Muhammad Asif Raza (PAS)

Dubai World, the flagship holding company of Dubai, with $100 billion in assets and $59 billion in debt, sought a six-month standstill agreement from its creditors on November 25, 2009. Bonds amounting to $4 billion and belonging to Nakheel – the property unit of Dubai World - were maturing on December 14, 2009. The standstill agreement means that Dubai World will negotiate with creditors to extend maturities. It was indeed a shocking development. Stock markets around the world convulsed as investors scrambled to understand the implications of the restructuring of debt. Only two hours before Dubai revealed that it was seeking a standstill arrangement for Dubai World, it had completed a transaction of $5 billion fully subscribed by Abu Dhabi through its two state-controlled banks. Dubai has shattered the confidence and lost its credibility in the eyes of global bond investors. The question now will be about the nature of the sovereign support provided to various borrowers in the region.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009 Rahimullah Yusufzai The first surge of 21,000 troops in Afghanistan ordered by President Barack Obama soon after he assumed office didn’t achieve much. After another review of the failed US strategy, and an agonisingly long wait of 92 days during which his war council repeatedly met, he has decided to send another 30,000 soldiers on a tough mission to reverse the Taliban momentum, increase the beleaguered Afghan government’s security capabilities over the next 18 months and stabilise a country that has come to be known as the graveyard of empires. With 68,000 US troops deployed in the country and another 30,000 set to join them by next summer, the United States was not only commanding the NATO forces but also setting the goals of the war. Now Obama will be overseeing a threefold increase in the number of U

In a special joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate, the government today unveiled its promised “Baluchistan conciliation package” (synopsis of provisions and full text, below). This marks a small but important step forward in what one certainly hopes is a trend towards full integration of all Pakistanis into Pakistan. The package follows reform packages announced for FATA and for Gilgit-Baltistan , where elections were recently held. The contents of the package - yet to be discussed in to approved by parliament - are by no means comprehensive, and some Baluch leaders are already opposing it. They have good reason to be be skeptical - not only because of what is not in the package but also because there is a long history of such steps being taken for political appeasement rather than as real triggers of systemic change in the structures and distributions of power. One certainly hopes that this time things are different and that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani’s

THE message that emerged from the recent visit of US secretary of state to Pakistan is that despite claims of a long-term, multi-faceted partnership, trust deficit continues to characterise the relations between the two countries. On the part of Washington, the trust deficit is on two counts: One, the suspicion that the security establishment of Pakistan is not going all-out in tracking down Al Qaeda leadership; two, the apprehension that Pakistan’s nuclear material may fall into the hands of terrorists, who may use it against the US. On the other hand, a significant segment of Pakistani intelligentsia continues to suspect that the war against terrorism in which Islamabad is a frontline player is essentially Washington’s war and that all the repercussions of the war on the country’s society and the economy are a ‘gift’ of American ‘friendship’. Seen in the context of Pak-US relations during the last sixty years, the trust deficit is hardly surprising. A watershed in Pak-US relations w

THE countdown has begun. The forthcoming UN Climate Change conference (popularly called CoP 15) scheduled to be held at Copenhagen on Dec 7-18 is generating tremendous excitement. Climate change has suddenly become the buzzword. As top political leaders are getting ready to descend on Copenhagen, there is surely a thrill in the air. A handful of international NGOs, which dominate the global debate, have managed to very deftly shift the entire development discourse to climate change. The United Nations (not only UNEP, but all its other arms), the bilateral donor agencies like USAID/DFID, and the global think-tanks like the International Food Policy Research Institute (which are no better than the corporate rating agencies) have for quite sometime been active in putting climate change on the top of the global development agenda. And they have surely succeeded. In the process, the real issues confronting the world have been very conveniently swept under the carpet. So much so that if you

IN the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index rankings 2009, Pakistan is given 159th place out of a total of 175 countries. According to the organisation’s website, the ranks are awarded on the basis of questionnaires that are circulated amongst journalists and media experts. These relate to instances of physical assault/intimidation, indirect pressure in the form of intelligence surveillance and corporate manipulation, official censorship and self-censorship, economic influence, the extent of control of media, etc. The objective is to assess “the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom.” Given the survey’s scope and different areas of focus several points emerge. First, one-party states, theocracies, police states and the like, which practise the systemic suppression of thought and expression and ru

AS it goes for his charm of fensives, President Barack Obama has yet to show that there’s anything more to them than just charm and soft diplomacy. The one he delved into earlier this year, with so much fanfare, with regard to the Muslim world very largely remains a non-starter, more than half-a-year later, with Israel’s hard-line Benjamin Netanyahu viciously thumbing his nose at Obama to scuttle any prospects of a new beginning for US policy vis-à-vis the Muslim world. Obama’s very first charm offensive, i.e. the commitment to close down the notorious Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, has come a cropper, with Obama forced to eat his own words on its promised deadline for closure. Undaunted by reverses, however, Obama seemed to be diving into yet another one this week in China, which in more senses than one is now the most important country in the world for him and whatever he may deem of making of his turn at the helm of our world’s only reigning superpower in regard to that country.

HILLARY Clinton’s recent three-day visit to Pakistan, the most intensive and intrusive of any other per predecessor, is likely to cast long shadows over the two countries’ evolving bilateral relations. The major malady that afflicts the relations between Washington and Islamabad is the trust deficit, which was also observed by Clinton. This has led to a feeling of acrimony between the two states. Both believe that their concerns are not being addressed. She held wide-ranging talks with both high government officials and representatives of civil society. These meetings no doubt helped her develop a good understanding of Pakistani perceptions about their expectations from the bilateral relations. While the offer of US assistance to Pakistan (Kerry-Lugar Bill) and its various modalities and conditionalties have irked Pakistanis, the issue is likely to be settled through adequate interaction with the administration and Congress. The trust deficit problem, however, will continue to rankle a

DURING his recent meeting with President Obama in Washington, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sought to solidify a relationship transformed under the Bush administration from mere friendship to that of a ‘key ally’ that led to nuclear cooperation deal and unprecedented security collaboration. He is also reported to have sought Obama’s support for his bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. He was given assurances that the US will not neglect India while pursuing close ties with Pakistan and China. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden played a key role in bringing the two countries closer to serve each other’s agendas during Bush presidency. India needed western technology; the US needed the Indian market. India had regional aspirations, a nuclear and military strength which it was keen to expand and had estranged relations with China; the US under Bush needed a regional ally ready to contain China and serve as its proxy for policing the region. And with 9/11, came a new ro

PRESIDENT Obama couldn’t have chosen a more befitting and more relevant venue than West Point — the US Military Academy in New York State — to announce yet another — his 2nd in nine months — surge of troops for Afghanistan. The hallowed precincts of West Point have trained and turned out generations of fighters to constantly fuel the juggernauts of the most war-addicted country in the world. The announcement of his decision to further beef up the already sizeable US military presence in war-torn Afghanistan by as many as 30,000 additional troops was quite anticipated; the whiff of it had been in the air for several days. That President Obama has opted for a more robust military presence in Afghanistan is no surprise at all. He came to the White House with an articulated sense that the Afghan theatre of war had been neglected and down-graded by his predecessor in favour of Iraq, and deserved to be quickly rectified. Within weeks of settling down in the Oval Office he had rushed 35,000 s

The country’s economy suffers from many structural weaknesses. These have been identified by many analysts over a long period of time but those in policymaking positions have found it difficult to address them. Without resolving them, the country will not be able to put the economy on the trajectory of high rates of growth on which it can remain without having to deal with disruptions. One of the more serious problems is the inability of the economy to match the increased demand for imports with an equally large – in fact larger – increase in exports. It is only when the rate of increase in exports overtakes the rate of increase in imports by a wide margin that the country will be able to deal with the recurring balance of payments problem. One reason why imports continue to increase much faster than exports is the economy’s increasing dependence on imported oil. A significant share of the import-export difference is accounted for by oil. This deficit increases when the price of oil