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Why Biden won’t engage with #Pakistan

By FM SHAKIL

US leader has not contacted his Pakistani counterpart despite Islamabad's crucial role in brokering an Afghan peace settlement.

When Joe Biden assumed the US presidency in January, many in Pakistan hoped for a bilateral reset. Three months on, there is no such rapprochement in sight as the new administration in Washington delivers perceived snubs rather than engaged olive branches to Islamabad.

Officials claim the US has ignored Pakistan’s hopeful outreach, despite the critical role Islamabad has played in persuading the Taliban to negotiate with the US in a peace process that appears to be headed towards a settlement in neighboring Afghanistan.

Despite that crucial initiative, one that aims to end America’s so-called “endless war”, President Biden has not personally spoken to Prime Minister Imran Khan since the former assumed power, according to Pakistani officials familiar with the situation.That, they say, is likely because Washington thinks Islamabad is pushing China and Russia’s agendas at the expense of US interests in Afghanistan. Washington also knows Pakistan is well-placed to manipulate the formation of a future Afghan government by dint of its proximity and connection to the Taliban.

Washington, some in Islamabad believe, is expressing that displeasure through not-so-veiled diplomatic sleights. For instance, Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry, visited India and Bangladesh last month but eschewed a stopover in Pakistan.

Similarly, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited India and Afghanistan on March but opted not to land in Pakistan. Instead, the US defense chief spoke with Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa over the phone while he was in Kabul.Islamabad has not yet publicly conveyed its reservations about the Biden administration’s perceived snubs, but senior officials admit privately that they feel the gestures have been deliberate and not mere diplomatic oversight.

Pakistani officials quoted in news reports think that the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three associates who allegedly kidnapped and decapitated Wall Street Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl back in 2002 put relations with Biden on the wrong foot.The court released Sheikh just as Biden was taking his oath of his office in January. Washington has reportedly asked Islamabad to review its legal options after the ruling and has apparently suggested allowing for the US to prosecute the suspects to secure justice for Pearl’s family if for political reasons it is unable to do so in Pakistan. There is also lingering distrust over Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US who resided quietly in a Pakistan hill-station compound situated suspiciously near a military containment area. In May 2011, the US famously sent commandos into Pakistan without Islamabad’s foreknowledge to assassinate the terror leader. In his recent book “A Promised Land”, former US president Barack Obama claimed that he preferred not to involve Pakistan in the raid because it was an “open secret” that elements inside Pakistan’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and likely by association al-Qaeda.

Pakistan, he wrote, sometimes used them as “strategic assets” against Afghanistan and India.

Fast forward to the present, the new US administration likely wants Islamabad to demonstrate it is not a pliant proxy of China. That’s easier said than done in light of Beijing’s US$60 billion commitment to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key, strategic spoke of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Mushahid Hussain Syed, a Pakistani politician, analyst and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator, told Asia Times that there was a perceived lack of sensitivity and gratitude on the part of the US for what Pakistan has and is doing to “pull the American chestnuts out of the fire on Afghanistan.”

“While Pakistan is pressing the ‘right buttons’ on FATF, India, Afghanistan and terrorism issues, which the US considers key irritants, they still seem to view Pakistan through the prism of the emerging Cold War. They are aligning with India to contain the Chinese influence in the region, which is going to backfire. The US should have rather built bridges with Islamabad that strived to bail out Washington from its latest defeat in yet another land war in Asia,” Syed said.

Symbolically, Biden did not invite Khan to his government’s first virtual summit on climate change held on April 22-23. The US president invited 40 heads of state and government, including leaders of India, Bangladesh and Bhutan from the South Asian region, but sent a belated invitation to a low-profile functionary who serves as Khan’s special assistant on climate change.

Khan, who is touting his own “billion trees” environmental initiative, perceived the diplomatic snub, Pakistani officials claim.

While China’s economic influence looms large, Pakistan still needs Washington’s support, both to sustain disbursements of its $6 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and to be removed from the terror-financing and money-laundering watchdog Financial Action Task Force’s “grey list”, a designation that hinders Islamabad’s participation in global financial markets. If Biden could influence either organization’s decision-making in Pakistan’s favor, he hasn’t done so yet. The IMF has so far released two tranches of $450 million each of an Extended Fund Facility program initiated in 2019, but delayed a second review meeting and the release of a third tranche last month without letting Pakistani officials know in advance.

Similarly, the FATF kept Pakistan on its grey list in February because “Pakistan must improve its investigations and prosecutions of all groups and entities financing terrorists and their associates and show that penalties imposed by courts are effective.” The next FATF plenary review of Pakistan’s status is due in June this year.

Khan’s government thinks the best way to reset with the US is through economics rather than security. In early March, Khan formed “an apex committee” under the chairmanship of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to develop an all-inclusive agenda for re-engagement with the new US administration.The committee was specifically tasked to work on economic and industrial ventures that could be put forward to Biden’s policy team for possible economic collaboration.The proposals under consideration include so-called “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs), an initiative first broached by the George W Bush administration in 2006 in return for Islamabad’s support for the US “war on terror” in neighboring Afghanistan, where al Qaeda was then known to maintain bases.

The committee has also proposed the formation of a US-Pakistan Economic Zone at Karachi’s port to re-process industrial goods at concessional rates for export to US markets. The apex committee’s work has so far remained confined to working papers in the absence of an opportunity for Khan to engage personally with Biden’s team.

Mushahid opined that the new US administration seems confused about Pakistan’s role in the Afghanistan peace process, a communication breakdown that could fatally hinder ties. “The only clarity seems to be a readiness to scapegoat Pakistan if and when things go wrong in Afghanistan,” said Syed, “while conjuring up the ‘China threat’ to justify their bloated military budgets.”

https://asiatimes.com/2021/05/why-biden-wont-engage-with-pakistan/

Coronavirus doctor's diary: Families stranded in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh

 Some Bradford schools are missing pupils because they travelled abroad with their families, who cannot now get back without paying a hefty bill for hotel quarantine. This is just one of the risks of travel during a global pandemic, says Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary, who notes that British travellers may also have contributed to the spread of the virus.

A head teacher tells me that she has a problem with families stuck abroad, in countries on the UK's red list.

British residents who have been in one of these countries have to spend 10 days in quarantine in a hotel when they arrive back, at a cost of £1,750 for a single adult, and much more for families. Those who can't afford it are sometimes staying where they are - perhaps living free of charge with relatives - and this has left noticeable gaps in some classes.

In Bradford, families are mostly stuck in Pakistan, where the majority of the city's Asian population originates, but it's clear that many UK families are also unable to return from India and Bangladesh.

"We didn't know there was any chance of quarantine - we just went," says Inaya Hussain, who flew to Pakistan with her three children, aged between nine and 13, the week before lockdown, because her mother was seriously ill.

But on 9 April Pakistan was put on the UK's red list, because of rising numbers of Covid infections, as was Bangladesh. On 23 April, India was added too.

Lynette Clapham, head teacher at Grove House and Crossley Hall Primary Schools, says she's aware of 11 families who are currently abroad and unable to return, often because of the cost of quarantine.

I suspect that during each of our three waves we exported the virus from Bradford to low-incidence countries

Dr John Wright
Bradford Royal Infirmary

Some travellers, however, have found a way round this: they are travelling from Pakistan to Turkey, spending 10 days in Turkey, and then returning perfectly legally to the UK from there. They are then able to quarantine at home for 10 days, rather than in a hotel.

But now it turns out that cases have been rising in Turkey too. A week ago the country went into a three-week lockdown as a result. Travel agents say travellers from Pakistan are still arriving in Istanbul en route for the UK, and that while Turkish residents are meant to stay at home, tourists are still allowed to go sightseeing.

The surge of cases in India, and to a lesser extent in Pakistan and Turkey, reminds us how connected our world is in the face of this pandemic. It is less a global village and more a global forest, with the Covid fire igniting one section of dry tinder just as it is extinguished somewhere else.

Front-line diary

IMAGE COPYRIGHTPISHDAAD MODARESSI CHAHARDEHI

Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio.

Last year, during the first lockdown, when the UK had some of the highest rates of infection, I talked to patients and their families who were escaping back to their roots in Eastern Europe or Pakistan, seeking places of greater safety. I'm aware that in the second and third waves too people have been travelling to see their families, perhaps for funerals or weddings, or to look after elderly parents.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority, 32,000 people either took a direct flight from the UK to Pakistan in January, or flew from Pakistan to the UK. The figure was nearly 38,000 in February and 46,000 in March.

However, as we know from the initial spread of the virus from China to Italy and Spain in 2020, travel is a critical, yet highly controllable route of transmission.

I suspect that during each of our three waves we exported the virus from Bradford to low-incidence countries, and this may well have contributed to subsequent outbreaks in Pakistan, India, Eastern Europe or Turkey.

Nobody wants to be a prisoner on our island, but until we have effective global vaccine coverage and control of international transmission then importation of cases, and new variants in particular, remains a clear and present danger.

Red list restrictions for travellers from high risk countries may be disruptive and inconvenient but they are a crucial public health protection measure.

Quarantine

• A state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that may have been exposed to infectious disease are placed
• Origin: Late 15th Century (in sense "place where Jesus fasted for forty days")... The modern sense is from Italian quarantina "forty days", from quaranta "forty"

Source: Lexico.com

The good thing about our connected world, however, is that information also travels with ease.

In the hospital in February 2020 we were getting minute-by-minute updates from our medical colleagues in China, Italy and Spain, who were sharing the latest glimmers of evidence about risk factors and treatments via WhatsApp groups and social media. That speed of knowledge mobilisation saved countless lives.

Recently, my Bradford colleague Dr Dinesh Saralaya and his classmates from medical school in India have been helping one another by sharing what they've been able to find out about best practice since the start of the pandemic.

image captionDinesh Saralaya in April 2020

"We are sharing information about what has worked - Dexamethadone, the early use of C-pap [non-invasive ventilation with oxygen] and proning, for example," says Dinesh.

"Some of the drugs they're using there - Remdesivir and plasma treatment, for example - are hardly used here as they haven't proved effective in trials."

In the early 1990s my wife Helen and I were working in a rural hospital in Southern Africa when we noticed a rapid rise of HIV-related infections.

In the age before the internet, knowledge was a precious commodity that moved slower than the tortoises wandering through the Lubombo bush. Our observation of rising rates of HIV-related TB in 1991 required a letter written on an ancient typewriter, posted by aerogram and eventually published months later as a letter in the British Medical Journal.

There is a long-standing frustration from political leaders about how slowly innovation spreads in the NHS; a good idea in Bradford is rarely adopted in Bristol (and vice-versa). There is a whole field of "implementation science", with its own bespoke journals, dedicated to how we can overcome our natural, curmudgeonly instinct to ignore ideas that are not invented here. But the pandemic has demonstrated that in a crisis we are very good at rapid adoption and spread.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56873813

In Pakistan, Bajwa’s iftar dinner is trending. No Covid questions for Imran

 NAILA INAYAT 

Govt’s negligence towards vaccine procurement on one hand, and hesitancy among people on the other — that’s where Pakistan stands today.

For a moment, one almost forgot the pandemic coming back in our lives — when everyone and their uncles started discussing an iftar dinner with the Pakistani army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, attended by journalists. A “strictly” not-to-be-talked-about affair has become the talk of the town. How does that work? All things aside, the biggest takeaway of the meet was that the conflict between India and Pakistan was like a ‘saas-bahu ka jhagra’, and that the resolve to settle the disputes won’t be walked back. Wish we all live to see that day. The new strategic depth suggests ‘saas-bahu ka jhagra’ has to end.

Over to some unimportant stuff now. Cases of coronavirus in Pakistan continue to increase, recording more than two hundred deaths in a day — first time since the start of the pandemic. Situation is critical but there is no need to panic. That is the verdict from the officials who continue to reassure that there is enough medical oxygen in the country. This shifts the focus back to the lack of management, and no clear policy of the Imran Khan government on tackling the pandemic. Too busy planning ways to take control of the residences of the opposition leaders, giving sermons over knowing the West all too well, the PM’s priority hasn’t been vaccines but his speeches. This is precisely what his coalition partners also think. But then speeches win headlines, vaccines not so much.

Ministers, the rule breakers

After having called in the military to assist in implementing the Covid-19 SOPs, it is the government ministers who are seen defying the rules even as the much-celebrated Corona Tiger Force, which we were told last April will wage jihad against coronavirus, is nowhere to be heard of. Taimur Saleem Jhagra, the health minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is booked for violation of Covid SOPs at an iftar party. Jhagra then explains how he didn’t know much about the private gathering or its location. How then did he reach the venue is a mystery. Fascinating indeed. But he is still proud to be booked by his own government. Wait till he is arrested or given ‘murgha’ punishment like any ordinary SOP violators.

In another event, Maulana Tariq Jameel, a close religious aide to PM Imran Khan, launched his flagship fashion brand in Karachi. Offering 20 per cent off on the collection, the inauguration ceremony invited Covid SOP violations. But glad that no action was taken against him for the fashion line is intended to financially support madrassas in Pakistan. The idea which came to him during the pandemic, he has told.

Where is the vaccination policy?

As the world continues to vaccinate people, the Pakistan government is criticised for over-relying and waiting on handouts and aids rather than procuring vaccines on its own as promised. With no clear policy layout, it was told last month that the government plans to deal with the challenge through herd immunity and donated vaccines. “That there was no plan to buy vaccines at least during the current year.” Which now the government says it has signed contracts with at least three companies for vaccination. Pakistan has received a million doses of Sinopharm, half of which were gifted by China and the other half bought by the government. While the private sector that secured Sputnik V and CanSino has now run out of vaccines. So far, 2.1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered, according to the Pakistan government.

Negligence in procuring vaccines in time on one hand, and addressing the issue of vaccine hesitancy on the other. That’s where Pakistan stands today. Vaccinating 70 per cent of the population to deal with Covid-19 is what the world hopes to achieve. But in Pakistan, vaccine hesitancy is pervasive — we have people who still believe that coronavirus isn’t a real thing. The theories about 5G: that the pandemic is part of a notorious plan of people like Bill Gates and the idea is to roll out vaccinations containing tracking chips that will then be activated using the 5G technology. This is believed even in a country that doesn’t even have 5G. Or that the virus is a drama, all persist even after a year of havoc.

Pakistan, over the years, has seen its polio vaccination fall out due to the conspiracy theories that surround it ever since the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. From claims that vaccinations result in impotency, that they are made with pig blood and are un-Islamic or that America/Israel want to damage the pure race. The sentiment has only gained strength while increasing attacks on polio teams in the country. Last year, Pakistan reported 84 cases of polio and 146 cases in 2019. After Afghanistan, Pakistan is the only other country where polio virus remains endemic.

#Pakistan - Prime Minister Imran Khan should apologize to the nation for the PTIMF deal, which has ruined the country’s economy

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that the puppet Prime Minister Imran Khan should apologize to the nation for the PTIMF deal, which has ruined the country’s economy.

“It is not enough for the selected PM to admit his mistake in the IMF deal. He should have listened to us before entering into the deal with the IMF, instead of now reviewing it,” the PPP Chairman stated in a press statement issued here. He said that the buck stops with Imran Khan and that the Prime Minister could not constantly try to stave off criticism and save himself by scapegoating others.

Criticizing the Prime Minister, the PPP Chairman said that Imran Khans admission that the IMF deal was wrong was actually an acceptance of his incompetence.

“First, he claimed that he would rather consider suicide than sign a deal with the IMF, then after delaying until terms got harsher, he defended and signed on to conditions that have crippled Pakistan, and now he is making another U-turn on policies he championed till a month ago. Imran Khan makes mistakes, acknowledges those mistakes and then goes out and repeats the same mistake all over again. This is a country, not an elementary school,” he added.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari announced that his Party would thwart this governments plan to bleed the people with new taxes of up to Rs1,200 billion at the behest of the IMF.” He added that the Federal Government had overseen crippling price hikes of electricity, gas, and petrol at the behest of the IMF. “Imran Khan claims to be free of influence in his decisions, but in reality the economic fate of the people of Pakistan has been abdicated to a few salaried employees of the IMF,” he said, adding that crushing the people under the burden of excess taxation at the whims of the IMF was dereliction of duty, and a dishonor to the integrity of the country.

The PPP Chairman further said that Imran Khan’s decision to devalue the rupee on the IMF’s dictation had been catastrophic for the nation, the consequences of which were being borne by the people today.

“If Imran Khan had taken Parliament into confidence before the deal with the IMF, the people would not have been drowning in the tsunami of inflation today,” he added. He blamed record unemployment figures in the country on the asinine economic policies of the illegitimate and incompetent PTI regime. He pointed out the bitter irony in the fact that a party that had promised to create 10 million jobs, had instead made millions of Pakistanis unemployed.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also reiterated his and the PPPs unwavering commitment to ensuring the economic freedoms of the people.

https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/24747/