Experts demand local elections in Pakistan tribal areas

Power to the people! Pressing demands for local bodies’ elections in tribal areas.

Politicians and social activists reiterated demand for local representation.

PESHAWAR: Political leaders and social activists from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) reached a consensus over their demand for local government (LG) elections in the tribal areas at a conference organised by the FATA Research Centre (FRC) in Peshawar.

Speaking to the media after the roundtable conference, FRC President Dr Ashraf Ali said attendees had reached the consensus that residents of Fata have been deprived of their basic rights for long enough. According to Ali, the people had been suppressed, and the state’s “deprivation policy had created a vacuum, which is now being filled by militants.”

He said the time has come to give Fata the right to vote and elect their own representatives at a grass-roots level. Ali said the manifestos of all parties state they will bring Fata into the political mainstream – the first stage of which is empowerment for the locals.

“Unfortunately, the political parties of Pakistan are silent over the issue. If LG elections are held all over the country, why should they not be held in Fata as well?”

Dr Ali, explaining the format for elections, insisted there must be three tiers to the government: union councils, tehsil councils and agency councils. A Fata council was also suggested at the conference.

“A political agent is the uncrowned prince of an agency,” he said. “Until his powers are significantly reduced, this system will not work.”

Flanked by Awami National Party leader from Bajaur Agency Sheikh Janzada and a political analyst from Mohmand Agency, Said Nazeer, Dr Ali reminded participants about Fata’s natural resources. When the people’s representatives are given actual governance rights, Fata will not only fulfil its own needs but cater to the rest of Pakistan as well, claimed Ali.

To a question about the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), Ali told The Express Tribune it is a fact that FCR is not progressive for the region. He claimed Fata parliamentarians held no power over legislation and were given meagre resources to work with. However, Ali expressed hope that democracy would gradually be strengthened in the area.

FATA Reforms leader Zahir Shah Safi told participants though the law and order in the region is not stable, it can be overcome through proper representation. Safi emphasised elections must be held through the election commission and not political agents.

Local bodies elections demanded in FATA

The conference, aimed at generating a debate on the importance of local government system in FATA, attracted tribal elders, Maliks, academia, media persons, civil society organizations, politicians, professionals, political experts, analysts and members of various social and development forums to deliberate upon the need for enactment and implementation of an effective local government system in the war-ravaged FATA region.

PESHAWAR: The political and judicial vacuum coupled with bad governance and massive corruption in state institutions ultimately resulted in creating a gap between the state and society in today’s volatile tribal belt of Pakistan. This widening gap and the resultant sense of deprivation and frustration amongst the masses finally led to their exclusion from political process that left the space empty for the militant Taliban to capitalize on. This was the crux of a conference held under the auspices of FATA Research Center (FRC) at a local hotel here.

FATA Research Center (FRC) is a non-partisan and non-political independent research organization that focuses on FATA to broaden knowledge base and help the concerned stakeholders better understand this war-ravaged area of Pakistan with independent research and analysis.

While referring to the recommendations put forward by the joint committee on FATA reforms, the speakers asked if the 11 mainstream political parties were all one voice on holding the local bodies elections, then what stop the central government to come up with a scheduled program for holding the local bodies elections in the volatile tribal areas.

The conference, aimed at generating a debate on the importance of local government system in FATA, attracted tribal elders, Maliks, academia, media persons, civil society organizations, politicians, professionals, political experts, analysts and members of various social and development forums to deliberate upon the need for enactment and implementation of an effective local government system in the war-ravaged FATA region.

The participants unanimously called for immediately holding of the local bodies elections in FATA.

The participants unanimously called for immediately holding of the local bodies elections in FATA. While stressing the need for holding the local bodies elections, the participants questioned the sincerity of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) led government in honoring its commitment for mainstreaming the region and giving peace a chance.

While referring to the recommendations put forward by the joint committee on FATA reforms, the speakers asked if the 11 mainstream political parties were all one voice on holding the local bodies elections, then what stop the central government to come up with a scheduled program for holding the local bodies elections in the volatile tribal areas.

It’s an irony that even in the 21st century the people of FATA are still deprived of their fundamental democratic rights. People have little or at times no access to basic facilities due to which they have developed a sense of frustration and deprivation. And they have almost been excluded from the political process. This could be gauged from the fact that literacy rate stands at 17 % for male while the female education ratio is only 3%.

Deliberating upon the pros and cons of the proposed local government drafts of 2002 and 2012 and recommendations put forward in the newly proposed draft, the conference pointed out that due to their exclusion from the political process, the people have lost confidence over state institutions.

And that’s why people have started taking law into their hands. People could be seen in the busy bazaars of Karachi beating, and even killing culprits after apprehending them instead of handing them over to the state institutions. It was the need of the hour to restore people’s confidence over state institutions. And that was possible only when the people are given a sense of ownership by making them part of the decision making process.

To materialize this idea, the participants were all on the same page to say that the effective local government system was a must in the volatile tribal areas.

While urging the central government the speakers also called upon the mainstream political parties and their leadership to join their strengths for a peaceful, tolerant, progressive and integrated FATA by introducing an effective local government system in the war-stricken FATA to put the region back on the track to progress and prosperity.

Liquor, girls being brought to parliament lodges, alleges Dasti

ISLAMABAD: Independent Member National Assembly (MNA) Jamshed Dasti has made shocking claims in the lower house of the parliament, saying that liquor worth Rs 40 to 50 million is annually supplied to the parliament lodges.

Addressing the National Assembly session here Thursday, Dasti put forward a demand to hold screening tests of the parliamentarians.

He claimed that girls have also been brought to the parliament lodges for ‘immoral activities.’ There is always a smell of hashish in the lodges, he added.

Acting Speaker Naeema Kishore turning off Jamshed Dasti’s microphone said that he could have informed the speaker about details in his chamber along with the evidence supporting his claims.

National Assembly Speaker, Ayaz Sadiq said Dasti should provide proof of these allegations. He added that if the allegations are true, action would be taken against the perpetrators. If the allegations are false, Ayzaz Sadiq said parliament would decide on Dasti’s punishment.

China's Growing Stake in Stability

China’s growing investment in industries worldwide chills those who see in it the specter of a global economic behemoth. But there could be more reason to welcome than fear this new role. By giving China a greater stake in global and regional stability and prosperity, these investments could ease the tensions created by China’s geopolitical activities.

China has had a major role in world financial markets for years. But investment in foreign businesses by its public and private companies could soon overtake foreign investment in China, said Shen Danyang, a Commerce Ministry spokesman. Direct investments abroad not only create employment and wealth in the recipient countries, but, if they are large enough, they can bind national economies and political interests, stabilizing relationships.

The Lenovo Group, a major computer manufacturer, recently made acquisitions worth more than $5 billion to push into the smartphone business in the United States. The company is based in Beijing but has a hub in Morrisville, N.C. Xu Weiping, the creator of huge business parks in China, is investing $1.6 billion to turn the abandoned Royal Albert Dock in London into the main European hub for Chinese companies. He said more than 60 Chinese businesses had agreed to take space in the development.

Last week, the French government and the Chinese state-owned Dongfeng Motor agreed to buy $4 billion in shares of the troubled French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën. The investment provides Dongfeng with technological upgrades and Peugeot with capital to restructure so it can become competitive again. The deal raises China’s stake not only in Peugeot but in the health of the French economy and in its relationship with the French government.

Chinese investment in Japan has been in the billions for several years, despite tensions over conflicting claims about islets in the East China Sea that some strategic analysts fear could lead to war. But it makes little sense to go to war while increasing investments that could be confiscated during a conflict. Even though China does not seem worried about stirring up this rivalry, further Chinese investment in Japan should motivate China to tone down its aggressiveness out of self-interest.

Deepening economic integration can act as a counterweight to international political difficulties. Japanese and European governments should take heart in the flow of Chinese capital that provides the much-needed investment in their current struggles to fight deflation. Conversely, any nationalistic effort to restrict the flow of Chinese capital would heighten anxieties to no one’s benefit.

U.S. Moves Toward Atlantic Oil Exploration, Stirring Debate Over Sea Life

By MICHAEL WINES

The Interior Department opened the door on Thursday to the first searches in decades for oil and gas off the Atlantic coast, recommending that undersea seismic surveys proceed, though with a host of safeguards to shield marine life from much of their impact.

The recommendation is likely to be adopted after a period of public comment and over objections by environmental activists who say it will be ruinous for the climate and sea life alike.

The American Petroleum Institute called the recommendation a critical step toward bolstering the nation’s energy security, predicting that oil and gas production in the region could create 280,000 new jobs and generate $195 billion in private investment.

Activists were livid. Allowing exploration “could be a death sentence for many marine mammals, and is needlessly turning the Atlantic Ocean into a blast zone,” Jacqueline Savitz, a vice president at the conservation group Oceana, said in a statement on Thursday.

Oceana and other groups have campaigned for months against the Atlantic survey plans, citing Interior Department calculations that the intense noise of seismic exploration could kill and injure thousands of dolphins and whales.  

But while the assessment released on Thursday repeats those estimates, it also largely dismisses them, stating that they employ multiple worst-case scenarios and ignore measures by humans and the mammals themselves to avoid harm.

Many marine scientists say the estimates of death and injury are at best seriously inflated. “There’s no argument that some of these sounds can harm animals, but it’s blown out of proportion,” Arthur N. Popper, who heads the University of Maryland’s laboratory of aquatic bioacoustics, said in an interview. “It’s the Flipper syndrome, or ‘Free Willy.’ ”

How the noise affects sea mammals’ behavior in the long term — an issue about which little is known — is a much greater concern, he said.

A formal decision to proceed with surveys would reopen a swath off the East Coast stretching from Delaware to Cape Canaveral, Fla., that has been closed to petroleum exploration since the early 1980s.

Actual drilling of test wells could not begin until a White House ban on production in the Atlantic expires in 2017, and even then, only after the government agrees to lease ocean tracts to oil companies, an issue officials have barely begun to study.

The petroleum industry has sunk 51 wells off the East Coast — none of them successful enough to begin production — in decades past. But the Interior Department said in 2011 that 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 312 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could lie in the exploration area, and nine companies have already applied for permits to begin surveys.

President Obama committed in 2010 to allowing oil and gas surveys along the same stretch of the Atlantic, and the government had planned to lease tracts off the Virginia coast for exploration in 2011. But those plans collapsed after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in April 2010, and the government later banned activity in the area until 2017.

Thirty-four species of whales and dolphins, including six endangered whales, live in the survey area. Environmental activists say seismic exploration could deeply imperil blue and humpback whales as well as the North American right whale, which numbers in the hundreds.

Surveys generally use compressed-air guns that produce repeated bursts of sound as loud as a howitzer, often for weeks or months on end. The Interior Department’s estimate said that up to 27,000 dolphins and 4,600 whales could die or be injured annually during exploration periods, and that three million more would suffer various behavioral changes.

But many scientists say death and injury are not a major concern. Decades of seismic exploration worldwide have yet to yield a confirmed whale death, the government says.

Loud sounds like seismic blasts appear to cause stress to marine mammals, just as they do to humans. Experts say seismic exploration could alter feeding and mating habits, for example, or simply drown out whales’ and dolphins’ efforts to communicate or find one another. But the true impact has yet to be measured; there is no easy way to gauge the long-term effect of sound on animals that are constantly moving.“It is quite unlikely that most sounds, in realistic scenarios, will directly cause injury or mortality to marine mammals,” Brandon Southall, perhaps the best-known expert on the issue, wrote in an email exchange. “Most of the issues now really have to do with what are the sublethal effects — what are the changes in behavior that may happen.” Dr. Southall is president of SEA Incorporated, an environmental consultancy in Santa Cruz, Calif.

“These animals are living for decades, if not centuries,” said Aaron Rice, the director of Cornell University’s bioacoustics research program. “The responses you see are not going to manifest themselves in hours or days or weeks. We’re largely speculating as to what the consequences will be. But in my mind, the absence of data doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.”

Guns, roses and good sense

Kamila Hyat

With the misguided attempts at talks with the Taliban over, as jets, ‘copters and troops take over from the negotiators, the present moment is one dominated by the military. We cannot know how long this will last, what the outcome will be and if we really have any hope of doing away with a band of frenzied fanatics who openly dismiss the constitution and seek to replace it with their own, particularly obscanturist version of Shariah law. 

This idea is of course terrifying – perhaps most of all for women, members of minority groups and indeed all others who would like to see their country move forward, and not backwards.

The sight of military aircraft bombing settlements in its own country is not a pleasant one. As the ISPR press releases come in, they do not say what civilian casualties may have been suffered. Some, of course, are inevitable. But we should also be thinking more about these people: why have they been ignored for so long and why does no one – the government, the media, the commentators – say much about them? 

The people of the tribal areas, estimated to number about 3.40 million, have largely been left out of the equation. Had they been considered early on, pulled into the mainstream of the country, and given the same rights as its other citizens, perhaps we could even have avoided the emergence of the Taliban who have fed off the desperation and deprivation of people to build their own strength.

But when we do hear the voices of people from the tribal areas, they ask why they have been neglected. They ask why they have been thrown to the Taliban and no heed paid to the conditions under which they live. We have occasionally heard from those forced to flee the Taliban and stay away from their homes for years because they have opposed them in some way. But we do not hear often enough from these people. As a result we see them as abstracts, or persons who simply do not exist at all.

Whatever the outcome of the current conflict, the fate of these people – and others in the conflict zone – needs to be considered. No matter how well they are carried out, and how effectively we remove from our midst a band of criminals who use violence to blackmail and have contributed enormously to the expansion of crime and insecurity in our country, the fact is that the guns will never be enough. We need other weapons, other tools, to turn to and the most powerful of these would be development. 

The Fata areas, and also other zones of conflict within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have some of the worst statistics when it comes to education, health and other statistics. In parts of Fata the literacy rate stands at barely 15 percent; a mere one percent or less for women. Many people living there have never encountered a doctor. In this situation moving forward is near impossible.

What we need, alongside the military operation that had at any rate seemed inevitable, is a huge developmental initiative. This should have come a long time ago. Yes, some efforts were made in Swat but they were faltering and have not really changed very much in terms of the lives people lead. In Fata, we need to see roads made, schools built, clinics and hospitals put in place – and perhaps most important of all livelihood and opportunity offered to people. These people also need security and the basic rights enshrined in our constitution – which are denied to them.

This is something we need to start thinking about right now. The building works and other efforts should be started as soon as possible. People need to be convinced that the state, society and government see them as real beings and not as nonexistent entities who simply exist somewhere alongside the Taliban. We have heard politicians say that these people support the militants: but there is much evidence to show that just the opposite is true. Many seek peace and that is their priority.

Alongside efforts such as these, we also need to alter mindsets. Currently, some very dangerous ones have developed. There are people who actually believe that the Taliban are not a force that needs to be removed from the scene. Of course this does not need to happen by physically annihilating them. There must be a process of trial and fair play. If security forces are indeed guilty of taking away militants and killing them as they have been accused of doing, they too need to answer for their crimes. When an authority of the state engages in violations such as these, it lowers itself to the level of the criminals itself. There is then nothing left to differentiate between them.

The business of persuading people to change their minds about how they see militancy, religion and other issues linked in to it is complex. This could prove to be the biggest challenge we face. It is true that the Taliban have considerable support, much of it in the Punjab which has of course never lived under their rule. But there are also a large number of people who simply want to go about their lives in a normal fashion, and who distance themselves from the whole ideology put forward by the Taliban. Their views need to be strengthened. 

The role of the media in this has been unfortunate, with the retrogressive line of thought emerging far too often and the most hard-line clerics given space to say what they believe even when this violates the law of the land.

We need to think about our future. What kind of country do we want? What kind of land do we want our children to grow up in? It would certainly not be the one that exists today. This is most true for those living in conflict zones. To alter this reality, a multi-pronged attack is needed. We need discussion, debate, consensus building but we also need to convince people to take pride in all that their culture and heritage offer. In no way does this link back to the greed of the Taliban. 

Textbooks, efforts at state level and other innovative approaches need to be adopted to alter the change we have been seeing seep into society. We must remember that it is as yet only a leak. There are many people, among them rural villagers and the poor, who share nothing in common with the militants. The fact that they have no voice in their own country is unfortunate.

They need to be given this voice. Their views need to be projected more forcefully so that we can all hear them. Everywhere in the country, more and more girls are going to school; Pakistani music has made its mark on the world as has its art. These are realities we too often forget. 

We need to project them as one way of stating who we really are and breaking free of the chains that have pulled us into a civil war and threaten to create even greater damage in many different ways as they continue to drift through society, taking hold of those who are in some way uncertain of where they stand or what they want.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

Origins of militancy KHURRAM HUSAIN

THE strong demands for military action against the TTP have put one party and its position regarding militancy in a tight spot.

The PTI of Mr Imran Khan, which made a large platform out of opposing action and promoting talks as the only way to deal with the terrorists, is now searching for a way to climb down, at least partially, from that position so as to not appear totally out of step with the mood prevailing in the country.

For instance, the party’s senior vice president, Asad Umar, argued recently that the fight against terrorism and extremism is not just a military battle, but “a battle for the soul of Pakistan”. In this battle, he said, “[w]e have to go to the root causes of why and where such intolerant behaviour is taking shape and dry up the swamp”.

So what are the root causes of terrorist violence in Pakistan? “The state of Pakistan has been getting weaker as the years go by,” he argues, before making a list of the areas where weakening state capacity is directly responsible for empowering the terrorists and their hate-filled narrative. The areas he lists are many, and they include intelligence and law enforcement capacity, growing “injustice and inequality” in society, “elite capture and abuse of state institutions”.

These dysfunctions “make disenfranchised youth vulnerable to messages of hate and intolerance” he says, arguing that “the people of the country are in an angry mood”.

The narrative that emerges goes something like this: injustice in society and a dysfunctional economy creates anger, and that anger finds a voice in terrorism and the voice exerts a pull on disenfranchised youth who take up arms against an unjust order.

There is something seductive about this analysis. In a sense it says that there is symmetry between the anger you and I feel at the state of affairs in our country and the anger that animates the Taliban.

The truth, unfortunately, is far simpler. Terror groups are thriving in our country for one simple reason: they enjoy protection and patronage from the highest authorities of our land.

And this is the big problem in the narrative that unemployment and poverty are the causes behind terrorism: a quarter century long history of building and funding and protecting terrorist outfits as proxy fighters for demented regional ambitions is totally glided over in this telling of the tale.

The myriad dysfunctions of our economy and society are very real, and they indeed serve as breeding grounds for violent and antisocial behaviour. But every bit of research on this subject leads to the conclusion that an angry and disenfranchised youth is more likely to take up a life of street crime and armed robbery than embrace holy war against the world.

Ideological fighters of the sort found in terrorist outfits have other origins. Ideological fighters always require state support to sustain themselves and carry on their fight. Usually this support comes from outside the country, by neighbours or other great powers that have an interest in overthrowing the regime that runs the country in question. But in our case the support has been internal, since these groups were raised to wage proxy war against neighbouring countries.

The argument that creating smoothly functioning economic and social institutions is the best way to conduct counter-insurgency is in fact an old one.

Early in the 1960s, Walt Rostow, one of the earliest pioneers of development thinking, wrote a short essay titled Development as counter-insurgency in which he had argued that economic growth creates a large demand for labour which deprives insurgent groups of recruits. Since then, the argument has been repeated in many forms in many forums, most recently in the debates around the Kerry Lugar Bill.

The argument was originally directed at the question facing the US early in its career as a superpower: how to demobilise the mass movements that had swept away the European colonial empires in the decades following the Second World War.

But our situation today is very different. We are not looking to demobilise a mass movement. In fact, it’s not even a movement that we face, the Taliban are not the careers of a popular grievance. What we’re facing is a group of ideologically indoctrinated militias that were raised and trained by our armed forces to perform a certain function — the clandestine projection of power in the region — and that have now spun out of the control of their benefactors and patrons.

The economic and social dysfunctions of our society didn’t create this monster, in fact if anything the reverse is true: these dysfunctions are a legacy of this policy of cultivating extremist militias as tools. No amount of social and economic reform will cause this monster of terrorism to lay down arms, and economic growth is unlikely to deplete it of recruits since unlike a mass mobilisation, it doesn’t need recruits on any significant scale.

Let’s not drag the economy into this. Let’s not change the subject at a critical point in the conversation. Fighting the menace of extremism begins with a simple step: we must dissociate from it.

There is no sense in wagging our finger at the economy using one hand while with the other we hold as partners the very same militants and their apologists who have made our lives so difficult for so many years now.

The writer is a business journalist and 2013-2014 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington D.C.

Style of governance matters

I.A. REHMAN

THE mystery about the system of governance Pakistan is now following needs to be resolved as quickly as possible if the state is to be saved from suffering avoidable embarrassment and harm.

Theoretically Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy. That means the government exercises its authority through the cabinet of ministers, which is answerable collectively to parliament. And there the locus of the state’s authority lies. It will be difficult for anyone to claim that this fundamental principle of parliamentary government is evident in practice.

The opposition’s complaint that the government was not rendering parliament its due was not confined to the prime minister’s reluctance to attend its sessions, though in any democracy this would be considered a serious deviation from form. The latest addition to their list of grievances is the unexplained about-turn in the government policy on Syria.

Until a week ago, Pakistan had declined to take sides in the Syrian conflict, maintaining all the time that the issue had to be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people. A radical shift in policy became known only through the joint statement issued at the end of the Saudi crown prince’s visit wherein Pakistan came out in support of Bashar al-Assad’s immediate ouster. The scale of the shift can be gauged from the fact that while demanding a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan never called for a regime change there.

No explanation has been offered for this sudden change of gear. The statement of the leader of the house in the Senate, that suggestions regarding any change of course were mere propaganda, did little credit to the experienced legislator once hailed as Gen Ziaul Haq’s opening batsman. The demand for a full dress debate in parliament — and there is no justification for a closed session on this issue — is unexceptionable. There is more to the matter than the fate of Bashar al-Assad. The issue is rooted in the inter-Arab struggle for supremacy, and suspicions of an anti-Iran undercurrent cannot be discounted. Pakistan cannot afford to take sides in intra-Arab quarrels nor can it be a party to any country’s intrigue against Iran. And only parliament, after a thorough debate, can define the national course.

Regarding relations with Iran, the exchanges on the case of the Iranian guards’ abduction did not enhance Islamabad’s reputation for maturity. The Iranian threat to cross the border in hot pursuit was unjustifiable but the Pakistani spokesperson’s rejoinder was not proper either.

Later on, it was suggested that the Iranian guards might have been killed by an organisation called Jaish al-Adl and therefore Tehran should strengthen its border security. The stakes in Pakistan-Iran relations are high enough to prohibit imprudent verbal duels. Regardless of Tehran’s duty to defend itself, Pakistan cannot ignore any terrorist activities on its side of the border.

Then, what is the policy now on the Taliban threat to Pakistan? The prime minister came to the National Assembly to announce his decision to offer the Taliban negotiations. The talks have run aground while air power is being used to attack the Taliban hideouts. Was it not necessary to take parliament into confidence? Was the cabinet consulted before the prime minister authorised the armed forces to launch air strikes? Bombardment of Pakistani sites and the people is a serious matter and should be subject to parliament’s scrutiny.

There are many other signs of the government’s discomfort with the principle of parliament’s right to oversee its actions. The privatisation of state assets is being carried out with reckless abandon and no heed is paid to either economic experts’ reservations or protest by labour.

There are reasons to suspect a deliberate downgrading of institutions. The Foreign Office’s position is compromised by the refusal to name a foreign minister and the reasons for denying Mr Sartaj Aziz the status of a cabinet minister is beyond comprehension. It could be argued that the Election Commission, the Higher Education Commission and the office of the federal ombudsman have similarly been downgraded.

No responsible citizen can be happy on learning that the cell for disappearances in the attorney-general’s office is being wound up. For one thing, the issue of disappearances is a live one and cannot be blinked at; for another, the defence ministry’s opposition to efforts to resolve the matter will bring it under an unfavourable cloud.

The dangerous consequences of this drift can easily be identified. Democracy flourishes when governance carries the sanction of the people. It is necessary for the government to function under public consent because the people’s sovereign rights cannot be ignored. Besides, consultative processes offer safeguards against errors of judgement all human agencies are prone to.

Over the past couple of decades attempts have been made to move away from majoritarian rule by taking all elements in parliament on board, and now it is necessary to move towards rule by consensus by increasing the possibilities of the government’s discourse with the people. Failure to do so will hamper Pakistan’s transition towards a genuine democracy and widen the gulf between the government and the masses. No political authority can survive such situations for long.

The present government has the difficult task of seeing the country through a variety of crises. It enjoys considerable goodwill but it needs more of it. To ensure that it continues to enjoy the people’s support it must not allow its actions to appear arbitrary or whimsical. The style of governance matters much more than is generally realised.

MIDDLE EAST Shrugging Off Past Setbacks, Obama Plans Personal Role in Middle East Peace Bid

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — President Obama, after avoiding a hands-on role in Middle East peacemaking since the setbacks of his first term, plans to plunge back into the effort, his advisers said this week, starting with an urgent appeal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

When he welcomes Mr. Netanyahu to the White House on Monday, these officials said, Mr. Obama will press him to agree to a framework for a conclusive round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that is being drafted by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Later in March, Mr. Obama is likely to meet with the Palestinianpresident, Mahmoud Abbas, to make the same pitch. The goal, officials said, is to announce the framework, a kind of road map for further talks, by the end of April, the nine-month deadline that Mr. Kerry set last summer for a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

For Mr. Obama, the decision to thrust himself into the talks is fraught with risk. He made Middle East diplomacy a centerpiece of his first term, bringing Israelis and Palestinians together at the White House in September 2010 for face-to-face talks, only to watch those negotiations collapse three months later in acrimony.

Since his re-election, Mr. Obama has left the Israeli-Palestinian issue almost entirely to Mr. Kerry, who has made the process a consuming priority, making nearly a dozen trips to the region and holding countless meetings with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas in an attempt to bridge gaps that have separated the two sides for more than three decades.

“Now is a very timely opportunity for him to get involved,” a senior official said of Mr. Obama, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. If the two sides agree to the framework, which would set out general terms on issues like Israel’s security and the borders of a future Palestinian state, the negotiations could be extended, with a new target of completing a treaty by the end of 2014.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama never lost interest in the diplomatic effort, pointing to an impassioned speech he gave in Jerusalem last March. But after his failed effort in 2010, and the failure of a follow-up push in May 2011, Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Netanyahu soured, and other issues, like Iran’s nuclear program, pushed peacemaking aside. With his own re-election bid nearing, he showed little appetite for expending further political capital on the issue.

The challenge for the White House has been to redeploy the president only when it is believed he can make a critical difference. With Mr. Kerry’s self-imposed deadline nearing, and with little indication that Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas have resolved key differences, that moment is now, the officials said. “The president wouldn’t want to run any risk that it was the lack of his involvement that would make the difference between success and failure,” a senior official said.

It is far from clear, however, that Mr. Obama can pull off what has so far eluded his secretary of state — not to mention several of his Oval Office predecessors. While Mr. Kerry and his special envoy, Martin S. Indyk, have held intensive meetings with Israelis and Palestinians in recent days, the two sides have not met face to face for weeks. That suggests, analysts say, that there has been scant progress in closing some of the core differences, like the status of Jerusalem or the contours of a new Palestinian state. It is difficult to know the exact status of the talks because the participants have largely kept a promise not to air the details publicly.

Skeptics say Mr. Kerry’s decision to opt for a framework is itself a sort of concession — or at best, a way to buy time. Some worry that if Mr. Obama puts his prestige on the line to coax approval for an interim step, he will have less leverage to push through a final deal.

Continue reading the main story

Administration officials said the framework will cover all the major final-status issues, though Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas will be able to express reservations about individual provisions, so long, an official said, “as they don’t vitiate the framework.”

American officials trying to sell the framework to both sides have shared some details with Jewish groups. The document foresees the creation of a security zone along the Jordan River that would be fortified with high-tech fences, electronic sensors and unmanneddrones, to protect Israel from attacks. But it will not deal specifically with the status of Jerusalem, claimed as a capital by both Israelis and Palestinians.

“Kerry is running into much heavier water on the substance,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator who is a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Either he feels the need, or they do, to deploy the president.”

On one level, Mr. Miller said, the president’s involvement is a promising sign, “because it shows he is more risk-ready.” On another, he said, it underscores the hurdles to even a “generalized framework,” which he said raised the question, “What is it going to take to get to a comprehensive deal if the president has to do heavy lifting?”

By re-engaging, Mr. Obama may deflect some of the blows his secretary of state has taken lately. When Mr. Kerry warned last month that if Israel did not resolve the Palestinian issue, it would fuel an anti-Israel boycott, he was criticized by several Israeli officials, who said Israel would never negotiate under pressure. Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, was quoted by an Israeli newspaper as saying that Mr. Kerry was driven by “misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” in his quest for a peace accord. Mr. Yaalon later apologized for the remarks.

Mr. Kerry has met with skepticism from Palestinians as well. While he was meeting with Mr. Abbas last week in Paris, another senior Palestinian official, Hanan Ashrawi, offered a bleak assessment of his efforts to reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

A framework that allowed each side to voice reservations, she said, would be “self-negating,” adding, “It will be a nondocument.” Any document not based firmly on international law, she said, “will become a box of chocolates: You can pick and choose what you want.”

Ms. Ashrawi did not say the Palestinian Authority would actually reject the framework, if it came to that. But she asked: “Why have it? Is it just to maintain a semblance of progress? Is it meant to buy more time? Or is it not to admit we have failed?”

The geopolitics of the Ukraine crisis

Remi Piet Remi Piet is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Diplomacy and International Political Economy Department of International Affairs College of Arts and Sciences Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

Ukraine experienced the most dramatic weekend in European history since the fall of the communist regimes. Twenty-four hours after unprecedented violence in the streets of Kiev, which claimed the lives of 80 demonstrators and more than a dozen policemen, the situation remains uncertain.

The Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovich, has fled the capital, leaving behind him a power vacuum that will potentially reshape the balance of power in the region between Russia and the European Union. As governmental forces disappeared from the streets of Kiev, several key questions remain: Who can claim legitimate authority?  Is there a future for a united Ukraine? How will the current evolution impact Russian and European presence and control over their shared neighbourhood?Although contested by Yanukovich's supporters, the immediate political next steps have been swiftly and overwhelmingly agreed on by the Parliament: A return to the 2004 Constitution that reaffirms the authority of the Parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) over the president and new presidential elections in May. If this ensures a return to a well-known institutional framework established 10 years ago after the first ousting of Victor Yanukovich - a president that now has on his record not one but two destitutions - it does not ensure long term stability by any means.

None of the opposition parties can claim to legitimately represent the popular uprising by itself. "Fatherland", a coalition of parties behind former president Yulia Tymoshenko and led by Arseniy Yatsenyuk during her imprisonment, has traditionally been at the forefront of the contestation to Yanukovich.

However, the party was rejected by the population during the 2010 elections and the return of Tymoshenko - a polarising figure in Ukraine - on the forefront of the political stage comes with its fair share of liabilities in the attempt to reunite the country. Although it is the largest opposition political force in the Rada, "Fatherland" is also flanked by two other opposition parties who took a central part during the popular revolt on the Maidan: "Svoboda" and the "Democratic Alliance for Reform".

"Svoboda", a nationalist party led by populist leader Oleh Tiahnybok, was at the frontline of the resistance to Yanukovich's Special Forces (the Berkuts) during the last weeks of the contestation and its momentum culminated yesterday when police forces from Lviv (the birthplace of "Svoboda") joined the movement. Similarly, former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who heads the Democratic Alliance for Reform, emerged as a key opposition leader and gained credibility over the last weeks.

It remains unclear how each opposition force will manage to govern the country in coalition until the next elections or with which legitimacy since more than a hundred parliamentary members supporting Yanukovich did not take part in the most recent votes.

On the bright side, recent attempts by the recently deposed president to divide the opposition by proposing governmental positions to Yatsenyuk and Klitschko were unsuccessful. This tends to show the capacity and will of opposition leaders to work together during the conflict. Yet, now that the conflict seems to have tipped in favour of the opposition, agreeing on a common political platform including "Svoboda" will be another challenge. The opposition to the lavish lifestyle and corruption of Victor Yanukovich cannot be the only common denominator to agree on a sustainable political transition.

From instability to geopolitical fractures

The political instability in Kiev is limited however in comparison with the ever-growing rift between the Eastern and Western parts of Ukraine. The country is deeply divided between two regions which have very few in common. One is resolutely turned towards the European Union and advocates for a liberal market economy. Its majority Christian Catholic and well educated population speaks Ukrainian and has supported opposition leaders throughout the Yanukovich end of reign. On the other side of the country, Crimea and the Eastern provinces still firmly back the former president. The population there is in majority orthodox, speaks Russian and looks confidently towards Moscow for the stability and economic security it provides to Ukraine thanks to its discounted gas prices and its strong presence in the national economy. The division of the country is nothing new. The Western part of Ukraine has long been under Polish control while the Eastern part was governed by Russia. The very existence of Ukraine as a unitary country has been contested throughout modern history, as shown by the treaty of Riga in 1921 dismantling the country, and the emergence of a common Ukrainian identity only gained momentum in the 19th century. The result is that while half of the country cheered yesterday over the destitution of the president, advocating for an alliance with the European Union and away from a corrupted Russian influenced regime, the other half of the country, which followed the Kiev uprising through Russian media, still calls for a return of Yanukovich and protection from the Kremlin against fascist forces. This division also answers a wider geopolitical fracture between the European Union and Russia. What is at stake in Kiev has ramifications in the fields of energy security, regional integration and international balance of power. Ukraine is a central card in Putin's hand to revitalise the Russian strategy, hoping to renew with its status of leading geopolitical power in Europe and Asia. What is at stake in Kiev has ramifications in the fields of energy security, regional integration and international balance of power. Ukraine is a central card in Putin's hand to revitalise the Russian strategy... If Ukraine drifts towards Europe, the political project of Eurasian Union defended by Putin will be strongly challenged. More importantly, Ukraine also controls most of the transit of Russian gas towards the West and thus Putin's energy grasp over the European Union. A day after the Russian hockey team, which concentrated the hope and pride of the whole country, faced an embarrassing elimination in the Sotchi Olympic Games, Putin suffered a salient geopolitical defeat underestimating the European Union capacity to intervene. Indeed, the current evolution in Ukraine has shown that the European Union could finally lead an effective common foreign policy. After the stammering and hesitations shown over the last few months and the incapacity to agree on an ambitious European support to Ukraine, the visit to Kiev of the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland has been essential in stopping the violence and in drafting a truth agreement between both parts of the conflict. By agreeing on common sanctions towards Ukrainian oligarchs, who had much more to lose than their Belarussian counterparts three years ago in a similar situation, the European Union isolated Yanukovich from its domestic support. As a conclusion, if the future of Ukraine remains uncertain both in terms of the sustainability of its political transition and its capacity to remain united, what this crisis has demonstrated is that when united, the European Union is able to be an effective foreign policy actor and stand in front of Russia. Remi Piet is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Diplomacy and International Political Economy Department of International Affairs College of Arts and Sciences Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Another chance for change in Ukraine

Ukraine should not repeat the mistakes of its past two revolutions.

Mykola Riabchuk Mykola Riabchuk is a political and cultural analyst in Kyiv. His last book "Glechschaltung. Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012" was published in both Ukrainian and English.

Throughout the weekend Ukrainians were mourning the victims of the Maidan - more than 70 people were massacred on Thursday morning by squads of snipers who took positions on buildings overlooking the area. It is still not quite clear who ordered the blood-bath that day but the fact is that most victims got very precise shots into their heads or chests - a clear proof that the main goal of the "operation" was killing. The very labelling [Ua] of the protesters as "terrorists" was actually brand new in Ukraine. Until Yanukovych's return from Sochi, the protesters were smeared as "radicals", "fascists" and "putschists" in the pro-government propaganda machine, but the top officials refrained, in most cases, from employing this language. As long as they negotiated (or pretended to) with the leaders of opposition, they preferred to distinguish the "fascists" and "radicals" from the "healthier" part of protesters, prompting the latter to distance themselves from the former. The sudden emergence of the Putinesque term "anti-terrorist operation" in Yanukovych's post-Sochi parlance was highly ominous. It meant that everything was permitted and one should expect the worst. In 1999, as Anne Applebaum points out, "[t]he term granted Russian soldiers carte blanche to destroy Grozny, the Chechen capital". This is why so many reacted with horror when the Ukrainian defence ministry warned that the army "might be used in anti-terrorist operations on the territory of Ukraine". The path to violence The ruthless killing of peaceful protesters with no firearms has completely delegitimised the regime - both domestically and internationally. Despite the regime's expectations, the protesters in the Maidan did not run away after the bloodshed but stood defiant. New people from all over the country rushed to support them bypassing police cordons and transport blockades. Local councils in western regions took over local government, subordinated the local police, and renounced obedience to the capital. The prospect of civil war in a 45-million country[Ua] has finally forced the EU to move from words to deeds and impose sanctions on Ukrainian officials. This  - predictably -  triggered the split within the ruling party as more and more of its members rushed to distance themselves from the criminal policies of the government. Within a day the regime fell down as a house of cards, resembling the split within the Soviet leadership in 1991 and that of their East European satellites two years earlier. Back then, the Ukrainian democratic and national liberation movement was hijacked by the communist nomenklatura who got rid of their party membership cards but not of old habits. In 2004, Ukrainians made a second attempt to complete the unfinished business. They staged a spectacular non-violent Orange revolution that brought new people to power but failed to enforce the much-needed institutional changes. They allowed their leaders to play with the rules rather than by the rules. This lawless, dysfunctional democracy compromised itself to such a degree that the orange electorate punished the leaders by staying at home and watching how the supporters of Yanukovych voted him by a slight majority into office. The result was disastrous. In a less than four years, the president and his team destroyed all the trances of an independent judiciary, privatised the police and security service and effectively monopolised both Ukrainian politics and economy. The country fell in the hands of the "Family" - the president, his two sons and their close friends, mostly natives of the Donbas region. Under these circumstances, the third Ukrainian revolution turned regretfully violent, following rather Romanian than the Polish, East German and Czechoslovak pattern of peaceful transition. This was actually what Alexander Motyl, a political science professor from Rutgers University, predicted a year ago. He wrote that violence is very likely to occur when "the society is humiliated and exploited, when oppressors look vulnerable and weak, and when individuals or groups with violent agendas exist." The way forward The cleaning up of the house is the major task for the new Ukrainian government. As Motyl foretold back in 2013: "Following the extensive institutional destruction wrought by Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, Ukraine will have to be reconstructed from top to bottom. Mere reform will no longer be enough. Even 'radical reform' may not quite accurately capture the magnitude of change that Ukraine will have to endure to emerge from the 'Yanukovych Ruin' politically energised and rejuvenated, rather than enervated and ossified." But the problem is that the new Ukrainian government faces not only this strategic task but also numerous mundane issues like paying domestic and international bills, keeping the order and curbing attempts at mob justice against the most hated members of the ancien regime. The EU further guardianship is highly important in these circumstances, but probably even more important is advance of new people with no tails of corruption, nepotism, or dubious business activity in the past. The old politicians like Yulia Tymoshenko or Viktor Yushchenko should stay off the political process. They had a chance to build a new Ukraine in 2005 but pathetically failed. Today, after the bad experience of two previous revolutions, Ukrainians broadly believe that the Maidan should stay - at least for some time - and watch the new government. The real threat to the revolution comes not from Moscow or Kremlin-sponsored Crimean separatism. Nor does it come from the far-right groups that got some prominence during the struggle. The biggest threat comes from within:  from old habits and old-boy networks, from sophisticated corruption schemes and shadow funds accumulated by oligarchs, from lack of much needed skills on part of the revolutionaries and lack of political will on part of the politicians. The rapid fall of ancien regimes are often deceptive. In most cases they are as resilient. The two Ukrainian revolutions - of 1991 and 2004 - rather pitifully illustrate the rule. The new revolution, however, was not that peaceful. It cost the lives of so many bright and courageous people that Ukrainian politicians have simply no moral right to spoil it by pursuing their selfish, partisan, and parochial goals. Mykola Riabchuk is a political and cultural analyst in Kyiv and visiting EURIAS research fellow at IWM in Vienna. His last book "Gleichschaltung. Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012" was published in both Ukrainian and English. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera