The business community says (i.e. if you discount the CVT misstep which led to stock brokers going on a rampage breaking things) the Federal Budget is a good investor-friendly initiative. Nothing innovative about it, mostly an adjustment of statistics giving to each audience what that particular audience wants to hear, viz (1) a populist commitment to the masses for alleviating their miseries and (2) for the benefit of the world at large and (particularly) international aid agencies, maintaining a high economic growth rate by not splurging on the social sector. Good in macro-economics there is no perceptible change for the better in the “misery index” (micro-economics) of the masses despite the Finance Minister's (FM's) insistence that the population below the poverty line has reduced by 4.2% overall, the common man's buying power continues to be eroded by the rise in the price of essentials. The data from which the 4.2% poverty reduction figure was arrived at is a matter of doubt and controversy.

Controlling of inflation below double digits sounds wonderful on primetime TV, for the middle class and the poor it is mere rhetoric. Reducing the duty on edible oil by a grand 0.5%, the GST on it was raised by 15%. Ghee will cost more, one guess who uses ghee more? The average food bill has gone up about 16%, further diminishing the consumer buying power of the common citizen, though the commulative effect of lowering of consumer sales may not effect the economy given the incentives made available for the “upwardly mobile”.....more

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There are signs that our rulers have started the process of making necessary adjustments in political compromises to secure this city from boiling over into disaster. Karachi's civic services are normally stretched to the limit, if they are overwhelmed because of civil disturbances disrupting services, mass reaction will make society as we know disappear into a cauldron, not unlike that to which Mogadishu has descended. Ethnic and sectarian clashes are already not a matter of conjecture anymore, sporadic clashes have already taken place. Terrorists have cleverly manipulated the city's schisms to their advantage. Immediate remedial measures are necessary to restore the rule of law to this great metropolitan city.

Power centres proliferate in Sindh, viz (1) Governor's House run by the MQM nominee Dr Ishrat ul Ebad and the perennial Advisor to all Governors, Brig (Retd) Akhtar Zamin Naqvi, presently enjoying maximum power in Karachi, and by extension over the Province, acting virtually as the Chief Minister (CM) in place of (2) CM Ali Mohammad Maher who exercises power only as much as is his inherent ability and/or is allowed to him by the powers-that-be (3) Karachi city's government is run presently by the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) through the City Nazim Naimatullah (4) the present Corps Commander 5 Corps Lt Gen Ahsan Salim Hayat exercises quiet influence (as he should) in contrast to the political wheeling-dealing of his predecessor, Tariq Waseem Ghazi and last but not the least (5) power brokers exercising remote control from Islamabad, but overlapping from their own disciplines at will into sectors of their motivated interest. As an example of how usurping/encroachment of power affects situation adversely, the recent by-elections would have been won by the MQM anyway, the Honourable Governor's ham-handed intervention resulted in blatant over-kill and the electoral results becoming controversial......more

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What a week, a low intensity explosion went off near a KPT gate followed next day by staggered explosions outside the PACC designed to inflict maximum casualties, rounded off within days by the assassination of Mufti Shamzai. The civil disturbances, including an attack on the Quaid Academy, to protest this horrible murder had not died down when a bomb went off in an Imam Bargah in the evening of May 31 off Karachi's main arterial

M A Jinnah Road, killing 18 and wounding countless others and setting off another chain reaction of violence in Karachi. The present spate of terrorism had started a fortnight or so earlier with the horrific suicide bombing in the Shia mosque in the Quaid's Alma Mater Sindh Madrassatul Islam. Given the paralysis of government in Sindh, someone somewhere is playing a deadly game with Karachi's future, we are rapidly sliding into anarchy. It goes without saying that this will seriously affect the country's economy.

In the early 1990s, Karachi (and by extension Sindh) had a severe law and order problem. The situation was so bad that the army was commissioned to launch “search operations” in the city to ferret out militants, simultaneously the Special Services Group (SSG) was deputed to work with the police and the Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) to break the back of kidnapper gangs that were targetting the wealthy elite of the city for ransom. While the kidnappers were effectively decimated, the Army had only moderate success in eliminating militants. The untimely death of Gen Asif Nawaz Janjua saw the new COAS, Gen Abdul Waheed, extricate the Army from the morass of “aid to civil power” and hand responsibility for law and order back to political authority. In power in the Federation and in Sindh, Ms Benazir gave a clear mandate to the Federal Interior Minister, Maj Gen Naseerullah Khan Babar, rid the problem of urban militancy in Karachi and Hyderabad so that governance (in some form) could be applied in the Province.....more

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One of the things common about Pakistan and US has been brought to the surface by the 9/11 Commission, countries fighting the modern version of terrorism need to have far better quality of intelligence than available at present, this must be shared quickly and effectively with the units actually fighting on the ground. The prime requirement of today's war against terrorism is timely “actionable” intelligence. The accountability inherent in any democracy means that the US is doing something about it, public hearings by a bi-partisan blue-ribboned panel has exposed the in-built weaknesses of the entire US intelligence apparatus. While the creation of a new “Homeland Security” Department have resulted in extensive reforms of the entire intelligence system and the observations of the Commission have force-multiplied these reforms, this process may well take several years. The major finding of the Commission was that while there was a proliferation of sporadic intelligence reports, “actionable” intelligence was not available in real-time. Moreover the intelligence reports crucially lacked the projected date, place and method of attack, the process of the jigsaw puzzle were spread over too many departments which were unwilling to share information due to inefficiency, ineptitude or simply inter-departmental jealousy.

One can gather intelligence on an enemy's capabilities in any number of ways, but determining the enemy's intentions is extremely difficult. This was made more difficult for the US when under the mandate given by US President Carter, CIA Boss Admiral Stansfield Turner virtually dismantled the “human intelligence” assets of the CIA in favour of electronic intelligence. To an extent the ISI suffered a similar fate in losing a whole lot of the field operatives once the first “Afghan cleansing” was done in 1993-94 in the wake of the US threatening to put Pakistan on the list of “terrorist nations”. Penetrating an enemy organization to ascertain the enemy's capabilities and intention requires human intelligence (“humint”), electronic intelligence can kick open the door, you need boots on the ground to go through that door. Only “humint” can discover not only what the enemy can do but what he plans to do, and find out the where and the when. The US has discovered this weakness at grievous cost, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Contrary to universal perception, the ISI was virtually without any intelligence assets in Afghanistan pre and post 9/11.....more

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