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Parched for a Price: Karachi’s Water Crisis

KARACHI, Pakistan – Orangi is a maze, a spider’s web of narrow, winding lanes, broken roads and endless rows of small concrete houses. More than two million people are crammed into what is one of the world’s largest unplanned settlements here in western Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

But Orangi has a problem: it has run out of water.

“What water?” asks Rabia Begum, 60, when told the reason for Al Jazeera’s visit to her neighbourhood earlier this year. “We don’t get any water here.”

“We yearn for clean water to drink, that somehow Allah will give us clean water.”

It is so rare for water to flow through the taps here that residents say they have given up expecting it. The last time it flowed through the main pipeline in Begum’s neighbourhood, for example, was 33 days ago.

Instead, they are forced to obtain most of their water through drilled motor-operated wells (known as ‘bores’). Ground water in the coastal city, however, tends to be salty, and unfit for human consumption.

“When we shower, our hair [becomes] sticky [with the salt], our heads feel heavy,” says Begum.

The only other option for residents is to buy unfiltered water from private water tanker operators, who fill up at a network of legal and illegal water hydrants across the city. A 1,000-gallon water tanker normally costs between $12 and $18. Begum says she has to order at least four tankers a month to meet the basic needs of her household of 10 people.

Farzana Bibi, 40, says she has to ration out when she showers and washes her family’s clothes, because she can not afford to buy enough water every month.

But not everyone in this working class neighbourhood can afford to buy water from the tankers or to pay the approximately $800 its costs to install a drilled well for non-drinking water.

“I’m piling up the dirty clothes, that’s how I save money,” says Farzana Bibi, 40, who manages a household of five people on an income of roughly $190 a month. “We bathe two days in a week.”

Asked how she gets by, with so little water coming via the taps and no access to a saltwater source to clean dishes or laundry, she seems resigned.

“I lessen my use. Sometimes I’ll take my clothes to my cousin’s house or my sister’s house to wash them. Sometimes I’ll get drinking water from them. One has to make do somehow.”

When she washes her clothes, she says, she makes sure not to leave the tap on. She’ll fill a basin with water and wash her dishes in that, rather than under running water. She waits until there is at least a fortnight’s worth of dirty clothes before beginning to wash them. Every drop of water, she says, needs to be accounted for.
But despite all this rationing, the water tank at her home is almost dry.

“There is a small amount of water,” she says. “I am saving it to drink. When I have money in my hands, I’ll get a tanker.”

Orangi’s problems, while acute, are not unique in Pakistan’s largest city. Karachi’s roughly 20 million residents regularly face water shortages, with working class neighbourhoods the worst hit by a failing distribution and supply system.

Areas such as Orangi, Baldia and Gadap, some of the most densely populated in the city, receive less than 40 percent of the water allotted to them, according to data collected by the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), an NGO that works on civic infrastructure and citizens’ rights in the area.

On average, residents in these areas use about 67.76 litres of water per day, according to data collected by Al Jazeera. That includes the water they use for drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, bathing and sanitary uses.

So what is going on here? How is it possible that in one of the largest cities in the world, there simply isn’t enough water being supplied? Is it because the reservoirs and water sources supplying Karachi just aren’t large enough for this rapidly expanding megacity?

The answer to these questions is somewhat surprising.

Karachi draws its water mainly from the Keenjhar Lake, a man-made reservoir about 150km from the city, which, in turn, gets the water from what’s left of the Indus River after it completes its winding 3,200km journey through Pakistan.

Through a network of canals and conduits, 550 million gallons of water a day (MGD) is fed into the city’s main pumping station at Dhabeji.

That 550MGD, however, never reaches those who need it. Of that water, a staggering 42 percent – or 235 MGD – is either lost or stolen before it ever reaches consumers, according to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), the city’s water utility.

Karachi’s daily demand for water should be about 1,100 MGD, based on UN standards for water consumption for the megacity of more than 20 million. If that estimate – considered generous by local analysts – were to be pared down, however, Karachi’s current water supply should still be adequate to service most of the city’s needs.

“If 550GMD of water actually reaches Karachi, then right now, with conditions as they are, we would be able to manage the situation very well and provide water to everyone,” says Ovais Malik, KWSB’s chief engineer, who has been working for the utility for more than 12 years.

So where is it all going?

Malik complains that the water supply infrastructure in the city is aged, parts of it running for more than 40 years, and that the funds simply are not there to fix the problems.

KWSB is, by any standard, a sick institution. This fiscal year, it estimates that it will be running at a deficit of 59.3 percent. Only about 60 percent of consumers pay their bills, with the biggest defaulters being government institutions themselves, which owe KWSB about $6 million in arrears.

Moreover, Karachi has expanded in a largely unplanned fashion over the last several decades, with informal settlements ‘regularised’, but not properly brought under the ambit of civic services, he says.

“Our [settled] area has grown too much. Our…system has not been able to bear it,” says Malik.

Farhan Anwar, an architect and urban planner, told Al Jazeera that KWSB was almost bankrupt.

“There is nothing left for any kind of maintenance or capital investment.”

That lack of capital investment affects not just the ability to provide water, but to make sure that it is clean enough to be consumed, Anwar argues.

“The water is obviously contaminated,” he says. “There are discharges, there are cross-connections of water, where sewage lines are leaking into supply lines. Construction practices are such that…often sewage lines are side by side with water lines, or even above them.”

And KWSB never seems able to get around to addressing these problems, several analysts said.

“There is corruption, inefficiency, political interference, so it’s an organisation rooted in a number of problems.… You need institutional reform, to begin with. Instead of starting by fixing the pipes, you need to fix the institution that fixes the pipes,” says Anwar.

The problem, however, is not just leakages and inefficiency in the system: it is theft.
The bulk of Karachi’s ‘lost’ water is being stolen and sold right back to the people it was meant for in the first place.

WHO IS STEALING KARACHI’S WATER?

Akhtari Begum, 48, has to manage a household of five people on her husband’s income of $160 a month.
She ends up spending more than a third of that on water.

“Water does come [in the main line], but it gets stolen before it gets to us,” she says. “So we don’t get any water, we have to get tankers.”

A typical 1,000-gallon water tanker costs anywhere between $12 and $16, depending on where you are in the city, what time of year it is, and how desperate you might be.

Water tankers have been a part of Karachi’s water supply landscape for decades. Initially introduced as a stop-gap measure while the KWSB was meant to be expanding the city’s water supply infrastructure, they have grown to dominate the sector.

Today, there are more than 10,000 tankers operating across the city, completing roughly 50,000 trips a day, according to Noman Ahmed, the head of the architecture and urban planning department at Karachi’s NED University. They are meant to fill up at 10 KWSB-operated hydrants, but the business is so lucrative that more than 100 illegal hydrants operate across the city, tapping into the city’s mains to steal water.

“There are more than a hundred of them [illegal hydrants], and those are just the ones that have been identified. Every day there’s a new one being made somewhere,” says Anwar Rashid, a director at the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), which tracks the tankers’ illegal activity.

“They’re visible easily. They tap into the bulk mainline. They syphon off the water. And then there are tankers standing there, and they’ll fill up directly from the [illegal hydrant] and then drive off.

“When they take from the bulk, then that means that the water that was meant for residential areas will be reduced,” says Rashid.

The scale of the theft is staggering.

If tankers in Karachi are making 50,000 trips a day, with each trip priced at an average price of Rs3,000 (prices vary between Rs1,200 to Rs7,000), that amounts to an industry that is generating Rs150,000,000 a day.
That’s $1.43 million, every day. In a month, that adds up to $42.3 million. By the end of the year, stealing water in Karachi is an industry worth more than half a billion dollar.”

THE MAFIA IS VERY STRONG”
“We have carried out more than 400 operations against illegal hydrants in recent years,” Rizwan Hyder, a spokesperson for the KWSB, told Al Jazeera. “We are acting against these things … and working with the police …. We have lodged scores of cases against people operating illegal hydrants.

The local police station chief in the area where [there is] a hydrant is the one who is responsible for acting against them. The moment they inform us, we act against it. In the last few days, we have taken action against three illegal hydrants in Manghopir [near Orangi Town].”

But the people who are meant to be controlling the theft are the ones cashing in, tanker operators, analysts and former KWSB employees told Al Jazeera.

“Unauthorised hydrants are run with the connivance of the water board and the police,” claims Hazoor Ahmed Khan, the head of one of the city’s main water tanker unions. “There are about 100 illegal hydrants still operating in the city…most of them are in Manghopir, in Baldia, in Malir, in Landhi, and Korangi. They’re running in Ayub Goth on the Super Highway.”

“[Illegal hydrants] can only be run by people who are in the government, or in the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, the police, or the revenue department,” claims the OPP’s Rashid. “And they all have the share in it.
His view is borne out by a former KWSB chief, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject.

“The mafia is very strong …. There is no doubt that the illegal connections that are made, our KWSB man knows about it. Even if it is an [illegal] connection within a building, he will know that a connection has been installed in the night,” he says.

“The valve man takes his money, the assistant engineer takes his money … I could never say that there is no corruption in the KWSB. But I also know that the builder has so much influence, that no matter who [the KWSB chief] is … he will get a call from [a] minister [or senior bureaucrat] to just do it.”

The ex-chief said he had himself received phone calls of this nature. Another current senior KWSB official who asked to remain anonymous confirmed that he, too, had received such phone calls from members of the government, asking him to curb operations against illegal hydrants.

The result is a system where water is being stolen, commodified and then sold to citizens through the free market. A market, analysts say, that inherently favours the rich over the poor.

“The social contract, regarding what is the role of the state vis-a-vis the people, that is now mediated through the medium of money and privatisation,” says Daanish Mustafa, a professor of geography at Kings College London who studies the sector. “The rights-based approach to water, that water is a fundamental right of the people and a fundamental responsibility of the state, that has ended.

“Who is going to make money getting water to a poor man? Where there is money, the water will reach very quickly, and very easily.”

When asked about KWSB personnel being involved in the theft of water, the KWSB’s Hyder told Al Jazeera, “It has never been our position that no member of our organisation is involved [in the theft of water]. But the moment someone is found [to be] involved in this, they are fired and charged under the law. We have charged our own staff … we have zero tolerance for this.”

There are periodic drives to shut down these illegal operations. But none last for long.

“If there is ever a crackdown, if there is pressure, they do not cut the [hydrants] on the bulk mains, they just demolish a little bit of the infrastructure [of theft], and then four days later it’s back up and running,” says Rashid.

“The illegal hydrants are still running. They can never be shut,” says the former KWSB chief.

If the very people responsible for shutting down the illegal theft of water are the ones benefitting from it, who will watch the watchmen?

“If I fix the water system in an area, then no one will take a tanker. If we fix the system, whatever illegality is happening will [be] finished,” says the current senior KWSB official.
“These things are possible. We can do them,” he adds. “But we don’t want to do them.”

CAN’T AFFORD IT, CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT
For 16 years, Ali Asghar, 75, tended to his small herd of cows and buffalo on a small plot of land behind his cramped four-room house in Orangi. Four years ago, when the water supply to his area began to suffer, he had to give them up.

Today, his entire household of 17 people is dependent on water bought from tankers.

The biggest injustice, he says, is that he is still paying his bills to KWSB, for water that never comes.

“The [mains] pipe is lying out there, completely dry,” he says. “This is how it is in this whole neighbourhood.”
“The people of the water board are the ones who are doing this. They are the ones who create the water crisis, and they’re the ones who don’t provide the water, and take the bills,” he says, his voice rising in exasperation. “For every job, there is a price. And if you don’t have money, you won’t get anything done.”

Ali Asghar, 75, says he still has to pay bills to the utility company for water that never comes in the pipes
A few streets away in Orangi’s spider web, Rabia Begum says the city’s poor are trapped because no matter what the price, people need water.

“We cannot tolerate the expense of water … and we cannot live without it,” she says.

In March 2013, four gunmen on motorcycles boxed in a car near the Qasba Mor intersection in Orangi. They proceeded to spray the car with bullets, killing its occupant, Perween Rehman.

Rehman was the director of OPP, and had worked tirelessly for the rights of Karachi’s working class communities, particularly when it came to land titles and access to water. Much of her research focused on documenting the locations of illegal water hydrants, for which she received several death threats.

Shortly before her murder, Rehman spoke to a documentary crew, who were making a film about her work. Her words ring as true today, four years later.

“It is not the poor who steal the water. It is stolen by a group of people who have the full support of the government agencies, the local councillors, mayors and the police; all are involved.”

Who will watch the watchmen, while the poor remain parched – for a price?

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Committed to ‘sham’ democracy

The political history of Pakistan is marred by repeated military coups and a rich tradition of people sacrificing their lives for the restoration of democratic rule in the country. Ironically, successive civilian governments failed to deliver on public goods.

One of the main reasons for this failure is the classist nature of our ruling elite. Pakistan failed to dismantle local power configurations. Patron-client relationships especially in the context of governance failure remained intact. The dynastic nature of political parties, lack of voter’s education, poverty and the increasing role of money and violence in politics make the political arena exclusively a male prerogative.

Electoral processes keep on bringing the same old tribal, feudal and capitalist class in power. Within this larger context, the return of the time-tested political elite, having no commitment to people’s welfare in the 2018 election is no surprise.

Elections in Pakistan have been notoriously flawed and blemished with political engineering and violence. However, the level of brazen pre-election manipulation in election 2018 has been unprecedented.

Also the way ‘electables’ changed their political loyalties shamelessly before the election and the formulation of unnatural alliances of political forces in the post-election phase to form government shows that there is a death of ideology in Pakistani politics.

It is inquisitorial why people in Pakistan who have experienced only an illiberal, elite form of democracy remained committed to the democratic rule in the country? This is clearly evident from the voter turnout, consistently rising since 1988 — 35% in 1997 to 51.85% in 2018 election.

Democracy is the only system of governance that brings citizens to the centre of power politics. It establishes the principle of equality amongst citizens irrespective of their class, gender, ethnicity or religious background. Democracy invests the power of vote equally in poor and the marginalised sections of society.

Elections compel the arrogant political elite to reach out to the poor, beg for votes and make promises for their uplift. Continuity in the democratic system of governance has the potential to open the gateway of accountability of elected representatives. We have already witnessed people holding candidates accountable for their performance during their election campaigns. Voters’ aggressive questioning stunned ‘electables’. Many candidates could not digest public accountability and were seen leaving the crowd angrily. Continuity of the democratic system is critical. If politicians know that they had to face the electorates in the next election, they would be forced to improve their performance.

Transfer of power through election in the last two terms has already unleashed promising social dynamics in the political arena of the country. Political parties are forced to give representation to the marginalised sections of society to promote their pro-people image. Women, religious minorities, persons with disabilities and transgender communities also found some space in democracy to voice their issues and field their own candidates in the election.

The number of women who contested the election in 2018 is unprecedented in the electoral history of Pakistan. Out of 171 women candidates for the National Assembly, 105 were awarded tickets by the political parties. Similarly six candidates from religious minorities got elected and five transgender contested election.

Electoral democracy, even though flawed and failing to deliver, is the only system that has the potential to create space for the representation of all segments of society.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, dominated by the old political elite, has transformative claims. The only way to correct the dysfunctional politics of the elite is through building strong people’s resistance movements. Civil society must mobilise the social and political imagination of people to reclaim democracy. The democratisation of democracy and strong public accountability is the only way to ensure that the wealthy and powerful in the upcoming government do not use state power to serve their own vested interests but use it to improve governance and people’s wellbeing.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2018.

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Imran Khan, Elected as Prime Minister, Offers Little Conciliation to Foes

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Imran Khan, the charismatic cricketer-turned-politician, was elected prime minister on Friday in an acrimonious vote in the lower house of Parliament that was punctuated by partisan shouting.

“Those people who have looted the country, I promise that they will be brought to justice,” Mr. Khan said in a brief speech after the vote, repeating an anti-corruption campaign theme and offering little conciliation to his adversaries.

Surrounded by loyalists as the opposition’s sloganeering grew louder, he added: “No one has ever been able to blackmail me before. I tell you please go ahead and protest and hit the streets.”

Mr. Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, received 176 votes on Friday while his opponent, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, got 96. He is scheduled to take the oath of office on Saturday.

The hall of Parliament erupted as soon as Asad Qaiser, the speaker, announced the vote count. Mr. Khan’s supporters exalted “Prime Minister Imran Khan,” while his opponents stood up and roared “Vote thief not acceptable,” alluding to allegations of rigging in the July 25 general election.

Mr. Khan sat smiling after his victory, holding a prayer bead in one hand and occasionally shaking his head in disapproval of the opposition ruckus.

Mr. Khan’s party, known as PTI, holds 151 seats in the parliament. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the former governing party, has 81 seats. The Pakistan Peoples Party, the third-largest party, has 54 but abstained from Friday’s voting.

The uproar in Parliament may be a prelude to the difficult path ahead for the new prime minister. The large number of opposition members in the two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate, will make legislating a tough bargain.

PTI’s rise has marked a stunning turnaround in Mr. Khan’s political fortunes. He emerged as a serious contender only in 2011 when he began attracting large crowds at rallies.

For a long time, he was considered a nobody in the political landscape, and people often mocked his ambition of becoming prime minister. In 2002, his party had just one seat in Parliament. He boycotted the 2008 elections, and in 2013 managed to increase his party’s share to 35.

But he has a history of doing the improbable. Pakistan’s cricket team emerged as one of the best in the world under his leadership and won the World Cup in 1992. Mr. Khan also built the country’s first cancer hospital that treats poor patients for free after raising money through charity.

Mr. Khan has no real governing experience and will face an enormous task in steering the country out of its economic and political challenges.

During the election campaign, Mr. Khan vowed to end corruption and official malfeasance. A broad section of the country’s population, especially the young and educated middle class, has been enamored of his promise of change and reform.

But the elections on July 25 were also marred by allegations of the powerful military’s meddling and irregularities in voting.

The military has denied tilting the election in Mr. Khan’s favor, but the party formerly in power, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has leveled loud accusations that intelligence agencies forced its members to defect to Mr. Khan’s party or run as independents.

The corruption conviction and jailing of Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, just before the elections also helped Mr. Khan’s ascent.

In many ways, Mr. Khan was responsible for the downfall of Mr. Sharif, a towering figure in the country’s politics who has served as prime minister for three times but never managed to complete a full term.

Mr. Khan led large-scale street protests against Mr. Sharif and helped to advance Supreme Court cases that led to his ouster in July 2017.

Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, the younger brother of Mr. Sharif, is now running their political party but analysts here say he cannot match the elder Sharif’s leadership style.

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Why the Taliban’s Assault on Ghazni Matters

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American-led invasion of Afghanistan routed Taliban extremists from power after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 17 years later, after tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars spent and two White House administrations come and gone, those extremists are not only undefeated but seem as strong as ever.

Since Friday, Taliban fighters have roamed the streets of Ghazni City, a strategic urban center less than 100 miles from the capital, Kabul, killing dozens of Afghan soldiers and police officers, cutting communications and severing the main highway from Kabul to the south and beyond.

The Ghazni assault has demonstrated a stunning display of Taliban tenacity that belies the official Afghan and American narrative of progress in the war and the possibility for peace talks. It also has revealed remarkable bumbling by the Afghan military, including the wrong kind of ammunition sent to besieged police officers. Moreover, the siege has raised basic questions about what conditions the Taliban might accept for peace talks.

What is happening in Ghazni?
For months, residents and local officials in Ghazni, a city of about 280,000 people, had warned that the Taliban was surrounding the city and making inroads of control. Taliban fighters were even collecting taxes in some areas. On a visit in June, I found the city in fear — people avoided large gatherings. Assassinations were more frequent.

On Aug. 10, more than 1,000 Taliban fighters stormed the city in a predawn assault. Officials claim the Taliban were aided by foreign fighters, including Pakistanis and Chechens, and even some Al Qaeda affiliates

The police were forced to retreat and protect the main government facilities — the governor’s office, the Police Headquarters, the intelligence compound, the main prison — leaving the Taliban assailants to entrench themselves elsewhere. The Afghan minister of defense on Monday said that about 100 police officers and army soldiers and more 20 civilians had been killed. He put the number of dead Taliban fighters at about 200.

The siege of Ghazni is perhaps the most audacious example of a Taliban resurgence that has whittled the gains made after tens of thousands of American troops launched a campaign to oust them from power.

While not the first time Taliban fighters have invaded a major Afghan city in recent years, Ghazni’s strategic location is important. Its proximity to Kabul and location on the major highway connecting the capital to the south makes it a vital lifeline.

Rahmatullah Nabil, a former Afghan intelligence chief, said Ghazni also was important because some of its neighboring provinces border the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, where militants have long moved with impunity. Who controls Ghazni also impacts how freely the insurgents can move into other parts of the country, Mr. Nabil said. Taliban control of Ghazni also raises the possibility that Taliban eventually could surround Kabul itself.

In recent years, as Afghan forces have largely taken ownership of the war from American forces, the Taliban have continued to gain territory. In some areas, they have struggled to hold a district or city that they briefly entered, but in others they are firmly embedded.

According to the United States military, the Afghan government controls just over half of the country’s nearly 400 districts — about 56 percent. Taliban insurgents control 14 percent, and the rest of the country is contested.

A major deterrent to further Taliban gains has been American and Afghan airstrikes. The United States military alone has dropped about 3,000 bombs in the first six months of this year. But air power alone is insufficient.
Mr. Nabil said the internal political struggles of the Afghan government and its inability to outthink the Taliban’s moves before insurgents invaded a city were underlying problems. He likened the Ghazni battle to the 2015 siege of Kunduz, when it took more than two weeks for government-backed forces to retake the city.

“It was like this in Kunduz also — they first went after the outlying districts, then military bases, and eventually they made it to the city,” Mr. Nabil said. “Once the city is totally surrounded, entering inside the city becomes easy.”

How is the U.S. military involved?
The United States maintains about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan; they play an advisory role to Afghan troops and support a small counterterrorism mission. That is down from the peak of about American 100,000 soldiers in the country, at a time when the American military was leading the fight to defeat the Taliban in Afghan villages.

Military officials said American advisers were on the ground with Afghan forces in Ghazni. American forces also have conducted about 25 airstrikes in the city.

But much like the Afghan government, the United States military played down the extent of the crisis, in assessments completely at odds with the information from the locals.

A statement by the United States military said, for example, that the main highway to the south remained open. But passengers on both sides remained stuck, and local Afghan officials said the highway was closed.

It is unclear how many American troops are on the ground in Ghazni. But in cities such as Farah and Kunduz — assaulted by Taliban militants in 2015, 2016 and this year — the American military sent teams of Army Special Forces to call in airstrikes and fight alongside their Afghan commando counterparts.

One American military official said he wasn’t surprised by the attack on Ghazni. Turmoil between Ghazni’s Pashtun and Hazara tribes helped lay the foundation for the assault by the predominantly Pashtun militants.

Local tribal dynamics, he said, is one reason the Afghan government struggles to hold territory.

He added that these kinds of battles — heavy fighting in dispersed towns and small cities — were likely to keep happening well into the future, with American air power often acting as the deciding factor between victory and defeat.

To the west in Helmand Province, American troops are preparing for potential attacks on American and Afghan outposts because of concerns that Taliban fighters may be preparing to expand their offensive in Ghazni.

How will this affect peace talks with the Taliban?
For months now, a new, urgent push has been underway to persuade the Taliban negotiate. Such efforts have failed before, but now there are some important differences.

First, both sides announced a rare, overlapping cease-fire. Then, American diplomats met with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, in what was seen as an icebreaker to ease the insurgent group’s long-held demand that it would first talk to the Americans without Afghan government officials present.

The increase in violence and the siege of Ghazni come at a time when the Afghan government and its international partners have been pushing for a second cease-fire in coming weeks. Although the violence is unlikely to change those plans, it does complicate the government’s effort to counter critics of the peace efforts.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting from Washington.

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What will Pakistan’s new leader Imran Khan deliver for China?

As former cricket superstar Imran Khan assumes office as Pakistan’s prime minister vowing to change the way the country is governed, members of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) have started to ask embarrassing questions about the perks enjoyed by Chinese companies involved in belt and road projects linking Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea.

Fighting the election on an anti-corruption plank for building a “new” Pakistan, Khan’s party has jump-started its promised public examination of agreements for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) made by the last government led by Khan’s nemesis, Nawaz Sharif.

Sharif’s government released only piecemeal information about CPEC and its officials often made contradictory claims, fuelling criticism that the agreements were poorly negotiated – as well as allegations of corruption involving members of the Sharif family.

Chairing a senate committee this week, PTI politician Shibli Faraz questioned the “discrimination” of creating a dedicated US$179 million revolving fund to ensure regular partial payments to Chinese power companies.

Pakistan’s power sector is riddled with debt, created by the government’s inability to keep pace with bills owed to fuel suppliers and independent power producers.

Responding to complaints from Chinese companies and to avert possible Chinese pullback on future CPEC projects, the revolving fund was agreed upon by the caretaker administration that oversaw Pakistan’s government during the three-month campaign season and transfer of power.

Why is the US trying to bully Pakistan with empty China threats?

According to that agreement, the government would finance the fund through expensive short-term borrowing from domestic banks, senior power ministry official Zargham Ishaq told the senate committee.

Although the fund was yet to be established, the government was required to implement the agreement as part of its CPEC commitments, he said.

The incoming PTI administration might have other ideas, and choose to scrap the agreement on the grounds that the caretaker government exceeded its constitutional mandate. Faraz’s interjection reflects a continuing political sniping in Pakistan, placing Chinese companies in the line of fire.

Another Senate committee this week ordered the national highway authority to provide it with details of a CPEC motorway project in central Pakistan, after PTI member Nauman Wazir claimed favourable terms accorded to the Chinese contractor were tantamount to the “embezzlement” of US$1.1 billion.

Pakistan’s politics is known for its volatility – and the current state of play is no different. Sharif, who is serving a 10-year sentence for corruption after being sacked by the Supreme Court following a petition by moved by Khan and his allies last year, prioritised CPEC projects that helped plug the country’s crippling power shortfalls.

Michael Kugelman, senior South Asia associate at The Wilson Centre, a Washington think tank, said China likely would have been more comfortable with Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) staying in power, knowing that it had largely agreed with Beijing on the broader terms of CPEC on the whole and had not raised any concerns about the lack of transparent financing plans.

“The PTI’s emphasis on more transparency could certainly be an irritant for Beijing, but at the end of the day this is something the Chinese may well have envisioned happening anyway, especially on the assumption that Pakistan would go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan and have to open its books,” Kugelman told This Week in Asia.

Whoever wins, Pakistan’s new boss will be bossed just like the old boss

But Sharif is far from done. His Pakistan Muslim League has formed a grand opposition alliance that poses a formidable opposition to Khan’s legislative programme in the directly elected National Assembly, where Khan’s PTI enjoys a thin majority. The opposition alliance already holds a majority in the senate, which has the power to block non-finance bills. It also plans to mount protests against last month’s election, disrupting Khan’s ability to govern in much the same way he had done to Sharif in 2014.

Chinese diplomats have repeatedly voiced concerns about political instability and its potential impact on the execution of CPEC projects. Khan, who has little experience as an administrator, has promised “real change”. That, along with the need to keep Sharif in check, would necessitate continuing attacks on past government policies, many of which helped Chinese companies.

Hardline PTI politicians and allies are expected to continue to make noises about CPEC-related corruption by the Sharif administration, leaving it to responsible cabinet members to play down the Chinese connection
.
Finance minister-in-waiting Asad Umar said on Wednesday CPEC agreements would be placed before parliament to “ensure transparency”, but there was nothing wrong with them in general – although members of the incoming government have not yet seen the texts. Agreements would only be “reopened” if clear evidence of corruption emerged, he said.

How far the PTI can go in pursuing corruption within CPEC projects is questionable as the military assumed political ownership of the corridor last year by integrating it into national security policy.

“They will take time in rebooting the mindset of an eternally angry opposition, provided all is not lost by then,” said Aamir Ghauri, the editor of The News International, a Pakistani newspaper.

The PTI’s questions about CPEC transparency echoed those raised recently by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ahead of a request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout by the incoming Khan administration. The bailout is needed to address a yawning trade imbalance worsened by Chinese machinery imports for the US$28 billion of CPEC projects launched over the past three years. Beijing has helped shore up Pakistan’s plunging foreign exchange reserves with US$6 billion of emergency loans, adding to Pakistan’s debts.

In considering the implications of an IMF bailout, Umar would have to weigh Pompeo’s warning that a bailout application would be subject to intense vetting to ensure US taxpayer dollars did not end up paying Chinese debts.

The US has launched an increasingly aggressive campaign against China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, which seeks to boost global trade through infrastructure projects. It has recently announced the establishment of a US$113 million fund to aid economic competitiveness in the Indo-Pacific in partnership with Japan and Australia. Soon after, a group of 16 US senators known for their hawkish views on China wrote to Pompeo and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin asking how the US government could use its influence at the IMF to ensure the terms of a Pakistan bailout “prevent the continuation of ongoing BRI projects, or the start of new BRI projects”.

The recently approved US defence budget also includes a stipulation by Congress that would require the Donald Trump administration to submit a report by March on China’s use of the belt and road plan to “gain access and influence”.

“Pakistan needs the IMF but the US administration has been uncharacteristically candid in drawing a link between the donor agency’s leaning and the state of US-Pakistan ties,” said Moeed Yusuf, author of Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia.

“From everything I am picking up, this doesn’t seem to have been a hollow threat,” Yusuf said in a recent commentary for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

This has built pressure on Umar to rebalance Pakistan’s financial exposure away from dependence on China, and to make good on promises to make public the terms of existing CPEC agreements. Some pullbacks on big-ticket infrastructure projects are in any case likely as Khan will be forced to trim expenses, meaning a pullback on some future CPEC projects.

“We look forward to constructive relationships with all important countries and the US is the most important. But the PTI will not have an either-or approach. We want good relations with both the US and China,” Umar said, participating in a US think tank discussion on Wednesday.

With the future of the Pakistan-US relationship shrouded in uncertainty, Khan would not do anything to alienate China in a big way.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2156011/whoever-wins-pakistans-new-boss-will-be-bossed-just-old-boss

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The Origins of Imran Khan’s Rise to Power

The Pakistani Taliban routinely used terror attacks on civilians and army targets as a lever to stop US drone strikes, and expand their hold on territory. A decade after 9/11, their guerrilla tactics became bolder. At times they acted in concert with army insiders to carry out a stunning number of terrorist attacks at military and naval bases, airports, docks and other strategic locations.

As the Pakistani Taliban grew, they attracted Uzbek, Tajik, Chechen, Uighurs, Southeast Asian, Arab and North Africans jihadis. Pakistan became the global hub for jihad. It was not just the madressahs but higher academic institutions that bred anti-modernity. The absence of governance let sectarian groups kill Shias, Christians, Hindus and religious minorities with impunity.

The army’s high wire attempts to keep the `good (Afghan) Taliban’ separate from the `bad Taliban,’ — Pakistan’s militant Pakhtuns — threatened to implode the state.

With the Obama administration’s announcement of a draw down of troops from Afghanistan, the time was ripe for Pakistan’s army to revise its military strategy. A new chapter was added to its `Green Book’ relating to `sub-conventional warfare,’ which underlined the “internal threat.” Army Chief Gen. Kiyani articulated what people in Pakistan had known through a decade of suffering — that the Taliban and multifarious sectarian, ethnic and secessionist groups had become “a greater threat to Pakistan than even India.”

But the army also needed sweeping powers which would override the civilian government’s authority. Who could serve them better than the twice elected prime minister and businessman born from their womb — Nawaz Sharif? They also needed a politician like Imran Khan, who was ready to `flog the US horse’ and support the Taliban, or not… as long as it gave him access to power.

In May 2013 the army gave the Pakistani Taliban a license to become `king makers.’ In this electoral strategy, the Taliban refrained from violence against public rallies of right wing politicians like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan… while gunning down candidates of secular parties like the Awami National Party, Pakistan Peoples Party and Mutehidda Qaumi Movement.

Bereft of a populist leader like Benazir Bhutto, the PPP mostly hunkered down. While the ANP, MQM and independents made the ultimate sacrifice, losing candidates and sympathizers to the rampaging Taliban. Knowing that the good times wouldn’t last, the Taliban sought a `quid pro quo’ from the government they had helped to elect. They demanded an end to US drone strikes and the army’s withdrawal from FATA and the territory adjoining Afghanistan.

Imran Khan, who formed the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — which included much of the territory under army control — became the “soft power,” to negotiate the Taliban’s demands.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif convened an All Parties Conference in Islamabad, where political parties agreed to hold “peace talks” with the Pakistani Taliban. Their precondition to the TTP, then led by Hakeemullah Mehsud, was that the Taliban cease all terrorist attacks.

But flush with ill-gotten wealth, weapons and foreign fighters, the Pakistani Taliban killed innocent people and issued demands side by side. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, who still had an ideology against `foreign occupation,’ the Pakistani Taliban had turned into a loose assortment of criminals.

Dismayed, people saw politicians cower before the Taliban. The TTP network stretched between 30 factions headed by Hakeemullah Mehsud in North Waziristan and Mullah Fazlullah in Afghanistan. Hakeemullah had cemented the perfect union between the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and their sectarian affiliates.

The Taliban warned that their real intent was to overthrow the constitution of Pakistan and implement their interpretation of Shariah — the pre-Islamic and customary laws they had enforced in Afghanistan. Just two weeks before he was killed, Hakeemullah gave a rare interview that Pakistan’s close relations with the US had made it necessary to attack the state.

Army insider, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned the Taliban that failure in talks could result in sustained army action. But Imran Khan rose to their defense. Even after Christians were massacred in a church in Peshawar, he demanded that the Taliban be allowed to open an office for negotiations.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s army held its high moral ground against US drone attacks. In October 2013, it sent victims to Washington to testify before Congress.

US House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Alan Grayson, who presided over the testimony, called its bluff when he delivered a left-handed compliment to Pakistan about its “very powerful” air force.

“With all due respects to an ally, it is well within Pakistan’s capability to end those drone strikes tomorrow,” he told the media in the nation’s capital.

Playing Politics Like a Game of Cricket

For most of 2014, a reality TV show played out across Pakistan, as the media covered cricket star Imran Khan’s demand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resign for presiding over “rigged elections.” TV channels competed for ratings, as they covered the PTI chief, standing atop a container in Islamabad, where he spoke unscripted and at times ranted abusively against the prime minister.

Sharif was no stranger to rigged elections — having secured his victory against Benazir Bhutto through rigging, as acknowledged by army insiders. But the twice elected prime minister and wealthy businessman possessed slick election support. One contestant from Lahore told me, he was aghast to find the stupendous amounts spent by the Sharifs during their 2013 electoral campaign.

As Nawaz Sharif became prime minister for the third time, he faced rivalry not only from Imran Khan but Pervez Musharraf — the military chief turned president, who ousted him in a coup in 1999. Musharraf had returned home in time for the elections, hoping to carve out a new political career. But the `commando’ faced serious charges of suspending the constitution and presiding over the assassinations of Baloch tribal chief, Nawab Akbar Bugti and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Arriving at Karachi airport with a couple of hundred loyalists from overseas, photographs show Musharraf with raised hand… as if saluting the imaginary millions swarming to welcome him home. Instead, as a frowning policeman looks on, the picture speaks a thousand words.

That, alas for Musharraf, was the reality that greeted him upon return. In a Shakespearean drama, the tables turned as Musharraf was put on trial by the very prime minister he had ousted.

It was an uncomfortable position for the army establishment to have one of their own, tried in court like a commoner. Musharraf’s supporters turned to aggressive tactics, fighting off the photographers and reporters who tried to document his historic downfall.

Even though party loyalists had dwindled, they apparently had a plan to “rescue” Musharraf. It intrigued me when his party’s chief praised a religious cleric, Tahir ul Qadri, who had just then flown from Canada to Islamabad to mobilize against Pakistan’s newly elected prime minister. The quirky cleric, whom I had encountered in the ’80s, would occasionally `parachute’ into Pakistan to mobilize welfare recipients of his Islamic schools, for select causes.

For months Imran Khan and Tahir ul Qadri rallied supporters in Islamabad on a one-point agenda: removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Flanked by party leaders, the unlikely pair fired up crowds from their respective containers for the August 14 climax — Pakistan’s Independence Day — when Khan hoped that the `umpire’ would rule in his favor.

The government held off a heavy handed approach, even shifting security barriers in front of parliament to accommodate the protestors. The climax came as TV cameras moved from the leaders and zoomed in on loyalists… as they battled riot gear police, and broke furniture in the headquarters of state controlled television.

Twitter lit up with comments from Pakistan observers when PTI president, Javed Hashmi… once imprisoned by Musharraf for being a Sharif loyalist… appeared to snap out of his stupor. Perhaps jolted by the realization that Musharraf may be using him to bring martial law, Hashmi turned into a whistle blower. He told the media that Khan had told the party’s internal meeting that he had received support from army generals to oust the prime minister.

The drama ended when army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif showed little appetite for dissolving Sharif’s government or taking over the reins of power.

Still, as Qadri flew back to Canada and Khan went home, the army got respite. Musharraf was no longer required to attend his court hearings. Instead, he was put under `house arrest’ in his sprawling house in Defense Housing Society, Karachi — with the
street closed off to the public. Like a bored tiger in a luxurious cage, he issued statements, spoke at events and attracted a clueless elite. Despite court cases that included charges of “treason,” in 2016 the former army chief was quietly allowed to fly overseas on “medical grounds.”

On the other hand, Imran Khan’s campaign left Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif weaker and the army establishment in a stronger position to control the pillars of democracy.

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Opposition parties to support PML-N candidate for PM election in NA

ISLAMABAD: An all-party conference of opposition parties has denounced the parliamentary elections as sham and unfair, said Senator Sherry Rehman on Thursday.

“The opposition alliance has declared the elections as non-transparent. But we have decided to challenge the puppet government in the parliament,” Sherry Rehman told media persons after the APC which was attended by PML-N, PPP, MMA, ANP and other parties.

“We will take oath in the Nationa Assembly,” she said.

Opposition parties have developed a consensus on some points which include fielding joint candidates for the upcoming elections of Prime Minister, Speaker and Deputy Speaker in the National Assembly, she said.

“It has been decided that every political party will separately issue a white paper against the elections,” she said.

She said that opposition parties would back a PML-N candidate for the election of Prime Minister.

PPP will field its candidate for the election of National Assembly Speaker while Deputy Speaker will be taken from the MMA, she added.

“We have also agreed to stages protests in the assembly and outside,” she said, adding that election was held to ensure the victory of one party.

Speaking on this occasion, PML-N MNA Ahsan Iqbal said that all democratic parties would launch a democratic struggle. “The flawed election is an assault on the foundation of Pakistan,” he said.

ANP’s Mian Iftkhar Hussain said that opposition parties were in a strong position to form a government.

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Imran Khan’s election in Pakistan presents a global dilemma

The cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has finally been accepted as Pakistan’s next prime minister. I say “finally” because the election commission managed to add to widespread concerns about the elections by inexplicably delaying its announcement of the outcome. Almost all of Pakistan’s parties, other than Khan’s, have contested the results; Shehbaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which won the last general election, tweeted about “manifest and massive irregularities” and argued that Pakistan’s democratization has been “pushed back decades.”

Sharif is right. The past year saw the disqualification of his brother Nawaz, the democratically elected prime minister, and then an election campaign that was throughout very far from fair. Most outside Pakistan will agree with Sharif and his colleagues in other parties, and question whether a government brought to power in this manner should be considered legitimate.

But where does that leave the rest of the world? Pakistan’s military establishment has, through its skillful management of this election, presented the world with a problem that has no easy solution.

Khan has been in the public eye for decades — for more than 20 years as an aspirant prime minister, and before that as the charismatic captain of Pakistan’s cricket team. When that team won the World Cup more than 25 years ago, Khan famously delivered a speech that was stunning in its egotism: He actually forgot to thank his young teammates. After his election victory, his teammates in the powerful establishment — the “boys,” as some Pakistanis euphemistically refer to them — will surely expect more tangible thanks.

But here’s the dilemma the rest of us face. On one hand, we have to continue to support Pakistan’s democratization — which means engaging with its civilian leadership, rather than the generals in Rawalpindi. On the other hand, do we want to help legitimize a government elected with the open support of the military?

You could argue that we should wait to see what sort of prime minister Khan becomes. But, frankly, our expectations should be low. Khan’s political positions in the past have been troubling — particularly his flirtation with the obscurantist religious right, which in Pakistan is very obscurantist indeed. For example, he has voted in favor of religious laws that make it impossible to prosecute rape cases.

During his campaign, he projected himself as a defender of Pakistan’s stringent and illiberal blasphemy law. It’s hard to imagine a Khan-led administration starting off doing anything other than what the military would want it to do — which is to protect those who carry out attacks in Afghanistan and India, defend the army’s entrenched economic interests, and keep the fires of anti-American sentiment burning.

None of this is good news for ordinary Pakistanis, or for the rest of the world. Khan’s anti-West speeches may have been strident, but reality will overtake his rhetoric. Pakistan’s economy is teetering on the brink of a balance-of-payments crisis; sooner or later, and probably sooner, the new government will have to turn to the International Monetary Fund for support. Sooner or later, but probably later, the new prime minister will also realize that the robust “new Pakistan” that he ha he has promised his voters will need him to complete the structural reforms that his predecessors have left unfinished.

After all, Nawaz Sharif himself was once a creature of the military: He rose to power as an acolyte of the military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan in the 1980s. Sharif’s relationship with the Army, however, soured once he was in power and developed a small-business power base of his own that expected him to take on the entrenched interests that dominated Pakistan’s economy. It is not impossible that a similar dynamic will play out over the first years of Khan’s term.

India and the West, therefore, should be cautious. Embracing Khan too early would be a mistake, as it would signal support for the military’s management of the electoral process. But we should be awake to any sign that Khan — a man with enough ego for an entire cricket team — is breaking with his powerful backers. After all, how long will a man like Imran Khan be satisfied by not being the captain of his own team?

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Pakistan’s Ali Wazir: The lone Marxist to win despite Taliban killing 16 of his family

A rare Communist to survive and win, Wazir refused a seat from Imran Khan, who later didn’t put up a candidate against him.

Ali Wazir, a central committee member of The Struggle, has won a seat in the national parliament of Pakistan from NA-50 (Tribal Area–XI) with 23,530 votes and his closest rival from a religious parties alliance, MMA got 7,515. Thus winning the seat with a majority of 16,015.

Ali Wazir is one of the main leaders of the Pashtun Tahafaz Movement (PTM). This year, mass meetings were organised in major cities of Pakistan to raise voices for fair compensation to the victims of the “war on terror” and to demand the release of all ‘missing’ persons or to bring them to the courts if they are guilty.

Two other leaders of the PTM also contested for the national parliament and one of them, Muhsin Dawer also won the seat after a close competition. Mohsin Javed Dawer got 16,526 votes while Aurangzeb of Imran Khan’s PTI got 10,422. However, the MMA candidate Mufti Misbahudin got a close 15,363 votes.

These two PTM leaders contested from Waziristan, an area dominated by religious fanatics. However, a strong movement for civil rights of Pashtuns had cut across the influence of the fanatics and Pashtuns voted despite all the threats to them.

Two main leaders of the PTM present in parliament has given hope to many in Pakistan that at least there would be peoples voices in a parliament dominated by feudal lords, corrupt capitalists and stooges of the military and judicial establishment.

Who is Ali Wazir?
Ali Wazir is a very special person. His personal ordeal best illustrates what prompted his demands. Ali Wazir was pursuing a degree in law at the turn of the century when his hometown, Wana, the headquarters of the south Waziristan agency, became the epicenter of global terrorism after a host of Taliban-allied groups sought shelter in the communities.

No doubt the terrorists had some individual local facilitators, but ultimately it was the state that failed to prevent them from using the territory. When his father, the chief of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, and other local leaders complained of their presence, government officials ignored and silenced them. Instead, Islamabad spent years denying the presence of any Afghan, Arab, or Central Asian militants.

By 2003, the militants had established a foothold in south and north Waziristan tribal agencies and were attempting to build a local emirate. Ali Wazir’s elder brother Farooq Wazir, a local political activist and youth leader, became the first victim of a long campaign in which thousands of Pashtun tribal leaders, activists, politicians, and clerics were killed with near absolute impunity. Their only crime was to question or oppose the presence of dangerous terrorists in their homeland.

In 2005, Ali Wazir was in prison when his father, brothers, cousins, and an uncle were killed in a single ambush. He was behind the bars because of the draconian colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) law, that holds an entire tribe or region responsible for the crimes of an individual for any alleged crime committed in the territory.

Ali Wazir had committed no crime, never got a fair trial, and was not sentenced, yet he was prevented even from participating in the funerals for his family.

In the subsequent years, six more members of his extended family were assassinated. The authorities have not even investigated these crimes let alone held anyone responsible.

Ali Wazir and his family faced economic ruin after all of the notable men in his family were eliminated. The government failed to prevent the militants from demolishing his family owned gas stations. They later used those bricks to build bathrooms, claiming they were munafiqin (hypocrites) so even the inanimate materials from his businesses were not appropriate to build proper buildings.

His family-owned apple and peach orchards in Wana were sprayed with poisonous chemicals, and tube wells were filled with dirt to force them to surrender to the forces of darkness.

In 2016, his family-owned market in Wana was dynamited after a bomb blast killed an army officer, which was an accident. They nevertheless destroyed their livelihoods under the FCR. After the demolition, the government prevented the local community — mostly members of Ahmadzai Wazir tribe — from collecting donations to help them. They were told it would set an unacceptable precedent because the government cannot let anyone help those it punishes.

So all together 16 members of his family, including his father, two brothers were killed by Taliban during these years.

Ali Wazir was one of the main leaders of Pashtun Tahafaz Movement. He recently toured the country and organised mass rallies in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Swat. Lahore Left Front was the host of Lahore public meeting which was formally not permitted by the authorities. We were not allowed to campaign, no posters or stickers were allowed to be put up in the city.

Ali Wazir and seven more were arrested a night before the public meeting and after a massive immediate response, they were released before the rally. Yet, over 10,000 participated in this public meeting.

In June this year, dozens of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) supporters were injured and 10 were killed as a result of an attack on Ali Wazir by the “pro-government militants”, also known as the Peace Committee. However, the PTM sympathisers gathered to welcome Ali retaliated, upon which the militants fled, leaving Ali’s cousin and a Voice of America (VOA) journalist injured among others.

In an interview in April 2018, Ali Wazir said, “The past few months have transformed my life. Amid the agonies I have endured and the threats, suspicion, and accusations I face, the love, support, and respect I receive is overwhelming.

Since February, when we began protesting to draw attention to the suffering of ethnic Pashtuns — among the worst victims of terrorism — I have learned a lot about the potential of ordinary Pakistanis. Their thirst for change is inspiring and heralds a peaceful, prosperous future we must build for generations to come”.

During those difficult years, he didn’t lose faith in the mass movement and remained committed to politics of class struggle. He ran in parliamentary elections in 2008 and 2013.

In the 2013 general elections, his victory was changed to a defeat at gunpoint. He lost the election for just over 300 votes after the Taliban intimidated voters and tortured his supporters and campaign volunteers.

Amid the volcano of violence, thousands of civilians have disappeared, and thousands have fallen victim to extrajudicial killings. The leaders of PTM are profiled as suspected terrorists across the country, face humiliation at security check posts, and innocent civilians have to face violence during security sweeps and operations. As the world’s largest tribal society, the Pashtuns are known for their hospitality, commitment, and valour, yet they were falsely reduced to terrorist sympathisers despite the fact that they are their worst victims.

Ali Wazir belongs to The Struggle, a Pakistani Marxist organization that has joined the Lahore Left Front, a united platform of several Left groups and parties. However, the Lahore Left Front has organised some mass activities where Ali Wazir participated.

The general election of 2018 was the most rigged elections in the history of Pakistan. The society has pushed further to the right with Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) coming to power. Imran Khan called Ali Wazir prior to the elections and offered him PTI nomination from the area which Ali politely refused. However, such respect for Ali Wazir Imran Khan had that that he told him that in any case, “we will not put up our candidate against you”.

Prior to the general elections, a wholesale rigging took place on the behest of the establishment. PML(N) candidates were threatened, forced to change loyalties and so on. The PTI had open support from most of the state institutions.

In this background when a more Right-wing party PTI, than the previous ruling party PML(N), has come to power, a Marxist in parliament would be a breath of fresh air.

Although other Left groups also contested including Awami Workers Party (AWP) and had launched tremendous election campaigns, however, the election campaign of Ali Wazir had some special characteristics. He addressed few public meetings every day, went door to door with his meagre resources. Thousands cheered him at all times. We were all sure that he will win but were afraid of any incident that could cancel the elections from his constituency.

Ali Wazir has opened the gates for the entire Left. He is loved by most of the social activists, a sober person who is always down to earth in his presentation in workers meeting but speaks like a lion when he is addressing the ruling class. A fearless class fighter who has emerged as one of the most respected Left leaders in recent working-class history.

This article was originally published in the Asian Marxist Review

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The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Next Leader

LAHORE, Pakistan — Imran Khan, a charismatic cricket star who has fiercely criticized American counterterrorism policy in a region plagued by extremism, appeared poised on Thursday to become Pakistan’s next prime minister.

After preliminary results showed his party decisively ahead in an election that critics say was deeply marred, Mr. Khan addressed the nation on television, outlining what he would do as prime minister.

He said he would fight corruption at the highest levels, improve relations with China, seek a “mutually beneficial” relationship with the United States and create a just welfare state along the lines of what the Prophet Muhammad did centuries ago.

“We’re going to run Pakistan in a way it’s never been run before,” he said.

He also said he would never live in the prime minister’s mansion. In a country of so many poor people, he said, “I would be embarrassed” to stay in such a house.

For years, Mr. Khan had tried but failed to take the reins of this nuclear-armed Islamic republic, which has struggled with poverty, economic stagnation and instability and which is increasingly torn between its two biggest allies: China and the United States. But this time around, he found a powerful ally in Pakistan’s military.

In recent months, army and intelligence officers pressured, threatened and blackmailed politicians from rival parties, human rights groups have said, steadily thinning out Mr. Khan’s competition.

Members of rival parties said unfair practices continued during the vote, with some ballot counting done in secret, guarded by soldiers. But Pakistan’s election authorities said the vote, on Wednesday, had been fair.

“The way this stage has been set, it would have been a surprise if he didn’t win,” said Nighat Dad, the executive director of Digital Rights Foundation, an advocacy group.

Mr. Khan’s ascendance injects a volatile element into relations with the United States under President Trump, who has accused Pakistan of lying about the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militants embedded in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mr. Khan has denied that and accused the United States of recklessness and murder in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in his country, signaling he wants them to stop.

Friends and foes describe Mr. Khan, 65, as relentless, charming, swaggering and highly unpredictable.

As a young man, his good looks, prowess on the cricket pitch and success with women made him something of a fascination in England, where he lived for a time. In 1982, he posed for a London newspaper lounging on a bed, wearing only briefs.

“Imran Khan is worried in case I portray him as a sex symbol,” wrote the London newspaper journalist sent to interview him.

“This is possibly why Imran is stretched across his hotel bed wearing only a petulant expression and a pair of tiny, black satin shorts.”

But a complex, mysterious transformation would begin soon after. In 1992, Mr. Khan captained Pakistan’s cricket team to a World Cup victory over England, the country’s former colonial ruler. It was a moment of immense Pakistani pride, and Mr. Khan was at the center of it.

But looking back on it, he told interviewers, he felt empty.

He began to stay away from the clubs, the partying, the girlfriends. He began a quest to build a cancer hospital in Pakistan for the poor; his mother had died of cancer, and the two had been close.

He turned to Islam and the Sufi sect, which he said helped lend purpose to his life.
Then he entered politics. Pakistan in the late 1990s was a mess: Its Machiavellian spy services were working with the United States and, at the same time, supporting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The country was poor, troubled and divided — which could still be said today.

Mr. Khan seized on a single issue: governance.

“In Pakistan, the main problem is not extremism,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “We are a governance failure. And in any third world country, the moment the governance collapses, mafias appear.”

He focused on corruption, repeatedly stating that a few political dynasties had shamelessly enriched themselves while governance weakened and the country grew poorer.
But Mr. Khan’s shouts for reform were not taken seriously at first.

The Justice Movement he founded in 1996 initially won only one seat in Parliament — his — and a Pakistani newspaper ridiculed him as “Im the Dim.”

His personal life also careened back and forth, always attracting enormous attention, especially after he married a wealthy British heiress, Jemima Goldsmith. She converted to Islam, they had two children, and tried living in Pakistan together. But it did not last, and they divorced. Mr. Khan married twice more, the last time to his spiritual healer, which again raised eyebrows across Pakistan.

But he seemed adept at not letting the gossip pages distract him, and he kept hammering on about corruption. And two years ago, he received a gift from the Panama Papers.

Those files, an avalanche of millions of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama, included several pieces of information that incriminated Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif. Evidence began to build that Mr. Sharif had stolen millions of dollars from public coffers in Pakistan to buy expensive apartments in London, under the names of his children.

Mr. Khan capitalized on this and called for Mr. Sharif to resign. The Supreme Court removed Mr. Sharif from office, and just two weeks ago, right before the election, Mr. Sharif and his daughter were imprisoned.

Few would disagree that corruption is out of control in Pakistan. But many observers here saw something in Mr. Sharif’s downfall that was more selective, possibly more sinister.

The widespread suspicion was that Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence services had pressured the judiciary to take out Mr. Sharif, clearing a path for Mr. Khan to take over. Mr. Sharif had clashed with the army chiefs, even some of those he had chosen, many times. He was a thorn in their side.

Mr. Khan, on the other hand, was someone the military bosses seemed to think they could work with. Analysts said he shared their worldview, in which Pakistan would kowtow less to the United States and talk more with the Taliban and other extremist groups.

In the prelude to the election, the military seemed to push even harder for Mr. Khan. Human rights groups, academics and members of other political parties said security officers threatened politicians to defect to Mr. Khan’s side. Several did.

That does not mean that Mr. Khan was not genuinely popular. He was, especially among young men who lionized him as a sports hero. As elections loomed, a Khan wave swept Pakistan. His face was everywhere — on banners, lampposts and torn flags flying from the sputtering rickshaws that flit in and out of traffic. His supporters were the most energized and confident. His party’s symbol: a cricket bat.

Votes were still being tabulated on Thursday, but Mr. Khan’s party was far ahead, though still falling short of an outright majority in Parliament. According to results on state television, Mr. Khan’s party had 120 seats, Mr. Sharif’s party 61 and a party run by the Bhuttos, one of Pakistan’s most storied political families, 40.

Even with some vote rigging allegations unsettled, it is widely expected that Mr. Khan will entice politicians from several smaller parties to join a coalition government, with him as prime minister. Depending on how many smaller parties he woos, his government could be strong or weak.

What will Mr. Khan face?
Domestically, the challenges will be overwhelming. Pakistan’s electricity grid is disintegrated, its infant mortality rate is among the most distressing in Asia, its currency is sliding, and its debt — especially to China — is ballooning. So many Pakistanis are unable to find jobs that every year, countless young men set off on a desperate exodus to the Middle East to work as street cleaners, luggage handlers, anything.

Internationally, Pakistan is in a pinch. China has extended it billions to build roads and other infrastructure, which at the current rate will be impossible to repay.
At the same time, President Trump has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. “They have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Mr. Trump said of Pakistan in a tweet in January. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Mr. Khan deeply disagrees.

“To blame Pakistan for that disaster is extremely unfair,” he said in the recent Times interview. “The moment the U.S. went into Afghanistan, everyone knew what was going to happen.”

“It was the history of Afghanistan,” he added, citing the defeat of occupying Soviet troops in the 1980s. Just as with the Soviets, he said, the longer the Americans stayed, the more resistance would grow.

Pakistan, he says, has borne “the brunt of the war on terror,” and he lamented what he called a misguided strategy that has killed thousands of people in his country and deprived Pakistan of billions of dollars in lost business. For years, he has been a particularly vocal critic of American drone strikes.

All these positions play well with many Pakistanis. So does Mr. Khan’s recent support for the country’s strict blasphemy laws. Pakistan is socially conservative, and about 96 percent of citizens are Muslim.

Mr. Khan’s positions on religion have tacked like a sailboat over the years. But as the election drew closer, he seemed to set his course for the Islamists. In the past, he expressed support for the application of strict Islamic law, including hand amputations for thieves.

Mr. Khan has successfully rebranded himself as a populist alternative to Pakistan’s political elite, whom voters seemed more than ready to jettison.
But his life, in many ways, could not have been more different from that of most Pakistanis.

Born to a rich family in Lahore, Mr. Khan went to the best schools in Pakistan and in England, including Keble College, Oxford. He is independently wealthy, still travels abroad regularly and remains close to Ms. Goldsmith, despite their divorce.

Though many acquaintances credit him with being charming, he can also come across as remote and desultory. His attendance record as an elected member of the National Assembly, Pakistan’s Parliament, was one of the worst.

Many analysts wonder how long Mr. Khan’s friendship with the military will last.
“He is known to have erratic behavior and a very unpredictable personality,” said Taha Siddiqui, a journalist and critic of the military who recently moved to France, saying he feared for his safety.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Meher Ahmad and Daniyal Hassan from Lahore.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/world/asia/imran-khan-pakistan-election.html