Help Pakistan – drop the debt

Dear Friends,

As Pakistan struggles to rescue families from flood waters and fend off disease and starvation before winter sets in, it is scrambling to pay out a shocking 30% of its annual budget revenues to foreign creditors on debt incurred by previous dictatorships.

If Pakistan is obliged to make these debt payments, rescue efforts for tens of millions of people whose lives have been devastated could be crippled. Earlier this year, we persuaded creditor governments to drop Haiti’s debt after it was devastated by an earthquake — and now we could do the same for Pakistan.

Right now international financial institutions and donor countries are assessing how to assist Pakistan. Let’s come together and call for life-saving debt relief for the people of Pakistan. Sign the petition below to stop these stifling debt payments and let Pakistan rebuild, and it will be delivered directly to ministers and senior officials attending the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

http://www.avaaz.org/en/pakistan_cancel_the_debt/98.php?cl_taf_sign=sNJfJd6N

Pakistan’s staggering $55 billion debt burden comes from decades of reckless spending by its autocratic ruling elites, matched by irresponsible lending on the part of Western creditors and banks.

Govt seeks to be part of investigation

ISLAMABAD: The spot-fixing scandal allegedly involving Pakistan’s cricketers continued to create waves on Monday, with the government scrambling to get involved in the matter. With a three-member team from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) preparing to fly out to London, Pakistan has officially asked Scotland Yard to allow it to be part of the investigations into the scandal.

“Scotland Yard has been requested to make Pakistan a part of the investigation process,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told The Express Tribune.

The request has been made through the Pakistan High Commission in London, the spokesman said. “We are  waiting for their (Scotland Yard) response,” he added.

The government had already announced that it would send a Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team to London to examine the allegations that some Pakistani cricketers were involved in spot-fixing. The team, which will be headed by by FIA director Altaf Hussain, who will be accompanied by Inam Ghani and Inspector Tahir, have applied for UK visas, and will proceed to London as soon as their documents come through.

Officials said the FIA team will study claims that Muhammad Amir and Muhammad Asif deliberately bowled no-balls during the final Test against England at Lord’s.

Water level at Kotri Barrage crosses 900,000 cusecs

Several villages in Hyderabad are inundated as Kotri Barrage braces for the worst flood in 50 years. The super flood passing through Kotri will take at least six days to subside.

The provincial government is monitoring the situation at dykes as the water pressure builds up. More than 900,000 cusecs of water is likely to pass through the barrage.

Irrigation experts said that the current flood torrent has broken the record of the 1976 floods.

Meanwhile flood water has entered parts of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) building in Hyderabad. Water has already caused devastation in Ghauspur, Thul, Jacobabad, Garhi Khairu and other adjoining areas.

Water pressure at Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD) III has been reduced by making breaches at three points and efforts are underway to keep the safety dyke in ShahdadKot intact.

Flood torrents from Garhi Khairu and Balochistan have reached Hamal Lake. For the past ten days, transport of food items between Sindh and Balochistan are at a halt due to suspension of the road link between the two provinces.

The cyclone that broke Pakistan’s back

It wiped out villages. Destroyed crops. Over 3.6 million people were directly affected. Most estimates suggest that half a million died; some suggest as many as one million perished. Nearly 85 per cent of the area was destroyed. Three months after the catastrophe some 75 per cent of the population was receiving food from relief workers.

It happened in Pakistan. Yet few Pakistanis even know of it by name. Fewer still remember that it eventually contributed to Pakistan’s break-up. The 1970 Cyclone Bhola hit then East Pakistan on November 12, 1970.

Historians tend to agree that although there were many other forces at work, the devastation caused by the cyclone and the widespread view that the government had mismanaged the relief efforts and West Pakistan had generally shown an attitude of neglect, contributed to high levels of anti-West Pakistan feeling, a sweeping victory for the Awami League, and eventually the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.

Such, then, are the forces of nature. And such are the forces of history.

As we hear newspaper headlines proclaiming the historic magnitude and devastation wrought by the floods on our plains, it is worth remembering that 40 years ago The New York Times was describing another calamity in Pakistan as the “worst catastrophe of the century”. Much more importantly, we should pay close attention to the lessons of history, and the lessons of nature.

The lesson of how policy mismanagement led to public dissatisfaction and eventually contributed to national dismemberment. Of course, this is not an entirely parallel situation since so much more had already gone wrong in the East Pakistan case — and the cyclone was a contributor to, not the cause, of how history unfolded — but Bhola’s lessons should not be lost on the politicians, policy-makers and people of Pakistan.

Pakistan considers limiting IMF loan package to $10b

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is considering restricting the $11.3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout programme to less than $10 billion and wants to delay the IMF Executive Board meeting in a bid to gain more time for tax reforms.

Finance ministry sources told The Express Tribune that the government is mulling over taking the meeting of the IMF Executive Board to November instead of end-September or early October. The move is said to have two objectives.

“The primary aim is to deliver on the commitment of tax reforms by buying more time and secondly it will leave no time for the last meeting before the end of $11.3 billion programme in December,” said a key government official on condition of anonymity.

“Pakistan does not want to avail of the last tranche of $1.2 billion due to better position of foreign exchange reserves,” the official added. The IMF loan cannot be used for budgetary support and the money can only be spent on import bills.

Pakistan and the IMF will enter into staff-level talks on August 23 in Washington DC to review the economic performance in the last quarter (April-June) of financial year 2009-10. During the year, the country missed the budget deficit target by a wide margin and ended up with a deficit of Rs909 billion or 6.2 per cent of GDP instead of the target of Rs769 billion or 5.1 per cent. It also could not levy the Value Added Tax (VAT) from July 1.

Pakistan is committed to implementing the reformed GST, which includes withdrawal of tax exemptions on goods and levy of the tax on services, by October. The issue remains unresolved as the Centre and provinces have been unable to sort out differences.

150,000 survivors at risk again

Fresh flood warnings were issued in Rajanpur district on Monday as district officials ordered the emergency evacuation of areas previously untouched by the fury of the raging torrents.

The warnings put about  half a million people at risk, including 150,000 who had taken refuge from the surrounding areas and were being asked to evacuate on an emergency basis, The Express Tribune has learnt.

A 40-kilometre tract of land stretching from Jampur to Rajanpur tehsil is now under threat. “The second wave has hit us badly,” District Coordination Officer (DCO) Muhammad Usman told The Express Tribune. He said these are areas where people had gathered after escaping the earlier floods.

“We are trying to plug the breach but we have also warned the people to evacuate the area,” he added. He said the River Indus had overflowed its banks and washed away a 20-foot long bank of the Qadra Link Canal. He said the administration was working to strengthen the second embankment wall at Hazoori Wah.

According to him, breaches have been made on three other embankments to deflect som of the water pressure but there was another threat as well because the waters had also washed the bank of the Qadra Link Canal, which is five kilometres away from Fazilpur.

Over 150,000 people from the surrounding areas who had taken refuge in Fazilpur are being asked to evacuate yet again.

Five children die of starvation in Kohistan

ABBOTABAD: At least five children died of starvation in a village in the flood-battered Kohistan district of Hazara division, a local lawmaker reportedly said on Sunday.

Speaking to journalists in Bisham, MPA Abdul Sattar Khan said that the mountainous Kohistan district of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has been cut off from the rest of the country since surging floodwaters destroyed vital infrastructure, including roads and bridges, in the area two weeks ago.

“‘We are facing a very serious food crisis in the district. Five children have already died and many more people would starve to death if they don’t get food in the next two days,” Khan was quoted by a local newspaper as telling journalists.

The lawmaker claimed that he somehow managed to reach Bisham to send out an SOS because the telecommunication system has collapsed in Kohistan. He came down hard on the government for “ignoring the people affected by  floods in the region”. He said that no government aid has reached upper Kohistan, which has been cut off from the rest of the country.

Khan called upon the government to immediately provide aid to hundreds of families stranded in upper Kohistan to avert a human catastrophe.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2010.

Bilawal… or Bakhtawar?

KARACHI: Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari has decided to start practical politics in Pakistan very soon.

“Bakhtawar’s decision to enter into the politics of the country is a laudable act, which will bring a new socio-economic development for the democracy loving people, particularly women,” Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister Sharmila Farooqui said in a statement issued from her office on Thursday.

Farooqui said that Bakhtawar, by following the philosophy and wisdom of her mother Benazir Bhutto, would become the beacon of light for the downtrodden women and would struggle to ensure them a high status in society. Farooqui said that she will work parallel to the PPP government for the welfare of the people.

“Bakhtawar will revive her mother’s commitment and struggle for providing justice, freedom, social rights to the people besides raising the flag of her mother’s mission,” the advisor said.

Farooqui said “the time is not far when the daughter of a great mother Benazir Bhutto will rule the hearts of the Pakistani people by following her mother’s struggle to provide rights to the down-trodden people, strengthen democracy and lead the country towards real progress.”

Remove US forces from Pakistan

There are regular American soldiers in Pakistan; they ensure compliance under threat of overt occupation. Moreover, “the United States is engaged in a covert strategy to increase [their] troops’ role [in Pakistan] incrementally, with the goal of convincing Pakistan to be more accepting of [their] presence.” So says US Representative Kucinich, co-sponsor of a July 22 Resolution in Congress: “Directing the President…to remove the United States armed forces from Pakistan.” “We became enmeshed in a war against Vietnam with advisers leading the way,” he said: “[we] are seeking to nip in the bud an expansion of US ground presence in Pakistan.” Reportedly, 30 Special Operations soldiers, billed as military trainers, first arrived in Pakistan in October 2008, days after President Asif Ali Zardari took office, after four months of stalling by the Pakistan Army. Today, there are some 120 to 200 ‘trainers’ in Pakistan, with an expanded and growing scope of mission. While it is well-known that numerous US and allied – including Indian and Israeli – intelligence agencies have been operating inside Pakistan, this resolution confirms the presence of regular US military forces in Pakistan.

In parallel with CIA, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) soldiers of the US Special Operations Command, each with its own Blackwater/Xe and other mercenaries, have been long suspected to be active in Pakistan — recruiting spies, running faux terrorists, staging apparent terrorist incidents, buying friends, bribing the recalcitrant, and assassinating targets. A much wider presence, however, was confirmed when three foreigners, in civilian clothes, were killed in February, while on their way to inaugurate a girls’ school in Lower Dir built with American money. Although the government insists that only a handful of US troops are training the Frontier Corps, a US Army Special Operations Command press release identified two of the deceased as being from their 95th Civil Affairs (CA) Brigade (Airborne), and one from the fourth Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group. The Frontier Corps is not tasked with either of these activities.

113 people dead in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The death toll of those killed in floods in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa rose to 113 on Thursday.

The areas worst affected by the flash floods in Khyber Pakhthunkhwa include Shangla, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat, Tank and the North Waziristan tribal agency.

Senior Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa minister Basheer Bilour said that  over 50 bridges have been swept away.

Fifiteen bridges, 300 shops, more than 80 houses and a hotel were washed away in floods in Swat and Bahrain.

Twenty-six people have died due to rains and floods in Shangla. Lightening struck and killed nine people in Dhairy, while eight drowned in floods in the Kohistan area.

Six people were swept away in floods in Lower Dir, while two children died in Marzoi area of Shabqadar when the roof of a house caved in.