A backhanded compliment

It is a truism that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and the last people to hand anything resembling a gratis feed to Pakistan are the Americans. The US State Department has issued its annual report on human rights in Pakistan and notes that there has been a considerable drop in terrorism-related fatalities as at the end of October 2017. The numbers have been coming down for three years, and came to 1,084 as compared to 1,803 in the complete year of 2016 — a 40 per cent drop. Any other place or time and there would have been banner headlines announcing a considerable success, but success is followed in this instance by some serial and persistent failures, and uncomfortable as the numbers may be the US State Department is right to serve them up as the main dish.

Whilst caution always has to be exercised regarding any data relating to Pakistan the source in this instance is the South Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP) which has a track record of reliability. The SATP notes that the recorded 39.878 per cent decrease would have been larger had the last two months of the year been added to the balance sheet.

Pakistan may have become a safer place to live — and by extension the world a safer place as well — but it remains intolerant, violent and abusive with militant organisations and other non-state actors all contributing to a lamentable human-rights record nationally. There is a culture of lawlessness in Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Enforced disappearances remain common, with mystery surrounding many and fingers never conclusively pointed but the police and security services are suspected of complicity if not actual abduction. Mob violence and vigilante justice with virtually zero accountability are not uncommon, as are attacks on journalists and media organisations. Discrimination against religious minorities is rife. All in all a bleak picture and a reduction in terrorist fatalities does not offset a continued failure to improve an appalling human-rights record. The reduction cannot be used as a fig leaf for an unrelenting inner darkness. No free lunch.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2018.

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