Who gets to cast moral judgment in an election? Ideally, it should be the voters. An election, after all, is meant to give people a choice to sift the good from the bad, the well-meaning from the shifty liars. When the election is preceded by a committee deciding who is worthy enough to be part of the democratic enterprise, you end up with a selection, not an election.

By now, we are all aware of the few returning officers (ROs) who followed the Constitution down to the letter and decided to impose a religious test for office. Articles 62 and 63 are best observed only in the breach so the disqualifications are thankfully, and somewhat predictably, being overturned on appeal. There are many who wondered how the ROs could disqualify candidates for their inability to recite religious verses while waving through tax cheats and loan defaulters.

That question is an incorrect one to ask. The underlying premise is that it is okay for a group of men (it’s always men) to judge fitness for office; the only issue is how to set the parameters for disqualification. This is a profoundly anti-democratic sentiment. We have an election to decide if someone is qualified to be a parliamentarian so I can’t quite understand why we need a pre-election. The Constitution should be amended so that we have no bar on who can run other than basic limits like a minimum age. Convicts, tax evaders and the corrupt would all be welcome to run. Hopefully, they would be defeated at the ballot box but even if they aren’t, at least we will get the representatives we deserve.

The current system is horribly flawed not just because it undermines the principle that anyone should be able to stand for election in a democracy but also because of how capriciously and randomly it is used. There may be 10 people who have not filed tax returns for the last three years but maybe four will end up having their nomination papers rejected while the other six will be cleared to run. The ideal of innocent until proven guilty is also turned on its head when candidates are rejected simply for being accused of corruption in a court of law. Apparently, an accusation alone is now enough to decide your name is not worthy enough to be printed on a ballot paper.

Even if this is not the intent, disqualifying people for character issues and past transgressions will have the effect of taking the politics out of democracy. Much as General (retd) Pervez Musharraf tried to do away with a lot of politicians by introducing his graduate condition, the RO witch-hunt ended up targeting politicians who have been around a while. You can only judge the actions of a politician if he has previously been in office. So, all the new candidates were waved through while many experienced politicians had to answer for their record, not at the hustings or the ballot box, but in front of the ROs. Whether it is the military, the bureaucracy or the judiciary, all these institutions are filled with unelected people who do not appreciate or understand the compromises that need to be made to win an election.

Democracy is a messy process that involves deals, patronage and lots of compromises. Experience has shown that when a group of technocrats are inserted into power, we may have people whose records are clean but the outcomes for the country are much worse. This is why we let the people decide.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.

As has been mentioned ad nauseum, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, a democratically-elected government has served out its term and will peacefully (hopefully!) be replaced by another government chosen through the ballot box. This statement is technically true and certainly calls for a short moment of reflection, but the achievement should be considered a springboard, not a triumph in and of itself. No matter how badly we may wish to avert our eyes, reality keeps staring us in the face. Our democracy is still contaminated by the remnants of decades of military rule.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the insertion of amendments to Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution through a presidential ordinance by General Ziaul Haq. In his pious religiosity, General Zia decided that simply meeting minimum age and citizenship requirements was not enough in order to qualify to stand for parliament. He decreed that all aspirants to elected office must demonstrate adequate knowledge of religious teachings, practice all obligatory religious duties and be “sagacious, righteous and non-profilgate and honest and ameen”. If there is a single citizen of the country, forget our parliamentarians, who fits the bill, I have yet to come across him or her.

General Zia, of course, did not state who would stand and judge his fellow-beings’ righteousness but now the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has decided to take up his mantle. Prospective candidates were asked to recite Quranic verses as a qualification for office, this apparently being enough to decide if someone is a good enough Muslim to be allowed in the sanctity of parliament. The ECP may want to peruse the Munir Report which, let alone sifting through people to identify good Muslims, found that clerics could not even agree on how to define a Muslim.

General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, too, is making his presence felt, although his literal presence in the country is a mere distraction. The dictator, who like all military men had nothing but disdain for the political class, decided that he wanted to get himself new politicians. He did so by adding a graduate requirement to stand for election to the National Assembly. We didn’t get many new politicians but we did get many new university degrees. That anti-democratic requirement, which disqualified pretty much the entire country from standing for national office, has been rightfully abandoned but it is still making its presence felt through the ECP, which is disqualifying candidates who submitted fake degrees in the past, and the courts, who are jailing the same people.

Certainly, in both of these cases, the politicians have to share a lot of the blame. While debating and passing the Eighteenth Amendment, parliament should, as a matter of principle, have removed each and every contamination introduced by military dictators, including the additions to Articles 62 and 63. It is also very hard to feel any sympathy for politicians who are guilty of perjury and, in many cases, forgery. The point is not to absolve the political class of any blame; it is to point out how the shadow of the military still darkens the electoral process.

It is an irony of democracy in Pakistan that the biggest threat to the holding of free and fair elections will be the very institution tasked with safeguarding the electoral process. There is every chance that security at the polls will be handled by military and paramilitary forces, rather than regular police. There are those who will argue that only the military is capable of providing security which, if it is true, is only because the military has ensured that its influence remains paramount in every nook and cranny of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2013.

Far be it for me to promote “slackerism” but here is some advice for election day: sleep in, enjoy the holiday, spend some much-needed time with your family and don’t bother to vote. Contrary to what the scolds keep telling you, your vote doesn’t matter and it never has mattered. The chances of it mattering are about one in a million. You have a much better chance of getting picked in the annual US green card lottery than you of casting a vote that will have any effect on the outcome.

This isn’t a usual pox-on-all-politicians argument which says that all candidates are equally corrupt and evil and so there is no point in voting. You could have one candidate who is perfect in every way running against Hitler and still your vote would be pointless. Georgetown professor Jason Brennan once ran the numbers in a scenario where one candidate would produce GDP growth of 0.25 per cent more than his opponent. For the voter, casting a ballot for him would give a personal gain in wealth of 2,648 magnitudes less than a penny. Basically, Brennan says, the voter should stay at home because he or she is vastly more likely to die on the way to the polls than to benefit from voting. As part of a research project, I have been looking at the results of every National Assembly seat in every election. There has yet to be a case where a single vote ended up deciding the outcome.

Realising the futility of voting is not the same as calling for political disengagement. Instead of voting, you could post a status update on Facebook about an issue dear to your heart. Convincing one of your few hundred friends to take the issue seriously is a far greater possibility than casting a vote which matters. In my constituency, NA-250, the MQM candidate got more than 80,000 votes in the 2008 elections while my preferred party, the ANP, got less than 100. There is absolutely nothing I can do to affect the outcome. The only reason to vote is purely symbolic, so I can wave my ink-stained finger around and act as if I have done my civic duty.

On top of not voting ourselves, we also should not be encouraging others to vote. Not everyone is as politically aware and the chances are that if we shame a hesitant voter into marking an “X” on a piece of paper, that voter will not have done much research. It is no secret that people do not always vote according to their own interests and those who are not politically engaged at all will be even more likely to cast a vote that doesn’t represent his or her interests.

One of the worst arguments in favour of voting is that you have no right to complain about the performance of those in power if you are a non-voter. Curiously enough, no one applies the same logic to those who vote for winning candidates and hold them accountable for their performances. There are many ways of bringing about desired political change. Organising rallies or writing articles are unlikely to succeed but these tactics are more likely to effect change than voting.

All this said, I may just end up voting myself but will do so with open eyes. I’ll be voting for the same reason that I go to a Pakistan cricket match and scream at the top of my lungs or stick a Liverpool football club badge on my laptop. I know I won’t affect the outcome; I’m just loudly telling everyone else what my preference is.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2013.

In an ideal world, the sheer amount of sweat and ink wasted on the composition of the caretaker government will be inversely proportionate to its relevance. A caretaker government should be unnoticeable to the point of invisibility, take no bold initiatives and just let events play out — like Misbahul Haq. There is absolutely no need to hire more government workers who invariably belong to the same political party favoured by the rulers and little reason to spend development funds in constituencies that will be up for grabs on May 11.

The caretaker government doesn’t even need to concern itself with the elections; the day-to-day nitty gritty should be handled by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). It is up to the ECP to treat the military and its invariable interference like the hostile invasion it is, and in Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, we have a person who has made a career out of being wary of the men in khaki. If needed, the Supreme Court, never shy of picking a fight when retreat would be counselled by conservative minds, can serve as a back-up force.

Pakistan is in such an unprecedented place — a democratic government has served out its term; a caretaker government is being appointed without discarding the Constitution to the garbage heap; we will have two successive elections without a decade-long dictatorial interlude — that it is surprising how easily we are getting distracted by C-plots at the expense of the main storyline. The utterly irrelevant sideshow that is Pervez Musharraf has been sucking in precious media oxygen by announcing yet another return to Pakistan. At this point, no one should believe he will ever come back and face the music for his many crimes but it makes for good, if completely wasteful, copy.

Neither the caretaker government nor Musharraf will be the saviours or destroyers of democracy. They just don’t matter enough. The events that transpire both before and after the elections are dependent on our politicians. The military is not in a position to take overt power and as long as every major political party remains committed to staying independent, it will have no one to usher into power as a proxy either. The PPP has always been too hated by the military, Nawaz Sharif has picked fights with every army chief who has ever crossed his path and Imran Khan is too much of a wildcard.

It is the latter figure who could conceivably hold the key to the survival of democracy after the elections. No one party is going to win enough seats to form a government on its own and if the PTI is able to snag around 40-plus seats, it may not be possible to form a government without the PTI either. If Imran Khan sticks to his long-held position of refusing to form a coalition with both the PPP and the PML-N, we could have a hung parliament. This is where the military could swoop in, most likely by taking advantage of the confusion and the fatigue at the thought of an election mulligan. This is one situation where a bit of ideological and political flexibility would be the mature course for Imran Khan to take.

Then again, maturity is not a quality our politicians aspire to. The PPP has essentially abdicated its responsibility to govern and yet, many of its members voted themselves backdated pay raises and lifetime perks. No matter that handing gifts to themselves is an art perfected by the generals, these are the kind of moves that, however unjustifiably, sour people on democracy and make the military an attractive option.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2013.

Imagine if the workers of a government agency went on strike to protest unfair conditions and in return, they were greeted by a contingent of thuggish policemen. The news may be downplayed in the media but would surely merit a mention. However, if the culprit is a private corporation, then it may as well not have happened. If a union strike takes place against a wealthy business and the media is not around to hear it, it does not make a sound.

Workers at a five-star hotel in Karachi are on strike demanding that 500 employees be given permanent status. The strike is perfectly legal but the management’s response has been to suspend most of the temporary workers. The police have been called in to attack the strikers outside the hotel and those who have occupied the hotel’s basement are being harassed by hotel security. A similar thing happened at the same hotel in 2010, accompanied by the same sounds of silence.

All of this comes as news to most people because the media doesn’t consider anything to be news if it hurts the bottom line. This is why the greatest threat to the freedom of media today comes not from the government but from private corporations. Business news in the country is concerned only with profits, shifts in the stock market and profiles of executives who will be so flattered they may throw an advertisement or two in the direction of the media organisation.

Labour unions in Pakistan have seen a diminishing of their power ever since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto turned on his supporters in the working class. Ziaul Haq then gleefully feasted on the remaining scraps. Throughout this period, the media saw, heard and reported no evil. Now, close to half of urban labour is working on informal contracts, beyond the reaches of state labour laws. Expecting corporate management to develop a conscience is laughable and the government is more interested in stuffing unions with its supporters.

If it is true that the job of the media is to hold the powerful accountable, then it should be the only ally labour unions have. Perusing the pages of a newspaper, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only protests being held are by NGOs, society aunties and other mainly apolitical groups. Certainly, they deserve all the coverage they get but those protesting for a living wage, safe working conditions and humane working hours should have their voices heard, too.

After the Baldia Town factory fire, we saw moving photos of vigils by those who lost loved ones and angry protests by outraged citizens. Here’s a novel idea: along with this ex post facto coverage, why don’t we also make space for those who are taking to the streets and holding strikes at work to ensure that they aren’t the next victims of such avoidable tragedies?

Part of the problem is that some media organisations themselves take the same shortcuts and engage in the same labour practices as everyone else. A state broadcaster could avoid those pitfalls but right now, PTV is both susceptible to pressure from politicians who are allied with corporate owners while still reliant on private advertising for a share of revenue, what is essentially the worst of both worlds. Realistically, social media and the like can reach only a limited number of people and independent non-corporate media is non-existent.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2013.

Hugo Chavez was never a subtle politician so it is unsurprising that the reaction surrounding his death has been so stark. For most commentators, he was either the voice of the poor and downtrodden, a socialist committed to empowering the disenfranchised and opposing worldwide imperialism or a coup leader with totalitarian instincts, who was instinctively drawn to other despots. Both interpretations of Chavez have the benefit of being factually correct but the drawback of being incomplete. Which side you fall on depends on ideology but any intellectually honest assessment of the man would acknowledge his opposing instincts.

This is not a problem that can solely be attributed to Chavez’s charisma (or his tendency to annoy, for those who are firmly in the anti-Chavez camp). All politicians, no matter how dull or grey they may be, tend to inspire extreme emotions in their supporters and opponents. This is to be expected of party members whose political power is dependent on fealty to the leader but needs to be avoided by journalists and analysts, for whom nuance and fairness should trump ideological considerations.

In Pakistan, as election season approaches, we will see this phenomenon — already so prevalent in our politics — magnify. The two worst offenders in this regard are supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The PPP’s fans have regularly come down with a bad case of idolatry. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, we are told by the jiyalas, is a man who led the first and only mass movement in the country’s history and ultimately fell victim to a military conspiracy. All this is certainly true but Bhutto also had dictatorial tendencies which, like Chavez, extended to jailing many who opposed him, passed the constitutional amendment that declared Ahmadis non-Muslims and was as bad on Balochistan as the army has ever been. None of these criticisms are meant to ignore Bhutto’s achievements but they are necessary to separate the myth from the fallible politician. The beatification of his daughter Benazir is similar in its adamant refusal to accept that she, too, was an immensely flawed politician.

The case of Imran Khan and the PTI is even more curious. Since he and his party have never actually been in power, they are a blank slate on which anything can be drawn. Once the politician has been cast as saviour, it gives his or her supporters carte blanche to mock and vilify those who dissent. Fans of the PTI have turned this into an art form. Simply saying that Imran Khan has some interesting ideas coupled with a lot of naïve ones is enough for one to be denounced as a sell-out (whom we are selling out to is never mentioned).

We need to reconceive how we see politicians. There is no one person so perfect that with the wave of a wand, all our problems will be wished away. Voting is an act of compromise; we should choose the candidate or party with whom we most agree or, as is often the case in Pakistan, disagree with the least and then hold our noses and cast our ballot. Politicians owe their careers to many different interests and will need to cater to other interests in order to stay in power. This necessarily makes them easy targets for criticism from their opponents while being used as excuses by their supporters. That is how politics works but we in the media should not be playing the same game.

It is time we stop acting like politicians are cartoon characters in a superhero comic book, who exist only to be deified or villainised. Advancing your own agenda and sacrificing complexity has never served anyone well.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2013.

Everyone can agree that in the legal realm, the fight against militancy has been failing. Too many cases against alleged terrorists end up with acquittals. In recent months, the government has tried to come up with legislative fixes for this problem, first by passing and signing the Investigation for Fair Trial Bill and then voting on the National Counterterrorism Authority Bill. Now parliament has approved an amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Bill.

First, the positives. Setting up the National Counterterrorism Authority, which includes the prime minister, chief ministers and intelligence and police chiefs, finally creates a centralised body that will be able to ensure that all measures relating to terrorism are implemented. It should also allow for better coordination between factions that ought to be working together but are often engaged in turf wars. Intelligence-sharing, one of the keys to counterterrorism, should become more common if this agency exists. And with so much terrorism now transcending borders, it will be helpful to have a body that is not exclusively military in nature and which can coordinate with international intelligence agencies.

The Investigation for Fair Trial Bill has been slightly more controversial since it deals with the issue of the government spying on its own citizens. There are even some who see the name of the bill as an ironic commentary — like the Patriot Act in the US — on its distinctly unfair nature. The criticism has been overblown. The government, in theory, has a right to spy on the electronic communications of suspected terrorists and this bill lays down a process, involving judicial warrants and time limits, for doing so. This bill on its own won’t end illegal government surveillance but at least now there will be a legal mechanism, which should reduce the need for resorting to spying without judicial oversight.

This doesn’t mean that the bill is perfect. There was no need to provide indemnity to the government and private companies that conduct the surveillance so long as they comply with the bill’s provisions. Citizens who feel they have unfairly been spied on should always have the right to confront their government in court. It is also a bit rich that parliamentarians, both at the federal and provincial levels, cannot be spied on without approval from the speaker, especially at a time when there are indications that the PML-N may be forming an alliance with the ASWJ.

The amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Act is the most disappointing in how limited its scope is. It deals with the financial dealings of terrorist organisations and while most of the changes are sensible, one can’t help but feel that this amendment exists only to mollify the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, which had blacklisted Pakistan.

There has been no legislative effort to improve the functioning of the anti-terrorism courts which, thanks to the expansive definition of terrorism under the act, very rarely deal with cases that involve terrorism as we have come to understand it. Instead, the courts are bogged down with kidnapping, murder and even celebratory firing cases that are better handled by regular courts.

There has also been no effort to create a witness protection programme although it is briefly mentioned in the original act. Right now, only Sindh has allocated money for witness protection, despite the fact that most acquittals are caused by a lack of witnesses. Judges and lawyers, too, need protection since they are also threatened, sometimes in open court, by accused terrorists.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2013.

Those who oppose negotiating with the Taliban, in a twisted reversal, put the onus to justify their stance on people who say talks are better than military operations. The standard has always, and should always be, that war is the option of last resort, when there is absolutely nothing else that can be done. The argument usually given to justify a military option is that we have tried talks before and these have been a conspicuous failure. This is true enough but ignores the very salient fact that we have also tried military operations before and indeed, are still employing military means on a daily basis to fight the Taliban and this has been equally fruitless in rooting out militancy. The onus, then, should be on those who favour the military option to give a good enough reason for continuing down this failed and bloody route.

There are good arguments against most of the complaints against negotiations. One, used by just about every government in the world, is that talking to terrorists gives them legitimacy. This rhetorical device is observed only in the breach. In most cases — be it Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers, Britain and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or Spain and the Basque separatists — a combination of military and diplomatic tactics have been tried even though all these countries have spewed the we-do-not-negotiate-with-terrorists line. One way to evade the problem of legitimacy would be by sending a lower-level official, perhaps even tribesmen, to represent the government in negotiations. That would signal that while we are ready to negotiate, we are not willing to condone the behaviour of the Taliban.

Indeed, in 1991, Britain continued backchannel negotiations with the IRA even after a bomb attack on 10 Downing Street nearly took out the entire British cabinet. Which brings us to the next argument: that the Taliban are so unique an evil, with such unprecedented disdain for human life that they cannot possibly be negotiated with. Leave aside the fact that the US is currently negotiating with the Afghan Taliban, which may be operationally different from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan but share the same tactics, it is ahistorical to claim that there haven’t been equally wanton terrorist groups in the past.

The military would also have a role to play in the negotiations. Even if a temporary ceasefire or withdrawal is accepted, to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, the military would be stationed nearby to remind the Taliban that this is the next alternative to negotiations.

Of course, we will never be able to get everything we want during negotiations. Intellectual honesty compels us to admit that in order to gain in the short term, we will also have to give the Taliban something. This would likely mean accepting the reality that the Taliban control significant amounts of territory in the tribal areas. Reversing this has not been possible through military operations and it certainly won’t happen through talks either.

Taking back territory requires a much longer-term solution. Primarily, it means breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment till the Taliban are unable to draw the forces necessary to hold their territory. Studies show that between 1987 and 2004, when Israel carried out measures to raise the standard of living in Palestine, it did far more to lower the number of attacks than punitive measures which hurt the entire population. Replicating this policy in the tribal areas may be the only shot we have left. Military operations will not get the job done; relying on talks coupled with humanitarian assistance may be the only chance we have left to reduce the power of the Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2013.

India really needs to take it down a notch. Since the fracas at the Line of Control (LoC), still shrouded in competing claims, Pakistani diplomats have been barred from attending the Jaipur Literature Festival, our hockey players felt so threatened by protests that they flew home and now our women’s cricket team is being forced to live at the stadium in which they will be playing their group matches.

For the first two cases, short-sighted Indian hawks who don’t hold much stock in cultural and sporting contact can make the exceedingly technical case that attending literary festivals and playing in an Indian hockey league is a privilege, not a right. The same cannot be said for our participation in the women’s World Cup. Our cricket team has earned its way into the tournament and deserves to be provided both with security and the same accommodations as the other teams.

The cricket team was originally meant to be stationed in Mumbai but the power, both at the street and governance level, of the Shiv Sena made that a non-starter. Our matches were then moved to Cuttack but the nearest hotel in Bhubaneshwar is an hour’s drive away. So our players will have to live at the clubhouse in the stadium for the entirety of the group stages. This also means that the entirety of India’s security strategy is dependent on us not making the final, which is to be played in Mumbai. If we do reach the final will India simply declare the city safe for us?

Try this for a thought experiment. What if we tell international teams that Pakistan is completely safe for visiting teams so long as they never leave the stadium? The suggestion would get us laughed out of the ICC and yet a different standard is being applied to India. In 1996, when Australia and the West Indies refused to play their World Cup matches in Sri Lanka out of fear, the hosts offered to airlift the players into and out of the stadium. That wasn’t enough to get them to play. We should take a similar stand. If the Indians cannot guarantee our players’ safety outside the stadium, how can they ensure it inside?

The refusal to let Pakistani diplomats attend the Jaipur Literature Festival, meanwhile, smacks of pettiness. This was a decision made not on the basis of security threats but simple petulance. Restricting the movement of diplomats only ensures that similar tit-for-tat actions will be taken in Pakistan.

Peace between the two countries has been incremental but steady over the last couple of years. The centrality of people-to-people contact in that process should never be forgotten or taken for granted. Our politics have certainly moved in a more pro-India direction, with none of our major political parties disputing the need for peaceful relations with India. Debate in Pakistan is now centred on how peace with India may best be achieved, not whether peace is even in our interest. The twin LoC incidents on their own were not enough to change the contours of this debate but any further humiliation of sportspersons may just tilt the scales in the direction of hawkishness.

The current détente that the two countries have enjoyed should be seen as fragile and easily broken. Any temporary anger we feel should be tempered by the bigger picture. The women’s cricket team has shown maturity by accepting the situation rather than walking off in a huff. But that does not mean India should be spared criticism for its heavy-handed response to the LoC incidents.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2013.

The hoary cliché, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re out to get you,’ used by people to justify their outsized sense of self-importance and to further their delusions may just be applicable to Pakistan. We have often thought we loomed larger in other countries’ minds than we actually do. Now, we have reason to continue believing that. US President Barack Obama, trying to give legal cover to his dubious tactics in the ‘war on terror’, has recently been working in secret to codify what the president can and cannot do in catching and killing terrorists. These rules, according to an administration leak published in The Washington Post, came with one caveat: they do not apply to CIA operations in Pakistan.

Think for a minute about how staggering this is. The US is essentially saying that it cannot come up with a single justification for the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan. When taken to court over the issue, the Obama Administration argues that the courts cannot rule on the matter since national security binds them from even acknowledging the existence of these operations.

Now, in a subversion of legal and political norms, the president is post-facto legalising his actions but is doing so in secret and even within this extremely broad framework, he cannot provide legal cover to drone strikes in Pakistan and is instead arguing that they will continue just because he wants them to. This would be like me deciding to lose weight by cutting out all chocolate from my diet and then deciding that I can eat all the Maltesers my heart desires. The exception destroys the rule.

Those few Pakistanis who support drone attacks in the tribal areas will argue that there is no reason for us to worry about US legalese; that drones are the best way to kill the terrorists that we refuse to fight ourselves. For one, this argument does a great disservice to our military, which has actually committed to the fight against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, no matter what objections we may have to its tactics. Then, there is the fact that those who make this argument end up sounding a lot like those who say our government is so corrupt that we need a bunch of technocrats/military strongmen to come and clean up the mess. Whatever short-term progress is made through such stopgap measures is invariably undone in the long term. The same principle applies to drones. The death of a few hundred militants in drone strikes won’t compensate for the anger caused by the strikes themselves, the blatant lawlessness that accompanies them will become the new normal and the US will be even less concerned about civilian casualties in the future.

Recall that right now, the US classifies any man above the age of 18 who is killed in a drone strike as a militant, unless proven otherwise. These are the consequences of operating in secret, without any oversight and accountability. Those you murder become guilty until proven innocent.

It should be pointed out that the US, as the driver of the drone policy, is the most culpable in this matter but the Pakistani state is a front seat passenger which deserves some of the blame. Drones get support because they represent an easy way out. You get to kill a lot of people, many of them militants, without being shot at in return and you get to do it in secrecy without having to be answerable to anyone.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2013.