by Imtiaz Gul The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an inescapable part of the conversation, whenever officials, private businessmen or intelligentsia from both countries meet — regardless where. In Islamabad, the talk around CPEC is loaded with promises of a “game-changing initiative”. Here, ambiguities still surround many issues such as the preference for the western route. Projects such as the Orange Line or coal-based power plants continue to draw flak and controversy. Controversy, confusion, convolution of facts and connivance of the mighty ones to reap the maximum dividends (to the exclusion of merits and transparency) probably is one way of describing how the Sharif government is going about the CPEC. In Beijing, or elsewhere in China, guarded optimism and veiled or even direct questions accompany this conversation which, in fact, is rooted in a very clear strategy flowing from President Xi Jinping’s vision of One Belt One Road (OBOR); this initiative exemplifies China’s effort to produce new opportunities for itself as well as for others because no country can develop in isolation. Neither can you be well if your neighbour is poor, so they believe. Also, an inclusive development  strategy is seen as the engine of the Chinese economy which is being run by local/regional governments. In contrast, the manner with which the ruling party in Islamabad and Lahore embraced the CPEC, entailed the impression that they aimed to create a haven of peace and prosperity i.e., Punjab (by advancing the longer eastern route). This clearly ignored the regions that are key to the shortest Kashgar-Gawadar route i.e., Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This deliberate deviation also reflected the rulers’ selfishness and apathy towards areas that have, in the recent years, been battered by conflict and insecurity. In Beijing, the entire state machinery representing all regions hunkered down to work out the best strategies for implementing the CPEC as the first of the...

by Imtiaz Gul Can development projects substitute political reconciliation? Rehabilitation, reform and reintegration of ex-combatants, and the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) constitute the four important “R” challenges for post-conflict strategies. If handled in a politically injudicious way, they can hardly prevent a relapse of the rebellion. During my recent visit to Sri Lanka, I saw that Tamil nationalists are still wary of the high-handed and allegedly discriminatory handling of the conflict in the country by Colombo. They are demanding an international probe into the final anti-LTTE assault that reportedly killed tens of thousands in May 2009, and calling for accelerated Tamil-owned development strategies that can help the national integration of the eastern and northern territories. Tamils don’t trust the national Supreme Court, which is dominated by ten Sinhalese judges, although the chief justice is a Tamil. On the face of it, Colombo has done well as far as de-radicalization and rehabilitation are concerned. Soon after the elimination of LTTE chief, the central government threw in a lot of funds for infrastructure development, including massive uplift of road and rail communication. India also chipped in with funding for 43,000 housing units – repairs, reconstruction or entirely new construction – to facilitate Sri Lankan IDPs. They live under the shadows of suspicion In order to placate the Tamil sentiment, as many as 1,500 former LTTE cadres from Jaffna, Killinochi, Mannar, and Vavuniya districts have already been inducted into the army. Over 400 Tamil women have also joined the army since 2013, including close to 100 from Killinochi, once the LTTE stronghold. Besides the military’s plan to recruit 5,000 rehabilitated LTTE cadres from the North and East, the government also has plans to recruit 2,000 Tamil police officers from the Northern and Eastern provinces. But mistrust is a major issue. “It is a Catch-22 situation for the...

by Imtiaz Gul Pakistanis are great talkers. Charmers. Populists. High on complaints and diagnosis. Low on solutions — pro-active and reactive actions for course correction. The chorus of pontifications and lofty rhetoric from top positions grows ever louder. And people, at large, watch in awe and suffer in misrule. Their expectations, therefore, keep switching from politicians to the military to the judiciary and vice versa. This context also prompted Justice Amir Hani Muslim (March 24) into remarking that 17 judges of the Supreme Court could not make the system of the country right. The nation should not assume that the 17 judges of the Supreme Court could streamline the system of the country. Similarly, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Anwar Zaheer Jamali last week lamented the low conviction rate and called for greater introspection collective efforts within the justice sector and to turn things around. He was addressing a National Judicial Conference on ‘Transforming the Criminal Justice System’. “I have no doubt that the low conviction rate is a matter of concern for us all… no one organisation acting on its own can significantly change the conviction rate, as it requires a collective sector-wide coordinated and concerted effort from all parts of the justice sector,” the CJP said. Legislature, in its wisdom, had taken steps, but “we, as the justice sector, also need to address this scenario… in our respective areas of competence and available resources,” the CJP said. He hit the nail on the head when he pointed that the system’s apparent “inability” to provide justice to the aggrieved, adversely affected public confidence in the formal justice system, encouraging citizens to seek justice by whatever means possible, thereby undermining the formal rule of law. The phrase “justice by whatever means possible” — coming from no other person but the CJP himself — reflects a bitter reality as well as an admission of a bitter reality; in Fata, for instance, the...