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Govt should handle conflicts, foreign aid properly
 * Speakers
at ‘Citizenship — Intra and Interstate Conflict and the Political
Economy of Aid’ evaluate national challenges, suggest solutions
LAHORE: The government must deal with intra-state and inter-state
conflicts properly, and evolve a transparent mechanism to deal with
the distribution of foreign aid, speakers at a seminar said here on
Friday.
Speaking at ‘Citizenship – Intra and Interstate Conflict and the
Political Economy of Aid’, a seminar organised by the ASR Resource
Centre, participants said that a huge amount of foreign aid was
flowing into Pakistan, but the people had no idea what the source of
this money was and where it was all being spent. They said these
questions should be debated in the National Assembly, and called for
the inclusion of foreign aid in the current budget session of the
National Assembly.
Presenting an overview of the situation, ASR’s Executive Director
and rights activist Nighat Saeed Khan said not all citizens of
Pakistan were equal, and those from different social strata had a
different relationship with the state. Not everyone, she said, could
aspire to or reach the highest of state offices. She lamented the
fact that the manifesto promises of the All-India Muslim League, a
document that enshrined the original values of an independent state
for the Muslims, had still not been realised.
Pakistan, she argued, was one of the only countries in the world
where all four federating units or provinces had international
borders, such was it’s geo-strategic importance. During the
Musharraf regime, the democratic process in the country had been
derailed, and a large chunk of the constitution had become
undemocratic over time. There is still debate on whether to restore
the 1973 Constitution in its original spirit, or to revert to the
document as it stood before the military coup of 1999, she said.
In Balochistan, she said, cracks had begun to emerge and, among
other issues, a growing divide between Pashtuns and the localo
Baloch had begun to emerge. The Baloch were becoming a minority in
their own province. She also called for national debate on the
crisis of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and asked why they
were not being allowed to settle temporarily in Sindh and Punjab.
Giving a Sindhi perspective, ASR member Zulfiqar Halipoto said that
things had changed with the tragic demise of Benazir Bhutto. The
people of Sindh, he said, considered her the last great hope for the
province, and with her gone, there was a great vacuum, since no
other leader, out of the current stock, could match her calibre or
stature. There was now a huge gap between the centre and the
province, and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) had emerged as a
disruptive force in Sindhi politics. He said the MQM’s influence was
increasing to dangerous levels, which was unsettling because the
party did not seem to have a consistent political ideology, and
changed its stance frequently. They are acting more like a pressure
groiup than a political party, he said. With no great national
leader to rally behind, nationalist parties were starting to exploit
the IDPs issue, encouraging separatist sentiment, he said.
Losing hope: Amar Sindhu, another rights activist from Sindh, said
the current government was practically Sindh’s last hope, but people
had started loosing faith in it too. The ethnic violence in Karachi
was a cause for great concern for everyone, he said, adding that
with the amount of munitions available to all sides, the violence in
Karachi could easily spiral out of control. During the open house
session, Husain Naqi, senior journalist and human rights activist,
said the IDPs would ideally head for areas where they could have a
shot at finding employment. The displaced tended to move towards
Karachi because it was the only industrial hub in the country. He
pointed out that international opinion was wary of Pakistan,
especially after the bungled-up quake relief campaign of 2005. Those
that had helped us out were doing so to further their own interests,
he said, citing Saudi Arabian aid for seminaries, and American aid
to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda as examples. Sectors such as
development and education were the actual areas where aid money
should be spent, he said.
Talking about the political economy of foreign aid, Nighat Saeed
Khan said the Friends of Pakistan forum believed that poverty was
the sole cause of the Talibanisation in Pakistan. She said they were
pumping money into the places where Taliban had already taken hold,
but were ignoring impoverished areas such as southern Punjab, which
could become a nursery for militancy. She said a huge chunk of aid
money went back to donor countries themselves and was adamant that
parliament should ensure that a transparent aid mechanism was
evolved.
Daily Times: Staff Report:
Saturday, June 13, 2009 |
