Archive for Pakistan

7-Year Old Loses a Leg

December 5, 2009 at 9:07 am · Filed under Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , , , , ,

Leg of a seven-year-old girl, Laiba, was amputated at a private hospital in Peshawar after she received serious injuries when personnel of Frontier Corps fired at their vehicle in Hayatabad on Nov 25. 

She is a bright child and brilliant in her studies.   

The leading TV channels have declined to highlight her plight as they are under pressure from the “invisible forces”.
 
While no one visited her at the hospital including both government functionaries as well as security personnel, the family is under pressure not to follow the case. The Hayatabad police station has registered the case against unknown attackers while knowing very well who they were.
 
So far neither any compensation has been extended to the family nor she has been provided free treatment by the provincial or federal government.
Where is Mian Iftikhar Hussain and other representatives of the government who have constantly been asking us to remain prepare for giving sacrifices. At least they should have the courtesy to visit this little girl. while talking to father of this girl I was at a loss and had no words to share his sorrow. The poor man has yet to come to terms with this tragedy.
 
It could happen to any one of us, to our children or other relatives. I simply wonder how could security personnel directly target a vehicle carrying women and children. They were so callous that they didn’t even bother to stop and look at what they had done.

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The World Class City Concept

November 28, 2009 at 8:25 pm · Filed under Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

 By Arif Hasan           (04 September 2009)

Email: arifhasan@cyber.net.pk

 (Paper prepared for the IAPS-CSDE Network Symposia on Culture, Space and Revitalization, Istanbul, Turkey, 12 – 16 October 2009)

Introduction

The welfare state model in Europe was born out of an uneasy reconciliation between capitalism and its opponents. Its principles were adopted by most of the newly independent countries (who did not belong to the Soviet block) in the post-Second World War period. The ethos of the model survived because of the division of the world into socialist and capitalist entities and because of the presence of a revolutionary China and a militarily powerful Soviet Union in the UN’s Security Council. In these circumstances a global market economy was simply not possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the repercussions of the failure of the Cultural Revolution in China changed all this and in political terms capitalism came to dominate the world. 

As a result, we are governed today by three global institutions. They determine global politics, culture, finance and development and as such most national development policies and concepts as well. These institutions are all undemocratic in nature and hence their decisions and policies cannot be changed through existing rules, regulations and procedures that determine their functioning. These institutions are: one, the UN which is controlled by five members of the Security Council who won the Second World War and who can individually veto any decision of the UN General Assembly; two, the International Monitory Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which function on the basis of one dollar one vote; and three, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which was born out of the G-7 green room negotiations that led to the creation of GATT and is controlled by the G-8. 

Collectively these organisations have promoted what has come to be known as the “free market” economy, the most important aspect of which is the freedom of capital to move across national borders and seek investment wherever it can multiply. The structural adjustment process, which most poorer countries had to undergo in the decade of the 90’s, facilitated the growth of the free market economy and helped in this process. Structural adjustment demanded from national governments the regulating of then balance of payment and returning loans taken from the IFIs. To make this possible countries undergoing structural adjustment agreed to remove subsidies on health, education and housing; increase taxation on utilities; sell their industrial and real assets to the private, national or international corporate sector; and remove restrictions on imports and exports. The resulting national economic crunch meant that the poorer countries could not invest, and in many cases even subsidise, infrastructure projects and these had to be built by the international or national corporate sector through international tendering. As a result, there has been a big boom of international companies bidding for these projects. The Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) and the Build-Operate-Own (BOO) processes were invented to make infrastructure development possible through this system. Both systems produce infrastructure at more than twice the cost of government produced infrastructure and in addition national governments have to give sovereign guarantees for the investment made by the investors.    

A whole new terminology and concepts has been developed to support the market economy. Concepts such as “it is not the business of the state to do business”, “cities are the engines of growth”, “direct foreign investment”, and the concept of linking economic well being with GDP growth have had a major impact on national policies of Asian countries. In search of growth and DFI, they have invested in a big way in the creation of industrial zones (instead of in their people) and accepted the concept of “corporate” farming. India is one of the emerging economic giants who have followed these policies since the mid-1990’s. As a result, its economic growth in the last decade has varied between 7 and 9 per cent. However, it is estimated that as a result of the creation of 500 Special Economic Zones (for attracting Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) and corporate farming (both promoted by the World Bank for GDP growth) about 400 million people would willingly or unwillingly be forced to move from rural to urban areas by 2015.[1] This is twice the population of the United Kingdom, France and Germany put together. This process is also being promoted in other Asian counties and is in many cases being resisted by the farmers.[2] It is replacing food crops by cash crops and in the process increasing the cost and shortage of food; creating agricultural refugees; and making the state vulnerable to corporate sector pressures and interests.[3] 

To promote DFI, the three undemocratic global institutions have also promoted the decentralisation of governance systems, giving considerable power to local level institutions. Increasingly this power is being used for accessing DFI and identifying projects independently of the provincial or central governments. It is too early to evaluate this process. Maybe an audit after one more decade will help us decide as to the benefits of the system – at present it is a mixed bag.[4] 

IFI pushed political reforms and deregulations have also had a major impact on property markets and have reshaped the politics of land development. Trading across borders in gold and contraband goods is no longer lucrative. As a result, the gangs and mafias involved in these underworld activities have become involved in the real estate business and linked up with their underworld partners abroad for this purpose. This has skewed the land market and promoted massive speculation.[5] The process has been further facilitated by regional conflicts, increasingly porous borders (both for capital and individuals) and the narcotic trade. All this has introduced an element of violence and targeted killings and kidnappings of opponents, rivals and social activists in the land and real estate sector.[6]     

The state in almost all cases has responded to these market pressures and made land available for development through landuse conversions, new development schemes and the bulldozing of informal settlements.[7] NGOs and CBOs who have challenged this process have faced two constraints (apart from their own internal organisational weaknesses and culture); one an unsympathetic international media and the other an absence of laws to prevent environmentally and socially inappropriate land conversions. Even where such laws do exist, rules, regulations and procedures and institutions to implement them are often missing. As a result, courts often deliver judgements that promote inequity, poverty and social fragmentation.[8] Media too is increasing being controlled by the global giants, who promote the new paradigm, and Richard Mindoch has predicted that very soon there will only be three global media grants and his company will be one of them. In 1983 there were over 50 such corporations. By 2002 they had fallen to nine.[9] National medias, where journalists and the intellectuals are fighting for reform and justice, are responsive to social and environmental issues but their owners are subject to both state and corporate sector pressures that they cannot resist.[10]   

Poverty in the countries who did not have the means to respond positively to the free market, has increased and the rich-poor divide has increased in all cases. The most damaging aspect of this divide is promoted by the privatisation of education. This is introducing two systems of education, private for the rich and public for the poor, and has very serious long term repercussions.[11] To rectify this increasing divide, the IFIs have promoted the concept of safety nets for the poor for which loans are being provided and the role of NGOs in these programmes is being encouraged. Safety nets are serving a very small percentage of the effected population and NGO involvement with big funds available to them is adversely affecting NGO culture and its relationship with development policies and poor communities.[12] Loans for infrastructure projects have also increased, especially for road projects. There is an increasing questioning of these loans and aid programmes and the projects they promote by civil society organisations in the South.[13] There is evidence that shows that most of the projects are either failures or unsustainable, expensive and that much (in some cases most) of the loans go back to the north in the shape of technical assistance, overheads and contractors’ profits promoted by the concept of international tenders.[14]    

What has been elaborated above has had a profound effect on the shape and politics of our cities. The shape that our cities are taking and the reasons behind them are the result of a powerful nexus of developers and investors (many of dubious origins); compromised government institutions and bureaucrats; and politicians seeking global capital for shaping their cities in the image of the “West” – an image that is promoted (implicitly or explicitly) by the three global institutions I mentioned in the beginning of this paper. To promote this paradigm, which I call the neo-liberal urban development paradigm, the concept of the world class or global city has also been promoted. It is a powerful concept and has almost universally been accepted by national government policy makers, the newly emerging middle classes and academia, especially in the West.      

The World Class City Concept and its Repercussions 

Karachi, Bombay, Hochiminh City, Seoul, Delhi all aspire to become World Class cities. Some wish to become like Shanghai and others like Dubai[15] although the context of Shanghai or Dubai is very far removed from them. The World Class city has been defined beautifully (also sympathetically) by Mehbubur Rahman in a brilliant paper and in other literature.[16] According to the World Class city agenda, the city should have iconic architecture by which it should be recognised, such as the highest building or fountain in the world. It should be branded for a particular cultural, industrial or other produce or happening. It should be an international event city (Olympics, sports fairs). It should have high-rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements and low-rise neighbourhoods. It should cater to tourism (which is often at the expense of local commerce). It should have malls as opposed to traditional markets. For solving its increasing traffic problem (the result of bank loans for the purchase of cars) it should build flyovers, underpasses and expressways rather than restrict the production and purchase of automobiles and manage traffic better. Doing all this is an expensive agenda and for it the city has to seek DFI and the support of International Financial Institutions (IFIs). For accessing DFI, investment friendly infrastructure has to be developed and the image of the World Class city established. For establishing this image, poverty is pushed out of the city to the periphery and already poor-unfriendly byelaws (which are anti-street, anti-pedestrian, anti-mixed landuse and anti-dissolved space) are made even more unfriendly by permitting environmentally and socially unfriendly landuse conversions. The three most important repercussions of this agenda are that global capital increasing determines the physical and social form of the city and in the process projects have replaced planning and landuse is now determined on the basis of land value alone and not on the basis of social and environmental considerations. Land has unashamedly become a commodity. 

The agenda for opting for high-rise redevelopment rather than the upgrading of settlements; relocating old informal settlements to the periphery of the city; and making room for mega projects and mega events has resulted in a massive increase in evictions all over Asia in the last five years.[17] Over 500,000 persons have been evicted in Delhi for the preparation of the 2010 Asian Olympics alone.[18] All studies show that the evicted population was not consulted in the eviction and/or relocation process; that there was always an element of subtle coercion and often of brute force; and that the evicted and/or relocated population became poorer than before and often in debt whereas before they were debt free.[19] Children’s education too has always been disrupted as a result; jobs lost and travel time to and from work increased to over five to six hours in many cases, thus effecting families and social life, health, recreation and entertainment activities.[20] The result of the above policies, along with an absence of appropriately subsidised land development and social housing, has seen a phenomenal increase in informal settlements. 

Politicians and government planners justify the high-rise redevelopment approach by insisting that a modern city has to be high-rise with open areas in-between. They also insist that high densities, needed for a well-functioning city, cannot be achieved by upgrading and densifying existing neighbourhoods.[21] The image of a city is governed by the perception of what it should be. One can discuss and disagree on it. However, a recent International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) supported study by the Urban Research and Design Cell at the Department of Architecture and Planning (DAP), NED University, Karachi, of Karachi settlements and apartment complexes has conclusively established that the same densities as prescribed by the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) can be achieved by building row houses of ground plus two stories (along with required social infrastructure) without damaging the environment or adversely effecting social life.[22]  

The study of a resettlement and upgrading project in Hochiminh City (considered as one of the better ones) illustrates the problems with the high-rise option as opposed to upgrading.[23]  The average compensation given to apartment dwellers in the project is about US$ 5,400 which does not include the loan required to bridge the gap between the compensation and the actual price of the housing unit. It does not include the cost of external infrastructure either. The apartment option, given Vietnam’s economy, is not sustainable except through massive IFI loans. The upgrading option on the other hand works out to US$ 325 per household and is manageable. Communities also prefer upgrading to apartments for they cannot perform economic activities in apartment blocks. Out of 72 households who had moved to apartments in the project, 50 were in debt as a result of moving, whereas previously none were in debt. One of the reasons was that they were paying the equivalent of US$ 8 per month for utility and maintenance charges and US$ 21 instalments for the apartment against an average monthly earning of US$ 75 per month. 

The World Class image of the city has no place in it for informal businesses and hawkers except as organised tourist attractions. The link of these hawkers and businesses with low income people (for whom they make life affordable) and with commuters is not recognised and as such large scale evictions of informal businesses and hawkers have taken place without any compensation in all the major cities in the Asia-Pacific region. This has impoverished millions of families.[24] 

The free market economy led in the last decade to considerable liquidity in banks and leasing companies. This has been utilised for providing loans for the purchase of cars. Evidence suggests that these loans were provided as a result of an understanding between the automobile industry and global banking and financial sectors. Many billion dollars of loans have increased the population of cars in many Asian mega and secondary cities in the last decade by over 80 to 100 per cent. In Karachi alone banks and leasing companies gave the rupee equivalent of US$ 1.8 billion for the purchase of an average of 506 vehicles per day in the financial year 2006-2007.[25] As a result of this automobile industry-banking sector nexus, traffic in the larger cities of the Asia-Pacific region has become a nightmare. To solve this problem, city planners have initiated a massive programme for the construction of signal-free roads, flyovers, underpasses and expressways which have aggravated the situation and in addition made life difficult for pedestrians and commuters. In addition to these traffic related projects, non-motorised means of transport, used mostly by the poor (such as cyclos, rickshaws, animal drawn carts) have also been banned in many cities or their movement restricted to the periphery or to low income settlements.[26] Mass transit light rail projects meanwhile have failed to provide an adequate or affordable alternative to the poor since they are essentially projects and not part of a larger comprehensive transport plan.[27]   

As a result of the above and related processes, the once poor-friendly cities of Asia have become poor-unfriendly, both for the migrants (mainly agricultural refugees) and for communities who have lived in them for decades if not for centuries. Land, construction costs and rentals have multiplied manifold as compared to daily wages for unskilled labour.[28] 

The Struggle Against the Negative Aspects of the World Class City

 I do not know of any city or country in the Asia-Pacific region where the neo-liberal urban development paradigm has been challenged as a paradigm or an alternative vision for the city has been promoted. However, projects promoted by the paradigm have been successfully challenged in those countries who have a populist political culture and strong civil society organisations and networks. 

Global capital, as has been said earlier, has desperately been looking for a home. Real estate development for the new rich and for tourism offers the best opportunities for investment especially in countries where regulatory frameworks are weak. Tourist resorts and condominiums along the beaches of Asian cities are prime locations for this development. For commercial plazas, the inner city informal settlements, if evicted, promise lucrative returns. National and the newly empowered city governments have clandestinely sold or arranged to sell these assets to national and/or international companies without the knowledge of the residents of these settlements and without developing any procedures for resettlement of the evicted population. According some reports,[29] almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign investors between 2006 and 2008, including seven islands off the coast and a large number of beaches and the homes of residents bulldozed. As a result, there was an increase of over 1,500 per cent in 2007 over the preceding four years in DFI. This investment has impoverished the poor and made them jobless and homeless. It has benefited the investors, their local partners and politicians.[30] Cambodia is a poor country, still recovering from years of devastation, genocide and war and as such with an almost non-existent civil society movement. So this clandestine sale was possible, with little or no organised resistance. 

Pakistan is also a poor country but it has a comparatively strong civil society, nascent environmental laws and tribunals and a populist political culture born out of repeated struggles for the restoration of democracy. In 2007, the Prime Minister of Pakistan agreed to sell two islands off the Karachi coast to a Dubai based company against an investment of US$ 43 billion. In addition, he agreed to providing about 33,000 hectares of coastal land to another Dubai based company for a US$ 500 billion project with an initial investment of US$ 150 billion. Another project of US$ 1,500 million, aimed at privatising 14 kilometres of beach has also been proposed and part of it has been initiated. In agreeing to sell the land and beaches the Prime Minister bypassed existing laws and procedures. In addition, the projects (which were exclusively for upmarket condominiums, 5 star hotels and marinas) were to adversely affect the livelihood of 200,000 fishermen, evict about 36 villages and prevent lower and lower middle groups access to the beach. At present, over 300 thousand persons visit the beaches over the weekend. Beach development projects have also tried to force lower income groups (and those who serve them) off the beach by preventing informal eating places and activities on the beach and replacing them with expensive formal food stalls.[31]       

Civil society organisations in Karachi formed a network to oppose the beach development and island sale projects. The network included fishermen’s organisations, community organisations from low income settlements, schools, NGOs, academia, prominent citizens (including ex-judges of the Supreme Court) and the print media. The sale was also opposed by a number of senior bureaucrats. As a result, the sale of the islands has been put on hold, the Limitless project cancelled and the US$ 1,500 million project considerably modified. Earlier, through the same process networks, backed by organisations that work with low income groups, had objected to the 1994 Karachi Mass Transit Project as a result of which modifications were made to it.[32] A US$ 100 million Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan was also cancelled for a waste water management project when an NGO, working with communities in informal settlements presented and lobbied through a network for a US$ 20 million alternative.[33] Professional bodies representing architects and planners were conspicuous by their absence in these processes although a number of architects did take part individually in the movements. 

A similar process to that in Karachi has been followed in Bombay. The Maharastra state government, of which Bombay is the capital, put out an advertisement for an “expression of interest” for the redevelopment of Dharavi, an inner city informal settlement. The developer was to survey the settlement, carry out the urban design exercise and relocate and/or provide housing for the displaced population. Dharavi’s population is over half a million and its informal businesses and industry serve the formal ones and generate the rupee equivalent of well over US$ 500 million a year. In spite of this, the advertisement called Dharavi a pocket and asked the investor whether the prospect “turns you on”.[34] The people and businesses in Dharavi were not consulted regarding this advertisement and had no knowledge of it. Also, for such a huge undertaking an EIA was required under Indian Law which was not carried out. What made the issue even more serious was that the developer was being asked to carry out the survey. Already there were major differences between government and NGOs surveys of Dharavi. Government listed 55,000 houses but no businesses whereas NGO surveys listed 81,000 structures and 120,000 businesses and households.[35]        

A network consisting of the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) (a national level organisation of 500,000 households), NGOs working with low income groups such as SPARC, concerned citizens and organisations formed specially for opposing the government plan, was formed. International academics, artists, researchers and NGOs also expressed their concern. Meanwhile, the President of the NSDF offered a partnership to the state government for the development of Dharavi and also threatened agitation if the government plan went through. As a result of this movement, negotiations took place and an NGO, Mashal, has won the bid for carrying out a survey of Dharavi with the support of NSDF and Society Promotion for Area Resource Centres (SPARC).[36] 

All successful movements against insensitive projects have a number of things in common. One, the existence of a large network or organisation of poor communities; two, the existence of organisations that support these communities with information and managerial and technical guidance but do not control or direct them; three, research on social, technical and planning issues that question the project in an informal manner and present alternatives; four, support from concerned and prominent citizens, professional bodies, academia and media; five, no one group owns the network and its successes as theirs. Another aspect that has emerged from a number of case studies is that violence or threat of it, unfortunately, is the only form of dissent that is acknowledged and accommodated by officialdom.[37] 

The bleak picture above has to be supplemented with hope. This is provided by the Baan Mankong nation wide slum upgrading project of the Community Development Institute (CODI). It is a Thai government project. Under the project communities (organised through a process of savings and credit) identify and acquire land for their housing and house building or upgrading through a government system of subsidies and loans through revolving funds. To prevent speculation the strategy of collective rather than individual ownership has been adopted. A search is also on to find ways to develop new social systems on the basis of the relationship established in the process of the savings process and that of land acquisition. Local governments, professionals, universities and NGOs are involved with poor communities in the CODI process. Between January 2003 and March 2008, over 1,100 communities (53,976 households) in 226 Thai cities had benefited from the programme.[38] 

An Alternative to the World Class City Concept?   

What is the alternative to the World Class city concept? An inclusive city based on the principles of justice and equity? A pedestrian and commuter friendly city? By what process do you develop a vision? And then there are a number of sub issues. After developing a vision how do you promote it? Or will it be born out the processes that challenge (successfully and unsuccessfully) the projects promoted by the neo-liberal urban development paradigm? Maybe we need to discuss this but in the meantime what should one do? 

In the case of Karachi, I see projects replacing planning for the foreseeable future. I have tried to promote some principles on the basis of which projects should be judged and/or modified. These are: one, projects should not damage the ecology of the region in which the city is located. Two, projects should as a priority seek to serve the interests of the majority who in the case of our cities are lower and lower middle income groups. Three, projects should decide landuse on the basis of social and environmental considerations and not on the basis of land values alone. And four, projects should protect the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the communities that live in them. This would in my opinion produce better projects. But you cannot effectively follow these principles if you do not have affection and respect for the natural environment and for the people who form the majority in your cities.   

However, the question is whether the megalomania and opportunism of politicians and planners will accept a new and more humane paradigm that curtails their profits and decommoditises land? I do not think they will unless they are pressurised by city wide networks armed by alternative research and an alternative vision. The key to bringing about a change lies in the nature of professional education, I often think that it might help if graduating architects, planners and engineers should take an oath similar to those of doctors and if they do not follow the terms of the oath, their names should be removed from the list of practising professionals. In 1983, after evaluating the environmental damage that some of my work had done, I promised in an article.[39] “I will not do projects that will irrepairably damage the ecology and environment of the area in which they are located; I will not do projects that increase poverty, dislocate people and destroy the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of communities that live in the city; I will not do projects that destroy multi-class public space and violate building byelaws and zoning regulations; and I will always object to insensitive projects that do all this, provided I can offer viable alternatives.” I have tried to keep that promise and I think I have succeeded.

[1]. Devinder Sharma; Displacing Farmers: India Will have 400 Million Agricultural Refugees;        www.dsharma.org

[2].  In Pakistan a major movement of share croppers has struggled successfully against being evicted from their farms in the Okara district of the Punjab province over the last five years. Neanwhile, the Pakistan government has identified 7 hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land for lease to foreign countries. For details see, Ahmed Rafay Alam; Leasing Out Land And Food Security; The Daily News, Karachi, September 04, 2009.

[3]. Devinder Sharma; Displacing Farmers: India Will have 400 Million Agricultural Refugees;         www.dsharma.org

[4].  David Satterthwaite; Understanding Asian Cities; Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Bangkok, October 2005. The paper asks two important questions. These are: “Does decentralisation give city governments more power and resources and thus capacity to act?” and “If city government does get more capacity to act does this actually bring benefits to urban poor groups?”

[5].  Liza Weinstein; Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 32.1, March 2008 

[6].   Ibid. Also, planners in different Asian cities have voiced similar concerns to the author.

[7].   Arif Hasan: Understanding Karachi: Planning and Reform for the Future; City Press, Karachi 2000

[8].  Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008 

[9].   John Pilger; The Invisible Government; Speech delivered at the Chicago Socialism 2007 Conference on June 16, 2007 

[10]. The electronic media in Karachi in 2006-2007 gave considerable coverage against real estate development projects that were going to privatise Karachi’s beaches. The media was forced to discontinue this coverage when the real estate companies threatened to withdraw their advertisements.   

[11]. Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007

[12]. Arif Hasan: Discussion Document for UN University Event on “Sustainable Urban Future in an Era of Globalisation and Environmental Change”; New York, July 09-10, 2007 

[13]. These include the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank Group in India; People’s Voice in Karachi; and Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Cambodia.

[14]. See Stephanie Gorson Fried and Shannom Lawrence with Regina Gregory: The Asian Development Bank: In its own Worlds; “An Analysis of Project Audit Reports for Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; ADB Watch, July 2003. Also, Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007. Also, according to research carried out by the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, the government develops infrastructure at 4 to 6 times the cost of labour and material involved. When loans are taken from IFIs the cost goes up by 30 to 50 percent due to foreign consultants and related purchase conditionalities. Where an international tender is also a condititionality the cost can go up by an additional 200 to 300 percent. Thus something whose cost is US$ 1 in material and labour terms is delivered at a cost of US$ 20 to 30.      

[15]. See City District Government Karachi: Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020; October 2008 and State of Maharashtra; Transforming Mumbai into a World Class City; Chief Minister’s Task Force; 2004. Author’s conversations with politicians and planners in other Asian cities support this contention.  

[16]. Mahbubur Rahman; “Global City – Asian Aspirations; paper read at the DAP, NED University Karachi seminar on Planning in a Globalising World, Karachi, May 30, 2009

[17]. ACHR Monitoring of Evictions in seven Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines) shows that evictions are increasing dramatically. Between January to June 2004, 334,593 people were evicted in the urban areas of these countries. In January to June 2005, 2,084,388 people were evicted. The major reason for these evictions was the beautification of the city. In the majority of cases, people did not receive any compensation for the losses they incurred and where resettlement did take place it was 25 to 60 kilometres from the city centre. (Ken Fernandes; Some Trends in Evictions in Asia; ACHR, March 2006)

[18]. Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008  

[19]. For details see Tripti Lahiri; A Nightmare Grows on Ruins of India’s Housing Shortage; Daily Dawn, Karachi, May 14, 2008 and Han Verschure, Arif Hasan and Somsook Boonyabancha; Evaluation & Recommendations for Infrastructure & Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal; Ho Chi Minh City, 28 April 2006  

[20]. Arif Hasan; Livelihood Substitution: The Case of the Lyari Expressway; Ushba International Publishing, Karachi, 2006. According to the estimates of the Urban Resource Centre Karachi, the building of the Lyari Expressway adversely affected the education of 26,000 children.   

[21]. Government planners from Delhi, Phnom Penh, Hochiminh City, Seoul and Karachi have repeated this in their conversations with the author   

[22]. Arif Hasan. Asiya Sadiq, Suneela Ahmed; Density Study of Low and Lower Middle Income Settlements in Karachi; unpublished study prepared for the IIED, UK, 22 June 2009

[23].  Han Verschure, Arif Hasan and Somsook Boonyabancha; Evaluation & Recommendations for Infrastructure & Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal; Ho Chi Minh City, 28 April 2006

[24]. For details see Arif Hasan, Asiya Sadiq Polak, Christophe Polak; The Hawkers of Saddar Bazaar; Ushba International Publishing, Karachi, 2008 and Bhowmik, S.; Social Security for Street Vendors: A Symposium on Extending Social Security to Unprotected Workers; Volume 568, December 2006 (quoted in Liza Weinstein; Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 32.1, March 2008)  

[25]. Arif Hasan; The Neo Urban Development Paradigm and the Changing Landscape of Asian Cities; International Society of City and Regional Planners Review No. 3, The Hague, 04 June 2007 . According to government officials (in conversations with the author), 1,700 cars per day were registered in Bangkok and 1,300 per day in Delhi in the financial year 2006-2007.

[26]. Madhu Gurung; Delhi’s Graveyard of Rickshaws; InfoChange News & Features, September 2006. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has destroyed 60,000 rickshaws which it had impounded for violation of registration related regulations. The rickshaw owners could not pay a fine of Rs 325 plus a storage charge of Rs 25 per day at the municipal yard to get their rickshaws released within a period of 15 days. Impounded cars have to pay only Rs 100 per day and if the owner does not pay this sum, the car is not destroyed.    

[27]. Cities such as Bangkok, Manila, Calcutta have made major investments in light rail and metro systems. Other Asian cities are following their example. However, these systems are far too expensive to be developed on a large enough scale to make a difference. Manila’s light rail caters to only 8 percent of trips and Bangkok’s sky train and metro to only 3 percent of trips and Calcutta’s metro to even less. The light rail and metro fares are 3 to 4 times more expensive than bus fares. As a result, the vast majority of commuters travel by run down bus system (for details, see Geetam Tiwari; Urban Transport for Growing Cities; Macmillan India Ltd., 2002 and Arif Hasan; Understanding Karachi’s Traffic Problems; Daily Dawn, January 29, 2004.)  

[28]. The seriousness of the situation can be judged from the fact that in Karachi (which is a far more poor friendly city than the other Asian mega cities) land costs in peri-urban informal settlements in 1991 was Rs 176 (US$ 2.35) per square metre or 1.7 times the daily wage for unskilled labour at that time. Today, the cost of land in such settlements is about Rs 10,000 (US$ 133.33) per square metre or 40 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. In 1991, the construction of a semi-permanent house in an informal settlement was about Rs 660 (US$ 8.8) per square metre or 6.6 times the cost of the daily wage for unskilled labour. Today, the cost is Rs 5,000 (US$ 66.66) per square metre or 20 times the cost of the daily wage for unskilled labour. In 1991, such a semi-permanent house could be rented for Rs 350 (US$ 4.66) per month or at 3.5 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. Today, the rent for such a house would be Rs 2,500 (US$ 33.33) per month or 10 times the daily wage for unskilled labour. (Source: Arif Hasan; Housing Security and Related Issues: The Case of Karachi; unpublished paper prepared for UN-Habitat, October 2008

[29].  Ardian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark; Country for Sale; The Guardian, April 26, 2008 

[30]. According to a paper by the Cambodia Development Resource Institute titled Technical Assistance and Capacity Development in an Aid-Dependent Economy; Working Paper 15, Year 2000; in 1992, 19 percent of all aid money was spent on technical assistance. In 1998, it had increased to 57 percent. Also, according to Tom Coghlan; Consultants Reap Wealth from Afghan Chaos; Daily Telegraph, 26 March 2008, almost 50% of British aid to Afghanistan since 2001 has been spent on consultants and contractors. According to Afghan MP Shukria Barakzai, only 11 cents out of every dollar goes to the Afghans – the rest goes back to the West.  

[31]. See “The Partitioning of Clifton Beach” in Arif Hasan; Planning and Development Options for Karachi; Sheher Saaz, Islamabad, 2009. See also, website of Fisherfolk Forum www.pff.org.pk      

[32].  Urban Resource Centre website: www.urckarachi.org.  

[33].  Orangi Pilot Project website: www.oppinstitutions.org  

[34].  Society Promotion for Area Resource Centres (SPARC) website: www.sparcindia.org  

[35].  Sheela Patel and Jockin Arputham; Plans for Dharavi: Negotiating a Reconciliation Between a State-Driven Market Redevelopment and Residents’ Aspiration; Environment & Urbanization, Volume 20(1), 2008    

[36]. Ibid 

[37].  This has been observed by the author in at least three cases in Karachi and the struggle of the tenant farmers in the Punjab. This has also been mentioned to the author by Sheela Patel of SPARC for Bombay and by Prof. Yves Cabannes for cases in Latin America..  

[38].  See CODI website: www.codi.or.th  

[39].  Arif Hasan; No to Socially and Environmentally Development Projects; The Review, 1983

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Density Study of Low & Lower Middle Income Settlements in Karachi

November 28, 2009 at 8:17 pm · Filed under Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

 

By Arif Hasan         Asiya Sadiq             Suneela Ahmed

(Revised Draft, 19 August 2009) 

1.         INTRODUCTION 

There is a growing trend in Asian cities to demolish low income informal settlements and relocate their residents in six to eight storey apartment blocks. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that i) low income groups (other than white-collar workers and some of the better-off among the poor) are unhappy with the high-rise solutions for sociological reasons; ii) the units are expensive to maintain and instalments for lease or ownership are more often than not unaffordable for the poor residents; iii) residents cannot carry out any informal businesses in the apartments (apart from activities such as giving tuitions or running beauty parlours); and iv) the residents become poorer and some of them destitute. As a result, the majority of them sell their “possession” informally (if they can) at throw away prices and move back as renters to informal settlements in the city centre.[1] The city governments and their planners argue that high-rise apartment living is necessary for it provides higher densities, better social and environmental conditions and enhances the image of the city as a “world class” or “global” city.[2]   

Study was initiated to test the thesis that the same or considerably higher densities as prescribed by the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) bylaws can be achieved by building houses on small plots as opposed to apartments, without compromising on social and physical environment related concerns and to see if there are any social and economic benefits in providing plots or houses rather than apartments.  

3.        FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH FOR THE DIFFERENT CASE STUDIES 

3.1       Khuda-ki-Basti – 3 Khuda-ki-Basti is located 25 kilometres from the city centre. It is spread over 40.8 acres (16.51 hectares). It is planned keeping in view KBCA regulations for the planning of townships.[5] 49.26 per cent of the site consists of residential plots of 80 square yards (67 square metres) each; 1.85 per cent of the site is allocated for commercial plots; 6.51 per cent is allocated for amenities (including schools); 7.24 per cent for open spaces and parks; and 35.14 per cent for streets and roads. The total number of plots is 1,237. The land was provided at subsidised rates to the NGO Saiban[6] who had the settlement planned as a plot scheme and developed a process through which only poor families could purchase a plot and be forced to live on it immediately. Repayment for the plot is in affordable instalments spread over seven years. 

The settlement is designed as neighbourhoods of 100 houses around a small open community space with a space for one primary school for two neighbourhoods. A central circulation and amenity spine containing parks and community buildings runs through the settlement. The maximum permissible density as per KBCA regulations for the township is 500 persons per acre (1,285 persons per hectare). This for KKB works out to about 15 persons per residential unit. Currently the average number of persons per plot is 6.7 and the density is 203 persons per acre (555 persons per hectare). According to the byelaws construction can only be for ground plus two floors. Important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below. 

All the persons who were interviewed and/or answered questionnaires moved to KKB-3 because they wanted to own a home that they could build on incrementally and because KKB was affordable. The fact that it was far away from the city was not a consideration since transport was available. 13 per cent would have preferred a 48 square yards plot in the city centre and 16 per cent an apartment nearer to their place of work but both these options were unaffordable to them. 65 per cent respondents were renters before they came to KKB. Now only 5 per cent are renters.   

58 per cent male and 72 per cent female respondents are between the ages of 20 and 40. They are aware that once their children are older, they will require homes. They see no other affordable alternative but to build additional floors for them (once they are married) on their present properties even if it violates the regulations. 

30 per cent of the respondents have businesses in their homes and an additional 65 per cent are interested in using their premises for income generation activities. As a result, 17 per cent of the respondents work from home although 68 per cent are artisans or day-wage labour. Meanwhile, all plots developed for commercial purposes have not yet been occupied.  

The open spaces provided by the planners are not utilised. Instead, the 24 feet (7.3 metres) wide roads, meant for vehicular traffic are used as community spaces. 85 per cent of the respondents feel that in the absence of traffic these spaces are more secure for children and more suitable for social interaction since the houses open out onto them. These spaces are used by children (even grown ups) for playing, for washing and drying of clothes, parking cycles and motorcycles and for social interaction (gossiping). Community gatherings (such as religious events and marriages) also take place on the streets. Even though the residential areas of Khuda-ki-Basti are fully inhabited, the street space is still not fully utilised and appears empty. A tripling of population would seem to be required for its proper utilisation. The larger planned open spaces meanwhile are un-kept (some of them have become garbage dumps) in spite of Saiban’s attempts to turn them into parks.

The average income at KKB is Rs 8,000 (US$ 100) per month. 4 per cent of this per month (Rs 350 or US$ 4.37) is spent on maintaining and expanding the house; 4 per cent is spent on children’s education (this is low as compared to other settlements because of cheap NGO operated schools in the neighbourhood); 18 per cent is spent on travelling which varies between one to four hours every day. The residents are willing to put up with this expense and with the long travel time because they wish to own a home and this is the only alternative. As a result, speculation on property in KKB is only 10 to 11 per cent[7]  although there is a major cost difference in the price residents have paid for their properties and the current market price.[8]

The wide streets and the single and/or double storey houses along them do not provide shade for people to sit together in the summer heat. Higher houses and narrower streets, however, would.

In spite of residents wishing to increase their accommodation, no encroachments on roads and public spaces has taken place. Also, since the settlement is properly planned as neighbourhoods, it is not congested and there appear to be no major social issues or conflicts. The presence of the NGO Saiban has guaranteed protection from encroachment. It has also guaranteed NGO run schools and health clinics due to which resident’s expenditure on education is very low as compared to other settlements.  

The houses in KKB-3 are in the process of being added to. The rooms are small and often badly ventilated. Not enough thought was given to the fact that construction would be added to them.  

Three important issues emerge from the KKB study.

 Circulation and community spaces can be combined so as to increase space for residential plots.

 The accommodation requirements of the residents can be fulfilled in plots of 56 square yards (47 square metres) instead of the current 80 square yards (67 square metres)provided permission to build houses of ground plus three is allowed. This would reduce the cost of the plot, infrastructure and construction.

 Respondents want that at least two of their children after marriage should be able to live in a semi-independent unit within their plot.   

 School teachers feel that the areas allocated for the schools are not only appropriate but with the use of neighbourhood open spaces for playing the number of students can be increased by over 50 per cent. However, for higher densities an increase in area allocated for education purposes should be “appropriately” increased.

 3.2       Nawalane

 Nawalane is situated in Lyari Town of Karachi which is over 250 years old. It is an informal settlement that was regularised in 1976. It is spread over 20.9 acres (8.4 hectares), has 769 plots and a density of 1,356 persons per acre (3,376 persons per hectare). Till 1976, when it was regularised, most of the houses were single or double storey. Today, the majority of them are ground plus two to ground plus four (and even ground plus five) and they continue to rise vertically. Parks and playgrounds are almost non-existent. However, there are parks in the neighbourhood of Nawalane. The settlement consists of houses on 38 to 300 square yards (31.38 to 100 square metres) and is served by 24 lanes. The maximum road width is 15 feet (4.5 metres) and the minimum street width is 2 feet 6 inches (0.76 metres).

 The settlement is ethnically homogenous. The ancestors of all the residents migrated from Balochistan. All the respondents were born here except for four women who had come to the settlement as a result of marriage. The average family size of the respondents is 13.56 and at an average two families live on one plot. There are 6.36 children per nuclear family and as such space is required for playgrounds. 34.21 per cent males and 54.84 per cent females are between the ages of 20 and 29. As such, there will be substantial growth in the population in the coming decade. 23.68 males are over 60 years and hence require space for recreation. Only 18.84 per cent of the population uses their homes for economic activity. This is because traditionally this is a working class area and does not have a tradition of entrepreneurship. 71.15 per cent of the area is residential; 19.6 per cent is streets; and only 0.12 per cent is parks and open spaces.   

 The important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below.

 Nawalane can be spatially divided into two almost equal zones, “A” and “B”. Zone “A” is in the south-east and has a majority of houses of ground plus three to ground plus four. Its density is around 4,480 persons per hectare. This is more than twice the maximum government prescribed density of 650 persons per acre (1,605 persons per hectare) for income apartment complexes. The physical and social conditions in Zone “A” are degraded. The streets are congested, obstructing air circulation and natural light. Due to this, the residents have constructed sky lights overhead or alongside bedrooms for capturing natural light and air. Interviews suggest that the residents are dissatisfied with these conditions because they pose issues of physical and psychological well-being, promiscuity and privacy. Social relations are also strained and the residents are less communicative than in Zone “B”. In many cases, 30 to 40 persons live on one plot. They cannot afford to purchase or rent accommodation except in informal settlements on the city fringe. They do not wish to go there because of strong social and family ties with Nawalane and because of tenure insecurity associated with the informal settlements.

 Congestion within the house (as in Zone “A”) also means that the father prefers to stay out of the house and that the mother is happier when the elder children are away. Due to this, the elder children have greater freedom and adolescents become part of gangs or take to drugs. [9]  

In Zone “B” (which is in the north-west), the people are visibly relaxed, more open and communicative. Parts of the streets and cul-de-sacs are privatised with the consent of neighbours and extended families. This provides badly needed open space. Interviews also suggest that in Zone “B” the social relations between neighbours are more cordial than in Zone “A” and adolescents, as a rule, “less aggressive”. Houses are also larger and plot sizes bigger in Zone “B” and most of the houses are of ground plus one floor. Younger people have moved out to other areas and come back for religious festivals and family gatherings. The density in Zone “B” is about 2,600 persons per hectare and the environment, in spite of ad-hoc planning and encroachments onto streets, does not give a feeling of congestion.

Streets are used as public space. Since most of them are inaccessible by motorised transport, they are secure. Respondents do not wish their children to play unsupervised and as such 50.72 per cent play within their homes. Children over 14 go to play in the neighbourhood parks. Streets in front of the house are the domain of women and young children. The periphery is the domain of men and male youths. 60.87 per cent of women face problems with regard to recreation and entertainment. They feel the need for community halls and vocational schools.  

Weddings and festivals also take place on the streets and this creates considerable inconvenience for the residents as access to their homes is often blocked off as a result.

People spend around Rs 5,000 (US$ 625) per year for the maintenance and improvements to their houses. The average income per household is Rs 6,500 (US$ 81.25) per month, 11 per cent of which is spent on transport and 22 per cent on the education of children. 62.28 per cent of the population feels that the major disadvantages of living in Nawalane are related to lack of open space, privacy and security. 85.36 per cent of the respondents felt that the major advantage of living in Nawalane is proximity to the city centre and places of work and to family and ethnic networks.

The narrow roads prevent access of ambulances or fire engines into the locality and pose problems for the maintenance of sewage and electricity supply lines.

66.66 per cent of the respondents said that they would not like to leave Nawalane even if they are offered an affordable choice. 17.4 per cent opted for a plot of land in other areas of Karachi and 5.8 per cent for a two room apartment on the city fringe. 10.14 per cent could not specify their choice.

There are health and education facilities in the settlement. The health facilities, however, are in the informal private sector and as such exploitative both in terms of costs and quality. Families spend a large amount on education but that is because of the large family size.

Houses have been built over time in an ad-hoc manner and do not function well. The rooms are far too small and as mentioned earlier there are problems of congestion, light and ventilation.  

The important issues that emerge from the Nawalane study are given below.

Densities over 3,500 persons per hectare create congestion that planning may find difficult to manage. Congestion and lack of space for social interaction is also responsible for discomfort in social relations.  

If circulation and community spaces can be combined, densities of upto 3,500 persons per hectare can be achieved without compromising on environmental conditions.

56.33 square yard (47 square metres) plots can accommodate three families provided permission is granted to build ground plus three floors and if there is sufficient accessible open space in front or adjacent to the house.

For densities of between 2,000 to 3,500 persons, at least 4 per cent of the area (as opposed to the present 2.32) should be allocated for primary schools.

Road width should be a minimum of 15 feet (4.5 metres) so as to permit access of service and emergency vehicles.

Space for recreation and related activities should be provided for women. 50 per cent of the area for amenities should be allocated for this function.

The settlement would have been very different if there had been an organisation that could have provided the residents with design advice and managerial guidance for the expansion of their homes and prevented the encroachments that have taken place.  

3.3       Paposh Nagar

Aurangabad in Paposh Nagar was created as a plot settlement in 1954 for migrants from India. At that time it was on the city fringe about seven kilometres from the city centre. Today, it is adjacent to the industrial area and to important health and education institutions. It was designed as 417 plots of 45 square yards (38.5 square metres) each. The houses consisted of one floor only. However, over time they have grown and many of them are now ground plus one to ground plus three structures. People have also increased the size of their plots by encroaching on the roads. For example, the tertiary roads were planned as 12 to 14 feet (3.6 to 4.2 metres) wide. Many of them are now only 4 feet (1.2 metres) wide. Secondary roads were 24 feet (7.3 metres) and are now 12 feet (3.6 metres) wide. The primary road, however, has not been encroached upon and remains 48 feet (14.63 metres). As a result of these expansions, the average plot size is now 81.6 square yards (68.2 square metres). Household size is 6.7 persons and there are 1.5 households (10.05 persons) per house. As such, the density is 478 persons per acre (1,182 persons per hectare). The settlement contains two mosques, six schools and private clinics. There is a proper park to the south-west of the settlement which is used by the residents. 

The important findings of the analysis of the physical and social survey are given below.

 The 12 to 14 feet (3.6 to 4.2 metres) wide roads are used for small scale gatherings and functions. Weddings, however, take place in wedding halls or playgrounds in the area. In the evenings children play in the streets and men hang around in them. Women are not found socialising on the streets. Car ownership ratio is estimated at 1:10 and they are parked wherever space is available. Most of the front gates of the houses open on the 12 feet (3.6 metre) wide roads.

Roof tops and courtyards within the house are used extensively and provide light and ventilation. 89.33 per cent of the respondents believed that the locality requires properly designed recreation spaces that cater to all age groups. The survey suggests that 58.3 per cent of the children under the age of 14 play in neighbourhood playgrounds and parks where parents supervise them. 69 per cent of children over 14 play on the streets unsupervised.   

The majority of residents would like to have more space in their houses to accommodate additional economic support facilities. At present, such space is limited.

89.33 per cent of respondents believe that their houses are well ventilated and they do not have any privacy related issues. However, observations and documentation of the houses suggest that they are not well ventilated and there are privacy issues especially where the upper floors of the houses project out onto the narrow streets below.

Almost all families are extended families. 36.32 per cent of the male respondents and 54.05 per cent of female respondents were between the ages of 20 and 30. They claim that they are the dominant group in the settlement. This means an increase in population requiring new homes will take place in the next decade. 26.32 per cent of the respondents are male above the age of 60. They also claim that they are a sizeable group and it is because of them that the extended family system survives and functions. 

40 per cent of the respondents have been residing in the area since the last 55 years and 37 per cent of the respondents moved into the locality over the last 10 years. The remaining 23 per cent have moved in during the last two to three decades. Interviews suggest that there is a conflict between the newer residents and the older ones due to a difference in cultural values although they belong to similar political, religious and ethnic networks. Ethnicity is one of the reasons for moving into this locality. The owners from whom they have purchased these houses have gone up in life and moved to better locations because of the improved education of their children and/or entrepreneual skills.

The occupation of the residents is mixed between working class and white-collar employees. The residents are teachers, drivers and maids, para-medics, tailors and beauticians. Only 32 per cent of the respondents work within two kilometres of Paposh Nagar and the rest of the 68 per cent travel long distances to and from work and as such they do not have enough time for social interaction on week days.

85.67 per cent of the respondents were previously living within two kilometres of the city centre. 33.33 per cent owned their houses and 18.67 per cent were renters. The rest lived as extended families. 93.33 per cent of the respondents now own their houses. 46.67 per cent of the respondents wished to continue living in Paposh Nagar as opposed to 2 per cent who would like to own a two room flat in New Karachi. 

85.15 per cent of respondents feel that the biggest problem they face in their settlement is related to poor infrastructure, especially with regard to plumbing related issues in kitchens and bathrooms.

Respondents spend 19 per cent of their income per month on transport and 18 per cent on the education of their children. In addition, they spend on an average Rs 7,574 (US$ 94.7) annually on maintenances and improvements and additions to the homes.  

The spaces in the Paposh Nagar homes are badly related to each other and also have problems of light and ventilation. 

The important issues that emerge from the Paposh Nagar study are given below.

Paposh Nagar was a well planned settlement with proper amenities. However, because of population pressure and the non-availability of alternatives, the settlement densified and encroached on road and public spaces, thus increasing their plot sizes. This densification and growth could have been managed if there had been an authority that would have given design and technical guidance for catering to this growth. With a ground plus three floor option for the 45 square yard plot, the accommodation requirements of the families could have been fulfilled.   

Given the current density of the settlement, at least 4 per cent of the area should be utilised for amenities and another 4 per cent for education purposes as compared to the present 2.6 and 2.85 per cent respectively.

By combining public and street space, Paposh Nagar can be redesigned to relatively higher densities without adversely affecting the physical and social environment.

As for KKB and Nawalane, a 56.33 square yards (47 square metres) plot is adequate for fulfilling the needs of the residents.

3.4       Fahad Apartments

Fahad Apartments are different from the other three case studies as they are not a settlement consisting of houses on individual plots but a developer built apartment complex. They are located in an urban development suburban project designed by the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) on 26,000 acres (64,222 hectares). The apartment complex is built on 1.5 acres (0.60 hectare) and consists of 248 apartments and 56 shops. Each apartment has three rooms and a covered area of 81.6 square yards (68.2 square metres). The entire complex is a walk-up affair of ground plus four floors. The average household size is 5.72 persons per apartment which works out to a density of 942 persons per acre (2,329 persons per hectare). This far exceeds the maximum density of 650 persons per acre (1,605 persons per hectare) allowed by the KBCA regulations for low income apartment complexes. Obviously, the developer of Fahad Apartments has violated the rules.  

The housing unit in the apartments is also different from the other case studies. It has balconies, attached bathrooms (with glazed tiles) and “American kitchens”. It projects a picture of a different culture and a different way of living. This is developer induced. Many of the residents would live differently if they had built their own homes. To what extent this has determined their lifestyles can be a subject of study.  

The other major difference between Fahad Apartments and the other case studies is that amenities and health and education institutions are available to it in a planned manner in the neighbourhood. However, the residents of Fahad Apartments have added a mosque in the open space provided within the complex. Unlike Nawalane and Paposh Nagar, Fahad Apartments are not ethnically homogenous since the apartments were offered for sale on the formal market. The owners and renters have formed a union that takes care of the maintenance for shared spaces and infrastructure. A small office for the union has also been built in the open spaces provided by the developer. The Complex has been occupied for the last ten years. 

Important findings of the analysis and of the physical and social survey for Fahad Apartments are given below: 

70.6 per cent of the plot area has been built upon and the rest (29.4 per cent) is available as open space. This is used for parking of vehicles (mostly motorcycles) and as a gathering and meeting point and for religious occasions. 80 per cent of the residents “hang out” in this space in the evenings; parents chat with each other and children cycle. Older children use the neighbourhood grounds and parks provided by the KDA. 72 per cent of women do not have any problem with regard to recreation and socialising and feel that the compound fulfils their requirements.  

Although transport, electricity and infrastructure are in place, residents complain of plumbing and sewerage problems. They also complain of the failure of their union to provide adequate services for maintenance of infrastructure. In addition, they complain that the union is subservient to a Karachi ethnic political party and this has adversely affected its functioning and also relationships within the community. Although only 10 years old, Fahad Apartments are run down and the open spaces could be better maintained.   

Of the 248 apartments only three have commercial activities in them. These are tailoring, an informal Montessori and a beauty parlour. Some apartments have been subdivided for rental purposes. Most residents feel the economic repercussions of inflation and recession and would like to have the possibility of setting up income generation activities in their homes. However, given space and social restrictions, this is not possible.        

60 per cent of the male respondents are between the ages of 20 and 29 and have recently got married. Thus, the three room apartment fulfils their requirements. They also feel that the majority of the residents are young people with not more than two to three children and that there are almost no older people living in the apartments. That is why the family size of the respondents is 5.7.

The respondents have not thought of the housing related problems they will face once their children grow up and wish to get married. However, they feel that when the problem arises they will not be able to raise funds for the purchase of an apartment or a plot of land. They are fatalistic and respond “God will provide”.

36 per cent of the residents are employed in “private” jobs such as bank-tellers, accountants, school and college teachers, in the entertainment industry and electronic factories, and also as cooks and drivers. 80 per cent of the families earn more than Rs 11,000 (US$ 138) per month as opposed to 52.17 per cent in Nawalane, 31 per cent in Khuda-ki-Basti and 35 per cent in Paposh Nagar. They spend 15.4 per cent of their monthly income on transport, 24 per cent on their children education and Rs 631 (US$ 8) on their house maintenance. House maintenance here means the monthly instalments they pay to the residents’ union unlike the other studies where it also means improving the home.  

36 per cent of the working population works within two kilometres of Fahad Apartments and the rest, 64 per cent, travel long distances to and from work. Unlike the other case studies, who use local markets for shopping, the Fahad Apartments residents shop at the Samama Shopping Mall and KDA market which are within two kilometres of the apartments.     

60 per cent of the respondents were previously living on rent in other parts of Karachi and 68 per cent chose to move to the apartments so that they could become owners of a place to live. Most respondents claim that their previous residence had a better environment and location but was more expensive in rental and shopping terms. 90 per cent of the residents chose to move to Fahad Apartments because cheap apartments (with a loan facility) were available for sale or on rent.  

The important issues that emerge from the Fahad Apartments case study analysis are given below.

KDA zoning regulations for plot townships do not apply to Fahad Apartments. However, it would be interesting to see what densities could be achieved if Fahad Apartments was developed as a self-contained complex with all amenities and facilities, as per these regulations.

 

If plots instead of apartments can be developed and with incremental additions to the first two floors, densities as high as those prescribed by the KBCA rules can possibly be achieved. However, in this case the developers would not be able to make the profits that they make through building apartments.

Apartments are suitable for white-collar workers. They give an “upwardly mobile” image to their owners. However, with time, congestion and poor maintenance destroy that image.

It is interesting to compare Fahad Apartments with Labour Square which was built 35 years ago in 1974 by the provincial government (for housing factory workers) next to the Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate (SITE). SITE is a major industrial area of the city. Labour Square consists of 28 blocks of three room apartments of ground plus two and ground plus four floor heights. The residents have, over time, become owners of their apartments by paying rental instalments. The important findings related to Labour Square are given below.

Unlike Fahad Apartments the number of persons per apartment is estimated by the residents interviewed as between 10 to 15 persons. When they moved in 1974, many were young married couples with one or two children. Now the children have grown up, got married and have children of their own. It is not possible for them, due to cash constraints and non-availability of affordable loans, to purchase apartments or a plot of land for additional accommodation for all the children. Rentals and even land in katchi abadis, apart from the outer fringe of the city (where there is no infrastructure) is unaffordable.    

The maintenance of the apartment complexes is poor. There are problems related to sewage, scarcity of water and poor garbage collection. In addition, a number of informal businesses have cropped up in the open spaces since it is not possible to operate businesses from within the apartments. This, it is claimed, has an adverse effect on the social environment.

Since this is a formally planned area, schools and colleges are available within two kilometre of the neighbourhood and health facilities in the form of private clinics are also available.

4.         CONCLUSIONS

A number of conclusions emerge from the four case studies on the basis of which these settlements can be redesigned to provide equal and/or higher densities than those prescribed by the KBCA and with better environmental and social conditions. These conclusions are given below.

All the respondents and interviewees in the four settlements wanted to own a place to live. The distance from the place of work mattered, but it was a secondary issue.

The respondents preferred a place that could grow incrementally to house some of their children after marriage since they were aware that finding separate accommodation for them was not an affordable option.

The vast majority of respondents wanted the possibility of carrying out some income generating activity within their home. This was an important consideration.

Except for the KKB-3, all the settlements had densities that were in excess of the KBCA requirements for apartment complexes.

In building their homes initially, residents in the plot settlements had not considered the additions that they would incrementally make as their needs increased. As a result, the houses were badly planned and ventilated and the neighbourhoods, in the case of Nawalane and Paposh Nagar, have problems of congestion and in certain areas of Nawalane there are also social problems. Planning in advance for the incremental growth of the house is a must.

Apartment living forces a different lifestyle and culture on residents. It is perhaps because of this that the majority of families that have opted for it in Fahad Apartments are less poor than those who live in the other three settlements.

The existence of a controlling authority and/or one that gives advise on development, helps the settlements to grow in an organised manner. Such an authority prevents encroachments on streets and public space and helps in the creation of education and health facilities. Saiban plays this role in KKB-3 but does not provide design advice on house construction. However, design and technical support for house construction is essential if an improved physical and social environment is to be created and sustained.  

Streets in low income plot settlements are planned for vehicular traffic but are not used as such. They can be integrated into parks and open spaces as a result of which space for residential areas can be considerably increased.

The site percentages allocated by the KBCA for different activities are rational and do produce a liveable physical and social environment. However, for higher densities than proposed by the KBCA, a higher percentage has to be set aside for education and amenity purposes.

In the case of plot townships of 15 acres (6.07 hectares) or more, core houses (which can be added to) or plots of land on which people can build, are normally provided. Such land is on the periphery of the city and developers accept these conditions. Space for facilities and amenities are set aside as per KBCA regulations and are built upon by the government, the developer or by NGOs inducted into the planning process.

Plots for apartment blocks and complexes are usually part of a larger KDA sector plan. The sector and its different neighbourhoods have spaces allocated for social amenities such as commercial, educational, health and recreation. As such, the developer does not have to provide for these in the apartment complex plan. In addition, land is expensive in these locations and the developer would loose financially if he were to plan for incremental growth. This has been discussed with developers and estate agents and their proposals have been considered in the re-planning of Fahad Apartments which are discussed in Section 5.4 below. 

Orientation of roads, their widths and the ultimate heights of buildings and their relationship to each other are important to provide a climatically comfortable environment so that they can be used in the heat and humidity of a Karachi summer.

In the re-planning exercise, it was not possible to achieve ultimate densities of higher than 3,500 persons per hectare without increasing the house heights to more than ground plus three floors or cutting back on spaces for amenities and social facilities. Increasing the heights make the houses uncomfortable and their living spaces on the floors below lacking in light and ventilation. Decreasing spaces for amenities and social facilities, adversely affects social and environmental conditions. 

The dimensions of the plots are important for developing rational and economic layouts. A geometrical relationship between width to depth is advisable. The narrower the width the cheaper are infrastructure and construction costs.

5.         CONCEPTUAL REMODELLING OF THE SETTLEMENTS

5.1       Khuda-ki-Basti – 3

Khuda-ki-Basti has been remodelled to increase its density to more than the maximum prescribed by the KBCA regulations. According to KBCA regulations, the density at KKB should be 500 persons per acre (1,285 persons per hectare). The density achieved is 693 persons per acre (1,714 persons per hectare). For details of density and landuse. The manner in which density has been increased and landuse changes have been made, with the results achieved, are explained below.   

 The plot size has been decreased from 80 square yards (67 square metres) to 56 square yards (47 square metres). This has been done because the requirements of the KKB residents can be fulfilled on a smaller plot. The dimensions of the plot have been changed so as to make the plot 13 feet x 39 feet (3.96 x 11.8 metres). As a result, a larger number of plots can be accommodated. After remodelling the number of plots has increased from 1,237 to 2,112.

 Residential and residential-cum-commercial landuse has been increased from 47.14 per cent to 55 per cent. This is in keeping with the maximum prescribed KBCA regulations.

 By combining road and open spaces, circulation areas have been reduced from 35.6 per cent to 23.5 per cent (KBCA minimum 22 per cent) and as a result commercial areas, parks, amenities and space for educational facilities have been increased from 1.85, 7.24, 2.86, 3.19 per cent to 5, 8, 4, 4.5 per cent respectively. This is a major improvement in the physical environment.

 The increase in the number of plots and the new dimensions also reduces the cost of the plot considerably. The Saiban cost of a plot was Rs 42,000 (US$ 525). After remodelling the cost comes down to Rs 24,600 (US$ 308). In addition, savings on infrastructure cost (water, sewage, road) per plot comes to Rs 5,965 (US$ 74). This means a 44 per cent saving on infrastructure development. This remodelling makes KKB far more affordable.

 5.2       Nawalane

 Nawalane currently has a density of 1,356 person per acre (3,367 persons per hectare). An attempt has been made to keep the same density. However, this has not been successful and as a result the density has been reduced to 1,291 persons per acre (3,214 persons per hectare). This is about 2.5 times higher than the KBCA prescribed densities. The remodelling exercise has improved the physical conditions and as a result many of the social problems faced by the residents (with regard to recreation, entertainment, education, public space, gender issues, privacy) have been taken care of. How this has been achieved is explained below.  

 The average size of a plot in Nawalane is 125 square yards (100 square metres). It varies between 38 to 300 square yards (25 to 251 square metres). Currently, there are 769 plots. These have been replaced by 1,000 plots of 56.33 square yard (47 square metres) each.

 Currently, there are 2.72 families (36.8 persons) living on each plot. Remodelling suggests two families or 27 persons on each plot. Housing plans developed for the settlement are ground plus three, with eight rooms.

Landuse allocations have also been changed. By remodelling residential use has been reduced from 60.5 to 55 per cent which is prescribed by the KBCA regulations. Commercial, parks, amenities and space for educational institutions has been increased from 0.02. 0.12, 1.81, 2.32 percent to 5, 10, 4, 4 per cent respectively. 

The existing circulation area in Nawalane is 19.6 per cent. It consists of narrow congested lanes. It has been increased to 22 per cent and wherever possible roads and open spaces have been combined so as to give the settlement a feeling of openness.  

 Amenities have been grouped together around large open spaces and the fact that they will be single storey (may be double) as compared to the ground plus three floor houses, will increase the feeling of openness at these nodes.

 Commercial areas have been developed on the periphery road. Each commercial plot is also 56 square yards (47 square metres) and may have three floors of apartments above it.

 Sections through the site indicate that the ground plus four floor heights of the houses will not create a feeling of congestion.

 Ideally speaking the family size in remodelled Nawalane should be 13.4 with a building height of ground plus two and a half. This would give a density of 641 persons per acre (1,583 persons per hectare) and if the commercial units are added, the density increases to 672. Again, this is higher than the KBCA prescribed densities of 500 persons per acre for townships and 650 persons per acre for apartments.  

 5.3       Paposh Nagar

 Paposh Nagar currently has a density of 478 persons per acre (1,182 persons per hectare). The average plot size is 81.6 square yards (67.8 square metres) and the average number of persons per plot is 10.5. By following the principles applied to the remodelling of Nawalane, the number of plots has been increased from 714 to 777 and at 13.4 persons per house the density has been increased to 694 persons per acre (1,715 persons per hectare).

 If the household size is reduced from 13.4 persons to the existing 10.5, the density decreases to 543 persons per acre (1,343 persons per hectare). If the commercial areas are added, then the density increases to 658 persons per acre (1,625 persons per hectare). This is higher than the KBCA maximum prescribed densities for apartment blocks.  

The remodelling of Paposh Nagar creates a pleasant non-congested settlement. The residential area has been reduced from 60.5 per cent to the KBCA prescribed 55 per cent. The commercial area, parks, amenities, spaces for educational institutions have been increased from 4, 4, 2.85, 2.60 per cent to 5, 10, 4, 4 per cent respectively. Road space has also been increased from 16.03 to 22 per cent. Sections through the site indicate that the ground plus four floor heights of the houses will not create a feeling of congestion.     

 5.4       Fahad Apartments

 Plots for apartment complexes are built by developers with loan facilities. The developer maximises his profits. As such, the concept of incrementally increasing the house was considered difficult to apply to a developer built scheme. Therefore, developers were contacted and discussions held with them and with estate agents. As a result, a number of interesting alternatives were proposed by them.

6.         RECOMMENDATIONS

The studies carried out prove conclusively that through proper planning much higher densities than those prescribed by the KBCA for apartment blocks can be achieved by building small houses on plots of land. It is also conclusively proved that the accommodation in these houses can be incrementally increased provided proper design and technical advice is provided to the house owners. All this can be done without adversely affecting the physical and social environment as envisaged by the KBCA regulations.

This study is really an exploration into an understanding of the spatial dynamics of low income settlements and their relationship to social, economic and real estate development issues. Further work is required before one can reach conclusions that can apply universally. A few recommendations are given below.

The high-density-incremental-growth-individual-house model is suitable for new settlements and townships. Additional work on the planning of individual units and landuse, governance systems and financial requirements for the model need to be initiated.  

There are groups among the better-off poor who may prefer apartments. A better understanding of who they are and what they can afford is necessary.

In incrementally growth, densities would require 20 years to achieve the targets they are planned for. A better understanding of the pros and cons of this reality needs to be investigated. 

Although the research deals with developer related concerns for the incremental housing model on apartment sites, it does not really offer a viable solution. Developer concerns need to be addressed.

A study for the comparison of the Karachi situation and the KBCA regulations with other cities in Asia should be initiated.

Study of further options and plot sizes to the ones that have been proposed should be carried out leading to the development of new zoning and density related regulations.

The results of the study should be presented to the area communities and their feedback should be used for modifications if required.

From the data that has been gathered, academics should draw urban design and housing related lessons and turn them into teaching material.   

[1].  Han Verschure, et Al; Evaluation and Recommendations for Infrastructure and Resettlement Pilot Project Tan Hoa-Lo Gom Canal Sanitation and Urban Upgrading in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, April 2006. Also, material available with UN’s Advisory Group on Forced Eviction for Istanbul, Turkey

[2]. Arif Hasan’s discussions with politicians and local government planners in Ho Chi Minh City, Istanbul, Karachi and Delhi

[3].  These interviews were carried out in August and September 2008 at Al Azam Square, Karimabad; Labour Square – 1, Orangi Town; Falaknuma Apartments, New Karachi

[4].  These interviews were carried out in August 2008 at Khuda-ki-Basti, Nawalane, Lyari and Chashma Goth

[5].  As per the KBCA byelaws, maximum residential area 55 per cent of site; maximum commercial 5 per cent of site; minimum 22 per cent for roads and minimum 3 per cent for educational use; and minimum 5 per cent each for playgrounds, public use buildings and parks. Source: Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations, 2003

[6]. Saiban is an NGO engaged in providing unserviced land at affordable down payment and monthly instalments to poor families. They acquire infrastructure over time on the OPP model. Saiban provides support through other NGOs for education and health programmes and advice on infrastructure development

[7] . Plots were provided at Rs 10,000 (US$ 125) down payment and Rs 300 (US$ 3.75) per month instalments for seven years. This works out to a total of Rs 42,000 (US$ 525). The current market price for a plot in the area is Rs 300,000 (US$ 3,750)

[8].  Source: Akhtar Ali Khan, Project Director, Saiban, Karachi

[9].  Also see Arif Hasan, Demographic Change and its Socio-economic Repercussions: The Case of Karachi; unpublished paper, April 2009

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Militants from South Punjab Are Better Educated & More Ruthless

November 28, 2009 at 7:42 pm · Filed under Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged ,

By Ayesha Siddiqa

The Punjabi jihadis are different from their counterparts in FATA: the former are comparatively more educated. There are many, such as Maulana Masood Azhar, who were educated in the Banuri town madrassa in Karachi and completed their dars-e-nizami – an eight-year course in religious ideology that inculcates the significance of jihad in the pupil. There is a constant flow of students from religious seminaries in South Punjab to Karachi.

There are also those who have a secular education and are given responsibility for further education or conversion, and not just jihad. Additionally, there is also a reverse flow of militant religious scholars from South Punjab to other parts of the country. A prime example is Lal Masjid’s Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi and his wife, who hail from Dera Ghazi Khan.

Besides being relatively more educated, thePunjabi jihadis are also distinguishable from the Pashtoon jihadis in terms oftheir style of fighting.

A lot of the fidayeen(suicide bombers) come from the Punjab and are reputed to be much more brutal intheir handling of victims.

Frontier Governor Owais Ghani says some of the more ferocious commanders of the Taliban forces in Waziristan and Swat are South Punjabi jihadis and are much moredifficult to crack than their Pashtoon counterparts. They have no emotional ties with people up north, and are mainly ideology-driven, just like their Arab and Uzbekbrothers-in-arms.

 So,  as one freelancing jihadi confided, Uzbeks chop off a victim’s head with extreme precision and fight with an enviable commitment. The Punjabi jihadis want to avenge the rape of Muslim women in Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine, Kashmir andAfghanistan by waging a war against non-Muslims.

Militant groups show films of the killing of Muslims in these conflict zones and the rape of women to draw potential warriors. The preachers assure the fighters that a holy war is not only sanctioned by Islam but is a must for every able-bodied Muslim male.

 So, it does not really matter that the territories mentioned above are not connected with the immediate social reality of the fighters.

Unlike the Pashtoons, the South Punjabis are not motivated to wage war because they have lost one of their own in the war on terror. Instead, they are willing to give up their lives (or offer others in their family) because they are highly motivated about higher, selfless causes (70 Virgins)

Jihad provides an immediate sense of empowerment to people who now begin to see themselves as being capable of helping helpless women in far away lands. Those who are sent are even given Arab names to inculcate in them a sense of history.

source ; http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsSep2009/coverstory2sep.htm

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The Water & Sanitation Challenge: The Conflict Between Reality & Planning Paradigms

November 28, 2009 at 4:28 pm · Filed under Pakistan ·Tagged

by Arif Hasan                                (27 October 2009)

             Since the late 50’s all governments in Pakistan have given great importance to the drinking water and sanitation sector  

  • Their importance has been emphasised in all five year plans, in MTDF and in the Pakistan Vision 2030 (the correct vision in medical terms is 2020) 
  • For the implementation of water and sanitation programmes we have borrowed heavily from IFIs and in most cases technical assistance was part of the loan package. This has added substantially to our development related debt burden (in my paper I will give statistics and their sources)  
  • In spite of this, evaluation of these schemes and projects tell us that over 70 per cent of them have been unsustainable or unsuccessful in meeting their objectives (statistics and sources will be given in the paper) and in spite of “capacity building” our capacity in these sectors has actually fallen in proportion to the increasing demand
  • Thousands of water and sanitation schemes lie abandoned or function erratically all over the country, forcing people back to their conventional water sources and sanitation methods. Attempts at rectifying this state of affairs have been made periodically over the last 30 years but with very limited success  
  • The reasons for the problems faced by these programmes and schemes were (and still are) that they are conceived and developed as purely engineering solutions based on conventional standards and construction, delivery and maintenance mechanism. For this reason, they are also expensive to construct and maintain  
  • Also the institutions that designed and maintained these schemes have over long periods suffered from neglect, inadequate funding (required to fund these capital intensive schemes) and ill-intentioned political interference  
  • In the design of these schemes and programmes, there has always been an inbuilt assumption that the conventional design and maintenance institutions have the capacity to carry out this work and that the communities and the state have the required financial, technical and managerial capacity. Assumptions that have been proved wrong again and again 
  • Over the last decade the importance of anthropological and sociological considerations in the design and O&M for the sectors has been recognised but has not been successfully applied in the public sector programmes except for a few schemes. NGO networks dealing with these larger realities have expanded in the last decade. However, their work has been on too small a scale to make a nationwide difference except for the Orangi Pilot Project’s initiatives in Karachi  
  • In many seminars and papers it has been mentioned that the reason for the difficulties in the drinking and sanitation sector was because we did not have national drinking and sanitation policies. Today we have both  
  • Policies, however, mean little by themselves. They lay down some principles and directions (sometimes also some grand concepts and wish lists) based on an analysis of the national situation  
  • The implementation of policy requires rules, regulations and procedures and institutions and persons trained to deliver them 
  • In 2005, I was asked by the federal government to prepare the background paper for the sanitation policy and then draft the policy itself. The drafts were prepared after feedback from a series of workshops and consultations and modified through a long process of seminars and further consultations with various stakeholders  
  • In the policy we tried to lay down some broad principles which hold good for the drinking water policy as well. These principles were successfully applied  (but on a small scale)by the ATDO under the guidance of Ghulam Kibria in the 1970’s and have formed the basis for much of the work Akhtar Hameed Khan initiated in Orangi through the OPP. In recent years this work has expanded all over Pakistan  
  • Broadly speaking these principles are:  

1.  Build on what exists. Most communities have water sources. Some of them also have sanitation systems. If we understand these systems and the sociology behind them, they can be upgraded. Similarly, damaged schemes (or parts of them) can be rectified rather than replaced. 

2.  Technology has to been subservient to sociology. The social unit in most of the rural areas and small towns of Pakistan is around the clan and/or extended family neighbourhoods. This has to be accepted rather than developing large schemes which bring together a cluster of villages. By building around the social unit we reduce capital costs, make maintenance easier and cost effective, the communities own the scheme and there is no need for compound walls round the scheme or for chowkidars.   

3.  But to do this technology as to be miniaturised and maintenance systems decentralised. This calls for the questioning of engineering standards and procedures. It calls for research.  

4.  Schemes have to be cost effective. And for this there are three principles: i) They have to be gravity flow so as to be free of energy requirements (this can be done through decentralisation); ii) they should be designed on the basis of the finances that are available rather than designing grand mega projects and then looking for loans for them. This is possible if we accept the process of incremental development which has been followed in much of OPP work. To do this an optimum relationship between demand, standards and resources has to be arrived at while accepting that all three can change over time; and iii) where energy is required solar technology should be used. Thardeep’s rube wells in he Tharparkar district are successful examples of this.     

5.  The component-sharing principle. Under this principle, different stakeholders share development components. For example, communities can finance, manage, construct and maintain their lane and neighbourhood water and sanitation systems whereas the government can develop the source, transmission and/or disposal systems. The OPP partners and more recently the NRSP have been following this principle. Similar arrangements can be developed between developers and development authorities/WASAs, cooperatives and local government, neighbourhood organisations and TMAs. This simplifies the development process and brings the technical and financial resources of a number of actors together. Responsibility is shared 

  • The above principles are stated in the policies and work on the development of pilot projects has already been undertaken. However, the policies have yet to be mainstreamed and turned into effective action plans otherwise they cannot meet the MDG or the MTD targets and nor can they keep pace with the demand   
  • To implement the policies effectively, a number of steps need to be taken.  

i)    The policies need to be disseminated. The public needs to know about them so that it can make informed demands around them. A media policy is required (FM radio, TV, print media). They have to be projected in a manner that people can relate to them   

ii)   For departments, agencies and other actors such as developers and housing societies, dissemination is not enough. For them there has to be a process of orientation and visits to projects where policy principles are being applied. Given the number of such institutions and enterprises, this will have to be a massive programme. Right now the policy is not being followed in a number of high profile projects. Open drains and soak-pits are still being built in government financed projects in violation of policy directives.   

iii)   Both the policies spell out some social and technology related guidelines. For these to be implemented, as said earlier, rules, regulations and procedures are required along with design options. Who is to develop these and how? Toilets for schools and public spaces come to mind; disposal of hospital waste (different criteria under different conditions); principles for the creation of landfill sites (they will be different for different locations); and turning natural drains into box trunks (different design principles for different ecological regions). One can go on. This is lot of work. It requires innovation, a questioning of conventional ways of doing things.  

iv)  The principles I have discussed earlier require skills in relating to and mobilising communities. They require mapping skills and on that basis decentralisation of design components and maintenance systems. Satellite imagery makes this easier. All Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) need it. It does not exist within TMAs. Introducing the system is not enough. It has to be sustainable. This requires training and continuous upgrading     

v)   For long term success, the involvement of technical and professional academic institutions and bodies is required – institutions where policy makers and bureaucrats are trained. In most of the technical and professional institutions the policies are not known.     

vi)     To do what I have mentioned above, what is required is a provincial government institution that takes the responsibility of initiating, coordinating and monitoring what I have suggested. This is how the PHED, its rules, regulations, procedures and designs were developed in the 60’s. A similar exercise but in a very changed context and with community and stakeholder involvement is required. If proper linkages are created between different potential actors and beneficiaries, a culture of continuous learning can develop and this will prevent fossilisation, something that has happened in the past. For the creation of such an institution provincial legislation may also be required.    

  • A massive research, training and orientation programme is perhaps the most important ingredient of what I have suggested above. Much of the knowledge required for it exists in NGO and government projects. It needs to be turned into effective training material. Projects also exist, so both the problem and the solution are visible.    
  • Bemoaning the present state of affairs with distressing statistics, carrying out irrelevant donor driven research, trying to replace government responsibilities by NGOs, and seeking fancy solutions far removed from the socio-economic reality of the country, will not deliver.  

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Citizens in Pakistan ve to Protect Themselves and the State as Well

November 28, 2009 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Terrorism in Pakistan, Tribal Areas ·Tagged , ,

Relationship between state and citizens is a social contract. A basic ingredient of the contract is that the state shall protect the life and property of its citizens. It is in this context that violence is the monopoly of the state which it shall use according to the law. In theory this is so in Pakistan as well. In practice it is not so, in many parts of Pakistan.

But the most disgraceful and atrocious violation of the social contact can be seen in FATA and the NWFP in face of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorism in the area.

The state has failed again and again to protect citizens from the atrocities of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The absence of state protection made many people in the NWFP and FATA create local lashkars (volunteer armies) to push Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorists out of their areas. Most members of the lashkar had never been fond of violence. They would prefer a peaceful and quite life. The state’s abrogation of its responsibility to protect them had forced them to take up weapons in self-defence.

Even then the state never came forward to help the lashkars, most of whose leaders and members were slaughtered by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, with the state just watching as an unconcerned bystander. But still the resistance of the people continues on self-help bases in several parts of the NWFP and FATA.

There is a lashkar in Badaber, an area of rural Peshawar on the border with Darra Adamkhel, the area taken over by the Taliban, to the south, and with Khyber Agency, ruled by Mangal Bagh and Hakimullah, to the west. The Badaber lashkar is playing an impressive role in preventing Darra Adamkhel Taliban from taking over Peshawar. The lashkar has had several clashes with the Taliban, which led to death and injuries on both sides. A striking feature of the lashkar is that it is not only protecting the people of Badaber but also extending protection to law-enforcement agencies in the area. It is not uncommon to see police and FC vehicles and personnel being escorted by the lashkar’s vehicles and volunteers. Thus, in Badaber the social contract between the state and citizens is turned on its head: the citizens are protecting the state!

In another country such citizens would have become heroes. Not so in Pakistan. For a long time the state ignored the efforts of the citizens. But at last the one and only “recognition” came from the state: a letter of appreciation. It was issued on Nov 17, 2008, by the chief secretary of the NWFP and addressed to two of the lashkar’s leaders, Khushdil Khan, deputy speaker of the NWFP Assembly, and Gulzar Hussain, former chairman of thye Union Council of Badaber.

The letter states: “The provincial administration would like to place on record its commendation/appreciation for the good work that your honour has undertaken regarding formation of Aman (peace) Committees for maintenance of law and order in Badaber and Sheikh Mohammadi areas of District Peshawar. This step would go a long way in ensuring maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the concerned areas in collaboration with law-enforcement agencies. Formation of Aman Committees is a commendable and enviable community measure emulable in other troubled areas all over NWFP.”

This letter has been a source of torture for many, if not all, members of the Badaber lashkar. Is this the recognition that they deserve from the state for the acute dangers they have taken upon themselves and their families by challenging the Taliban? Some lashkar members might have thought that it would have been better they never had that letter which is more a source of torture than appreciation for them.

In my view, the letter should have come from the highest political authority of the state: the president or the prime minister of Pakistan. If not that, then at least it should have come from the chief minister or governor of the NWFP. The letter should have clearly acknowledged the role of the lashkar in protection of the law- enforcement agencies. The letter should have been shared with the media so that everyone in Pakistan had seen that the state recognised the efforts of the lashkar.

But what is the most important is that the state must fulfil its responsibility to protect the people of the NWFP and FATA from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For that to happen, the state must abandon the idea of strategic depth for good. The state must stop using FATA as a strategic space. The state must respect the fact that the people of FATA are its citizens who are fully entitled to its protection. The lashkar people, both in FATA and the NWFP, have not taken up arms for fun or out of habit.

They have done so because the state has abandoned them to the wolves
The writer, Farhat Taj, is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com

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Punjab is Dragging the Rest of Pakistan to a Snail’s Pace

November 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm · Filed under Economy, Pakistan ·Tagged

The lack of common sense in inventing the Sasti Roti Scheme has emptied the coffers of the Punjab Government. What is use of 2 Rupees Roti , when plate of Dal is for 100 rupees to accompany with it . 

Punjab is bursting from seems , with its overpopulation, most highly populated cities, with more then 500 persons  per square km. 

To top it all, there are another nine cities in Punjab, which are above 400 persons per square Km. As a result the tiny country is ranked 6th most populous in the world in such tiny area, which is amazing. 

While you compare this with other three Provinces combined, they have only four such cities like Karachi, Peshawar, Mardan, and Nowshera in Pakistan. 

This heavy load of population, on infrastructure, and economy, by Punjab is dragging Pakistan to a snail pace and promoting, poverty and terrorism.  

As Punjabis fail to follow contraceptive measures, because of their backwardness and rigid religious, beliefs, the rest of the country suffers. 

The heavy concentration of people in Punjab, the health and economic matters are getting worse as well as water sources are getting scarce.

Punjab has highest amount of Hepatitis C and B incidences.  

Whole Budgets are wasted on useless pseudo socialist projects like providing cheep food (Sasti Rotis) and no real education and development projects. Only way out is by decreasing population. 

Shahbaz Sharif is bluffing the people and making a fool of them as they are capitalist in their hearts, and promoting pseudo- socialism, which fails to pay taxes on agriculture, and claims this luxury as its birthright. 

From where this money will be brought from snatching from other provinces rights, I suppose ? 

Dr  Khurrum Shaukat Yusafzai.
Email : Khurrumuk@gmail.com

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In Pakistan, Can Nuclear Warheads be Kept Safe?

November 28, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Army's Involvement, Pak-US Relations, Talibanization ·Tagged , ,

by Seymour M. Hersh November 16, 2009

America’s dealings with Pakistan may be increasing the risk of radicalization.

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a 22 hour standoff that left 23 dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms.

There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated 80 to a 100 warheads, scattered in facilities around the country.

The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.

At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a 400 million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust.

Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan.

 I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved.

In response to a series of questions, Admiral Mullen acknowledged that he and Kayani were, in his spokesman’s words, “very close.” The spokesman said that Mullen is deeply involved in day-to-day Pakistani developments and “is almost an action officer for all things Pakistan.” But he denied that he and Kayani, or their staffs, had reached an understanding about the availability of American forces in case of mutiny or a terrorist threat to a nuclear facility.

“To my knowledge, we have no military units, special forces or otherwise, involved in such an assignment,” Mullen said through his spokesman. The spokesman added that Mullen had not seen any evidence of growing fundamentalism inside the Pakistani military. In a news conference on May 4th, however, Mullen responded to a query about growing radicalism in Pakistan by saying that “what has clearly happened over the [past] 12 months is the continual decline, gradual decline, in security.”

The Admiral also spoke openly about the increased coöperation on nuclear security between the United States and Pakistan: “I know what we’ve done over the last three years, specifically to both invest, assist, and I’ve watched them improve their security fairly dramatically.” Seventeen days later, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

“We have invested a significant amount of resources through the Department of Energy in the last several years” to help Pakistan improve the controls on its arsenal. “They still have to improve them,” he said.

Pakistan has more than 20,000 people working in the nuclear-weapons industry, and here is this American view that Pakistan is bound to fail.

High-level coöperation between Islamabad and Washington on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal began at least eight years ago. President Musharraf, recently acknowledged that his government had held extensive discussions with the Bush Administration after the September 11th attacks, and had given State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures.

Musharraf also confirmed that Pakistan had constructed a huge tunnel system for the transport and storage of nuclear weaponry. “The tunnels are so deep that a nuclear attack will not touch them,” Musharraf told me, with obvious pride. The tunnels would make it impossible for the American intelligence community—“Big Uncle,” as a Pakistani nuclear-weapons expert called it—to monitor the movements of nuclear components by satellite.

Safeguards have been built into the system.

Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft).

The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, PM Gillani—casting the deciding vote.

But the safeguards meant to keep a confrontation with India from escalating too quickly could make the arsenal more vulnerable to terrorists. Nuclear-security experts have war-gamed the process and concluded that the triggers and other elements are most exposed when they are being moved and reassembled—at those moments there would be fewer barriers between an outside group and the bomb. A consultant to the intelligence community said that in one war-gamed scenario disaffected members of the Pakistani military could instigate a terrorist attack inside India, and that the ensuing crisis would give them “a chance to pick up bombs and triggers—in the name of protecting the assets from extremists.”

The triggers are a key element in American contingency plans. An American former senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the élite counterterrorism group. He added that the unit, which had earlier focussed on the warheads’ cores, has begun to concentrate on evacuating the triggers, which have no radioactive material and are thus much easier to handle.

“The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security,” he said. “We’re there to help the Pakistanis, but we’re also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile.” The detailed American planning even includes an estimate of how many nuclear triggers could be placed inside a C-17 cargo plane, the former official said, and where the triggers could be sequestered. Admiral Mullen, asked about increased American insight into the arsenal, said, through his spokesman, “I am not aware of our receipt of any such information.”

A spokesman for the Pakistani military said that “Pakistan neither needs any American unit for enhancing the security for its arsenal nor would accept it.” The spokesman added that the Pakistani military “has been providing protection to U.S. troops in a situation of crisis”—a reference to Pakistan’s role in the war on terror—“and hence is quite capable to deal with any untoward situation.”

Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai.

In an actual crisis, would the Pakistanis give an American team direct access to their arsenal? An adviser to the Pentagon on counterinsurgency said that some analysts suspected that the Pakistani military had taken steps to move elements of the nuclear arsenal “out of the count”—to shift them to a storage facility known only to a very few—as a hedge against mutiny or an American or Indian effort to seize them. “If you thought your American ally was telling your enemy where the weapons were, you’d do the same thing,” the adviser said.

“Let me say this about our nuclear deterrent,” President Zardari told me, when asked about any recent understandings between Pakistan and the United States. “We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody’s integrity. We’re all big boys.”

In May, Zardari, at the urging of the United States, approved a major offensive against the Taliban, sending 30,000 troops into the Swat Valley, which lies a hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. “The enemy that we were fighting in Swat was made up of 20 percent thieves and thugs and 80 percent with the same mind-set as the Taliban,” Zardari said. He depicted the operation as a complete success, but added that his government was not “ready” to kill all the Taliban. His long-term solution, Zardari said, was to provide new business opportunities in Swat and turn the Taliban into entrepreneurs. “Money is the best incentive,” he said. “They can be rented.”

Zardari’s view of the Swat offensive was striking, given that many Pakistanis had been angered by the excessive use of force and the ensuing refugee crisis. The lives of about two million people were torn apart, and, during a summer in which temperatures soared to a hundred and twenty degrees, hundreds of thousands of civilians were crowded into government-run tent cities.

The Obama Administration has had difficulty coming to terms with how unhappy many Pakistanis are with the United States. Secretary of State Clinton, during her three-day “good-will visit” to Pakistan in October 2009 seemed taken aback by the angry and, at times, provocative criticism of American policies that dominated many of her public appearances, and responded defensively. 

Last year, the Washington Times ran an article about the Pressler Amendment, a 1985 law cutting off most military aid to Pakistan as long as it continued its nuclear program. The measure didn’t stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, or from buying certain weapons, but it did reduce the number of Pakistani officers who were permitted to train with American units. The article quoted Major General John Custer as saying, “The older military leaders love us. They understand American culture and they know we are not the enemy.”

Some military men who know Pakistan well believe that, whatever the officer corps’s personal views, the Pakistan Army remains reliable. “They cannot be described as pro-American, but this doesn’t mean they don’t know which side their bread is buttered on,”

Brian Cloughley, who served six years as Australia’s defense attaché to Pakistan and is now a contributor to Jane’s Sentinel, told me. “The chance of mutiny is slim. Were this to happen, there would be the most severe reaction” by special security units in the Pakistani military, Cloughley said. “But worry feeds irrationality, and the international consequences could be dire.”

The recollections of Bush Administration officials who dealt with Pakistan in the first round of nuclear consultations after September 11th do not inspire confidence. The Americans’ main contact was Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, the head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, the agency that is responsible for nuclear strategy and operations and for the physical security of the weapons complex. At first, a former high-level Bush Administration official told me, Kidwai was reassuring; his professionalism increased their faith in the soundness of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and its fail-safe procedures. 

The Army was controlled by Punjabis who, the Americans thought, “did not put up with Pashtuns,” as the former Bush Administration official put it. (The Taliban are mostly Pashtun.) But by the time the official left, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term, he had a much darker assessment: “They don’t trust us and they will not tell you the truth.”

No American, for example, was permitted access to A. Q. Khan, the metallurgist and so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, who traded crucial nuclear-weapons components on the international black market. Musharraf placed him under house arrest in early 2004, claiming to have been shocked to learn of Khan’s dealings.

At the time, it was widely understood that those activities had been sanctioned by ISI. Khan was freed in February 2009, although there are restrictions on his travel.

A former State Department official who worked on nuclear issues with Pakistan after September 11th said that he’d come to understand that the Pakistanis “believe that any information we get from them would be shared with others—perhaps even the Indians. To know the command-and-control processes of their nuclear weapons is one thing. To know where the weapons actually are is another thing.”

The former State Department official cited the large Pakistan Air Force base outside Sargodha, where many of Pakistan’s nuclear-capable F-16s are thought to be stationed. “Is there a nuke ready to go at Sargodha?” the former official asked. “If there is, and Sargodha is the size of Andrews Air Force Base, would we know where to go? Are the warheads stored in Bunker X?” Ignorance could be dangerous. “If our people don’t know where to go and we suddenly show up at a base, there will be a lot of people shooting at them,” he said. “And even if the Pakistanis may have told us that the triggers will be at Bunker X, is it true?”

There is a lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders in Pakistan. Insiders have facilitated terrorist attacks.

Suicide bombings have occurred at air force bases that reportedly serve as nuclear weapons storage sites. It is difficult to ignore such trends. Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to cooperate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. .Anything that helps upgrade Pakistan’s nuclear security is an investment in America’s security.

The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. “If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he’s lying,” he said. “The Pakistanis wouldn’t share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away.”

If the Obama Administration persists in convincing Pakistan to fight Taliban, there will be an uprising, and this corrupt government will collapse. Every Pakistani will then be his own nuclear bomb—a suicide bomber. The longer the war goes on, the longer it will spill over in the tribal territories, and it will lead to a revolutionary stage. People there will flee to the big cities like Lahore and Islamabad.

A former ISI agent, Tarar, believes that the Obama Administration had to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, even if that meant direct talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Tarar knew Mullah Omar well. “Omar trained as a young man in my camp in 1985,” he told me. “He was physically fit and mission-oriented—a very honest man who was a practicing Muslim. Nothing beyond that. He was a Talib—a student, and not a mullah. But people respected him. Today, among all the Afghan leaders, Omar has the biggest audience, and this is the right time for you to talk to him.”

A $7.5-billion American aid package, approved by Congress in September, was, to the surprise of many in Washington, controversial in Pakistan, because it contained provisions seen as strengthening Zardari at the expense of the military.

Shaheen Sehbai, News editor, says that Zardari’s “problem is that he’s besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him,” and, as a result, “he’ll open his pants for them.” Sehbai noted that Kayani’s term as Army chief ends in the fall of 2010.

If Zardari tried to replace him before then, Kayani’s colleagues would not accept his choice, and there could be “a generals’ coup. America should worry more about the structure and organization of the Army—and keep it intact.

If Pakistani officers had given any assurances about the nuclear arsenal, they are cheating the Americans and they would be right to do so. We should not be aiding and abetting the Americans.

Persuading the Pakistan Army to concentrate on fighting the Taliban, and not India, is crucial to the Obama Administration’s plans for the region.

There has been enmity between India and Pakistan since 1947, when Britain’s withdrawal led to the partition of the subcontinent. The state of Kashmir, which was three-quarters Muslim but acceded to Hindu-majority India, has been in dispute ever since, and India and Pakistan have twice gone to war over the territory. Through the years, the Pakistan Army and the ISI have relied on Pakistan-based jihadist groups, most notably Lashkare Taiba and Jaishe Mohammed, to carry out a guerrilla war against the Indians in Kashmir. Many in the Pakistani military consider the groups to be an important strategic reserve.

ISI is deeply troubled by the prospect of Pakistan ceding any control over its nuclear deterrent. “Suppose the jihadis strike at India again—another attack on the parliament. India will tell the United States to stay out of it, and ‘We’ll sort it out on our own,’ ” an ISI guy said. “Then there would be a ground attack into Pakistan. As we begin to react, the Americans will be interested in protecting our nuclear assets, and urge us not to go nuclear—‘Let the Indians attack and do not respond!’ They would urge us instead to find those responsible for the attack on India. Our nuclear arsenal was supposed to be our savior, but we would end up protecting it. It doesn’t protect us,” he said.

Pakistan’s fears about the United States coöperating with India are not irrational. In 2008, Congress approved a controversial agreement that enabled India to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the United States without joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty, making India the only non-signatory to the N.P.T. permitted to do so.

Concern about the Pakistani arsenal has since led to greater coöperation between the United States and India in missile defense; the training of the Indian Air Force to use bunker-busting bombs; and “the collection of intelligence on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal,” according to the consultant to the intelligence community.

“Our worries are about the nuclear weapons in Pakistan,” one of the RAW officials said. “Not because we are worried about the mullahs taking over the country; we’re worried about those senior officers in the Pakistan Army who are Caliphates”—believers in a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state. “We know some of them and we have names,” he said. “We’ve been watching colonels who are now brigadiers. These are the guys who could blackmail the whole world”—that is, by seizing a nuclear weapon.

The Indian intelligence official went on, “Do we know if the Americans have that intelligence? This is not in the scheme of the way you Americans look at things—‘Kayani is a great guy! Let’s have a drink and smoke a cigar with him and his buddies.’ Some of the men we are watching have notions of leading an Islamic army.”

In an interview, an Indian official who has dealt diplomatically with Pakistan for years said, “Pakistan is in trouble, and it’s worrisome to us because an unstable Pakistan is the worst thing we can have.” But he wasn’t sure what America could do. “They like us better in Pakistan than you Americans,” he said. “I can tell you that in a public-opinion poll we, India, will beat you.”

India and Pakistan, he added, have had back-channel talks for years in an effort to resolve the dispute over Kashmir, but “Pakistan wants talks for the sake of talks, and it does not carry out the agreements already reached.” (In late October, Manmohan Singh, the Indian PM, publicly renewed an offer of talks, but tied it to a request that Pakistan crack down on terrorism; Pakistan’s official response was to welcome the overture.)

The Indian official, like his counterparts in Pakistan, believed that Americans did not appreciate what his government had done for them. “Why did the Pakistanis remove two divisions from the border with us?” He was referring to the shifting of Pakistani forces, at the request of the United States, to better engage the Taliban. “It means they have confidence that we will not take advantage of the situation. We deserve a pat on the back for this.”

Musharraf says he had been troubled by the American-controlled Predator drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, which began in 2005. “I said to the Americans, ‘Give us the Predators.’ It was refused. I told the Americans, ‘Then just say publicly that you’re giving them to us. You keep on firing them but put Pakistan Air Force markings on them.’ That, too, was denied.”

Musharraf, who was forced out of office in August, 2008, under threat of impeachment, did not spare his successor. “Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud,” Musharraf told me. “He’ll do anything to save himself. He’s not a patriot and he’s got no love for Pakistan. He’s a third-rater.”

Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for Chief of Army Staff, were still in telephone contact. Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999, and remained in uniform until near the end of his Presidency. He said that he didn’t think the Army was capable of mutiny—not the Army he knew. “There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don’t think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These ‘fundos’ were disliked and not popular.”

He added, “Muslims think highly of Obama, and he should use his acceptability—even with the Taliban—and try to deal with them politically.”

Musharraf spoke of two prior attempts to create a fundamentalist uprising in the Army. In both cases, he said, the officers involved were arrested and prosecuted. “I created the strategic force that controls all the strategic assets—eighteen to 20,000 strong. They are monitored for character and for potential fundamentalism,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that things had changed since he’d left office. “People have become alarmed because of the Taliban and what they have done,” he said. “Everyone is now alarmed.”

The rise in militancy is a sensitive subject, and many inside Pakistan insist that American fears, and the implied threat to the nuclear arsenal, are overwrought. The Army continues to support an unpopular President. The survival of the coalition government shows that the present Army leadership has an interest in making it work.

Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them. For more than two decades, the Pakistan Army has been recruiting on the basis of faithfulness to Islam. As a consequence, there is now a different character present among Army officers and ordinary soldiers.

The current offensive in South Waziristan marked a significant success for the Obama Administration, which had urged Zardari to take greater control of the tribal areas. There was a risk, too—that the fighting would further radicalize Pakistan.

Since the Waziristan operation was announced, more than 300 people have been killed in a dozen terrorist attacks. “If we push too hard there, we could trigger a social revolution,” the Special Forces adviser said. “We are playing into Al Qaeda’s deep game here. If we blow it, Al Qaeda could come in and scoop up a nuke or two.” He added, “The Pakistani military knows that if there’s any kind of instability there will be a traffic jam to seize their nukes.” More escalation in Pakistan, he said, “will take us to the brink.”

There are undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam has grown.

A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. “They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,” he said. In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to England for additional training.

“Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?” the Obama Administration official asked. “In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics.” ♦

Source : http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh

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What Will Happen to the Shias if Taliban Come to Power?

November 28, 2009 at 7:26 am · Filed under Talibanization, Tribal Areas ·Tagged , ,

By Farhat Taj

Orakzai is the only agency in FATA that has no border with Afghanistan. It touches Khyber agency in the north, Darra Adam Khel in the east, Hangu and Kohat in the south and Kurrum in the west. 

Orakzai is occupied by the Taliban from Waziristan, Darra Adam Khel and Khyber agencies. Some local tribesmen have also joined the Taliban from the other agencies. Many of the locals who joined the Taliban used to be petty thieves and drug pushers. 

The Taliban have imposed an alien ideology and way of life on the people.

The activities of the Taliban in Orakzai have two interesting aspects. One, tribal affiliations under the code of Pakhtunwali have by and large countered sectarian differences that the fiercely anti-Shia Taliban want to exploit. 

In an area called Dobari for example, there are about 100 Shia families surrounded by the Sunni majority. Under Pakhtunwali, the majority community had taken upon itself to protect the 100 families, whom the Taliban wanted to banish from the area. 

The Sunni tribesmen, however, rejected the Taliban’s banishment and decided instead to remove the Taliban from the area by raising a tribal lashkar. The Ali Khel is the largest tribe in Orakzai and the leaders of the tribe then held a grand jirga to work out the details of a strategy to take on the Taliban. 

The grand jirga was scheduled for Oct 10, 2008 and as it was being held it was attacked by a suicide bomber. 140 tribesmen were killed.

In effect, the tribe’s main leadership was decimated and this paved the way for the Taliban to take control of the agency. However, despite this the Taliban were not able to succeed in dividing the Ali Khels along Shia-Sunni lines. 

Instead, in the intense rivalry between the Ali Khels and the Taliban, a Taliban commander who belonged to the Ali Khel tribe defected and joined his tribe. This angered the TTP which put head money on the man.

The people of Orakzai say that the government and the military should have done more to help the tribe, especially when it had decided to take on the Taliban by raising its own lashkar. 

They say that had that help been forthcoming the situation perhaps would be different to what it is today – where the government’s writ is confined only to the agency’s headquarters and the Taliban control most of the rest of Orakzai. 

Every day, people are kidnapped, killed, beheaded or publicly insulted by the Taliban, who like in other parts of FATA, have also set up their own so-called ’sharia’ courts. In recent weeks, a mentally ill man was even beheaded by the Taliban – he was a Shia and had mistakenly entered an area which the Taliban had banned for all Shia tribesmen.

So what is the way forward? Well, for starters, the Taliban are not a unified group. It is an umbrella of sectarian terrorists, global jihadis and even criminals, and their differences can be exploited by the intelligence agencies. And there are many proofs of such differences. 

In the Ferozkhel area recently, two groups of the Taliban fought each other and there were several casualties. The dispute was over whether or not to return a Shia boy who had been kidnapped by them to his family in exchange for one of their (the Taliban’s) colleagues.

The people feel that they have been left to fend for themselves. And they have taken matters into their own hands. Some weeks ago, three such volunteers intercepted a suicide bomber but could not stop him from triggering his explosives and as a result all three died. 

Also, of late, a Taliban court in the agency summoned 60 businessmen from the majority community – their alleged crime being that they were involved in business with tribesmen from the minority sect.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.

Email: bergen34@ yahoo.com

 

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Like the Meccan Pagans, Indians are Conspiring with Jewish Tribes, with US Sitting like Roman Empire

November 28, 2009 at 7:18 am · Filed under Islam, Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

Many jihadis in support of the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir are opposed to destabilising Pakistan.

When asked who was responsible for the suicide bombings they point finger towards India, the United States, and Israel which, according to them, had colluded resources to create a super-agency to dishevel this entire region.

This whole India-US-Israel theory has a lot of popular currency these days in Pakistan, a country whose national sports should be lounge room politics and conspiracy theorising instead of cricket and hockey. The myriad of television talk-shows on every news channel are heavily relying on this theory of a triangulated axis of evil out to destroy Islam and Pakistan.

I don’t mean to dampen Pakistan’s highly built up superiority complex laced with self pity at the whole world’s always being out to get us, but has anyone ever thought of questioning why we always situate Pakistan at the centre of our world view?

It is true that Pakistan is in the news a lot these days, and that the location of our borders in terms of resources and trade routes present significant geopolitical interests. But isn’t it a bit much to consider the current conflict in terms of issues that lie beyond the immediately obvious uses of Pakistan’s soil, and therefore hurl the current conflict in to the realm of myth and conspiracy?

Islamic mythology has obviously played a huge role in the formation of our national identity. Given this strange mix of religious indoctrination and nationalist propaganda, it isn’t a shock that our national identity is hopelessly intertwined with religion. The great ups and downs of our history are also then viewed though the mirror image of early Islamic Arabian history, starting with the Partition of 1947 where the oppressed Muslims in the land of infidels partake in a hijrah-like migration to greener pastures. This is also responsible for similar coinages as mohajir’s for people who migrated from the other side of the border, and of course the Muttahida Quami Movement as well.

After two wars with our neighbour that have been cloaked in the same historical-identity mirror as jihads which the Prophet Muhammad participated in – the 1965 war, where a small number of Muslims beat a larger threatening army of infidels akin to the scenario in Jang-e-Badar, and the 1971 war being similar to Jang-e-Uhad, where the Muslims suffered heavy losses owing to their greed and indiscipline. Kargil would then be seen as the Battle of the Trench, had it not ended with such a national disaster.

The idea of martyrdom has been historically very close to these times of crisis when national unity is a must. The list of the dozen or so shaheeds who gave their life for the country is also present in every textbook. Unfortunately, the idea of the martyr as a member of Pakistan’s armed forces has become one that is hotly contested in recent times, as the right to declare a martyr isn’t the sole prerogative of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The ISPR’s version of a shaheed in Waziristan is diametrically opposed to that of the TTP’s version of shaheed.

The same mujahids who valiantly fought in Kashmir and Afghanistan for Islam and Pakistan, seem to have turned on the Islamic Republic as the very fabric of propaganda which binds Islam with Pakistan is ruptured beyond repair. With the popularly elected government being portrayed as infidel rule propped up by the Americans, and the culture of the modern, westernised elites is labeled as shamelessness and excessive debauchery, it seems we’re caught in the middle of a storm where the hero can no longer be told apart from the enemy.

For decades, the enemy image coined in our heads has been that of the Islam-hating, darker-skinned Hindu at the eastern edge of our border.

This interesting transposition was evident in an armed forces award ceremony in which shaheeds from the current conflict were inducted into the ranks of those martyred in Pakistan’s conventional wars.

The reenacted footage telegraphing each incident showed a mysterious tribal as the concealed enemy. The army also seems to be relying on foreigners being involved in the tribal areas as a way to distance the conflict from civil strife. The circulation of reports of large containers of alcohol belonging to Uzbek militants also seems to be a way of distancing Islam from the enemy.

As a matter of convenience for our security establishment, the principal enemy obviously remains India. But those polygamous infidels couldn’t possibly be the solely responsible for such an ingenious plan that redirects our tactics against them and literally brings the country to its knees?

Once again the answer is conveniently available from early Islamic Arabia, where the Meccan pagans were conspiring with scheming Jewish tribes. A simple transposition of the historical onto our mythological identity yields the result of India and Israel collaborating for the destruction of Pakistan, with the US sitting on the fringes like the Holy Roman Empire.

I think it’s time we quit hiding behind the convenient curtain of myth, and take the bitter pill of reality. We need to step away from viewing this as a clash of civilisations, in terms of Islam versus the West. The West is not a religion, and Islam isn’t a geographical location.

Lahore-based Asif Akhtar is interested in critical social discourse as well as the expressive facets of reactive art and is one of the schizophrenic narrators of a graphic novel. He blogs at http://e-scape-artist.blogspot.com/ and tweets at http://twitter.com/e_scape_artist.

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