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DAWN NEWSPAPER: 15 February 2025
• FO rejects Pakistan-specific terrorism reference in US-India joint statement, calls attention to New Delhi’s poor human rights record
• Cautions against sale of advanced weapons that could exacerbate military imbalance in S. Asia
• Ishaq Dar due to attend high-level UN summit in New York next week
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday strongly cautioned the United States against exacerbating military imbalances in South Asia by supplying advanced military technologies to India, after President Donald Trump cosied up to Narendra Modi, offering to sell state-of-the-art fighter jets to New Delhi.
Firmly rejecting its mention in the US-India joint statement in the context of terrorism, Foreign Office Spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan called the reference “one-sided” and “misleading”.
The statement, issued during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington on Feb 13, urged Pakistan to “expeditiously bring to justice” those responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the Pathankot incident, further demanding that Pakistani territory not be used for cross-border terrorism.
Speaking at the weekly media briefing on Friday, Mr Khan expressed Pakistan’s disapproval of the joint statement, saying: “We are surprised the reference has been added to the joint statement notwithstanding Pakistan’s counter-terrorism cooperation with the US.
“Pakistan also remains committed to continue with counter-terrorism efforts, address the issue of terrorism, including acts of terrorism perpetrated by foreign elements.
“We consider the Pakistan-specific reference in the Indo-US joint statement of Feb 13, 2025, as one-sided, misleading, and contrary to diplomatic norms.”
Responding to the focus on terrorism incidents, the spokesperson criticised the statement for overlooking India’s human rights violations and its involvement in targeting dissidents abroad.
He remarked, “Such references cannot cover up India’s sponsorship of terrorism, subversion, and extrajudicial assassinations in the region and beyond, nor can they shift international attention from the stark reality of India being a safe haven for the perpetrators of hate crimes against Muslims and other minorities.”
Mr Khan reaffirmed Islamabad’s dedication to countering terrorism, emphasising, “Pakistan would continue to contribute constructively to the regional and global efforts to promote peace and stability in the region. It remains committed to bringing the fight against terrorism to its logical conclusion by eliminating the scourge from its soil.”
F-35s sale
Pakistan also reacted sharply to President Trump’s offer to sell state-of-the-art fighter jets to India, expressing serious concerns over the potential transfer of advanced military technology. During a joint press appearance with Modi, Trump announced his administration’s willingness to sell F-35 stealth fighters, one of the most advanced military aircraft globally.
If finalised, the deal would make India part of an exclusive group of countries, including Nato allies, Israel, and Japan, authorised to purchase the F-35s, which is known for its stealth capabilities and supersonic speed. Currently, India operates an aging fleet of Russian fighters along with a limited number of French Rafale aircraft.
Warning against the consequences of such arms transfers, the FO spokesman cautioned, “Such steps accentuate military imbalances in the region and undermine strategic stability. They remain unhelpful in achieving the objective of a durable peace in South Asia.”
He urged “international partners” to adopt “a holistic and objective view of the issues of peace and security in South Asia” and avoid taking “one-sided positions divorced from ground realities.”
During the briefing, the spokesperson also announced that Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar would visit New York next week to participate in a high-level United Nations Security Council meeting. He is also expected to engage in bilateral discussions with his counterparts from other nations and senior UN officials, including Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
When asked about a possible meeting with officials from the Trump administration, Mr Khan stated that details would be shared once all meetings were confirmed.
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025
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Rafia Zakaria // DAWN: 15 February 2025
FOR the past several weeks, government workers in the richest country in the world have been quaking in their boots as they await the cuts proposed by the ominously named (and acting) Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk. Musk — who increasingly appears to be the shadow president, despite his performative kowtowing to Donald Trump — is determined to slash the size of the US government. The enemy, according to Musk and his band of technovillains, is bureaucracy: career government servants who do things in ways that maintain hierarchies and the power of government institutions rather than carrying out the people’s agenda.
In Pakistan, the bureaucracy has its own issues. Thousands take the CSS examination every year in the hopes of being a part of the service. One current controversy that is dogging the test, which selects individuals to be a part of the machinery that runs the country, is that this year’s examinations are being conducted without the results of last year’s test being released. This would mean that candidates who may have failed last year’s examination and could have decided whether to attempt it again this year will not have this information. They will have to wait until next year to retake it.
A test based on a candidate’s merit indicates that the person has been selected for their knowledge and skills rather than for any other reason. In contrast, political appointees are selected because of their political views and their allegiance to a particular party. Unlike bureaucrats whose central purpose is to ensure that government institutions retain their power by the endless pushing of paper, it is in the interest of political appointees to get things done fast.
Indeed, in some countries, the emphasis is on trying to achieve the goals of the elected government as quickly as possible so that they will have something to ‘show’ voters when election campaigns start for the next term. However, political appointees, because they are selected for their allegiance to a party’s cause, often lack the technical knowhow to actually carry out tasks. Not all are career service officers.
One of the most crucial tasks of the government bureaucracy is the issue of revenue extraction, which in turn enables the government to operate. A number of people have lamented the state of the bureaucracy in our part of the world — among them political scientist Andrew Wilder, who described the steel frame of the civil services in Pakistan as “decidedly rusty” with over-politicisation, corruption and lack of capacity rampant in its ranks.
It has also been argued that foreign aid, especially after the start of the US-led ‘war on terror’ in 2001, created further incentives for the decline of the bureaucracy. The easy availability of revenues extracted, not from the people but from other governments, meant that there was little incentive to improve the dismally low tax payment in the country. Second, bureaucratic interest in maintaining institutional legitimacy was undercut by an overemphasis on political appointees. Finally, widespread corruption within the bureaucracy delegitimised the institutions themselves in the eyes of the public. Even routine functions, such as issuing documents to the public, became more corrupt.
Ordinarily the balance between bureaucratic and political power is part of the delicate dance that allows democracy to be functional. The government sets the agenda, and bureaucratic institutions are tasked with carrying it out. When this balance goes awry through politicisation, bureaucrats no longer feel their positions to be secure in their roles as career civil servants. Meanwhile, political appointees, who owe their job to the patronage of this or that leader, spend their time enjoying government benefits and frittering away the taxpayers’ money. In the case of countries like ours, they may also ensure that they themselves don’t pay taxes.
The tension between the agenda for governance and the knowledge required to implement it, reveals the complexity of democracy. Both elements are essential. A large influx of money from external aid can handicap a country just as the inability of successive governments to enact the necessary reforms can cripple the development of a healthy and functional bureaucracy, one that makes the individual’s life better and dealing with the government easy. The mess in America — our own mess notwithstanding — reveals just how hard it is to make institutions work and keep political appointees from destroying them.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025
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READING FOR PLEASURE
Shehzad Sharjeel // DAWN 15 February 2025
IMAGINE if Ambedkar could not find living quarters in Baroda, whose ruler had bankrolled his foreign education on the condition that he returned and served the state. What are lesser mortals of any faith when a complex admixture of caste, cause, and majoritarianism comes into play? The Aam Aadmi Party has lost the Delhi elections to the BJP. The nuances of its rise and slippage is a topic for another piece, but, rest assured, communal politics and the party’s stance on it has a role to play in its recent loss at the polls.
Renowned diplomat-turned-politician Mani Shankar Aiyar was asked by the residents’ association of a building in Delhi to condemn his daughter’s criticism of Ram Mandir’s consecration in Ayodhya last year. His daughter was advised to leave the building if she did not rescind her criticism. Ambedkar, who authored the Indian constitution, was thrown out of the only hostel he could find in the middle of the night because he was a Dalit.
Discrimination based on religion, caste, class, culture, colour, language, status, etc, is a universal problem. Islam isn’t supposed to have a caste system or clergy, yet its adherents espouse both. Religion may not have been the criterion for letting a house in Pakistan, but sect has crept into the list of criteria. Shops are known to have refused to serve customers belonging to particular sects.
Class, it seems, is both a divider and a unifying force.
Rental advertisements for ‘foreigners only’ or ‘no singles’ are not uncommon. Talk to single men, and they would have you believe that women have it easy when it comes to renting. However, single women face a double whammy: they undergo much stricter scrutiny and are not allowed to have male visitors.
Marriage is a different story altogether; the end of endogamy is nowhere in sight. Class, it seems, is both a divider and a unifying force. A rich bride or groom from outside the group’s identity is more likely to be accepted than someone from a humble background. In other words, where wealth and status are not in the mix, prejudice against the ‘other’ will almost always prevail.
There, however, is a limit to what wealth and status can achieve in terms of acceptability, and layers of hostility towards the ‘outsider’ increase. For instance, while a gori bride will most likely cause puffed chests, a white groom will only be a cause célèbre. However, compared to a ‘kala,’ a ‘gora’ is considered less of a scandal. A person of colour can gain bonus points if they convert to Islam.
Christian partners inch into the sphere of acceptability; this concession is, however, denied to the Jewish people. The word ‘yehudi’ is hurled as an insult, which evinces a more energetic reaction than any insinuation about the target’s lineage.
In this tug between biases, gender plays a very significant role, twisting bigotry into a stronger chord instead of fraying it. A foreign bride is accepted into the family or community more quickly than a foreign groom. This particular strain of bias is almost universal, and the subcontinent is no different. In a society as polite as the Japanese, ‘gaijin’, a foreigner is somewhat tolerable, but one with a Japanese woman by his side is properly loathed. We, too, will take a Nusrat, Sonia, Jemima, or a Shaniera any day, but a George or a Graham is a different story. They can adopt the country or convert all they like; they cannot even dream of running for public office. Foreign brides seem to have an edge here; even so, they can only contest an Amethi or a Larkana; they can never vie for the top office.
Too much has already been said on social media about the African American woman Onijah Robinson, who landed in Karachi in search of love. Her virtual love interest developed cold feet. Even the urban legend, where a volunteer groom would always step forward when the enlisted band, baja and barat failed to appear did not play out. Imagine the stampede of wannabe saviours had she been of a different race. It would be a scene out of a regular if not the Maha Kumbh Mela.
In southeastern Nigeria, it is customary for the bride to search for her groom among the wedding guests with a goblet of palm wine. Knowing her groom full well, she playfully moves in various directions among the cheerful crowd. At one such event, as the bride moved toward a swarthy South Asian, the entire gathering protested aloud, “No, don’t offer it to the gora!” Shades of biases may be relative, but their presence is absolute. As February happens to be the month of both his birth and death, let us end with the most famous question by Narendra Sharma; ‘Yeshomati maiya say bole Nandlala, ‘Radhakiyun gori, mein kiyun kala? (Lord Krishna asks his mother, why Radha is fair and I am dark?).
The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025
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• Saudi summit on Feb 20 to discuss various draft ideas for enclave; one proposal suggests sidelining of Hamas
• 369 Palestinians to be freed today in exchange for three Israeli prisoners
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is spearheading urgent Arab efforts to develop a plan for Gaza’s future as a counter to US President Donald Trump’s ambition for a Middle East Riviera cleared of its Palestinian inhabitants, sources said.
Meanwhile, Hamas on Friday said Israel is expected to release 369 Palestinians in exchange for three Israeli prisoners on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia will host the leaders of four Arab countries on Feb 20 to discuss Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza, a source said.
The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE will attend the summit, to take place ahead of an Arab League meeting in Cairo one week later on the same issue. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas may also attend.
Draft ideas will be discussed at the Feb 20 meeting in Riyadh. Proposals may involve a Gulf-led reconstruction fund and a deal to sideline Hamas.
Trump sparked a global outcry with his proposal for the US to “take over” the Gaza Strip. Arab countries have come together in a rare united front, outraged by the idea of displacing the Palestinians.
For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement of their ancestors during Israel’s creation in 1948.
Reuters spoke to 15 sources in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere to build a picture of the hurried efforts by Arab states to pull together existing proposals into a new plan they can sell to the US president.
One Arab government source said at least four proposals had already been drafted for Gaza’s future, but an Egyptian proposal was now emerging as central to the Arab push for an alternative to Trump’s idea.
The Egyptian proposal involves forming a national Palestinian committee to govern Gaza without Hamas involvement, international participation in reconstruction without displacing the Palestinians, and movement towards a two-state solution, three Egyptian security sources said.
“We are telling the Americans we have a plan that works. Our meeting with MbS is going to be critical. He is taking the lead,” said a Jordanian official.
The White House did not respond to several requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Palestinian groups in Gaza said they would release hostages Iair Horn, US-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen and Russian-Israeli Alexandre Sasha Troufanov on Saturday, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas said Israel was expected to release 369 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025
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