Category Archives: Defence and Disarmament

Message from Almaty

Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

WAS the Conference for Interaction and Confidence Measures in Asia (CICA) summit at Almaty a failure? That is how many in Pakistan feel.

If the expectation was that diplomacy on the sidelines of the summit would bring India and Pakistan rushing immediately to the negotiating table to discuss the future of Kashmir, CICA was a disappointment. But this organization which has been born after a long gestation period of a decade has achieved more than one could have hoped for in its very first high-level moot.
Continue reading Message from Almaty →

Nuclear war: an insane option

Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

MAY 28 is the fourth anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests at Chaghai. On Yom-i-takbir, which the government celebrated in a big way in 1999, it informed the people through boastful newspaper ads: “We are the seventh nuclear power of the world”.

Today, as war clouds gather on the horizon, this nuclear status gives us no joy or confidence. Those in power might reassure us that nuclear weapons will not be used. But who will believe them? Can states, which possess nuclear arsenals, keep their confrontation limited to warfare with conventional weapons?
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The price of neglecting social sectors

Administration, Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Defence and Disarmament, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Environment, Health, Housing, Population, Social Issues, War and Peace, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

The state of the social sector in a country is an accurate measure of the value it attaches to human life. For howsoever strong a state might be in terms of military power and rich in economic resources, its institutional greatness will be judged by the quality of life it ovides its citizens.

This is basically determined by the social policy of the government, that is, the priority it gives to providing education, health care, housing and family planning facilities to the people. Pakistan’s performance in this context has not been one of which one can be overly proud. Of course, it depends on how one defines progress. If it is simply a matter of moving forward in terms of absolute numbers from a given baseline — a very low one at that — the country’s achievements over the decades since 1947 might appear to be very impressive. Continue reading The price of neglecting social sectors →

To go nuclear or not is the question

Archive Edition, Defence and Disarmament, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Health, Human Rights, International Politics, Nuclear weapons, Social Issues, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE suspension of American aid to Pakistan has produced one positive result. It has for the first time brought into the open the nuclear debate in this country.

Given the categorical linkage Washington instituted between the flow of economic assistance to Pakistan and nuclear non-prolif eration, Islamabad never encouraged a public discussion on the atom bomb.

To use Stephen Cohen’s term, a policy of ‘designed ambiguity’ was adopted. In other words, the capacity and the will of the government to go nuclear are deliberately kept ambivalent. Continue reading To go nuclear or not is the question →

Privatisation of social sector: what it means in Third World context

Archive Edition, Defence and Disarmament, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Health, Housing

By Zubeida Mustafa

Is the State responsible for educating its citizens and providing them health care? According to Adam Smith, who believed in the supremacy of the marketplace, education should be “self-sustaining and supported by those who use it”. Karl Marx displayed greater humanitarian concerns though today he stands discredited owing to the happenings in Eastern Europe. He advocated “free education for all children in public schools”.

Which of these principles should apply in Pakistan, a Third World country where 35 per cent of the people live below the poverty line (UNDP’s estimate)? The dictates of social justice should not permit a State to leave the responsibility of providing education and health care entirely to the vicissitudes of the marketplace.

57-02-07-1991a

And yet a glance at the federal and provincial budgets for the incoming year shows that the present government is applying to the social sectors the Smithsonian principle under pressure from the Western-dominated financial institutions. As such very little money has been set aside in the public sector for the human resources development of the people of Pakistan.

 

After the nation’s experiment with the nationalisation of education in the seventies, the pendulum has now swung to the other end. The government wants the private sector to shoulder the responsibility of meeting the people’s health and education needs. Hence the relentless drive to get the private sector to open schools, colleges, clinics and even universities. Continue reading Privatisation of social sector: what it means in Third World context →