After a decade of being free of the IMF, Pakistan has had to go back for a loan. It has the usual ‘free market’ conditions such as increasing the level and coverage of General Sales Tax, GST (VAT). The World Bank estimates that over $1bn of tax is evaded each year by the rich. Hilary Clinton has criticised them for paying too little tax. The finance minister talks of helping the poor and no one believes him. He has a point when he says that cutting subsidies on the hugely loss making PIA won’t hurt the poor as they never fly but who believes him when he argues that subsidising electricity helps the rich heat their swimming pools? The federal interior minister promises ‘jihad’ on corruption. The ‘Newsline’ magazine questions his credibility, pointing out that ministers, the prime minister, the president himself, all have big houses in London, Swiss bank accounts together with modest official incomes and tax bills.
The Consumer Price Index now stands at 15.48% and rising, it’s more for many basic food items. There are some organised protests about the price of sugar and cooking oil. In Peshawar, twenty five bakers were arrested recently for going on strike. Their demand was that supplies of subsidised flour are restored or they be allowed to increase the price of a roti. A few days later it was reported they were baking again, now producing smaller roti at the regulated price.
The budget deficit is 6% of GDP. Many businesses, large and small and the government are all are short of cash, causing lots of crises such as the cancellation of the national water purification programme and a 50% R 150 billion ($1.5bn) reduction in the development budget. $2bn a year goes to service foreign debts and this will increase with the latest loan from the IMF. There is again a debate on whether to default on debt. ‘Dawn’ has an editorial against default, arguing that it would remove the only discipline there is on an otherwise financially irresponsible government.
The political parties are manoeuvring on the GST vote that is due shortly, trying to avoid the unpopularity that approving the increase will bring. The government coalition appears to be breaking up. Two ministers, for religious affairs and for science, have publicly attacked each other for corrupt dealings over the Haj arrangements, ripping off the thousands of pilgrims from Pakistan who go every year. Eventually Gilani, the prime minister, sacks them both and the small islamist party of the religious affairs minister, JUI-F, leaves the coalition. It doesn’t bring the government down but there are plenty of people who think this is just an elaborate charade to delay putting the IMF conditions through parliament.
Parties accuse each other viciously. The PPP Sindh interior minister, speaking at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce, attacks the MQM, Karachi’s largest party:
“When they want to kill any Pashtun, Sindhi, Punjab or Baloch, they go about executing their plan methodically.”
In the absence of political parties with manifestos for real change, the slogan raised by Zulfiqar Bhutto, founder of the PPP, in Pakistan’s first national election in 1970 ‘roti, kapra aur makan’ – bread, clothing, shelter, remains what people want. It is the total failure to deliver this, together with military occupation that creates the conditions in which the Taliban can recruit.
The chief minister of the Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, suddenly announces a plan to halve the price of vegetables in three months, using empty state land in parks, schools and colleges. It’s hard to see this as a cheap and even cruel PR stunt, exploiting the misery of the poor.
Not only the corruption but also the arrogance of the elite is boundless. The managing director of PIA, flying from Manchester has the plane he and hundreds of others are on diverted mid flight from Lahore to Karachi, 750 miles distant.
In Lahore, 10,000 gas based plants have had their gas supplies stopped. The gas has been diverted to domestic consumers in other cities in the Punjab, Gujranwala, Sialkot and others because of the strength of local protests. The manufacturers claim that two years ago they predicted a crisis in supplies and proposed investment in equipment to enable liquid natural gas imports. If this has been done then there would now be no crisis.
The papers and giant billboards in the city are carrying a message:
“On behalf of honest and regularly paying customers of Karachi Electricity Supply Company – KESC. Only 20 days left – pay all your outstanding bills and voluntarily report your tampered meters within the next 20 days or face disconnection, public defamation, up to 3 years imprisonment and up to 50 lakhs fines.”
Load shedding (power cuts) is now being imposed more in areas judged to have a higher proportion of non payers. This is in effect collective punishment. In some poorer areas, effectively no one pays their bills. They are judged too dangerous for the meter readers to work in. There are other areas where payment approaches 100%.
Just 2% of GDP is spent on education (in Britain it is 6%). Where parents can afford it, they pay for private education. Much of the education budget is stolen or wasted. There a ghost teachers who don’t exist, though someone collects their salary, village schools which are empty or used as warehouses by local landlords. Students and lecturers in Lahore are protesting the appointment of 20 boards of governors who will take over if and when the government hands over control. This is part of the on going privatisation drive that for twenty years has been pushed by the IMF and World Bank.
Welfare is being cut. The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) which gives 1000 rupees a month to each family is being cut back from R70bn in 2009 to R50bn. To do the job properly would require R150bn. This in a country where 75% of the population are living on less than £2 a day. In 2003 unemployment was under 8%. Now it is over 15%.
There is violence, mainly targeted killings between the parties and between gangs and sometimes both. The most recent large bomb in Karachi targeted a CID building, notorious for using torture in its interrogations. Interestingly, the attackers spent some time before detonating a huge bomb, firing in such a way as to clear the area. No one was killed at this point. The city isn’t shutting down as it did when there were bombs put in mosques. The government and the state bureaucracy have surrounded all their buildings with walls and concrete blocks. Not knowing who he can trust, Zardari, the president, leaves his palace as rarely as possible.
Nevertheless, there is enormous tension in the run up to the 9th and 10th day of Muharram, the days of the Shia processions, security is everywhere. Exactly a year ago a bomb exploded on a procession in Karachi, killing 25.
It is becoming clearer and clearer that the super flood was a man made disaster, not a natural one. Not just a chronic failure to maintain the system properly together with building on floodplains, deforestation but the most hideous crimes carried out by big landowners, as in the case of the breach at Tori Bund:
‘The mysterious breach on the right bank of the Indus on 7 August at Tori Bund. The accused include Kursheed Ahmed Shah, federal minister of Labour and Manpower. Others accused include senior military personnel. The breach led to floods causing 50 deaths and the displacement of half a million people’
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Muharram
Today is the 9th day of Muharram, sacred for the Shias. A public holiday today and tomorrow, the 10th and final day. Both see huge processions of Shias and there is enormous tension because a year ago a bomb attack on a march killed 25. There are 20,000 police on duty, there are black flags everywhere.
A day for staying in PILER, catching up with emails, reading more of Karachiwala and writing up this diary.
Friday 17 December
10th day of Muharram. After breakfast, a walk. It’s like Christmas Day with sunshine: the roads are clear, people are slowly surfacing, boys are beginning to play cricket. I speak to Shahid Husain, experienced Karachi journalist, to apologise I’ve leaving before we’ve been able to meet and he immediately arranges to come over after lunch. He tells me of a travelogue he’s written after a recent visit to the US, a conference of 4,000 US Pakistani doctors in Dallas, the older ones all accusing each other of what they did and didn’t do forty years ago and the shocking poverty, more and more people queuing for food. This, he says, has direct parallels here in Karachi.
I report my meeting with Faiz Ghangro whom he knows. He accepts the argument that Chief Justice Choudery represents that section in the ruling class that see the urgent need to put limits on the corruption but points out that the CJ has a blind spot when it comes to the media. The journalists have a long running case of a national wage award which has been denied them. He could sort this out but won’t for fear of upsetting the media moguls. Sounds familiar.
We talk about Obama’s speech on slow progress in Afghanistan and whether the people advising him are stupid or dishonest - we agree on the latter. And the criticisms of Pakistan for not doing enough to root out the Taliban just don’t get how Pakistan’s army, the people who really run the country, have seen India as the enemy ever since they were children. That means that Afghanistan must be an ally and, given any possibility the Taliban could in future be Afghanistan’s government, it follows that no matter how much military aid the US gives to Pakistan – over $1bn a year currently – links with the Taliban have to be maintained.
Shahid has written an article on climate change and Pakistan . I invite him to come and do a meeting about it in Manchester if he manages to fulfill his plan to come to England.
A real red sunset at 5.30, the first I’ve seen. Now back to finish off the diary before a couple of hours sleep and then to the airport.
A day for staying in PILER, catching up with emails, reading more of Karachiwala and writing up this diary.
Friday 17 December
10th day of Muharram. After breakfast, a walk. It’s like Christmas Day with sunshine: the roads are clear, people are slowly surfacing, boys are beginning to play cricket. I speak to Shahid Husain, experienced Karachi journalist, to apologise I’ve leaving before we’ve been able to meet and he immediately arranges to come over after lunch. He tells me of a travelogue he’s written after a recent visit to the US, a conference of 4,000 US Pakistani doctors in Dallas, the older ones all accusing each other of what they did and didn’t do forty years ago and the shocking poverty, more and more people queuing for food. This, he says, has direct parallels here in Karachi.
I report my meeting with Faiz Ghangro whom he knows. He accepts the argument that Chief Justice Choudery represents that section in the ruling class that see the urgent need to put limits on the corruption but points out that the CJ has a blind spot when it comes to the media. The journalists have a long running case of a national wage award which has been denied them. He could sort this out but won’t for fear of upsetting the media moguls. Sounds familiar.
We talk about Obama’s speech on slow progress in Afghanistan and whether the people advising him are stupid or dishonest - we agree on the latter. And the criticisms of Pakistan for not doing enough to root out the Taliban just don’t get how Pakistan’s army, the people who really run the country, have seen India as the enemy ever since they were children. That means that Afghanistan must be an ally and, given any possibility the Taliban could in future be Afghanistan’s government, it follows that no matter how much military aid the US gives to Pakistan – over $1bn a year currently – links with the Taliban have to be maintained.
Shahid has written an article on climate change and Pakistan . I invite him to come and do a meeting about it in Manchester if he manages to fulfill his plan to come to England.
A real red sunset at 5.30, the first I’ve seen. Now back to finish off the diary before a couple of hours sleep and then to the airport.
PILER round table on the flood
Wednesday 15 December
I’m invited to take part in a round table on strategy. A Dutch NGO, ICCO, leads off with a report on the flood.
This is followed by Pervez Tahir, economist, Muhammad Ali Shah, chair of Pakistan Fisherfolk (PFF), and Ercelawn from PILER. The three together provide a devastating analysis of the Pakistani state and the impossibility of reform. What follows is a brief summary of my notes
Pervez Tahir
The July super flood created the conditions for a serious government to introduce emergency taxation. This remains a proposal, a lost opportunity. Today the media make no reference to the floods apart from a few specials programmes. The talk is of rehabilitation even though large numbers still need emergency relief. The government talks giving a lead in rehabilitation by creating model villages. How much impact can this have when there are 1.8 million households without shelter? The model villages will in any case almost certainly fail.
Many families have rebuilt their own shelters. Now they need to rebuild their lives. They cannot rebuild schools without aid. There is the question of the condition of the soil which will often not be suitable for planting a new crop.
Most Western governments are reducing their development budgets; there is a conservative wave throughout the Western world. Reconstruction is expensive. Nevertheless the government must make a plan. With the 2005 earthquake a reconstruction agency was established. With the floods there has only been rescue and relief. The Flood Control Commission exists but there has been under funding of irrigation systems for a long time. And there is a constitutional issue. With the [new] 18th amendment, the provinces have the power to act but are not ready for this power. The National Financial commission award reverses the financial flow towards the provinces which now have the bigger share of state funds including the social sector, an increase in funds of 58%. In the past federal government did the big projects. Now provinces are free to negotiate loans and raise money in the international money markets. Do they have the capacity? Provinces have always demanded maximum political autonomy. Now they have it they are reluctant to pick up the liabilities. They only want the assets.
There is the continuing question n whether the government will survive. Two ministers have just been sacked just before the crucial vote on the extension of the general sales tax.
Floods are not new in Pakistan. Why do we feel powerless? Encroachments hinder water flow. The powerful have taken a lot of land for housing, for mangoes, that should have been left.
There is the problem that irrigation departments have not done much work for a long time. Take for example the problem with the Sukkar barrage gates. The provincial department has the capacity to deal with this. The decision was taken, however, that to would be done by the army. If the provincial capacity is not used, it deteriorates while the military industrial complex grows.
Matters have been made much worse because there was no system of local government when the flood happened. Union councils used to be close to the people. Instead we have ad hoc appointed district officers. The experience of the union councillors was lost. The provinces are unprepared, uncertain what to do, unable to take charge as they should, given the 18th amendment.
Muhammad Ali Shah,
Nothing was worse than the flood. Floods have become worse since the dams were built. Encroachment and deforestation have contributed as has global warming and climate change. This was not a natural but a man-made disaster with 1.7 million houses destroyed in Sindh and a huge loss of livestock and crops. 90% of those affected are small farmers and landless labourers... The IDPs in camps are not the full picture as many are living with relatives... There are many health hazards; drinking water is the biggest hazard. 2.5 million acres of crops were badly affected. Much of it is still under 3 or 4ft of water. It’s impossible to have a rabi (winter) crop. Many IDPs cannot return home because they can’t survive there. Governments subcontracting aid through different agencies – one for food, another for non-food -as well as aid that doesn’t relate to traditional culture, means there is no security of daily food supply and non-food aid is often sold. There are problems with only one family member receiving money and then the problems with the WATAN [ATM] cards that often do not work. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is hugely corrupt as are the provincial DMAs whose members often are not up to the job. We need an alternative. We need to control the disaster naturally. We have to abolish capitalism and feudalism. 20 million affected, we need debt cancellation and proper distribution of resources. We need proper plans for disaster management, an autonomous authority involving civil society representatives, those working on the ground. The state should play its role. If not, civil society has to launch a campaign to pressure them to act, to cut defence expenditures
Aly Ercelawn
From the experience of mobilisation and service delivery aiming to reduce vulnerability and provide assets such as clean water, there is a problem of social ideology, no collective responsibility, for example for children. Household based arrangements are not the best way. Looking at this as moral issues not cost effectiveness. In a village near Thatta, looking ideal fro collective action, we brought a gravity system, originally Australian. Sourced by muddy river water, capable of 300 litres an hour, 3000 litres a day, sufficient for drinking, washing cooking utensils and at least washing the children whose bodies are covered with sores because of the water.
But women are reluctant to climb up the tank to put in the water. The men are earning 200 rupees a day fishing or on construction work. People are drinking it but not using it for anything else... They aren’t willing to pay for a small pump. We shouldn’t do anything that isn’t sustainable. There is opportunity for innovation such as the treadle pump from Africa.
What is our argument? Are we about rights? Or entitlements? Service delivery? Or mobilisation? Finally, can we be planning for the next flood or cyclone? What is our position on state assets? Are we being charity organisations implying that part of the state perceives poverty as a natural phenomenon? Most of government is very economistic with little time to look at the ecological framework.
And from the discussion that followed,
In Swat, an hundred year old, decrepit, unused bridge, partially survived the flood. There were sixty newer bridges upstream. Of which not one survived. This raises the question, in this case in the reconstruction, ‘What is the state? What should the state do?’ There are examples of parent teacher associations where there sufficient funds to rebuild the school but it isn’t done. Not for a lack of resources but for a lack of will. Civil administration is not functional. Without democracy … When you have such a disaster, you have to operate on a huge scale. Diversity is needed.
Muhammed Ali Shah added: in the rehabilitation phase to have to make a plan for challenging the state. Change in policy is needed. Focus on mass change, not only disaggregated efforts, a need for holistic restoration. We forget the media. We have to widen our concept of civil society.
Ercelawn: we need mobilisation on a political basis as we find solutions that avoid the bullying…
After lunch I disappear to the city, for presents, shawls and sweets, back at 5pm, just in time for everyone to join in eating Anees’s cake, together with samosa and jelabi and an unrehearsed rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.
Later, Ercelawn suggests meeting with Iftikar, another sharp and critical soul. A beer at Ercelawn’s flat in town and then to Iftikar’s. Before setting off, I talk with Issat, the driver. He’s a Pashtun and learnt English working in Malaysia. He introduces me to a fellow Pashtun from Swat, where two years ago a deal was done and the local Taliban took over. After a few months and sharp criticism from Hilary Clinton, the military occupied Swat causing two million to flee. Most have now returned. ‘We want the military to leave’ he says. Meanwhile he’s working in Karachi sending money back to his family.
Traveling home at midnight, Issat tells how just recently his eight month old son was very ill but could go to an excellent local hospital because his job at PILER gave his family health insurance.
I’m invited to take part in a round table on strategy. A Dutch NGO, ICCO, leads off with a report on the flood.
This is followed by Pervez Tahir, economist, Muhammad Ali Shah, chair of Pakistan Fisherfolk (PFF), and Ercelawn from PILER. The three together provide a devastating analysis of the Pakistani state and the impossibility of reform. What follows is a brief summary of my notes
Pervez Tahir
The July super flood created the conditions for a serious government to introduce emergency taxation. This remains a proposal, a lost opportunity. Today the media make no reference to the floods apart from a few specials programmes. The talk is of rehabilitation even though large numbers still need emergency relief. The government talks giving a lead in rehabilitation by creating model villages. How much impact can this have when there are 1.8 million households without shelter? The model villages will in any case almost certainly fail.
Many families have rebuilt their own shelters. Now they need to rebuild their lives. They cannot rebuild schools without aid. There is the question of the condition of the soil which will often not be suitable for planting a new crop.
Most Western governments are reducing their development budgets; there is a conservative wave throughout the Western world. Reconstruction is expensive. Nevertheless the government must make a plan. With the 2005 earthquake a reconstruction agency was established. With the floods there has only been rescue and relief. The Flood Control Commission exists but there has been under funding of irrigation systems for a long time. And there is a constitutional issue. With the [new] 18th amendment, the provinces have the power to act but are not ready for this power. The National Financial commission award reverses the financial flow towards the provinces which now have the bigger share of state funds including the social sector, an increase in funds of 58%. In the past federal government did the big projects. Now provinces are free to negotiate loans and raise money in the international money markets. Do they have the capacity? Provinces have always demanded maximum political autonomy. Now they have it they are reluctant to pick up the liabilities. They only want the assets.
There is the continuing question n whether the government will survive. Two ministers have just been sacked just before the crucial vote on the extension of the general sales tax.
Floods are not new in Pakistan. Why do we feel powerless? Encroachments hinder water flow. The powerful have taken a lot of land for housing, for mangoes, that should have been left.
There is the problem that irrigation departments have not done much work for a long time. Take for example the problem with the Sukkar barrage gates. The provincial department has the capacity to deal with this. The decision was taken, however, that to would be done by the army. If the provincial capacity is not used, it deteriorates while the military industrial complex grows.
Matters have been made much worse because there was no system of local government when the flood happened. Union councils used to be close to the people. Instead we have ad hoc appointed district officers. The experience of the union councillors was lost. The provinces are unprepared, uncertain what to do, unable to take charge as they should, given the 18th amendment.
Muhammad Ali Shah,
Nothing was worse than the flood. Floods have become worse since the dams were built. Encroachment and deforestation have contributed as has global warming and climate change. This was not a natural but a man-made disaster with 1.7 million houses destroyed in Sindh and a huge loss of livestock and crops. 90% of those affected are small farmers and landless labourers... The IDPs in camps are not the full picture as many are living with relatives... There are many health hazards; drinking water is the biggest hazard. 2.5 million acres of crops were badly affected. Much of it is still under 3 or 4ft of water. It’s impossible to have a rabi (winter) crop. Many IDPs cannot return home because they can’t survive there. Governments subcontracting aid through different agencies – one for food, another for non-food -as well as aid that doesn’t relate to traditional culture, means there is no security of daily food supply and non-food aid is often sold. There are problems with only one family member receiving money and then the problems with the WATAN [ATM] cards that often do not work. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is hugely corrupt as are the provincial DMAs whose members often are not up to the job. We need an alternative. We need to control the disaster naturally. We have to abolish capitalism and feudalism. 20 million affected, we need debt cancellation and proper distribution of resources. We need proper plans for disaster management, an autonomous authority involving civil society representatives, those working on the ground. The state should play its role. If not, civil society has to launch a campaign to pressure them to act, to cut defence expenditures
Aly Ercelawn
From the experience of mobilisation and service delivery aiming to reduce vulnerability and provide assets such as clean water, there is a problem of social ideology, no collective responsibility, for example for children. Household based arrangements are not the best way. Looking at this as moral issues not cost effectiveness. In a village near Thatta, looking ideal fro collective action, we brought a gravity system, originally Australian. Sourced by muddy river water, capable of 300 litres an hour, 3000 litres a day, sufficient for drinking, washing cooking utensils and at least washing the children whose bodies are covered with sores because of the water.
But women are reluctant to climb up the tank to put in the water. The men are earning 200 rupees a day fishing or on construction work. People are drinking it but not using it for anything else... They aren’t willing to pay for a small pump. We shouldn’t do anything that isn’t sustainable. There is opportunity for innovation such as the treadle pump from Africa.
What is our argument? Are we about rights? Or entitlements? Service delivery? Or mobilisation? Finally, can we be planning for the next flood or cyclone? What is our position on state assets? Are we being charity organisations implying that part of the state perceives poverty as a natural phenomenon? Most of government is very economistic with little time to look at the ecological framework.
And from the discussion that followed,
In Swat, an hundred year old, decrepit, unused bridge, partially survived the flood. There were sixty newer bridges upstream. Of which not one survived. This raises the question, in this case in the reconstruction, ‘What is the state? What should the state do?’ There are examples of parent teacher associations where there sufficient funds to rebuild the school but it isn’t done. Not for a lack of resources but for a lack of will. Civil administration is not functional. Without democracy … When you have such a disaster, you have to operate on a huge scale. Diversity is needed.
Muhammed Ali Shah added: in the rehabilitation phase to have to make a plan for challenging the state. Change in policy is needed. Focus on mass change, not only disaggregated efforts, a need for holistic restoration. We forget the media. We have to widen our concept of civil society.
Ercelawn: we need mobilisation on a political basis as we find solutions that avoid the bullying…
After lunch I disappear to the city, for presents, shawls and sweets, back at 5pm, just in time for everyone to join in eating Anees’s cake, together with samosa and jelabi and an unrehearsed rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.
Later, Ercelawn suggests meeting with Iftikar, another sharp and critical soul. A beer at Ercelawn’s flat in town and then to Iftikar’s. Before setting off, I talk with Issat, the driver. He’s a Pashtun and learnt English working in Malaysia. He introduces me to a fellow Pashtun from Swat, where two years ago a deal was done and the local Taliban took over. After a few months and sharp criticism from Hilary Clinton, the military occupied Swat causing two million to flee. Most have now returned. ‘We want the military to leave’ he says. Meanwhile he’s working in Karachi sending money back to his family.
Traveling home at midnight, Issat tells how just recently his eight month old son was very ill but could go to an excellent local hospital because his job at PILER gave his family health insurance.
An evening with Faiz and Fazl, lawyer and politics professor
Tuesday 14 December
Teaching done, just a report to write. Taking an early morning stroll, I talk to Anees, supervising a new bungalow being built at the back of PILER. He’s the building contractor who built PILER ten years ago. I sing the praises of this wonderful building. For some reason I cannot fathom, he asks me what kind of cake I like. ‘Coffee’ I reply.
6.00pm, Jamil drops me at the Jang Building where I wait for Riaz. We walk across the road into Faiz Ghangro’s office, two smallish rooms, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, ever inch packed with traditionally bound law reports, his desk piled high with briefs. A trade unionist in the cement industry in the 1970s, a communist in and out of prison, Faiz is now a labour lawyer, chain smoking as he explains why he’s cheerful: the judiciary have changed, really changed. Since the lawyers’ movement of 2008/2009, justice has been cleaned up, 15-20% of the judges have been ‘retired’, and cases that were stalled for years, even decades, are now being settled. The judges and the court staff have had their pay doubled, they at work beyond 5pm, not leaving at 2pm. Faiz has just won a case for a woman against her employer, KLM. Even more amazing, she’s already been paid her full compensation, 45 lakh rupees, over £30,000 with no one taking a ‘commission’. Faiz proudly shows me a photocopy of the cheque. The MQM, who have dominated the city for more than twenty years , and have 600 or more ‘placemen’, unqualified lawyers, who block vote for MQM in elections to the Sindh Bar Council have lost control by a margin of several hundred votes for the posts of president and general secretary.
The law is still inadequate. A lawful strike can only take place after arbitration which can take months and months. And even when a case is won, implementation can take forever.
Now a drive across the city to Fazl, a professor of politics, in his forties, a Marxist, a Pashtun from Quetta. Picking his words with care, he’s scornful of leftist rhetoric which gives ‘socialism’ as the answer to every problem. He explains the history of Pashtun nationalism (and the differences with Baloch nationalism) and the hopes of the national intelligentsia as they see the potential of the mineral wealth of the region, hoping to emulate the model of the Gulf States, a good life for all citizens (with migrants excluded from the welfare system or political rights.) I suggest that far more probable is the Congo model, small enclaves controlled by foreign capital which extract the wealth leaving nothing for local people. Fazl agrees, pointing out this is already happening, for example, with the Sui gas field in Balochistan, which supplies all the cities of Pakistan but does nothing for the local inhabitants
Then Fazl explains that his daughter very much wants to meet us. Her trophies for winning debating contests are on the wall and as she speaks clearly and forcefully, it’s not hard to see why. She’s doing a BSc in microbiology and wants to go on to a PhD in clinical virology. Unless, that is she passes the civil service exams. Her father chuckles at this point, the two careers could hardly be more different. She wants to talk politics and we vigorously discuss the causes of terrorism, continuing with hardly a break when the power is cut and various torches are found. I carefully explain that I don’t think Pakistan should exist and she’s somewhat shocked while her father laughs.
Nearing midnight, we refuse the offer of supper – we’ve been offered generous bowls of pistachio and almonds – and depart, stopping briefly to eat some spit roasted chicken at a Baloch roadside restaurant, rather more than we can eat at this time of night. As we get up to leave, a young girl who has been watching us walks to our table and puts the remaining chicken onto the naan. The waiter moves to shoo her and stops as he sees me watching. She smiles and departs.
Teaching done, just a report to write. Taking an early morning stroll, I talk to Anees, supervising a new bungalow being built at the back of PILER. He’s the building contractor who built PILER ten years ago. I sing the praises of this wonderful building. For some reason I cannot fathom, he asks me what kind of cake I like. ‘Coffee’ I reply.
6.00pm, Jamil drops me at the Jang Building where I wait for Riaz. We walk across the road into Faiz Ghangro’s office, two smallish rooms, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, ever inch packed with traditionally bound law reports, his desk piled high with briefs. A trade unionist in the cement industry in the 1970s, a communist in and out of prison, Faiz is now a labour lawyer, chain smoking as he explains why he’s cheerful: the judiciary have changed, really changed. Since the lawyers’ movement of 2008/2009, justice has been cleaned up, 15-20% of the judges have been ‘retired’, and cases that were stalled for years, even decades, are now being settled. The judges and the court staff have had their pay doubled, they at work beyond 5pm, not leaving at 2pm. Faiz has just won a case for a woman against her employer, KLM. Even more amazing, she’s already been paid her full compensation, 45 lakh rupees, over £30,000 with no one taking a ‘commission’. Faiz proudly shows me a photocopy of the cheque. The MQM, who have dominated the city for more than twenty years , and have 600 or more ‘placemen’, unqualified lawyers, who block vote for MQM in elections to the Sindh Bar Council have lost control by a margin of several hundred votes for the posts of president and general secretary.
The law is still inadequate. A lawful strike can only take place after arbitration which can take months and months. And even when a case is won, implementation can take forever.
Now a drive across the city to Fazl, a professor of politics, in his forties, a Marxist, a Pashtun from Quetta. Picking his words with care, he’s scornful of leftist rhetoric which gives ‘socialism’ as the answer to every problem. He explains the history of Pashtun nationalism (and the differences with Baloch nationalism) and the hopes of the national intelligentsia as they see the potential of the mineral wealth of the region, hoping to emulate the model of the Gulf States, a good life for all citizens (with migrants excluded from the welfare system or political rights.) I suggest that far more probable is the Congo model, small enclaves controlled by foreign capital which extract the wealth leaving nothing for local people. Fazl agrees, pointing out this is already happening, for example, with the Sui gas field in Balochistan, which supplies all the cities of Pakistan but does nothing for the local inhabitants
Then Fazl explains that his daughter very much wants to meet us. Her trophies for winning debating contests are on the wall and as she speaks clearly and forcefully, it’s not hard to see why. She’s doing a BSc in microbiology and wants to go on to a PhD in clinical virology. Unless, that is she passes the civil service exams. Her father chuckles at this point, the two careers could hardly be more different. She wants to talk politics and we vigorously discuss the causes of terrorism, continuing with hardly a break when the power is cut and various torches are found. I carefully explain that I don’t think Pakistan should exist and she’s somewhat shocked while her father laughs.
Nearing midnight, we refuse the offer of supper – we’ve been offered generous bowls of pistachio and almonds – and depart, stopping briefly to eat some spit roasted chicken at a Baloch roadside restaurant, rather more than we can eat at this time of night. As we get up to leave, a young girl who has been watching us walks to our table and puts the remaining chicken onto the naan. The waiter moves to shoo her and stops as he sees me watching. She smiles and departs.
Karachi activist course and IS meeting
Sunday 12 December
Today was day one of a course for new activists. Twenty five, mainly young women textile workers, working 16 hour days, made to work seven days, not paid the minimum wage. They are extremely nervous at the start and then got going.
This evening we have the IS branch meeting, seven comrades plus me. Sartaj does a short talk about Wikileaks, which is followed by trying to work out how to increase sales. Selling papers at the bigger universities risks getting beaten up by one of the Islamist student groups, there are no places where people meet regularly for meetings or musical events. Asgar comes with a box of Indian sweets to celebrate a successful interview making him permanent in his job in the Federal Urdu Uni.
After the meeting, Riaz and Sartaj and I go out to eat. The large but less than totally salubrious restaurant we eat at is packed with lots of young male professionals. We get a table surprisingly quickly; Riaz reckons the 'gora' (me, the white person) gets special treatment. We discuss being careful about what we eat. The main hazards come from water, not food and Sartaj gives me the old Pashto proverb ‘Don’t be afraid of what you eat; be afraid of what eats you.’ After the meal, we have a paan. Two inches across, carefully wrapped, it’s a folded leaf filled with aniseed, bits of nuts and much else, to be taken whole and slowly chewed. A kind of ‘digestif’ to be taken at the end of the meal. They used to smuggle the leaves in from India, now it’s legal. As Riaz goes to the paan stall, I watch a policeman stagger past. ‘He’s drunk’, Sartaj points out. In Karachi, all policemen are drunk after six o’clock.
Monday 13 December
The course finishes well. Shuja, back from a prison in Karachi where he’s assisted with the release of a dozen Indian fishermen, puts pictures up on the web:
1st day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHIWS_Day1?feat=directlink
2nd day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHI_Training_Day2?feat=directlink
Today was day one of a course for new activists. Twenty five, mainly young women textile workers, working 16 hour days, made to work seven days, not paid the minimum wage. They are extremely nervous at the start and then got going.
This evening we have the IS branch meeting, seven comrades plus me. Sartaj does a short talk about Wikileaks, which is followed by trying to work out how to increase sales. Selling papers at the bigger universities risks getting beaten up by one of the Islamist student groups, there are no places where people meet regularly for meetings or musical events. Asgar comes with a box of Indian sweets to celebrate a successful interview making him permanent in his job in the Federal Urdu Uni.
After the meeting, Riaz and Sartaj and I go out to eat. The large but less than totally salubrious restaurant we eat at is packed with lots of young male professionals. We get a table surprisingly quickly; Riaz reckons the 'gora' (me, the white person) gets special treatment. We discuss being careful about what we eat. The main hazards come from water, not food and Sartaj gives me the old Pashto proverb ‘Don’t be afraid of what you eat; be afraid of what eats you.’ After the meal, we have a paan. Two inches across, carefully wrapped, it’s a folded leaf filled with aniseed, bits of nuts and much else, to be taken whole and slowly chewed. A kind of ‘digestif’ to be taken at the end of the meal. They used to smuggle the leaves in from India, now it’s legal. As Riaz goes to the paan stall, I watch a policeman stagger past. ‘He’s drunk’, Sartaj points out. In Karachi, all policemen are drunk after six o’clock.
Monday 13 December
The course finishes well. Shuja, back from a prison in Karachi where he’s assisted with the release of a dozen Indian fishermen, puts pictures up on the web:
1st day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHIWS_Day1?feat=directlink
2nd day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHI_Training_Day2?feat=directlink
Rising tide and meals with Sharafat and PILER colleagues
Saturday 11 December
I come to Riaz's on Friday night and in the morning we go to the impressive, nineteenth century, red sand stone Mohatta Palace - not huge - where there is a new exhibition of modern art called ‘The Rising Tide’. We are twenty minutes early to get into the exhibition, so off somewhere for a cup of tea. We are in Old Clifton, perhaps the poshest part of the city, near the sea. But behind the large expensive sea front buildings, are poor side streets where amidst everything, a tea house is not too hard to find. As we sit, Riaz points out a drug addict shuffling past, bedraggled and ill. There are now 600,000 according to Al Jazeera, ever since the Afghan War in the 1980s brought heroin and Kalashnikovs to the city; this is the first time I’ve knowingly seen one. Going back to the car, Riaz stops to talk to a man waiting in a car opposite who’s staring at us. He’s worried for my safety in such a dangerous place. I tell him I’m very well looked after and thank him for his concern. He’s a doctor working in this area, a former katchi abadi, an illegal slum which at some point ten or twenty years ago was recognised by the city. People started investing and now it’s a mix of good, bad and awful buildings. Very mixed, every ethnicity, it’s full of traders, next to Riaz’s car, there’s a small wagon loaded with cooking oil, a favourite for hoarding as prices are going up all the time.
Into the palace and at first I’m put off by the ‘Pseuds Corner’ language of the introduction but I now think that that was just to keep the sponsors happy. It’s quite the most subversive exhibition I've seen. Subtle, so as not to provoke the military or the Islamists, but anti military, anti mullah, anti bank and anti big business. Paintings, sculpture etc, all of a very high standard. One picture above, a couple more at http://picasaweb.google.com/geoff.brown/TheRisingTide#
Then to lunch with Sharafat, Karamat's younger brother. On the way we pass the Three Swords monument out up by Bhutto with the slogans Unity, Faith and Discipline". The islamist dictator Zia ul Haq who overthrows Bhutto and executes him, adorns the swords with praise and glory to Allah. Now Zardari has covered up Zia’s additions with giant ajraks, the Sindhi national shawl, now looking weather worn. Lunch is dominated by his five year old granddaughter, Shakina, an assertive young woman speaking excellent English.
The day ends with a meal back in Clifton with a group of PILER staff. On the way there, Shuja explains the flood relief work he and PILER colleagues have been doing for the last few months. Much of it has been supporting the people in the camps on the outskirts of Karachi with crises such as a young woman in the final stages of pregnancy urgently needing four pints of a rare blood group. Against the odds, they finally were able to get it, mother and child are both now OK. There will be a huge battle if the government falls and the city bureaucrats get a free hand to evict the 10,000 living in the Labour Colony across the road from PILER.
Back to Karachi and a talk on workers and neo-liberalism
Wednesday 8 December, Haripur to Karachi
The last day here goes fine. The small NGO who’ve organised everything, SAHARA, show me some quite good documentaries they’ve made about their work (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2Q79iT96g). There is only one woman working for them and she wears a niqab, but in places like Haripur it is going to be tricky getting men and women working together. They promise that they will be organising courses for women.
It is gone ten when I got back to PILER, plane late plus roadside security checks, to find I’m invited to supper with Karamat. There, as seems to happen often with Karamat, were a couple of interesting new faces. Both are Baloch, around my age, from families of tribal leaders, one an ex senator, the other a current senator (as in the US, the Pakistani senate has 100 senators). The current senator argues that religious people were always reactionary and I found myself with Karamat putting a Marxist response – the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed.
Thursday 9 December, Karachi
A quiet morning and then the lecture on ‘The international labour movement and the crisis of neo-liberalism’. It goes fine with lots of people asking questions a good sign, especially with those less confident in English. Trying to argue that we are all part of a global battle comes up against the general disbelief here that people in the “West” or “Global North” are suffering. I use Laura’s example of the homeless in New York keeping warm in the railway stations with their suitcases and I think it made some impact. At the same time people here are watching what’s happening abroad e.g. the students in Britain.
Shujauddin, a senior PILER colleague, uploads photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/GeoffBrown?feat=directlink
The last day here goes fine. The small NGO who’ve organised everything, SAHARA, show me some quite good documentaries they’ve made about their work (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2Q79iT96g). There is only one woman working for them and she wears a niqab, but in places like Haripur it is going to be tricky getting men and women working together. They promise that they will be organising courses for women.
It is gone ten when I got back to PILER, plane late plus roadside security checks, to find I’m invited to supper with Karamat. There, as seems to happen often with Karamat, were a couple of interesting new faces. Both are Baloch, around my age, from families of tribal leaders, one an ex senator, the other a current senator (as in the US, the Pakistani senate has 100 senators). The current senator argues that religious people were always reactionary and I found myself with Karamat putting a Marxist response – the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed.
Thursday 9 December, Karachi
A quiet morning and then the lecture on ‘The international labour movement and the crisis of neo-liberalism’. It goes fine with lots of people asking questions a good sign, especially with those less confident in English. Trying to argue that we are all part of a global battle comes up against the general disbelief here that people in the “West” or “Global North” are suffering. I use Laura’s example of the homeless in New York keeping warm in the railway stations with their suitcases and I think it made some impact. At the same time people here are watching what’s happening abroad e.g. the students in Britain.
Shujauddin, a senior PILER colleague, uploads photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/GeoffBrown?feat=directlink
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