Budgeting for a real world

Budget-makers while preparing the annual balance-sheet did not take into consideration UN report

Considering the current security challenges that confront Pakistan on its three borders and the on-going war against terrorism, one is constrained to regard as a non-starter an election-driven, over-ambitious development budget for the year 2017-18.

Attempts to play to the gallery with what would be considered to be the last fling of the profligate would only end up adding further to the national woes rather than improving the chances of the incumbents in the next general elections.

It is difficult to believe that budget-makers while preparing the annual balance-sheet did not take into consideration a recent UN report claiming that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) might create geopolitical tensions with India and ignite political instability.

India is incensed that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — one of the key Belt and Road projects — passes through the disputed Kashmir territory. “No country can accept a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay said making it clear his country’s intentions to meet the self-deluded challenge militarily.



The budget-makers have certainly not missed, one ardently hopes, the threat assessment presented to the US Senate Committee the week before last by Director, US National Intelligence (NI) Daniel R Coats, who has warned that Pakistan-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan. “The threat to the United States and the West from Pakistan-based terrorist groups will be persistent,” the US NI maintained.

It further said that the groups that will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan’s internal security included the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s Khorasan group, Laskhar-e- Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami.

More worrying is the part of assessment on our nuclear programme. It said early deployment during a crisis of “smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon.”

The US NI assessment consolidates the pro-India tilt in the US policy for the South Asian region.

In a strategy paper prepared for the Hudson Institute (February 2017) by Lisa Curtis, director at the US National Security Adviser’s office, the author says: “The wavering level of commitment to Afghanistan by previous administrations…has undoubtedly contributed to Pakistan’s hedging its bets in Afghanistan.”

After years of restraint in the face of Pakistani terrorist provocations, Curtis says, the Modi government has laid down a new marker that it will not stand by in the face of such attacks. The new US administration must be prepared for the possibility of an escalation in India-Pakistan tensions.”



Ms Curtis recommends that the Trump administration halt its even-handed South Asia policy: The US should no longer sacrifice its anti-terrorism principles in the region for the sake of pursuing an “even-handed” South Asia policy, but rather should levy costs on Pakistan for policies that help perpetuate terrorism in the region. In particular, US officials must break the habit of trying to balance policies towards India and Pakistan and should instead pursue shared mutual interests with each.

One, therefore, hopes that the budget-makers have built a plan ‘B’ within the next year’s budget to meet what looks like an imminent increase in tension on the three borders and at the same time a reduction in US assistance.

Indeed, it is always good to be your own master, especially in the matter of economy. One is able to safeguard one’s political sovereignty more effectively only when one’s economy is not dependent on any outsider.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2017.

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