Accountability and compliance with the rule of law probably should be our yardstick for this support of the opposition, instead of looking at it through the eyes of incumbent elites Most of Pakistan is currently polarized in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s controversial Panama verdict. The socio-political dynamics unleashed by what the pro PML-N denounce as an (establishment-sponsored) judicial coup seem to have galvanized almost all key political stakeholders, including the chief provocateur, the PTI chairman Imran Khan. The sleazy barrage of accusations (read Aysha Gulalai) and the flood of federal and Punjab government commercials on both the print and electronic media as well as the narrative doing rounds invariably reminds me of two anecdotes. These offer a good explanation on the mindset behind our political economy and also highlights why and how the politics of patronage, permits, plots and loan-write-offs took the economy down a disastrous path. One of the anecdotes relates to the late Ardeshir Cowasjee, an extremely selfless human being, prolific writer/columnist for a national newspaper and a fearless critic of Pakistan’s civilian and military elites. The paltry sums of income taxes that the Sharif family paid in the 1980s and the 1990s bore testimony to the propensity to conceal income and evade or avoid taxes, while their Finance minister hunted small and medium private businessmen to cough up exorbitant taxes Sometime in the earlier part of Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure (1997-1999), we met at the Islamabad residence of veteran politician couple Begum Abida Hussein and Fakhr Imam. Over lunch Cowasjee shared with us his recent meeting with the Sharif brothers. I flew from Karachi for the meeting at the Prime Minister’s House where they offered me the governor ship of the Sindh province. “We value your greatly and think you deserve a place like the Governor’s House in Karachi to guide us,” Cowasjee recalled. Despite repeated requests, Cowasjee, who...

OVER the past few weeks, I have come across two powerful new words. Coincidentally, both are related in a certain way. The first, ‘kakistocracy’ refers to “government by the worst people”. (Understandably, PML-N sympathisers want to insert an ‘h’ after the first ‘k’). The second word, ‘tenderpreneurs’ hasn’t made it to the dictionary as yet, but it should. It has been coined by Raila Odinga, the veteran Kenyan opposition leader, to refer to the alleged money being made by the Kenyan president and his coterie via commissions from a raft of public works tenders by the government in the run-up to elections. Many of these are deemed to be overpriced and shoddy in construction (a $12 million bridge constructed by the Chinese collapsed a fortnight after inauguration by the president earlier this year). Misuse of public funds, embezzlement, using a public office for private gain, stashing ill-gotten wealth in offshore tax havens etc., have all been around since people first stepped forward to ‘serve’ others and exercise control of collective finances. The scale and scope is, unfortunately, much larger now, with allegations of mega corruption no longer the preserve of African dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko, Sani Abacha et al., or of presidents Marcos, Duvalier and Suharto. Of recent, grand corruption scandals have broken out under democratically elected governments in Malaysia, Turkey, South Africa, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Argentina, South Korea among others. Of course, corruption is not the exclusive domain of civilians — far from it. Many of the corrupt African dictators were serving generals (Sani Abacha, Charles Taylor etc). In Pakistan’s case, the first major corruption scandal in Benazir Bhutto’s tenure involved the serving naval chief at the time (in the Agosta submarine case). Under Gen Musharraf’s time, several high-profile cases of irregularities came to light — in the importation of rail engines and carriages, the NICL land scam, Bank of Punjab,...

Terrorist Financing and NACTA Gear Up For Assessment One of the 20 points listed in the National Action Plan (NAP) relates to terrorist financing or “choking financing for terrorist and terrorist organizations”. And after long and focused inter-provincial deliberations, the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) has finally laid down a roadmap to tackle this menace. The task had become urgent because of increased international monitoring of illicit funds meant for terrorist activities and an impending evaluation of Pakistan’s efforts against it. The challenge is to satisfy the 35-nation intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force when it visits Pakistan in October next year. Formed in 1989 to combat money laundering, the task force also began monitoring the financing of terrorism after 9/11. If unsatisfied with a particular country’s banking measures against terrorist financing, the task force can blacklist it, which would hurt a country’s ability to borrow. Back in 2015, it had exempted Pakistan after its annual session which appreciated the country’s progress in tackling both money laundering and terrorist financing. With this looming deadline, NACTA, the lynchpin in the entire effort,  moved with speed to put together policies, recently approved by the the Minister for Interior. It also included a proposal for a National Task Force on Counter Terrorism Financing. It will have representation from all police establishments, the Inter-Services Intelligence, Intelligence Bureau, FMU, Federal Board of Revenue, Anti-Narcotics Force, National Accountability Bureau, the Home departments, FIA, State Bank of Pakistan and FATA secretariat. The task force held its first formal session on July 19. The challenge is to satisfy the 35-nation intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) when it visits Pakistan in October next year Simultaneously, Counter-Terrorist Financing Units (CTFUs) have been set up in all provincial Counter-Terrorism Departments (CTDs). ...

It appears that the real winners of the Afghan war may be the shady contractors who continue to build their profits through misreporting in the US-funded training and mentoring programs Afghan security forces due to an inadequate monitoring system of accountability. As revealed in the latest performance evaluation analysis by SIGAR, the $457.5 million training programs funded by the US Department of Defense (DOD) for building the intelligence capability of Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) failed to meet their stated objectives, especially in terms of showing any indication of improvement in the overall intelligence operations, due to increased corruption by the contractors and subcontractors involved. The two programs, namely Legacy Afghanistan R&D program and the Afghanistan Source Operations Management (ASOM) program, relied heavily on the contractors which implemented them to measure the readiness of intelligence training sites for transition to the Afghan government thus presenting faulty data to determine the efficiency of the Afghan forces’ intelligence capability. Furthermore, the report reveals, an absence of defined outcomes or performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of these programs by was also found, raising the question if the amount spent was actually even worth the cost. The Legacy R&D program, for example, did not define any outcomes or provide any adequate performance metrics while its stated cost valued at $314.4 million. For monitoring their performance, the Army Contracting Command (ACC) appointed the Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) as the contracting officer's technical representative which, on its part, simply relied in its assessment of Imperatis Corporation, the contractor (previously known as Jorge Scientific Corporation until 2013), and subcontractor New Century Consulting Limited (NCC) which had actually been submitting false invoices, while also relying on some...