TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Save the pangolin

Editorial | March 23, 2020

THE first 41 victims of the novel coronavirus had one thing in common: more than half
of them had either worked at, or recently visited, a market in Wuhan, China, which
traded in live animals. While the original source of Covid-19 is still uncertain, it is
largely accepted that the disease was spread to humans via an animal host. At first,
experts suspected bats to be the potential carriers. Later, growing evidence suggested
that pangolins were the primary source of the outbreak. But even without clear
answers, it is evident that stricter controls need to be enforced on the wildlife industry
and the illegal trade of live animals and animal parts for food, medicine, clothing,
decoration or research purposes. The infamous market in Wuhan has now been sealed,
and China has imposed a ban on trading and eating ‘non-aquatic’ animals. However,
while wildlife conservationists welcome the ban, those paying attention to the fine
print have pointed out ‘loopholes’ which would allow traffickers to continue bad
practices, potentially endangering humanity once again. After all, Covid-19 is not the
first zoonotic disease to rattle the 21st century. Both SARS and Ebola were traced to
animals, as was HIV, which largely terrorised the previous century.

Even if the pangolin is found not to be the source of the recent pandemic, there must be
greater intercontinental efforts to uphold an international ban on the trade of the critically
endangered species — often referred to as “the world’s most trafficked mammal” — poached
for its scales and meat that are in demand in China and parts of Africa. While Pakistan is
fortunate to host diverse wildlife, attitudes towards the pangolin range from indifference to
fear and demonisation, with several instances of locals attacking and killing the notoriously
shy animal. Others try to profit off it. On Thursday, for instance, wildlife officials seized a
pangolin from poachers in Punjab. In the midst of a pandemic and a climate crisis, if greater
sense does not set in, perhaps we are doomed.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Militant attacks
Editorial | March 23, 2020

A TROUBLING uptick in small-scale militant attacks in the tribal areas has become
evident. On Wednesday night, two constables laid down their lives in the line of duty
when armed men attacked a police station, also manned by Frontier Corps personnel,
in the Orakzai tribal district. The assailants escaped after the assault. In the early
hours of the same day, an army officer and three soldiers were martyred during an
intelligence-based operation against a terrorists’ hideout in Dattakhel in North
Waziristan. Seven terrorists were also killed. About two weeks ago, on March 10, a
colonel was martyred in the course of another IBO in Tank district bordering South
Waziristan.

There is good reason to be concerned. Local residents for several months have been
warning that militants have been trickling back into their areas, perhaps attempting to
establish a foothold in their old stomping grounds. Dattakhel — along with Mir Ali and
Miramshah, also in North Waziristan — was once considered a hub of TTP activity. In 2011,
it was the target of the first drone strike after the Raymond Davis affair ended with his
release: 44 people were killed, leading to widespread protests across the country.
Wednesday’s attack on the army personnel in Dattakhel is suspected to have been carried
out by men belonging to the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group which is believed to be sheltering in
Afghanistan. Gul Bahadur, who had once negotiated an ill-fated peace deal with the Pakistan
Army, was the head of a syndicate of various militant outfits before Zarb-i-Azb forced them
to flee across the border. As yet, there is no evidence that the Afghan government has taken
any action against such groups whose resilience drives them to seek any opportunity to
regain lost ground. The increasing number of small-scale attacks in Pakistan indicates either
they are still managing to slip across the border, or that sleeper cells on this side have
become more active. The gravity of the situation is further enhanced by the growing crisis in
Pakistan on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. If the number of infections rise
exponentially, it is conceivable that the government may have to impose a lockdown in
some parts of the country. As in other countries, the measure may require the army to be
called out to enforce it strictly, stretching the security forces’ resources further. One hopes
that planning for the coming weeks takes this reality into account.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Incentive package
Editorial | March 23, 2020

THE prime minister has now announced formally that an incentive package is being
prepared for industry to help them weather the severe disruptions in demand as well
as their operations with the spread of the coronavirus. From his points mentioned
during his interaction with the media on Friday, we know that the construction sector
and textile exporters are high on the list of industries that are in focus as the incentive
package is hammered out. The reasons he gave are that construction creates
employment for daily wagers, a group that is high on his list of priorities, and textiles
brings in foreign exchange. It is not known yet what size and shape this incentive
package will take and more specifically how it will ensure that the group the prime
minister is trying to reach is targeted; all this will be known only when the details have
been made announced.

At the outset, though, it is important to underline that this is not the best direction to take. If
the plight of the daily wagers in the event of a slowdown is the key concern here then the
resources and energies of the state should be spent in quickly developing an income
transfer scheme to put funds directly into the pockets of this group during a lockdown. The
Sindh government is already moving in this direction, and public-sector enterprises are
drawing up lists of daily wagers who work for them to see if funds can be transferred to
these people using mobile payments to help them weather a lockdown. It is not difficult for
the state to build such a database in a short period of time if it seeks out the cooperation of
industry and labour leaders, as well as members of the research community who have
experience working on social protection schemes.
It is true that industry needs support and it is also true that many developed countries are
announcing stimulus packages for their economy. But as the top leadership itself keeps
pointing out, Pakistan is a poor country and its response does not brook comparison with
the examples that are cited. There is now little doubt that a surge of infected people is
coming our way and in the middle of such an outbreak the hand of the state may well be
forced into announcing and enforcing lockdowns. This is the time to focus all our energies
on preparing for the surge by strengthening public health systems, building targeted income
transfer schemes to help the poor to weather the foreseeable lockdowns, and to ramp up
public messaging on social distancing. The federal government’s response in all three of
these areas is woefully inadequate. Focusing on transferring state resources to industrialists
and property developers, especially in the name of protecting daily wagers, is the wrong
direction to be heading in.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

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 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Uncertain Afghan endgame  

Maleeha Lodhi | March 23, 2020

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

THE global coronavirus crisis has understandably overshadowed the international

endorsement earlier this month of the Doha agreement between the US and the Afghan
Taliban. 

On March 10 the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution welcoming the US-

Taliban agreement as a significant step “towards ending the war and opening the door to
intra-Afghan negotiations”. This marked an important development as it conferred
international legitimacy on the agreement signed in Qatar on Feb 29. But other
developments have been far more consequential for the peace process, already at a
standstill following a series of setbacks.

The inability to start intra-Afghan talks slated for March 10, deadlock over the prisoners’
release issue and the rival inauguration ceremonies of the Afghan president on March 9 —
all underline how fraught the post-Doha situation has turned out to be. This raises serious
questions about the future of the peace process as envisaged by the Doha accord.
While considering the ramifications of these developments it is important to keep in view
the limits of the Doha agreement. This is indicated by its purposively vague nature in some
respects and the obvious fact that it excluded the Afghan government with whom
Washington signed a separate declaration.

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The crux of the Doha agreement is Washington’s commitment to a total but phased
withdrawal in return for the Taliban’s commitment to prevent Afghanistan’s soil from being
used by terrorists and agreeing to intra-Afghan talks. The rest consists of aspirational goals
and timelines, with the Afghan parties left with the responsibility to negotiate a ceasefire
and a political settlement to end the war.

Delay in starting intra-Afghan talks

increases the risk of the Doha peace plan
being derailed.

The agreement calls for intra-Afghan talks to begin on March 10 and assumes their progress
but does not indicate when they are to conclude. It also does not specify when the new
Islamic government is to be formed — within the 14-month period committed for the
drawdown of US forces or after?

As many analysts have pointed out, for President Donald Trump the agreement to bring
troops home ahead of the American presidential election (less than eight months away) is
driven by domestic political calculations rather than any strategic thinking. It enables him to
deliver on his pledge to disengage America from an “endless war”.
This implies that his determination to pull out of Afghanistan appears to have priority over
whether the negotiating process is able to yield enduring peace. From the Doha agreement
and Trump’s statements it seems that the US may even be prepared to contemplate leaving
Afghanistan without any meaningful long-term commitment. At the declaratory level,
Washington will continue to assert that the drawdown is conditions-based until full
implementation of the agreement, but President Trump is hardly likely to change his long-
held view that Afghanistan is a quagmire from which an exit, not staying on, is the best
course. “Countries,” he said after the Doha deal, “have to take care of themselves. You can
only hold someone’s hand for so long.”

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Disagreement over the prisoners’ release, which the Taliban insist is a prerequisite for
commencement of an intra-Afghan dialogue, has become the immediate obstacle in the
peace process. But a bigger challenge is the political crisis sparked by the clash between
Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah over the disputed presidential election.

If not expeditiously addressed, the tussle can snowball into a bigger crisis. This would
further delay intra-Afghan talks at a time when the US withdrawal is already under way
while the Taliban have resumed operations against government forces and vice versa.

Several questions are raised by these developments. Will the start of the US drawdown
mount enough pressure on Ghani and Abdullah to reconcile their differences and agree on a
common negotiating team for intra-Afghan talks?

How engaged will the US be at this time to press the Afghan parties to compromise,
preoccupied as it is, like other countries, with tackling the coronavirus emergency? Will a
prolonged hiatus in peace talks unravel efforts to end the war especially if there is a
renewal of significant violence?

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For now, Ghani seems intent on using the prisoners issue as leverage to strengthen his hand
with Washington and press Abdullah to back down and accept him as the legitimate
president. This brinkmanship, against the backdrop of parallel governments and regional
leaders lining up with one or other side, risks further destabilising the situation and
imperilling the peace process.

Meanwhile, the Taliban, while renewing attacks on government forces, have sought to
demonstrate that they are sticking to their deal with the Americans. On March 14, the
Taliban reiterated their commitment to eliminate the Islamic State (Daesh), which was
promptly welcomed by US special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad as a “positive step”.

Nevertheless, the longer the delay in starting intra-Afghan negotiations the greater the risk
of the peace plan mapped out at Doha being derailed and the country descending into
political chaos.

While Covid-19 will impose obvious limits on diplomatic efforts, Khalilzad has used it to
press the urgency of resolving the prisoners dispute.

Yet despite his prolonged stay in Kabul, he has been unable so far, to overcome the impasse
on both the prisoners issue and parallel governments. Nato, meanwhile, has expressed
concern at the political turmoil.

For Pakistan it is imperative to accurately anticipate the likely scenarios that may evolve
and be ready with a whole-of-government approach to respond to them. This exercise
should neither be guided by wishful nor short-term thinking.

The best-case scenario of course is that the principal parties adhere to the agreement, work
to reduce violence and defeat the machinations of domestic and regional spoilers even if the
timelines change and stated positions are modified in order to make the arrangement work.

However, the risk of other scenarios materialising may be higher, in which the road map
laid out at Doha is upended by the collapse of intra-Afghan negotiations or the failure of
talks to resolve core issues even if the dialogue can somehow get going. This could lead to a
resurgence of violence which may in turn compel a reluctant US to slow down its
withdrawal with unpredictable consequences.

All this serves as a telling reminder that winning the peace is always much harder than
waging war.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Two glaring deficits

Umair Javed | March 23, 2020

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

AS the experience of a number of states across the world demonstrates, dealing with a
new pandemic is just shy of an impossible task. It becomes even more so for
governments in resource-poor developing countries that are burdened by the legacy of
inefficient bureaucracies and weak administrators. This reality should preface and
contextualise all conversations on the response to the crisis shown by Pakistan’s
federal and provincial governments. They’ve been dealt a bad hand, and, for the sake
of sanity, one would prefer to assume they’re doing all they can, given significant
capacity limitations.

At the time of writing, the prime minister had reiterated a policy preference to manage the
crisis without enforcing a lockdown. This appears to go against best practices configured in
other country contexts, but it’s a decision anchored in a difficult choice. Put simply, locking
down the country might flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus, but will also
cause untold disruptions to economic life, triggering a subsistence crisis for daily wage
labourers, contract employees, self-employed vendors, and other vulnerable groups.
Hence the federal government’s signal so far has been non-coercive behavioural regulation,
over and above the closure of educational institutions and various social and commercial
gatherings (parks, weddings, cinemas etc). This essentially means that it is advising people
what they should do — self-isolate, avoid crowds — without imposing any serious cost for
non-adherence.

There is no large-scale welfare mechanism

that can reach adversely impacted
populations.

Given the policy conversation so far, there are two points worth analysing in detail here.
Firstly, relying on people changing their behaviour has as its assumption the notion that
people trust the state enough to listen to it. Secondly, regardless of the success of this or any
other strategy, the country is still facing significant economic disruption. This means that
beyond the daunting task of upgrading emergency healthcare provision, the government is
still looking at a relief and welfare responsibility of an unprecedented scale.

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On both of these two points, the existing situation is grim. Even if we assume that every
citizen trusts the current federal government in some amorphous way, does that trust carry
a normative/moral dimension powerful enough to get them to change their behaviour? For
example, the state hasn’t banned religious congregations, it’s just requested people to avoid
‘all large gatherings’. If images from Faisal Mosque this past Friday are anything to go by,
this doesn’t seem to have had any meaningful impact. Does the distant federal government
— speaking through televised addresses — have the moral authority in people’s life to make
them rethink their ingrained habits?

Past experiences on this front are unconvincing. We’re still unsure what institutions and
factors of socialisation influence citizen behaviour in Pakistan, but we can safely say the
state ranks pretty low on that list. Voluntary compliance with the rhetoric of the state
doesn’t work in other domains (taxation, immunisation, family planning, sectarianism), why
would it here? In other words, the state in its current incarnation does not have the moral
importance, ie ‘convincing power’, nor the right channels of communication to get people to
change their habits.

Alongside this challenge, is the concurrent one of providing welfare to those materially
impacted by the pandemic. On this front too, the situation is bleak. Other than the Benazir
Income Support Programme, there is no large-scale welfare mechanism that can reach
adversely impacted populations. Even BISP, given its design and current spatial spread, may
not be able to cater to previously subsisting urban populations experiencing significant
economic shocks. The Pakistani equivalent of a public distribution system, the Utility Stores
Corporation, has suffered from years of chronic underfunding and corruption, and is
unlikely to plug the gap if food supply chains are disrupted.

An inability to change behaviour non-coercively and provide welfare in times of urgent

need points to two political deficits that the country needs to pay attention to when this
pandemic is (hopefully) over. The first is a democratic deficit, which has laid bare once
more the organisational weakness of political parties and their inability to constitute
meaningful moral and ideological relations with the citizenry. People don’t trust the state
sufficiently because they haven’t been socialised into trusting the state by those who do
politics. A large part of this is down to the absence of contact between parties and citizens,
where showing up at election time and asking for votes is what passes for mainstream
democratic politics.

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Contributing to the democratic deficit is the absence of workable relations between the
government and CSOs, such as voluntary associations, charities, and religious groups; as
well as the glaring absence of community-based mechanisms of outreach, such as elected
local governments. If people won’t listen to the prime minister speaking through their
television, maybe they would be more amenable to local community workers or
neighbourhood elders who help them out on other issues. The crisis here is hence amplified
by the persisting absence of meaningful ways of coordinating with those who may hold
moral authority over citizens.

Beyond this democratic deficit, we’re also facing a welfare deficit, which all preceding
regimes have helped compound. Glaring examples include seven decades of the military
prioritising a national security state rather than allowing for the development of a
functioning welfare system; or at a subnational level, chronic underfunding of public health
and welfare provision in favour of vote-winning and rent-extracting physical infrastructure
projects, such as by successive PML-N governments in Punjab.

These deficits are now coming back to haunt the country at the worst possible time. At this
point, let’s hope that a response that can tackle the crisis effectively is somehow mustered.
Let’s also hope that once tackled, the state is compelled to draw on this period of crisis and
hold a meaningful conversation about its future priorities.

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

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Twitter: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Corona crackdown
Huma Yusuf | March 23, 2020

The writer is a freelance journalist.

SHUTDOWNS. Lockdowns. Blanket bans. Closed borders. States of emergency (or

calamity, if you’re in the Philippines). Temperature-checking drones and the surrender
of mobile data to track citizens. Government directives to industry. Coronavirus has
made authoritarians of us all.

Delaying the spread of the virus is of paramount importance. But it is not too early to
consider the long-term toll the virus will take on our political systems. Democracy seems
particularly vulnerable to this pandemic.

On the simplest level, the pandemic has highlighted how voting systems cannot handle
disruption. Local and national elections around the world are being suspended — the
logistics are too overbearing and costly in the midst of a crisis, and social distancing
impossible during polling. These delays will undoubtedly erode trust in the system as
leaders without a credible mandate bungle their way through an unprecedented crisis.
 Democracy is particularly vulnerable to the
virus.

The dithering of political leaders in democratic states when making difficult decisions has
also been criticised, and contrasted with quick action in China. Some of this is due to the
slower pace of consensus gathering in democracies, as different departments and numerous
political stakeholders must be consulted. Many delays can likely be attributed to leaders
weighing the political costs of what they must do. Either way, democracy can be found
wanting.

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It doesn’t help that democracy has been equated with cacophony over these trying weeks. In
devolved systems, provinces and states have been responding differently, often at odds with
each other, spurring the virus’s spread. Even democracy’s most diehard supporters have
found themselves longing for centralised command and control. 

Many democratic leaders have, unfortunately, also exploited Covid-19 as an excuse to

behave badly. The US has doubled down on its irrational travel bans. In Singapore and
Israel, the governments are invoking the crisis to start tracking people through their mobile
phones. In Delhi, a BJP activist has blamed those protesting the citizenship act for spreading
the virus. Globally, journalists are facing pressure and threats for criticising government
responses to coronavirus, or questioning the accuracy of reported numbers. It has only
taken a few weeks for the situation to get dire enough for a group of UN special rapporteurs
on human rights to issue a reminder to governments to not use Covid-19 as a cover for
repressive, discriminatory or unconstitutional measures. 
Such bad behaviour will persist while democracy’s greatest asset — accountability — is
undermined. The fast pace of events and the unprecedented nature of this crisis means that
typical accountability functions such as the media, courts and civil society organisations are
unable to serve as effective checks. In the short term, this will result in dubious decision-
making. In the long-term, today’s mistakes will be held up as examples of flagrancy, venality
or incompetence by populists and autocrats hell-bent on further undermining democratic
systems. 

But we cannot lose faith in the system during this crisis. Democracy, when agile and
credible, can deliver the efficacy of an authoritarian system while maintaining
transparency and accountability. This is the ‘wartime democracy’ being daily extolled in the
Western press. In this conception, democracy can rely on a unified public mandate (which
authoritarian states rarely have) to make quick decisions, while being kept answerable for
its actions (don’t forget, China, which is now recording no or few daily new cases, and is
being envied the world over for its top-down coronavirus crackdown, initially sought to
suppress the outbreak of the virus, leading to its spread).

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The real stress for democracies is not now, during the handling of the crisis. Rather, it will
come when the pace of the spread of the virus has been made manageable, and people
observe how quickly their systems bounce back. How soon and proactively will
governments reevaluate emergency measures, roll back monitoring and tracking provisions
once they are no longer needed, and, most importantly, re-engage citizens to understand
their priorities and needs.

Moreover, once the virus is controlled, we will recognise that the fallout of the pandemic
can only be managed by a robust democratic system. When we seek to rebuild shattered
economies — and societies — we will need inclusive representation so that all constituents
can be heard and accounted for. We will need social welfare programmes, local
governments to engage the public at the grass roots, and civilian policing to tackle the likely
rise in petty crime during a recession. Above all, we will need governments — and
democratic ones are best suited for this — to hear the global public’s priorities, and improve
access to quality health and education so that we’re never so vulnerable again.

The writer is a freelance journalist.

Twitter: @humayusuf

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Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

 TODAY'S PAPER | MARCH 23, 2020

Vagueness doctrine
Omer Imran Malik | March 23, 2020

The writer is a human rights lawyer working in Islamabad.

IN every civilised legal society, where the right to due process is recognised, it is taken
for granted that criminal laws — which prohibit certain behaviours and risk
restricting the liberty of citizens if violated — are going to be very clearly articulated
and well defined. This is because liberty is an innate right belonging to all persons, and
thus any law that restricts or threatens the liberty of an individual must be carefully
crafted and worded so that it might not unfairly restrict this inalienable right.

It was this concern that gave birth to one of the most time-honoured, celebrated and well-
known constitutional law doctrines of modern legal thought: the ‘void for vagueness’
doctrine. Under this doctrine, any law that imposes a criminal liability on a person for any
speech or action cannot be vaguely worded: every criminal law must be clearly worded and
distinctive in its meaning, application, enforcement, prosecution and punishment.
 A law criminalising certain speech or action
cannot be imprecise.

Courts all over the world follow this doctrine to ensure that four very important principles
are enforced, which are inseparable from the idea of the rule of law: (i) ordinary persons
must not have to guess as to what conduct is legal and what is illegal so that they may
clearly know and avoid illegal behaviour; (ii) judges, police and state officials should not be
given an opportunity to abuse the policing powers of the state through whimsical, arbitrary
or discriminatory enforcement; (iii) ordinary persons are not inhibited from lawful activity
or the exercise of their constitutional rights due to the fear that they could be violating the
law; and (iv) sloppy laws, which leave policymaking to the police, government agencies or
judges rather than the elected law-making body, should be discouraged.

In Pakistan, this rule was recognised in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in
Zaheerudin v. State (1993 SCMR 1718): “There may be no dispute about the proposition that
if a law … particularly, criminal, is vague, uncertain or broad, it must be struck down as a
void law … In order to succeed … [it must be shown that the] constituents of the offence, as
given in the law are so indefinite that line between innocent and condemned conduct
cannot be drawn or there are attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory
enforcement or that it is so vague on the face of it that common man must necessarily guess
at its meaning and differ as to its application.”

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This doctrine was finally used by the apex court to strike down Section 7A of the Anti-
Terrorism Act of 1997 in Jamaat-i-Islami v. Federation of Pakistan. It was held then that as
per Article 4 of the Constitution, the right to due process is protected for all persons and no
citizen of Pakistan can be prohibited from doing something that is not illegal or can be
compelled to do something the law does not require them to do; thus vague laws, especially
criminal offences, are antithetical to our constitutional credos.

Sadly, despite this, the judiciary has been unable to enforce the Constitution and has
continued to allow many vague criminal laws — which provide little to no reasonable
precision to an ordinary citizen to understand what conduct is prohibited and what is
allowed — to remain in force, leaving us at the mercy of state functionaries and their
capricious and whimsical moods. 

An example is the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, itself. While striking down one section back in
2000, the honourable Supreme Court appeared to have disregarded many other problematic
clauses that never distinguished what conduct falls under ‘terrorism’ and what falls under
our ordinary criminal law.

After almost two decades of divergent interpretations by different high courts and
amendments in the text by parliament, in 2019, the Supreme Court finally ended the debate
and defined which elements are necessary for an offence to fall under the Anti-Terrorism
Act. However, even then, the apex court noted that Section 6 was still problematic in the last
paragraph of its judgement: “… the definition of ‘terrorism’ contained in Section 6 of the
Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 as it stands at present is too wide…”

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Our judiciary needs to stop tip-toeing around this issue and spending so many years trying
to interpret such problematic criminal laws that draw blurry lines between innocent legal
conduct and criminal behaviour. Why should it be the job of the courts to draw those lines
for the legislature?
Laws, especially those imposing criminal liabilities, should be certain and clear. If they are
not, they have no place on the statute book and should immediately be struck down. It is the
only way that parliament will learn to be precise when drafting legislation to ensure that
the invaluable right of liberty in Pakistan shall remain protected.  

The writer is a human rights lawyer working in Islamabad.

omerimranmalik@gmail.com

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Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020

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