Divinely Inspired Rains Lead To Man Made Disaster

It is heart breaking to watch. Millions of people wade through muddy waters, most of them desperately poor, clinging on to what little belongings they have. Those who are fortunate enough to be able to reach dry land either sit in stunned shock or scurry around looking for the basics of food and water. Some choose to remain in deluged areas, refusing to leave what little of their livestock they have managed to hold on to. In some places, people are surrounded by miles of water from every direction. They face the challenge of navigating through waters in which snakes are swimming and disease thriving. Where there is relief available, fights break out over supplies as the victims, left on their own for so long, succumb to primal urges in an attempt to survive. Grown women snatch food from the hands of children, epitomising the desperate reality faced by the common man.

Thousands of Muslims across the world are engaged in a drive to raise charity to help the floods victims of Pakistan. Various styles are being used to gather donations. Mobile text messages, Facebook, Twitter, sponsored bike rides, television phone in shows, charity dinners and auctions are amongst some of the creative ways people are being asked to give what they can to help their brothers and sisters in Pakistan. Whilst appeals from the UN for more aid are struggling to gain sufficient traction with international donors, individual Muslims from as far as Africa are engaged in charity efforts to provide relief to the destitute thousands of miles away. In additions, those unaffected by the floods in Pakistan are using their initiative and organising their own relief efforts with friends and family, sacrificing their own time, wealth and energy in the process. These actions fly in the face of accusations that Muslims today, both in Pakistan and the wider Ummah, are rotten, selfish and corrupt failures that care only for their own lives and families and as a result we are suffering due to our own handiwork.

The fact that we are currently in the Holy month of Ramadhan only seems to have added to the zeal of people as individuals are donating thousands of pounds and dollars at a time globally. The tireless works of various Muslim charities is commendable. The donations of people, both small and large amounts, are praiseworthy.

This is with regards to individuals. What of the Pakistani State?

Pakistan’s economy, already ailing, is threatening to give way. The floods have inflicted devastation on a massive scale with roads, bridges, schools, dams and power stations being destroyed and millions of acres of agricultural land lying under water. 1,600 people have died and 20 million are affected, with 6 million of these now homeless and 4.6 million displaced. One fifth of Pakistan’s territory, approximately the size of England, has been flooded. Though the floods are now expected to recede, people are faced with the spectre of disease and a return to homes which simply do not exist anymore. 600,000 people are now living in relief camps in Sindh.

The outlook is not promising. Key crops such as wheat, cotton and rice have either been destroyed or the land they are planted in rendered unusable at least for the short term, leading to fears of a food shortage in the coming weeks and months. The calamity hitting the agricultural sector does not end here, as what little funds the State has available may be diverted in to urgent infrastructure reconstruction; not a single bridge stands in the north-west along the Indus River.

Pakistani officials are travelling to Washington for talks with the IMF over the country’s existing $10 billion program, something which Pakistan was already off track from since its agreement in 2008. Pakistan was targeting a fiscal deficit (the amount government expenditure is greater than revenue by) of 4% of GDP for the fiscal year 2010/11, which is now expected to rise to 8%. A figure of 4% of GDP would have meant a deficit of Rs 685 billion or over $8 billion dollars; with the new 8% projected figure this means that Pakistan will now have to raise or borrow over $16 billion this fiscal year alone, most likely to become new debt. Due to insufficient aid coming through, Pakistan has had to turn to banks to take out loans at unbearable rates of interest. It has secured $1 billion from the World Bank and $2 billion from the Asian Development Bank to begin pressing reconstruction and rehabilitation work.

Looking at the wider context, the cost of the floods is not yet established. Early estimates put the figure at $15 billion dollars. Before the floods, Pakistan’s existing external debt stood at $56 billion. This figure was already expected to reach $75 billion dollars by the fiscal year 2015/16, as debts which were temporarily rescheduled after 9/11 due to Pakistan’s agreement to join America’s ‘War on Terror’ were reintroduced. Even without this, adding in Pakistan’s internal debt of $54 billion leaves the country with a total debt of $100 billion.

Pakistan’s debt servicing was already a nightmare before the floods. According to the Finance Ministry’s own figures, Rs 873 billion ($10.27 billion) would have been paid out this year to service old domestic and foreign loans, the vast majority being interest; last year 46% of government’s revenues were used to service debt. The combined healthcare expenditure this year will be just Rs 24 Billion ($285 million) whilst total education spending will be Rs 39 billion ($465 million) with total federal government expenditure standing at $38.4 billion.

Bluntly, Pakistan is being crushed by debt. As a result the State finds itself in a position today where it is unable to help the poor in any reasonable fashion. This is not the fault of this government alone. Rather this is a consistent, prolonged and systematic failure of both secular democratic and secular dictatorship regimes. This monstrous debt and the pathetic condition of the economy are due to inept and treacherous political decisions and the slavish observance and colonised imitation of Capitalist principles across a period of decades.

Finance Ministry figures officially put the impact on Pakistan of participating in America’s colonial war at $43 billion dollars from the years 2001-2010. This is in comparison to the pitiful ‘aid’ of $1.5 billion per year that America has offered in exchange for legalised interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs via the infamous Kerry-Lugar Act. If this were not bad enough, Pakistan for decades has been selling off State assets in return for short term gains, a substantial amount of which have been affected by corruption.

In 1988, Benazir Bhutto’s government commissioned a privatisation plan from Rothschild & Son, which recommended a Margaret Thatcher style privatisation through the stock exchange. When her government was dismissed in 1990 Nawaz Sharif continued the Capitalist programme identifying 115 units for privatisation. The Musharraf regime continued the privatisation drive with the sale of the remaining enterprises. The justification for the privatisation policies was that the units were performing poorly, and that their sale would generate much-valued revenue for the state. However, in practice the promised gains amounted to nothing.

Although the Musharraf regime championed the privatisation programme as bringing competition, competitiveness and efficiencies to their respective sectors they were sold below their market values to make them attractive. In addition any short term gain that was made from the proceeds of the sale would have been offset by the long term loss of revenue from these units.

The Zardari regime, not to be outdone, has set about abolishing government subsidies and increasing taxes. This has led to inflation running at the terrifying figure of 25%, made worse by a weakening rupee. Even now, a new sales tax and a ‘Floods tax’ are being proposed, allegedly, to be levied upon the rich. As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Pakistan’s tax system knows, the rich in reality pay no real taxes. It would the poor man that would once again have to bear the burden of these senseless ideas. The fact that the secular democrats Zardari and Gilani have the same Finance Minister as the secular dictator Musharraf did shows there is no material difference between the two systems and regimes.

These secular dictators and democrats have reduced Pakistan to being a modern day slave to Western institutions, corporations and governments. Their ‘vision’ is limited to receiving orders and approvals from predatory institutions such as the World Bank and IMF or turning up to the Washington, London or Paris for a photo session. All their degrees and foreign work experience, their holy grail of success, has taught them is how to go to the whole world like street beggars asking for handouts.

Foreign governments now get to decide what our policies should be, from foreign affairs to education to economy. The most poignant example of this neo-colonisation of Pakistan is the American drone strike in Mir Ali, North Waziristan on 14th August ‘Independence Day’ this year, killing 5 villagers and wounding 4 others whilst the people were offering Taraveeh prayers. Haji Muhammad Nasir, a villager, remarked that, “We thought Americans have been moved by the destruction caused by the floods in Pakistan and stopped sending their spy planes to kill us.” In response to these murders, Pakistan did not bat an eye lid.

For decades the common man has been betrayed by rulers who were implementing a cruel Capitalist doctrine upon the country and selling out the security of the people. The floods today may be divinely inspired in origin, but the abysmal response is certainly man made. Long term betrayal and copy cat implementation of Capitalist doctrine in the Pakistani State have resulted in there being no funds or relief teams to help the poor in this desperate hour. Short term ineptness and corruption is leading to farcical situations where Yusuf Raza Gilani turns up for a photo session at non-existent relief camps. It is a complete disregard for the common man which leads to the numerous cases of politicians and well connected land owners directing local administration officials to divert flood water away from their lands and property in to the path of the poor helpless man, washing away his home and entire village.

The situation has reached such a low that Pakistan is now unable to even exert it’s authority over its own territory. Relief to up to 500,000-700,000 flood victims could not be provided in Jacobabad as the PAF Base Shahbaz (Jacobabad) was under American control. Due to American security conditions, relief agencies were denied access to the air strip from where they could get supplies to the people. Jacobabad air base is where the newly delivered Block 52 F-16’s are, with a contingent of American personnel who ‘keep an eye’ on how the planes are used by the PAF.

This is not the first time such incompetence and disregard has been demonstrated in the face of a natural phenomena. The victims of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake are today living as if the event happened yesterday. Muzaffarabad, which has a population of 750,000, looks like a city cast back into the Stone Age. Half of the 3.3 million people made homeless after the destruction of 500,000 homes had yet to be re-housed as of July 2009. Tens of thousands of people are still living in tents and pathetic temporary structures of corrugated iron, and until early 2009 not a single road had been constructed in almost four years. It was officially accepted that only 274 of the 2,706 schools and colleges that were destroyed had been rebuilt, as had less than half the 161 flattened health facilities.

According to The Telegraph newspaper in the UK, Rs 40 billion (£300 million) of the aid given for reconstruction has been ‘misused’ by the Zardari regime. Earthquake reconstruction directors were first told their budgets were being cut in March 2009 when Rs 12 billion (£90 million) was diverted from their budget to other government projects. They were told: “When we have the money we will pay you,” said one senior official. “All the money was given by Western governments, but they said ‘we have so many other problems,’” he added.

In June this year, Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) staff were told their 2010-2011 budget of Rs 43 billion (£322 million) had been put down to just Rs 10 billion (£75 million). In Balakot, where 5,000 of the town’s 25,000 people were killed in the earthquake, thousands of families were told their entire town would be rebuilt six miles away because it stood directly in the ‘red zone’ directly above the fault line. But despite promises that the new town would be completed by last month, not a single new road has been completed nor a building construction begun on the site of ‘New Balakot’. Plans have also been made to cut its 3000 staff down to 800.

The secularists, whether dictators or democrats, have repeatedly shown themselves to be utter failures in every possible category. There is not a single place where they have sold out and shamed the country. This situation has now risen beyond a mere academic debate. The situation is so dire that these secularists have to be ejected from power and an alternative established in Pakistan, namely Islamic rule in the form of the Khilafat.

This is not a discussion about putting a few people who talk about religion yet participate in the same secular system as their ‘modern’ counterparts in to power. This is a call for a system of politics and economics to be established exclusively upon the principles of the Quran and Sunnah. Economics and politics are linked in the real world and not distinct academic entities. As such a unified ideological Islamic view would be required for both in order to develop coherent policies. This is a call for a system where political and economic policies are built upon the ahadith of Muahmmad (saw),

The Muslims are partners in three, water, pastures and fire

(Narrated by Ahmed and Ibn Maja)

It is derived from this hadith by scholars that utilities which are needed by the people must not be allowed to fall in to private hands at the expense of the public. This would ensure the State can look after the needs of the public on a day to day level, and not private companies who would only be after the maximisation of profit under Capitalist doctrine. This is a call for a State that would secure resources for the people, and not offer both the people and resources and commodities for exploitation by the foreign governments and corporations looking for new markets.

It would be a system that does not conduct financial transactions based upon interest; something which is squeezing the life out of Pakistan at this very moment. Interest, the tool used by foreign institutions and governments, to enslave a country with a population of 177 million people and a nuclear armed military. Interest, which means almost half of Pakistan’s GDP is sucked out of the country whilst crucial services like health and education receive barely 2% of GDP.

It would establish a fair tax system, one that targets excess wealth beyond a certain level. It would promote economic activity by abolishing regressive taxes that target consumption, such as the GST. It would tax the productivity and actual output of agricultural land, affording the common man with more disposable income. This is in contrast to the current Capitalist system where the rulers are bent upon increasing the tax base in line the orders they receive from their political masters in the West.

It would be a system, where legislation such as the NRO, Kerry-Lugar, and Presidential immunity cannot be enacted as the Shariah would not allow it. The Shariah would prevent corrupt criminals and foreign colonists from spreading their tentacles across the State, legalising their actions at whim through the secular legislative process of parliamentary majority and spreading misery where ever they go.

It would be a system where decisions such as siding with America in the killing of Muslims in both Afghanistan and Pakistan are not taken; something which has cost tens of thousands of innocent lives of men, women and children and cost Pakistan billions of dollars financially, further weakening its economy. It would be a system where Americans are not allowed to take over our own bases for the purposes of killing our own people, both directly through drone and F-16 strikes and through preventing emergency relief from reaching flood victims.

Sadaqah is something the people of Pakistan urgently need right now. But how long will charity support 20 million people? Can charity develop infrastructure across millions of square miles of a vast country? Will donations feed the people for the rest of their lives and lift them out of poverty? Are we really just a nation that is satisfied with living on hand outs and the pity of the world? We cannot and must not be content with such a situation.

This Ramadhan, many a time has the name of Allah been invoked for the sake of increasing donations. Allah’s name has been invoked in prayers for the affected and prayers made for the alleviation of difficulty. However, though we are quick to invoke Allah’s name to elicit money, are we paying heed to Allah’s commands of establishing the Islamic system? It was 63 years ago, again in Ramadhan, that the country was created with the cry of ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya? La illah ha ilallah!’ for the Muslims of the sub-continent to live under Islamic rule but was eventually hijacked by secularists.

The secularists have had their chance. We cannot allow more people to die and suffer whilst these people are allowed to indulge in criminal neglect and treachery, and then throw their hands up in the air at a time like this and say there is nothing we can do. The outpouring of money and relief work from Muslims all over the world shows the Ummah is sincere and wants to do good; the only thing blocking progress is the corrupt system. The people suffering are just like our own brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children. If it were our own blood we would not be content with simply giving them some money. Let us take a silver lining from this tragedy, and consign this secular system to the dustbin of history where it belongs and establish a system that would truly look after the people.

By Muhammad Asim. mamuhamamdasim@gmail.com

The author is a freelance analyst and columnist.

Divinely Inspired Rains Lead To Man Made Disaster was first posted on August 23, 2010 at 10:16 am.
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