On thin ice

PAKISTAN skates too dangerously on thin ice. Despite the blunt-bladed incompetence of its governments, it has managed to wobble and stumble for 77 years.
Today, many Pakistanis wonder how long it can continue to defy the laws of economic gravity and ignore the need for a national purpose. How long can our state sustain this war with itself — the judiciary vs its brother black coats; the state vs its public; the legislature vs its electorate; impetuousness vs common sense?
We survive each day in an uneasy condition, the very opposite of Chamberlain’s peace with honour.
In many countries — certainly those with a burgeoning population the size of ours — political parties prepare a plan on the essentials of governance before coming to power. Others with less foresight wait until they are in government and then announce national strategies. The foolhardy prefer the doctrine of arrière-pensée, steering themselves by using the rear view window.
Take the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. In 1947, the water system was bifurcated, with headworks located in India and downstream canals running through Pakistan. After six years of desultory talks, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and our president Ayub Khan signed the IWT in September 1960. The lollipop provided by the World Bank financed the Mangla and Tarbela dams.
The treaty spawned a Permanent Indus Commission with commissioners from each side to ease implementation of the treaty. The 118th meeting of the Pakistan-India Permanent Indus Commission was held in New Delhi from May 30-31, 2022. During it, “Pakistan highlighted its objections on India’s hydroelectric projects on the western rivers. The Indians assured that Pakistan’s outstanding objections would be discussed in the next meeting”. Both sides reiterated their commitment “to implement the Indus Waters Treaty in its true spirit”. In effect, the party to the First Part promised to continue living with the party to the Second Part.
The 119th meeting is unlikely to be held, as India refuses to hold any more meetings until the IWT is renegotiated. India issued a notice in 2023 and another in 2024 seeking “a review and modification” of its terms. India has cited “changes in population growth, agricultural needs, and the evolving water usage situation since the treaty’s inception in 1960”. PM Modi’s rationale is blunter: “Blood and water cannot flow together.”
Our powers that ought to be should recall the warning of the expert David Lilienthal, who conceived the IWT: “No armies with bombs and shellfire could devastate a land so thoroughly as Pakistan could be devastated by simple expedient of India’s permanently shutting off the source of water that keeps the fields and people of Pakistan green.”
Our governments, however, continue to behave like some tethered goat, tied to the past, bound to the rigid terms of the IWT and the now sterile UN resolutions on Jammu & Kashmir. PM Modi resolved the J&K conundrum by abrogating Article 370 and absorbing its possession of the disputed territory into India. He now proposes to abrogate the IWT and leave us dehydrated, a modern Mohenjodaro.
Has the government any more leeway than it had in the Reko Diq mining deal? Reko Diq is “the world’s largest gold and copper mine, with deposits capable of producing 200,000 tons of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold a year for nearly 50 years”. Our paper riches turned instead into $11 billion in fines. Islamabad escaped them through a renegotiated deal which cost $900m paid to a former investor.
In another deal gone sour — the Iran-Pakistan pipeline — we avoided a penalty of $1m a day by building our rump of the pipeline, shrinking it from the planned 785 kilometres to 80 km.
Sadly, the independent power producers are headed also towards confrontation. Recently, the government ‘urged’ owners of five IPPs to voluntarily terminate their power purchase agreements and shift to a ‘pay and take’ model. Worse still, some IPPS are being told to replace their feedstock from rich imported coal to poorer local Thar lignite. Such draconian measures can only dishearten existing owners and discourage future investors.
News now abounds that the Pakistan Steel Mills (Pasmic) — a defunct monument to avarice and incompetence — is being resurrected with Russian help. As if on cue, a convoy of diplomats (including the Russian ambassador) returning from a jaunt in Swat to explore investment, was attacked by someone using an improvised explosive device. History reminds us that the assassination at Sarajevo started the First World War on flimsier grounds.
In 1961, Russia helped us establish the Oil & Gas Development Company, and in 1974 Pasmic. Is it possible that Russia’s Lazarus interest in Pasmic in 2024 has something to do with the announcement of major oil and gas reserves off our coast?
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2024