The politics of globetrotting

While urgent agenda at home cries for attention

What the whole nation had been waiting for with bated breath has finally happened: talks with the Taliban have begun. Or so our prime minister on his umpteenth trip to London told the British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Back home the government has however informed the opposition leaders that it is only in contact with the TTP through back channels. The Taliban spokesman has also confirmed that no formal contacts have been made and that talks are only being conducted through the media.This means that structured talks are still far away.

According to reports the TTP is playing hardball. They want imposition of Sharia and a halt to the drone programme as a precondition for talks. Despite being in the appeasement mode both demands are beyond the ambit of the government.

Pakistan has no control over the drones. Despite Nawaz Sharif pleading with Obama in his recent meeting, the US is simply not willing to stop using this effective tool to exterminate its enemies holed up in the badlands of Pakistan.

Islamabad’s case against drones has not been strengthened by its own admission that over the past five years 2,160 terrorists and only 67 civilians were killed in drone attacks. Judging from the fact that so far 50,000 civilians have perished in terrorists’ attacks, it’s not a bad score.

Similarly imposing Sharia beyond the ambit of the constitution will be the undoing of a democratic Pakistan unacceptable to the political stakeholders. As it is, the constitution needs to be cleansed of some of the insidious provisions inserted by dictators like Zia and Musharraf.

According to some reports the TTP is composed of 57 militant groups out of which 37 are supporting the dialogue process while the rest, hardliners amongst the hardliners, are imposing strict preconditions. It is obvious eking out a method out of the madness of these initial contacts will take some time.

In the meanwhile there is a forlorn hope that some kind of ceasefire (read Taliban groups not targeting innocent civilians) will be put in place. This would be a miracle, still waiting to happen.

Meanwhile it seems while the Sharifs are away globetrotting Pakistan is running well under a new system of governance by remote control. The prime minister has spent only a few days in the country during the past one month while Ishaq Dar, the finance minister and close consort of the Sharifs, has been altogether absent from the country.

Mian Sahib, after scaling the heights at the UN General Assembly, Turkey, the White House and Whitehall, all in the past few weeks, is latter due to attend the Commonwealth Heads Summit in Sri Lanka and then paying an official visit to Thailand.

As if this was not enough Shahbaz Sharif, effectively Pakistan’s energy Czar, has a busy foreign itinerary of his own. In the past two weeks or so, he has already been to China, Turkey and Germany ostensibly in search of solar energy technology. Last he was spotted in London with his elder brother rubbing shoulders with Nick Clegg and addressing the World Islamic Economic Forum.

Pakistan is a hard country to run. So goes the title, “Pakistan, A Hard Country” by Anatol Levin. The author in essence sympathetic to Pakistan, puts it succinctly: it is divided, disorganized, backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism.”

Our leadership perhaps still flush with the victory at the hustings thinks otherwise. A lot of lip service is paid to the fact that the last government owing to its misrule and corruption left the country in a deep mess and effective measures are being taken to set things right.

While the rulers are busy visiting world capitals scaling the red carpet at state expense, they exhort the hapless people to wait patiently for good times to come. They will come, we are assured, albeit without much conviction.

The 100-day honeymoon period for the government is long past. The otherwise sympathetic media is now forced to judge it on its performance. Unfortunately there is nothing much achieved on the ground.

A lot of emphasis is being placed on merit. Initially advertisements were placed in the media for heads of different corporations in the public sector. But no jobs have been filled. Adhocism rules the roost in most of these institutions being headed by officiating CEOs drawn mostly from the favourites in bureaucracy.

The economy is in shambles to say the least. Since the present government has taken over the rupee has lost at least 10 per cent of its value against the US dollar. To meet the IMF’s frontloaded conditionalities the government has further jacked up energy prices, when these were already beyond the reach of the common man.

Despite its best efforts, Islamabad has been unable to meet all the IMF conditionalities in letter and spirit. The Fund’s review mission is here to assess the situation. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves position is so precarious that it is unable to finance more than one month of imports.

The government desperate for the IMF tranche due to it hopefully will get it after Sharif’s successful visit to the White House. Since most of the previously laid out red lines have been removed during the visit, Washington will certainly not like Pakistan to go under at this crucial stage.

As he mentioned during one of his foreign visits, solution to Pakistan’s problems lies at home. Quite a few urgent matters pending for long now need Nawaz Sharif’s immediate and urgent attention.

The most crucial amongst them is his choice for the next COAS (Chief of Army Staff). Gen Kayani is due to retire in less than four weeks now, while the post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) is lying vacant since the retirement of Gen Khalid Shamim Wyne in early October.

The senior-most general will be the best person suited for the job of the COAS. Of course, Kayani’s successor at this crucial stage should be clear-headed about Pakistan‘s strategic priorities. However to cherry pick for favourites will be as disastrous as has been in the past.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the prime minister will be to give a clear vision along with a road map on how he wants to steer the hapless nation in the next few years. Judging from the recent past, however, this will be expecting far too much.

Arif Nizami is Editor, Pakistan Today.