Daily Times

Present in Peshawar after the tragic Meena Bazaar attack, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani broke the biggest logjam in the centre-NWFP relations by announcing that he had accepted the NWFP demand for the payment of net hydel profit arrears of Rs 110 billion. He disbursed Rs 10 billion immediately and promised to release Rs 25 billion as the next instalment. The federal government has to pay Rs 6 billion annually to the NWFP as a part of the net profits made from hydroelectricity projects in the province.
The NWFP government will be considerably strengthened in its finances by the injection of Rs 25 billion in the first quarter of every fiscal year. The help it is receiving for the calamity-stricken people living under the heel of terrorism is extra and is coming from multiple directions. Compared to Balochistan, the NWFP has always run a more compact government in terms of spending its development budgets. There can be little doubt that the ANP-led government will put the money that was always theirs to good use.
Since the NWFP case was valid under the Constitution, the money not paid to it by the Centre has accumulated an interest overhang. The total money under that head comes to Rs 141.4 billion and Peshawar is right in not letting go of it. The prime minister has promised to put a committee on it which will also decide whether the “cap” of Rs 6 billion on profit-sharing should be lifted and to what extent.
The NWFP is in many ways the frontline province because it takes the overspill of the violence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and has to contend with the extension of the Taliban to the Malakand division. It needs more money for capacity-building against this contingency. It needs to build up its police force which has always been less effective than Punjab’s but more like the police in Balochistan, trying to coexist with a tribal society. It needs a lot of money to rehabilitate the region of Swat-Malakand where people are still not completely reabsorbed into a barely functional local economy.
In April this year, Chief Minister NWFP Mr Ameer Haider Hoti had said that the terrorists paid more to its militants than the province did to its khassadars. Now that he has got the royalty, he must set about building up the infrastructure that the NWFP has never been able to in the past, partly at least because of financial constraints. After the Meena Bazaar horror, the rescue team trained to look after people in trouble had to be called in from Lahore. The efforts being made in Swat to recruit people into the police are not as organised and transparent as desired, mostly because of the large numbers needed for induction.
It is hoped that the federal government’s decision to establish a cantonment in Swat will mature soon and something will appear on the ground. Cantonments will help bring stability and security to regions subject to tribal dissension. In the NWFP an opposite trend has been set in motion because of the growing power of the Taliban and the dwindling of the writ of the state in the face of their onslaught. NWFP’s most stable cities like Bannu and Kohat — both strong army and air force strongholds — have learned to live under the tutelage of the warlords.
The ANP government has always demanded the merger of the FATA in the NWFP. The Charter of Democracy signed between the PPP and the PML-N also pledges the ending of the “tribal museum”. But before taking over the responsibility of looking after the FATA region, the NWFP will have to overcome the problems it has in the settled areas. It must be given the wherewithal to strengthen its control over such cities as DI Khan, which face the ‘ungoverned spaces’ of South Waziristan.
For the NWFP to become ‘normal’, the problem of Khyber must be resolved at the earliest. The agency is adjacent to Peshawar and the Khyber warlords exercise authority in parts of the city. Terrorists easily disappear into the Khyber territory after hitting targets in the capital city. The military operation in the Khyber Agency must be decisively concluded. Khyber is the foremost reason why the NWFP’s demand for the merger of FATA with it sounds convincing. g

NRO comes centre-stage

As the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) makes its progress at the committee level before coming before parliament, the country’s polarised politics is boiling over. Walking out of the committee preparing the NRO bill, the PML-N has declared war on it. Laying out the party position, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said Saturday that the passing of the NRO in parliament would be a defeat of the country.
If you want to read the political map of Pakistan, just read what the political parties are saying about the NRO. First, there is the extra-parliamentary opposition, which did not take part in the 2008 elections because the polls were rendered invalid by Musharraf’s act of dismissing the Supreme Court in November 2007. The issuance of the NRO the previous month formed a part of the delegitimisation of the elections.
The PML-N went to the court against the NRO but took part in the 2008 elections, thus partially legitimising it. Then it showed respect for the ‘spirit’ of the NRO by briefly joining the PPP-led government. (A bunch of PPP MPAs are still hanging on to the Punjab government as remnants of that phase.) After that, political recidivism set in. The PML-N thought it would become more popular by being in the opposition. This has been proved right and the NRO is now anathema to most people in Pakistan.
The PML-Q, which midwifed Musharraf’s NRO, is now a purist on it. It is accusing the PML-N of secretly supporting the NRO, which is patently false if you look at the public posturing of our politicians. The lawyers, divided like everyone else, fight over whether an act passed by parliament can be struck down by the Supreme Court. The PPP will have a tough time mustering the required numbers, but from the way the opposition is fussed over the matter, it seems the act will be passed, and the Court will have to pull yet another undesirable political chestnut out of the fire. *