No individual has influenced the course of US military strategy more over the last 10 years than Osama bin Laden. In an age of increasingly narrow ideologies, Osama has been the standard bearer for international terrorism. Beyond that simple equation, however, lies a complex, contradictory chain of events that over the last decade has seen Australian forces caught in the unending US war in Afghanistan.

In what is probably the most accurate statement on his passing, Afghan officials termed bin Laden’s death a “symbolic victory”. Afghans have suffered more than any others at the hands of Osama bin Laden, but they are well aware that his death will not bring them a better future.

For a time bin Laden’s ability to evade the most powerful and sophisticated military force in human history gave him a superhuman aura. But as the body count rose the ultimate futility of his terrorism has become ever more evident. For in every conflict in which Osama engaged — from Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan and Somalia — even other Islamists eventually realised that his al Qaeda lacked any sustainable vision for Muslim majority societies.

There is no question that Osama’s radical politics were a product of autocratic regimes across the Arab world. Some were aligned with the West, others, like Syria, are still official enemies. Most now face unprecedented challenges from grassroots movements that make a mockery of Western notions of moderate and non-moderate Muslim states.

Al Qaeda’s brand of violent, radical politics too has been swept aside by the soft power of popular politics. Last week the Hamas movement signed a peace agreement with the secular Fatah in Egypt. Both were under immense pressure from ordinary Palestinians to reach such a settlement. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has replaced militancy with political negotiations. Inevitably these developments have their uncertainties. But for societies fatigued by oppression and war they are welcome developments.

It is time the West read these important signals. When the former US pro-consul in Iraq Paul Bremer announced the capture of Saddam Hussein before a packed news conference the hall erupted into loud celebrations. This time, the celebrations are relatively muted.

In a week dominated by the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, one cannot help but feel the theatre of bin Laden’s death obscures the moral and tactical questions we need to answer.

Will his murder reduce the terrorism threat or weaken the insurgency our troops are fighting alongside others in Afghanistan and Pakistan? And why has it taken so long to find bin Laden? That last question is especially prescient given that he was found living in a house in Abbottabad, a settled, urban part of Pakistan’s north-west that is home to many serving and retired military personnel, including some of my own distant relatives.

Only hours after bin Laden’s assassination was announced, unknown assailants torched a NATO supply convoy and killed four policemen in the nearby region of Attock.

Mindful of further devastating attacks, Pakistan’s military has been averse to emphasising its role in the joint operation with US forces that led to bin Laden’s death. Militant groups are expected to mount fresh attacks. That includes Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Pakistani branch of the Islamist insurgency that is more closely aligned to Al Qaeda than its Afghan counterparts.

It is easily forgotten now, but the key moment in bin Laden’s war against the West was 1990. In that year Saudi Arabia invited US troops into the desert kingdom to end Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Bin Laden considered it a sacrilege for American soldiers to be present on the same soil as Mecca, for Muslims the most sacred place on earth. Already disillusioned by the Saudi regime, this was what convinced Osama to engage in high-profile terrorism in the hope of arousing global Muslim animosity towards the US.

The tragic irony is that the international community played a pivotal role in giving Osama international prominence well before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Underwritten by the US and Saudi Arabia and managed by Pakistan’s military, the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s brought bin Laden and other extremists to the fore. The Soviet Union’s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent collapse convinced militant Islamists that their violence could make politics and the global system redundant.

Recent events prove the opposite to be true. Bin Laden is not the only one who was seeking shelter from this conflict. Millions of innocent civilians remain homeless throughout Pakistan, while in neighbouring Afghanistan and in Iraq and many other places the victims of a decade of war continue to suffer.

Liquidating terrorists like Osama bin Laden will not end the terrorism threat. It is grievance and poverty in all its shades — of livelihoods, of opportunities and ideas — that ultimately breeds the conditions in which terrorism is born.

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 10.00 BST

Contempt for human life is at the heart of Pakistan’s miseries. Although the relationship between rich and poor is complex and far from monolithically asymmetrical, fundamental inequalities make progress difficult.

How else to explain our president’s decision to visit Europe while the country suffers one of its greatest natural disasters? In any other country, a head of state would surely cut his or her foreign visit short to lend moral support in a time of catastrophe. The government’s failure in the face of the floods, along with the army’s primary role in confronting it and Asif Ali Zardari’s apparent nonchalance, has been a disaster for democracy in this country.

It is sad, too, as one local commentator noted, that it is only in moments of disaster that the rest of us unite as one nation. The floods have not discriminated against ethnic Punjabis – long resented by other minorities for dominating the state – Pashtuns or Balochis, the latter two already ravaged by insurgencies heavily laced with international intrigue.

As a foreign-born Pakistani, our acute anxiety over a national identity has always struck me as odd because there are self-evidently so many separate Pakistans. In every city, there are entire regions that never intersect, except via the dusty, colourful buses that transport day workers and servants to and from their slums to the homes of the more privileged. Growing up, doting aunties and uncles would constantly warn me not to forget my Pakistani heritage. And yet, as Pakistanis, we seem to easily forget those compatriots who clean our homes, hawk on the streets and fight in our wars.

As wild floods ravage the north west, our president is busy touring Europe in luxurious comfort. Staying back would have helped the assistance effort little, but it demonstrates poor political judgment. It also reflects the elite’s flagrant indifference to human suffering. That is why in the heat of summer and widespread power outages last year our main opposition leader, the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, decided toimport a rare tiger that required a specially built, refrigerated enclosure.

To understand this strange opulence remember that our wealthiest live in a fantasy realm of mansions, servants and privilege derived mostly through nepotism. Superficially cosmopolitan – for their children typically study abroad and imitate foreign accents and customs – they are left with utter contempt for those who are less fortunate. Few show izzat, or respect, to the lowest who work in their kitchens, drive their cars or hawk trinkets to them in the markets. In a society based largely on honour and riven with resentment, it is a dangerous mix.

Resentment is a powerful political weapon in this country. Most of the so-called anti-Americanism in Pakistan is a sideshow used to enable the mass to vent its anger, admittedly at an empire that has done more than most to patronise our elites and feed their megalomania. Criticism of the west, Jews, or Hindus has become the catch-all that enables the oppressed to forget how casually brutal we have become to one another.

That does not mean humanity is dead in Pakistan. There is a lively philanthropy sector. Millions donated to charities helping those made homeless by the war in the Swat valley last year. And appeals for assistance to victims of this year’s floods have already proliferated. Islamist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayaba linked Jamat-ud-Dawa, now operating under different names, have been quick to respond to the tragedy, too. The army has been at the forefront of humanitarian relief efforts.

Although liberal opinion calls for greater democratisation, what can be said when elected officials stand idle in the face of the two sectors of Pakistan society – the mullahs and the military – that are supposed to be our greatest problems? To be sure there are hundreds if not thousands of secular charities that have for decades sought to alleviate poverty and suffering in Pakistan. They cannot match the funding or political support garnered by the Islamic welfare groups or the military. Only support from elected governments can stem the influence of extremists or the military.

One of the principle reasons why the Taliban spread so quickly through the tribal areas in the north west was their promise to provide justice and equality where the state never did. Their leaders are virtually all salt-of-the-earth men of humble origins. Within the state, only the military has demonstrated a capacity to offer meritocratic advancement to every day citizens, albeit in a very limited form. According to the World Bank, 26.5% of Pakistan’s wealth is held by the top 10% of the population. The lowest 20% hold a mere 9.1%. A measure of poverty including social exclusion used by the UN ranks Pakistan 141st of all nations, just above Swaziland but below Burma.

But no statistics or amounts of foreign aid can challenge a mindset. Without compassion and respect for all of our fellow citizens we will never be capable of grappling the disasters that routinely rock our nation.

[Published in The Guardian's Comment Is Free website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/04/pakistan-corrosive-inequality-zardari-floods]

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 June 2010 07.59 BST

More and more Pakistanis are looking to prayer for protection in these troubled times. In the absence of credible, secular options, the fatalism this generates is a mixed blessing.

For most of this year my wife has been seriously ill. When successive health professionals failed to determine what was causing the malaise, relatives consulted an imam in Lahore. When told of her symptoms, he advised that she may very well be suffering the dreaded “evil eye” – a curse caused by black magic, an ancient source of trouble typically practised by envious or resentful others.

To ward off the curse, the imam instructed my wife to avoid eating beef and eggs, and told her father and me to swirl a bowl of dal and five eggs counter-clockwise above her head while reciting a verse from the Qur’an. Once this was completed, we were told to throw the eggs and dal into nearby bushes and walk away, careful not to gaze at where the contents of the bowl lay.

A born sceptic, I was certain that this ritual would not heal my wife. To be sure, her discomfort has only been eased, albeit incrementally, by a more modern form of ritual – the neuro-ontologist’s prescription of rest and a healthy diet avoiding caffeine and dairy products.

Yet for my family, the imam’s curse-busting commands have visibly helped. My wife’s father has been left with a sense of control, a feeling that, at the very least, something is being done to help his daughter recover.

Uncertainty is an inherent part of the human experience, but in Pakistan much of what a reader in Britain might take for granted is far from certain. How long will the electricity last today? Where will the next bomb go off? And, for most who do not inhabit my privileged world, will I be able to afford the right medication if I fall ill? The profound loss of control felt by long-term illness sufferers and their loved ones has become a countrywide phenomenon in Pakistan.

The situation has exacerbated our cultural tendency to avow causation in favour of fate and the rewards of prayer. Whether looking for a job, waiting anxiously for exam results or willing the national cricket team to victory, prayer has become a kneejerk source of solace and comfort in difficult times. Holy men, or pirs, and local soothsayers have for generations made a career out of selling their prayers to those in need.

And why not? Doing the right thing, like expecting to get a plum job without working family contacts, rarely seems to lead to results in our country. During my travels I have met several academically bright students from middle-class backgrounds who complain they cannot get into top university courses because wealthier classmates have paid to gain entrance. The experience for the millions below the middle class, who could never dream of a university education, is even more dire.

So dire, in fact, that although the resort to prayer to ward of curses is more associated with Pakistan’s Sufi Muslim traditions, they are widely practised even among those more influenced by rigid Deobandi or Gulf Arab Salafist interpretations, albeit more quietly these days.

In fact, the resort to prayer and fear of curses is a subcontinent-wide tendency, as demonstrated by the fact that Pakistan’s minority non-Muslim communities practise similar rituals of their own. Even the Taliban have spread rumours of their mystical support to persuade villagers in the country’s north-west to support them. According to one rumour, a colleague from the tribal areas told me last year, a woman gave birth to a demon that lived long enough only to warn the population not to support the army’s battle against the Taliban.

This mix of uncertainty and superstition puts a fatalistic streak into our national consciousness reflected in what I would call the inshallahcomplex. “Inshallah” (the Arabic term for “God willing”) is liberally used by Muslims the world over to describe a broad sweep of aspirations including hope and despair. If the handyman wants to avoid promising to fix your broken generator promptly he is bound to say inshallah. Whenever relatives call to ask if my wife’s health has improved, I always say … inshallah.

As useful as the inshallah complex is, however, it does risk lulling us into a false sense of invisibility. That is why we have become blind to the apartheid-like persecution of our minorities or the epidemic proportions of violence against women. As much as people were shocked by the recent massacre of more than 90 Ahmadiyya Muslims at their mosque, for example, many nevertheless believe they are apostates bound for hell. With violence becoming increasingly endemic in our society, it is becoming harder to understand it in rational terms.

How do we break this blindness when our society is already so shattered? As one popular blogger noted, for decades Pakistan’s liberal-minded community has tried and largely failed to break it. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless better to have limited success than the oblivion of endless, vacuous sermons by imams extolling the virtues of fatalism and jihad.

Perhaps our harsh reality is too brutal without a filter. But so long as that filter is prayer and superstition, little will separate blessing from curse.

[Published on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jun/07/pakistan-violence-superstition-prayer]

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 February 2010 08.00 GMT

Memory spans are short in modern politics, but even by those standards the relative ease with which the discourse on Afghanistan has shifted from fighting the Taliban to negotiating with them is remarkable.

Even more incredible is our collective refusal to admit the obvious. The Taliban are stronger than ever because the US chose a heavy-handed, unilateral military response to the 9/11 attacks. What’s more, the insurgency is now more ideologically aligned with al-Qaida than ever before. Thanks to bin Laden’s network, the Taliban have changed from rag-tag army to deadly insurgency and, most ominous of all, they believe they are more than a match for the world’s only superpower.

Some will say that the climate following the deadly attacks on the US nearly nine years ago made it impossible to take the more nuanced approach now being attempted. Diplomacy back in 2001 was left to the Taliban. As the US began its carpet bombardment of Afghanistan, however, Mullah Omar expressed a willingness to hand bin Laden over provided the US gave evidence of his culpability. Any extradition, he added, would have to be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was flatly rejected in October 2001, along with an earlier suggestion to try bin Laden in a domestic or international tribunal. It is impossible to judge in hindsight the veracity or practicality of these overtures. But as US-led foreign and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and hundreds of foreign nationals, including 253 British soldiers, the decision to favour unilateral war over diplomacy has proved disastrous.

The Afghan war is also a political liability for foreign governments embroiled in it. A majority of voters in most countries involved in the International Assistance Force for Afghanistan, including Britain, want their troops to return home. Western planners have realised that there can be no hope of a withdrawal in the foreseeable future unless there is dialogue with the Taliban.

This is no simple task. On the one hand, negotiating with the Taliban is a victory for realism. They may represent one of the most fanatical and oppressive streams of Islam, but the Taliban are now the dominant social movement in Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, the country’s largest ethnic group who inhabit the regions of the south and east – major frontlines in the current conflict. Support for the Taliban among Pashtuns, far from universal before 2001, has increased because the US and its allies decided to invade their country.

But these facts should not detract from other truths. There can be no doubt that the Taliban and the warlords backing the pro-US regime in Kabul pose a long-term threat to the development of Afghanistan, particularly for its women and minorities. New research suggests that support for the Taliban is based not on ideology but social ties, cultural affinities and the hope that the insurgents can improve living conditions more than President Karzai’s hopelessly corrupt administration.

Karzai is a product of the US decision to unilaterally invade Afghanistan. Along with resentment towards the US for installing the Karzai regime, however, many Afghans are also openly hostile to regional powers, especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for promoting conflict in their country even after the Soviets left in 1989. Interestingly, Afghans view India more favourably than any other foreign presence in their country – up to 71% of them according to one recent opinion poll – including the UN. It cannot be a coincidence that there are no Indian soldiers in Afghanistan. India has invested billions of dollars in developing the country’s civil infrastructure. India’s involvement in Afghanistan is not an act of charity and it has a long history of supporting former Northern Allies warlords widely implicated in atrocities. But in post-2001 Afghanistan, the soft power of Indian development assistance has accrued enormous goodwill.

An extensive survey carried out by the Asia Foundation last year found that the central thing on Afghan minds is not the Taliban or the US, but access to education and employment for both men and women. And as Khalid Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, points out, poverty is a far greater cause of death in Afghanistan than war.

In the rush to end our participation in the Afghan war it is important to remind ourselves that what Afghanistan needs is not an end to foreign involvement but an acceptance that it was a victim of the international community’s collective interference long before bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks.

Talking to the Taliban should not mean appeasing extremists in exchange for a quick withdrawal. Rather, solving this morally ambiguous conflict will require a commitment to engage with all Afghans over a long period of time.

The greatest militant threat facing India comes not from the Islamists who attacked Mumbai but Naxalite Maoist rebels

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 September 2009 09.00 BST

Last November’s fedayeen-style attacks on Mumbai may have reminded the world that India was not immune to terrorism. But few outside the subcontinent are aware that the greatest source of militancy in this diverse country comes not from Islamists but Maoists.

Insurgencies by Naxalites (named after Naxalbari, a town in West Bengal where rural peasants took up arms against oppressive local landowners in 1967) have proliferated over a vast beltway stretching from the forests of Bengal in the north to Kerala in the south.

Astonishingly, there is believed to be a Naxalite presence in one-third of the Indian landmass, or 16 of India’s 28 states. Authorities estimate that one-fifth of the nation’s forests are under Naxalite control.

In comparison, at the beginning of this year the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan was believed to control a maximum of 11% of the country, all in the North-West Frontier province and Federally Administered Tribal Area along the border with Afghanistan. Little wonder, then, that the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, recently dubbed the Maoist rebels the “single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”.

In contrast, the Economist derided them as “an outmoded ideology” that is “out of keeping with the modern India of soaring growth, Bollywood dreams and call-centres”.

Such typecasting – of India’s apparent economic dream and the seemingly luddite rebellion opposed to it – is as much a part of the problem as the violence that has embroiled rural India. Vast economic and social disparities between rich and poor persist here despite, and indeed because of, the economic boom of recent times. Although the Indian constitution outlaws the caste system, it still causes much discrimination with, in the words of University of Westminster’s Radha D’Souza, the poorest facing “routine everyday violence” by the police.

India’s controversial special economic zones, like those in China and other developing nations, have also played a role, causing massive dislocations of communities in the name of giant hydro, mineral or logging projects that benefit powerful local and multinational businesses.

The Naxalites are a product of these traumas. Like the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan, they capitalise on the latest experiences of generations-old corruption, harassment and nepotism and promise stability, an equitable share of wealth and quick, if brutal, justice.

They are particularly popular among the poorest communities, especially in rural areas such as the remote forests of resource-rich Chhattisgarh where Aboriginal tribespeople have been forcibly “relocated” to make way for mining companies hungry for the iron ore buried under their feet.

Authorities have facilitated relocations like this – even the communist-led government of West Bengal that championed land reforms for the poorest in the late 1970s stands accused of removing peasants to make way for a Tata car factory.

The Naxalites are often the only ones standing up for the dispossessed. Leaders like Koteswar Rao (known as Kishanji) claim their overall aim is to “liberate” the poorest and transform India into a socialist state along the lines of Maoist communism.

Such rhetoric marks the Naxalites out as true insurgents. Like a fledgling state, the rebels administer justice in “people’s courts”, and raise “taxes” from families and businesses in areas under their influence. Indian authorities say the largest Naxal network, the Communist party of India (Maoist), raised 10bn rupees (£125m) in “taxation” in 2007.

But the Naxalites are far from a united force. Regional rivalries – most broadly split among different political and militant factions – have occasionally led to bloody internecine conflict. As a result, Naxal allegiances typically vary from village to village in every region they are present.

Some Naxal rebels have been guilty of committing wanton atrocities that their critics say prove they are not about liberation but to intimidate ordinary villagers into joining their ranks. During election periods, for instance, Naxalites have threatened to cut off voters’ hands. Naxalites are openly hostile to parliamentary politics – they view mainstream communist parties such as those of West Bengal and Kerala states as enemies of India’s underclasses.

Others, such as the anthropologist George Kunnath, speak of the movement’s positive contributions – the emancipation of indentured “schedule caste” labourers who are otherwise condemned to generations of de facto slavery, greater social equality between men and women, and their promotion of education for all.

Whether or not the positives outweigh the negatives, the government has itself been guilty of excesses.

In Chhattisgarh, government security forces and a vigilante militia known as the Salwa Judum – ostensibly created to protect people against Naxal rebels – have been implicated in atrocities like extra-judicial killings and forcible evictions that have exacerbated the conflict. According to Amnesty International, villagers who complain of police or paramilitary abuse are branded Naxalites to silence them.

Compounding matters, the Indian government looks to be escalating its military presence in affected regions and especially in Chhattisgarh. Since July, it has deployed hundreds of soldiers along with air and paramilitary forces to combat the Naxalites in Chhattisgarh who, in turn, have murdered scores of police personnel.

To his credit, Singh acknowledges that the Naxalite rebellions are at least in part a consequence of decades-old alienation of the poorest owing to discrimination, poverty and harassment. Yet there are no clear signals that the rhetoric is being matched with economic and social policies capable of bridging the social and economic divides between rich and poor. Without that divide there would be no Naxalites.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/16/naxalite-rebels-india

]]> http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/a-very-indian-insurgency/feed/ 0 http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/pakistans-power-politics/ http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/pakistans-power-politics/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:54:54 +0000 mustafa http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/?p=552

Ordinary Pakistanis still suffer from energy shortages – and are unlikely to benefit from their country’s rich natural resources

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 August 2009 17:00 BST

Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

On the streets of Pakistan’s vibrant cities, the industrious whir of countless generators is as ubiquitous as the hawkers desperately trying to make ends meet.

With its ever-growing population, Pakistan has always struggled to match energy supplies with demand. Those difficulties have turned violent recently. In Karachi and throughout the Punjab last week angry mobs went on a rampage and assailed power companies in frustration at the long daily power cuts that have brought modern life to a standstill.

The Gilani Research Foundation estimates (pdf) that 53% of Pakistan’s population goes without electricity for more than eight hours a day. In fact, the blackouts are even longer in rural and poor urban areas which also lack other basic infrastructure like roads and waste water drainage. The situation has led to a series of annual hikes in energy costs. In the poorest slums of Karachi, for instance, people are forced to clandestinely tap into the electrical grids of rich communities because the retail price is too prohibitive. Power theft in Karachi and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas alone is believed to cost the state £138m in lost revenues.

The government has been under pressure to increase tariffs and reduce subsidies across a broad spectrum of industries including energy ever since agreeing to an IMF loan package last year in desperation as the nation’s foreign reserves dwindled. The move has caused much consternation among consumers and local businesses, not just the angry mobs.

The power cuts occur with greater frequency during the long hot summer months. Every time they occur, modern life and business grinds to a halt. This, along with poor employment prospects, and education and health services – and not the Taliban – is the greatest concern for the average Pakistani.

“We have inherited these problems [from the Musharraf regime]. There was no planning done, there was no [energy] policy for the past 3-4 years,” Asim Hussain, national adviser for petroleum and natural resources, tells me during a break in a London conference on Pakistan’s oil and gas industry.

Just as a gaping hole divides the supply and demand for electricity in Pakistan, the country is heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels: local energy production accounts for only 15% of all usage. Oil and gas make up 80% of all of Pakistan’s energy consumption and with 62,000km of pipelines, it has one of the largest networks in the world.

Authorities say they hope to raise national power generation by 4000 megawatts by 2010 but there are concerns the target is unlikely to be met as political intrigues continue to plague the government. Similar intrigues have scuppered attempts at exploiting alternative and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectricity. Among the stalled initiatives is the contentious Kalabagh dam project that proponents say will deliver greater irrigation for agriculture and quench a thirsty nation’s energy needs by tapping into the Indus river. The project is opposed by all of Pakistan’s provincial governments except the dominant Punjab. Critics cite multiple reasons for opposing the dam’s construction including environmental degradation, mass displacement of regional communities, and domination of the project by the Punjab.

The failure to find local energy sources has compelled government and business to look abroad with mixed success. Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, but it will be some years before the taps will be turned on. Another proposal is to import LPG across the Persian gulf from Qatar, but such an ambitious venture requires substantial infrastructure still lacking in Pakistan.

With that and the unending energy crisis in mind, the Pakistan government has been wooing multinationals at a series of oil and gas exploration conferences in London, Houston and Calgary last week. With its Petroleum Policy 2009, the current government says it will reinvigorate Pakistan’s troubled energy sector primarily through foreign investment.

Pakistan is not just a gateway to mineral resource wealth in Central Asia and the Middle East, it is rich in minerals and fossil fuels. According to government sources, there are believed to be reserves of 27bn barrels of oil and 280trn cubic feet of gas. Yet most of that wealth remains locked away: only 3.4% of oil and 19% of gas resources have been tapped thus far. “Pakistan has significant remaining exploration potential,” explains a British geologist at the London conference. That has much to do with the country’s “complex geology”, and the fact that many of the most promising sites lie in the unstable regions of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province, home to separatists, militants and bandits.

Those obstacles haven’t dissuaded some of the largest oil and gas companies – such as British Petroleum and ENI – from investing in large exploration licenses. “With great risks come great rewards,” explains one eager executive from another multinational. “We have had years of experience in Iraq,” another eager entrepreneur from a private security company assures me. The stakes are indeed high. “There is no doubt that we are dependent on foreign companies to exploit Pakistan’s natural resources,” senior petroleum ministry bureaucrat GA Sabri. Eighteen out of 20 companies operating ventures in Pakistan are foreign-owned.

For years indigenous and regional communities have complained that their ancestral lands have been damaged by prospecting resource companies, or that they haven’t been given a stake in the riches under their feet. In a glossy pamphlet, the state-controlled Pakistan Petroleum Limited claims to be committed to developing these very same communities.

As the government and multinationals divide the spoils, however, the question remains whether the average citizen will get a seat at the table.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

[Originally published at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/02/pakistan-power-shortages-energy]

So you can talk about the smell of urine and the kids rummaging through rubbish which has been dumped by the roadside. You can see rusted tin roofs, narrow muddy alleys, streams containing human waste, and kids with grubby clothes and bare feet. But if you do see those things, then I urge you to also look for the signs of community and dignity that are all around…

Pakistan is a great place to be Marxist in your thinking. With most people, especially the poor, so divided and looking down on the social rung below them there isn’t a hope of collectively challenging those at the top – the army, the businessmen, the land owners – who control everything not through personal skill or merit but merely because they’re powerful and intend to remain so. I need to find time to investigate this further…