the British Medical Journal Global Health. Since most readers don’t follow peer-reviewed medical journals and since the issue is of paramount importance to all of us in Pakistan, I thought of sharing the findings of this research with the readers of Dawn.
Before dwelling on this research, for the regular readers of my column, I would refer to another article I wrote on these pages with the title ‘An unholy alliance’, published on December 3, 2021. The current research is actually an evidence-based scientific testimony of what I wrote then. The article started thus: “There is an unholy alliance working against the interests of patients. Highly unethical dealings go on between the pharmaceutical and health technology industry and doctors and other health professionals.” I further wrote: “The word ‘unethical’ hardly conveys what is going on in the medical marketplace.”
The current research is led by Mishal Khan based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also my alma mater, and 17 other researchers, most of them at AKU Karachi. A novel method was used whereby data collectors posing as pharmaceutical company sales representatives visited private doctors to see their engagement with incentive-linked prescribing. Incentive-linked prescribing is a sugar-coated phrase for accepting, and often demanding bribes for prescribing specific medicines to patients regardless of their need.
The collusion between doctors and industry is well-known, widespread globally and deeply entrenched.
In this research 419 medical doctors, mostly general practitioners, providing primary healthcare in their private clinics in Karachi, were enrolled by taking their consent to participate in this study, which meant they agreed to ‘unannounced assessment’ of their practice. These doctors were randomly assigned to “intervention” and “control” groups, 210 to the former and 209 to the latter. Those in the intervention group were systematically engaged in multifaceted educational interventions through which they were informed about the problems associated with pharmaceutical incentives. They participated in a well-designed educational seminar on ethical prescribing followed by reinforcement messages over six weeks and they took part in a related slogan-designing competition.
In the control group they were given an inert or placebo seminar in which unethical prescribing was not included as a topic of discussion. Three months after these seminars and reinforcement interventions the doctors were visited by the covert ‘pharmaceutical company representatives’. The primary outcome was the proportion of participants agreeing to accept incentives in exchange for prescribing promoted medicines. Once all the data was collected, results were disappointing.
In the control group among those who participated, 41.9 per cent of doctors agreed to accept incentives in exchange for prescribing promoted medicines, as compared with 32.3pc in the intervention group. Statistically speaking this difference is not significant, which in simple terms means that engaging doctors and educating them about the problems of pharmaceutical incentives alone does not change their practices.
The majority of private doctors who agreed to accept incentives for prescribing promoted medicines opted for a financial incentive, such as cash or cheque payment, followed by clinical equipment or renovation. Interestingly, in many cases those who refused to accept incentives were in fact already fully committed to incentive agreements with other pharmaceutical companies.
This first study to covertly assess deal-making between doctors and pharmaceutical company representatives demonstrated that the practice is strikingly widespread and suggested that substantial reductions are unlikely to be achieved by educational interventions alone.
The research has shown the obvious but by using a scientific method and statistically calculating the results. The phenomenon of collusion between doctors and industry however is well-known, widespread globally and deeply entrenched.
To understand the scale of the problem, in 2020 the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 26 pharmaceutical companies paid around $33 billion in fines between 2003 and 2016 in the US. These fines were slapped by the US authorities on account of various illegal activities, such as providing kickbacks and bribes, knowingly shipping adulterated or contaminated drugs to pharmacies, and marketing drugs for unapproved uses.
Closer to home, the forms and shapes medical marketing takes have become so heinous, pervasive and damaging that the less said the better. The so-called medical conferences in Pakistan are basically the medical community basking in luxury and glory, dining and wining, and pharmaceutical companies happily footing the hefty bills. Patients and their families pay through their nose the unaffordable prices of the medicines, many a times fraudulently prescribed to them. Poor people suffer the financial and physical consequences.
Now that prices of medicines in Pakistan have been deregulated, they have skyrocketed. Marketing budgets will further go up, competition to sell will become more fierce and new lows in unethical marketing practices by the companies will be witnessed.
This is the principal contradiction of the medical profession. Greed has replaced care. The real moral of the story of this research is that any amount of education and research will not make any difference as the medical practitioners are part of the society which suffers from a deep moral crisis.
What to do about this seemingly complex and insurmountable problem which is systemically entrenched in unbridled corporate capitalism? All countries suffer from this menace, the difference is that of scale and shamelessness. A cocktail of measures — educational, managerial, regulatory — need to be taken and interventions need to be made simultaneously and sustainably. Continued research, like the one quoted above, needs to be encouraged and undertaken. And, lifestyle medicine and preventive healthcare need to be promoted, which require least pharmaceutical use.
The writer is a former health minister, currently a professor of health systems & population health at Shifa Tameer-i-Millat University.
zedefar@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025
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DAWN Editorial
CONSIDERING the extensive damage it has already wrought to Pakistan’s digital aspirations, one would have expected this government to have picked up a few lessons along the way. Not so, it seems.
The latest bright idea from its policymakers is to turn the digital ecosystem into even more of a minefield, with fresh laws that can and very likely will be weaponised against any citizen who refuses to toe state-set lines.
The Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Bill, 2025, passed by the National Assembly on Thursday, seems aimed at providing new means to state authorities for cracking down on various digital platforms and the ‘mischief makers’ who use them.
The amendments seek to jail those who spread disinformation for three years, replace the FIA’s notorious Cybercrime Wing with a brand-new investigation agency, and establish a new authority with the power to partially or fully block social media platforms that do not comply.
Peca, since its introduction in 2016, has been widely criticised as a black law created mainly to punish dissent. In the eight years since its enactment, it has been used extensively against politicians, journalists, rights activists, and even ordinary political workers to impress the might of the Pakistani establishment onto those who dare to challenge it.
It has condemned those it has touched to incur immense personal, professional and psychological costs, yet not a single meaningful step has been taken to address or even limit its abuse.
Indeed, the country’s three biggest political parties have each contributed to either implementing or augmenting Peca to make it even more dangerous than it should have been.
The law’s apparent fixation with the criticism of state institutions and their functionaries is indicative of the simple fact that the interests it seeks to protect are not public or national interests, but the vested interests of the country’s power elite.
There are examples aplenty of individuals who have been harassed over Peca complaints based on highly frivolous reasons to support digital rights activists’ assertion that this law needs to be revised and retrenched, not expanded.
With the country’s justice system in a shambles and the authorities time and again displaying an abject lack of regard for due process or human rights, there is a very strong likelihood that the amendments made to Peca by the government can and will be abused by the authorities.
There is no doubt that the rise of social media has greatly complicated some of the challenges faced by modern nation-states and created the potential for unprecedented instability. However, it would be folly to attempt to tackle these challenges with blunt tools like Peca.
The Pakistani state must stop inflicting wounds on itself and learn to resolve its internal issues through social and political means.
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025
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DAWN Editorial
THE vision of this country’s founding father was that of a Muslim-majority state where members of all religious communities could live in security, and with dignity. Sadly, we have come quite far from that noble vision, as the plight of Sindh’s Hindus illustrates.
According to a recent study by the HRCP, a number of factors are fuelling the Hindu exodus from Sindh towards India. It should be noted that Sindh is host to the largest number of Hindus in Pakistan.
The HRCP says that the key reasons forcing Sindhi Hindus to migrate from their ancestral land are forced conversion and marriage of girls and young women, kidnapping of Hindu individuals, as well as the generally poor law and order situation in the province.
Moreover, economic issues are also causing Hindu Pakistanis to leave the country. As HRCP head Asad Iqbal Butt observed, there were reports that around 300 people left Kashmore alone for India last year, but the actual number may be higher.
It was also mentioned at the study’s launch that while wealthier Hindus led relatively comfortable lives across the border, poorer members of the community were living in refugee camps.
It is also true that India is encouraging this trend; in 2024 the Citizenship Amendment Acttook effect in that country, which allows non-Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh facing ‘persecution’ in their home countries to seek Indian citizenship. Muslims from these states are pointedly excluded.
Hindus are an essential part of Sindh’s culture, and Pakistan’s religious tapestry. The fact is that there is no state-sponsored anti-Hindu campaign in the country. Rather, extremist elements and criminals are targeting the community.
But the state cannot absolve itself of the responsibility to protect Hindu citizens, and assure them of safety. The key factors behind the exodus need to be addressed, while those Pakistani Hindus that have left for India should be given an amnesty, and allowed to return home.
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025
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