Local government has been one of the main pillars of the governance agenda of ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) since 2013. So, after winning the 2018 election, the party turned its attention to reforming local governance in Punjab, acknowledging what it has “learnt from the pitfalls it confronted in governance” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its most recent election manifesto points out that local development in villages and small towns in Pakistan is controlled either by members of the provincial assemblies (MPAs) and members of the National Assembly (MNAs), or by bureaucrats “who do not want to cede authority and relevance”.

It, therefore, had plans to “introduce a city government model, where the directly elected Mayor will be responsible to deliver on all interrelated urban city matters”. This is what the PTI has done with the passage of the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 and the Punjab Village Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils Act 2019.

Undoubtedly, the local government system being introduced by the PTI is better than the one implemented by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) via the Punjab Local Government Act 2013. The PMLN version allowed direct party-based elections for councillors but those who came to hold higher-level posts in local governments were elected indirectly.

Over time, the government also made many changes in the law – the most egregious one being a provision for the appointment of technocratic members who could then become mayors – that further weakened the local government system. The Punjab Local Government Act 2013 also did not provide for a meaningful fiscal devolution from the provincial to the local level. Local governments had little money at their disposal and remained dependent on the provincial government and bureaucracy.

The PTI’s local government laws, by comparison and in theory, seem intent upon devolving real fiscal and administrative powers to the local level. They also aim at allowing people to participate more directly in local politics. These laws, however, are not without problems. In fact, their ambitious scope raises numerous questions regarding their implementation as well as the capacity of the local governments they will create.

The new laws re-establish a rural-urban divide, somewhat similar to the local government system introduced by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 2001. The Punjab Village Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils Act 2019, for instance, envisions panchayats for rural areas and councils for urban ones (and does away with union councils). These panchayats and councils will perform such civic functions as taking care of sanitation, water supply, population welfare, public health, sewerage disposal and waste management. Higher tiers of local government can also devolve more responsibilities to them.

The Punjab Local Government Act 2019, similarly, provides for a tehsil council for the whole population of each tehsil in the province but it envisions metropolitan corporations, municipal corporations, municipal committees and town committees specifically for urban areas (doing away with district governments). The PTI argues that districts in Punjab are too large – both in size and population – to be governed effectively through district governments. In most cases, district councils will be too far removed from their voters. A tehsil, the party contends, is a better avenue for engaging with local population because it is a smaller unit.

The critics of the decision to bypass districts, however, rightly point out that this omission will limit the professional and technocratic resource pool available to tehsil councils because more resourceful and better trained personnel will like to work in bigger district headquarters rather than in small tehsil towns. This means the entire burden of delivering essential services will fall on the shoulders of untrained public representatives at the tehsil level.

This problem can be overcome by ensuring that public representatives get proper training, not only about their responsibilities and powers but also about the rules and regulations that govern their work. Such trainings should also be conducted with the intent to empower local government representatives in such a way that they are no longer reliant on provincial authorities for understanding and fulfilling their local development needs.

The second major flaw of the act is that it allows the provincial government to retain considerable regulatory control. For instance, it makes local governments work under the direction of the provincial authorities “in such manner and to such extent” as these authorities require in areas such as education, waste management, health, building regulations, public transport, crime and the maintenance of public order.

Bureaucratic politics in Punjab will be another important indicator of the success or failure of the new system. There are three reasons for that. Firstly, the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 says that deputy commissioner (DC) will be a district-level coordinator between different local governments but he or she remains outside the purview of all the local governments within the district. How power dynamics will work between directly elected heads of local governments, MPAs and MNAs, and DCs appointed by the provincial government will determine whether local governments will work effectively or not.

Secondly, the act provides that a chief officer, a bureaucrat, will be appointed in each local government. These officers will have considerable power to administer and monitor the work of local governments; the heads of local governments, too, will have the power to evaluate and report the performance, or lack thereof, of these officers to the provincial secretary of local government department.

This is in line with the Musharraf-era local government system that empowered elected mayors to evaluate the performance of district coordination officers. There was resistance against this provision back then from the bureaucracy, as Ali Cheema, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Adnan Qadir have noted in a paper, Local Government Reforms In Pakistan: Context, Content And Causes. It will be interesting to see how the bureaucracy responds to it now.

And thirdly, as Umair Javed’s column, ‘Litmus tests for devolution’, published in daily Dawn, and Shahrukh Wani’s analysis, published by Dawn.com under the title ‘Has Punjab just taken a step towards unlocking the potential of its cities?’ point out, the bureaucracy’s willingness – or unwillingness – to hand over power will be particularly important for the system’s effective implementation in urban centres.

Open list system: If five seats are available in a constituency, the person with the highest number of votes will get the first seat (and will become the chairperson), the person with the second highest number of votes will gain the second seat — so on and so forth.

The act intends to devolve many civic agencies and local authorities – such as the Water and Sanitation Agency, Lahore Development Authority, Traffic Engineering, Transport Planning Agency and Parks and Horticultural Authority – to the mayor’s office. Bureaucrats exercise a great deal of discretionary powers in these entities and there are numerous lobbies that will strongly resist ceding these powers to elected representatives, as Syed Mohammad Ali has pointed out in his report, Devolution of Power in Pakistan, written for the United States Institute of Peace.

Devolving administrative powers may turn out to be even more fraught considering that fiscal resources to be transferred to local governments under the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 are quite large. The act provides for the transfer of no less than 26 per cent of the province’s general revenue receipts for the first two years and no less than 28 per cent of the same in subsequent years.

On the surface of it, this commitment marks a significant improvement in comparison with the 2013 law that left local governments beholden to the provincial government. It remains to be seen if the PTI government can maintain this commitment considering the austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund’s assistance package.

Yet the devolution of revenue generation powers, and funding-based incentives to generate more revenue and deliver better services are likely to allow local governments more room to manoeuvre than they had in the past.

What may help the system to also work better is the fact that various oversight mechanisms will be put in place, as per the provisions of the Punjab Local Government Act 2019, to ensure that local governments perform. These include a Local Government Finance Commission, the Punjab Local Government Commission and an Inspectorate of Local Governments. Procedures for oversight by the provincial government, processes for responsiveness to citizens, and the ways and means to remove the heads of local governments (though these have certain limitations) are also being devised to complement the work of these entities.

While it is too early to judge the effectiveness, or otherwise, of these bodies and the accompanying rules and regulations, some concerns are already being expressed regarding the extent of power these may have over local governments.

Elections to village panchayats and neighbourhood councils will be held under an “open list system” for multi-member constituencies and the candidates will need no nominations from political parties. The reason being cited for leaving the parties out of this tier is that local governments need to be insulated from provincial and national politics so that these can focus on delivering civic services. This provision, however, disincentivises political parties from establishing themselves at the grass-roots level. Ali Cheema has highlighted the consequences of a weak party presence locally in a 2015 column — titled ‘Whither local self-government?’ and published in daily Dawn.

“It is vital that the leadership of political parties realises [sic] the political dividends of building strong grass-roots ties through local democracy. Their own experience reveals that the political costs of weak grass-roots ties are exorbitant. One would imagine that this lesson has been learnt. If not, [Professor Adam] Przeworski’s research on new democracies flashes a warning that half [of these democracies] fail within 10 years and revert to a non-democratic form,” he wrote.

As Hassan Javid has also pointed out in his article, ‘Punjab’s new local government act: An interesting mix of ideas’, published on the website of Geo News, local governments have been used by military regimes in the past to weaken political parties by reconfiguring political allegiances on the basis of clan ties and religious or sectarian affiliations.

Keeping the parties out of elections in villages and neighbourhoods runs the same risks again even when the PTI government is arguing that the new system will reduce the influence of clans and strongmen. It is quite likely that candidates will join hands in informal panels to campaign together under a local leader who is intending to be the chairperson. In the absence of party associations, they may find it convenient to exploit primordial affiliations of caste and creed.

On the contrary, the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 strengthens the powers of party leaders by providing for party-based elections at tehsil level and for urban committees/corporations. These elections will be held under a closed list proportional representation system.

The PTI government’s contention is that this system will greatly increase the costs of contesting elections as independent candidates and will, thus, cement voters’ affinity with parties. It is also being seen as a means to reduce personality-based politics, allowing progressive and professional candidates to enter the field through party nominations. Another likely benefit of this system is that it will allow smaller parties and traditionally excluded groups to be represented in local governments, leading to more diverse elected bodies.

The way reservation of seats for women will work under the closed list system is another positive aspect of the Punjab Local Government Act 2019. Rather than maintaining a separate reserved list for them, which is not voted on at all, women candidates will be “zipped” into a closed list of general councillors. Every alternate name on the list will be that of a woman, ensuring that they are actually elected and not selected. On the flip side, the closed list system will allow party leaders to determine who will be on their lists as well as the order in which the names of their nominees will appear on those lists.

The closed list system, thus, strengthens centralised, top-down party control over the candidate selection process, enhances intra-party competition to curry favour with party leaders and disincentivises parties from establishing such institutional structures at the local level that are independent of their leaderships. As Mariam Mufti, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, notes, Pakistan’s major parties are organisationally weak, and their recruitment and selection strategies for MPAs and MNAs are highly personalised and centralised.

A closed list system will only enhance and institutionalise such control all the way down to the local government level. Therefore, unless there is a significant change in how the major parties organise themselves internally, and reform the way they recruit and select candidates, the long-term gains to the party system may not be as substantial as the authors of the law may have imagined.

Closed list system: The closed list system allows political parties or other groupings to determine their list of candidates for the available seats. For example, if there are 10 seats available, each party or group will draw a list of 10 names in the order it likes. The voters will vote for the whole list. They will not cast a separate vote for each individual seat. The allocation of seats between different parties/groupings will be done on the basis of proportion of votes they win.

Equally importantly, a common outcome of the proportional representation systems is that these produce hung houses where no party holds a sufficient majority to push legislation through. The system certainly encourages coalition building but it also often hinders decision-making.

To counter this risk, as well as to compensate for the relative disenfranchisement of voters (because they cannot vote for individual candidates under the closed list system), the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 provides that the head of each local government be elected directly. This is a positive step, especially in comparison to the Punjab Local Government Act 2013, as it makes the heads of local governments directly accountable to the people. It also ensures that no one is elected as the head of a local government without enjoying the support of a significant proportion of the voting population.

The law, however, becomes a little confusing at this point. Its sections between 83 and 87 state that the same ballot will carry the name of the candidate for the top slot of a local government as will have the closed list for councillors. This means that voters will cast just one vote, limiting voter choice and making the closed list dependent on voter preferences for the head of a local government. While this may have some positive effects – such as encouraging members of professional groups to enter politics – it also makes candidates for the top slot immensely powerful figures in local politics. How this power will play out vis-a-vis MPAs and MNAs, and how parties will handle their internal politics will have a significant impact on the implementation of the local government system.

As Umair Javed points out, PTI’s local government legislation, like all such laws in the past, is “an attempt to reconfigure power dynamics”. This is not meant as a value judgement but is a comment on how institution building is done.

The two laws, indeed, propose a large-scale change in the administrative and political setup of Punjab. According to the secretary of the province’s local government department, the top echelons of PTI – Prime Minister Imran Khan, ousted local government minister Abdul Aleem Khan and the party’s chief strategist Jahangir Tareen – were instrumental in designing the new local government system. For them, apparently, the key issues have been the electoral systems to be used, and the growth potential of cities if their regulatory and revenue generation powers are devolved.

The opposition alleges the government has devised a system that suits its own political interests and that is why it has not consulted other political parties in any meaningful way before passing the two laws. It says the government has not allowed a proper debate on the new laws even within the assembly, pushing them through for passage in great haste.

There is some truth in these allegations. Addressing a press conference where the new laws were unveiled, Imran Khan did say his party wanted to introduce a local government system that strengthened its electoral prospects in the next election. He said the PTI could mass mobilise people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 2018 polls because voters who had benefited from its local government system there wanted to return the compliments.

Yet the PMLN in particular, and other parties in general, must play catch-up and get ready to orient their party structures to the new system. By “engaging in adversarial politics, instead of offering a credible alternative and holding the ruling party accountable”, as Mariam Mufti argues, opposition parties stand to lose more than they will gain. They will be better advised to make good use of the time they have to consolidate their party structures at the local level in order to be well-placed for the coming local government elections.

A note of caution is necessary here. If the new laws are to be fully implemented by May 2020 (as is currently planned), the government will need to carry out a number of activities over the next few months — fresh constituency delimitations, changes in electoral rules and procedures, the passage of supplementary legislation and the establishment of various commissions mandated by the laws.

What must not get lost in the technical and administrative aspects of bringing this new system to fruition is the burden of educating voters, candidates, politicians and bureaucrats alike on the finer points of these laws. Without a clear understanding of what roles and responsibilities the laws assign to each of them, elected local government representatives will not be able to perform as they are envisioned.

Similarly, without a thorough grasp of new electoral rules, voters will not be able to exercise their right to choose properly. And without a consensus across the institutions of government on the need to devolve power, politicians and bureaucrats will continue to undermine local governments.

Correction: The Punjab Local Government Act 2019 maintains the rural-urban divide established by the Punjab Local Government Act 2013. General Musharraf’s local government system had done away with this division.”

The writer is an assistant professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

The article was published in the Herald's June 2019 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

All our lives we have lived in purdah; now that we have finally met, your locks look so beautiful.

Four girls, sitting inside a room on its bare floor and draped in dark shawls, sang this Kohistani song as they clapped. Away from them, a boy with bangs danced.

A video clip featuring them started doing the rounds in May 2012. Since then, three of the four girls and four brothers of the dancing boy have been killed. One of the latter, Muhammad Afzal, was murdered on March 6 this year.

That evening, Afzal was sitting inside a passenger van in Abbottabad city’s garrison area. According to his nephew, Faizur Rehman, who was accompanying him, an armed man, Abdul Hameed, appeared there along with two others, Mosam Khan and Bazameer, and opened fire at Afzal. Hit by several bullets, he died on his way to a hospital.

The incident took place near a police station. A policeman posted there says he rushed to the site of the gunfire – a nearby van terminal – as soon as he heard about it. When he reached there, he saw a young man trying to escape. The policeman followed him and caught hold of him. He was carrying a loaded handgun and a spare magazine with 10 bullets in it. His name: Faizur Rehman. The gun he was carrying was licensed under the name of his uncle, Afzal, who carried it with him all the time.

Police officials in Abbottabad say Rehman has changed his statement about the incident several times. If there were any assailants as he claims and one of them fired at Afzal as he describes, the police ask, how did Rehman escape the bullets given that he was sitting closer to the rear opening of the van than his uncle — thus, being more exposed to firing from outside.

They are also sceptical of Rehman’s claim that he pulled out the gun from a holster tied to Afzal’s waist to fire back at the attackers. If so, they ask, how did he find time amid all the emergency caused by the attack to lay his hands on the additional magazine as well?

The police claim to have an eyewitness, Kaleemullah, a tribesman from Bajaur tribal district, to corroborate their version. He saw a roadside vendor – who also came from Bajaur – being hit by a bullet that had gone through Afzal’s body. When Kaleemullah rushed to help the injured vendor, he saw Rehman with the gun which he thought was the source of the bullet that had hit the vendor. Kaleemullah tried to grab Rehman and was fired at from the same gun. He ran away to save his life, he claims, but Rehman chased him and shot him injured at the second floor of a nearby cloth store.

A forensic report also states the bullets found in Afzal’s body and the one that injured Kaleemullah were both fired from the same pistol recovered from Rehman. The police have arrested him and lodged a case against him for the murder of his own uncle.

Dr Farzana Bari, an Islamabad-based academic and women’s rights activist, who has been following the whole video clip saga since its beginning, says Afzal came to her house to condole the death of a niece of hers only two days before he was murdered. “His nephew, Faizur Rehman, was with him,” she says and wonders why he would kill Afzal in a public place while the two stayed in each other’s company all the time.

Surprisingly, the police have also arrested Mosam Khan, one of the two people accompanying Afzal’s attacker. He has been kept in detention for investigation for several weeks now though no case has been filed against him.

Afzal once lived and worked in Mansehra city, in the north-eastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He was married to a girl he loved. She came from a background completely different from his own.

Afzal was a Kohistani tribesman, born and brought up in a mountainous village in Kolai-Palas region (which was made a district in 2017 after separating it from Kohistan district); his wife was a city dweller who belonged to a Hindko-speaking family of Abbottabad city.

Afzal was quite enterprising. At various stages in his life, he ran a tailoring shop, worked as a clerk with a lawyer, sold tickets for the government-run buses that connect the Gilgit-Baltistan region with the rest of Pakistan and traded bee honey. He also studied law in his spare time. Two of his younger brothers – Gul Nazar, a college student, and Bin Yasir, a manual labourer – also lived with him.

Their father, Narang, had a big family — seven sons and a daughter. He belonged to a tribe called Salehkhel and lived in Gadaar village along the Karakoram Highway some 160 kilometres north from Mansehra. The village had only three other families that came from the same tribe as Narang’s. The members of another tribe, Azadkhel, comprised 75 per cent of the local population of around 200 households. The rest belonged to two smaller tribes.

Before he died of old age about 20 years ago, Narang worked as a tailor. He also owned a small patch of land in Gadaar where his sons worked hard and produced over 20,000 kilogrammes of corn every year. His large family lived comfortably, if not luxuriously.

His sons also enjoyed considerable respect among their fellow villagers. One of them would lead prayers at a local mosque. Life for his progeny was peaceful and decent.

Sometime in 2010, Nazar and Yasir travelled from Mansehra to Gadaar to be with their family. One night during their visit, four local girls – Siran Jan, Begum Jan, Bazeegha and Amina, all from Azadkhel tribe – came to their house. They sat down in a room along with the two boys and, after a brief conversation, started singing to the beat of their own clapping — all our lives we have lived in purdah... One of the boys, Nazar, danced and the other, Yasir, recorded the singing, clapping and dancing in a mobile phone. This is at least what the families of the girls allege.

Around two years later, the video clip surfaced on the internet. As it went viral, police officials at a local police station registered a case, alleging that “Bin Yasir and Gul Nazar called the girls of Azadkhel caste to their dera where they made obscene video of the girls and made public the same.” Within days, the two brothers were arrested under the Motion Pictures Ordinance and held in custody for six and a half months.

Nazar and Yasir deny meeting the girls. They say someone mixed a video clip of Nazar’s dance, made at an uncle’s wedding, with a video of girls singing and clapping. Nobody takes their claim seriously.

On December 18, 2012, Nazar and Yasir were acquitted after a trial court found that the video was neither obscene nor disseminated by the two. They immediately shifted to Lahore as a security measure.

Two of their elder brothers, Afzal and Gul Shahzada (who worked as a tailor in a valley below his own village), had by then shifted to Allai, a former princely state, in Battagram district, halfway between Mansehra and Kolai-Palas. A powerful Allai landowner had offered them protection against any hostilities from the Azadkhel tribe. Nazar and Yasir, too, joined them there a few days later.

Three other Salehkhel families living in Gadaar also moved to Allai — leaving behind Narang’s three sons, their wives and many children.

Nobody knows what happened to the girls. Police in Kolai-Palas say that an Azadkhel jirga assembled soon after the video clip emerged. The participants of the jirga ruled that those who appeared in the video were chor — thieves. And, as is the local custom in such cases, they decided the girls, the woman who took them to Narang’s house and the two boys were all liable to be killed since they had hurt the honour of the whole Azadkhel tribe.

Afzal did not want these punishments to materialise. Soon after his brothers were taken into police custody, he started approaching journalists and human rights activists, alerting them that the lives of the girls in the video were in danger. If anything, his efforts had a contrary effect: local people turned against him. They were incensed that he was disregarding tribal traditions that govern interaction between men and women who are not related by blood. His demands for the protection of the girls were seen as a transgression that brought dishonour to the whole Kohistan region steeped in a conservative culture.

Within days, though, his voice started resonating elsewhere.

On June 4, 2012, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the then chief justice of Pakistan, took a suo moto notice of reports that the girls might have already been killed. He immediately directed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police to find out what was going on in Gadaar.

A police report presented during the next hearing refuted what was already public knowledge in many parts of Kolai-Palas. They said that no jirga had been held over the video, let alone anyone having killed the girls featuring in it. Justice Chaudhry asked police officials if they had met the girls. They said they had not because the tribal tradition of purdah would not permit that.

As proceedings that day moved towards a close, Justice Chaudhry spotted Bari among the audience in the court and told the police to take her to Gadaar to investigate the case again. He also directed Rehman Malik, the then federal interior minister who was also present in the court, to arrange a helicopter to fly Bari and police officials to the village.

Bari thought that she should take some other people along with her. She contacted the National Commission on the Status for Women (NCSW) to recommend some names for the purpose. She received three names: Shabeena Ayaz (who works with Aurat Foundation, an Islamabad-based non-government organisation focused on women’s rights), Dr Fouzia Saeed (a researcher, writer and women’s rights activist) and Riffat Inam Butt (an NCSW representative).

All the three women agreed to accompany Bari. With their inclusion, what originally was to be a police probe became a fact-finding mission.

When the members of the mission flew into the Kolai-Palas area, they could not go straight to Gadaar because the village, being located on a high cliff, had no suitable place for a helicopter to land. They, instead, landed in Sartay, a village nestled in the valley below.

The residents of Gadaar had been informed about the visit but none of them were there in Sartay to meet the mission. They were still in their village high up in the mountains. If the members of the mission wanted to meet the families of the girls, they had to either climb up the mountains or wait for the villagers to climb down.

Instead of waiting in Sartay, the members of the mission decided that they would climb halfway up and asked the villagers to climb halfway down. Everyone agreed.

The trek uphill was arduous so Saeed decided to stay back. The other women, too, had to use police batons for support to climb upwards. After an hour and a half, they reached a place where one of the girls in the video, Amina, was present to see them. “We were informed that other girls could not come down because they were too high up in the mountains,” says Bari.

The members of the mission told the Supreme Court during the next hearing that they could only meet one of the girls in the video. The court then formed a judicial commission, to be headed by an additional district and sessions judge, Munira Abbasi, to probe further and submit its report after 10 days. The commission was to also include all the three women who had met Amina.

On the day its members were scheduled to leave for Gadaar, again in a helicopter, Bari turned up at a helipad in Islamabad to find that Ayaz, Saeed and Butt were not there. In their place, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the then provincial information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Bushra Gohar, a member of the National Assembly representing the Awami National Party that then headed the coalition government in the province, were waiting for her.

Bari says Gohar told her that other commission members had been informed about the visit’s schedule and still they did not turn up. When Bari called the three herself, they said they had not heard from the authorities responsible for arranging their visit.

(Gohar says she did not have anything to do with who should have been in the commission and who should not. The terms of reference for the commission were made by the Supreme Court and conveyed to the head of the commission, she says. “I was asked by then spokesman of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [government] Mian Iftikhar Hussain to accompany [the members of the commission] to Kohistan.” Hussain says he wanted to accompany the commission in order to “provide them administrative-level facilitation” and that he was “not supposed to call the members of the commission…[They themselves were] supposed to ensure their timely presence at the helipad.”)

Gohar then insisted, according to Bari, that they should leave immediately because they also had to pick judge Abbasi from Abbottabad.

Their helicopter landed again in Sartay. Azadkhel tribesmen, including the families of the girls, were waiting for them inside a tent there. They had brought two girls with them whom they introduced as Siran Jan and Begum Jan. Amina was not there this time round (because the earlier fact-finding mission had already told the Supreme Court that she was alive) while Bazeegha could not make it because she was reported to be pregnant and, therefore, could not travel.

“There was a strong resemblance between the girls present in the tent and those in the video,” says Bari but, she adds, they were not the same. She says she immediately protested that the girls showed to them were not the ones in the video. “The moment I said this, both Bushra Gohar and Munira Abbasi hastened to convince me that they were, indeed, the same girls,” she says. “I was confused but I had to go with what others said.”

Next day when Bari went to a meeting with Abbasi, she had already written a report, stating the girls they had met were the same as in the video. Bari “wrote a dissenting note”, saying that she did not agree with the conclusion reached by Abbasi.

(Gohar disagrees with this account. She says: “The Munira Commission recommended [a] forensic analysis of the new photos [and the] old stills taken from the video and [the] verification of [the girls’] finger prints.”)

Upon receiving the report, the chief justice closed the case by ruling that “no sign and evidence whatsoever” was found regarding the “murder of the said girls”. He cited the commission’s account of its meeting with the girls and “the statements of the girls, recorded on the spot by the commission/judicial officer,” as the reason for having reached the conclusion he reached.

He also added a caveat though: since there is a dissenting note in the commission’s report, the case can be reopened if and when any evidence emerges to contradict the report’s findings.

Bari continued to look for that kind of evidence.

She reached out to a foreign journalist to help her analyse the girls’ photos. The journalist connected her with a Britain-based company – Digital Barriers – that studied the photos and reported to her on February 25, 2013 that there was just a 40 per cent resemblance in one case; in the other, the resemblance was only 14 per cent.

Bari wrote a letter to Justice Chaudhry and shared these findings with him but he did not respond to her directly. The Supreme Court, instead, informed her through the vice-chancellor of Quaid-e-Azam University, where she was teaching at the time, that the case could not be reopened on the basis of the facts she had provided to the court. The court’s missive issued on April 16, 2013, stated: “No further action is called for.”

While all this was happening in Islamabad, Afzal’s three brothers, Sher Wali, Shah Faisal, and Rafiuddin – who were still living in Gadaar – were allegedly killed by the members of Azadkhel tribe on January 3, 2013. They – wrongly – believed that they faced no threat because they were neither in the video nor were they involved in its dissemination. Even traditions that people follow in this part of the country in matters of tribal honour did not, in this particular case, require that they be killed.

On February 8, 2014, Maulana Dildar Ahmed, a former member of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly from Kohistan, held a press conference. He alleged that all the four girls featured in the video, as well as the one who took them to Narang’s house, had been murdered.

His allegations prompted another round of litigation. Afzal filed a petition at a court in Dasu, the headquarters of Kohistan district, for the production of the girls. The families of the girls moved the Peshawar High Court against his petition, pleading that no action be taken on it because another petition by him to reopen the probe into the video and its aftermath was already pending hearing at the Supreme Court. The high court granted their request.

Afzal and NCSW, that had also become a party to his petition in Dasu, challenged the high court ruling at the Supreme Court where it was heard by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan. After hearing the parties concerned, he set up another commission – on November 10, 2016 – comprising Kohistan’s district and sessions judge, Shoaib Khan. The justice directed the commission to meet the girls to verify if they were alive and living a normal life.

Shoaib Khan went to Gadaar along with a woman police officer, Shahzadi Noshad Gillani. Azadkhel tribe produced some girls, one by one, in front of the two but did not allow them to be photographed.

The report that judge Shoaib Khan submitted to the Supreme Court on December 2, 2016 stated: “The girls produced were observed [to be] extremely nervous and frightened. They were hardly able to respond to queries about them… [They had] incompatible reflexes and face expressions. In response to most of the queries, it was commonly observed that they were supplied with words from elders …especially about their ages and husbands.”

The tribe claimed that the first girl produced before the commission was Amina. “By appearance, she was about 14/15 years old. Reportedly, the video was shot back in the year 2010 and [it] surfaced [on the internet] in 2012. If we subtract the six years from [Amina’s] age, her age at the time of video shooting would be between 8/9 years whereas girls visible in the [video]… look to be aged between 20/22 years back in the year 2010.”

The commission noted another problem too. After it recorded Amina’s statement, she was told to verify it by putting her thumb impression to it. She could not do so because the skin on both her thumbs was burnt. Her fingerprints were all missing.

The second girl produced before the commission was reported to be Siran Jan. “Neither she, nor her father was able to tell her age. By appearance, she was not more than 16/17 years of age… [She] would have been aged 9/10 years [in 2010],” the report stated. Records maintained by the National Database and Registration Authority put Siran Jan’s date of birth at February 2, 1993 which, the commission noted, “made her appearance incompatible with her age”.

The commission similarly found incompatibilities in the appearances of the third and the fourth girls as well. In their cases, the ages given by their families would make them minors back in 2010. The husbands of the girls were also not produced before the commission even when it had given the tribe “clear directions” for their production.

On the basis of its findings, the commission reached the “conclusion that something was wrong”. It noted that the girls produced in front of it “are not [those] allegedly visible in the video.”

For around a year and a half after its report was presented to the Supreme Court, the case did not move forward much because of various procedural reasons. And then Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan retired on May 7, 2018.

Bari later wrote to the Supreme Court to resume proceedings on the report and conduct an early hearing in the case. Justice Saqib Nisar, who was then chief justice of Pakistan, subsequently directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police to inform the court about progress in the case. To comply with the order, a senior police official in Kohistan formed a special investigating team on July 7, 2018.

Since Bari did not trust the police, she asked the National Commission for Human Rights, a government entity, to include some representatives of the civil society in the probe team. The commission accepted her request, directing the district police officer of Kohistan on July 20, 2018 to include her and Ismat Raza Shahjahan, a social and political activist based in Islamabad, among the investigators. The commission also told the officer to submit a comprehensive report by the end of that month.

The investigation team was finally able to find out that three girls – Siran Jan, Begum Jan and Bazeegha – had been murdered. The investigators, therefore, recommended that a case be constituted against eight people from Azadkhel tribe.

The case was registered on July 31, 2018 at Palas police station and the tribesmen named in it were subsequently arrested. They were accused of instigating and abetting the killing of the girls as well as of giving false information to investigating agencies in order to protect their murderers.

The counsel of the accused at a trial court later contended that the girls were murdered by Shamsuddin, Siran Jan’s brother. In a strange twist to the case, Shamsuddin was already dead by then — shot in Palas on July 20, 2018. (His cousin Mosam Khan had nominated Gul Nazar and five others as Shamsuddin’s murderers. Mosam Khan himself is now in detention for his alleged involvement in Afzal’s murder.)

The defence council also claimed during the trial that two girls – Amina and the one who had taken the four to Narang’s house – were alive and had, indeed, appeared in the same trial court to record their statements. There is sufficient reason to doubt the second part of his contention. The commission headed by judge Shoaib Khan had raised serious questions about the identity of the girl presented in front of him as Amina. If the same girl was presented in the trial court then, of course, it did not mean that Amina was still alive.

On February 13 this year, the under-trial tribesmen moved the Abbottabad bench of the Peshawar High Court, seeking release on bail. On March 18, the high court ruled that seven of them had hoodwinked investigating agencies by producing other girls in place of the ones in the video. Their bail applications were rejected. Only the eighth person, Habibullah, was allowed to be freed on bail.

In June 2017, a house was set blaze in Bandi Maweshyan, a locality in Gadaar inhabited by the Azadkhel tribe. Three children and two women were burnt to death in the incident. The tribe alleged that Afzal and two other men had set the house on fire.

During his trial, Afzal tried to prove that he was present elsewhere at the time of the incident but the court did not accept his alibi. The Peshawar High Court, too, did not agree to his contention. He spent the next 16 months in jail until the trial court, on finding other evidence of his innocence, acquitted him in February 2019.

Afzal was home hardly for a month when he was shot dead. He had been asking for protection since the summer of 2012, says Abdul Saboor, an Abbottabad-based lawyer who represented Afzal’s brothers in the video leak case.

Two years ago, Afzal had married again: this time into his own Salehkhel tribe. His brothers Nazar and Yasir now take care of his widows and four children. They have also married the widows of their two brothers killed in 2013. Their other surviving brother, Gul Shahzada, who was already married to another woman, has married the widow of their third brother killed that year.

Narang’s once prospering family now has 21 orphan children. And his lone daughter’s young son is facing the charge of having murdered the same uncle his own mother had designated him to guard.

Songs surely can cause grief. Some can even kill.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

The article was published in the Herald's May 2019 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

On a dark night when clouds enveloped the sky and rain and lightning forced people indoors, the residents of a village heard a roar and a thud louder than the loudest of cloud thunder. Many of them rushed out and saw a fighter plane crashed in the nearby fields.

Some of them thought its pilot must have died during the crash. Others surmised that he could be hiding somewhere and might try to attack them. As this chatter was going on, a boy and his sister heard a weak knock at their door. Someone was crying outside in pain. They opened the door and found a man in military uniform standing outside. He was the pilot whose plane had crashed.

For a moment, they hesitated. He was, after all, a combatant from the other side. He could also be armed and might hurt them. But he was also badly injured and bleeding. They called their father and all three helped him get in. They offered him food and water, cleaned and dressed his wounds. Next morning, they quietly went to a nearby military post and handed him over to the soldiers there.

This story was told in a Pakistani textbook back in the 1970s.

Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian pilot whose fighter plane crashed on Pakistani soil late last month, could say that this is not the way villagers in Azad Kashmir treated him. After they saw him descend from the sky with a parachute, they rushed and found him by a stream. Some of them immediately started beating him up and continued doing so until a contingent of the Pakistan Army arrived and rescued him.

The earliest images of the captured Indian pilot showed his face bloodied by the beating he got. A black eye and a swollen cheek were still visible in the images of him being handed over to India on March 1.

What has changed between the 1970s and now? What has made real life Pakistanis behave differently from their storybook version? Context. Mindset.

The context for the textbook story was a government effort to pacify the Pakistani public’s opinion towards India in the aftermath of a lost war in 1971. People were hurt. They were angry. They did not want to accept the creation of Bangladesh even though it was already a reality. They felt deceived and stabbed in the back by India.

The government needed to revive their essential humanity in order for them to see that blind hatred towards their big neighbour to the east was neither helpful nor desirable in making them good human beings — both individually and collectively. A mindset needed to be changed and a new mindset required to be inculcated so that the hurt and anger could be replaced with kindness and care.

Since those distant years, the context has changed drastically. Beginning with the early 2000s, the situation has only gotten worse. A strategically strident, politically powerful and economically confident India has spared no opportunity to browbeat Pakistan in almost every field — from diplomacy to sports and from competition in the international arena to bilateral cultural exchanges. Except for a brief period around the Agra Summit between General Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001 and some helpful behind the scenes diplomacy over the thorny issue of Kashmir more than a decade ago, the two countries have moved apart with a mutual ferocity they previously displayed only during and around wars.

Pakistani attitudes towards India have gone through multiple war, peace and then war again sequences during these years. This could be because Pakistanis have received an overtly aggressive education vis-à-vis India in recent times — one that emphasises their difference from the people on the Indian side of the border. They have been made to see the political and geographical divide between India and Pakistan as a war between good and evil, as a battle between an Atal-Bihari-Vajpayee-neighbourhood bully and its smaller, but virtuous, nemesis, and as a conflict between two religions.

Same has been the case on the Indian side — only more so because a shrill news media there has come to believe that there is money to be made from selling war. The hostility towards everything Pakistani has often manifested itself in rabidly anti-Pakistan rhetoric coming out of India’s chatterati — including politicians, actors, former bureaucrats, ex-soldiers and sometimes even intellectuals and writers.

In its most recent manifestation, this schooling in hate has led to multiple lynchings of Kashmiris working and studying in different parts of India. They are increasingly seen as Pakistani agents out to destroy India.

That the two sides need to change this context and their mutually hostile mindsets to one that induces peace more than it breeds war, is something that cannot be over-emphasised. There is so much to lose from war — money, men, our essential humanity. And there is so much to gain from peace — human development, security, our long-lost kindness and care.

By F.S. Aijazuddin

We are at war, yet never really at war.
We are at peace, never truly at peace.
What is this land in which we live -
seeded by hate, by the sword tilled,
by Death scythe-harvested?

Since neither of us can win,
let our unequal gods meet,
bury arms instead of limbs,
and negotiate a mirror’d defeat.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has achieved the unthinkable: he has pulled his country back from the precipice of peace.

Modi was not even born in April 1948 when India, after it lodged an appeal to the United Nations for help in Jammu and Kashmir, was handed the toothless Security Council Resolution No 47 which called for “a free and impartial plebiscite” to determine the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. That plebiscite was never held. India’s action created a precedent, though, for after that, whenever there was any tension or confrontation between India and Pakistan, one or the other or both scurried to third parties for mediation.

It did not matter whether it was the United Nations Security Council, the United States, the Soviet Union and latterly China. The two irascible neighbours have always expected someone else to coax them into accepting what they doggedly denied each other. For example, the World Bank acted as the broker for the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 and the Soviet Union midwifed the Tashkent Agreement in 1966. It was only in the aftermath of the war over Bangladesh in 1971 that Pakistan and India conceded the unavoidable. They agreed to talk to each other, not at each other.

The preamble to the Simla Agreement of July 1972 was piety incarnate. Both countries admitted that they needed to “put an end to the conflict and confrontation that have hitherto marred their relations and work for the promotion of a friendly and harmonious relationship and the establishment of durable peace in the Subcontinent, so that both countries may henceforth devote their resources and energies to the pressing task of advancing the welfare of their peoples”.

Its first clause reiterated their acknowledgement of the supremacy of the United Nations Charter (that is, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and respect for each other’s sovereignty).

The second clause expressed the resolve of both India and Pakistan “to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them”. Both countries decided to let the Security Council Resolution No 47 hang out to dry while they washed their dirty linen in private.

Before leaving for Simla in the last days of June 1972, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was all too aware that he was hamstrung: over 5,000 square miles of his country’s territory was occupied by India; over 73,900 prisoners of war and 16,400 civilians under protective custody (not protected by the Geneva Convention) were held in concentration camps scattered across India; and the United Nations had been palpably ineffective in getting India to hold the promised plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir. To Bhutto, bringing India to the negotiating table yielded parity to Pakistan with a larger, stronger and adversarial neighbour.

For Indira Gandhi, a concession to hold bilateral negotiations cost her nothing. She had succeeded in removing the United Nations’ flailing fly off the table and she had decided in her mind that she would delay all bilateral negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir by postponing them. She knew that no one – neither the United States nor the Soviet Union – could coerce her to sit at any negotiating table with Pakistan to settle the issue of Kashmir.

By 1999, with Pakistan’s misadventure in Kargil and India’s swift retaliation, the dynamics in the Subcontinent changed. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif hurried to Washington DC and, over a July-fourth holiday weekend, implored President Bill Clinton to protect him from the Indians in Kargil and from his own military in Rawalpindi.

This was an ironical replay of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s panic-ridden appeal during the 1962 India-China conflict. He had approached not the Non-Aligned Movement, of which he was a founder, nor the communist Soviet Union, of which he was a close ideological ally, but President John F Kennedy of the arch capitalist United States for “two squadrons of B-47 bombers” and “twelve squadrons of supersonic fighters manned by American crews”. This plea went unfulfilled.

Even if had been fulfilled, conditions attached to arms supplies by the United States remained clear — weapons sold to the nations in the Subcontinent were intended for use only against communist states, not against each other. That is why during the current crisis, India, which could not prevent the purchase of F-16 fighter jets by Pakistan from the United States, is desperate to have the United States condemn Pakistan for violating the small print of the supply contract.

Subtly, the United States has responded by telling India that F-16s in Pakistan’s possession could not be used offensively. It reminded the Indians that they had been the aggressors in the attack on Balakot. They had violated Pakistan’s territorial boundary, therefore, technically, Pakistan was justified to use F-16s (if it had) in self-defence.

China – “Pakistan’s all-weather friend” – has no such qualms. It does not mind where its arms are used or against whom. In its armaments supply policy, China follows the dictum of its former president Deng Xiaoping: it does not matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. 

China, however, could not have been unconcerned when its JF-17 aircraft (manufactured by Pakistan with Chinese assistance) engaged in actual combat against India’s Russian-designed MiG-21s and Su-30s. It needed to know if the aircraft was any good. The JF-17 passed the test and vindicated Pakistan’s decision to rely upon China rather than the United States, which asks for its money in advance and then delays delivery.

The military cooperation and collaboration between Pakistan and China has come a long way since the middle of the 1960s when China would give in to Pakistan’s petulant and importuning demands for military hardware. Pakistan’s former ambassador to China, Sultan M Khan, in his book, Memories & Reflections of a Pakistani Diplomat (published in 1997), describes a visit to China in 1966 by a Pakistani delegation of senior military personnel. They had come to seek replenishment of their country’s weapons stockpile, depleted by the 1965 war with India.

The ambassador recalled that, on the final day of its stay, the Pakistani delegation called on Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. He told them that “all the requirements on their list would be met” and then remarked that he had seen the Pakistani list but was not sure on what basis the quantity of ammunition had been calculated. One of the Pakistani generals replied that the calculations were based on reserve supplies for 14 days.

This prompted Enlai to ask, “And what happens after fourteen days? How can a war be fought in that short time?” The general explained that Pakistan hoped that, during that time, the United Nations Security Council would meet and call upon both parties to cease fire and withdraw their armed forces to their respective borders.

“Please forgive me,” Enlai said, “if I appear to be confused by your reply. But if the outcome of a conflict has been predetermined to be a restoration of the status quo ante, then why fight at all? Why unnecessarily waste human lives and economic resources? Wars cannot be fought according to a time-table, and one has to be ready for a prolonged conflict.”

That conversation took place in the mid-1960s, before China became a nuclear superpower and before Pakistan developed its own nuclear capability. It was a time when the threat of nuclear attacks and retaliation could begin and end within 48 hours. Many people, even pseudo-statesmen, talk glibly about nuclear war today, as if it is a Republic Day parade in which nuclear-armed missiles will be ignited instead of fireworks.

They have perhaps forgotten that the last time a nuclear device was detonated, it was way back in August 1945 when the United States President Harry S Truman authorised his forces to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In retrospect, Truman’s diary entry about his decision to drop the bombs seems almost naive in its expectation: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between [July 1945] and August 10th. I have told the [Secretary] of War, [Henry Lewis] Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.”

The bomb that detonated 1,900 feet above Hiroshima was nicknamed The Little Boy. It contained about 64 kilogrammes of uranium-235 and took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft. Its descent was slowed by a parachute to allow the B-29 bomber aircraft, which carried and dropped it, to fly clear. The bomb did not distinguish between military and non-military victims nor was it gender sensitive. Everyone within a four-mile radius from where it detonated either died or was unspeakably maimed. On the whole, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of 220,000 people.

Since that searing August, no nation has dropped a nuclear bomb on another. They have tested them, certainly, to assess their efficacy but the world has yet to see a nuclear conflagration. And with good reason. No one will live long enough after a nuclear attack and retaliation anywhere in the world to find and read any diary entries, as we do with Truman’s, about the approval for using those bombs.

Historians trying to make sense of these past few weeks need to understand this background, if only to comprehend why the conflict began with Balakot and had to end with a mirrored de-escalation, brokered by guess who? the United States. Both India and Pakistan have decided that (to borrow Winston Churchill’s juvenile phrase) “it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war”.

The earliest cautious step in this direction was taken in the first week of March when contact between the director generals of military operations (DGMOs) of the two countries was restored. The second step – to ensure that their respective high commissioners return to their posts in New Delhi and Islamabad – is already being undertaken by both sides. The all-important third step would be a meeting between the two prime ministers in a neutral venue.

Saigon last month proved to be unlucky for President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un. Helsinki in 2018 might have succeeded had Trump not tried to avoid any discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russia’s alleged interference in the United States presidential elections in 2016. Tashkent and Simla are out — too many ghosts.

For the time being, the venue of such a prime ministerial meeting is less important than the outcome of the Indian general elections in May 2019. If Modi returns to power with a working majority (albeit in coalition with some smaller parties), he might interpret that as an endorsement of his belligerence. He could blunt that with an invitation to Prime Minister Imran Khan to attend his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi.

Will Imran Khan peck at the olive branch just as Sharif did in 2014? But, as Imran Khan has demonstrated, he has stronger nerves than Sharif showed during Kargil. He has not run to Washington and begged for protection from the Pakistan Army. He stayed put in Islamabad and remained silent.

He may have begun his stewardship, as his detractors still claim, as a ‘selected’ prime minister but they forget that no prime minister in our history has had to face a war within the first seven months of assuming office. In 1939, Winston Churchill came over-prepared for World War II; he had been the Lord of the Admiralty. In 1945, when Truman succeeded Franklin D Roosevelt as president of the United States, he had already served as vice-president, albeit for only a short time.

It is clear from his brief but pithy speeches that Khan does not intend to be swayed by sentiment in his dealings with India. He can afford to wait until the May elections in India and some years thereafter. If there is anyone who is feeling the heat, it is Modi. He is having to watch ministers from his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trip over each other’s lifeless lies. He has had to listen to the Indian Air Force chief who, when asked about the number of actual terrorists killed in Balakot, passed the buck to the government in New Delhi.

Modi’s ambition to violate Pakistan’s borders with a swift, surgical strike has festered into a gangrenous failure. His hopes of uniting India under his singular unquestioned command have disintegrated into a non-nuclear ash, incinerated not by Pakistan but by opposition parties within India.

Had Modi read history instead of trying to make it, he would have learned that on October 22, 1971 just before the India-Pakistan conflict over Bangladesh, Dr Henry Kissinger (then working as an assistant on national security affairs to president Richard Nixon) met Zhou Enlai in Beijing. They discussed the fomenting crisis in the Subcontinent. Enlai had already conveyed to Kissinger China’s principled stand on the sanctity of international borders and on non-interference.

Kissinger’s reply has not lost its relevance even after 48 years: “[United States is] totally opposed to Indian military action against Pakistan. I do not normally see ambassadors, but I have warned the Indian ambassador [L K Jha] on behalf of the President that if there is an attack by India we will cut off all economic aid to India. We have told the Russians of our view, and they have told us they will try to restrain the situation, but I am not sure that I believe them. We believe there is a good chance that India will either attack or provoke the Pakistanis to attack by driving the Pakistanis into a desperate action in the next month or two.”

A generation of Indians and Pakistanis lived through the subsequent Armageddon. Another generation has these days seen a vision of the next Armageddon. They see no future dying in it.

By Siddharth Varadarajan

Just when we thought India-Pakistan relations had hit rock bottom, a suicide blast on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) travelling from Srinagar to Jammu has helped push the bilateral relationship several notches further down. The attack exacted the highest death toll for a single incident over the 30 years of insurgency in Kashmir.

Its scale (more than 40 troopers were killed) and its timing (coming just weeks before what is going to be a closely fought general election in India) were destined – and perhaps even designed – to generate a military response from India. In September 2016, the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had responded to an attack on an army camp in Uri and the threat of “infiltration by terrorists” from the Pakistani side with what it said were “surgical strikes” on “launch” pads across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir.

Pakistan denied the surgical strikes had taken place but these quickly became part of the political narrative of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inside India. In fact, barely weeks before the Pulwama attack – which, ironically, the 2016 surgical strikes were meant to deter – a Bollywood film, Uri, was released to tremendous public response. Two lines from the film seemed tailor-made for the BJP’s electoral playbook.

“How’s the josh?” the commanding officer of one of the units, tasked with a surgical strike, asks his men and they reply, “High, sir!” And in a pivotal scene, the Indian national security adviser says of the war on terror, “This is a new India. We will enter their homes and kill them there.”

With Modi and several of his ministers using “How’s the josh?” phrase, it became politically impossible for the government not to react militarily to the Pulwama attack. This was especially so given the scale of the attack and the fact that its victims came from virtually every part of India. Within minutes of the news of the attack, hypernationalist television anchors quickly upped the ante, demanding that the government take military action against Pakistan.

A day later, Modi told a public gathering in Jhansi that he had authorised the military to give a fitting reply to the Pulwama attack at the time and place of its own choosing. He also told his audience that India needed a strong government and that they should strengthen his hands once again in the election.

While the nature of the Indian response was more or less hard-coded into the circumstances in which the attack occurred, Pakistan did not help matters by prevaricating in its initial statements. The Foreign Office in Islamabad issued a mealy-mouthed statement only to revise it quickly. Notwithstanding his offer to move on any actionable evidence India provides against the Pulwama plotters, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s own statement on February 19 was seen by the Indian side as lacking in sensitivity.

He could have helped defuse the tension which was clearly building up by immediately initiating a crackdown against the Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leaders. Muhammad Hassan, the official spokesperson of the militant organisation, was, after all, quoted in all Srinagar-based newspapers as claiming credit for the attack.

A video recording of a young man from the Indian side of Kashmir was also available in which he had acknowledged the Jaish’s role in the Pulwama blast. The fact that the Pakistani establishment was “in touch” with the Jaish has been admitted by no less a person than Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, albeit indirectly, in an interview to the BBC.

Instead of acting against the Jaish and its leader, Masood Azhar – as it was obliged to do given its international commitments and as it ought to have done given its own national interest – the Pakistani establishment went into lockdown. At an official briefing, the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Asif Ghafoor, not only failed to acknowledge the possibility of the Jaish’s involvement in the Pulwama attack but he also went on to insinuate that the attack on the CRPF (and, indeed, a host of other high-profile terrorist incidents) might actually be false flag operations.

He warned India against taking any military action and said Pakistan would “surprise” its neighbour with its response and would “dominate the escalatory ladder”. For added measure, and with an eye on the international community, Major General Ghafoor brought in the nuclear factor by referring to the convening of a meeting of Pakistan’s National Command Authority which supervises the country’s nuclear weapons.

By this point, it was clear the die was cast. Pakistan knew Indian military action was coming and India knew the Pakistani military would strike back. Neither side had any sense of the specifics but India was confident it could contain the danger of escalation.

Since the Jaish was seen as the public face of the Pulwama attack, the Indian side decided it would use its military to send a message to the militant organisation and its support infrastructure inside Pakistan. In the early hours of February 26, India launched an aerial strike against what it said was a Jaish training facility near Balakot, a town in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, many kilometres inside the LoC.

Major General Ghafoor scooped the Indians by breaking the news of the airstrike to the world’s media via Twitter at around 6:30 am. He also declared the attack to have been unsuccessful. Later the same day, the Indian foreign secretary held a press conference to say that a “large number” of terrorists and their trainers had been killed in an intelligence-led “non-military pre-emptive strike” on a Jaish target.

The details of the airstrike are still not clear since neither India’s Ministry of External Affairs nor its Ministry of Defence or the Indian Air Force have provided any details on record. Going by the accounts of India’s reputed defence writers, it does appear as if the operation involved the deployment of four Mirage 2000s of the Indian Air Force near but not across the LoC. These planes fired precision-guided munitions in ‘stand-off’ mode on to a madrasa complex that sits atop a hillock at Jabba village south of Balakot.

The fact that Pakistan has not allowed reporters access to the madrasa suggests the Indian airstrikes did cause damage. The extent of the physical damage and the casualty rate, however, remain, unclear and will likely be debated by image analysts and munitions specialists for months if not years to come. Indian politicians have put out figures like “350 terrorists killed” for public consumption, ignoring the fact that the metric for measuring the effectiveness of the airstrike is not necessarily a body count but the message that was sent to a group like the Jaish: that it should not consider any part of Pakistan to be a safe haven.

The airstrikes were also designed to send a message to the Pakistani establishment and to the world’s big powers. For the former, the Indian message was that its strategy of using jihadi groups as a reserve army would henceforth involve military costs. For the latter, the message was that New Delhi would no longer consider itself constrained by Western fears of Indian kinetic operations triggering the dreaded ‘nuclear flashpoint’.

For the nuclear bluff to be called, it was essential that any Pakistani military response be brushed aside and not responded to. That, in turn, required the Pakistani military response to be calibrated in such a manner that it could tell India it had the ability to pay back in similar coin while not actually striking in a way that wider hostilities get triggered.

In the event, Pakistani military chose the tactic of aerial ingress and the targeting of military facilities. While the Pakistani military spokesperson said the Pakistan Air Force deliberately detargeted at the last minute so as not to escalate, the Indian side simply says the Pakistan Air Force “missed” its targets.

Whatever the truth in these claims and counter-claims, the fact is that Pakistan was able to ‘respond’ militarily to India’s strike in Balakot in a manner that Indian military officials described as “an act of war”. Yet, this tit-for-tat action drew the hostilities to a close without either side contemplating the next step up the ladder of escalation.

The downing of an Indian MiG-21 and the capture of an Indian pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, certainly played its part in the de-escalation, especially since the Indian side also claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16. Pakistan denies this but the truth will only be known with certainty when the United States conducts its next round of end-use verification — an exercise that will involve, at the very least, an inventory count.

From the Indian point of view, the first-order risk that the strike in Balakot entailed – of gradual or even open-ended escalation – appears to have been contained. But there is a wider risk involved here: of getting locked into a predictable military response each time a terrorist group launches a major strike inside India. This means it is the terrorists and their backers who keep the initiative on their side, drawing India out and escalating tension whenever they wish to.

The swift return of the Indian pilot was a shrewd move on the part of Imran Khan. It was more realpolitik than magnanimity because the longer he remained in Pakistan’s custody, the greater were the chances of conflict escalation.

The fact that none of the world’s major powers and none of the countries in the wider neighbourhood saw fit to condemn India’s military action in Balakot – which Pakistan had officially described as an act of aggression – would also have weighed on the minds of Imran Khan and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Returning Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, at least, allowed Islamabad to shore up its diplomatic capital and give itself leverage over the big powers to call on India to de-escalate.

Where do India and Pakistan go from here? The Imran Khan government has responded to the aftermath of Balakot with a crackdown against the Jaish and other groups but just how far these measures go is not clear. Judging by the past, Islamabad is likely to take only reversible steps so long as it believes India remains vulnerable in Jammu and Kashmir.

Unlike the years of Pervez Musharraf’s rule in 2000s, when Pakistan seemed committed to an end-game that involved ‘out of the box’ steps in Jammu and Kashmir short of any change in the territorial status quo, Islamabad believes it holds better cards today.

If the desire of United States President Donald Trump’s administration to leave Afghanistan has raised the salience of Pakistan and even made Russia get warm to it, Modi government’s disastrous handling of the situation on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir has also dealt Pakistan back into that game. Yet, the experience of the years before 2001 is proof that Pakistani support – whether ‘moral’ or armed – for militancy in Kashmir is a strategic dead-end that will yield no solution. Worse, Pakistan’s failure to take action against militant organisations will, in the event of further terrorist attacks, only invite further military responses with an uncertain outcome.

On India’s part, the recent crisis is a reminder of just how poorly conceived and untenable its line of ‘talks and terror cannot go hand in hand’ actually is. Attacks in Pulwama, Nagrota, Sunjuwan and other such incidents which happened earlier are all proof of the fact that the absence of talks does not deter or disincentivise terror.

The Balakot airstrike has added one more element to the Indian menu of options but its utility, if any, will be diminished if New Delhi steadfastly refuses to use diplomacy too. Cessation of trade and travel between the two countries is hardly a lever that bothers the jihadi groups. It is a fact that levels of terrorist violence have declined precisely at those times when India and Pakistan were engaging with each other on all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.

Any decision on engagement before the Indian elections is perhaps too much to expect but a meeting between the two sides to open Kartarpur Corridor for Sikh pilgrims has been scheduled. This means progress is certainly possible.

After the election, whoever is prime minister in New Delhi will have to find ways to talk to Pakistan. Balakot and its aftermath gave both India and Pakistan a glimpse of the abyss that lies ahead if the only form of engagement left on the table is military.

This article was originally published in the Herald's March 2019 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Photos by Mohammad Ali, White Star

Relationships

Anchal Mirza fell in love with a 22-year-old man when she was 35. She would talk to her beloved every day before she “bought a ticket and went to see him” in his village in rural Sindh. Soon, they decided to get married. The wedding took place in a marriage hall in Karachi and was attended by Anchal’s friends and members of her community.

After the wedding, her partner said he wanted to take her to his village. She wore her most decent clothes and went with him even though she was apprehensive that his family would not accept her as his spouse. When she reached the village, her worst fears came true. On the very first day, her partner took out his phone from his pocket and switched on a recording of her groans and gasps. She was aghast: the recording had been made during one of her pre-wedding rendezvous as a sex worker. “My blood went cold,” she says. Her partner went mad with rage and started torturing her. His whole family called her a prostitute.

Anchal ran away — arriving back in Karachi and resuming her life in the big city as a sex worker. Looking back at those days, however, she is rather forgiving and says she understands why he was upset. “How can anyone tolerate their spouse getting physical with someone else?”

In a photograph taken around that time, she looks attractive — even seductive: it shows her prominent nose, a heavily made-up face, high cheek bones, jet black hair falling smoothly below her shoulders and an exposed cleavage.

Anchal looks nothing like that now. Her face has become dark and wrinkled, her cheeks have sunk, her hair has visibly thinned and frizzed and her body looks haggard. Around eight months ago, she was diagnosed with hepatitis C. “I lost a lot of weight. I used to cry every night,” she says as she recalls the days and nights before the diagnosis.

Anchal moved to her hometown, Lahore, sometime after her ‘marriage’ broke down but continues to visit Karachi and other parts of Sindh to meet customers. Now that she is ill, she can no longer engage in sex work and works as a manager for some other sex workers. They all live with her in a small house where they also entertain their customers.

Anchal was born as Mirza Waseem in 1980. She was uncomfortable in her male body from the beginning and always wanted to be a woman. She was still a teenager, having passed her 10th grade, when her parents died. Since her siblings did not accept her feminine ways, she had to leave her house and become a sex worker in Lahore. “If you think like a female and dress like one, you also want to join this line of work,” she says.

Her siblings would tell her to stop being a sex worker. They would call her friends, asking them to bring her back home. She also craved their acceptance — but on her own terms. She offered them more than 110,000 rupees so that they could have her turned into a woman through surgeries and accept her as their sister. But they refused. “We would rather piss on such money [given how it is earned],” is how they dismissed her offer.

A few years later, she expanded her clientele to various towns and cities in Sindh and started living in Karachi. It was then that she became romantically involved with her future partner. Since theirs was a marriage between two men, it did not seek approval of the state and the society. Instead, a guru – an older transwoman who has the self-assumed status of being an elder of the community – supervised the wedding ceremony. The marriage deed, though legally unenforceable, had the weight of a whole group of transwomen and their guru behind it. One of its many provisions covered infidelity: the partner found guilty would pay heavy fines to the other.

In retrospect, Anchal would have liked some provision against mental and physical torture as well — and perhaps also a mention of some kind of a medical insurance.

A few months ago, a man poisoned himself in Faisalabad. He survived but the police and his family turned up outside the Karachi apartment of a transwoman, Mehek. They knocked at the door, asking her to come out. She ran away with a friend.

“I met that man at a dance event. He kept giving me money later so that I gave him all my attention. When I did not, he consumed poison,” she says in a recent interview in Karachi.

Mehek’s voice is deep like a man’s but her face is feminine. She dyed her hair blonde a few months ago and is proud of how it compliments her olive skin. She has a long nose and kohl-rimmed eyes that appear to be hiding some mystery.

She also takes time to open up and does not tell much about her early life. It is only after a few meetings that she pulls down her shirt and reveals a faded tattoo on her right breast. It reads ‘Usman’ written in Urdu.

Mehek says she fell in love with Usman when she was 13. “We met at someone’s outhouse. He was drinking and I was looking at the moon. Then I looked at him and he looked back at me. We were in love instantly.” The two were together for the next seven years but then he left her for a woman.

After Usman abandoned Mehek, she took to drugs and alcohol to heal her emotional wounds. When that did not work, she started slashing her forearms. The scars have healed but the pain remains.

What made it worse for Mehek was that Usman’s wife would show up at her house and heckle her loudly, calling her khusra — a Punjabi word for a transwoman. Mehek cursed her back, retorting, “May you never have a baby.”

Those brawls took place a year ago and Usman’s wife has been unable to get pregnant during this time. “There is this popular superstition that the curse of a transwoman does not go unrealised. I never used to believe it but I started doing so after Usman’s wife could not conceive for months,” says Mehek — neither sad nor happy over this turn of events.

Usman recently came to see Mehek and begged for forgiveness. She forgave him but does not know if the curse has ended too.

Shehzadi Rai is a big fan of Indian actress Aishwarya Rai whose last name she has also adopted. She was born a boy – and was named Shehzad – to a father who worked as a deputy manager at the Pakistan Steel Mills in Karachi and a mother who was a school principal in the same city.

Shehzadi left her home soon after she turned 18 and started staying with another transwoman. Later, she moved into a rented apartment with three other transwomen — fearful that her older brother might beat her to death. She now lives in an apartment of her own in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar area.

Shehzadi is lean and lanky. Her hair is long and wavy, her facial features are soft, her lips thin and her almond eyes small. The only apparent sign that she is not a woman is her prominent Adam’s apple. She says she is 30 years old.

Early one evening a few weeks ago, Shehzadi has just woken up and is sitting on the floor inside her house. Like most people in her community, she sleeps during the day and stays awake at night. She stopped being a sex worker a few years ago. She also no longer performs as a dancer at private events — something most young transwomen do for a living.

She, instead, is in relationship with three men whom she calls her ‘husbands’. Together, they take care of all her expenses. Two of them come to see her daily, she says. “We sit together and smoke hashish at night.”

The third one is married. “He introduced me as a friend to his wife,” she says. The wife also became friends with Shehzadi — until she read text messages exchanged between Shehzadi and her husband and found out about their relationship.

Shehzadi has had similar relationships with other men too. One of her former ‘husbands’ gave her one million rupees after she spent time with him in Dubai some years ago. She spent the money on buying the house she now lives in.

Makeovers

It was a cold night in January 2011 when Sarah Gill renounced her identity as a boy and left her family apartment in Karachi’s posh Defence area. She moved to the house of a transwoman she had met through a social media platform. The woman helped her become a dancer and a sex worker. Sarah was only 14 at the time.

Sarah has undergone facial surgery to make her lips fuller and cheekbones higher so that she can look like her idol, Indian film actress Kareena Kapoor. She also gets Botox injections regularly and has had part of her male genitals removed. “The things God did not give me have been given to me by doctors,” is how she describes these changes.

Sarah does look a bit like Kareena Kapoor. Fair and slender, she has thick lips and delicate facial features. Her dyed dark brown hair fall smoothly on her thin shoulders. If anyone sees her in a public place, they will never think that she was born a man.

Now 23 and a fourth-year student of medicine at a private university in Karachi, she is regarded as a ‘sex symbol’ among her fans and friends. Men throw money at her when she performs at dance events and pay her an asking price to have sex with her. “As long as prostitution is helping me earn my medical degree, I don’t mind it,” she says in a matter-of-fact manner.

Sarah lives in a three-room rented apartment in a commercial neighbourhood of Defence area. Her bedroom is painted orange. It has velvet curtains and yellow lights. She shares the place with Payal, another transwoman who, according to some members of her community, has undergone many sex reassignment surgeries (SRS). They claim that her posterior, calves and chest have been reconstructed by surgeons in Thailand. But Payal denies these claims vehemently.

Shehzadi, on the other hand, dreams every night of getting SRS – so that all her male genitals are removed and replaced with female ones – but the cost is prohibitive and the fear of medical complications strong. She knows of a transwoman who underwent SRS but has been left with decomposed genitals.

When Shehzadi was 13, and was still regarded as Shehzad by her family, she recalls, her breasts started growing in size — an unusual development for a boy. Her family sought to ‘fix’ the ‘problem’ through traditional means. Her mother would put an ironed towel on her chest to stop her breasts from growing and a practitioner of indigenous medicine gave her testosterone to consume with milk every night for a year. This led to excessive hair growth on her body.

Five years ago, she took some medical measures in the opposite direction. She got silicone implants to make her breasts look bigger and had a part of her genitals removed. To avoid legal complications, the doctors who did the latter procedure wrote in her medical record that she had undergone radical prostatectomy — a surgical procedure done on those suffering from prostate cancer.

Simmi Naz is a ‘fully-operated transwoman’.

She was born 30 years ago as Asif Ali in Lahore and was initially raised as a boy alongside two sisters. But, much to the wrath of her mother, she would sneak out of her house at night, wearing her sisters’ clothes, jewellery and make-up. Her mother would beat her up, though her father would let her be. By the age of 13, she took up her female name and became a transgender person publicly.

Simmi now lives in a one-room residence in Jinnah Colony, a poor neighbourhood behind Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. She is short, has broad and bulky shoulders, and a big belly.

Simmi has spent a lot of money on reconstructive surgeries. She got breast implants three years ago. The surgery, involving the insertion of silicone gel pads into her chest tissue – costing 100,000 rupees – was done overnight in Lahore, with no follow-up visits required. She was only instructed to keep the stitches warm for a week. A year later, she had female genitalia implanted from Dubai. The procedure cost 500,000 rupees.

Simmi’s reason for undergoing these elaborate and costly surgeries is to attract male attention and, thereby, earn money. “Men come to us when we look like real women,” she says.

The surgeries seem to have worked — at least as far as attracting attention is concerned. Her boyfriend says he cannot take his eyes off her. If she goes to a dance event, more men are attracted to her than to other transwoman. And even though she lives at her boyfriend’s house along with his family, her ex-boyfriend keeps calling her. He wanted to marry her but his family rejected her, calling her a man. That was before she had undergone the surgeries. Now his sisters themselves request her that she marry their brother.

But all is not well with Simmi. Her animated face turns solemn as she complains that the surgeries have left her weak, rendering her unable to dance as she used to. Her bones ache if she does anything strenuous and she irritatingly mentions how various procedures have led to the release of hormones that have caused excessive hair growth on her body — something she did not have to worry about when she was regarded as a man.

She gets a regular laser treatment to rid herself of facial hair and calls a waxing lady home for the removal of bodily hair.

Given a choice, most transwomen in Pakistan will opt to undergo some form of a sex reassignment procedure to complete their transition from being a male to becoming a female. Many of them want to be castrated to decrease the growth of their male hormones. Others want breast implants. Some want both. A complete sex change is termed an orchiectomy and involves the replacement of all genitalia.

The process usually starts with estrogen injections that increase the growth of female hormones and make breasts grow. Before any surgeries are performed, tests for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV – the most common diseases among the transgender community in Pakistan – are conducted to prevent their spread afterwards. (Data put together by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS – UNAIDS – in 2018 states that 5.5 per cent of all members of the transgender community in Pakistan are HIV affected.)

Insertion of breast implants is probably the most widely conducted procedure in Pakistan. A lot of transwomen have gotten implants for as low as 80,000 rupees from unauthorised hospitals operating within residential areas in Lahore and Karachi. “No one knows what is going on inside those hospitals,” says a chest specialist at a private hospital in Karachi.

Some countries – such as Iran, Syria and Egypt – have legalised sex reassignment procedures but there is no clear prohibition or permission for them in Pakistani laws. A urologist at a private hospital in Karachi says there is nothing illegal about them — provided they are necessitated strictly by medical reasons. Some children, he says, are born with either genetic or physiological defects that make the determination of their gender difficult. These defects must be caught early and corrected by medical professionals, he adds. At just his hospital, according to the urologist, 25-30 surgeries are carried out every year on such children.

News media also frequently reports cases in which doctors prescribe and perform sex reassignment surgeries even for adults. For instance, an 18-year-old girl became a boy after undergoing a gender change surgery in December 2018 in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Diamer district; two sisters in Chichawatni town (in Central Punjab) underwent sex reassignment surgeries in 2006 and 2014; in 2013, a woman in Toba Tek Singh (also in Central Punjab) converted to a man through surgeries two years after her marriage.

But, in many other instances, doctors have refused to perform sex change surgeries without explicit permission from legal authorities. Two women – one in Islamabad and the other in Peshawar – moved high courts in 2018 for permission to undergo surgeries for the change of their gender. One of them, 22-year-old Kainat Murad, stated in her petition that she was “almost a male” but could not undergo a sex reassignment surgery because the doctors wanted her to “get the high court’s permission”. The verdict is awaited in both the cases.

Surgeries might be justifiable in all such cases – both in legal and medical terms – but removing one set of human organs and replacing them with another for non-medical reasons is certainly prohibited in Pakistan. In children, it constitutes genital mutilation, says Dr Sana Yasir, Pakistan’s first intersex educator.

The cosmetic surgeries desired by transgender people fall in the prohibited category because, as the urologist says, it is impossible to decide whether they have a medically treatable problem or they are seeking a sex reassignment surgery for some other reason.

Many transwomen in Pakistan still want to – and do – undergo such surgeries. Those who can afford to, get these procedures done by qualified doctors both within the country and abroad. Those who do not have enough money resort to cheaper – and also dangerous – methods. For as low as 15,000 rupees, a guru in a remote rural area will cut the undesired genitalia with crude tools and unsafe mechanisms.

These guru-led surgeries seem like violent orgies. The transwoman seeking the surgery is made to consume alcohol before the procedure so that she does not feel pain. Then her genitals are cut with a sharp knife and the wound is doused with hot mustard oil and some ointment. The whole process is carried out in a secluded place to keep it secret.

Anything can go wrong during these rudimentary surgeries. Anecdotal evidence suggests that transwomen undergoing such procedures usually lose consciousness for an inordinately long time but, to maintain secrecy, they are not taken to any healthcare facilities. In other cases, they receive scars that refuse to heal.

Sometimes a surgery conducted by a guru results in excessive bleeding and also leads to death. If and when a transwoman dies as a result of a surgery gone wrong, she is quietly buried then and there.

Community

On an early winter night in Karachi last year, an all-male gathering inside an empty plot next to a police station in Lyari neighbourhood is waiting for the arrival of some transgender dancers. No woman is allowed inside the venue. It is strictly a men’s-only event. The dancers arrive dressed in revealing female clothes. Over the next few hours, they dance to film and folk music while men congregate around them, cheering them up and also throwing money at them.

Dance events – or ‘functions’, as they are called by those involved in them – are a major source of income for transwomen. They usually take place around midnight. Their locations vary — some are arranged in secluded areas outside big cities, others take place inside ‘safe’ houses or empty lots blocked from public view. These events often become possible with the connivance of the concerned police station.

The function organisers contact performers either through men who have already seen them perform or through their gurus. The modes of communication between the two sides range from phone calls and text messages to various social media platforms. Many performers have their accounts on social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Vigo Video, where they post seductive photos and videos of themselves and receive private messages from prospective clients.

These functions get rowdy and violent quite often. Sometimes men ask dancers for a dance off; on other occasions, they order them how to dance and how not to. Occasionally, they clash over the choice of dancers —different groups supporting different sets of dancers. Fights erupt, sometimes resulting in injuries.

Men also vie to attain the attention of dancers — usually by giving them more money than others. Occasionally, violent force is also used to achieve the same objective.

A good-looking and young transwoman dancer, known among insiders as a mashooq, sits at the top of an internal hierarchy of Pakistan’s transgender community. She also engages in sex work but selectively. Below a mashooq is the professional sex worker, or a peshaver, and then come the beggars, or toli.

Looking as much like a woman as they possibly can is important for pashavers and mashooqs since their earning depends on their looks. The most feminine-looking among them can earn as much as 100,000 rupees per event as dancers. Their sex work also fetches a high price. “We have to do a lot of things to get attention,” Sarah says. This includes attempts to have the best hair, get the most attractive make-up and find the most fitting dresses, etc. “If we wear one dress at a function, we will not wear it again because people notice.”

There are some regional variations in how a mashooq is treated by men around her. In Punjab, sex work is considered dirty. A mashooq doubling as a peshaver is considered impure and loses her appeal. If a mashooq becomes a sex partner of one of the men at a particular function, others present there will not invite her to perform at any other function. The word then spreads about her and she becomes a persona non grata.

Men in Punjab also do a ‘full-body survey’, scrutinising a mashooq from head to toe, says Simmi. Even the feet of a mashooq need to look smooth and fair, she says as she gently rubs a foundation cream on her feet. Some men touch a mashooq’s face to see how much make-up has been applied. Look pretty, they demand, but also look natural.

Not that sex work does not take place in Punjab. It does but it is a discreet and underground affair. This is not the case in Sindh in general and Karachi in particular.

Transwomen also sometimes prefer sex work over dance performances. “I will get 3,000 rupees if I perform at a function in Karachi but I will get around 10,000 rupees if I do sex work twice a night,” says Simmi.

Some mashooqs are so popular that their fans take them abroad both for performances and company. Sarah and her roommate, for instance, were asked to perform in Bangkok recently. There they also found themselves to be in high demand as sex workers. “Pakistani, Indian and Filipina transwomen are most in demand there,” says Sarah, giggling.

While part of a transwoman’s appeal lies in looking like a woman, most men are attracted to her for what she can offer and a woman cannot: she can play both, a catamite and a sodomite.

All this works as long as the bodies of transwomen are young and taut. Once they start wearing out, opportunities to earn money from dancing and sex work also shrink. Most of them then either become gurus or they join a toli to seek vadhai, or alms, by singing and dancing.

Simmi is on the cusp of having to make these choices soon. She plans on working as a dancer and a sex worker for another couple of years and then she will “find an old guru and start seeking vadhai”.

Chhanno is more than 50 years old and lives in a small room in Azam Basti, a slum off Karachi’s Korangi Road. Her lodging was bought years ago by her parents and is part of a bigger structure consisting of many rooms of similar size and shape. These are occupied by her relatives. “I have lived here all my life and I will die here,” she says.

Chhanno, a guru of the transgender community in her area, is obese and dark and spends most of her time inside her residence where she sleeps on the floor and plays with her little nieces and nephews. She has a man’s voice and her hands are rough. In pictures from her younger years, she looks fairer and thinner.

Chhanno attends every celebration in her neighbourhood. If a child is born or if someone is getting married, she will go to their house along with her chelas – or disciples – who will sing and dance in anticipation of vadhai. “The people who perform at functions are different from those who go from house to house to sing, dance and beg,” she says. The latter group is usually older, darker and not so good-looking.

On a Sunday evening late last year, Chhanno is getting ready to attend a pre-wedding event not far from her house. She applies heavy make-up on her face and adorns herself with heavy jewellery. She gets into a pink laacha, a long skirt of sorts that has golden embroidery on it. All the while, she is waiting impatiently for her two chelas – Anjali (who, like many other transwomen, is a trained make-up artist and has worked at a salon in Islamabad) and Aarzoo – to show up. The bride’s family has already reminded her twice that she is running late.

When her chelas finally arrive, all three have a quick, small meal. Then they set out of the room in the setting sun — but only after praying quietly for a few minutes.

Chhanno prays regularly. Being a Christian, she goes to a local church every Tuesday and is warmly welcomed by the nuns there. She also celebrates Christmas with fervour, spending the night before it in worship at the church. On December 25, after early morning service ends at 4:00 am, children in her family decorate her palms with henna. She then visits her neighbours, wishing them a merry Christmas and celebrating with them. She follows the same celebratory routine on Eid days.

Her own guru was a Muslim who told her that every religion was as important as the other. There is no religious discrimination within the transgender community, says Chhanno. “It does not matter what religious beliefs its members have.”

As Anjali and Aarzoo gyrate and sing in their male voices, Chhanno provides the occasional beat with her loud clapping. The audience throws money at them while they perform. The family of the bride also gives them some cash in vadhai – essentially a handout given to have better luck – as they end the performance profusely wishing the bride and her parents well.

Throughout the performance, Anjali and Aarzoo vie for the attention of their guru. They crave her approval and want to be the centre of her attention. This sort of competition often results in odd occurrences: a chela may like to dress herself again if she finds that another chela is looking better than her and is, thus, getting more attention from the guru.

A guru, indeed, is revered by her chelas more than anyone else. “If [my guru] tells me to bring eggs for her, I will get those for her before doing anything else,” says Shehzadi. Though she is relatively young, she has her own chelas who revere her similarly.

Most transwomen in Pakistan try to get into this guru-chela system in order to have access to a stable clientele – both as sex workers and as dancers – and also to protect themselves against exploitation, violence, as well as police raids and arrests. Young transwomen, who have to leave their own families, find alternative families – and also shelters – by joining the guru-run networks. Usually, a guru and her chelas live together in the same house, creating a family structure of their own.

An elaborate ceremony is held when a chela enters a guru’s network. Members of the transgender community are invited from far and wide. Food is served generously. Many song and dance routines are also performed.

The central event of the ceremony is the adoption of the chela by the guru. How it is done varies slightly in different transgender communities. Sindhi gurus pierce the nose of their chelas as a token of acceptance whereas Urdu-speaking gurus put a red dupatta on their chelas’ heads to fomalise their association. A new name is also chosen for the chela –— sometimes by the guru but often by the chela herself.

A guru is as much a mentor, a teacher and a protector as she is a manager. It is the guru whom the organisers of a dance event have to talk to in order to sort out the logistical and financial details — as well as the number of performers required. A guru also guides her novice chelas on how to dress up and how to attract male attention during a performance.

In return for all this, a guru gets a share of the earnings by her chelas. “You have to give to the guru [because she] gives you her tutelage and her name,” says Shehzadi.

The system also works as a survival insurance for ageing – as well as aged – transwomen.

After their looks fade and their bodies grow old, transwomen start performing at vadhai events (that are informal and short compared to events organised by men who seek entertainment). Older transwomen are preferred for vadhai because of a popular perception that their prayers are more likely to be accepted.

This stage in a transwoman’s life also signals the start of her career as a guru — a stage in which she will not be doing anything herself but will be living off her chelas who willingly contribute to her expenses.

A guru also plays an important role in hitching a transwoman with a man — the former providing sex and company and the latter financial security. The guru becomes both the guarantor and the enforcer of the terms and conditions of their relationship.

Some of the strictures of such relationships have been eased with the changing financial needs of young transwomen. Those requiring more money for their upkeep often get into relationships with more than one man and men, too, find it expedient to share expenses with others like themselves.

Like most of their internal affairs in Pakistan, transgender people in the country also have their own particular language that outsiders seldom understand. A male partner is called a girya; a transwoman is known as a moorat — a curious mix of mard (man) and aurat (woman); and a chamka is a man willing to spend money just for the sake of company. The chamkas sometimes also escort transwomen at dance performances.

The transgender language has a sentence structure loosely based on Urdu and a unique vocabulary of at least a thousand words, according to a 2018 paper, Hidden Truth about Ethnic Lifestyle of Indian Hijras, written by Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu, both students at an Indian university. It is used as a survival mechanism by the community, the authors note. It helps them communicate among themselves in times of emergencies and distress, or when they do not want to share their secrets with anyone else but their own ilk.

Transgender people have, in all likelihood, existed in the Indian subcontinent forever — and possibly with all their internal divides. They are variously known as khusras (in Punjabi), hijras (in Urdu and Hindi), chhakas and khadras (in other local languages). The most socially conscious among them want to be known as khawaja saras — a term originally used for eunuchs working for Muslim rulers in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, mainly for communication within the gender-segregated royal palaces.

Others, the educated and politically aware ones, prefer such modern terms as transgender. Many among them do not use any masculine or feminine pronouns for themselves — instead of being addressed as ‘he’ or ‘she’, they want to be addressed as ‘they’.

Biologically, a transgender person may lie anywhere on a spectrum that includes males with partial physiology of females and vice versa. In between, there lies a whole range of transgenders who deviate from the two dominant genders – male and female – in varying biological degrees. The term transgender can broadly cover everyone on this spectrum — from a gender-neutral person to an intersex person. Medical practitioners, however, insist that not all intersex people are transgenders — only those are who at some stage in their lives make a transition from one gender to the other.

There can be more than 30 types of biological conditions in which an individual’s sense of personal identity and his or her assigned gender may not match. In Pakistan, the most common conditions are congenital adrenal hyperplasia – that causes excessive production of testosterone in females, making them develop manly features – and androgen insensitivity syndrome — that makes a genetically male person resistant to male hormones, giving them some or all of the traits of a woman. Many of the latter end up being transwomen.

Occasionally, biology plays its own tricks and gives the same person both male and female organs — making him or her an intersex person. The urologist from Karachi cites the case of a bearded Muslim cleric who needed to have a surgery for the removal of hernia. “When we opened him up in the operation theatre, it turned out that he had a uterus and ovaries,” he says.

According to Dr Sana Yasir, Pakistan’s first medical educator on gender issues, 1.7 per cent children are born as intersex globally. Given that Pakistan’s population is more than 210 million according to the latest census, their total number in the country should be as high as 3.57 million.

Almost all of them seem to be registered as either male or female as their actual number does not show in census records which puts the number of all types of transgender people in Pakistan only at 10,000. A vast majority of intersex people either do not know about their intersexuality or they – or their families – hide it.

Even though the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2017, passed by Parliament in May 2018 under the directives of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, provides that transgender people have the right to register themselves as a third gender, most are yet to exercise this right.

Apart from biological variations, there are also many psychological scenarios in which people may not like the genders assigned to them at birth. Someone born a woman may want to be a man. Such individuals are called transmen. Or a man by birth may seek to be seen as a woman. Such people are called transwomen. They could be at various psychological stages of transition between the two genders. Transvestites – people who dress and behave like members of the opposite sex – are perhaps the most obvious manifestation of these psychological phenomena.

The society at large, though, does not recognise these biological complications and psychological compulsions. It portrays members of the transgender community as being sexually deviant, socially shameful and religiously undesirable.

Activism

Mani’s first job was as a physical education teacher at a girls’ school. He was only 18 years old at the time. The job did not pay him well so he started working for a shipping company. This was before he made his transition from a woman to a man.

Mani always had many masculine traits growing up. He wore jeans and a T-shirt at home. People in his neighbourhood called him a ‘dada’ (goon) affectionately. Yet, he took time to figure out his gender. “Because we lack access to medical technologies, we do not know a lot about ourselves,” he says as he explains reasons for the delay.

Mani was around 22 years of age when he realised that he wanted to be a man. When he turned 27, he finally told his parents about his wish.

“Our families are very weird,” he says. “When, while still being a woman, I came back from work, my father would say here comes my sher (lion). Even my mother would say that my mind worked just like that of a boy’s.” When, however, he finally decided to call himself a man, his parents could not accept it. “They said Allah did not make you a man. All of a sudden the lion became a lioness.”

After coming out, Mani left his hometown (which he wants to keep unidentified) and moved to Lahore along with his girlfriend. He was able to have his gender changed to male on his Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) a couple of years ago and runs a foreign-funded non-governmental organisation (NGO), HOPE, to work for transgender rights.

On a day early in January, he is sitting behind a well-polished wooden desk in his office that doubles as his residence near Lahore’s Cavalry Ground area. A portrait of a woman holding a candle hangs above him as he keeps playing catch with a small ball on his desk. He is dressed in an oversized grey jacket and loose pants, making him look bigger than he actually is. His eyes are dark and piercing and a thin stubble covers his pale face.

Transmen like him have different issues from the ones faced by transwomen, he says in an interview. “We are raised in female bodies so we have to face whatever a female faces in our society.”

For one, transmen do not want to leave their families — as most transwomen do. “Our biggest problem is that we are too attached to our families to leave them,” says Mani. “Our families also do not abandon us.”

Transmen are not welcome in the transwomen community — because they neither want to dance nor indulge in sex work. They also find it difficult to fit into the society at large after coming out because of having little experience of life outside home.

They similarly face many bureaucratic hurdles before they can register themselves as transmen. If a woman goes to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and wants to be identified as a man, the officials will not immediately accept her request, Mani says. He will have to provide many medical records to prove his gender.

This could well be because of the social impacts of such a gender change. “For instance, if a woman claims to be a man, her inheritance rights change,” Mani says.

Only legal and administrative reforms will be insufficient to deal with problems arising out of such a situation. “A lot of changes need to take place in the society in order for these things to become acceptable.”

[“Y]ou will be surprised to know that a million transgender women [in Pakistan] are living … double lives,” said Jannat Ali, at a TED Talk event held in Lahore in 2017. “Some who come out are shunned by the society and kicked out by their parents,” she added and argued that coming out is a turning point for a transperson “because coming out, living life as naturally as possible, is very important for your physical health, for your sexual health and for your mental health”.

Jannat hails from Lahore. She is a business administration graduate from a private university but her interest always lay in dance. She finally got the chance to learn it from Nahid Siddiqui, one of Pakistan’s best known classical dancers.

Jannat is also the founder of Saathi Foundation, a Lahore-based non-governmental organisation that works on issues related to the transgender community. One of its main objectives is to provide vocational training to transwomen so that they do not have to resort to selling their bodies and begging.

Sitting in a lavender room in her NGO’s office near Lahore’s Chauburji area, she says she has attended pride marches in Copenhagen and Amsterdam and has always been keen to hold a trans pride march in Pakistan as well.

Her hair comes undone from a loosely tied ponytail as she describes how dozens of transpersons carried blue and pink flags, as well as colourful banners and balloons, and marched from the Lahore Press Club at Shimla Pahari to the Alhamra Arts Council on The Mall on December 29, 2018. The participants were dressed in wedding clothes and were decked out in heavy jewellery. Some of them rode in flower-covered horse carriages while others danced all the way.

At the end of the march, they held a press conference and then presented a number of performances. These included theatre plays, skits and music by Lucky and Naghma, transwomen who have performed in a Coke Studio song.

“Members of the khwaja sara community are always celebrating someone else’s birth or wedding but we never get to celebrate ourselves. This trans pride was an opportunity to do just that,” Jannat says.

It, though, did not attract as much publicity as she had hoped. The press coverage was scant and the money collected for it – through donations – fell short of the expenditure, says Jannat. She still has to pay 34,000 rupees to the arts council in outstanding rent for using its premises.

The march nevertheless marked an important milestone in transgender activism in Pakistan. An earlier milestone was a petition moved by a lawyer, Dr Mohammad Aslam Khaki, in 2009, asking the Supreme Court of Pakistan to direct the government to officially recognise transgender people as being different from men and women. The petition was prompted by public outrage over mistreatment and sexual abuse experienced by transwomen returning from a wedding at the hands of some policemen in Taxila. The petitioner also sought the court’s directions for ensuring the economic and social welfare of the community so that they did not have to resort to sex work, dancing and begging.

The petition was heard by a three-judge bench, led by the then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. In June 2009, the court ordered the four provincial governments to carry out surveys to ascertain the size of their transgender populations, identify facilities available to them and suggest ways and means to punish parents who give away their transgender children to gurus. The judges also directed NADRA to register transgender individuals as members of a third sex.

Following the court’s directives, Pakistan became one of the few countries in the world to legally recognise the third sex. By 2012, transgender Pakistanis got the right to have their gender mentioned in their CNICs.

In 2017, Nadra made another important change in its rules for the registration of transgender people: they no longer need to present the CNICs of their parents; they can also get registered by presenting the CNICs of their gurus. This has helped many who have either left their families or have been abandoned by their parents.

Also, as a result of the Supreme Court orders to count the transgender population, the government included them for the first time in the national census held in the first half of 2017. The census revealed that the total population of transgender people in Pakistan stood at 10,418 — constituting about 0.0005 per cent of all the people living in the country.

The number is deemed incredibly low by many transgender activists. Some of them cite a 2018 survey by UNAIDS that puts the population of the transgender community in Pakistan at 52,646. Even this figure is disputed by many. News reports suggest that the number of transgender Pakistanis can be anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000. “Karachi alone is home to more than 15,000 transgender individuals,” claims Bindiya Rana, a transgender activist and the chairperson of an NGO, Gender Interactive Alliance.

If nothing else, the controversy over their population suggests that the conversation about transgender people and their rights is no longer static and limited to a few activists. The biggest proof of this came about when Parliament – after prolonged consultations with many transgender rights activists – passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act last year. The act grants the transgender community many sought-after rights including the right to be identified as they perceive themselves to be, the right to obtain a driver’s license and passport, the right to inheritance, the right to vote and contest in elections, the right to assemble and the right to access public goods, public services and public spaces.

The act provides that there should be no discrimination towards transgender people in education, employment, healthcare provision and transportation. It also includes provisions for the safety and security of transgender people against all kinds of harassment and abuse, the setting up of shelters, vocational training institutions, medical facilities, counseling and psychological care services, and also separate jail wards for them. Importantly, it stipulates that anyone forcing a transgender person to beg could attract up to six months in prison or a fine of up to 50,000 rupees — or both.

But, as is the case with almost every law in Pakistan, the implementation of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act leaves a lot to be desired. Socially and economically, says Bindiya, the community is still where it was before. “Little has been done to support it.”

Aradhiya Rai is perhaps taller than most women in Pakistan. She has an expressive round face made prominent by a pointed chin, parted in the middle. On a recent winter day, she is wearing a royal blue kameez, looking a bit tight on her broad shoulders, coupled with black tights and a black dupatta.

Last year, when she was 19, Aradhiya got a job at a fast food outlet in Karachi. She was initially hired as a cashier but was later moved to the kitchen because customers would get offended by her presence at the cash counter. She was repeatedly asked by her employer to cut her hair even though she kept them tightly hidden under a cap. Since she was unwilling to cut her hair for a job that paid her only 14,000 rupees a month, she was made to leave on the pretext that she took medical leave without proper documentation.

Mehlab Jameel, a graduate of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, who does research work for various NGOs on transgender issues, says such job-related discrimination towards transwomen is widespread. They have to hide their identities especially in order to get low-paying menial jobs, Mehlab says, and have to dress and behave like men to retain those jobs. Otherwise, Mehlab adds, they fear they will never be accepted at the workplace.

On the higher rungs of the social ladder, says Mehlab, transgender people get more and better job opportunities — such as working as make-up artists in salons, beauty parlours and even television studios. But those on the lowest rung always face the harshest discrimination, making it difficult for them to continue with their jobs and many of them soon return to the traditional ways of earning their livelihood, Mehlab argues.

Aradhiya narrates how discrimination is not limited to workplaces. During a recent trip to a fast food joint with her brother, she was pulled out of the women’s toilet by a male staffer. Letting transwomen use women’s toilet is not our policy, he informed her.

Transportation is another problem. Even though some restaurants and food outlets in Karachi have a policy to hire transgender people, Aradhiya is unable to find a convenient mode to commute to work and get back home safely in Gulistan-e-Jauhar area on a daily basis. Rickshaws and taxis are expensive and public transportation is embarrassing if not entirely dangerous, she says. “If I go into the women’s compartment, they get uncomfortable but I myself feel uncomfortable if I have to travel in the men’s compartment,” she says.

A lot of discrimination and abuse are either not seen as such or blamed on the victim. Aradhiya claims being treated as a curious object while she was studying in secondary school. Her teachers would invite her to their rooms to introduce her to other staff members as an odd person.

She also recalls how a senior in school raped her when she was 12 years old. When she reached out for support, those around her blamed her for it. They criticised her for the way she carried herself. She suffered depression over the next five years but told no one in her family about the rape.

It was only a few years later that she confided in her brother and started meeting others like her, eventually becoming a transgender activist three years ago. Although she is known in her neighbourhood for her activism, she says she still faces threats. People make prying glances into her home and send her messages telling her that they know where she lives and where she moves.

A few weeks ago, Aradhiya organised a well-attended music event. To others it might have seemed like a huge success. For her, it provided yet another proof that the society at large does not accept her the way she is. “Men in the crowd were looking at me in a perverse manner,” she says.

Aradhiya works with a microfinance organisation at a school in Karachi and is critical of the way NGOs treat transpersons. They get in touch with members of the community only as a publicity stunt, she alleges. They do interviews and take photographs but do not provide jobs or even maintain regular contact with them, she says.

Though Aradhiya is part of the guru-chela system, she steers clear of sex work. Her guru keeps asking her to start sex work in order to support her family but she says she does not want to. “My guru says to me raddi ki bhi qeemat hoti hai (even waste paper can fetch a price).” Then she asks her: “What is the price you are fetching?”

The writers are staffers at the Herald.

This article was originally published in the Herald's February 2019 issue under the headline 'Caught in the middle'. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Muhammad Shabbir was murdered in Karachi by some unidentified assailants in July 2011. He was 42 years of age at the time. He left behind his 32-year-of ld widow, Rabia, and a 15-year-old son. Both of them were ill-prepared to earn a living on their own. Rabia had no experience of working anywhere except at home and her son was too young to work.

They did not have to worry much though.

Shabbir was associated with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a party that treated his murder as a political one, carried out by its rivals. Before long, his widow was getting a monthly stipend from the Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation (KKF), an MQM-affiliated charity operating since 1988. The money helped her run her household and finance her son’s education.

And then towards the end of 2016 the flow of funds stopped. Her son was only a year into his bachelors in electronics. Though she has not taken him out of college, she says, “It has been very hard for us to meet our expenses without KKF’s help”.

Families of 4,500 MQM activists in Karachi – who lost their lives for their party – are similarly struggling. Around 1,800 other households in the city, whose members are in jail for various MQM-related criminal and political cases, are also suffering financially after their KKF stipends have been stopped. Same is the situation in Hyderabad where 3,500 families of murdered and imprisoned MQM workers are finding it hard to get by.

The heirs of murdered or imprisoned activists received anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 rupees each month depending on the size of their households, says Itrat Jahan, former director operations at KKF.

The foundation carried out a lot of other activities as well for the welfare of MQM’s associates. It gave up to 200,000 rupees to its poor activists for the marriage of each of their sisters and daughters and provided free healthcare through a hospital in Karachi, a maternity home in Hyderabad and several clinics in both the cities. It also ran a free ambulance and morgue service.

Shahana Qureshi describes what it means to live without this support system.

Her brother, Tahir Rasool Qureshi, was a neighbourhood-level MQM official. He was arrested in 2015 in two murder cases and has been undergoing trial since then. MQM would bear all his legal expenses besides providing financial support to his family but that is no longer the case. Shahana Qureshi, who works at a private company and lives with her father in Karachi, has to meet all his trial-related expenses now. “Not an easy task,” she says, given that she needs to contribute to her household budget as well.

KKF also used to provide free healthcare to MQM’s imprisoned activists. This, too, has been stopped, leaving ailing prisoners with the option to get treatment either at a jail hospital or from a private facility at their own expense. The first option could be dangerous given the poor healthcare provided by jail hospitals but the second option is often too costly to afford for their already financially distressed families. “My brother suffers from appendicitis and I want to get his treatment done outside the jail but this requires a huge amount of money,” says Shahana Qureshi.

Even delivering medicine to her brother within the jail has become a financial hassle for her. The party would take care of this expense earlier but now she has to pay bribes to jail officials, on top of the price of the medicine, twice every week to ensure that he does not run out of supplies.

The KKF has stopped paying for all these facilities due to a restriction by the government on its operations. Since August 2016, when MQM founder Altaf Hussain delivered a speech that incited his followers to violence and was roundly condemned for its anti-Pakistan contents, law enforcement authorities have stopped the foundation from raising funds, collecting donations and disbursing money to its beneficiaries.

Early this year, the Federal Investigation Agency took over the foundation’s 29 Karachi-based properties reported to be worth about 3.5 billion rupees. The action was taken on a 2017 money laundering case registered against Hussain and many other MQM leaders, including a former federal minister and some former parliamentarians. The authorities alleged that a large part of the rent of these properties was illegally sent to Hussain in London. The money siphoned abroad allegedly amounted to as much as five to six billion rupees.

Dr Farooq Sattar, a former mayor of Karachi and many time member of the National Assembly, took over MQM after Hussain’s speech led to a massive law enforcement crackdown against the party’s leaders, activists and supporters. Accompanied by many senior MQM members, he addressed a press conference immediately after the speech and they all dissociated themselves from Hussain. They proclaimed that they, as well as the voters and supporters of the party, did not endorse his anti-Pakistan rants. Soon, they rebranded MQM as MQM-Pakistan – or MQM-P.

It was not easy for the party to step out of the shadows of Hussain whom it always projected as a larger-than-life figure. Many MQM members and associates still swore by him and would not hesitate from doing his bidding no matter how dangerous that bidding could be.

Sattar, by his own claim, handled the transition well. “In one year, I managed to bring 75 per cent of the party back to its feet,” he says.

But, then, MQM-P’s highest decision-making body, the Rabita Committee (Coordination Committee), came unstuck in the wake of the March 2018 Senate election. While two factions, a smaller one headed by Sattar and a larger one led by most other members of the committee, vied for taking over the party’s control, it managed to lose the election very badly. It could have won at least four Senate seats, given its numbers in the electoral college and the provincial assembly of Sindh, but managed to win only one.

Many insiders say the root cause of the split was money — in fact, the lack of it.

MQM thrived because it had an elaborate system of collecting funds mainly from Karachi and Hyderabad. It encouraged, often coerced, people into giving money to it. Shopkeepers, traders, industrialists — everyone was tapped for donations. Hides of hundreds of thousands of animals sacrificed in the two cities every year on Eidul Azha were another source of earnings for the party. Its activists did not balk at using force to beat other charities and political and religious entities in their hide-collection campaigns.

For years, law enforcement agencies looked at these activities suspiciously — a possible source of funding for deadly crime, political violence and gang warfare in Karachi. They finally started to put an end to these in 2015. In many ways, Hussain’s speech was a reaction to the government’s efforts to cut off his – and his party’s – financial supply line.

By the time MQM-P came along, this supply line was all but choked. The new party was not in a position to even run its offices properly.

Old MQM workers say its headquarters, famously known as Nine Zero, alone employed hundreds of its associates for various security-related and administrative duties. Many other young people would get monthly stipends of up to 20,000 rupees as long as they did not have a job. Around 200-300 members of the party would get free lunch at Nine Zero every day. The number of people who got a free dinner there would reach anywhere between 1,000 and 1,500 each day.

Since MQM-P did not have access to money the way MQM did, it tried to attract people with deep pockets who could fund such activities. They, in return, were promised that they would be made the party’s electoral candidates.

This is how Kamran Tessori, a rich businessman from Karachi who has been in some other parties in the past, appeared on MQM-P’s candidate list for the 2018 Senate election. His candidature immediately led to a split within the coordination committee.

In the words of Syed Aminul Haque, a senior MQM-P leader, “Sattar wanted to oblige his blue-eyed people” by giving them electoral nominations. He also wanted to run the party as a “one-man show”.

Sattar offers a different explanation. “In the middle of 2017, I asked senior members of the coordination committee to share the details of their assets with me. I made it clear to them that, as the head of the party, I would never accept corrupt practices in it,” he says. “That is why some of them turned against me.”

In November the same year, Sattar says, he offered to hand over the party leadership to Amir Khan, who was then working as the senior deputy convener of the coordination committee. “But [other members of the committee] did not agree because they wanted to exploit me till the general election.”

The differences among the party’s top leadership could have an even older origin.

Shahid Pasha, a former deputy convener of the coordination committee who now supports Sattar, says the real source of the problem was the fact that MQM’s voters and supporters had started showing their unhappiness over how the party ran its affairs in the early 2010s. “They did not like the way it sought donations and collected hides of sacrificial animals,” he says.

They were also angry, according to him, because corruption and inefficiency rose astronomically within local government institutions and civic agencies where thousands of MQM members were given jobs and promotions without merit. Between 2008 and 2013, he alleges, the party’s city government allotted large tracts of government lands to its favourites — again to the annoyance of the party’s supporters.

“Saner elements within MQM wanted to address these problems,” says Pasha. He himself spoke to Hussain in 2015, informing him that most of the coordination committee members had developed a vested interest in protecting criminal and illegal activities. “I warned him the party would be wiped out from Karachi if he did not take serious note of this situation,” Pasha adds.

Hussain responded by making him a member of the coordination committee. “When I closely analysed the situation and pointed out many irregularities, numerous members of the committee became my opponents,” Pasha says and alleges that most of them are now among the top leaders of MQM-P.

Whatever the reasons for the split, it resulted in the replacement of Sattar as the convener of the coordination committee by Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui on February 11, 2018. The Election Commission of Pakistan endorsed this change as legal a few months later. Sattar, however, was still the nominee of the party in the July 2018 election for two National Assembly seats in Karachi. He was defeated and ended up losing both seats.

Yet sources within MQM-P say he is more popular than any other member of the coordination committee. “If MQM-P has to become an electoral force in urban Sindh, then Sattar, being the most recognisable face of the party, is best placed to achieve that,” says a party worker without wanting to disclose his identity.

It was perhaps this support from the rank and file that made Sattar resign from the coordination committee on September 13, 2018 and form what he called the Organisation Restoration Committee a month and a half later. The new entity was meant to press the MQM-P leadership to enforce discipline within its ranks and make it the same “ideological and active” force that MQM was back in the 1980s. He also demanded the appointment of a new coordination committee after a party election and sought arrangements for taking care of the families of those who were either in jail or had lost their lives for the party.

The coordination committee responded to his demands by accepting his resignation. It finally expelled him from the party on November 9, 2018.

The twin impact of the lost sources of money and internal disharmony has weakened MQM-P’s organisational structure at the grass-roots level. Its workers and supporters, especially the families of its killed and imprisoned activists, are not associated with it as strongly as they were with MQM. If the party fails to address their problems, says one source within MQM-P, they may again start looking towards Hussain for help.

Aminul Haque agrees. “Extremists will come forward and replace the present leadership of MQM-P if problems pertaining to the livelihood, education and welfare of its associates are not immediately addressed,” he says. To avoid that situation, he adds, his party is negotiating with the government to get permission for collecting donations.

For the time being, the government seems to be unresponsive, even obstructive. Some party activists allege that law enforcement agencies harass anyone who wants to give any money to MQM-P.

“This is unjustified and discriminatory,” protests Itrat Jahan. “If the government has accepted MQM-P as a legal entity then why is it banned from raising funds,” she asks. “Also, if other political parties are not banned from collecting donations, why should MQM-P be subjected to such a ban?”

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

This article was originally published in the Herald's March 2019 issue under the headline 'Still life'. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

A university lecturer in Karachi has been saving money since 2017 to buy a new car. She planned to save around 700,000 rupees, sell her old car for about 400,000 rupees and use the total amount to buy a Suzuki WagonR of the latest model. Many months later, she is still driving a dilapidated Suzuki Mehran car that does not even have an air conditioner.

Prices for new cars rose every couple of months after the start of 2018, she says. The basic version of WagonR has become costlier by 200,000 rupees. Bigger cars, such as Honda City, Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, are selling for up to 500,000 rupees more than they did at the end of 2017.

Every time prices increased, the lecturer needed to save more. This has not been easy given her fixed monthly income. She says she “could not come up with additional money immediately after every price hike”.

Automobile manufacturers were raising car prices in response to multiple decreases in the price of the Pakistani rupee vis-à-vis other currencies. These decreases rendered all imports – including automobile parts – costlier for local manufacturers and consumers.

Asad Zaidi, who works as a bank manager in Karachi but also imports automobile parts from China on the side, says his business has shrunk in order to cope with the decrease in the rupee’s value. “We heavily scaled back on the volume of our imports,” he says.

Expecting more devaluations to come, he is maintaining a cushion of 10-12 per cent over and above his profit margin in the sale price of his imports. This only means his customers have to pay far more for the same parts than they did a year ago.

Even bigger importers are hurt by changes in the rupee exchange rate. Tahir Ahmed, chief executive officer of Lucky Commodities, one of the largest coal importers in Pakistan, says his company suffered losses throughout 2018 on account of sharp changes in the exchange rate.

There is usually a lag of a month and a half between the placement of an order and the actual arrival of a coal shipment, he explains. By the time his shipment arrives at a port, he has already sold it to local customers on the currency exchange rate it was booked on but he will still have to pay port handling charges in dollars on the current exchange rate. “This messes up my costing,” Ahmed says.

His problems have been compounded due to the fact that banks are actively discouraging forward cover — that is, placing an order today on a mutually agreed exchange rate for a shipment that will arrive six months later. Banks discourage this practice so that importers do not rush to make large-scale forward bookings as a means to avoid the negative impact of future rupee devaluations. If they do rush, that will lead to a big exodus of foreign currency from Pakistan — a situation that will have further negative impact on the rupee’s exchange rate.

The exchange rate is determined by the demand and supply of foreign currencies, especially the American dollar, in an economy. Exports are a primary source of foreign currencies coming into a country — as are remittances by expatriates, foreign direct investment and loans obtained from other countries and multilateral financial institutions. Imports and servicing of foreign loans, on the other hand, result in foreign currency going out of the country.

Since Pakistan imports way more than it exports and its debt servicing has far exceeded the foreign loans and foreign investment it has attracted in recent months, it has been running short of dollars to pay its foreign bills. The rupee’s value vis-à-vis other currencies, consequently, has gone down massively.

The only sustainable way of keeping the exchange rate stable is to grow export earnings at a rate that outpaces the increase in demand for dollars in the economy. Pakistan achieved that stability between 2002 and 2007 when – thanks to the doubling of exports and windfall foreign currency inflows in the wake of 9/11 – the price of the American dollar remained stable around 60 rupees.

Analysts in Karachi believe a major downward adjustment may not be needed — at least for the time being. According to them, the rupee-dollar parity is already close to where it should be.

When Ishaq Dar was Pakistan’s finance minister between 2013 and 2017, he also ensured that the dollar’s price stayed around 105 rupees. This stability, however, was fundamentally different from the one that was obtained in the previous decade.

Since exports remained stagnant during Dar’s tenure, he tapped all other avenues of foreign currency inflows — including a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), bilateral loans from friendly countries, bond auctions in foreign markets and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves, as a result, hit an all-time high of 24.4 billion US dollars in October 2016. 

This was also an IMF conditionality: if Pakistan wanted to ensure that it continued receiving tranches of its IMF loan, it was required to keep building its foreign currency reserves.

So what did Dar do with those reserves? He ploughed them incessantly in the foreign currency market to keep the dollar price at an arbitrary level of 105 rupees. “For some inexplicable reason, he was fixated on keeping the exchange rate at 105 rupees,” says a State Bank of Pakistan official who frequently interacted with the federal finance ministry when Dar was heading it. “Every time there was even a slight movement in the exchange rate, our team would fly to Islamabad – sometimes even on Sundays – to explain its reasons to the finance minister,” the official reveals.

Consequently, the State Bank of Pakistan would set a daily level for foreign currency transactions and informally tell treasury managers of banks not to cross it. Whenever there was a higher demand for foreign currency, the central bank would take out dollars from its own coffers and sell them in the interbank market. This would maintain the exchange rate at 105 rupees.

Injection of dollars by governments or central banks to keep the exchange rate stable is nothing unheard of. Stability is important for every economy and stability in foreign currency markets guarantees that there are no shocks in foreign trade and foreign loan servicing. But, typically, this strategy works best when exports are expected to keep growing in the short to medium term. Dar’s obsession with foreign currency rates, on the other hand, coincided with a prolonged stagnation in Pakistan’s exports.

The obvious reason for a sluggish growth in exports is that the corporate sector is finding it more profitable to do business locally. Many big business houses in recent years, indeed, have diverted their attention from the international market to expand locally, says Salim Raza, a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.

Well-established conglomerates, such as Lucky Cement, Packages Group, Nishat Group and Arif Habib Group, have all entered businesses like retail and construction that cater to local consumers. Some of them have set up huge shopping malls although they could have expanded their export-oriented businesses — such as textiles.

So what did Dar do with those reserves? He ploughed them incessantly in the foreign currency market to keep the dollar price at an arbitrary level of 105 rupees.

Kaiser Bengali, a Karachi-based economist, verifies that there is a stronger focus on domestic markets among Pakistani businesses. In a recent study published by the Sustainable Development Research Centre, a think tank affiliated with the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, he says growth in imports in recent years has been far higher than that in exports. In the 1990s, according to him, average annual growth in exports was 6.1 per cent whereas average annual growth in imports during the same decade was 4 per cent. While exports have grown at an average rate of 7.5 per cent annually in 2000-2015, he says, imports in the same years have surged by an average annual rate of 11.4 per cent.

Former State Bank of Pakistan Governor Dr Ishrat Husain wrote a front page article in daily Business Recorder in the first week of October 2017. Dar was finance minister at the time and the dollar price hovered around 105 rupees. Almost everyone who knew a thing or two about economics and finance was clamouring for a rupee devaluation.

Husain argued against devaluation. Calling it a “blunt instrument”, he said devaluation would slow down economic growth, increase inflation and hurt job creation. He went to the extent of advising experts to “hesitate from making” statements about the issue as it could “confuse the economic players”.

According to Husain, devaluation does result in a short-term spike in export earnings but its effect is neutral in the long run. For one, foreign buyers will demand at least a 5 per cent price discount if a 10 per cent devaluation takes place, he argued. Additionally, he said, 40 per cent of Pakistan’s exports use imported raw materials which will become expensive with rupee devaluation. The net gain for exporters of a 10 per cent devaluation will be only 2-3 per cent, he stated. But, as he pointed out, devaluation increases inflation, raises prices of daily use items and, therefore, hurts the poor the most because wages do not always increase in line with the increase in prices.

As expected, the article drew a barrage of criticism. In a front page response in the next day’s edition of the same newspaper, former finance secretary Waqar Masood Khan wrote that Husain was missing “the fundamental point” that maintaining an unrealistic exchange rate drained the country’s foreign exchange earnings that should otherwise be used for financing the current account deficit.

A month later, Dar resigned. His successor took less than a month to reverse his exchange rate policy of four years. Five rounds of major depreciations later, the exchange rate now hovers around 140 rupees — with the local currency having lost more than 33 per cent of its value since November 2017.

This rapid devaluation has left some businesses struggling. While the cost of production has risen for almost everyone, some are suffering more than others because they are unable to pass the impact to consumers due to regulatory price controls and competition, says M Abdul Aleem, a senior representative of a caucus of 189 multinationals operating in Pakistan.

He acknowledges that devaluation was a necessary, though painful, step but argues that it could have been managed in a gradual manner. “Rapid devaluation together with increased interest rates has hurt business confidence.”

News reports suggest that the IMF is pressing the government to adopt a free-floating currency exchange rate as opposed to a managed one that exists right now. The government is apparently resisting the suggestion in order to avoid extreme and sudden exchange rate movements that may result from a free-floating mechanism. It wants to continue with the existing system but, unlike Dar, it is flexible towards making downward adjustments as and when needed.

Analysts in Karachi believe a major downward adjustment may not be needed — at least for the time being. According to them, the rupee-dollar parity is already close to where it should be.

They have arrived at this conclusion by using a method that IMF deploys to assess the real value of a currency. Called the “real effective exchange rate” – or REER – it measures the value of a country’s currency in relation to the currencies of that country’s major trading partners.

“With REER now hovering around 99.08 (a value of 100 means the prevailing exchange rate is justified), we believe the era of major currency moves is behind us,” reads a recent research note prepared by a brokerage house, AKD Securities. It, however, does not rule out a 3-5 per cent devaluation in the coming months, with the dollar rate settling at 145 rupees by June 2019.

The writer is a business journalist associated with Dawn.

This article was published in the Herald's March 2019 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Kukikhel tribespeople are not happy. For decades, they have sought the ownership of a piece of land that lies along the highway that links Peshawar city with their native Jamrud tehsil, in what till last year was known as Khyber Agency. So far, their demands have not been met.

Officials in Peshawar, in the meanwhile, blame their demands for having held back an ambitious government-planned housing scheme – almost double the size of the city’s well-known residential area, Hayatabad Township – for almost three decades.

Kukikhels are a branch of the Afridi tribe that live in a tribal district to the west of Peshawar. They claim that two of the five proposed zones of the housing scheme, called Regi Model Town, are situated on the lands they own. “We have our houses in both the zones,” says Haji Barkat Afridi, a tribal elder. “We will never vacate this land since we have the proprietary rights to it,” he says.

Their land ownership claims are much older than the housing scheme. These, in fact, go back to 1912 when, in order to address conflicting claims of the residents of Peshawar district and its adjoining Khyber Agency, the then deputy commissioner of Peshawar, Sir Ralph Edwin Hotchkin Griffith, and the then political agent of Khyber Agency, Sir John Maffey, unanimously prepared a map. Mandated by what is known as the Maffey-Griffith Award, the map resulted in the construction of 23 pillars meant to mark the boundary between the two areas.

The dispute erupted again in 1964 when Kukikhels objected to a decision by the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then known as North West Frontier Province or NWFP) to acquire 868 acres of land along the Peshawar-Jamrud highway. The land was acquired for setting up an industrial estate and, as per the provincial authorities, its price was paid to its owners who, according to land revenue records, were all residents of Peshawar district.

Kukikhels contested these records. They insisted that the acquired land actually belonged to them and demanded that the provincial government pay them compensation for acquiring it and also sign a lease agreement with them. To make themselves heard, they approached the then NWFP governor who directed the administrations both in the district and the agency to visit the disputed area and trace the boundary pillars built under the Maffey-Griffith Award. The authorities could trace only seven of the 23 pillars. They also found a boundary line which they claimed was identical to the one drawn under the 1912 award. On the basis of the two findings, they concluded that only a couple of industrial units – out of a few hundred – were located on the land owned by Kukikhels.

The then political agent of Khyber Agency found this conclusion anomalous. In an official dispatch that he sent to the secretary of the NWFP governor in February 1977, he explained what “has caused complications” is that the line drawn in “1912 was not implemented in the maps of the revenue records”. In other words, the land that the Maffey-Griffith Award identified as belonging to Kukikhels was still shown in the records as belonging to the residents of Peshawar district.

Subsequently, in April 1977, the then NWFP governor directed the provincial authorities to implement the Maffey-Griffith line, both on the ground and in the revenue records. The objective of the directive was “to establish the proprietary rights of the Afridis” as well as those of the residents of Tehkal and Achini villages.

The directive was never implemented.

In the late 1980s, the dispute surfaced again after the Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) decided to allocate hundreds of acres of land to Regi Model Town in Regi Lalma area bordering Jamrud. Kukikhels again objected. Their elders held several meetings with senior government officials but could not have their reservations addressed. In 2011, they moved the Peshawar High Court.

Two years later, the court ordered the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary to hold a meeting immediately to clearly identify the Maffey-Griffith line “which is an undisputed demarcation line for both the parties”. The court also directed that the line, once demarcated, should be marked with concrete pillars.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government did not implement the order. Another two years afterwards, Kukikhels held a sit-in protest outside the residence of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan in Bani Gala, Islamabad. Khan was a leader of the opposition in the National Assembly at the time but his PTI was in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In May 2015, he met Kukikhel elders in the company of the then Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, senior provincial minister Inayatullah, local government department secretary and the PDA’s director general. The participants of the meeting reached the same conclusion that authorities had reached earlier — that the dispute would be resolved in line with the Maffey-Griffith Award.

Consequently, a one-member inquiry commission, manned by a Peshawar-based district and sessions judge, was constituted under the West Pakistan Tribunal of Inquiry Ordinance 1969. “It was decided that the commission would be given a single [term of reference] — that is, the restoration of the Maffey-Griffith line,” says Malik Naseer, chief of the Kukikhel tribe.

When the notification for the inquiry commission was issued, it included eight terms of references. One of them stated that the decision of the inquiry officer shall be final and binding and none of the parties shall have the right to challenge it in any court of law. “This was not acceptable to us [so] we boycotted the proceedings of the inquiry commission,” says Barkat Afridi.

Since then, the dispute has lingered on.

A road recently built along a canal branches off Peshawar’s University Road in Board Bazaar area. It passes through a few housing schemes for around five kilomteres before it touches the main entrance to Regi Model Town.

The town, unlike the adjacent Hayatabad Township that was developed in various phases, was to be originally developed in one big go. Its main objective was to stem the spread of unplanned urbanisation and provide housing facilities complemented by planned infrastructure, civic amenities and commercial areas.

It was to have 26,900 housing units of varying sizes spread over five zones. Out of these, 5,951 units were to have around 500 square metres area each, 9,487 units to have around 250 square metres area each and 11,325 units to have around 125 square metres area each. It was also to have a high-rise zone over 32.62 acres, public utilities to be spread over 274.32 acres and various commercial areas measuring 134.838 acres.

Till a few years ago, Regi Model Town was almost a desolate piece of land. In recent times, its Zone-III and IV have started showing some signs of life. Scores of houses have reached completion stage while many more are under construction. In total, around 300 houses have been constructed (though no commercial areas, schools, hospitals and other civic facilities have been built yet). Trees of various types, sown years ago, have also come of age in these zones, adding some greenery to the landscape. Main and link roads, too, have been constructed in these two zones — as well as in Zone-I.

If, however, one is to look at Regi Model Town from Ghundi area in Jamrud tehsil, it still appears as an undeveloped piece of land. Within what would be its Zone-II and Zone-V, various cemented and mud (housing) structures stand haphazardly. Vast pockets of land around them are empty — but under the possession of Kukikhel tribespeople.

While part of the blame for the delay in the completion of the housing scheme can be placed on the land dispute, there is no explanation by the authorities as to why they have failed to construct markets, educational institutions, parks and healthcare facilities in the rest of Regi Model Town. Officials at the PDA cite financial constraints as a major reason for their failure to make these facilities available. Over the years, the cost of developing the housing scheme has been revised multiple times and – according to the latest official estimates – stands at a staggering 23.8 billion rupees. The city authorities do not seem to have that amount of money.

While the absence of civic infrastructure explains why people are reluctant to build houses in Regi Model Town, senior PDA officials allege that it is the land dispute that is delaying development work.

Dr Shahid Karim, who works as the PDA’s director estates, says the budget allocations for the scheme have been hampered by the conflicting ownership claims. He cites compensation demands by Kukikhel tribespeople to substantiate his argument. The law, he says, does not allow the PDA to pay twice for the same land since it has already compensated the residents of Tehkal village for acquiring the land for Zone-II and Zone-V.

Karim describes the Maffey-Griffith line as an imaginary one and cites provincial land revenue records to claim that the disputed land actually belongs to villagers living in Peshawar district. “We can only compensate Kukikhels for the structures they have constructed on this land,” he says. He, however, concedes that it is impossible for the PDA to evict the tribespeople without a settlement of the dispute.

It is clear that the Regi Model Town will not see its completion in the foreseeable future. Not as long as officials in Peshawar continue to hide their own lethargy in developing this land behind the ownership dispute.

The delay in the completion of the scheme, meanwhile, is leading to a large-scale conversion of agricultural land into unplanned residential areas. The PDA data shows that a total of 174 square kilometers of agricultural land has been converted into residential areas in Peshawar division – comprising the districts of Peshawar, Charsadda and Nowshera – between 2008 and 2018.

Regi Model Town, ironically, was planned to check exactly this type of urbanisation.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

This article was originally published in the Herald's February 2019 issue under the headline 'A bad model'. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

When General Ziaul Haq dissolved assemblies and sacked the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo in May 1988, he intended a party-less election to take place at the end of the year. The election did take place but without Zia being the president of Pakistan: he died in a plane crash in August that year. Political parties were also allowed to take part in the polls after an intervention by the Supreme Court. All this culminated in the very woman, Benazir Bhutto, becoming prime minister whom Zia had wanted to keep out of the electoral arena.

The rapid thrust of change that took place at the time was not just domestic; it was regional — even international. The first real signs of a dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union – such as Perestroika (or reformation) and military withdrawal from Afghanistan – all suddenly started taking shape. The fear of change within Pakistan led remnants of the previous regime to foist a stage-managed opposition to Benazir Bhutto with the dirty tricks brigade drudging up her photos and those of her mother to show them in a negative light. This was to abet a question already being raised about whether an Islamic state could even allow a woman, let alone a westernised female politician, to head the executive.

The yoke of state control was liberalised during her term in most parts of the economy and society, resulting in the removal of many curbs on cultural expression. It seems only natural that Vital Signs, Pakistan’s first nationally renowned band, would release its path-breaking debut album in 1989. The glasnost (or openness) that emerged with the return of democracy allowed the Pakistani state and society to embrace ideas and cultures from outside. Contemporary pop music was consequently supported officially (even though people had already embraced it through piracy).

This linear story is very tempting. It offers a neat narrative with the cause and effect clearly laid out. And for the most part, it is true — except for the inconvenient fact that Dil Dil Pakistan, probably the most treasured song by Vital Signs, was released in 1987, a full year before Zia’s C-130 crashed in Bahawalpur.

How was it that a song like Dil Dil Pakistan and its accompanying video made it to the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV)? What allowed its westernised singers – carrying guitars, riding dirt bikes, roaming around in an open-top jeep and eventually strutting their stuff in a concert like setting – to get airtime on a channel that (in one extreme example) showed a drama serial featuring a young husband and wife living in separate bedrooms? How did puritanism suspend its obscurantism in this instance?

In the telling of Nadeem F Paracha, Pakistan’s eminent cultural historian, it was part deliberate, part serendipity.

In a number of articles on Dil Dil Pakistan, Paracha has described how, during a back and forth with censors, the song’s producer, Shoaib Mansoor, pushed the argument that it was about time to foster nationalism in a youth that was seeking cultural products and expressions not endorsed by PTV. The incredible clout that Mansoor had at the time in PTV, thanks to his creative successes, enabled him to get the go-ahead.

Paracha also points out that this was not the sole instance of exceptionalism in the Zia era. The dictator’s regime, in fact, made several other exceptions to its cultural stranglehold. In the case of the sister-brother duo of Nazia Hassan and Zoheb Hassan, for instance, it was Zia’s personal approval of them that led him to commit perfidy with his own cultural politics.

Nationalism’s role in the arts in general, and popular culture in particular, is a heady mix — as is exemplified by Dil Dil Pakistan. It reaffirms state-sanctioned values to establish its bona fides with conservative gatekeepers and older audiences, while at the same time allowing space for embracing artistic influences that are contemporary, and sometimes, explicitly western.

“It is remarkable just how simultaneously status quo friendly and subversive the song was for its time,” says Ahmer Naqvi, a cultural commentator and a pioneer in Pakistan’s digital music business, about Dil Dil Pakistan.

This paradox underscores how nationalism has been used in Pakistan in film, television and music: nationalism has been both the carrier of regressive, constrictive ideas and a tool to embrace new and inclusive expressions.

While several notable films have preceded it, Waar, released in 2013, is recognised as a film that created a renewed interest in cinema — an industry that had dramatically contracted after decades of poor-quality films, lack of investment, shutting down of cinema houses to turn them into real estate, and due to the extraordinary security situation between 2008 and 2013 that had resulted in the shrinking of space for any public activity. Just as Dil Dil Pakistan opened one door, Waar opened another.

The movie’s characters represented a new generation of soldiers: they did not look anything like the rather homely representations of men in uniform shown in PTV dramas of the past, such as Sunehray Din. They were, after all, responding to a terrorist insurgency.

Waar’s cinematography was also more in tune with contemporary action films than with anything that characterised the Gandasa-era films. The film even used the F word in the culmination of a tense scene — its space to do so massaged in by the shroud of nationalism. If you can establish that you have the right intent, you can forge ahead with any content.

Why this is so, has significant historical roots.

The urgent want to forge a new national character was felt as early as 1947. The need for a nation-building narrative was understandable given how weak the fledgling country was at its inception. The large-scale violence and mass migration that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent and the incipient, almost non-existing, state structures put Pakistan at a massive disadvantage relative to India.

Materialising a national character, however, was a complex undertaking given the strength of five major subnational identities that existed in the Pakistan of that time. Religion was used almost immediately – despite an early opposition from the minorities during the passage of the Objectives Resolution by the constituent assembly – to glue the cracks.

Between 1956 and 1958, Pakistan saw severe political instability, with four prime ministers coming and going in quick succession, followed by a coup d’état by Ayub Khan. The twinned effect of a ruling party, Muslim League, rendered ineffectual after Jinnah’s demise, and the imposition of the first martial law set a pattern for the nationalistic project in the decades to come. This period laid down three parametres for formulating Pakistan’s internally-directed nationalism: a suspicion of the provinces other than Punjab; the demonisation of their struggles for identity and autonomy as treason; and the need for militarisation due to an inherent weakness of politicians and political institutions.

An evolving and deepening rivalry with India and the complex regional security situation also meant that a sense of perpetual insecurity became the raison d’être of a militaristic Pakistani nationalism.

All this has not been peculiar to Pakistan though. Nationalism greatly advanced during the last century in countries that faced either the threat of a war or a war itself. Since the relationship between Pakistan and India has been characterised by either a war or the threat of a war – except during brief interludes of a peaceable thaw – Pakistani nationalism for a certain section of the urban middle class has come to mean an apolitical commitment to the permanent institutions of the state.

The tensions within a nationalistic enterprise, however, heighten when it has to contend with multiple pre-existing identities — as is the case in Pakistan. Incomplete industrialisation and urbanisation have both contributed to those tensions.

Nationalism based on a singular identity benefits from central control that a modern economy and the concentration of a large population in a single space facilitate. An integrated market, thorough industrialisation and a unified nationalism often go hand in hand. Lopsided economic development in Pakistan, however, allowed large swathes of the society to exist outside the reach of the state and find security and identity in kinship-based networks. Waar offered a fascinating microcosm of many of these tensions within Pakistan.

Waar also served as a vehicle to energise a despondent population, one that was horrified by the unceasing trajectory of terrorist violence and the deep insecurity it had engendered. The film reaffirmed nationalism by rooting it in a muscular military response to terrorism, one that people increasingly wanted and one that proved prescient given how the war against terrorism intensified after the attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School (APS) in December 2014.

In doing so, Waar leveraged many plot points to make sure that it did not just address the contemporary security challenge posed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) but also highlighted the establishment’s traditional measures of who is, and who is not, a true Pakistani nationalist. The film’s ‘good’ politician is the one who lays his life to build a dam — presumably the Kalabagh Dam; one of its main female characters is ostensibly empowering people through her non-governmental organisation but is actually an Indian agent; the enemies of Pakistan are morally bankrupt and willing to plumb any depths to achieve their ends; these enemies are also indistinguishable from those living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Omair Alavi, a film journalist, lauds the technical finesse of a recent spate of nationalistic movies, including Waar, but he questions their contents which, to him, are not well-formulated. He deems many of these films as forgettable for being disjointed, failing to bring together their various plot points and stories. He, for instance, finds it ironic that an Indian villain or a TTP commander shown in these films speaks in chaste Urdu but the hero’s dialogues are often in English.

This, perhaps, is not an oversight.

It could be symptomatic of a jingoistic nationalism married to a quaint notion of modernity: the hero is an uber patriot like any young Pakistani professional but he is also westernised in the same way the old elites are. In this, he is very much an urban Pakistani entity — a nationalist ideologically but a globalist stylistically. He does not have any trace of provincialism in his outlook and is also a completely contemporary figure in the way he speaks and dresses.

A number of nationalistic films made along the same formulaic lines have hit the market recently. The latest of them are Yalghaar that came out in 2017 and Parwaaz Hai Junoon that was released in 2018.

Alavi explains that this advent of nationalistic films is not just due to technical support being offered generally by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) — that essentially works as the military’s media wing. Actors who want to play hard men also gravitate to nationalistic films because these can provide a natural setting for a story of personal valour and sacrifice.

Rafay Mahmood, a culture writer and an ethnomusicologist, argues that the structure of cinema in Pakistan and the audiences it attracts is also a reason why films have a nationalistic focus these days. Older single-screen cinema houses have given way to modern multiplexes with high-end amenities and expensive ticket prices that mostly attract an urban middle-class audience. While nationalistic action films address the existential anxieties of contemporary non-state actors, they do so within the ambit of existing prejudices of this very audience, he says.

The focus on producing nationalistic films can also be explained as a reaction to the emerging trend of right-wing Indian nationalism being espoused by Bollywood. Consider, for instance, the voiceover in the trailer of a forthcoming Indian film, Uri: The Surgical Strike: “This is a new India. This new India will not just enter the house of its enemy but also kill the enemy.”

Given their nascent stage of redevelopment, Pakistani cinemas, however, cannot afford to shun Indian films entirely if they want to keep drawing audiences. Western films do not have the same cache with local audiences as Indian ones have. The reaction of Pakistan’s security establishment to these challenges has been to develop its own cultural products with a counter narrative, though both their scope and scale remain limited.

India’s sheer diversity and scale of its cultural products, however, allow it to promote a nationalism that is at home with the country’s internal diversities. Its emphasis on sports biopics has helped it to showcase a diverse set of people in the service of the nation. These include people from down the totem pole of caste, or even religious, and other minorities — as is the case with a Muslim protagonist in Chak De! India, a Sikh athlete in Bhaag Milka Bhaag and a woman in Mary Kom.

Mahwash Ajaz, a journalist and Youtuber, does feel that some Pakistani films, too, offer diverse and inclusive representation of Pakistanis without necessarily being preachy, but this happens in films that are not explicitly patriotic. She cites such films as Actor In Law, Load Wedding and Main Hoon Shahid Afridi to make her point.

The film that did this perhaps most effectively is Main Hoon Shahid Afridi though, unfortunately, it is not given the credit it deserves. Released in 2013, it has a unique story revolving around cricket, with a wealthy team attempting to forcibly bring back ‘class’ to a sport now dominated by working-class stars. The film’s upstart team offers a stand-in for Pakistan’s diversity — all with its tensions, its prejudices as well as its potential and promise.

The fact that almost every Indian television channel – as well as many international television channels – often show hagiographic presentations of the Indian army poses a massive problem to Pakistani authorities who treat this as a front in a ‘hybrid war’.

While the establishment’s influence over news media helps it fight on this front, Pakistan’s entertainment television, unlike Pakistani films, does not really use nationalism thematically.

The mini-screen’s embodiment of nationalism, or even a conception of it, has been fleeting and without focus in recent years. This, explains Mahwash, is because the television’s entertainment formula for attracting audiences is well established: focus on family drama, psychosocial issues and romance.

The gendered split in viewing habits between men (who mostly watch news) and women (who mostly watch soaps) has largely eliminated the need for television to work on elaborate conceptions of nationalism or create a focused drama around it. While the representations of what is a ‘stock’ Pakistani family remain narrow (located within an urban ethnocentrism and still subject to patriarchy) and dominant on entertainment television, drama has only expanded in marginal ways to create stronger representations of the provinces with a nuanced take.

Music also no longer has a natural home on television. It has been squeezed out by the twin juggernauts of dramas and news. It enjoys just a brief space through a couple of channels dedicated to playing music videos and a seasonal window on national holidays when festivity demands a very narrow bandwidth of ideas that encourage celebration, optimism and hero worship. Anything outside this slender spectrum will not make the cut for airtime.

Even when song, drama and film represent a general nationalistic sentiment, they do so in an innocuous way.

With the exception of recent films that, like Waar, are driven to achieve specific ends (and inculcate a reactionary nationalism championed by the establishment), most nationalistic sentiments in popular culture seek to elicit a selfless affinity with the nation and generate positive energy. They do not contain many of the ingredients that can serve to feed an incipient form of fascism.

Most of the nationalistic cultural products can also be bland. This is because they offer very little variations in content — differences being borne primarily by aesthetics. The lyrical formula of Dil Dil Pakistan, for instance, has been repeated ad nauseum — just as the song itself borrowed from what had come before. Only the visuals, melodies, vocal styles and instrumentations have been different in each case.

Dr Taimur Rahman, who heads a progressive band, Laal, and also teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), feels that all the nationalistic songs, with some notable exceptions, have very little to say, that their search for platitudes has eviscerated depth. In times like the present when Pakistan faces a dire need to reconstruct its formulation of nationalism to make it more inclusive, he says, nationalist music has been left to regurgitating new permutations of a tired formula.

Ali Aftab Saeed, who rose to prominence with his biting satirical song Aalu Anday, explains the structural reasons for the persistence of this formula. According to him, it is commercial interests that have ensured its longevity.

Once a commercial brand wanted to buy one of Saeed’s songs with the intent to have someone else sing it, but the deal fell apart when the brand insisted he would not even receive a writer’s credit. His original sin, so to speak, is left-of-centre political positions in his songs. Commercial brands fear being tainted by association with him given his history as a bold satirist.

A look at the market for live music may help explain this further. Music performances derive their sustenance from ticketed events: they have to cater to what the audiences want.

In Pakistan’s case, while performances are experiencing a revival after a drought of several years, their audiences have changed in fundamental ways. Today’s audiences are happy to partake in anything that questions corruption among elites and berates politicians for bad governance, but do not have the tolerance to stomach anything that asks uneasy questions about nationalism, human rights and religion.

Ticketed events also face two more basic challenges: getting permissions from police and the excise department.

During the previous government, tax on such events was prohibitive, disincentivising performances unless they were aimed at a high-income clientele. And the police often deny permissions because they simply do not want to take the responsibility for providing security even when they do not have any real objection to the content.

There are two main avenues available to performers where these hurdles can be bypassed: educational institutions and corporate events. Both have an identification system for entry (which takes care of security) and both do not charge any money from the audiences (which means that no tax has to be paid). The two, however, are united in their unwillingness to host edgy content.

There is a paradox at work here: without corporate events or educational institutions, the music scene would effectively collapse; and because of being the sole source of support for the music scene, these two venues have a homogenising effect on what is acceptable to them and what is not.

This has led many new bands to keep their contents limited to a few select subjects. According to Saeed, who has been approached by many of these bands for advice, they mostly focus on composing either nationalistic songs, religious Sufi material or cricket anthems (which in themselves are a modern expression of Pakistani national ambition).

This content pipeline is simply a response to a skewed market. In some ways, it is not new. Only the severity of it is amplified like never before — digital platforms having killed album sales as a source of revenue. Speaking of the unintended effects of these developments, Nadeem F Paracha points towards the repackaging of protest music from the past, based on the works of Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Habib Jalib. Even the songs by these leftist poets have succumbed to the sanitising ethos of corporates, he says. “Seeing Faiz serving cola interests is an exemplar of the post-irony world.”

The rut of a sweet and soppy expression of nationalism in music – symbolised by Dil Dil Pakistan – was broken by Bara Dushman Bana Phirta Hai, a song released by ISPR in the aftermath of the APS attack. Mahmood calls it “the song of the decade”.

Few songs, according to him, have possibly captured the zeitgeist of a nation as this one did. It articulated the heartbreak of the country with a nuanced, underplayed, yet tellingly-powerful rejoinder to the terrorists. The song’s tone was mocking but it avoided undermining the pathos of the APS tragedy. It remains a highly significant symbol of how nationalism can be leveraged effectively in times of great change and great outrage.

Pakistan’s success in kinetic operations against its domestic insurgents has been nothing short of miraculous. But the policies that created those insurgents and the space given to religious extremists still need to be challenged. As the need for an armed response to some terrorist groups continues to rise, Pakistan’s formulation of nationalism, ironically, needs to soften to address its unintended effects.

One of these unintended consequences has been Da Sanga Azaadi Da, a song that has become a symbol for the ravages of an ongoing war against terrorism in the tribal regions on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It questions the rationale for the endless cycle of violence and has been one of the most organic articulations of a demand for inclusivity made through a plea for a human rights revolution. It also highlights the inherent problems of a militaristic nationalism that often does not coincide with popular sentiments on the fringes of the state.

And while Bara Dushman Bana Phirta Hai did bring a new verve in nationalistic music, nationalism in music generally treads a hackneyed, lyrically well-worn path. It is telling to see what it omits and what it chooses to represent.

Naqvi speaks about how nationalist musicians have sometimes been out of touch with the realities on the ground. He cites a famous military song that was played on PTV during his childhood: “Sindhi Hum, Balochi Hum, Punjabi Hum, Pathan Hum”. It was great on intent, acknowledging all the constituent parts of Pakistan, except there are no “Balochi” people. They are actually Baloch. Balochi is the name of their language.

Rahman offers a similar point of view. Patriotic songs will sing “paeans to geography” and offer odes to unity but gloss over the different provincial identities of Pakistan, he argues. The heroes praised do not often nclude people from ethnic and religious minorities, he says, and adds that the core challenge for Pakistan is to accept all the differences for the sake of coexistence rather than foisting unitarian directives on everyone. Rahman explains that a one-size-fits-all nationalism does not go well with individual angst and alienation that are defining traits of the current generation of the youth – the millennials – worldwide. If nationalism wants to use culture and art as a vehicle to achieve an end, its narrative drive may require to be atomised from the national to the individual, he says.

This may explain why a trend of political songs emerged in 2013 (in the backdrop of increased political contestation and polarisation in the country) and matured in 2018. In some ways, this trend is already in the process of supplanting patriotic songs, Rahman says.

Naqvi also mentions it, though in a different sense.

“Pop culture has always been the domain of the upper middle classes who drive consumption as tastemakers,” he says. Since this demographic cohort by and large supports the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), musicians have self-appropriated many of their unreleased songs to back the party, he adds. And because the constituencies for PTI and Pakistani nationalism coincide very obviously, the party’s pre-eminence in political songs may also be seen as a nationalistic hegemony of music by other means.

Perhaps the most telling development in recent years has been the emergence of Sufi songs as a manifestation of an informal nationalism.

Rahman explains this is because the challenge facing Pakistan has essentially inverted itself. In the 1980s, a society largely free of extremism and sectarianism was resisting authoritarianism of the state, but today people are looking towards the state as a saviour against threats from fellow citizens who have subscribed to a violent pan-Islamism. This inversion has created grounds for a state-supported nationalism to be welcoming of various religious traditions, including Sufism.

Also, because the narratives espoused by TTP and other terrorist groups have supplanted those championed by Pakistan’s traditional religious right-wing parties, the latter offer no alternative to anyone looking for a different religious narrative. The state is now center-stage in providing the alternative. But, as Mahmood says, expecting the state’s cultural patronage to create a new and meaningful expression that challenges the status quo of the state itself is an unrealistic expectation — not just in Pakistan but in any new state around the world.

Mahmood also underscores the fact that the question of ideology has become relevant once again post 2001 as Pakistan requires a new ideological sensibility to address religious extremism. Sufi music, with a particular fusion of an urban aesthetic, suggests that it could offer a narrative foil to the extremist discourse. Devotional Sufi music, after all, does provide, at least in theory, a counter to the global perceptions of Islam – including outright Islamophobia – because its content is largely about peace, love and inclusivity.

Mahmood’s experience with various musicians, however, leads him to believe that many of them do not see Sufism as a pedestrian counter-narrative device to extremism. They actually see it as a return to an authentic origin for our national identity that enables a better representation of the provincial symbolisms in the framing of a Pakistani nation.

How effective is the appropriation of Sufi music to serve nationalism, given that the state’s policies that gave space to extremists remain in place? Sufism as the new nationalism does present unique opportunities since it does not threaten the hold of traditional nationalism espoused by the state. It does not demand any change in the structure as well as the actions of the state. Since its emphasis is on the personal, it poses no threat to the current power structures. As such, the establishment would welcome such an addition to the ideology of the state because it puts all social and moral responsibility on the individual rather than on any collective institution.

The advent of Coke Studio and its artistic vision, according to Mahmood, have coincided with the need to find a cultural solution to the problem of extremism. And Coke Studio has generously – perhaps inadvertently – deployed Sufi songs of the past to do just that.

There have been many responses, negative as well as positive, to what this attempt has achieved. One of these responses has come from Assad Hasanain, a musician whose song Kanto Ka Rasta decries the violence of Partition. He has created a parody song (set to the melody of Pakistan’s national anthem) on what it takes to successfully audition for a Coke Studio show. The song, given below, captures the difficulty of infusing meanings into music when aesthetics and emotions have been prioritised over everything else:

The author is an op-ed writer on politics, a satirist and a cultural commentator.

This article was published in the Herald's January 2019 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

“[T]ime is running out,” warned a short essay written in Urdu and circulated on WhatsApp in late September this year.

The writer, who did not identify himself, alleged how a private education network, Beaconhouse School System, was pursuing an “Indian agenda” and promoting “western” values among its students. He expressed alarm at the rapid pace at which these students from the “elite class” were joining important positions in state institutions. “A large chunk of this lot is also entering the armed forces and it is obvious that they are not joining the forces to become soldiers,” he wrote.

He also gave a brief history of the school system, a short description of the political leanings of its owners and an overview of its curriculum. This was perhaps meant to give the impression that whoever wrote the essay knew his subject well. He was also intelligent enough to bring in a reference to something that many people do not like about private school systems: high fees. “Beaconhouse squeezes one billion to five billion rupees per month … from people,” he wrote before calling the school system an “enemy of the state” and labeling its students as “liberals” who indulge in immoral practices.

To substantiate these claims, the writer referred to the alleged writings of one Ayaz Nizami, a blogger imprisoned over blasphemy charges since March 2017. “We have infiltrated your colleges and universities with our professors and lecturers who will destroy the new generation’s ideology that supports your existence…They will see your enemies as heroes and you as a villain. They will see the ideology of Pakistan as a burden,” the essay quoted Nizami to have written.

It concluded by alleging that the Beaconhouse School System had initiated a “war” against Pakistan in the name of “education” and that the media and the courts appeared powerless to stop it.

In just two days after the essay was first circulated, one person’s tirade became a whole campaign. Hashtag #BoycottBeaconHouse was soon trending at the top of Twitter Pakistan charts. Over the next couple of days, it was retweeted more than 37,000 times.

A vast majority – 80 per cent – of the Twitter accounts involved in this propaganda campaign were from Pakistan. Another 9.6 per cent were from Saudi Arabia. Most of the rest were from Malaysia, Spain and the Philippines. A majority of them were not fake; the number of tweets generated by either bots or as bulk/spam was fairly low.

A large part of the content used for promoting the hashtag (both in English and Urdu) was the same, suggesting that the campaign to discredit the school was a coordinated one. The content was also being generated and shared by a certain group of people who routinely indulge in online propaganda.

The most replicated tweet was: “#BoycottBeaconHouse It is time we hit back at the deep subversion against the State being done by Indian funded schools.” The tweet also stated that it is understandable that former president Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif allowed this “subversion” but there is no excuse for it now because Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has come to power. “We are pointing it out strongly ..... This is treason by Beaconhouse.”

The web link that received the most traction on Twitter during the campaign belonged to some students who were allegedly studying at the Beaconhouse School System. The link talked about menstruation. In addition to it, some images were circulated that showed some students dancing inside a school. Photoshopped memes were also circulated to back the allegations against the school.

At the core of the campaign was a map in a textbook used by The Educators, a subsidiary of the Beaconhouse School System. The map did not show Indian-controlled Kashmir as a part of Pakistan.

Kasim Kasuri, chief executive officer of the Beaconhouse School System, says that, contrary to what people behind the campaign wanted everyone to believe, the map was not made by his educational network. It was part of a book written by a foreign author and published by the Oxford University Press, he says. “It was used by many educational institutions including the Army Public Schools.” But, he says, the book was retracted and the map was rectified much before the campaign began.

Kasuri claims the campaign was not a single person’s doing but was instead engineered and sponsored. “We lodged an application, asking the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to identify the people behind it and take action against them,” he says. No action has been taken yet, he says, and the “objectionable” content is still available online.

Aviral WhatsApp message disseminated a few months ago talked about a “strategy to eliminate Imran Khan’s government” right after he had come into power. “The American intelligence agency CIA has launched a media war to ensure the downfall of Imran Khan’s government,” the message said and added that a virtual warfare “has been imposed on Pakistan and Imran Khan is the primary target of this war”.

In the first stage of this war, the message read, a vicious media campaign and propaganda would be launched against the government. “Social media will be key part of this campaign,” it said and went on to allege that all opposition parties were part of this strategy to “destroy” the PTI government.

Such deployment of social media in what appears to be a war of political, ideological and geostrategic narratives is being summed up in a self-explanatory term: “Fifth-generation warfare”.

The term refers to the use of misinformation and other non-kinetic means, such as fake news and propaganda, to portray one’s own side as a victim of conspiracies and intrigues by others. For the likes of Zaid Hamid, a media commentator known for his hyper-nationalist, uber-Islamist rhetoric, Pakistan is “truly under attack” in what he calls the final stage of an information war being waged by the country’s enemies.

In early November this year, protests by religious groups over the acquittal of a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, in a blasphemy case triggered yet another round of such alarmist conspiracy theories on social media. A hashtag, #5thGenWar, claimed that an international conspiracy was being hatched to destablise the government in particular and the country in general.

“Former Indian Army Chief explaining the Indian #5thGenWar against Pakistan being waged by India ... Support to internal insurgencies, religious and sectarian wars, ethnic clashes, provincial disharmony, political chaos, economic collapse ... assassinations, terrorism and urban war,” read the most shared and replicated tweet from this hashtag.

While most of these tweets were sent out in English and Urdu, a few of them were also posted in Hindi probably to reach out to Twitter users across the border. Apart from Pakistan, most of the activity under this hashtag originated from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The fifth-generation warfare is also a popular topic of discussion on the Defence.pk website. It warns its users – who are mostly young – that social media is being used as a “war platform” by enemies of Pakistan.

Pakistan, though, is not the only country where such propaganda wars are rife. Nor is the present the only time when propaganda is being employed for political, ideological and geostrategic purposes. “Propaganda is as old as war itself but social media has allowed information operations a scope, reach and speed that was previously unthinkable,” says David Patrikarakos, a London-based journalist and author of War in 140 characters: How social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century.

“If you look, for example, at the downing of [Malaysia Airlines Flight 17] over eastern Ukraine in 2014, you can see this [idea] in action,” he says in an interview. The Ukrainian government and a Russia-backed rebel militia were locked in a civil war at the time. “It took only minutes for Russian trolls to flood social media with many contrasting propaganda narratives that went viral and, therefore, global,” he says.

One theory suggested that the flight was shot down by a plane, not by a ground-to-air missile. Another linked the plane’s mid-air explosion to a plot to kill Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Pravda, a digital news platform based in Russia, in fact, published a story based on the same theory. Titled MH17: some conclusions — did Nato try to murder Putin?, the story alleged that Putin was believed to be flying the same route as the Malaysian airliner at the very same time and that his aircraft had “very similar contours and colouring”.

No matter how outlandish these theories sound, they served their purpose successfully. “The disinformation campaign [around the flight] shows how initially successful [propaganda] can be,” says Patrikarakos. “Obviously the …lies were eventually debunked but by then their narrative had been fixed in many people’s minds.” That, he says, is the overarching goal of propagandists: “The more doubt you can sow in people’s minds about all information, the more you will weaken their propensity to recognise the truth.”

The use of social media in India to promote an aggressive Indian nationalism further explains how all this is done. Fake news with nationalistic messages are being very eagerly shared and propagated in India, according to a recent BBC research, even when people know they are not genuine. The need to accentuate national identity is certainly taking precedence over the need to fact-check.

Propaganda also does not always need to have a political and geostrategic agenda.

Earlier this year, a video surfaced on social media discouraging people from getting their children vaccinated against polio. The video alleged the vaccination was a “conspiracy” by Bill Gates, the co-founder of software giant Microsoft, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates large sums of money every year for polio vaccination in different parts of the world. “Bill Gates, the billionaire, started an initiative to end polio in Africa and other countries like India and Pakistan. Bill Gates, along with Melinda Gates, is working towards ending polio from the world. People say there is something missing in this programme,” read the text shown in the video (which is still available on YouTube).

The ‘missing’ part was then ‘revealed’ by claiming that the “vaccine prepared by Bill Gates has a chemical which weakens and destroys sperms so that when boys grow up, they do not have the ability to procreate”. All this was explained as a “Zionist conspiracy” to reduce the global population from its current level of around seven billion to just one billion. “Or to reduce the population to such an extent that only Jews are left behind, with their fake messiah Dajjal ruling over them,” the video claimed. “To achieve this, they have introduced several measures, including polio vaccine.”

The video, made in Urdu, was viewed 465,611 times and attracted 9,100 likes. Several other videos targeting polio vaccination are also available on YouTube and have been viewed thousands of times.

In March this year, for instance, daily Dawn reported from Nawabshah, a city in central Sindh, that a video was being circulated there which showed someone claiming that polio vaccine was killing children. When officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), that regulates internet in the country, investigated the origin of the video, they found out that the footage and the voiceover were done separately. The promoters of the video had curated some random footage and then dubbed it with their own message.

These anti-vaccination videos have resulted in a dramatic increase in refusals by parents to let their children receive anti-polio drops even in areas where there was no history of such refusals — such as Dadu district in Sindh. A report by the British daily Telegraph claimed as many as 70,000 refusals were reported from different parts of Pakistan in May this year alone.

The narratives being pushed online are certainly influencing public perceptions offline.

A screenshot of a Bol television channel’s news ticker showed Major General Asif Ghafoor, director-general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), which is the media wing of the armed forces, as saying that an anti-state campaign was going on in the country to defame the armed forces. “If abuse is hurled at the forces then full action will be taken. Please help us trace these traitors,” the ticker quoted him as saying. It also carried a list of telephone numbers and an email address that people could use to inform the ISPR about “these traitors”.

The image was posted on social media on November 5 with a caption that read: “Share this as much as possible so that the news reaches the whole country and whoever dares to criticise the army is taken to task.” The post received over 7,000 shares within half a day of being posted.

The screenshot, as well as its contents, were soon revealed to be fake. The ISPR had issued no such statement.

Earlier, in June this year, a screenshot of a Facebook post by Dawn.com, Dawn Media Group’s news website, surfaced on social media. Its contents wanted people to believe that Afghanistan had finally accepted the British-era Durand Line as its official border with Pakistan. The post carried an image of Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar and Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and claimed that the recognition of the Durand Line was discussed in a meeting between the two.

The image included so many defining elements from Dawn.com’s social media and Facebook layout that it led the Afghan National Security Council to issue a press release to say that no meeting between Bajwa and Atmar had taken place. Like many other social media users, the Afghans assumed that the post was legitimate.

It was not. Its content was manufactured and its layout doctored.

Such fake screenshots of news media outlets mostly emerge on Facebook which has a broad user base as opposed to Twitter where users are mostly, if not entirely, politically-engaged. The latter are more likely to detect the doctoring – and sooner – than the former.

Detection is still never as swift as the spread of the propaganda. The Internet and social media are expanding at such a breakneck pace that fake news and misinformation seem to be travelling at the speed of light.

Roughly 500 million tweets are sent each day and nearly seven hours of footage is uploaded on YouTube every second in 76 languages, say Emerson T Brooking and P W Singer who work with New America, previously the New America Foundation, a non-profit research organisation based in Washington DC. The two, who have written a book together, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, also state that around 3.4 billion people in the world – slightly less than half of the global population – now use the Internet.

Data for Pakistan suggests a similarly deep penetration of the Internet. According to PTA, there are 62 million subscribers of high speed broadband Internet in the country. The immense size of the digital universe makes it easy to disseminate manipulated and doctored images/video clips without much scrutiny.

Technological advances, meanwhile, are making the detection of manipulation even harder. Run a video at a higher, or lower, than its actual speed and it may suggest something that did not take place at all.

The most famous recent video with an allegedly changed speed shows a CNN reporter Jim Acosta trying to retain a microphone to ask American President Donald Trump a question during a press conference at the White House. The CNN has accused the Trump administration of doctoring the video to suggest that Acosta touched a White House intern inappropriately as she approached him to take the microphone away.

Also consider a picture of foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, circulated on social media on October 1 this year, showing him receiving a standing ovation at the United Nations General Assembly. The image was propagated on social media by PTI supporters to claim how the party’s newly-elected government was being warmly welcomed by people from across the globe. Prime Minister Imran Khan at the time was being criticised by leaders of opposition parties for not going to the General Assembly himself. The image indirectly addressed the criticism with a caption that said: “When leaders are honest then the world will respect them. Look at the respect for Foreign Minister in America because behind him is the lion – the truthful and trustworthy Prime Minister.”

The image was anything but genuine. The audience shown in it cheering for Qureshi was actually doing so for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a July 24, 2018 event at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

A troll in ancient myths is an ugly creature that can be either a giant or a dwarf. It lives in dark places – such as caves and caverns – waiting to snatch anything that can pass off as a quick meal.

Lifewire, a technology website based in New York, defines an internet troll as a modern version of the same mythical character. They hide behind their computer screens and go out of their way to cause trouble on the Internet. Like its mythical predecessor, an internet troll is both angry and disruptive — often for no real reason.

In Pakistan’s case, a troll usually identifies himself or herself as a “patriot”, “Muslim”, “pro-army”, “pro-Kashmir” and a PTI supporter. There are also liberal and leftist trolls as well as those who ostensibly claim to promote the cause of various ethnic and religious minorities. The trolls operate in swarms and act like bullies, collectively attacking anyone who opposes their views. Also like bullies, they disperse as soon as they face a counter-attack.

Most trolls have a large number of followers who generally share their personal and political views, and also ideologies. Trolls with their own pictures on their social media profiles are mostly based abroad. They are usually the ones to take the lead in picking and attacking a target. Soon after a troll with a ‘real’ profile has fired the first salvo, a large number of anonymous trolls follow up on that. They either repeat the original attack or add more firepower to it. If users of social media block one of these anonymous accounts, it is simply closed down and a new one is opened in its place immediately.

Some of these trolls have become quite known due to their involvement in numerous propaganda campaigns on social media. An analysis of 10 different hashtags, including #BoycottBeaconHouse and #5thGenWar, which have promoted hyper-nationalistic contents recently, shows Farhan Virk as a part of all of them. He is famous for initiating and promoting many nationalistic and pro-PTI Twitter trends in recent years.

In an earlier interview with the Herald, Virk had explained how misinformation is put on technological steroids through hashtags. “It takes just a single account with a major following to retweet [a fake] post at peak time and the message goes viral,” he had said. For most of the hashtags initiated and promoted by him (and his associates), the influencer (a person with a large social media following) is Zaid Hamid, one of the loudest exponents of various anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam conspiracy theories.

Another social media account always pushing these hashtags purportedly belongs to one Dr Aliya Kareem. She tweets with the handle @draliya7 and her account, made in December 2011, has 50,000 followers.

Kareem’s Twitter profile describes her as a “taxpayer” and a “proud Pakistani” who loves Imran Khan and the Pakistan Army. Her profile picture is that of a young woman standing behind what looks like an Imran Khan poster. Her profiles on Facebook and Instagram do not have the same photo. The Instagram profile has a low-resolution picture of a woman with her head tilted down. It is difficult to tell if she is the same person as in Kareem’s Twitter profile. Her Instagram account describes her as a student of medicine who lives in Karachi and loves food and traveling.

Kareem has sent out a total of 253,000 tweets (as of November 16). Mostly, these are either retweets of what other PTI associates have tweeted or they praise the party’s top leadership.

Countless other accounts similarly maintain an active online presence but do not leave any major traces about their real life existence. They could be what information technology insiders call “human-bots” — real people working like robots to repeat and replicate social media contents on behalf of people, parties and institutions that employ them. They are often deployed to propagate partisan misinformation, to push a particular political narrative and/or to blend engineered political ideas into genuine media content. They are also used for harassing, heckling and intimidating political rivals and journalists.

Such human-bots were deployed by all major political parties prior to the general elections in July this year, says Media Matters for Democracy, a policy research organisation based in Islamabad. The organisation set up a team that monitored 37 Pakistani Twitter hashtags with political content from June 23 to June 30. The monitors found out that most of those hashtags, except #Election2018, involved large-scale engineered activity comprising 800,000 tweets, retweets and replies. This suggests that the promoters of those hashtags were making concerted efforts to amplify their messages.

The monitors noted another common feature: some human-bots in each of the hashtags were inciting violence against political rivals — a dangerous trend that no political leader stopped or even condemned.

There is often a duplication of content in campaigns run by human-bots, says Sheheryar Popalzai, a data and technology journalist based in Karachi. This means that someone is providing them the same content which they then share through WhatsApp/email at a mass scale, he says. There are also no replies to the tweets that use propaganda hashtags, according to him. “This suggests they only want to grab attention for the time being.”

Popalzai regularly monitors the Internet and social media in Pakistan. He has devised an online tool – Project Shikari – with funding from the International Centre for Journalism (ICFJ) to analyse the contents of hashtags on Twitter and to see how they are used for pushing political agendas and promoting partisan propaganda.

His analysis shows human-bots operate differently from botnets or virtual robots. Botnets push the contents at very regular intervals – say, to send out five tweets each day – but human-bots exhibit random booms and bursts in their online activity, depending on whether and when they are required to carry out a campaign, he explains.

An important challenge pertaining to the accounts operated by human-bots is that, in order to be seen as genuine, they need to have followers.

A Google search throws up the name of ZV Market, an online marketplace where dozens of vendors are selling “real followers” for as low as two US dollars per account. One of its adverts reads: “Real & Active people. No Bots or proxy … Choose from 100 followers to 5,000,000 that we offer depending upon your needs.”

When approached through the chat option on the market’s website, the person on the other side insists that the services the market is providing are not in violation of any Twitter rule — implying that the followers being sold are real people. He also promises to ensure that the number of followers will never drop. “We are giving you a lifetime guarantee that no followers will ever drop. If any followers get drop, I will refund you the whole payment,” he says.

When the vendor is asked how followers purchased online in bulk can be made to follow other accounts overnight, he does not respond.

Popalzai rubbishes his claim that the followers are real people. They are only botnets, he says. And since they are botnets, he argues, “there is no way to ‘guarantee’ that their number will never drop”. This is because Twitter actively seeks them out and deletes them.

In neighbouring India, journalist Swati Chaturvedi has written a book to explain how an “army of trolls” works. She claims the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has engaged a huge network of volunteers and paid workers who are used, along with sophisticated bots, to attack journalists, political rivals and anyone who opposes the party. These trolls also disseminate false images and doctored reports to heighten communal tensions, she says.

They are coordinated through WhatsApp, she says in a phone interview, which is used to send them instructions on a daily basis. “Each troll has a contact [person] in the [party’s central social media] cell who sends them daily instructions regarding the content to push out,” says Swati, whose book, I Am a Troll, has recently won an award from the Reporters Sans Frontiéres, a France-based non-governmental organisation working on issues pertaining to journalism.

These BJP trolls, according to her, “are staunchly anti-Muslim and chauvinistic and resentful of liberal elites [that] English speaking journalists represent.” They also target those who challenge their party’s narrative. “Before my book came out, they systematically downgraded it [by writing negative reviews] on Amazon. They are highly organised.”

According to Swati, Modi himself follows two dozen of these troll accounts on Twitter and their work has won accolades from the BJP’s top leadership. “It does not matter if it is a lie or a truth; we can make anything viral,” is how, according to her, BJP’s president Amit Shah once boasted about their operations.

In Pakistan, the ruling PTI is a pioneer in the use of social media and has long been in the spotlight for trying to engineer politics through digital spaces. The incumbent information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, who was then in a rival party, alleged in 2012 that the “PTI paid 780 persons on a monthly basis just to abuse on [Facebook] and Twitter.”

Times have changed.

The same party is now intent upon curbing online propaganda. A few weeks after it came to power in August 2018, it set up a FakeNewsBuster account on Twitter under the Chaudhry-led Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The irony is that its look-alike Twitter handle emerged just a few days later — with the same display picture, title and information as in the original.

How will general users sift the fake from the original, especially given that even seasoned journalists, senior politicians and even federal ministers have failed to do so in recent weeks and months?

A renowned talk-show host recently apologised for retweeting a message from a Twitter account posing as belonging to Indian cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu. Rehman Malik, a former interior minister and a senator of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), is known to have sent a tweet to a fake account created under the name of American President Donald Trump. Chaudhry himself has made the same mistake.

On November 24, only days before Pakistan and India inaugurated construction work on a border corridor to provide passage to Indian Sikhs to reach a gurdwara in Kartarpur village on the Pakistani side, a Twitter handle (@NavjotSSi) tweeted: “Today I have been invited by the Government of Pakistan On the occasion of opening the #KartarpurCorridor. I am grateful 2Prime Minister Imran khan & Army chief. All Sikh community is thankful 2Pakistan. Pakistan is my second home. And I’ll definitely come on this happy occasion.”

The message generated over 20,500 likes and over 3,100 retweets. Chaudhry, who also follows the account, was among those who retweeted the message — without realising that it came from a fake account.

Asma Shirazi, a television talk-show host based in Islamabad, was accompanying former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz as the duo flew from London to Pakistan in order to undergo imprisonment for conviction in a corruption case. Soon after their arrest in July this year, video snippets of a conversation between Sharif and Asma started circulating on social media. The heavily edited clip showed Sharif complaining about his ‘exclusive’ interview with Asma that had not been aired. She can be heard telling him what had hindered the airing of the interview.

Within hours after the clip emerged, it triggered a mass social media campaign against Asma. Many Twitter users accused her of being a paid agent of the ousted prime minister. Others claimed she cried when Sharif and his daughter were arrested.

“The campaign was a mix of fake news, character assassination, slander and abuse to dent my credibility as a journalist,” says Asma in an interview. “It led to more cyber bullying that continued for days,” she says. Its negative impact, according to her, is still visible on her social media feeds.

Many of the accounts that started the campaign against her, Asma claims, were based abroad. “These would tweet one thing and a farm of troll accounts, each with 60 or less followers, would follow suit.” The abuse was more personal on Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube than on Twitter. “On Facebook, it was particularly filthy,” she says. “I received threats of both rape and death.”

Asma did not seek any legal action against the campaign. “There is no point. Trolls hurl abuse and intimidate journalists on a regular basis,” she says and points out that, ironically, it is the journalists, and not the ones who harass them online, who are facing censorship.

Digital Rights Foundation, a Lahore-based non-governmental organisation working on digital issues, has found another worrying pattern in social media campaigns: the abuse is particularly obnoxious and widespread when women are its targets. The organisation analysed 43,372 comments from the Facebook pages of 40 women politicians belonging to major political parties. Out of these, 2,262 comments (5 per cent) could not be classified in any category. The remaining were classified as sexist (25 per cent), abusive (23 per cent), threatening (2 per cent) and racist (1 per cent).

Abuse and personal attacks are often meant to divert attention from real, substantive issues, according to Imaan Hazir Mazari, a YouTube blogger based in Vienna whose mother, Shireen Mazari, is the federal minister for human rights. “When people resort to abuse or personal attacks, attention is automatically shifted from [issues] under discussion to abuse itself,” she says.

Imaan has often been in digital hot waters merely for voicing her political views. “I receive a flood of abusive comments, including death threats, on my YouTube channel and on my Facebook account,” she says.

But, as Imaan argues, the targetting of people who are outspoken about their political views is not entirely unexpected in a bitterly divided country like Pakistan. “There is a clear divide between those who hold secular, liberal and progressive values and those who are conservative in their thinking. Due to a lack of dialogue between these two opposing poles, their frustration [about] and disconnect [with each other] is seen on social media.”

Social media, according to her is, thus, only reflective of real life.

One of the initial tweets sent from the government’s FakeNewsBuster account said: “The objective of social media is information, education and knowledge sharing. It should be based on truth and should not spread #FakeNews and disinformation, to achieve ulterior motives.”

But what is fake news?

The term was initially meant to describe news that is not correct but has been politicised in recent times and is now being used as a synonym for partisan propaganda. “You repeat things and you repeat things and you say them [in] different ways and you say them over time and it eventually starts to sink in,” is how media columnist Margaret Sullivan explained it in a BBC interview. She was analysing how Donald Trump has made the term fake news a part of mainstream media conversation.

“Fake news is no longer just news that is not true. It has become a buzz word,” says journalist Umer Ali who is doing research on the subject as part of his studies in Europe. He finds it problematic that the government is getting to decide what fake news is. “Just consider what is happening in the United States where Trump labels as fake news anything that he does not like or is not in the favour of his government.”

Ali is worried that the government in Pakistan may also try to use this catchphrase to silence its critics. The authorities, he alleges, are already posting screenshots of social media posts by a select group of journalists on FakeNewsBuster account in order to undermine their credentials.

A few months before the account was set up, in June this year to be exact, ISPR’s head Major General Asif Ghafoor addressed a press conference in which he alleged, among other things, that social media was being used against the security of the state and its institutions. He pointed out how there was an increase in anti-Pakistan propaganda on social media, with many accounts promoting anti-army content by either distorting or manufacturing facts.

Ghafoor also showed a slide that explained how someone “tweets against the forces and the state” and then those tweets are retweeted. “But who is retweeting them?” he asked, signalling to several boxes in the slide which mentioned unnamed “political figures”. These political figures, he said, were using their own Twitter handles to retweet, praise and spread this “anti-state propaganda”.

Ghafoor then highlighted the need to regulate social media.

Two months later, information minister Chaudhry announced that the government was working on setting up a “unified” regulatory body for all types of media, including newspapers and magazines, television and websites, and also social media. In October, he briefed a standing committee of the Senate on the subject and said that, under the new regulatory regime, “no one will be able to defame anyone”.

Efforts to have social media accounts blocked and posts deleted are also well under way in Pakistan. And Twitter, it seems, is more willing to accept requests for the removal of contents and suspension/blocking of accounts than before. Between January 2012 and December 2017, it denied all the 156 requests by the Government of Pakistan to remove contents, according to its own global transparency report. In recent weeks, however, it has suspended or blocked many accounts including the one operated by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a pro-blasphemy law rabble rouser now in protective custody of the state.

Two journalists, Taha Siddiqui and Gul Bukhari, also claim that Twitter has recently warned them against uploading “objectionable content” on their Twitter accounts. The two have a history of alleged runs-in with some powerful tormentors. Siddiqui ran away to France in January this year after accusing some unknown persons of trying to abduct him in Islamabad. Gul also disappeared briefly in Lahore in June this year.

Could there be a better way to deal with fake news and misinformation than launching a selective crackdown on social media or imposing a blanket censorship?

Some conceptual clarity may help.

Satire, parody, misleading content, imposter content, fabricated content and manipulated content all need to be seen separately from each other and dealt with accordingly. The Ethical Journalism Network, a global conglomerate of journalists and media organisations, also highlights the need to clear the confusion about what constitutes fake news and what does not. In order to do so, the network has released its own definition of fake news. “Information deliberately fabricated and published with the intention to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehoods or doubting verifiable facts,” is how it defines fake news.

If nothing else, this definition sets apart propaganda, “alternative” facts, and malicious lies from journalism.

Apart from definitional ambiguities, there is also a lot of legal confusion around fake news.

Consider this tweet by the government’s FakeNewsBuster account: “It is the prime responsibility of all social media users to share information/posts that are factually correct. Reporting fake and baseless news on sensitive issues may lead to unrest among public and is a punishable crime under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016.”

This message lays down the problem of dealing with fake news and partisan propaganda masquerading as journalism under the current laws: Unless you connect the fake and propagandist social media contents to “sensitive issues” and “unrest among public”, the generators and disseminators of such contents cannot be prosecuted and punished. “Fake news in isolation is not punishable. It all comes down to the consequences it can lead to,” says a lawyer who has contributed to the drafting of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016.

This is also obvious from the law itself. “Whoever prepares or disseminates information, through any information system or device that advances or is likely to advance interfaith, sectarian or racial hatred shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years or with fine or with both,” reads its Section 11.

The only other legal provision available to try someone for producing and propagating fake news, according to the lawyer, is the defamation law. If fake news or propaganda harms someone’s reputation, they can always move the courts of law to seek damages for that, he says.

In short, no legal and judicial tool directly deals with fake news and propaganda. This makes it difficult for the authorities to come up with a clear procedure to take action against those involved in producing and promoting it. “Our job is to only monitor social media’s content and make the public aware,” says Mian Jahangir, who handles the FakeNewsBuster account and is director-general of the federal information ministry’s cyber wing. “We encourage people, especially journalists, to [publicly] rectify false news if they see/report it,” he says. Action is taken only by the FIA and the PTA, he says.

This three-way division of roles and responsibilities in dealing with the menace of fake news and propaganda has put journalists under triple pressure to watch their step constantly. They will be in trouble if their reports or analyses fall on the wrong side of any of the three departments.

To add to their woes, social media is abuzz with posts that target them.

Between October 20 and November 16 this year, at least six hashtags trended on Twitter which directly targeted journalists and journalism in Pakistan. Those partaking in these hashtags have portrayed journalists as “biased” and “propagandists”.

One of them, #BikaoMedia, accused journalists of spreading disinformation and urged the government to take “strict action” against them. “Everyone knows that Media is the main tool of enemies in 5th Generation Hybrid war — the main tool with [which] they will make up your mind … will make you watch what they want … don’t be at this destructive route #BikaoMedia,” read a tweet posted under the hashtag.

Another hashtag, #SayNoToFakeJournalism, generated almost 14,000 tweets (of which about 200 were identified as spam/bots). It went to the extent of reporting unverified news involving the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar. “Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has been asked to take urgent action against fake web channels and the impersonators who were plundering the people through these web channels,” a message under the hashtag read. “According to details, an owner of a TV channel has appealed to [the chief justice] to take action against fake web channels and especially against fake journalists and impersonators who were looting the people through social media,” read another message under the same hashtag.

“This intersection of troll armies with journalists is not healthy for democratic discourse,” says journalist Amber Rahim Shamsi who hosts a television talk show. “When the gatekeepers of information are being compromised, people will rely on word of mouth and that is how fake news spreads,” she explains.

Dawar Butt, who operates a fact-checking social media service ‘Surkhi’ from Lahore, also argues that “believability is no longer” a function of truthfulness. It now depends on the perceived credibility of the source of the news, he says.

The remedy, according to him, lies in fact-checking. “It is no longer an option that you can ignore. It is a necessity,” Butt says. “Citizens have to get above their partisanship and make it a habit to do background checks, not falling victim to confirmation bias in false news items.”

Confirmation bias can, indeed, distort fact-checking as well, making it partial and partisan. The government’s FakeNewsBuster account, for instance, continued to give the federal science and technology minister Azam Swati a clean chit even when evidence was mounting against him that he misused his authority to have the Islamabad police chief transferred in October this year.

Some seemingly non-government initiatives, such as @PakFactCheck, are also emerging in order to use fact-checking as a tool to support partisan narratives.

“Learn what’s true and what’s false | Harvesting Deep Web & OSINT| Non-Partisan | Verification of the Factual Accuracy of News & Analysis | Pvt Think Tank |,” reads the bio of @PakFactCheck on Twitter. The account talks about “anti-state activists”, “fascist” journalists and “subversive news organisations” and is followed by over 11,000 users.

[N[ate Hendrick’s social media bio listed him as a “traveller by profession, journalist by passion”, working as the Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s foreign correspondent in South Asia. He had nearly 10,000 followers and earned quote tweets/comments from prominent Twitter users, including musician Salman Ahmad. His account was also ‘verified’ as genuine by Twitter with a blue check mark.

One Twitter poll posted by Hendrick asked Pakistanis whether they preferred Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump — 91 per cent of the respondents sided with Putin. “Amazed at the way Pakistani leaders think going to answer questions regarding corruption is an achievement. Here in the West, leaders usually resign before commissions, but in Pakistan it’s totally the opposite,” he once tweeted, garnering over 1,700 retweets.

From July 2, 2017, to July 10, 2017, Hendrick tweeted more than 50 times on issues ranging from Iran’s Kashmir policy to CNN, adopting the tone of a bemused but naive observer with ties to Russia. “He would comment on Pakistani landscapes and food, interspersed with criticism of Sharif’s role in the unfolding Panama Papers inquiry,” wrote Russell Brandom, a policy editor at Report — The Verge, an online American publication focused on technology.

There was only one thing odd about the account: its handle, @NateBussey59, did not match its screen name, Nate Hendrick. Further investigations by Brandom revealed that the account was fake. Hendrick never existed.

His account’s social media popularity points to another dimension of digital politics — the influence of a foreign perspective on nationalism. Richard Harris is another such influencer as far as Pakistan is concerned.

“Business owner | Lahore | Brussels |South Asian History | Pakistan | Urdu | Qeema Naan and a jug of lassi,” reads his bio on his Twitter profile created in January 2017.

His Twitter presence remains rather unremarkable in terms of numbers – he has only 2,200 followers – but curiously inconsistent in terms of activity. There are days when he tweets more than 50 times a day. On other occasions, his account remains dormant for days. What is even more intriguing is that Richard rarely tweets original content. A vast majority of his 15,000 plus tweets – all focused on Pakistan – are either responses to other users or quote tweets (that is, retweets with comments). He actively responds to those Twitter users who comment about Pakistan in a critical manner and challenge the official narrative. He often engages in Twitter arguments with journalists or those who he labels as “liberals” or “pseudo-liberals”.

Richard’s profile offers little personal or professional information. He has claimed in some tweets that he visits Pakistan to meet his wife and children but his tweets display an in-depth knowledge of Pakistan which is unusual for an occasional visitor. He also seems to be extremely familiar with civic and political problems in places such as Karachi and Lahore. He once tweeted about purchasing an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system to counter load-shedding. At another moment, he wrote about Karachi’s electoral politics, citing local references.

Cynthia D Ritchie is a similar influencer though with a much larger outreach — and a highly public persona that helps her attract attention and earn credibility.

A self-described traveller and blogger, Cynthia is an American who has a Twitter account operational since January 2009. With only 7,500 tweets in almost a decade, her account has an unusually high number of followers — over 46,000. A vast majority of her tweets are also about Pakistan.

There has been a visible surge in her Twitter activity since 2013. Since October this year, she has also started writing opinion pieces in a Karachi-based English daily The Express Tribune. Her pieces focus on the need to see “Pakistan through a different lens” and also question American policies towards Pakistan.

Cynthia frequently uses Urdu phrases and words in her tweets and has also visited many places which remain inaccessible to many Pakistanis. In October this year, she visited North Waziristan, a major hub of religious terrorism where the Pakistan Army is still fighting against the remnants of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan terrorist outfit.

“The North Waziristan you don’t hear about in mainstream media. For Pakistan watchers, I don’t have to remind you with devastating ‘before’ images. Instead, I will show you the results, thus far, of the ‘clear, hold, build, transfer’ efforts of Pakistan’s armed services,” she wrote, sharing pictures of her visit on Twitter. This message generated 640 retweets and 18,000 likes.

When a digital magazine, Global Village Space, asked her about the reason behind her interest in Pakistan, she replied: “Look, Pakistan has its challenges, so you will be frustrated, you might even be frightened, but you will always be fascinated.” Her signature hashtags include #PositivePakistan, #EmergingPakistan, #ADifferentLens and #NarrativeEconomics.

Her pro-Pakistan tweets would perhaps be less believable if these were not coming from a white, American woman who now calls Pakistan her home.

She tweeted on August 19: “Happy to share I am registering my company #ADifferentLens media productions and strategic PR in #Pakistan. Pakistan is my home and I’m proud to invest in this country! Request duas for our success in helping the People of Pakistan and globally. #NewLogo US<3Pak.”

Hashtags for this story were analysed using Project Shikari. Bot/spam tweets were identified through machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms with an accuracy rate of 66 per cent.

The writer is a social scientist by qualification and a staffer at Daily Dawn.

This article was published in the Herald's December 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

This article was originally published in the Herald's December 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Excitement was pervasive when the Punjab government decided to build a small dam to store rainwater for irrigation in a northwestern part of Jhelum district in 2004. The project promised to bring a fundamental change in the traditional way of agriculture — waiting for rains to irrigate farmlands. It promised to make irrigation water available throughout the year, as and when local farmers needed it. Many of them, therefore, willingly sold their fields to the government so that the dam’s reservoir could be built on them.

In an area where only a small portion of rainwater can be used for agriculture – the rest of it flowing into streams and rivers – the dam was projected to store 1,733 acre feet of water, enough to provide one foot of water for more than five times a year to each of the 315 acres of land in three nearby villages.

The dam – along with a 22,000 feet long canal to take its water to the fields – was completed in 2008 at a total cost of 57.13 million rupees but its promised advantages never materialised. It could not store enough rainwater that would flow into its canal. The dry canal, in the meanwhile, has ceased to exist in many parts due to a lack of monitoring and maintenance.

“To our utter dismay, the dam has not irrigated an inch of land,” says Syed Nisar Hussain, a 47-year-old small farmer in Dhok Mughalabad, one of the villages which was supposed to benefit from the dam . The reason why the dam has been unable to store as much water as it should have lay in its design, reveals an irrigation department official on the condition of not being quoted by name. Those who designed the dam thought the average rainfall in its catchment area was sufficient to fill it every year, he says. Where they went wrong was in determining the behaviour of hill torrents that were supposed to flow into the dam after rains. “Those torrents may have changed their course, not flowing the way they were expected to.”

The project’s failure has resulted in as much despondency as the excitement it once generated. Local residents like Hussain are full of complaints when they talk about it. To reproduce just one of their grievances, they allege that heavy machines that worked on the dam have romped upon and excavated local pastures – where their animals once grazed – to the extent of damaging them irreparably.

In the absence of rainwater storage, Dhok Mughalabad and its neighbouring villages of Fateh Pur and Alipur rely heavily on the extraction of groundwater for irrigation. This has caused the local groundwater level to go down drastically – to nearly 500 feet – which makes it extremely costly to extract it overground.

When Muhammad Rashid, a 75-year-old resident of Fateh Pur, approached officials of Punjab’s agriculture department to ascertain the cost of a water extraction turbine that could work effectively with such a low water level, he was told that it will require 300,000 rupees to install. It was prohibitively expensive for him. Many other farmers, especially those with smaller landholdings, are facing a similar situation. They are finding it almost impossible to finance turbines capable of extracting water from great depths.

Underground water in the three villages is also too salty to be fit for human consumption. The villagers have to travel long distances just to fetch water to drink, says Rashid. “If this situation remains the same, we will have to migrate from here,” he says.

A small dam was constructed in 2008 near Jammergal village, 55 kilometres northwest from Jhelum city. Costing 43.427 million rupees, it has a putative capacity to store 1,655 acre feet of water, sufficient to irrigate as much as 450 acres of land. It, too, has never accumulated enough rainwater to let that flow in its canal. Its costly structure is going to ruins with every passing day.

The problem with this dam is that the bed of its reservoir is too porous to hold water. Rainwater flowing into the reservoir is “percolating” underground, explains Muhammad Azeem, a Jhelum-based executive engineer of the irrigation department. “Although percolation happens at almost all dam sites but it is very high in the case of this particular dam,” he says.

The possibility of a high rate of percolation, according to Azeem, should have been taken into account before the construction of the dam through what he calls a “subsurface investigation” of the proposed location of its reservoir. This investigation was not carried out, he says, because of its high cost.

Another dam, built in 2005 at a cost of 125.943 million rupees and meant to store around 6,000 acre feet of rainwater for irrigating around 2,220 acres of land, is similarly non-functional though for a different reason. Its water outlet was badly damaged in 2014 so the irrigation department stopped supplying water to farmers. Officials feared that allowing water to flow from the damaged structure could result in the dam’s collapse and flooding of the nearby village, Patha Wala Kas, situated around 15 kilometres to the northeast of Dina town, also in Jhelum district.

Four years later, the broken structure still awaits mending.

The irrigation department did make a plan recently to rehabilitate the outlet, says Azeem, but the reservoir required to be drained of all water before any repair work could be carried out. This created an unexpected obstacle. “When we started pumping out water, a contractor of the Punjab fisheries department approached a court and obtained a stay order, claiming that he would incur a loss of millions of rupees if fish in the dam’s reservoir died due to lack of water.”

The stay order is yet to be revoked.

Chaudhary Sajid provides tenting and catering services in Chakwal district’s Balkasar town. A strapping tall man in his late forties, he remembers how the most glittering tents in the town were used for holding a public ceremony on April 13, 2006 when Pervaiz Elahi visited the town as chief minister of Punjab to lay the foundation stone of a large water reservoir next to a nearby village, Dharabi. The dam was to have a gross water storage capacity of 37,000 acre feet, enough to irrigate 6,400 acres of local land.

Residents of Balkasar were very happy and thankful to Pervaiz Elahi for the construction of the reservoir, says Sajid. “They saw the project as a cure for their economic miseries and expected it to bring prosperity to their area.”

The excitement did not last long. “The project ended up bringing more distress than happiness for us,” says Sajid.

The dam was originally scheduled to be completed in 2007 but political turmoil that year and a subsequent change in government the next year meant that it did not receive the funds it needed for completion. The construction finally came to an end in 2012 – with an expenditure of 341.991 million rupees – but with a flawed design and poor construction quality.

Due to its design flaw, the dam’s 131,800 feet long irrigation channels run much lower than the land they are supposed to irrigate — rendering them useless for carrying water to the fields. Even the dysfunctional canals have been badly damaged over the last six years. In some places, they are as good as non-existent.

The government is also doing nothing to address another problem linked to the same project: local farmers who sold their land to the irrigation department for the reservoir are yet to be paid — a decade after the construction of the dam came to an end. “We lost hundreds of acres of land. My family alone lost 58 acres,” says Sajid.

Recently, he wrote two separate applications seeking compensation for the land. He sent one of them to the Small Dams Organisation, a subsidiary of the irrigation department which looks after small water reservoirs in Punjab and has its head office in Islamabad. The other he sent to Shehbaz Sharif who at that time was chief minister of Punjab. None of his applications has elicited any response. “The government has spent millions of rupees on the construction of a defected dam but it cannot pay any compensation to poor farmers,” he says with obvious anguish on his face.

A dam near Uthwal and Lakhwal villages, roughly 25 kilometres from Chakwal city, suffers from almost the same problems as the one at Dharabi does. Constructed in 2012 at a cost of 436.641 million rupees, it has a gross water storage capacity of 18,000 acre feet and was supposed to irrigate 3,500 acres of land in more than half a dozen villages but it has not become functional even though six years have passed since its construction was completed.

It, in fact, became dysfunctional as soon as water was released in it. One of its main pipelines – that was supposed to take water out of it and release it into an irrigation channel – burst under high water pressure during an initial test. No repair work has been done on it since then.

“The authorities showed us this dream that we will receive enough water after the construction of the dam to grow vegetables, maize and even sugarcane but unfortunately we are still living at the mercy of clouds and rain,” says 82-year-old Muhammad Nawaz, a wrinkle-faced resident of Lakhwal village.

What adds to the horror of their shattered dream is the fact that, just like farmers in Balkasar, they have received no compensation for the lands acquired from them by the government for the construction of the dam.

Not that the government has made no efforts to change the situation for the better.

A few official documents did move around. Plans were made, at least on paper, to rehabilitate both dams – the one at Dharabi and the other at Uthwal and Lakhwal – as Chakwal-based officials of the Small Dams Organisation prepared a feasibility report about three years ago, seeking 900 million rupees from the provincial government to make the two dams functional again. The paperwork, though, led to no practical action.

According to a report published in daily Dawn on January 31, 2016, the organisation sent the feasibility to the National Development Consultants, a private consulting firm that specialises in designing dams and offering engineering services for water resources and sewerage. The firm, the newspaper reported, demanded 1.25 billion rupees to restore the dam at Uthwal and Lakhwal and another one billion rupees to rectify design flaws of the one at Dharabi. Keeping in view the huge sum of money, the projects were dropped.

The irrigation department and the Small Dams Organisation then prepared another set of feasibility reports with help from the National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK), a state-owned consultancy firm. These reports have led to the setting up of a committee at the Punjab civil secretariat in Lahore with the mandate to look into whether the rehabilitation of the dams should be approved and if yes, then at what cost. “This committee will approve or disapprove the new feasibility reports after carefully examining them,” says Irfan Nazar, who represents the Small Dams Organisation in Talagang area of Chakwal district.

Though he remains confident that rehabilitation work will start soon and the dams will become operational within a year, he does not know how much money will be required for the purpose. “The exact budget will be determined after the approval of reports by the committee,” Nazar says.

What if the money is too much for the government to provide? He has no idea what will happen in that case except that the dams will remain as non-functional as they are now: temples of modernity providing no solace to their devotees.

Muhammad Zameer, a 56-year-old retired soldier who runs a small grocery shop from a room in his small house in Chakwal district’s Khai village, has an angelic smile though his words are often laced with despair. Crops on his small farm spread over eight acres of land were destroyed twice in 2013 after a dam situated next to his village failed.

When the dam’s sluice gates were first opened after its completion, its irrigation channels burst and flooded crops on hundreds of acres besides damaging a number of houses, Zameer says. This happened again when a second unsuccessful attempt was made to release water from the dam, he says.

He alleges the irrigation channels collapsed because of the low quality of the construction material used in them. The villagers, he says, knew about the poor quality of the material even before the dam was completed and they also apprised elected representatives of the area about it. “But no one paid attention.”

The dam at Khai is built on a seasonal rivulet near the scenic Kallar Kahar region located next to the motorway that links Islamabad and Lahore. It was constructed at a cost of 169.819 million rupees to irrigate 1,800 acres of land. Though it is full of rainwater – a good 5,920 acre feet of it – its 34,600 feet long canals and irrigation channels are all broken down. They cannot carry any water to the fields.

An irrigation department official in the area acknowledges that corruption and irregularities marred the construction of a number of local dams, including the one at Khai.

And just like what large-scale construction activity has done to a dam site mentioned earlier, communal pastures at Khai have all been wrecked due to the lifting and moving of earth from and through them with heavy machinery.

“We have to travel 12 kilometres to fetch animal fodder alone,” says Allah Daad, 65, who is playing cards with some others at a tea stall outside his village on a recent September day. “It would have been better if the dam had not been constructed at all,” he says.

An irrigation department official in the area, who wants to keep his identity secret, acknowledges that corruption and irregularities marred the construction of a number of local dams, including the one at Khai. “It is evident that low quality material was used to make maximum money out of these projects.”

A report, titled Pothohar Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project, was prepared in 2016 by four private national and international consulting firms in collaboration with the World Bank and local authorities. It stated that agriculture in the Potohar region – that consists of Rawalpindi, Attock, Chakwal and Jhelum districts as well as the federal capital, Islamabad – could benefit enormously if small dams and other man-made structures were built here to conserve rainwater during the monsoon.

The Potohar plateau, according to the report, covers nearly 7.5 per cent of all cultivable land in Pakistan and includes some of the most fertile parts of the country. But, in the absence of small dams and other similar structures, only “less than 14 per cent of the total [rainwater is captured in the region] to support irrigation systems”. Consequently, merely 11 per cent of the cultivated area in the region was “equipped with irrigation systems” as recently as two years ago.

The rest of the farmland in Potohar remains rain-fed with very low crop productivity. “The agricultural yield of wheat, barley, maize and mustard [in Potohar is] roughly 59, 29, 367 and 66 per cent lower, respectively, relative to canal irrigated regions in the Punjab,” read the report.

The authors of the report then looked at existing dams and other irrigation-related infrastructure in the region and came up with shocking revelations.

“Roughly 50 per cent of available small dams in the region” irrigate less than 95 per cent of their command area, the report said. Another 25 per cent of the local dams provide water to less than 80 per cent of the land they are supposed to irrigate, it added and cited canals damaged by bursting, leaking pipelines and poorly constructed water outlets among the reasons for the below par performance of small dams in the region.

Consequently, the report concluded, 54 different dams in Potohar irrigate only 34,000 acres of land — almost half of the 67,892 acres they are supposed to be irrigating.

The situation on the ground is perhaps even worse. As many as seven small dams were found to be totally dysfunctional. Built with a total expenditure of 1.26 billion rupees and located at Dharabi, Uthwal and Lakhwal, Jammergal, Fateh Pur, Lehri, Jamal and Khai villages, these are not irrigating even a single acre of land. Most of them have been non-operational since their completion.

Seven more dams have never provided water to more than 10-15 per cent of the land they are supposed to irrigate. Another 12 dams have been irrigating 50 per cent – or even less – of their command area.

The report was originally prepared with the aim to seek money from the World Bank for the construction of 25 more small dams in Potohar but the World Bank refused to provide money for them, citing “some serious concerns” about the pathetic condition of those structures that already exist in the region.

The Small Dams Organisation, set up in 1960 with the specific purpose of constructing and running small dams in Potohar, cites major institutional and financial constraints as reasons for the large-scale failure of small dams. Syed Tasneem Shah, who works as a project director at the organisation, complains of shortage of both human resources and money needed to maintain and rehabilitate existing dams in the region.

More than half of the sanctioned posts of different ranks at the organisation have been lying vacant for many years, he says. The current number of its regular staff is 612 even when it is allowed by the government to hire as many as 1,231 officials in regular category.

Money is perhaps an even bigger problem.

“As many as 29 dams – out of a total of 60 built by the Small Dams Organisation in Potohar – have not received any money for their upkeep since their construction,” he says. This is because, he argues, his organisation receives less than half the money it requires each year to keep all the dams under its jurisdiction in working condition. “The amount of money we need annually for the purpose is 304.964 million rupees but what we receive from the provincial government on this count is 112.607 million rupees a year,” he says.

Not all of this money gets spent on the maintenance and rehabilitation of dams either. Around 30 per cent of it is paid as salaries for workers temporarily hired to overcome staff shortage at the organisation.

Retired Lieutenant General Abdul Qayyum is a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz senator who hails from Chakwal. In 2016, he highlighted the issue of dysfunctional dams in his native district during a Senate session. Responding to his queries, the then federal minister for water and power, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, admitted that many dams did not benefit local farmers even when huge amounts of money had been spent on them. He also said an inquiry was being conducted to single out those who were responsible for flaws in the design of the dams as well as for the poor quality of their construction.

Later the same year, Qayyum brought the issue to the notice of Shehbaz Sharif, who was then Punjab’s chief minister. He ordered his official inspection team to carry out an inquiry into the dams built at Dharabi and Uthwal and Lakhwal. The chief minister’s inspection team charged around six officials of dereliction of their duties, says Qayyum in an interview, but they were not given any punishment.

The outcome of an even earlier official probe, conducted in 2011, is still far from being final. It was carried out after revelations that 20 small dams, constructed between 2000 and 2010 with a target to irrigate 30,000 acres of land in Potohar, were irrigating only about 2,044 acres — less than seven per cent of the target. All these dams, built with a total expenditure of 2.62 billion rupees, suffered not just from design problems but were also constructed with poor quality materials, say two news reports published in daily Dawn on October 28, 2011 and April 4, 2013.

The inquiry concluded that 12 irrigation department officials had committed serious financial and technical wrongdoings during the construction of three dams in Attock district. It also found three construction companies – Nazar Khan Construction, Gullan Khail Group and Finco Construction – guilty of carrying out defective construction of those dams. The Punjab government later blacklisted these firms.

The guilty officials, too, were penalised according to the magnitude of their guilt. Three of them were sacked; two faced compulsory retirement; and pension and other remunerations of the remaining officials were withheld for five years.

Some of these officials later challenged the penalties at the Lahore High Court but no proceedings took place in the case for a number of years. Recently, the judges sent the case back to the irrigation department where, according to Captain (retired) Sher Alam Mehsud, outgoing provincial secretary irrigation, “an in-house hearing is still being done.”

Khokhar Zer village is located some 20 kilometres south of Chakwal city. Its residents appear to be doing well even when most of them own only small pieces of land. Their apparent prosperity is linked to the fact that their agriculture is not dependent on rain. Their crops thrive because they are irrigated by a couple of nearby dams and the availability of irrigation water throughout the year allows them to cultivate all those crops that can be cultivated anywhere in the country — maize, sugarcane, vegetables.

The dams – located near Khokhar Zer and Surla villages – were constructed at a cost of 36.84 million rupees in 1979 and 1985, respectively. They have a combined capacity to store 5,217 acre feet of water and irrigate 2,500 acres of land. They also supply three cubic metres per second water to Chakwal city every day. Their irrigation channels, built after proper planning and with good quality material, have been functioning without a hitch for more than three decades now.

“I cultivate seasonal vegetables on my 15-acre farm and supply them to a market in Chakwal city,” says Muhmmad Younas, a resident of Khokhar Zer, as he proudly talks about the bounties of his village. “I earn enough money to rear my children well.”

Another local farmer, Zafar Iqbal, 45, cultivates wheat, fodder crops and maize on his 60-acre farm. Without fail, he harvests bumper crops and sells his produce at markets in big cities such as Rawalpindi, Lahore and Faisalabad. “If there was no dam in our area, we would have been poor like small farmers in other parts of Potohar,” he says. “The dams have changed our lives and those of our children.”

54 different dams in Potohar irrigate only 34,000 acres of land — almost half of the 67,892 acres they are supposed to be irrigating.

This general sense of gratitude is sometimes marred by complaints about how government officials assigned to operate the dams do not perform their duties honestly. Iqbal, for instance, alleges that those officials supply water on preferential basis to landowners who have political connections.

“Local political families get water whenever they want but small farmers with no political links have to wait to draw water until the officials are in a mood to entertain their requests,” he says.

These are but minor inconveniences. As farmers elsewhere in Potohar can testify, dishonest officials can lead to ruin even the best of the schemes for people’s welfare.

The writer is a PhD scholar in sociology at Government College University Faisalabad.

This article was published in the Herald's November 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Chaudhry Usama Wains received a message on his Facebook page in January 2018. An aspirant for a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seat was interested in buying a lion and wanted it delivered to a specific location in Peshawar. Wains, who deals in animals, drove from his home in Faisalabad along with an African lion and a couple of companions a few days later. As they were about to reach the designated spot, two cars approached them. Some men got out of them and took away the lion forcibly — without paying a penny for it.

Wains does not know who the lion snatchers were but he suspects that they were sent by the politician who had sought the lion’s delivery.

Politics and lions have a close association in Pakistan. Politicians who make a name for themselves often come to be known as the lions – undisputed rulers – of their respective constituencies or districts. A few of them have gone on to earn the title of Sher-e-Punjab — the lion of Punjab province; the most famous of them being a former chief minister and provincial governor, Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar. At least one political leader, Nawaz Sharif, has been elevated by his supporters to the exalted status of a babbar sher — a lion king. When he arrives to address public gatherings, he is always greeted with cheers of dekho dekho kaun aya, sher aya, sher aya (look, who is here — a lion).

For some inexplicable reason, however, a lion is not included in the list of election symbols approved by the Election Commission of Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif’s party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), has, therefore, settled for the next best thing – a tiger – as its election symbol. By a stroke of linguistic luck, they are still able to call their symbol a sher — a word locally used for both a lion and a tiger.

Love for shers runs high in the PMLN’s echelons. In 2009, Nawaz Sharif’s nephew Salman Shahbaz obtained a special permit from the federal government to import two Siberian tigers from Canada. His father, Shehbaz Sharif, was Punjab’s chief minister at the time.

The issuing of the permit created a big stir in the news media. Siberian tigers – scientifically called panthera tigris altaica – face a threat of going extinct and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a global covenant which Pakistan is a signatory to, prohibits their trade. The media coverage of the whole affair and the criticism it generated forced Salman Shahbaz to hand over a male tiger he had imported before the news broke to Punjab’s wildlife department which has kept it at the Murree Wildlife Park in Bansra Gali since then.

Park officials disclose that the tiger has become weak. It is also living a solitary life since its intended partner was never brought to Pakistan.

Some other shers – caged or chained – have been spotted at PMLN’s election gatherings and protest rallies. Many of the party’s candidates in past elections have also paraded lions during their campaigns to mobilise support.

More often than not, these animals have been sold and purchased by skirting around, if not entirely flouting, rules and regulations.

The latest scramble among politicians to procure lions was witnessed in the run-up to the general elections on July 25, 2018. In a phone interview, Wains says he sold as many as 12 white lions and 19 brown lions between the months of April and July this year to different PMLN candidates in various parts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. “I do not share the PMLN’s political ideology but the party was good for my business.”

Wains first saw a lion up-close at the house of a friend in Lahore about two and a half years ago. The animal scared him. “I had kept dogs as pets but there is a huge difference between a dog and a lion,” he says. In subsequent visits to his friend’s place, he gradually started feeling comfortable around the lion.

By December 2016, he fell so much in love with the animal that he decided to buy one for himself. He obtained an import permit and contacted a trader in South Africa who promised to send him a lion for 300,000 rupees (inclusive of delivery charges). Wains paid him around 200,000 rupees in advance – around 65 per cent of the total – as was agreed between the two. After receiving the advance money, the trader stopped taking his calls and disappeared.  

In March 2017, Wains made another attempt. The deal went through successfully this time round and he received his first African lion around a month later. It was not a wild animal, according to Wains, but was bred at a farm.

Soon, he started thinking of setting up his own lion breeding farm. He spent some time learning animal farming from two other wildlife breeders – one based in his own hometown, Faisalabad, and the other operating in Karachi – who breed a variety of animals such as deer and ostrich. He then imported eight more lions and set up two farms — one in Islamabad and another in Muzaffargarh. The second one is still under construction, he says.

Wains started his lion breeding business while he was still a student. His family often reprimanded him for indulging in it, especially when he would bring some lions home. “My brothers have small children. They were terrified to let their children be close to the lions,” he says. Overtime, though, they all became supportive of his venture.

Wains has three personal profiles on Facebook. In one of them, he calls himself a zoo owner; another describes him as the CEO in Wild Pets Club; the third has a picture of a man in his early twenties. “I am [a] Wild Animals Exporter. I have all wild animals for sale. I have three offices in South Africa, Mexico and Pakistan,” reads his personal description in one of the profiles.

Wains now has several animals at his farms, including a snake, two deer – each four months old – several parrots and many big cats: a 10-month-old pair of white lions, an 11-month-old female white lion, a 10-month-old wild lion and a farm-bred one of the same age. He sells the African lions he breeds for a minimum price of 550,000 rupees (inclusive of delivery charges). Stung by what happened to him in Peshawar, he has started collecting 50 per cent of the price before making a delivery.

In August 2018, an Indian named Karthik used a Facebook forum to accuse Wains of scamming him. Karthik’s post alleged that Wains had promised to send him a lion in India via a train from Pakistan for 3,000 US dollars that were to be deposited in a bank account in Malaysia. After Karthik transferred the money in two installments, he alleged, Wains stopped responding to his calls.

Wains denies the allegations. He says he does not export lions. “It is difficult to have them cleared from the customs to take them out of the country,” he says. “You need to pay a lot of money and also procure a CITES permit from the government.” It “is a hassle” he prefers avoiding.

On a recent Sunday evening, Hamza Hussain climbs a flight of stairs along with two young men to enter a roofless enclosure at the top of his 350 square yard house in Karachi’s PECHS area. A three-year-old brown African messai lion is lounging in the enclosure, tied to a concrete pillar with a chain and holding a meaty bone in its mouth. It stares vacantly at Hussain and his companions. The two men want to photograph themselves with the lion. They take turns to pose just behind it. The lion looks unperturbed. It seems accustomed to people moving around it.

Hussain, who is in his mid-twenties and works as a freelance videographer and restaurateur in Karachi, purchased the animal from a dealer in Lahore when it was a small cub. He named it Simba and initially housed it in a small room – on the floor right below the enclosure – which has enough space to accommodate just a single bed and a cupboard.

Simba was born in Lahore with deformed legs (probably due to the deficiency of Vitamin D) but his deformity has been cured now. “It was very social when it first came into my house. It would sleep with me in my bed,” says Hussain.

As Simba grew up, Hussain arranged a bigger space for it. He built a 2,000 square yard facility to house it near a village in Thatta district — just outside Karachi. The lion got 1,000 square yards of space to just move about — almost double of what it needs according to WWF-Pakistan’s guidelines. Hussain now brings it home only on weekends.

He also keeps some other animals, including 35 pythons, at his Thatta facility. The smallest python is five feet long. He initially purchased 100 of them from Jay Brewer Prehistoric Pets, a company in the United States – having contacted the seller through its website – but some of them died and some others he sold.

These days, Hussain is looking for a female companion for Simba. “If I cannot find one locally, I will import it from South Africa,” he says.

Finding the animal locally should not be hard. Multiple Facebook groups offer African lions, scientifically known as Leo Panthera, for sale. Three cubs, each four months old, are available for 750,000 on one group’s page. Another group offers two brown East African cubs of messai variety for 450,000 rupees (available for delivery at any location in Pakistan with an additional charge of 15,000 rupees).

The video of a four-month-old white cub lounging on a chair in the lawn of a private property in Karachi also made rounds on social media in September this year. It was available for sale at 750,000 rupees.

Some traders are peddling – both online and offline – body parts of lions as well. Lion fat is available for use in medicine meant to relieve muscular and joint pains. A Lahore-based trading website, Bolee, has a lion claw for sale for 35,000 rupees. Another online trader displays lion nails enclosed in a silver frame and attached to a metal chain. Price: 8,000 rupees. The trader claims to have imported the nails from Kenya.

Lion hides are also being sold and purchased, reveals a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) titled An Assessment of the Scale of Illegal Wildlife Trade in Pakistan. In 2016, the report states, the wholesale price of an African lion’s hide was 70,000 rupees and Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces were its top markets.

These days, lions are being sighted in many neighbourhoods across Karachi. Veterinarian Isma Gheewala confirms that lion visits to her clinic in Defence area have become quite frequent. One of them is brought to her for declawing after every month and a half. Still, Summaiya Zaidi, a Karachi-based lawyer, could not believe her eyes when she saw a young lion inside a house in Defence.

She was returning home from a cinema around midnight in May this year. As her car stopped at an intersection, she saw a cub through a half-open gate. “At first I thought it was a cat but then I quickly realised that it was too big to be a cat,” she says in an email interview.

An intrigued Zaidi then started gathering more information with the objective to move a court against the practice of keeping lions inside homes. Along with another lawyer, Muhammad Ali Lakhani, she subsequently filed a petition at the Sindh High Court, seeking punishment for those who were keeping lions in captivity. The petitioners also asked the court to cancel all previously issued permits for the import, trade and possession of big cats. There is nothing much that the court could do.

The problem is that there is no law in Pakistan to prohibit the possession of a wild imported animal, says Uzma Khan, who works as a technical advisor for WWF-Pakistan. If, for instance, someone is keeping a lion as a pet inside their house and their neighbours do not like it, all they can do is go to the police and register a complaint under section 289 of the Pakistan Penal Code that pertains to “negligent conduct with respect to [an] animal”.

Zaidi and her co-petitioners wanted a lot more. They requested the court to order the federal government to set up a ‘scientific authority’ to determine whether or not importing lions was detrimental to the survival of their species. They also wanted clear court orders that those keeping lions as pets provide the animals enough space and other facilities they require to live in peace and comfort.

After a hearing this August, the court finally ruled that no permit/licence must be issued without fulfilling the requirements mentioned in the Pakistan Trade Control of Wild Fauna and Flora Act 2012.

This is exactly what Pakistani laws already require — at least on paper.

A few years ago, Dr Farooq Sattar, a senior leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, met four young men, all friends, at some exhibition in Karachi. They were holding snakes that they owned as pets. An animal enthusiast, Sattar asked them if they had more animals and how and where they were keeping them. The young men had many other animals and they were keeping them inside their own homes.

Sattar made them an offer: he will arrange a public space as a habitat for their animals but they have to make them available for people’s viewing. The young men agreed. The deal looked beneficial to them: their animals would get a large place to inhabit as compared to the cramped spaces inside their homes. Letting others share the joy of seeing the animals was a small price to pay. More importantly, their partnership with the government would help them in getting import permits and possession licences.

This is how a public park in Karachi’s Nazimabad locality came to house the Wildlife Experience Center that has many local and foreign animals — a couple of crocodiles, a vulture, a toucan, flamingos, parrots, monkeys, an owl and a falcon among others. Its biggest attraction is two white lion cubs — a male and a female. On a recent evening, they can be seen roaming around in a large enclosure at the park, separated from the viewers by a glass wall. School children can be seen visiting the park on any day. Every now and then, various activities are also arranged there around the animals. The 50th birthday of the zoo’s resident tortoise was celebrated in August this year.

Every other day as night approaches and all the visitors leave, the four friends visit the park. After they get inside, the main gate is closed and a side door in the glass wall is opened. The cubs jump out eagerly, running about and cuddling with their owners.

Atif Imtiaz, one of the owners of the animals, has a video that shows the cubs playing with a football. They are jumping high in the air, trying to catch the ball. In their playfulness, they look like any domesticated pet.

The cubs belong to a rare breed – falling under Appendix II of the CITES – only found in the Timbavati Nature Reserve in South Africa. They have been imported under a permit issued by the federal ministry of climate change.

The process to obtain a permit is long and runs through many tiers of the government machinery. Those interested in importing animals first have to apply to get a No-Objection Certificate from the wildlife department of their province. The official cost of a certificate is 150,000 rupees but importers allege they often end up paying around 200,000 rupees in order to expedite the process of its issuance.

Provincial wildlife departments carry out their own checks to ensure that the intending importers have sufficient and suitable facilities to keep the imported animals and that they are registered with the provincial government concerned as non-commercial entities. “The provinces are required to get an affidavit from the importers that the animals being imported will not be used for commercial purposes or even for breeding,” says Samar Khan, a wildlife conservator at the federal ministry of climate change.

After a No-Objection Certificate is issued, importers approach the ministry of climate change in Islamabad which, after having received all the required fees and other documents, including a CITES permit from the country from which the animals will be imported, issues an import permit. Each permit is valid for no more than six months. Importers place their orders to buy the animals in advance so that their permits do not expire before their consignments arrive.

Once the imported animals land in Pakistan, a doctor, designated by the provincial wildlife department, checks them and issues a certificate on the state of their health. In normal circumstances, it takes an hour for an imported animal to get out of a seaport or an airport. “Once you bring the animals in the country,” asks Hameria Aisha, a wildlife manager at WWF-Pakistan, “is there a check and balance on their sale here?” There is none.

The closest thing to a regulatory regime is a set of guidelines issued in 2011 by the National Council For Conservation of Wildlife — now merged into the federal ministry of climate change. These guidelines for the acquisition and management of big cats state that trade of these animals should only be done by registered zoos and breeding farms and not by any individuals.

These guidelines, however, have no legal value, says Uzma Khan of WWF-Pakistan. These are merely recommendations. “We tried to push them into legislation,” she says, by filing a petition at the Lahore High Court in May 2013 through actor-writer-activist Feryal Ali Gauhar.

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, an environment-conscious judge, was chief justice of the Lahore High Court at the time. Around 14 months after the petition was filed, he set up a commission to look into the import and possession of big cats and to devise a code of conduct for their public display during political events.

In 2016, the commission recommended that the 2011 guidelines be incorporated in wildlife laws. Wildlife is a provincial subject in Pakistan. Only provincial governments have the power to enforce laws related to the poaching and trade of wild animals and punish those found in violation of those laws. Each province has different kinds of wildlife facing different kinds of threats. It makes sense, in theory, that provincial laws are tailored accordingly.

In practice, this results in a situation where there is no uniform country-wide policy to deal with wildlife-related issues. While a federal law, as mentioned earlier, prohibits the possession and breeding of wild animals for any purpose other than research, education and conservation, each of the four provinces have allowed private zoos and breeding farms that may or may not have anything to do with any of the three purposes.

On top of all this, foreign trade being a federal subject requires compliance with federal laws. As far as wild animals are concerned, their trade is governed by the Pakistan Trade Control of Wild Fauna and Flora Act. This law was passed in 2012 after Salman Shahbaz managed to obtain an apparently unlawful approval to import an animal listed on Appendix I of the CITES.

The law specifies that any animal can be imported to Pakistan as long as they are not listed on Appendix I of the CITES. It also states that importers must provide a physical environment for the animals that is similar to their natural habitat.

These provisions exist in breach rather than in compliance as do the federal government’s guidelines on the inter-provincial transport and trade of wild animals. One of the major reasons for the law not being implemented is that its implementation falls in the domain of provincial governments which often do not like federal interference in their domain.

Provincial governments also do not have the resources required for law enforcement. Sometimes, their officials do not have the will and the capacity for enforcement and at other times they are simply complicit with those involved in illegal trade. “People often bypass provincial authorities,” is how Samar Khan of the climate change ministry describes the situation.

He does not agree to the suggestion that the federal government should place a blanket ban on animal trade, especially of lions, both within the country and with other countries, as long as enforcement mechanisms remain ineffective.

No problems arise during the import process, Samar Khan says. “Difficulties in law enforcement emerge when the animals are kept at home as pets.” His answer to the problem: “Existing laws should be enforced properly so the animals are not kept in captivity for commercial or breeding purposes.”

How will proper enforcement be ensured given the federal-provincial dichotomy, and the incompetence and corruption among officials responsible for compliance on the ground? He does not offer an answer.

Online trading is even harder to detect and stop. Hundreds of websites, selling exotic wildlife species, and numerous Instagram accounts and Facebook pages operate openly offering or seeking lions, turtles, snakes, scorpions and many other animals. “Law enforcers cannot ensure surveillance of every web page,” says Samar Khan, “because provincial wildlife departments are not efficient in using the Internet and information technology.”

Uzma Khan of the WWF-Pakistan agrees to the extent that wildlife departments suffer from a lack of resources, but she also believes that tracking down and blocking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses involved in animal trade is not impossible. “If wildlife departments do not have the motivation or the capacity to curb online trade, the government should involve the federal information technology and telecommunication ministry in the process,” she suggests.

The only obstacle that prevents this from happening is that laws that govern the Internet in Pakistan do not even mention wildlife trading, says Mansoor Khan, a director at the federal ministry of information technology and telecommunication. “Prevention of online trade in wildlife does not fall in our domain.”

Even if his ministry gets the mandate to do so, it will be difficult to prevent such trade in a globalised online world. Traders can easily operate websites and social media pages from territories outside the jurisdiction of Pakistani authorities. Without a concerted global effort, piecemeal, country-specific actions are never going to work.

Some recent developments suggest that global level efforts are being made in this regard. In 2017, eBay, an online marketplace, announced that it had removed about 45,000 wildlife trading listings from its website. Similarly, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a non-profit working for animal conservation globally, launched this October what it calls a global wildlife cybercrime action plan.

The plan urges countries like Pakistan – where wildlife trade is rampant – to prioritise the detection and prevention of wildlife-related crimes both online and offline. It also suggests embedding cyber investigations into a government’s operations in the field of wildlife conservation.

“There has to be an improved customer and user awareness [through the provision of] information on wildlife poaching, online trafficking and laws around protected species,” says Tania McCrea Steele who leads the implementation of the IFAW action plan. “National governments need to block advertisements and individual users that abuse wildlife policies.”

This story was produced by the Herald, written as part of the ‘Reporting the Online Trade in Illegal Wildlife’ programme. This is a joint project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Global Initiative Against Organized Crime funded by the Government of Norway. More information at http://globalinitiative.net/initiatives/digital-dangers. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher.

The writer is a freelance reporter based in Karachi.

This article was published in the Herald's November 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

This article was published in the Herald's November 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

The idea of reorganising a state through the creation of new geographical and administrative units within it is not novel. Recent history provides examples of such ‘right-sizing’ of several states — one well-known to us is India where a number of new provinces have been formed over the last seven decades. Is Pakistan also about to enter a phase of right-sizing itself with the creation of a province consisting of Punjab’s southern and southwestern parts?

The latest spurt for the new province came on April 9, 2018 when a new political entity, Janoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz, came into being. Comprising disgruntled and defecting members of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) – including such notable politicians as Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar (from Rahim Yar Khan), Malik Qasim Noon (from Multan), Nasrullah Derashik and Sardar Balakh Sher Mazari (both from Rajanpur) – its constituents blamed their party for failing to live up to its promise of creating a separate province in their native region.

The Mahaz later merged into the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), thus, helping to bridge the electable deficit that the party had traditionally suffered from. This set in motion a series of developments that paved the way for an impressive PTI showing in the 2018 elections in southern and southwestern Punjab and, consequently, the formation of its governments both in Islamabad and Lahore.

All this raises a number of important questions.

Is there a historical context to the movement for reorganising Punjab? Has Pakistan moved beyond its well-entrenched paradigm of an overly centrist state which views every ethnonationalist demand for territorial restructuring through the prism of security? Will the creation of a new geographical and administrative unit in Punjab lead to the creation of other new provinces as well?

South Punjab witnessed the emergence of two competing political trends in 1970: a Bahawalpur-based movement centred on the demand for restoring the geographical and administrative boundaries of Bahawalpur state that had been merged into One Unit in 1955 and a Multan-centred linguistic-nationalist movement for the creation of a province comprising those districts of Punjab where Seraiki language is spoken.

The former movement was premised on the contention that Bahawalpur, one of the most prosperous princely states at the time of independence, had suffered a steep economic and political decline after its merger in One Unit. A litany of complaints about developmental deprivations, administrative neglect and oppressive centralisation of power in Lahore led to public demands for the restoration of the state when One Unit came to an end in 1970. These demands received a strong impetus through street agitations in Bahawalpur in April that year that also resulted in the death of some protestors at the hands of law enforcement agencies — giving the movement its first ‘martyrs’. A political organisation spearheading the demands for the restoration of the state, Bahawalpur Muttahida Mahaz, enjoyed such widespread support at the time that it won four National Assembly and nine Punjab Assembly seats from the Bahawalpur region in the 1970 general elections.

All this mobilisation soon subsided and its proponents either joined mainstream parties or they disappeared from the political scene altogether.

In recent decades, political discourse in south Punjab has tilted in favour of an identity movement based on the Seraiki language. It has its origin in literary activism that began in the 1960s when the development of the Seraiki script and the widespread availability of printing technologies made it possible to mass publish books and journals written in the Seraiki language.

A highly important milestone in the evolution of a Seraiki consciousness was a Seraiki literary conference held in Multan in 1975. Literary, social and political activists of the region who participated in the event decided to work for the official recognition of their language. Their efforts were rewarded in the 1981 census when the speakers of Seraiki were allowed, for the first time, to have it recorded as their mother tongue.

The 1980s marked the transition of Seraiki activism from a literary movement to a political one. Thus began the quest for a distinct Seraiki waseb (region) and some proto-parties, such as Pakistan Seraiki Party, emerged to mobilise public support for a separate Seraiki province. Soon, Seraiki Sooba Mahaz, a collective front comprising many literary, cultural and political entities, also came into being.

The case for a Seraiki province has been well-presented since then by researchers, writers and poets. From Professor Akram Meerani in Layyah district, who has written many monographs on the subject, to Ashiq Buzdar, who wrote poetry, including the famous poem ‘Asaan qaidi takht Lahore de (we, prisoners of the throne in Lahore)’ and organised an annual Seriaki festival in his hometown in Rajanpur district, many activists have made this case long before the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and PTI came around to championing the idea of Punjab’s territorial reorganisation.

The demand for the creation of a new province in south Punjab is rooted in the economic, political and cultural grievances of the people of the region. By all objective accounts, the districts of south Punjab rank far behind those from north and central Punjab in social and economic indicators. Seraiki civil society complains about the persistent neglect of its region by takht Lahore. Non-compliance with the regional job quota for south Punjab and the lack of suitable allocation of the development budget for the region are cited, among many other things, as major justifications for the division of Punjab. These arguments have some merit: the government’s general performance in south Punjab shows how distant the state is from the people living in this region.

Then there is something else.

The 2017 census placed Punjab’s population at approximately 110 million. If the province were a country, it would be the 12th most populated state in the world. The demand for its geographical and administrative reorganisation is rooted in the argument that it is not always possible to have effective administrative and governance structures to deliver civic services to such a vast population.

The passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010, that saw an unprecedented transfer of power from the centre to the provinces, is also an important development as far as the quest for a Seraiki province is concerned. The powers gained by the provinces under the amendment produced an instant reaction among ‘minorities’ within each of them. Urdu-speakers in Sindh, Hindko-speakers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakhtuns in Balochistan and Seraiki speakers in Punjab all demanded provinces of their own.

Thus began the latest stage in the territorial imagining of the Seraiki movement: a Seraiki province increasingly looked like a distinct possibility. It was under these circumstances in 2012 that the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly passed resolutions in support of the creation of new province(s) in Punjab. These resolutions were passed despite the fact that there were open differences both within PPP and PMLN, ruling in Islamabad and Lahore respectively at the time, over whether there should be one new province or two in south Punjab — or none at all.

The debate about right-sizing, or rather downsizing, Punjab subsequently came to the forefront of electoral politics as PPP embarked in 2013 on a proactive voter mobilisation around the demand for a Seraiki province. The politics of province-making, however, had no effect on the party’s electoral fortunes and it was routed in south Punjab, winning only one National Assembly seat from the entire region. Most of its stalwarts, including former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s sons, were defeated.

The 2018 elections offer a contrasting story.

Traditionally, south Punjab is home to some of the leading names among electables, politicians who have a steady record of winning elections. The only variable in their electoral politics is their party that changes in virtually every election — the reason why a very large number of political turncoats is found in south Punjab. It was a combination of the politics of electables and a careful use of the Seraiki card that enabled PTI to win more than 55 per cent of the National Assembly seats in south Punjab in the most recent elections.

A subsequent welcome development for Seraiki nationalists came with the appointment of Usman Buzdar from Taunsa tehsil deep in the Seraiki-speaking region as the chief minister of Punjab. Another important progress has been the tabling of a resolution by Mohsin Leghari, a PTI legislator, in the Punjab Assembly on August 15, 2018 for the creation of a new province. But perhaps the most important step in this regard has been the formation of a committee by PTI’s federal government in Islamabad. Comprising federal minister for planning Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar and foreign minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the committee has been assigned the task of consulting and convincing other political parties on the issue.

Together, these developments have generated an unprecedented optimism about the possibility of a Seraiki province becoming a reality.

Will this optimism translate into policy?

In neighbouring India, the creation of new provinces is a relatively easy affair — at least on paper. The central legislature approves the creation of a new province through a simple majority of its members even though the constitution requires it to have a (non-binding) consultation with the concerned state’s legislature too.

In Pakistan, Article 239 of the Constitution sets the bar extremely high when it comes to the creation of new provinces. Changes in the boundaries of existing federating units require a constitutional amendment that, in turn, needs two-thirds majority in the two houses of the federal legislature. What makes the changes even more difficult is that they also need to be endorsed by a two-thirds majority in the provincial legislature of the concerned unit. The creation of such a large-scale political and constitutional consensus is a tall order by any standard.

The Pakistani federation is also essentially a demos-enabling mechanism where federal institutions structured around the size of population, such as the National Assembly, remain far more empowered than those that are based on equal representation of the federating units regardless of their population — such as the Senate. This means that Punjab, having the highest number of representatives in the National Assembly, possesses an overriding legislative strength to thwart any move to divide it.

Will the whole effort for a Seraiki province, thus, flounder under the heavy weight of these requirements? Will all the latest developments merely end up making Multan a secondary capital of Punjab so as to better administer the southern and southwestern parts of the province? Will the linguistic/nationalistic ambitions of the Seraiki-speaking people be satisfied with any arrangement short of a province of their own?

These are all tough questions searching for early answers.

The writer is a PhD in political science and teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

This article was published in the Herald's October 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

Mir Ibrahim Bizenjo owns land – a huge amount of it – in various parts of the coastal district of Gwadar. He also owns a lot of large motorised fishing boats — some registered in Pakistan, others in Oman across the Arabian Sea from Pakistan’s Makran coast.

And he has a business partner, Mir Imam Bizenjo, who is known as far as the United States. The two are related too: Ibrahim Bizenjo’s son Charagh is married to Imam Bizenjo’s daughter.

The latter has been designated as a drug trafficking “kingpin” by the United States since 2009 under a law that bars “significant foreign narcotics traffickers” from doing business with American banks. A list of such “kingpins” issued by the American government referred to him with various aliases including Imam Bheel.

Imam Bizenjo has been in the news – both before and after that designation – for all the wrong reasons and yet he has not attracted much public attention.

Way back in 1998, he was named as a mastermind behind a passenger plane hijacking. The plane was flying from Turbat city in Balochistan to Karachi on May 24 that year when three armed hijackers forced it to land in Hyderabad, about 160 kilometres to the northeast of its original destination. The hijackers were overpowered a day later. During investigations, they claimed to be belonging to a student organisation from Balochistan and said they wanted to register their protest against Pakistan’s decision to conduct its nuclear tests in their province’s Chaghai district later the same month. They were subsequently hanged in 2015.

Imam Bizenjo was never arrested or tried in the case.

When General Pervez Musharraf removed Nawaz Sharif’s government in 1999, Imam Bizenjo sought help from Zubaida Jalal, a politician from his native district of Kech in Balochistan, to have his name cleared in the hijacking case. In return, he promised to help her win a National Assembly seat that then comprised Kech and Gwadar districts.

Jalal told Reuters news agency in 2012 that she agreed to help him because he said he had left drug trafficking “many years back”. After she won the election in 2002 and became the federal minister for education, a court hearing the hijacking case dropped charges against Imam Bizenjo over a lack of evidence.

Jalal and Imam Bizenjo had a falling out later so Imam Bizenjo put his son, Yaqub Bizenjo, as a candidate against her in the 2008 election. She lost the poll to Yaqub Bizenjo by a margin of 28,000 or so votes.

During his son’s tenure as a member of the National Assembly over the next five years, Imam Bizenjo and his family made headlines twice — and for violent crimes on both occasions. In the summer of 2009, a parcel bomb exploded at Yaqub Bizenjo’s residence in Karachi’s Defence area; in March 2012, Abdul Rehman Dashti, Gwadar’s district coordination officer, was shot dead allegedly by Imam Bizenjo himself in another part of the same locality.

A Baloch separatist group claimed responsibility for the first incident. Its leader alleged that Imam Bizenjo and Yaqub Bizenjo were helping intelligence agencies against the separatists and that the bomb was a warning for them to desist from doing that.

As for the second incident, investigation into it has not been completed even after six years. Imam Bizenjo was never arrested in the case, let alone interrogated or tried.

Why would Imam Bizenjo murder Dashti given that the two were known to be close to each other? There are unconfirmed reports that the murder was linked to Imam Bizenjo’s drug trafficking business. There are suggestions, also unverified, that it could be connected to Gwadar’s real estate sector that has become a multibillion-rupee affair after the 2005 construction of a deep sea port in the city.

Now his name is resurfacing — and again with reference to real estate.

Kalmat Khor lagoon looks like a large tree if viewed from the air. It is two kilometres wide and 12 metres deep where the Arabian Sea enters the land but seven kilometres into the land it expands enormously to 27 kilometres in width and 19 kilometres in length.

The lagoon, located 320 kilometres west of Karachi, almost halfway between the towns of Ormara and Pasni on the Makran Coastal Highway, covers an area of 102.25 square kilometres. It is surrounded by low hills which send a lot of sediment and silt into it during rains thus making it a perfect habitat for mangrove trees, say two botanists, Fayyaz Rasool and S M Saifullah, in a research paper published by the Karachi University in 1996.

The lagoon is also a fisherman’s paradise. Fishing can happen here all year long, even during the monsoon season in summer when the open sea becomes too rough to fish.

Local residents claim the Pakistan Navy is acquiring thousands of acres of land around the lagoon and, they allege, Ibrahim Bizenjo and Imam Bizenjo are the main beneficiary of this reported acquisition. Using their political influence and their ability to bribe government officials heftily, the two are said to have purchased more than 3,000 acres of land over the last few years from people living along the lagoon at paltry prices and are now expecting to make windfall gains by selling that land to the navy.

Syed Essa Noori, a member of the National Assembly between 2013 and 2018 from the region that includes Kalmat Khor, falls short of repeating these allegations but says he has heard from many people in Kalmat and Pasni towns about a land deal being done between Ibrahim Bizenjo and the navy.

Noori, though, blames a previous Balochistan government, headed by Dr Abdul Malik, for creating a land rush. That government revoked an ongoing land settlement process for Gwadar district’s Pasni subdivision, where Kalmat Khor is located, in 2013, thus mixing up state-owned land with privately-owned one, he says.

A new land settlement process that followed still goes on, according to Noori. And it has created opportunities for people with money and influence to encroach upon state land and have it registered under their own names, he alleges. It has also helped them purchase lands at lower than market prices from individuals who risked losing land in their possession to either the state or someone else under the new settlement process, he adds.

Malik denies any wrongdoing. When he became chief minister in 2013, he says, “land grabbers had encroached upon hundreds of thousands of acres of state land by having it declared as private land through bribes”. That is why he revoked the earlier settlement process. “The new settlement was done extremely transparently and more than 400,000 acres of state land was recovered from land grabbers.”

Malik also claims he did not leave the settlement process unfinished but completed it during his tenure (that ended in December 2015). “I have nothing to do with the process of land settlement being done in Pasni now.”

Whatever the reality, land settlement in the subdivision is still under way and its completion has been further delayed because Pasni does not have a land settlement commissioner. The post is lying vacant, says Muhammad Omer, the local assistant commissioner, who, in a green T-shirt and blue jeans, looks more like a sportsman than a government official.

Omar acknowledges having received a Pakistan Navy request for land acquisition but insists that it cannot be entertained before the land settlement process has been finalised.

Many residents of the subdivision claim that, regardless of the local administration’s refusal to acquire land for the navy without a final land settlement, there are signs that a silent acquisition is already taking place. They allege the navy’s checkpoints are appearing overnight next to their villages and towns in the vicinity of the lagoon.

Fishermen in Kalmat town say their access to Kalmat Khor has been blocked by security posts being built by the Pakistan Navy. Those from a village near the lagoon found their fishing nets burnt down to ashes early one morning in March 2018 near an under-construction Pakistan Navy post.

They see the incident as a warning to them to stay away from the lagoon. Otherwise, they say, how could anyone burn the nets after the personnel at the post had assured them that they could leave their nets there without fearing any damage to them?

When some fishermen later wrote social media posts about the torching of the nets, officials from the state approached them and gave them 50,000 rupees as compensation.

Fishermen complain the compensation is not just inadequate but is also meant to suppress their grievances over the expansion of the navy’s physical presence in their area without a consultation with them.

Haji Iqbal set out from his home in Turbat city on a cold morning in January 2010 to visit his farmland in a neighbouring area called Koh-e-Imam (or the leader’s mountain). When he reached there, he says, surveyors associated with the Pakistan Navy stopped him and did not allow him to enter what he thought were his own fields.

The surveyors told him the navy had acquired the land that he claimed to be his and had also paid its price to the provincial government’s revenue department.

Iqbal was shocked. No government official had told him that his land was being acquired by the navy. Nor had he received any money in return for it.

He was also surprised. Why, he wondered, would the navy need his land located more than 100 kilometres inland from the Arabian Sea.

Scores of other farmers in the area have similar complaints — that their land was acquired by the Pakistan Navy without their knowledge. “We only became aware of it when the navy started construction on our farmland and we were stopped from visiting our fields,” says Shabbir Ahmed Dashti, who claims to have lost 90 acres to the acquisition.

Earlier, in 2008, the navy acquired another 2,500 acres of land in Kunchati village of Dasht subdivision which, like Turbat, is a part of Kech district. The method of acquisition in this instance, though, was different from the one applied around Koh-e-Imam.

A team of navy officials is said to have approached Sohail-ur-Rehman who, as executive district officer revenue at the time, had the power to acquire any land in the district for official purposes. They reportedly apprised him about their desire to acquire land in Kunchati for a naval base but apparently asked him to find a way that allowed them to bypass the lengthy official procedures. The land was needed urgently.

Rehman came up with a novel idea. He informed landowners in Kunchati that the provincial government was going to acquire their land at an official rate (which is usually much below the one obtained in the market) but they could avoid the acquisition if they willingly sold the land to the navy — at a premium.

He then prepared two documents. One was an application by individual landowners. Its subject read: “Payment of compensation in lieu of area affected because of construction of a naval base (defence)”. The text of the application stated that x amount of land owned by person x was going to be affected by the construction of the naval base for which the government was paying compensation. “Please pay the compensation money,” the application asked the executive district officer revenue on behalf of individual landowners.

Each landowner put down his personal particulars and that of his land in the application and signed it (or put the impression of his thumb on it if he was unlettered).

The second document was an affidavit in which the landowners stated that they had received the compensation money. They also declared in it that they would hand over their land to the government after having received the compensation.

The two documents were meant to give the process of land acquisition a semblance of being legal but it is still far from legal, say law experts. According to a high court lawyer based in Turbat, land acquisition by an institution of the state becomes legal only if it follows the laid down official procedures. No other process, however elaborate it may be, makes it legal.

Yet the fact remains that none of the landowners in Kunchati has challenged the process in a court of law and the whole transaction is being seen as complete — and forgotten.

There is another important aspect of this particular land acquisition. Kunchati, like Koh-e-Imam, is more than 100 kilometres inland which, in the opinion of political and human rights activists in the area, makes it a less than ideal location for a naval base.

Also, no base has been built in the village even though almost 10 years have passed since the applications were submitted, affidavits signed and land acquired.

Officials associated with the Pakistan Navy’s public relations department say land acquisitions in Gwadar district are being made to implement a new arrangement for the security of Pakistan’s coast and sea waters. Called Regional Maritime Security Patrol, according to a non-classified Pakistan Navy document, this arrangement will be implemented “in critical maritime areas/choke points within [the] Indian Ocean … in order to maintain a robust security posture and protect national and international shipping”. It will “contribute in projecting Pakistan as a responsible state shouldering Regional Maritime Security” and will enable the Pakistan Navy to protect national and international ships plying in the Indian Ocean from threats of piracy and maritime terrorism as well as to counter drug trafficking, arms smuggling and human trafficking. The patrols will also help the navy “in generating rapid support to contingencies like Humanitarian Assistance, Search and Rescue and Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations in times of need”.

Another non-classified Pakistan Navy document explains that maritime activity is “set to grow exponentially” as soon as the Gwadar Port and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) become fully operational. “This will include increased shipping activity to/from our ports as well as development of maritime economic zones along the coast.” But the success of both the CPEC and the Gwadar port is “intrinsically linked with conducive maritime environment along our coast”. The Pakistan Navy, therefore, “has taken a number of initiatives to ensure” the security of CPEC-related projects and those linked to the Gwadar Port as well as “to augment maritime security arrangements all along the coast”.

The second document says the navy has raised a Coastal Security and Harbour Defence Force to “enhance vigilance and to respond to any emerging threat”. As a part of this force’s operations, a number of security stations, each equipped with surveillance and monitoring equipment, will be set up all along Pakistan’s coastline, from Jiwani in the west and Sir Creek in the east, it explains.

The Pakistan Navy also raised Task Force-88 on December 13, 2016 for ensuring the security of the Gwadar Port, “its seaward approaches as well as CPEC-related and other maritime projects”. This task force includes air units, unmanned aerial vehicles, fast attack ships and shore-based surveillance equipment.

It is because of these operational requirements that the Pakistan Navy is asking the government in Balochistan for land acquisition in various areas along the coast, says a navy official in Karachi. But, he adds, no land is being acquired directly from private landowners even though they are always “happy to sell their land to the Pakistan Navy”. This, he explains, is because they know the navy will never make them undersell their land. “They understand we will give them the best price for their land.”

If it were not for his grey hair, Naeem Bazai looks rather young. Sitting behind a large wooden desk in his office in Gwadar city, he is poring over a stack of office files and looks too busy to have time for responding to queries regarding land acquisition for and by the navy and other armed forces. As deputy commissioner of Gwadar district (he is now transferred elsewhere), he had a huge area under his jurisdiction – the district’s coastline alone is around 600 kilometres long – and, consequently, a huge amount of administrative issues to take care of.

When I finally get the chance to ask him about the land being reportedly purchased by the Pakistan Navy in Pasni from Imam Bizenjo and Ibrahim Bizenjo, he pushes the files aside and asks, “Are you from the navy?”

He has already seen my business card before allowing me into his office but I introduce myself again. He then says he is not bound to share official information with journalists and advises me to contact revenue officials in Pasni to get the answer to my question.

When I ask him if he has received 47 different demands for land acquisition in various parts of Gwadar by various state institutions, mainly the military ones, he responds: “This office does not initiate any land acquisition process merely on the request of the armed forces as they often do not deposit in advance the mandatory 25 per cent price of the land to be acquired.” He then pulls the files back in front of him as a signal for me to leave.

Before I exit his office, he shoots another exhortation in my direction: “Official matters better be kept official.”

His roundabout responses are certainly unhelpful in clearing the air of mystery and mistrust surrounding land acquisition by the armed forces which, according to official sources, is going to be larger than ever before. Official documents reveal that the ministry of defence, Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Air Force and National Logistics Cell (NLC) – all military-linked institutions – have asked the Gwadar Development Authority (GDA) to find more than 60,000 acres of land for them in different parts of the district. Most of the land the three armed forces want to acquire, though, is in Gwadar subdivision — closer to where the Gwadar Port and the Makran Coastal Highway are.

A GDA official discloses, on the condition that he is not mentioned by name, that the Pakistan Army wants to acquire 45,000 acres of land for building a garrison near Gwadar city. It is also seeking land for its Special Services Group (190 acres), for NLC (1,000 acres), for joint defence purposes (9,270 acres) and for setting up another garrison in Gurandani South area (2,500 acres) besides asking for many smaller patches of land for other purposes. Similarly, says the official, the Pakistan Navy wants to acquire around 1,500 acres of land in different parts of Gwadar district.

These demands have sent jitters among local realtors.

On a hot and humid evening a couple of months ago, many local estate agents are sitting on plastic chairs in a circle in the porch of a bungalow in Gwadar city. They are discussing what kind of impact these massive land acquisitions may have on the real estate market in the area.

One of them explains that a lot of land being sought by the armed forces falls in localities where private firms and individuals have invested billions of rupees in real estate. If and when those lands get acquired by the state, he says, their owners will get the official price for them which is always lower than the market rate and may turn out to be below their own purchase price.

“What will happen to their massive investment?” he wonders.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

This article was published in the Herald's September 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

This article was published in the Herald's September 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

This article was published in the Herald's October 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

The Trump administration's diplomatic strategy toward South Asia, as enumerated in its December 2017 National Security Strategy, places a high priority in seeking “a Pakistan that is not engaged in destabilising behaviour and a stable and self-reliant Afghanistan”. In addition, the administration’s strategy is to “deepen our strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region”. Key objectives that deserve to be, but aren't prioritised are seeking improved ties between India and Pakistan and reducing nuclear dangers in the region. Leaving these regrettable omissions aside, how is the administration doing by its own yardsticks?

Not too well, but there are extenuating circumstances. Important diplomatic gears are stuck on the Subcontinent. The governments of India and Pakistan aren’t moving to improve relations, at least not any time soon. Newly installed Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, with seeming support from his army chief, has notably said that he is willing to take two steps forward to Narendra Modi’s one, but this choreography isn’t about to start. At this juncture, they are more likely to take two steps backwards than forwards. It's hard to improve prospects for a settlement in Afghanistan when Pakistan and India remain at loggerheads.

Nor are the Trump administration's national security objectives likely to be advanced when Modi and Imran find it difficult to make headway with Washington. Donald Trump is palpably uncomfortable with being hugged by Modi, and he appears disinterested in Imran’s desire to turn the page. Besides, the price of improved ties with Washington appears high to decision makers in both countries, while calculations of presumed benefits seem modest. Washington’s influence is on the wane, here as elsewhere, and Capitol Hill’s fondness for sanctions certainly hasn’t helped.

It doesn’t take much to derail attempts to improve ties between India and Pakistan. Any such effort can embarrass leaders making the effort when spoilers derail progress, as they are inclined to do. Little did prime minister A B Vajpayee know when he embarked on his symbolism-freighted visit to Lahore in 1999 that secret implementation of the Kargil operation had already begun. Likewise, the 2008 Mumbai carnage directed at luxury hotels, the central train station and other targets put an end to backchannel efforts to revive public diplomacy.

Ever since, cross-border attacks have not been savage enough to prompt a major crisis, but have been sufficient to embarrass prime ministers making overtures to improve relations. The worst casualty count since the 2008 Mumbai attacks occurred in September 2016 at an Indian military camp in Uri, ruining an upcoming regional summit meeting. After the Uri attack, Modi authorised and publicised “surgical strikes” across the Kashmir divide, upping the ante and deflecting domestic outrage. It’s not unusual for Indian and Pakistani commandos to overrun border posts, but it is unusual to see footage of such operations online and on TV.

By comparison, the latest kerfuffle about starting new talks after Imran Khan’s election victory was prompted by a minor attack and the issuance of postage stamps highlighting the Kashmir dispute before Imran assumed office. Usually, a new government prompts a new start, but Indian elections are on the horizon and the Modi government is priming the pump, including celebrating the second anniversary of the surgical strikes. Many good ideas for confidence-building and nuclear risk-reduction measures on the Subcontinent will have to wait.

Traction to improve US ties with Pakistan and India is also hard to come by. The Trump administration's policies toward Pakistan seem to track closely with the recommendations of a Hudson Institute report, A New U.S. Approach to Pakistan: Enforcing Aid Conditions without Cutting Ties, whose principal authors are Husain Haqqani and Lisa Curtis, now on the National Security Council Staff.

They argue that Pakistan’s national security managers “need to take a comprehensive approach to shutting down all Islamist militant groups that operate from Pakistani territory … Accordingly, the objective of the Trump administration’s policy toward Pakistan must be to make it more and more costly for Pakistani leaders to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies to achieve regional strategic goals.”

This approach has yielded few dividends so far. The Trump administration has “right-sized” US support for Pakistan, reflecting wide divergences on key policy objectives. US military assistance has plummeted, including the unwise step of disinviting Pakistani military officers to attend training institutes. Moreover, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has publicly cast doubt about US support for yet another bailout of Pakistan by the International Monetary Fund. The carrots offered by the Bush and Obama administrations have been replaced by sticks.

The Trump administration’s penalty-oriented, Afghan-centric approach to Pakistan is understandable, but faces long odds. After seventeen years, Washington's patience is wearing thin and its desire for a diplomatic settlement is palpable. But after seventeen years, it is also clear that Pakistan’s national security establishment will do what it takes to assure a friendly, or at least non-hostile, neighbour to its west. Washington’s current talking point about Pakistan “do more” relates to bringing the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. But even if this happens, Pakistan’s objectives and plans are likely to remain at variance with those of Washington.

Left unaddressed are two major questions: Is Afghanistan the most important issue between Pakistan and the United States? And is there any realistic way for Washington to expect or influence better Pakistani behaviour on other key issues? If the answer to the first question is “no”, then the Trump administration has the wrong focus. If the answer to the second question is “yes”, then it is up to Islamabad and Rawalpindi to clarify positive movement, and it’s up to Washington to recognise it.

As for US-Indian ties, the bloom seems to be off this rose. High hopes about New Delhi’s help vis-à-vis China in the “Indo-Pacific” region have been grounded by the realities of the Indian strategic culture and domestic politics. New Delhi is more than willing to accept gifts from Washington, but not at the expense of its strategic autonomy. The stubborn reality is that India’s voting record in the UN General Assembly doesn’t vary all that much from China. Moreover, it remains exceedingly hard for any Indian government to reform dysfunctional practices governing national defence or to get more “bang for the Rupee” in defence spending.

Donald Trump can add a fillip to US-India ties by accepting New Delhi’s invitation to be its chief guest at the Republic Day parade next January, but Trump’s penchant for tariffs, sanctions and visa constraints seem ingrained. It was telling that the “Two Plus Two” talks between US and Indian cabinet secretaries in September yielded less results than Vladimir Putin’s visit approximately three weeks later. The centerpiece of the Putin visit — the signing of a deal worth five billion dollars for Russia’s S-400 missile system — defies the Trump administration’s threat to impose sanctions.

Washington and New Delhi can still find common areas to improve relations, but advances are likely to be incremental. For the near term, New Delhi (along with other US partners and allies) will have to deal with the Trump administration’s self-wounding actions. This, too, will pass. Until then, the case for heavy lifting on New Delhi’s part for an administration that espouses an “America First” strategy is less than persuasive. The longer term, structural problem of deeply ingrained habits that defy significant change in its national security policies will remain.

A period of diplomatic gridlock seems in the offing for Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad. As long as this is the case, the Trump administration's national security strategy objectives for the region will remain beyond reach. In the near term, the gridlock is more likely to be broken by bad news than by promising developments. Ironically, one good argument for avoiding another crisis until relations can improve is the unpredictability of and lack of confidence in the Trump administration.

The writer is Co-founder of the Stimson Center.

After a few weeks of wait and see, the government has recently taken some decisive steps. The increase in natural gas prices, announced on September 17, was followed up by a mini-budget presented in the National Assembly the next day. Both steps signal a departure from the ideology the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) expressed in its election campaign — and before that, in its long sit-in protests in 2014.

The increase in gas prices is aimed at correcting an almost criminal underpricing of a natural resource that has already depleted in Pakistan’s gas fields. The mini-budget is, similarly, an attempt at rationalising both the government’s income and expenditure.

Retaining many of the previous budget’s tax cuts for the less affluent, the government has increased tax rates for the rich. It has also announced programmes for housing and medical care for the poor apart from offering special incentives to exporters. The mini-budget has simultaneously taken a bold step by slashing development spending to bring fiscal deficit – the gap between the government’s earning and expenditure – under control. It has also promised to raise revenue by stopping tax evasion and plugging leakages in the tax collection machinery. Though, it has made a major concession by allowing non-filers of tax returns to purchase cars and properties, and by not banning luxury imports.

This middle-of-the-road strategy is not what many expected from a PTI administration. But campaign promises about what should be done and having the power to decide what must be done are two separate things.

What still has not been addressed is the balance of payment deficit – the gap between the US dollars coming into Pakistan and the US dollars going out of the country – and also inflation. Unless taken care of, these two problems will remain front and centre in our economic woes.

The statement by finance minister Asad Umer that the mini-budget is just about emergency steps to stabilise the economy – and that actual reforms will be announced soon – has not dispelled the sense of uncertainty about what the government intends to do. While many people applaud PTI’s social welfare agenda and its insistence on imposing austerity on the elite, there is uncertainty about interest rates and whether the rupee will further depreciate. There are also worries about the need for dollar loans to shore up foreign exchange reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan.

The government, indeed, is caught up in the middle of some deceptive choices: should it manage the deficit in the balance of payments or should it provide relief to people; should it go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance or should it seek financial help from China in order to avoid the IMF; should it initiate disruptive reforms or should it embark on a slower process of change that accommodates the existing sociopolitical realities.

As far as the debate about IMF is concerned, the narrative is simple. In the past, Pakistan has been dependent on IMF (and by association, on the United States) for regular assistance to stabilise its economy. This dependence is assessed to have given the United States a leverage over our foreign policy, specifically in Afghanistan. Now that China has emerged as a counterweight to the United States, the argument goes, Pakistan should move away from the IMF.

There are news reports that claim China has already stepped in to provide Pakistan with much-needed foreign exchange. These reports also point to how the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has provided a much-needed momentum to Pakistan’s economic growth.

People outside the government, however, are still looking for clarity on how exactly China will help Pakistan’s economy and what specific steps it can take to resolve the current uncertainty. Some have even predicted that China will disclose its economic plan for Pakistan only after our government has rejected the option to go to the IMF.

This is an ill-informed viewpoint. Pakistan does not face a choice between either IMF or China. One must realise that China is the third-largest contributor to IMF and is increasingly viewed as a champion of the existing global economic and financial system, especially after the United States has started trade wars with many countries. What bolsters this perception is that, unlike the Trump administration, President Xi Jinping has shown his commitment to multilateral organisations like the IMF.

The next point to note: there is no alternative to the IMF. While the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has been spearheaded by China and it is headquartered in Beijing, it is not a substitute to the IMF. Its mandate is to provide infrastructure loans to developing countries. It does not have the expertise (or the mandate) to assist countries facing problems in overcoming their fiscal deficit and in meeting their balance of payment requirements.

That Pakistan’s economy is mismanaged on both counts is starkly evident from the fact that it is among the top five countries that have repeatedly used an IMF assistance to overcome these problems. Overly dependent on imports but unable to export enough to pay for these imports, our economy is not in a sustainable situation. In order to rectify this state of affairs, IMF will require firm commitments – not just vague promises – from Pakistan to reform its economy.

But, as we have witnessed repeatedly, governments in Pakistan adopt a straight and narrow path for a while but, once the crisis has been averted, they return to their old habits, letting the external deficit rise again. Before long, the country is headed towards IMF one more time.

Market participants, who have lived through previous balance of payments problems in Pakistan, are by now conditioned to IMF bailouts and the sense of calm these bailouts create in the market. Since an IMF assistance package is premised on improving the macroeconomic outlook over the three years after its initiation, it gives market players a hard handle to anchor their expectations.

The question then is: what can China offer (as an alternative to an IMF programme) that will have the same calming effect on Pakistan’s market?

This brings us to another fundamental issue. Policies to narrow the twin deficits – the balance of payment deficit and the budget deficit – are not easy to implement because they require a change in economic behaviour which does not suit the status quo. Barring a revolution that seeks to overthrow the entire system of government, any attempt to take on the prevalent economic interests will always face resistance. Past reform programmes were initiated – but half-heartedly implemented – only because Pakistan was facing a balance of payment crisis and the protectors of the status quo realised that normal economic activity would not be possible without IMF’s assistance.

If the IMF option is rejected, the question to ask is why China will indefinitely finance Pakistan’s external deficit. Instead, China is highly likely to choose a combination of providing soft loans, forcing Pakistan to narrow its twin deficits and, most importantly, urging Pakistan’s policymakers to implement hard reforms. Only the latter will make Pakistan’s economy robust enough to participate in the CPEC as an active partner, rather than as a silent one.

Should we expect China to set economic targets for Pakistan without IMF’s involvement? Even if it does set these targets, will that not provoke public anger over how our best friend is treating us? This simply does not work.

The elements representing the status quo in Pakistan will prefer that China simply fund our external deficit without interfering too much in the economy (the way IMF does). These elements will argue that Pakistan’s needs are small in the larger context of what China seeks to achieve globally; so China should view this economic lifeline as a small price to pay for Pakistan’s loyalty.

This expectation is flawed for a very simple reason: after the anti-corruption campaign that President Xi Jinping has forcefully implemented at home, it is impossible that China will pander to Pakistan’s economic elite. China is also known as a tough bargainer. If its takeover of a Sri Lankan port in Hambantota in return for unpaid loans is any guide, China does not offer concessions on a platter but only when it really has to. A final complication in shifting towards China is the IMF’s seal of approval, which basically means that a country remains a viable destination for foreign investment only if IMF is satisfied with its macroeconomy. If IMF is taken out of the picture (after, say, Parliament rejects a recourse to it), managers of foreign funds that have invested in Pakistan’s stock market may become jittery. A poorly managed break from IMF may accelerate the outflow of their investment — something that has been happening already since mid-2016. With foreign investment in the stock market estimated at six to seven billion US dollars, heavier outflows may trigger a foreign exchange crisis.

To sum it up, IMF is too integral to Pakistan’s business sentiments, especially during this period of economic uncertainty; the China option, on the other hand, is too untested and politically fraught to provide a viable, realistic alternative.

Whether to narrow the external deficit or provide relief to the people — it is a tough call to make for a newly elected government. The decision to cut retail oil prices on September 1 is good for the average Pakistani and will help defuse inflation but there is a catch here: coming after a record balance of payment deficit in July 2018, this reduction casts doubt on whether the government is serious about bridging that deficit. Reducing retail oil prices after the oil import bill increased from 10.6 billion US dollars to 13.3 billion US dollars in the financial year 2017-18 will not be well received by foreign fund managers. They are already edgy as Argentina and Turkey are experiencing currency crises and there are fears about Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Brazil and South Africa as well.

Relief for the poor at this point in time is not the right signal. The nature of a drip-drip depletion of foreign exchange is such that it may become difficult to manage, unless the balance of payment deficit is significantly lower in the next several months compared to July 2018.

The caution with which the government is moving forward is understandable. It has inherited an economy on the brink and emergency measures (taken recently) will have to be supplemented by tough economic reforms. Such reforms can be driven from the top with limited consultation (that is, they can be disruptive) or they can be launched after discussions with all the stakeholders (that is, they can be accommodative).

This decision needs to be made wisely. For example, a parliamentary debate about whether Pakistan should approach IMF makes sense but, if the level of discussion is not nuanced enough to really understand the alternative (that is, a total dependency on China), the resulting decision will be ill-informed.

It is, in fact, easy to predict the outcome of a parliamentary discussion: an elected representative will not accept an economic roadmap devised by IMF, a foreign institution that is viewed as doing the bidding of a foreign power. Even from a personal point of view, an elected representative will not agree on tough fiscal steps which restrict his/her power to reward his/her political constituency.

Furthermore, Pakistan’s bureaucracy is tainted by association as it has facilitated corruption by the political leadership. Since it takes decades for a bureaucrat to reach the summit of the bureaucracy’s rigid hierarchy, he or she does not risk antagonising political bosses lest he or she is pushed down the career ladder. The bureaucracy, therefore, will protect its interests with the same zeal as the politicians do. To bring about real economic change, it is important to overcome such institutional inertia.

In this scenario, a strong case can be made for disruptive reforms from the top.

When confronted by a government machinery steeped in nepotism and corruption, it may not be possible to include everyone in policymaking. More so when a large section of those who wield political power are allegedly corrupt or at least condone corruption. The ruling PTI won the election on an anti-corruption agenda but its hesitant first steps and a business as usual approach to governing may extinguish public goodwill for it.

To stabilise the economy, the government should approach IMF for a bailout package — and it should do so quickly. Pakistan’s top leadership should also visit Beijing, not just to share its vision for economic and social reforms but also to shore up support in China for CPEC and the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement. It is not either China or IMF but a bit of both that Pakistan needs.

In terms of providing relief to people, short-term measures will only backfire. It will be wiser to inform people about the true state of Pakistan’s economy and ask them to be prepared for hardship in the short and medium run in exchange for a more prosperous future. Hard policy steps will be positively received as they signal that things are on the mend. If the government takes the right steps and justifies them, this in itself will create a virtuous cycle whereby investors (and people at large) will start planning for the future.

A real battle will have to be waged against the beneficiaries of the status quo. Since they have engineered or facilitated the weakening of state institutions, they will resist any attempts to reform the economic structure of the country — although they will do this by hiding behind nationalistic slogans or political expediency. In effect, accommodative economic reforms may only result in compromises such as the recent concession to non-filers of tax returns.

If the government’s political mandate is to clean up the system, it will be well-advised to initiate disruptive reforms.

The writer is the founder and author of 'Doctored Papers', a financial advisory.

This article was originally published in the Herald's October 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

It is a hot and humid day and the electricity is out in the small village of Chak 76-5R. Local lambardar, Tariq Tufail, is sitting on a charpoy outside his house surrounded by other villagers. They are using Chinese handheld fans to cool themselves. The irony is that the village is located under the shadow of a newly set-up coal power plant owned by a Chinese firm, Huaneng Shandong Ruyi.

Chak 76-5R is part of Sahiwal district where canal-irrigated farming is the mainstay of the local economy. Many farmers in the village, however, had to give up their farmland to make way for the power plant.

“It was coercion,” claims Tufail as he recalls the process of land acquisition. Farmers, he says, were “blackmailed” into giving up their land. “The government officials came one night, put the resisting villagers in a van and took them to a police station where anti-terrorism cases were registered against them,” he alleges. “Some of them are still fighting those cases in court.”

Older residents of the village have been dependent on the land to make a living. They know no other skills. But they had to accept the compensation – 2,070,000 rupees per acre – given to them by the authorities, and make do with whatever land they were left with.

To mitigate their suffering, the government promised to give them jobs the plant would generate. For a while, the promise was also fulfilled. During the plant’s construction there were plenty of jobs for local young men to work as labourers. Once the plant became functional, their services were no longer needed since running it required specialised and skilled labour that the villagers could not offer.

Then there came an additional worry: the water table in the area started falling due to its usage in the plant’s operations. The villagers claim water has receded by about 15 feet since construction for the plant began two years ago.

Though evidence for recession in the water table is largely anecdotal, the plant does require a large amount of water when it is running. Its feasibility report – prepared by the firm that owns it and submitted to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) – states that it uses around 49,850 litres of water per minute (or 29 cubic feet per second). This water is being drawn from Lower Bari Doab Canal which, according to the Punjab irrigation department, has an average flow of 7,000 cubic feet per second in Sahiwal district. Huaneng Shandong Ruyi pays for the canal water it uses. Last year, it paid 10.8 million rupees to the irrigation department in water prices.

When the canal is closed down – for 15 days in October-November and for 45 days in December-January every year – the plant extracts the same amount of water, 29 cubic feet per second, from two underground wells dug on its premises. The feasibility report claims this extraction will have no adverse effect on the water table as nature will each year replenish at least half of the total water extracted.

Farmers living around the plant complain that the withdrawal of water from the canal in any case means that they are receiving less water for irrigation from the canal than they used to. This, they say, is making them heavily reliant on underground water. Some of them have installed their own diesel-run tube wells; others have to buy irrigation water from their neighbours. This has increased their expenses on farming, they say.

Tufail has nothing to do these days except wait for the situation to somehow improve. “The young ones can still do something else. At 64, I do not know what to do.”

When Nawaz Sharif’s government came into power five years ago, it introduced a new power policy aimed at increasing electricity production and decided to set up many new power projects. To be added to the national grid by 2026, these include 14 coal-fired power plants, three plants that run on regasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) and seven hydro-electric projects.

Not all of these will be built by the end of the day. One of them, a 700 megawatt coal-fired one – to be built by a joint venture of a consortium of Chinese companies and K-Electric – is said to have been shelved even though it still features on the latter’s website.

Out of all the projects announced since 2013, two running on coal and two using RLNG have started producing electricity already. The rest are at various stages of construction or approval from the government.

All this flurry of plant building has increased Pakistan’s installed capacity to produce electricity by 30 per cent since 2013. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan for 2017-18, the country can now produce 29,573 megawatts of electricity — though actual production could be much less because of financial and other logistical, technical and natural constraints.

The increase in electricity production has happened as a result of foreign, almost exclusively Chinese, investment in the sector. To encourage this investment, the government had to announce many incentives that have come under criticism from many people.

Syed Akhtar Ali, a former member of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, says the investment required to set up a power plant is very high — to the tune of two billion US dollars. Since most Pakistani investors do not have this kind of financial pull, the government announced that it will exempt foreign investment in electricity generation from various taxes. The investors were also allowed to bring the required machinery into Pakistan at just five per cent import tax.

To make the investment opportunities more attractive, the government guaranteed that it will pay the power producers as per their capacity rather than actual generation of electricity by them. A private power producer will, thus, get paid even if it produces no electricity at all.

Various Chinese companies have subsequently invested large amounts of money in the power sector. Of the 62 billion US dollars to be invested by China in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), around 33 billion US dollars are allocated for the energy sector. Of this, an estimated 15 billion US dollars are to be invested in new coal-fired power plants alone.

Documents obtained from Nepra show that a total of 12 coal power plants will be built between 2013 and 2019 with Chinese money. Eight of these are to be owned by Chinese companies. Two of them, one in Sahiwal and the other at Port Qasim, Karachi, have already become functional.

“The whole process is a bit incestuous,” says Karachi-based economist Kaiser Bengali of the Chinese investment in coal-based power generation in Pakistan. Chinese companies will purchase plant machinery and other equipment from other Chinese companies with loans taken from Chinese banks. Even when projects are funded by Pakistani banks or undertaken by local companies, it is Chinese firms that provide engineering, procurement and construction services, he says, largely because Pakistan does not have the required expertise in these fields.

All Chinese investments in the power sector, in turn, are insured by the Sinosure Bank in China. The standard rate for this insurance is seven per cent of the entire cost of a project. When calculating tariff for a power plant, this amount gets included in the price at which consumers will buy electricity.

The insurance requirement, though, is not specific to Chinese investment in Pakistan, Ali says. It is a standard practice for most international lending in any country, he adds.

Another additional cost for all CPEC-related projects is the money being spent on the security of their Chinese staff — about one per cent of the cost of each project. This, too, is being added to the final tariff in the case of power plants.

Bengali points to another issue with the power policy: high rate of return promised to investors. The plant in Sahiwal has a return on equity – net income earned as percentage of invested money – of almost 27 per cent.

But the problem, as Bengali argues, is not with Chinese investment per se but the financial model being followed. There is the example of a power policy announced in 1994 that facilitated a large amount of foreign investment from the United States – not dissimilar to the Chinese investment now – through Independent Power Producers (IPP). But the change in government in 1997 resulted in corruption investigations into contracts with those IPPs. Legal notices were issued to 11 of them, leading to a halt in their electricity production. By 1998, the entire policy had collapsed.

One of the many reasons for its collapse was Pakistan’s highly vulnerable financial situation. As a result of economic sanctions imposed by the United States after Pakistan’s nuclear tests of May 1998, balance of payments deteriorated rapidly and foreign investment slowed down. The rupee depreciated by 25 per cent and dollar reserves declined alarmingly – shrinking to the equivalent of less than two weeks of imports. There was no money to be paid to IPPs. Eventually, the World Bank had to step in to resolve the crisis.

Now that Pakistan is passing through an eerily similar financial situation, any small setback can hurt investment worth billions of dollars in the power sector.

Ali sees all the concessions to the investors as the price Pakistan has to pay for foreign investment in coal — a fuel that most countries are not willing to invest in because of environmental concerns. “China itself is shifting away from coal,” he says.

Pakistan is seeking to utilise coal in order to avoid the high financial cost of electricity produced through imported oil.

Coal, though, exacts another price. It pollutes the environment like no other fuel does. According to some studies, a 30 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production has already been witnessed in Pakistan between 1990 and 2012. With the introduction of coal-fired power plants, this figure is likely to rise even further.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

This article was published in the Herald's September 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

It is 9:30 in the morning on July 6, 2018 and the temperature is already nearing 40 degrees centigrade. Neither the clouds nor the wind provide any respite from the blistering heat.

Scores of blue-shirted policemen stand guard at four consecutive steel barriers on a road that leads to Islamabad’s federal judicial complex in the city’s G-11 sector. The area is off limits to the public under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that prohibits the assembly of four or more people. Half a dozen supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) stand close to the barriers, raising slogans rather unconvincingly.

Inside the judicial complex, around one hundred journalists take refuge in the building’s shrinking shadow. Every now and then a small group from among them goes to a closed door that leads to the courtrooms to unsuccessfully negotiate a way in.

Inside, a verdict is being finalised in an accountability case involving ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Captain Muhammad Safdar, among others. They are accused of acquiring a set of four apartments in London through suspect money.

Syed Asif Saeed Kirmani, a PMLN senator, and Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a former federal minister of the same party, are also among those queued outside the door. As political secretary to Nawaz Sharif, Kirmani would, until recently, have a say in deciding who could get in and who could not. Today, he joins the ranks of those waiting to be let in.

At 10:00 am, the door opens and a group of people topples out to announce that Khawaja Haris, the lead defence lawyer, has submitted an application seeking a postponement in the verdict’s announcement for a week so that his client, Nawaz Sharif, can hear it in person. An hour later, Muhammad Bashir, the accountability court judge hearing the case, gives his ruling on the application: “rejected”.

The verdict, that was originally to be announced at 12:30 pm, is delayed to 2:30 pm, then to 3:30 pm, and then again to 4:30 pm. Some among the two dozen paramilitary rangers posted in the complex show signs of weariness, shuffling their feet and lowering the barrels of their guns. The journalists receive snippets of news from those on the inside through a bathroom window left ajar. Various humorous interpretations are doing the rounds about the delay: these range from politically incorrect to judicially contemptuous. That Nawaz Sharif will be found guilty seems to be a foregone conclusion; what everyone is waiting for is the extent of the punishment.

And then the door breaks open with a lot of people shouting excitedly — all at the same time. One only catches bits through the clamour: “Nawaz, 10 years; Maryam, 7 years; Safdar, 1 year; 10 million pound [sterling] in fine; confiscation of Avenfield apartments.”

Nawaz Sharif is well acquainted with the red-brick building of the Federal Judicial Complex. On 78 mornings between September 13, 2017 and July 6, 2018, he has driven through its gates in his black luxury vehicle — its bonnet and roof always covered in rose petals thrown with perfect aim by a dozen or so of his supporters at a checkpoint outside the complex.

He always arrived on time — sometimes even earlier than he was supposed to. Security personnel snapped into vigilance before his vehicle came into view and a ring of bodyguards saw him, Maryam and Safdar up a few steps to the complex’s door through a scrum of PMLN members and the press.

Courtroom No 1 inside the complex does not have any of the pomp and decorum of Courtroom No 1 at the Supreme Court. The small rectangular room can fit about 40 people on its benches and chairs, arranged on either side of an aisle running down the middle. Nawaz Sharif and Maryam would always occupy two chairs in the front row.

On a day when the duo had to make an appearance, it was common to see many senior PMLN leaders such as Pervez Rashid, Daniyal Aziz, Marriyum Aurangzeb and Raja Zafarul Haq, to name a few. Some of them would arrive before Nawaz Sharif, waiting for him on the steps; others shuffled in and out of the courtroom throughout the proceedings.

Sometimes Nawaz Sharif read a newspaper while waiting for the judge to arrive while Maryam mumbled prayers, clicking at her pink digital tasbeeh — an act copied dutifully by her namesake and sidekick, Marriyum Aurangzeb. Every now and then someone came and shook Nawaz Sharif’s hand, uttering vows of support; Maryam sometimes consulted her aides on a legal matter or the latest Twitter trend. Safdar, although a respondent in the case, looked most uninterested in the trial, spending his time chatting away in the back row or outside the courtroom.

A few steps ahead of where Nawaz Sharif and Maryam sat, their legal team led by Haris and lawyers belonging to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) would be huddled in front of the judge’s high table.

Haris would be joined by Maryam’s counsel, Amjad Pervez, who is known for defending the rich and the famous in cases involving white collar crimes. His clients have included Farooq Sattar, a senior leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, son of former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi — now speaker of the Punjab Assembly.

The NAB prosecution team would be led by Sardar Muzaffar Abbasi, who has been with the bureau since 2014 and has dealt with corruption cases involving former Sindh information minister Sharjeel Memon and former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.

Presiding over all this would be a bespectacled Bashir, noticeable only because of his place on a green chair that seemed to be floating a foot above the rest of the room. Most of the time, he spoke inaudibly and looked rather bemused. He would occasionally skim through documents presented to him and allowed the trial to unfold without exerting much control over it.

The judge generally maintained an affable demeanour. Only rarely would he be rattled: like when Abbasi loudly and relentlessly interrupted Amjad Pervez’s cross examination of a witness. Bashir rose from his chair, declaring he could not continue working amid such undisciplined behaviour, and stormed out of the courtroom.

A senior accountability judge, Bashir has also heard cases that involved former president Asif Ali Zardari. With twice as many corruption references filed against him as Nawaz Sharif is facing now, Zardari was acquitted in all but one of them by Bashir on November 24, 2015 accepting his plea under Section 265-K of the Code of Criminal Procedure: no sufficient evidence against the accused.

Nawaz Sharif and Maryam hear the verdict in the very apartments in London’s posh Mayfair neighbourhood that they have been punished for. A little later, they are all set to address a press conference at the same venue.

As they sit on a lounge sofa in a large room with fancy furnishing, their loyalists and servants mill about. A bevy of mostly Pakistani journalists working for various news organisations back home listen intently.

Nawaz Sharif reads out from a written statement before taking questions, as Maryam smiles silently by his side. He announces his intention to return to Pakistan despite the precarious health of his wife Kulsoom who has been battling cancer in a London hospital since August 2017, surviving on a ventilator. “What has this girl done to be sentenced for seven years?” he asks angrily, gesturing to Maryam. “Should we be jailed because we openly speak of things that should not happen in Pakistan?”

Safdar hears the verdict in his native district, Mansehra, where he is running his poll campaign for the general elections scheduled for July 25. He successfully dodges the police teams that come to arrest him and resurfaces two days later in Rawalpindi at the head of a sizeable crowd of supporters protesting his conviction. After playing hide and seek with the authorities for some time, he is arrested and shifted to Adiala Jail in the same city.

A week after the verdict is announced, Nawaz Sharif and Maryam fly back to Lahore via Abu Dhabi in the company of a large media contingent consisting of senior reporters, talk-show hosts and columnists. Shehbaz Sharif, former chief minister of Punjab, has rallied supporters in Lahore to receive his elder brother and niece at the airport. The government has other plans. It arrests many PMLN members in Lahore and some nearby cities and towns and deploys large number of security personnel on the roads leading to the airport. It also makes arrangements to arrest Nawaz Sharif and Maryam as soon as they land and whisk them away to Islamabad in another plane.

In the end, Shehbaz Sharif remains stuck for hours in central Lahore, at the head of a rather small crowd, while Nawaz Sharif and Maryam join Safdar in Adiala Jail. Not without a bit of initial confusion, though, on whether they will be imprisoned inside a special prison at Attock Fort, a police rest house in Sihala just outside Islamabad, or the jail.

Haris, meanwhile, files an appeal in the Islamabad High Court, challenging the verdict and asking for the sentence to be suspended until the appeal is decided. The hearings get stalled because of the general elections but he manages to secure some relief. The same judge, Muhammad Bashir, who has sentenced Nawaz Sharif will not hear two other cases against him. Since witnesses and evidence in these cases are remarkably similar to those in the Avenfield apartments case, Haris argues, it is not fair for judge Bashir to hear them because his mind is already made up about Nawaz Sharif’s guilt.

Taking hit after hit in the background is Nawaz Sharif’s party — PMLN. It loses many stalwarts to legal proceedings and judicial punishments: former finance minister Ishaq Dar prolongs his stay in England indefinitely to avoid appearing in a money laundering case that also involves Nawaz Sharif and his family; former federal ministers Daniyal Aziz and Talal Chaudhry are convicted for committing contempt of court; former parliamentarian Hanif Abbasi is imprisoned for life for dealing in a banned substance, ephedrine; former Punjab minister Raja Qamarul Islam is arrested for corruption. Even former foreign minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi are initially barred from running in elections but are allowed to contest on appeal.

These developments, of course, are in addition to scores of former parliamentarians associated with PMLN defecting to Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Come election day and the latter party beats the former by a big margin.

A sympathy vote for the incarcerated former prime minister does not materialise. His party bags 81 seats – compared to PTI’s 151 seats – in the final tally for the National Assembly. Even in Punjab, his stronghold for decades, PMLN secures 159 seats – against PTI’s 175 seats – in the ultimate count for the Punjab Assembly. Many PMLN heavyweights – Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khawaja Saad Rafique, Abid Sher Ali and Talal Chaudhry to name a few – suffer defeats.

One wonders how any of this can even happen. How does a former prime minister with a comfortable majority in the National Assembly till last July as the head of the country’s largest political party with deep roots in the most populous province, find himself in a jail cell while his party is dismembered and beaten?

Many lay the blame on sore relations between Nawaz Sharif and the military establishment, alleging that his downfall has been engineered from start to finish. The military, obviously, denies that it has any role in his ouster and imprisonment.

Not that PMLN has a stellar track record of maintaining cordial relations with the armed forces, these ties have been especially strained during General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s tenure as chief of army staff that started in December 2016. On occasions, some commentators have rung alarm bells for the end of democracy, though they have been wrong. But even with an efficient public relations machine at its disposal and multiple statements to the contrary, the military has struggled to remove the perception of its intervention in the civilian domain — including in Nawaz Sharif’s trial, conviction and punishment.

This, however, is just one side of the story.

When papers leaked from a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca & Co Limited, became public on April 3, 2016, Nawaz Sharif may not have realised that this will overturn his political fortunes. The leaks, comprising 11.5 million documents, made startling revelations about assets hidden through 214,488 offshore companies by the wealthy and the mighty from across the world, including Pakistan.

Though Panama Papers never mentioned Nawaz Sharif personally, they showed three of his children as owners and/or beneficiaries of several companies with assets in many parts of the globe. Most importantly, the documents linked his family apartments in Avenfield – a subject of controversy since 1993 – to two offshore companies, Nescoll and Nielsen, owned by his sons Hussain Nawaz and Hassan Nawaz. Their sister Maryam was revealed to be linked to the companies too.

As per Pakistani law, it is not illegal for a Pakistani to set up an offshore company. The problem is that such companies are often used for hiding ill-gotten money and concealing illicit business operations. They help their owners stow away their unearned wealth in complete secrecy in tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands and Bahamas, away from the prying eyes of Pakistani authorities.

Immediately after the leaks, a debate raged in Parliament over the Panama Papers. Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Khursheed Shah, suggested that a parliamentary committee be formed to probe the matter but the government never accepted the opposition-proposed terms of reference.

Amid this stalemate, Nawaz Sharif made a long speech inside the National Assembly and also addressed the public through state television in an attempt to clear the air. “My colleagues insisted,” he said in a parliamentary speech on May 16, 2016, “that I do not need to present myself for accountability since my name has not been mentioned anywhere in the Panama Papers but I am doing so regardless.”

Ministers in his government and his party’s rank and file believed that the Panama Papers were a storm in a teacup that would blow away sooner rather than later. They frustrated all attempts to investigate them through the Parliament and other federal agencies before the courts got involved.

It was Nawaz Sharif who first went to court. He wrote a letter to the Supreme Court, asking for the setting up of a judicial commission to probe the Panama Papers. Perhaps in an effort to stay away from the charged and divided politics of the day, the chief justice of Pakistan declined the request, citing legal shortcomings that would make such a commission ineffective. The court also refused to entertain petitions by several opposition leaders, including Imran Khan, to initiate suo motu proceedings on the matter.

For Imran Khan, all this was a Godsend — the beginning of a legal and political battle that he would pursue through a maze of evidence so dense that some of the sharpest legal minds have been left confounded by it. After he threatened to jam Islamabad through a sit-in – just as he had done in 2014 – the Supreme Court finally accepted his petition on the Panama Papers for a hearing in late October 2016.

After six months of proceedings, two of the five judges hearing the case disqualified Nawaz Sharif as the prime minister of Pakistan. The other three called for the formation of a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe the matter further. The six-member JIT was to be headed by Wajid Zia, additional director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and would include, for no discernable reason, one member each from two intelligence agencies — the Military Intelligence (MI) and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Nawaz Sharif’s supporters were ecstatic – at least initially – thinking their leader had dodged the bullet. Only a few months later would they realise that they had distributed sweets over the JIT’s formation way too prematurely.

With full resources of the state at its disposal, the JIT would assemble at the federal judicial academy in Islamabad to accomplish the task assigned to it within its fixed tenure of two months. It drew up questionnaires and sent them to the accused; it sent letters for mutual legal assistance to the British Virgin Islands and other countries; and made requests through diplomatic channels to Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, former prime minister of Qatar, to verify the contents of a letter he had written about the money his father had reportedly received from Nawaz Sharif’s father as investment back in the 1980s.

Many members of the Sharif family, including Hassan, Hussain, Maryam and Safdar as well as Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif and their cousin Tariq Shafi, were interrogated by the JIT for hours across numerous sessions. A leaked photograph of Hussain waiting on a solitary chair for his appearance before the JIT created quite a stir in the media — symbolising, in the eyes of Nawaz Sharif’s supporters, how the members of his family were ill-treated by the JIT.

The investigative team also sought help from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the FIA. The then SECP chief Zafar Hijazi was later arrested for trying to obstruct the collection of evidence regarding businesses owned by the Sharif family. He would be subsequently indicted for tampering records pertaining to those businesses.

Albeit belatedly, a realisation dawned upon the government and PMLN that the deeper JIT probed, the harder it would be for Nawaz Sharif to shake off the political and judicial consequences of its investigations and findings. His loyalists started portraying the investigating team more as his adversary than a neutral entity. At one stage, the prime minister’s secretariat claimed the JIT had been tapping phones and monitoring movements of witnesses.

Amid this acrimony, the JIT finally submitted its damning findings – a few days after the expiry of the deadline originally given to it – in a 10-volume report. Despite the fact that its mysterious Volume X is still being kept under wraps for reasons unknown, the report has been hailed by many in judicial circles as an example of investigative excellence. For the JIT’s detractors, though, it is seen as a hatchet job.

After perusing the report, the Supreme Court declared Nawaz Sharif as dishonest and untruthful as per Article 62 and Article 63 of the Constitution. He was disqualified as a parliamentarian as well as the prime minister for not disclosing in his election nomination papers that he possessed a work permit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which he had obtained as the employee of a company, Capital FZE, owned by his son Hassan.

The constitutional case against him now over, the Supreme Court ordered that he be tried under criminal law for indulging in corruption and possessing assets beyond his known means of income.

On September 8, 2017, NAB filed three references against Nawaz Sharif and his children in an Islamabad-based accountability court presided over by judge Bashir. One of the cases concerns Al-Azizia Steel Mills, set up by Nawaz Sharif’s father Muhammad Sharif in 2001 in Saudi Arabia and managed by Hussain. The mill, according to the Sharifs, was partially funded through a loan from the Saudi government which also provided the property that was mortgaged to obtain the loan.

The NAB prosecutors contend that there are no documents or audited accounts to prove where the money came from. The mill, they claim instead, was set up with black money siphoned from Pakistan. This money was then ‘whitened’ through a second company, Hill Metal Establishment, set up by Hussain in Saudi Arabia, which sent around one billion rupees to Nawaz Sharif and Maryam in Pakistan in the form of non-taxable “gifts” between 2010 and 2015.

The second reference pertains to a British firm called Flagship Investments. It was formed by Hassan at the tender age of 18 and is one of 10 businesses, which he started in the United Kingdom while he was still a student. These businesses own many costly properties — one of them being One Hyde Park Place, valued at 48 million pound sterling.

The third reference covers the Avenfield apartments.

The story of these apartments begins in Pakistan — and with Muhammad Sharif. An industrialist who had made his fortunes through a steel melting plant, Ittefaq Foundry, in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat area, he eventually set up Ittefaq Group of Companies in partnership with his brothers. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto nationalised the foundry in 1972, Muhammad Sharif set his sights elsewhere: to the rapidly developing sheikhdom of UAE.

He set up Gulf Steel Mills in Dubai in 1974, with funding from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and had his trusted nephew, Tariq Shafi, hold a quarter of the shares in the business and run its operations on his behalf. The mill did not do well. By 1978, Muhammad Sharif decided to sell his 75 per cent share to Al-Ahli Steel Mills for a little over 21 million dirhams in order to pay back bank loans he owed. Another two years later, he sold the remaining 25 per cent shares as well to the same buyer for an additional 12 million dirhams.

Up until this point, the defence and the prosecution in the Avenfield case find themselves on the same page. Where they differ is how those 12 million dirhams were utilised.

The defence story goes something like this: with the bank loan paid off, Muhammad Sharif decided to invest the leftover money with his long-time friends and business partners, al-Thanis, who happen to be the royal family of Qatar. In two letters sent to the Supreme Court during the Panama Papers proceedings, Qatari prince Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani stated that “he was informed that during the year 1980, Mr Mian Muhammad Sharif expressed his desire to invest a certain amount of money in [the] real estate business of Al Thani family in Qatar”. He “understood at that time, that an aggregate sum of 12 million dirhams …was contributed by Mr Mian Sharif, originating from the sale of business in Dubai”.

The letters also state that Muhammad Sharif wished during his lifetime that “the beneficiary of his investment and returns in the real estate business is his grandson, Mr Hussain Nawaz Sharif”.

The prosecution and JIT, on the other hand, argue there is no record of the money being invested in businesses owned by the al-Thani family. Instead, they point out, Gulf Steel Mills owed 27 million dirhams to BCCI and an additional 8 million dirhams in outstanding bills to various utility providers. Even after 21 million dirhams were paid to the bank following the first sale of shares, the mill still owed another 14 million dirhams to different creditors when the second sale took place. The JIT report states that Tariq Shafi opened an account with BCCI in 1986 which would be possible only if he had cleared all the previous dues.

There is no way to double check any of the two versions: BCCI was closed down in 1991 after it was found to be involved in whitening money linked to South American drug cartels and there is no document to show how and when the mill paid its outstanding utility bills — if it paid them at all.

The money trail goes quiet here as far as the JIT and the NAB’s prosecutors are concerned. For the defence team, it remains alive in that the proceeds from the money invested with the Qataris are shown to have indirectly paid for the Avenfield apartments — but more on that later.

Documents issued by Her Majesty’s Land Registry in the United Kingdom show that Nescoll and Nielsen first purchased the apartments in the mid-1990s. Since the two companies were not registered in the United Kingdom, their owners needed share certificates to prove that they also owned the apartments. For a long time, British law did not require these certificates to have any names on them. Like bearer cheques, whoever was in possession of the certificates was also the owner of the companies and, consequently, of the apartments.

The defence claims the property remained in possession of the Qatari royal family between 1993 and 2006. Nawaz Sharif and his family used the apartments during this period by paying rent and maintenance money but they possess no documentary proof of this because of what they call the informal nature of the arrangement between Muhammad Sharif and prince Hamad’s father Sheikh Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani — both now deceased.

The letters by Prince Hamad state the same: all transactions between the two families were customarily done in cash. He also claims the share certificates of the offshore companies – as well as the apartments – were handed over to Hussain at the end of 2005 in a final settlement for investments worth approximately 8 million US dollars. Nescoll and Nielsen, in turn, immediately transferred the trusteeship of the property to another offshore company — Minerva Trust & Corporate Services Limited, owned by Maryam.

Due to the bearer nature of the share certificates, it is impossible to ascertain the names of the individuals who owned the apartments before their transfer to Hussain unless the authorities that registered Nescoll and Nielsen are willing to reveal them. The legal provision that allowed such anonymity to owners of properties in the United Kingdom was revoked in 2006, exactly the time when Hussain claims he came to own the apartments.

The prosecution sought to disassociate the Qatari royal family from the Avenfield apartments through evidence collected by the JIT pertaining to a 1999 case in the London High Court over a loan default by the Sharif-owned Hudaibiya Paper Mills. The loan was obtained from an investment firm, Al-Towfeek Investment Fund, in 1995. When the Sharifs failed to return it, British authorities issued cautions against the four Avenfield apartments — something that would only happen if the apartments had been used as collateral to obtain the loan. If the cautions were ultimately lifted, the JIT argued, it meant that the loan was paid back. The Sharifs claim that the loan, too, was paid by the al-Thani family but the JIT dismissed this, arguing that the royal family had no connection with the Hudaibiya Paper Mills.

The complex nature of the case was further confounded by a small difference between two sets of documents issued by Her Majesty’s Land Registry regarding the ownership of the apartments. The documents obtained from the registry and submitted by the defence at the Supreme Court during the hearings of the Panama Papers case state that Nescoll acquired Apartment 17 in 1993 and Apartment 17-A in 1996, at 585,000 pound sterling and 245,000 pound sterling, respectively; and Nielsen bought apartments 16 and 16-A in 1995 for 1,075,000 pound sterling.

Similar documents, procured by NAB from the United Kingdom through a mutual legal assistance request and submitted at the accountability court, did confirm the acquisition of the apartments by the two companies. These documents, however, did not mention the property’s prices.

The defence lawyers chose not to bring the prices into their arguments because they believed they had already made a case during the Panama Papers hearings that the apartments did not belong to Nawaz Sharif, say sources privy to the case, and stuck to their narrative.

The prosecution did not dwell much on the value of the apartments for the same reason: even if it was proven that Nawaz Sharif owned the apartments, it would be relatively easy for his lawyers to prove that he had means to buy the property (that cost 89 million rupees at currency exchange rates at the time of their acquisition), say sources.

In the absence of any document that directly linked Nawaz Sharif with the apartments, the prosecution’s case primarily rested on a 2012 letter, included in the leaked Panama Papers. Written by Mossack Fonseca & Co Limited in response to a query by Errol George, Director of the Financial Investigative Agency in the British Virgin Islands, the letter stated that Maryam owned Nescoll and Nielsen. It also said that Mossack Fonseca was “not in receipt of” any details regarding a trustee connected to these firms. The prosecution used this as evidence to claim that Maryam was not a trustee but a beneficial owner of the two companies.

In response, she pulled out a 2006 deed between Nescoll/Nielsen and Minerva Services that declared her to be a trustee — Safdar being a signatory to the document. It had an obvious flaw though: the Calibri font used in it was not available for public use before 2007. The deed was declared a forgery by Radley Forensics, a London-based document examination firm, even though Maryam’s lawyers argued that a beta version of the font could be found on the Internet as far back as 2004.

The prosecution also told the court about the JIT having contacted a British solicitor, Jeremy Freeman, who had reportedly authenticated the deed. He confirmed that the deed had passed through his office but he had not seen it personally. The JIT concluded from his response that it indicated Freeman’s reluctance to incriminate Hussain, Maryam and himself for committing forgery.

Where in all of this, one might ask, does Nawaz Sharif figure?

Although the JIT report was peppered with references to Respondent No 1 – that is, Nawaz Sharif – the fact remains that the offshore companies and the apartments have no direct connection to him — at least on paper. The prosecution tried to make an indirect connection: that he gave money to Hussain and Hassan who were both too young when the apartments were first acquired to have money of their own for the acquisition of the property. The JIT report also claimed that his “exclusive use of the apartment makes him the sole beneficiary of the apartments as far as possession is concerned” — a notion that would incriminate even the most unwitting of houseguests.

It is evident that the prosecution’s contentions have mostly been based on the JIT report submitted to the Supreme Court during the hearings of the Panama Papers case. The investigative team was essentially formed to assist the apex court in deciding a constitutional case – one that involved a decision on whether Nawaz Sharif was qualified to hold public office in accordance with the Constitution – not to collect evidence for a criminal case to be heard by a trial court.

“One of the biggest mistakes NAB made was to go through the motions of an independent investigation without actually conducting one,” says Karachi-based lawyer Faisal Siddiqui. “[NAB] should have treated the JIT report just as a preliminary investigative report and then built on it.”

His observation is borne by the fact that NAB did nothing more than make a few additional calls to other countries for mutual legal assistance — and those too only to confirm evidence already brought to light by the JIT. That Wajid Zia, the JIT’s head, was the prosecution’s star witness also points to the absence of any spade work by NAB’s own investigators.

Zia appeared in the accountability court multiple times over a month but hardly any new information of note came out of his testimony. Some of what he said in the court, though, still stirred controversy.

One example of this was his acknowledgement that the prosecution’s version of the money trail leading to the purchase of the apartments was based on assumptions. Another was his admission that Nawaz Sharif had no direct link with the apartments, that it was extremely difficult to ascertain their real and beneficial owners and that the evidence leading to Nawaz Sharif’s ouster from the office of prime minister was collected from UAE in one day by the JIT’s members belonging to MI and NAB.

Perhaps his most important revelation was that Akhtar Riaz Raja – a British solicitor who had corresponded with key witnesses in the United Kingdom on the JIT’s behalf, had brought a forensic expert on board and also authored a commentary on the forensic report – was Zia’s own first cousin.

The prosecutors probably failed to collect additional evidence because they were under pressure to allow the case to conclude within a deadline set by the Supreme Court — a rarity for a criminal trial in Pakistan. Initially, the apex court wanted proceedings in all three references involving Nawaz Sharif to end by March 7, 2018 — six months after judge Bashir presided over the first hearings in those references. Later, the deadline was extended three times — first by two months and then twice for one month each.

Towards the final stages of the trial, the Supreme Court told the lawyers and the judge to conclude the case promptly even if it required working on weekends. Reacting to this order, Haris announced his decision to quit as Nawaz Sharif’s lawyer on June 11, 2018. He said he could not continue working on the case with the Supreme Court “dictating” terms for the trial, but re-joined the defence team within 10 days.

It was also perhaps in order to meet the Supreme Court’s deadlines that the accountability court refused, at a very early stage, a request by the defence to club together the hearings for all three references. Haris argued repetitively that due to 60 per cent of witnesses and evidence overlapping, his arguments in one reference would give away most of his defence in others. The request was finally accepted after Nawaz Sharif’s sentencing in the Avenfield case and a new judge assigned to hear the remaining two references — simultaneously to boot.

Much has been said and written about judge Bashir’s judgment. Agreeing with the JIT report and NAB prosecutors, he has, effectively, meted out a jail term to Nawaz Sharif for being his children’s father:

“The entire family: daughter, sons and father are one and the same monolith ... Therefore, accused No. 1 cannot say that he had not provided any money to them to purchase the apartments,” he wrote.

The judge, however, acquitted Nawaz Sharif of charges levied against him under Section 9 (a)(iv) of the NAB Ordinance. This means the judge did not deem him to have misused his public office to make money, but instead convicted him under Section 9 (a)(v) of the same ordinance: possessing assets beyond his known means of income.

There are a number of legal precedents in cases involving the latter section in which superior courts have set various parametres for the quality of evidence to prove if someone’s assets exceed his or her income. A 2011 judgment authored by senior Supreme Court judge Asif Saeed Khosa in a corruption case, Ghani-ur-Rehman versus NAB, for instance, says the prosecution must bring on record the sources of income of an accused and establish a nexus between the misuse of public office and the accumulation of assets.

Similarly, the Sindh High Court in a 2007 judgment, in Hakim Ali Zardari versus the State, declared that the mere possession of an asset did not constitute the committing of an offence. It also outlined four requisites without which a conviction under Section 9 (a)(v) would not hold. To paraphrase these requisites: establishing the accused as a public office holder at the time of the offence, ascertaining the value of the properties he has amassed, showing his known sources of income and proving that the assets found in his possession are beyond his means.

The NAB prosecutors have not fulfilled any of these: they have not ascertained the value of the Avenfield apartments; they have not established that Nawaz Sharif or his children did not have sufficient funds to buy them; they have not proved that Nawaz Sharif misused the public office he held to generate funds to buy the apartments.

Another important question, though, precedes a discussion about these requisites: on whose shoulders does the burden of proof fall in cases involving white collar crime? Is it enough for the prosecution to level charges and then ask the defence to prove otherwise — thus, effectively reversing the long-established legal dictum that everyone is innocent until proven guilty?

A Lahore High Court judgment issued in June 2015, in Brigadier (R) Imtiaz Ahmad versus the State, declared that it “has been abundantly made clear that disproportionate assets can only be ascertained with reference to the known source of income and the burden to prove this known source of income has been primarily upon prosecution.” The judgment went on to quote a 2001 verdict, issued in Khan Asfandyar Wali versus the Federation of Pakistan, which states “the prosecution has to establish the preliminary facts” before “the onus shifts and the defence is called upon to disprove the presumption of guilt”.

According to Lahore-based lawyer Reza Ali, who specialises in corporate law, the only way for the prosecution to shift the burden of proof onto the accused is by first proving that he owns assets beyond his known means of income. “Has NAB proven beyond reasonable doubt that there is a discrepancy between the assessed worth of the properties and Nawaz Sharif’s known sources of income at the time of the acquisition of those properties? No, it has not.”

According to Ali, the defence in Avenfield case “has put forward a version of events and stuck to it”. It was, he says, “up to the prosecution to bring forward its own narrative, witnesses, documentation, money trail and timeline to disprove the defence’s version so that its case could stand on its own legs”. The prosecution, on the other hand, has relied on “drilling holes in the defence’s argument”.

The caveat is that the prosecution only needed to convince a single person: judge Muhammad Bashir. And that it did successfully.

Weeks after the verdict is announced, everyone concerned – the defence, the prosecution, journalists, PMLN members – walks into the Islamabad High Court expecting more of the same. Seated on the presiding chairs are two, not one, learned judges: Athar Minallah and Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb. A modest crowd pours in through rather lax security to witness the first hearing of Nawaz Sharif’s plea to suspend his punishment until his appeal against Bashir’s verdict is decided.

Standing before the judges is a familiar bevy of lawyers, NAB’s prosecutors led by Muzaffar Abbasi on one side and the defence team headed by Haris on the other. Judge Minallah is sitting tilted sideways in his chair with a raised eyebrow. He speaks in a slow, clear voice for everyone in the room to hear. “If NAB has not challenged the defendant’s acquittal over Section 9 (a) (iv), which is the clause pertaining to acquiring property through corrupt means,” he begins, addressing the main prosecutor, “should the court understand that you have accepted the verdict in this regard?”

Abbasi, probably not used to being grilled in courtrooms, fumbles and says NAB has not accepted that part of the judgment. “Then why did you not file an appeal against this?” Minallah questions. Abbasi responds by saying that the conviction has been “independently” handed out over Section 9 (a)(v) anyway.

But Minallah persists and is backed by Aurangzeb. If charges have been framed on two offences, he says, how can NAB accept an acquittal in one offence when there is such an enormous overlap between them? “You are putting forward a self-defeating argument,” says Aurangzeb. “If you are claiming that both charges are independent of each other then you are agreeing that the defendant has not acquired the properties through corrupt means because he has been acquitted over that charge. You may not know where he has gotten [the assets] from but you are accepting it is not through dishonest means.”

Abbasi wiggles this way and that but fails to come up with a satisfactory answer. The defence team stands back amused, watching the debate unfold. It is mostly Minallah who does the talking but Aurangzeb, too, makes occasional remarks — the two frequently consulting each other in hushed Pashto.

The judges go on to question the sentence handed down to Maryam, asking the prosecution to clarify whether she was a dependant of Nawaz Sharif or a benamidar (someone who owns an asset in name only on the behalf of its actual owner). Being a benamidar in itself is not an offence, Minallah points out, even if the trust deed submitted by her is forged.

He is also confused as to how she has been convicted for owning assets beyond means if the assets are not owned by her but by her father. “NAB must take a clear stance as to whom the properties belong to,” Minallah says, waving aside Abbasi’s interruptions. “You say the properties actually belong to Nawaz Sharif but you concede that you cannot prove they have been acquired through illegal means. Then you say the children are his dependents but they are also beneficial owners. You claim it is difficult to ascertain ownership but you want the children and the father both convicted. Give me one name out of the three,” Minallah says, leaning forward. “Who owns the properties: Nawaz, Maryam or Hussain?”

Abbasi, evidently frustrated by this point, tries to argue that the matter is complicated and that the entire case material must be studied to get a deeper understanding of it. Sensing that the judges are unsatisfied with his argument, he hands the floor over to Haris.

The executive lounge on the top floor of a five-star hotel in Islamabad has served as an office for Haris for many months in recent times. He frequently works from this opulent room with wooden panelling and plush carpeting until late in the night along with his associates who occupy various tables, working on their laptops.

Haris comes from a distinguished Lahori family. His uncle Khawaja Khurshid Anwar was a leading musician in the Pakistani film industry and both his father and grandfather have practised law with acclaim. For close to two decades, he has been handling cases involving Nawaz Sharif, including the one in which he was charged for hijacking a plane carrying General Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Haris also served as advocate general of Punjab a few years ago.

With his greasy hair neatly parted sideways and a fitness device tied around his wrist, he has an air of no-nonsense efficiency about him. Not a hair on his head is ever out of place and his walrus moustache is perfectly combed.

Dressed in a crisp navy blue suit, he settles down in a leather sofa as a waiter places a cup of tea on the table in front of him. “A case of assets beyond means, in its essence, is simple math,” he says — his calm, low voice backed by the rhythmic pattering of a drizzle on a window. “The value of the asset in question must be ascertained, the means of the accused at the time of acquisition must be ascertained, and the disproportion between the two, if any, will speak for itself. Without having proven this, how can you convict a person based on perception or assumptions?”

Even if the prosecution had given a value of the apartments, Haris argues, he would have easily shown – if he needed to – that Nawaz Sharif could have comfortably paid for the apartments at the time. But, he adds, “they want me to put forward a money trail for a property that is not even mine.”

Continuing to refer to his client as himself – something he does even in court – he goes on: “I did [provide the money trail] – although that’s the prosecution’s job – but if it was found to be unsatisfactory, was an alternative provided? Has the prosecution been able to determine for itself, then, who owns the properties and how?”

He stops to give out instructions to an associate.

It is past midnight and a waiter standing at a nearby counter is almost dozing off to the lobby music. Haris asks for another cup of tea.

He says that he understands the inner workings of the Sharif family well and claims that it is a well-known fact that Nawaz Sharif was never involved in running the family business — especially not during the lifetime of his father Muhammad Sharif who called the shots on all family-related affairs including investments and even pocket money for his grandchildren.

“Although there is not a single thing connecting Nawaz Sharif to these apartments other than the fact that his children are involved, you and I could both still believe he is culpable,” he says, “but when you are going to criminally convict a person in a court of law, going by a layperson’s perspective of guilt is not sufficient. One can always err in their judgment but the moment there is any uncertainty, or a second interpretation of a set of facts, the case must always go in favour of the accused — this is the law.”

Haris then makes a claim that better suits a politician. “The external pressures in this case are known to anyone who has been following it and all one needs to do is connect the dots to understand.” He mentions an “orchestration to which we cannot close our eyes” but concedes that “of course, we would never be able to prove it if we had to”.

The drizzle has now become a torrential downpour.

Haris rises from his seat and rejoins his associates to continue preparation for the next day’s hearing.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

This article was published in the Herald's September 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

1

Not a single woman voted in Kerai.

A three-kilometre long mud track leading up a mountain from the Bisham-Swat highway ends in this scenic village, surrounded by green mountains. It is one of the hundreds of settlements that constitute Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly’s constituency PK-23 in Shangla district. In this year’s general elections on July 25, a long-imposed ban on women voting in the village was in force once again.

Something similar must have happened in many other parts of the constituency. Out of a total of 86,698 registered female voters here, only 3,505 cast their ballots on polling day. This low turnout, as per an election law passed in 2017, led the Election Commission of Pakistan to order a re-election in the constituency.

Signs are that women in Kerai will not vote even in the re-election scheduled for October 14, 2018. “We will not let our women cast votes,” says Bahr-i-Rome, an 85-year-old resident of the village. Voting by women, he says enthusiastically raising his arm, “violates our tradition of haya [modesty]”.

Gul Husain, another resident of Kerai, is not as adamant as Bahr-i-Rome. He says local residents are not against women’s right to vote but they cannot allow them to vote at polling stations where men also vote. “Islam does not allow the mixing of males with females,” he says.

A long, grey beard touching his chest, Hussain says another reason why women in Kerai never vote is because the polling staff that deals with them is usually male. “We cannot let our women unveil their faces in front of male election staff to establish their identity,” he says.

In the 2018 elections, Hussain says, there were only two women among the five-member polling staff in his village. Male polling officials, male army personnel and policemen were all stationed inside polling booths allocated only for women, he says.

The absence of separate polling spaces with all female election staff has been reported from most parts of the constituency. All seven polling stations in Butyal union council were indeed mix. They had the same entrances and exits for male and female voters.

Afiya Hayat, who worked as a polling agent in one of them, saw two male election officials carrying out all the processes inside a women polling booth.

Attaur Rahman, a local associate of the Awami National Party (ANP), similarly, complains that there was not a single female election official in some polling booths for women in his Dandai village. No woman from his own family cast her vote in order to avoid being at a polling booth staffed by men.

Local political activists say they apprised election authorities in early July about the need for separate polling stations for women. No action was taken. “If the situation remains the same, we will not be able to convince women voters to poll their votes in the re-polling process too,” says a local leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Akbar Khan was 17 when he witnessed something that would become a rare occurrence soon afterwards: a large number of women coming in tongas to poll their votes in Timergara, the headquarters of Lower Dir district. That was way back in the 1977 general elections.

“Ours was not a society too conservative to bar women from casting votes,” he says and recalls how local “women polled their votes in a large number” during the 1970 general elections. This was a remarkable feat considering that the princely state of Dir had joined Pakistan only a year earlier and this was the first ever election that local residents were taking part in.

Akbar Khan, who has been campaigning for human rights causes for decades, blames the Islamisation of society under Ziaul Haq for the confinement of women within the four walls of their houses. In local government elections held in 1979, 1983 and 1987 and all the general elections afterwards, he says, women voters were barred from casting votes. This was sometimes ensured through verbal commitments and at other times through written agreements among local politicians.

News media highlighted this long-running ban multiple times in the past but it changed only late last year when the election commission applied the newly passed Election Act 2017 to annul 21 by-elections for local government seats in Lower Dir. In none of those elections did women voting reach the mandatory 10 per cent mark.

When re-polling happened for the same seats on February 20, 2018 candidates and political parties knew that polling could be annulled one more time if women were not allowed to vote. Their attitude to women voting changed dramatically.

“Those who used to declare women voting as haram, all of a sudden changed their stance and started calling it a jihad,” says Shad Khan, a human rights activist based in Timergara.

By the time the general elections arrived, there was already a positive atmosphere for women voters in the district. As many as 93,000 of them – out of a total of 278,083 female voters registered in Lower Dir – came out to vote on July 25. Compared to an almost nil voter turnout among local women in the 2013 elections, a 33.44 per cent turnout among them in 2018 certainly represents a major shift in local attitudes towards their participation in politics.

This percentage could have been higher if the election commission had banned male presence in polling booths for women or set up more women-only polling stations in the district, says Saira Shams, a local PTI leader.

2

Haleema Bibi is a poor resident of Lilliani village in district Sargodha. Dressed in old tattered clothes on a recent August day, she is sitting on a charpoy in a mud house given to her family by a village landowner for whom she works. Hailing from the musalli community, which sits at the bottom of the social heap in central Punjab, she used her right to vote for the first time in 39 years of her life in the July 25 elections.

No woman in Lilliani has ever voted before.

Haleema says she would not have voted this time too if her employer had not asked her to do so. “I do not have anything to do with politics.” She does not even know the name of the candidate she voted for. “I was asked by the landlord to stamp my ballot on the symbol of bat because he was supporting Imran Khan,” she says.

Lilliani falls in the National Assembly’s constituency NA-89. It has a large number – 4,631 – of registered women voters so the election commission set up three women-only polling stations here. Yet Haleema was one of the only 97 local women who voted. Most of these voters were low-caste poor women — like her.

Local residents say these women, too, could vote because of a collective decision taken by the village’s two main landowning clans — Bakhars and Awans. Their elders decided that they would allow only 10 per cent female voters to cast their votes in order to fulfil the bare minimum voting requirements laid down in the Election Act 2017.

Lilliani is no small place and has a population of around 30,000. It is also not located in the back of beyond and is situated only about seven kilometres to the west of Kot Momin interchange on the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway. The village is surrounded by factories that process and grade citrus fruit before it is transported to markets in big cities as well as abroad. Local landowners are prosperous because their fertile lands produce some of the country’s best oranges.

All these commercial and communication links that Lilliani has with the rest of the world have failed to change the rigid local attitude about women voting. Its social values do not allow women any political freedom.

The ban on women voting was first imposed by the village elders in the 1960s, says Sheikh Mukhtar Awan, a local resident. Even though he has been working to have it overturned for many years, women from his own family do not cast their votes – they did not even vote in the July 25 elections – because of social pressure. “My clan will single me out as a pariah for taking women to a polling station,” he says.

Rana Shahbaz is travelling to his village 295-JB Devidas Pura in Toba Tek Singh district by a bus last month. He is constantly holding his prosthetic left leg to overcome the hurt it causes to his body due to the bumpy ride.

He has just had a meeting with the Regional Police Officer in Faisalabad with regard to a murder case registered against him. “I was nominated in a double murder case on May 27 this year by my political opponents in an attempt to stop me from running the election campaign of my party – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz – and from mobilising women to cast their votes,” says Shahbaz, a 32-year-old, who was smitten by politics when he was studying at the Punjab University in Lahore for his MPhil in international relations. He had to go into hiding to avoid arrest. “They were successful in achieving their goal since I returned home on a protective bail just a day before polling.”

Turnout of women voters in his village remained zero on July 25.

Shahbaz has worked in collaboration with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), a civil society forum, to help local women get their computerised national identity cards and have their votes registered. Partially as a result of his efforts, 922 local women have registered themselves as voters.

The election commission also set up a separate polling station for women in Devidas Pura but that did not convince local men to let women vote. They stuck to their decades-old decision to disallow them from doing so.

“It is not acceptable for men in our village to allow women to cast votes because politics is none of a woman’s business,” says Ghulfam Asghar, a local councillor. He went door-to-door before

elections to campaign against women’s right to vote. “We have our own values and we want to uphold those,” he says.

Sabira Bibi’s husband, Altaf Nawaz, was a National Assembly candidate for a constituency, NA-147, that covers Sahiwal city and many villages close by. An uneducated lady councillor, she did not have much of a personal and political clout in her village of 111-9L Jahan Khan. Coming from the Machhi clan which is considered way below landed clans in the conservative, caste-ridden local milieu, she focused on convincing other women like her – poor, uneducated and willing to partake in politics – to vote for her husband.

Altaf Nawaz could secure only 663 votes. At least 54 of them came from women voters in his own village. None of them had voted in any of the previous elections.

111-9L Jahan Khan is only 15 kilometres away from Sahiwal city but is ages apart in social and cultural practices. Its landowning elite barred women from voting as far back as 1947 — a restriction that has remained enforced in every election since then.

The village is divided into three main settlements and has 4,022 total registered voters. Out of these, 1,822 are women. Local politics revolves around a rivalry between two groups of the landowning Joiya clan. If one group supports a candidate or a political party, the other must oppose them.

It was in this divided political atmosphere that Sabira Bibi set out to mobilise local women to cast their ballots on election day. She spent the whole polling day getting women out of their homes, arranging transport for old and disabled among them to take them to two women-only polling stations in the village.

She was helped by a sister of her husband and his second wife who also worked as polling agents for him. “It was a great experience to guide woman about the voting procedure. They did not know how to cast their ballots since they were all voting for the first time,” says one of them.

Civil society organisations and news media also played important roles in creating an atmosphere in which it was no longer easy for the rival Joiyas to enforce the ban. It was partly due to their efforts that Sahiwal’s deputy commissioner issued a letter to five influential residents of 111-9L Jahan Khan in the run-up to the elections, telling them that they must not stop women from voting. “Preventing women from voting is a serious offence under election laws. You therefore are warned against indulging in such practice, in case you are found involved, action will be taken against you under relevant provisions of elections laws,” the letter read.

The warning worked. As many as 710 local women voted on July 25.

A cool breeze blowing after the previous night’s rain has made the weather pleasant in Dhurnal village but its main bazaars are deserted on an August morning. No one seems to be living here.

The village is known for its sleepy atmosphere. People remain in bed till late during the day and a general calm prevails around here. Where the locals are well awake and always alert is in maintaining their conservative customs and values — including a ban on women voting.

Before this year’s elections, three local residents – a midwife, a religious preacher and a civil society activist – set out to change this. They went to both men and women to raise awareness about the need for women voting. All their efforts could achieve was a rather nominal success: only 21 out of 5,501 registered women voters in Dhurnal polled their votes on July 25.

Yet it was a first in the history of the village.

“Asking women to vote here is like inviting people to boycott you socially and economically,” says the 38-year-old preacher. “When I started the voter mobilisation campaign, I was labelled as an agent working for some foreign organisation for the sake of money,” he adds.

Malik Muhammad Khan, a local resident, believes the turnout could have been higher if election authorities had acted wisely. He says he had submitted an application at the Election Commission of Pakistan’s Islamabad office on April 14, 2017 with the request that local polling stations for women be set up in buildings which do not have polling stations for men so that the two do not have to mix and mingle. His request was not granted.

Abdul Razzaq, Chakwal’s district election commissioner, acknowledges having received the application but explains that locations for polling stations were already chosen before it reached him. Now that a by-election is going to take place in the area on October 14 this year, he promises to set up polling stations for men and women in separate buildings.

Dhurnal’s neighbouring village, Balwal, experienced none of this activism. Not a single woman voted here on July 25 even though the village has 1,263 registered female voters.

“Allowing women to vote will result in disputes within families,” argues a 73-year-old village elder who once worked in the Pakistan Navy. What if women cast their votes according to their own choice, he asks. “Their independence will damage our family relations and family values,” he says. Politicians come and go, he says, but a family’s honour once gone is gone forever. “So, it is better for women to stay at home.”

The election commission knew the problem and held a meeting with the villagers a few days before the election to have the ban on women voting revoked. No one among local men was willing to be the first to allow women from his family to vote, says a local councillor. “Election authorities and district administration will have to take strict measures to make that happen,” he says.

Surprisingly, Dhurnal and Balwal fall in NA-65 which is one of the 18 National Assembly constituencies in the country where overall women voter turnout was higher than that of men in the 2018 elections.

3

The 2018 general elections marked a significant milestone as gender-disaggregated turnout was recorded from all the polling stations for the first time. This was a requirement under the Election Act 2017 and enables stakeholders, including the Election Commission of Pakistan, political parties and civil society, to examine trends and patterns in women voting based on verifiable data.

Other historic firsts include a women voter registration campaign that surpassed all previous efforts and the enforcement of a new legal provision that nullifies election in those constituencies where women voter turnout remains less than 10 per cent.

So, has all of this led to improved turnout among women voters?

The 2018 elections data reveals a substantial difference in voter turnout for men and women. About 56 per cent of registered male voters turned out on election day to cast their votes as compared to 47 per cent of registered women who did the same. In terms of regional variations, Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan all had a voter turnout gap of about eight per cent between men and women while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had a turnout gap of almost 19 per cent.

This is hardly surprising. Women of voting age in Pakistan are far less likely to possess a computerised national identity card that is mandatory for voting. They also face a host of sociocultural and economic barriers that make it difficult for them to travel the distance between their homes and polling stations to cast their ballots.

It is not easy to make a comparison with the past to see if the obstacles to women voting have increased or decreased. There are significant gaps in the data from previous elections that do not allow a measurement of improvements in 2018, if there were any, since this was the first election when polling station level turnout has become available. Analysis of women voter turnout in previous elections is based on incomplete data sets. Most studies of elections in 2008 and 2013 have relied on voter turnout from female only polling stations. This is problematic because it does not count results from mixed polling stations and may skew female turnout averages lower because women voters in Pakistan often rely on male relatives for transport to polling stations. Men are less likely to take women to a female only polling station that does not have an adjoining male polling station.

With these shortcomings in mind, a comparison of women voter turnout in the previous three general elections suggests that, overall, it has been relatively steady, at 46.46 per cent in 2018, 48.79 per cent in 2013 (counted from female polling stations only) and 37.05 per cent in 2008 (also gathered from female polling stations alone).

By digging deeper, one finds a different story — with marked regional disparities.

For instance, turnout averaged 17.71 per cent in 2008 in Malakand Division whereas it averaged 20.43 per cent in 2013 and 56 per cent in 2018.

In south Punjab, women turnout was 35.8 per cent in 2008 and 51.7 per cent in 2013 but it was 56 per cent in 2018.

In Karachi and Hyderabad, women turnout was 45.8 per cent in 2008, 44 per cent in 2013 and 45.6 per cent in 2018.

This suggests that certain regions have seen substantial increases in women voter turnout over the last three elections but there is an important factor at play here.

A massive gap exists between male and female voter registration. If women are under-registered, their turnout percentages rely on a lower number of registered women voters rather than the actual number of eligible women voters in an area. Given that there is a large voter registration gap between men and women in many constituencies, voter turnout data significantly overstates the level of women’s participation in the election. Closing this voter registration gap is thus critical to forming an accurate picture of women voter turnout.

Having already recognised this problem, the Election Commission of Pakistan launched a voter registration campaign in 2017 in partnership with civil society organisations in over 70 districts where female voter registration and/or the possession of computerised national identity cards among women were low. The campaign utilised a number of strategies, including the deployment of mobile registration vans to reach women in areas located far from NADRA offices. These efforts led to an increase of 4,307,553 women on electoral rolls in the span of seven months, showing an unprecedented rate of voter registration. In comparison, around 4.9 million women voters were registered between May 2013 and September 2017.

Despite these laudable efforts, the 2018 electoral rolls had 12.5 million less women registered voters as compared to men registered as voters. This could have resulted from sociocultural barriers against women’s registration as voters coupled with a rapid increase in the number of women who attained the voting age of 18 years after 2013.

Did voter registration campaign still have an impact on voter turnout on July 25? While further studies are needed that compare turnout changes in areas where the campaign was conducted against other parts of Pakistan, an overall analysis of women voter turnout and voter registration shows there is, indeed, a strong correlation between the two. Women voter turnout tends to be consistently higher in areas where more women are registered to vote. This suggests that a sustained drive to increase women voter registration has a significant impact on women voter turnout despite a host of other sociocultural barriers that hamper their participation in political and electoral processes.

In terms of reducing instances where women turnout is very low or zero, the new election law appears to have had a substantial impact. In 2013, women voter turnout was reportedly well below 10 per cent in 17 out of 272 National Assembly constituencies. In 2018, women voter turnout in only two National Assembly constituencies fell only nominally short of the 10 per cent requirement.

This suggests that candidates and political parties made targeted efforts to bring out women voters in order to ensure that elections in their areas were not nullified. The enforcement of the election nullification law in PK-23 in Shangla district has set an example for future elections and is likely to push candidates and political parties in areas with historically low women turnout to take the issue seriously.

Yet, it is also clear that a sustained, long-term drive for women voter registration is needed if the gap in women voter registration and turnout is to be tackled successfully. This drive should continue at high rates between electoral cycles and not just in the immediate pre-election period. Policies for automatic issuing of computerised national identity cards to every eligible voter should also be considered.

The minimum requirement for women voter turnout, too, needs to be raised in the future. The 10 per cent limit, while a step in the right direction, is the lowest the law could have aimed for. It was accepted after certain political parties raised objections against a higher percentage in the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms.

Policymakers, the election commission and civil society should also work together to draw additional insights from the gender-disaggregated data from this year’s election and develop creative policy solutions to increase women voter turnout. Without a long-term commitment, eligible women voters will continue to be underrepresented in elections.

Ghulam Dastageer is a staffer at the Herald. Rizwan Safdar is a PhD scholar of sociology at the Government College University Faisalabad. Sairah Zaidi is an election analyst based in Islamabad.

This was originally published in the September 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

This article was published in the Herald's August 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

[“Y]our mother is waiting for you, oh my dear son, come home,” wailed Nargis Bano over the body of her 18-year-old son, Yawar Ahmad Dar, before she fell unconscious. She woke up in the lap of her wailing daughter who cried out, “Please don’t cry my mother. Let my brother sleep a while.”

Dar was killed when a barrage of lead pellets was fired at him by Indian security forces in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district – 60 kilomters away from Srinagar — on September 10, 2016. He was the 78th Kashmiri civilian to have died at the hands of the security forces in just a couple of months after the assassination of a young militant commander, Burhan Muzaffar Wani, on July 8 that year. By the end of 2016, the death toll would reach 146.

The killing spree that started after Wani’s death – and has continued since then – is aimed at quelling a popular revolt against the Indian rule of Kashmir that has seen many such uprisings over the last 30 years. Together, these have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people — civilians, militants and soldiers.

Many sons and daughters have become orphans. The number of widows has increased manifold in Kashmir. Many brothers have shouldered the coffins of their young siblings. Many parents have seen their young sons disappear and then return home dead. Many mothers have lost their lives while grieving for their dead children.

Musmaat Fatima was one of them.

Her 24-year-old son Rayees Ahmad Ganai told his family living in Narpora village of Shopian district on January 27, 2018 that he was going to his aunt’s house in a nearby village. While he was on his way, he came across a group of young protesters in Ganowpora village — around two kilometres away from his own house. They were throwing stones at an army convoy passing by.

The army retaliated by opening fire at them, killing 20-year-old Javid Ahmad Bhat and 24-year-old Suhail Javid Lone on the spot. Over a dozen others were injured in the firing — Ganai being one of them. He was hit by a bullet in his head and was shifted to a hospital in Srinagar where he died four days later.

No one knows if Ganai had also joined the protesters but his family insists he had not. He was buried by thousands of mourners in a roadside graveyard a few metres away from his small single-storey house.

Ganai’s death changed everything for his 60-year-old mother, Musmaat. She rarely talked afterwards, says her elder son Aijaz Ahmad. If she said anything it would be about her dead son. “My son was innocent but they killed him,” she was often heard saying.

Her whole world shrank to her home, the graveyard and the road where her son was killed. She started her day by visiting his grave, then she walked towards Ganowpora village and stood on the road by the graveyard on her way back.

Three months and 13 days later, Musmaat left home at dawn. When she did not return for two hours, Aijaz Ahmad went out to look for her. He searched for her in the neighbourhood; then he went to the graveyard; and finally walked down towards Ganowpora. His neighbours and his uncle had also joined him by then.

They found Musmaat lying dead by the roadside, near a shallow stream, close to the site where Ganai was shot. “She probably had a cardiac arrest,” says Aijaz Ahmad.

Ruby Jan, 22, was married in 2015 to a young man of her uncle’s choosing. After a simple wedding, attended by relatives and neighbours, she left her parents’ home in Batmuran village of district Shopian in south Kashmir and went to live with her husband. A couple of years later, she gave birth to a daughter to the displeasure of her in-laws. They would taunt her for not bearing a son and her husband would beat her.

In December 2017, Ruby took her daughter and went back to her parents who complained to the local police about the abuse she had suffered. Before the police could investigate the complaint, some unknown gunmen had killed two Jammu and Kashmir Bank guards in a nearby village. The probe into her case was halted.

A few days later, on December 18 to be exact, a gunfight broke out between some militants and Indian government forces in a cluster of houses a little distance from her home. Some local young men also gathered around the site of the encounter to throw stones at the forces’ personnel so the militants could escape — a new trend in Kashmir. The exchange of fire continued till the next afternoon when two militants were killed. The police claimed they were involved in the killing of the bank guards.

The clash between the protesters and the forces, however, did not stop. The forces were soon pursuing the protesters by firing tear gas shells and even bullets at them.

Ruby was attending to her ailing uncle that afternoon in the anteroom of her house. She took a glance outside through a window pane. Within 10 seconds, she fell on the floor.

“When I saw her falling down, I asked her what had happened to her,” says her uncle. Her brother rushed in and thought she had suffered a stroke or something like that. “But when he picked her up, he found out that she was hit by a bullet in her ribcage.”

Ruby was taken to a hospital but it was too late. She died in front of her eight-month-old daughter, Azra, who had no clue what had just transpired.

Azra’s grandparents, aunts and uncles are now taking care of her. Her own father has seen her only once — on the day her mother was killed. “He never came to see his daughter [again],” says her maternal uncle Yaqoob Bhat who is cradling her in his arms on a recent July day.

For Abdul Hameed Mir, life is not what it was a couple of years ago.

On the afternoon of February 14, 2016, a Sunday, he asked his 22-year-old daughter Shaista Hameed to serve lunch at their home in Kakapora hamlet of Pulwama district. “After lunch, I went to the courtyard and saw some security forces personnel coming in from the opposite side,” says a disheartened Mir.

The personnel – men from the Central Reserve Police Force and the Indian army’s Rashtriya Rifles – were there as part of a siege and search operation in Astan Mohalla of Kakapora, says a police statement. They came under fire when they were looking for a militant, Adil Ahmad Shergojri alias Abu Bakar, of Lashkar-e-Taiba. “The police started evacuating civilians trapped inside the [security] cordon. A large number of people were evacuated but a lady namely Shaista while taking cover was hit by a bullet. She was evacuated to [a] hospital where she was declared dead,” the statement reads.

Mir has a different story to tell.

“The gunfight was over,” he says, by the time he saw the personnel moving around. Some boys, who were playing cricket in a nearby ground a little while earlier, started throwing stones at the Indian government forces who came running after them and opened fire at them, he says.

As he ran into his house, asking everyone to take cover, he saw Shaista falling like a dried leaf. She was hit by a bullet in her neck. “My wife and I picked our daughter and left for a nearby hospital in our car but she succumbed to her wounds on the way,” says Mir.

Shaista had a postgraduate degree in Urdu from Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad and was helping her parents make arrangements for her elder sister’s wedding. “She wanted to get a job as a teacher,” her father says.

An engineering student, Danish Farooq Mir, was also killed in the same security operation which left 15 others injured.

Thousands of women in Kashmir have suffered immensely due to the ongoing violence. Sisters have died saving their brothers, young wives have died defending their husbands and mothers have died longing for their missing sons. All of them have left behind shattered families, grieving parents and young children – a void filled only with memories, suffering and hopelessness.

Blood, Censored: When Kashmiris Become the ‘Enemy’, a recent book written by Pamela Philipose, Navsharan Singh, Tapan Bose, Dinesh Mohan and Harsh Mander, has discussed the sufferings of Kashmiri women.

“[There] was a woman who was so affected by her son’s death that she banged her head in despair and fractured her skull. Another shattered mother would visit shrines and keep repeating the words, ‘Get my son’,” the book quotes a leading psychiatrist, Dr Arshad Hussain, as saying. One woman in Shopian could not survive long after the killing of her youngest son. Another was “losing her eyesight after she learnt of her son’s death”.

Women in conflict zones are twice as likely to suffer from mental health problems as men, Hussain told one of the authors. This rings so true for the women in Kashmir — and then some more.

The writer is a freelance journalist who has written for several international publications including Al Jazeera and The Diplomat. His Twitter handle is @pzfahad.

This was originally published in the August 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

Twelve aspiring beauticians are present on the set of a morning show.

“Today we will do what no beautician has seen or heard before,” says a make-up expert invited to judge a bridal make-up competition among them. She opens a glittering golden box and takes out a make-up stick. “This is a Negro stick,” she says.

“Negro is habshi. Have you seen habshans?” says another judge, using the local term for men and women of African origin. “People of this colour will come to you too so you have to know what make-up to use in such situations.”

Sanam Jung, the show’s host, holds out her hand and applies the make-up stick on the back of her hand. There is a glaring difference between her light skin tone and the stick’s dark shade. “Make sure the make-up is of this Negro tone, nothing lighter,” she says to the participants of the competition. “You have to create a chocolate bride.”

The participants, who belong to Karachi’s lower middle-class and working-class areas such as Korangi, Malir, North Karachi and Gulberg, are perplexed. They have been taught to brighten the complexion of a bride, never darken it.

The show, aired on March 14, 2018, immediately draws criticism. At least five people lodge complaints against it on the website of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) under a code of conduct for electronic media issued in 2015.

But no action is taken against the show.

Another controversial show hosted by Sanam on August 21, 2017 similarly evaded penalty. It featured four celebrities along with their housemaids, or maasis, who were to take part in a cleaning and cooking competition for a prize of 50,000 rupees.

Many viewers were offended by the use of the word maasi which means ‘mother’s sister’ in Punjabi but has come to be used as an alternative for maid, particularly in Karachi. Others were highly critical of how the show presented working-class women as inferior to their bajis or employers.

Sanam does not see anything wrong with the show’s content. “What about the good that we were trying to do?” she says in an interview. “The prize money was a huge amount for a maid because their monthly wages are not even one third of that,” she argues, implying that the money compensated for their disrespectful presentation on-screen. Apparently oblivious to the glaring difference between how the maasis and their bajis were treated on her show, she offers another argument in her defence. “We tried to reinforce the idea that employers should treat their maids better.”

These views may explain why she often airs competitions like these on her show. She, for instance, hosted a Dulhan No 1 competition in which make-up artists competed to doll up brides to win a prize amounting to 250,000 rupees.

Other morning show hosts have tried similar gimmicks. Nida Yasir once hosted a show that offered tips on how short girls could appear taller, and Sahir Lodhi presented a show on March 12, 2018 to teach young girls how to look fairer.

“Do you take a lot of stress? Your face has acne, which is caused by stress,” Sahir told a high school student during the show, ignoring the crestfallen expression that appeared on her face. “Can you see?” he asked one of the guests. “She has a major acne problem.”

Sahir then went on to rub a potato-based paste on the faces of three members of the audience. “Potatoes have a bleaching agent and will make you fair,” he said, and called a skin specialist on stage to offer advice on how to have lighter skin. “If your haemoglobin level is low, your face won’t become fair,” the specialist declared, advising the audience to get their blood tests done.

These pseudoscientific tips are not the only things that Sahir – and many other hosts – peddle on their morning shows. He, indeed, has stretched the limits of what can be shown on a television show.

The result has not always been good for him. In January 2018, a citizen filed a petition with the Sindh High Court seeking to ban his show because it had once shown girls under the age of 12 dancing to Indian item songs. On May 15, 2017, Pemra found his live clip dancing with fashion models as “indecent and objectionable”. The show was fined one million rupees.

A maulvi and a psychiatrist were discussing a supernatural phenomenon on a show hosted by Nida Yasir a few years ago. The question they were addressing was a rather usual one: are djinns real or a figment of one’s imagination? The two were arguing intensely when suddenly some lights exploded on-set and shattered glass fell on Nida and the guests. The panicked on-set audience started screaming. The show had to be called off.

In a similar show aired in March 2012, a young man wearing jeans and a red sports jacket made a startling entry — causing some audience members to leave their seats in distress. Apparently, the man was possessed by a djinn. His face was never shown on camera but he could be seen having a scuffle with a guest wearing a black suit and tie. Moments later, the young man gave in and lay down on the floor, unconscious. The djinn had apparently left him.

On another show, on another channel but in the same year, an old man with a flowing beard was performing an exorcism on a woman wearing a black burqa. He held a muscle in her hand between his thumb and index finger – as if he was torturing the djinn inside her – and forced her to repeat religious verses after him. At the end of the act, the woman started screaming.

These are probably some of the strangest things to have taken place on morning shows. But other shows have also taken unexpected, albeit decidedly less bizarre turns – like guests quarreling with each other. Hosts, too, have to deal with the unforeseen. Nida once slipped on-set while she was heavily pregnant. With 10 seconds left to be back on air, she reappeared on camera, hiding any expression of pain.

“Being a host is not easy,” she says in an interview. “At times the guests say things they are not supposed to say. In that situation, I divert the attention of the viewers by brushing aside what was being said.” Her experience of acting in television dramas may have helped her deal with such situations.

Nida says she is especially careful about hurting her audience’s religious sentiments. “If something wrong slips out of your mouth, someone could get hurt.” And that could be dangerous. “Over here, people are ready to kill over the slightest of misunderstandings.”

Still, Nida has been quite prone to making on-screen blunders.

In an episode of her show aired in May 2017, she laughs when cricketer Shahid Afridi recounts how in anger he broke a television set because his wife was watching Indian soaps instead of taking care of the children. The segment received large-scale public disapproval for promoting domestic violence. “When a guest comes to your show and says something he finds funny, it is my job to laugh. Remaining serious will look rude,” says Nida when asked about it.

Insiders point out that such gaffes happen because the hosts do not follow any written or verbal guidelines from their producers and directors. Nida sort of confirms this. “We decide the topic of each show as a team but the final decision is mine,” she says. “If I do not find something interesting, I say no to it.”

This type of content control has often resulted in morning shows becoming uniformly inane, even absurd. Nida justifies this frivolity by arguing that the largest chunk of her audience consists of uneducated women sitting at home. “After their children go to school and their husbands head out to office, all they need is entertainment,” she says.

Sanam cannot agree more.

“When I started doing morning shows, I found myself saying no to a lot of topics. For instance, I had an issue with making shows too wedding-centric,” she says on a recent morning. “Then I studied the masses and came to realise that something that does not appeal to my sensibilities could be providing some form of benefit to somebody somewhere.”

She also argues that a lot of morning show viewers do not have the money to go to expensive doctors or beauticians. “By watching the shows, they get good advice from seasoned experts without having to leave the comfort of their homes and without having to pay for it.”

It is 3:00 am but women in a house in Karachi’s Landhi area are awake. Shakeela, her daughter Anum, her sister-in-law Shakira and her niece, Areesha, are trying to sort out something important before they can go to bed: what to wear to Nida’s show the next day? They are vigorously debating the merits and demerits of various dresses and finally pick a few formal outfits.

They have waited for weeks and made innumerable calls to the television channel in order to be at the show. They are extremely excited to finally be invited. Shakeela cannot believe that she will be meeting her favourite host in just a few hours.

An hour before sunrise, her husband wakes her up. She offers her prayer, recites the Quran and heads to the kitchen to make eggs, parathas and tea for her large family. She hurriedly lays out the breakfast and requests her husband to make sure everyone in the house eats well. Then she and her daughter rush to catch a bus arranged by the channel to take them to the set — as do Shakira and Areesha and many other women living in their neighbourhood.

The distinct scent of freshly printed panaflex paper hits their nostrils as they enter the show’s set in SITE area. The set is not as big and posh as it appears on television, covering an approximate area of 30 by 30 feet.

Around 40 lights flood the set with florescent brightness. The walls are covered with a three-dimensional print of a traditional Islamic architectural pattern. Fairy lights, white chiffon curtains and vases with white roses also adorn the place.

They find seats amid an all-women audience. A small empty space separates them from the stage where white faux leather couches are placed for the guests and host. The women in the audience have covered their heads with dupattas out of respect for the holy night of Miraj (ascension to heaven) — still around 12 hours away but scheduled to be discussed during the show.

Nida enters wearing a peach chiffon dress that brushes the floor. The audience stares at her in awe, scrutinising her from head to toe as if she were a bride. Holding the edge of her dupatta so it does not fall off her head, she strides towards a cooking station. The eyes of all 40 women in the audience follow her. Some of them are wiping their tears with their dupattas — so overcome are they with emotion.

With hardly a minute left for the show to start, Nida turns and makes eye contact with the audience, smiling and waving at them. “Assalam-o-Alaikum,” she says to one of the elderly women, who responds with gratitude at being acknowledged by a celebrity.

The shows takes longer than the audience expected. When the transmission ends, the women get back into the buses that are awaiting a signal from the show’s producers to leave. The wait is making Shakira restless. Her daughter, Areesha, who is with her, has to appear in an examination paper – her final for matriculation – at 2:00 pm and it is already 12:10 pm. Her husband, a police inspector, “does not even know that Areesha has a paper today,” she says.

They need to go home first, but Landhi is 30 kilometres to the east of SITE and requires at least one hour of travel. They could have taken a taxi but her community does not approve of women travelling in taxis without covering themselves in abayas — and her abaya is lying at home.

Shakira and Areesha immediately accept when I offer them a ride in a car. When their destination arrives, they disembark and greet a middle-aged man wearing a red T-shirt and blue jeans. He is Shakeela’s husband. Shakira signals to a house painted in pink and says, “This is Shakeela’s place.” Her own house, painted off-white, is right next door but she does not invite me in because her “father-in-law will get angry if he finds out we went to the show”. She hurries inside to get her daughter dressed for the exam.

Streets in the neigbourhood are narrower than the hallway that leads to the set of Nida’s show. The houses are so small that three of them would fit into the show’s make-up room alone. Standing on the edge of the street, all one can see is dozens of structures of the same size and shape huddled together like shipping containers placed next to each other.

Shakeela’s house is bright and artistically decorated inside. The tiny drawing room is painted bright purple and a beige chador with a red pattern is spread on the floor. A desktop computer is placed next to sofas that are covered in golden silk cloth. An air conditioner is mounted on the wall but does not seem to be working.

Shakeela and her daughter Anum soon arrive with two other members of the show’s audience — a mother and daughter duo from the same neighbourhood. The two women and their daughters sit down on the floor even though there is ample space on the sofas. “Did you see how stunning Nida is in real life?” Shakeela asks.

Anum adores Nida — and also Sahir. She cannot watch their shows when they air because she has to attend college in the mornings, but she watches them online each night.

Shakeela is an even bigger morning show enthusiast. She watches shows online along with her husband after having already watched them on television. “I do not know how to use the computer but Anum helps me with that.”

The other mother in the small gathering has been among the on-set audience of many morning shows, including Sanam Jung’s competition for dark-skinned make-up. “It was a great show,” she says. “It is easy to apply make-up on fair people. Real make-up skill is making women with dark skin look good.”

They are not bothered whether or not the shows conform to Pemra’s rules, and will keep watching re-runs if they are banned. “I will repeat-watch all the shows online to keep feeling energised,” Shakeela says, laughing.

A young girl once wanted to have a phone conversation with popular morning show host Shaista Lodhi, but Shaista refused to take her call. Disheartened, the girl tried to commit suicide and had to be taken to a hospital.

A bemused Shaista narrates the incident at a posh beauty clinic in Karachi where she works as a doctor. Sitting in her cosy office at 7:00 pm, she looks a little tired. But, dressed in a lemon-coloured lawn kurta and blue jeans, she still looks as pretty in person as she does on television. Her hair is blow-dried perfectly – straight and voluminous at the top and curled towards the ends – and her rosy skin glows. Her curls bounce with each movement of her head.

Shaista was at the peak of her popularity when a wrong move turned her career upside down — at least temporarily. On May 15, 2014, she hosted a lavish on-screen wedding of actress Veena Malik and Dubai-based businessman Asad Bashir Khattak. The celebrations became controversial when the couple, host and wedding guests danced on stage to the accompaniment of religious poetry sung by renowned qawwal Amjad Sabri.

Many religious scholars declared the act blasphemous. Around 6,000 people filed complaints with Pemra. A police case was also registered under the blasphemy laws against Shaista and Veena, as well as the owner of the television channel that aired the show.

Shaista had to move abroad after she received a flurry of death threats. She returned only in 2016 and had to publicly apologise before she could resume her television career. “There is a lot of pressure on us to watch what we say,” she says in a hushed tone. “I am very cautious now.”

Shaista also knows how the well-read and the well-heeled sections of society do not think much of morning shows and their hosts. Writer and veteran television host Mustansar Hussain Tarar once appeared as a guest on her show and she remembers his reaction when she started discussing something she had read. “So you read too?” he said.

“I was so embarrassed,” she says. “We have reduced the value of the content so much that people think we do not know anything.”

This realisation doesn’t deter her from keeping her morning show ultralight. “I have to make things digestible for housewives,” she explains.

It is for a similar reason that Shaista is unapologetic about shows that promote skin lightening: the public demands it. “Most of the patients who come to me at the clinic want to whiten their skin. Mothers bring their daughters who are about to get married for whitening injections,” she claims, pointing out that people from low-income communities who generally watch her shows cannot afford whitening injections and, therefore, rely on whatever advice they can get from morning shows.

However, she admits that, under pressure to attract as many viewers as she can, she often ends up presenting something she knows to be incorrect. “I am not strong enough to go to my employers and say I would not do this.”

What pressures her to do such things is viewership ratings. “I once translated an English poem about mothers and the ratings dropped,” Shaista says.

Morning shows do not earn anything directly from their viewership but instead make money by selling different advertising spots and options to various brands. “For advertising rates to be high, viewership ratings have to be high,” says Rehan Ahmed, the executive producer of Sanam’s show. “The advertising department of a television channel puts pressure on the programming department, which then transfers that pressure to a show’s production team,” he adds. “This is how we end up doing things that we do not like doing. Our hands are tied.”

The irony is that the viewership monitoring system is quite flawed. It is often criticised for being unreliable for a simple reason: there are only a few hundred viewership meters all over Pakistan and those too are run by a single company.

Medialogic, the current provider of viewership ratings, relies on 900 meters installed across the country to gain its numbers. Is this number truly representative of a population which exceeds 200 million people? The answer is obviously no.

Medialogic has two main clients: television channels and advertisers. The ratings Medialogic provides are used as currency for all buying and selling between broadcasters and advertisers.

Why do broadcasters and advertisers rely so heavily on Medialogic when other data providers are available, such as the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited that can provide viewership ratings based on what is being watched in 50,000 or so households linked to its cable television network? “Medialogic is the only data provider that is supervised and scrutinised by the broadcast industry itself. The industry recognises that we are credible,” says Medialogic’s chief executive, Salman Danish.

Pemra’s head office in Islamabad’s G-8 area is a perfect example of how marble and reflective glass can be used to construct a building that is pleasing to the eye. It is 3:00 pm on a March day and the building’s marble floor shines as if it has just been cleaned. Jinnah’s portrait hangs on a wall above the reception area and money plants are placed in several corners to add greenery to an otherwise grey interior.

Pemra’s media and public relations department is situated on one of the upper floors of the building. There, seated in a cubicle, is Maham Ali Khan. She is the department’s head.

“Pemra will take note only if rules mentioned in its code of conduct are broken,” she says, explaining why next to no action is taken against impropriety and horseplay at morning shows.

The code of conduct is not specific to morning shows. It is applicable to all electronic media in Pakistan, including private television channels, cable operators and private radio stations. It deems offensive certain acts — content that is against Islamic values, is indecent or obscene, incites hatred and contempt against a group or race and challenges the ideology of Pakistan and the ideas of its founding fathers.

A separate set of rules was released in early May 2017 particularly for morning shows. This is how Rehan Ahmed, who works as a producer for Sanam’s morning show, elaborates these rules: “If you are showing the point of view of a mother-in-law then you have to bring the point of view of the daughter-in-law as well. If we are showing a woman who is complaining about her husband, we have to get the husband’s version as well.” Morning shows, he says, cannot broadcast anything that may promote chaos, confusion and psychological problems in society. Black magic, exorcism and discussions about djinns are completely banned.

Some shows and hosts have already been penalised since the promulgation of the newer rules. In June 2017, for instance, Pemra fined Sahir for “disrespecting Quaid-e-Azam” on his morning show.

Others have faced action by other branches of the government. Sanam was recently told to retract her remarks about a young girl’s abduction. “I got a call from the Rangers. They said the incident was an old one but was discussed in the show as though it reflected the current security scenario in Karachi,” says Ahmed, her show’s producer. “I apologised on Sanam’s behalf for not verifying the information before speaking about it. [Even then] the Rangers required Sanam to issue a clarification on the show so we did that two days later.”

This must have been a special case.

Authorities usually do not move against morning shows on their own. As far as Pemra is concerned, it relies on television viewers to see if its own code of conduct and rules are being followed. “We take action after we get public complaints,” says Maham, “[because] we do not have a mechanism to monitor morning shows.”

Pemra, in fact, does not possess the technology to oversee everything that goes on air, she says. “We have a monitoring department that looks at 90 television channels 24/7, but all these are news channels.”

If and when an action is taken, which is rare, it does not always get automatically implemented. According to Maham, more than 500 cases are pending against various television channels but the proceedings have been stopped by various courts. “We cannot fine a channel more than one million rupees but most of them do not pay even this small amount and get a stay order from a court instead.”

Huma Amir Shah trained as a broadcast journalist and has been appearing on television for over a decade. She is also credited with hosting one of the first English language morning shows in Pakistan. These days she co-hosts a morning show on a popular news channel.

The set for her show is modestly constructed in a building on Karachi’s I I Chundrigar Road and is not open to a live audience. The show does not even accept live phone calls.

One morning last winter, Huma is wearing an A-line tunic with straight pants, a sharp contrast to the wedding garb donned by other morning show hosts. Also, she steers clear of discussing beauty tips or wedding dresses and instead chooses a blend of topics covering politics, economy, health and nutrition. “I try to offer content which I feel is something that a viewer should be informed about for the rest of the day,” says Huma. “Just entertainment news or learning how to cook would not get you anywhere.”

She does invite celebrities occasionally — not to regale the audience with their presence but to promote their work. Unlike with other shows, celebrities on her show do not get paid for their time. “Our guests come to our show willingly, knowing that there is no money on the table,” she says.

Also, unlike other hosts, Huma is certain that viewership ratings do not guide her content, and the senior producer of her show, Irfan Ishaque, confirms this. He reiterates that his production team does what it wants to do, paying no attention to ratings. “Our media has made the scope of morning shows very limited. They only discuss weddings and make-up and cooking. So we decided to introduce a morning show that includes things such as politics, environment, women’s empowerment, breast cancer awareness, digital safety, Internet freedom and celebrity and entertainment news,” he says. “Eventually, we got the ratings too.”

Ishaque also refutes the common assumption that only women watch morning shows. “We have studied the trends and found that men are watching our show as well.”

As one enters the set of a morning show near Karachi’s West Wharf area, the aroma of breakfast being cooked takes over. A guest chef is teaching the audience how to prepare a cheese omelette with spinach while the host, Anoushey Ashraf, talks about different dishes that can be served at breakfast time.

“We do not focus on rating, we do not have a live audience and we do not conduct marriages,” says Kiran Yazdani, the executive producer of the show. “The idea behind this show is to create a setting where characters are placed in a certain situation and a make-believe story is created. Anoushey plays the role of a progressive working woman who shares a house with a friend and a maid,” Kiran explains. “The guests who come in act like they are a part of the story line.”

In the second season of the show, Anoushey and her friend have bought a café. “So, we have revamped the décor of the set accordingly,” says Kiran, who has worked as a creative director at an advertising firm.

She believes it is important to give something different to the viewers from what they watch on other morning shows. “My question is: why are we showing the audience the same kind of content?” The show she produces often takes up social problems faced by housewives in particular and women in general. It also discusses many culturally taboo topics as well as subjects trending on popular Facebook groups.

Kiran and her team make sure that everyone on the show sticks to its core values. “We got an advertising offer that required Anoushey to apply a whitening cream during the show but I refused,” she says, shaking her head in disgust. “I do not promote this gora-kala culture.”

Kiran also does not agree that only fashion and beauty appeal to the masses. That her show has managed to attain the fourth highest rating only proves her contention.

Wearing a dark purple kurta, Mustansar Hussain Tarar is standing at the entrance of his residence in Lahore. His eyes are warm and friendly. He opens his arms in a welcoming gesture and says a soft hello.

Tarar is known as chacha jee by those who grew up hearing his greeting “Asalam-o-Alaikum Pakistan” every morning on a show called Subah Bakhair. The show started in February 1988 and included an exercise segment, discussion of current affairs, a weather report, religious subjects, cartoons and lifestyle related topics.

“The trend of watching television in the morning did not exist in the 1980s,” says Tarar. Back then, Pakistan had only one state-owned television channel, PTV, which ran between 4:00 pm and midnight, with occasional live broadcasts of mainly hockey and cricket matches. “We still decided to launch a show in the 7:00 am to 9:00 am slot, taking inspiration from morning shows in other countries. The aim was to keep the content short and light so that people could watch it while waking and dressing for school or office.”

The show was a success. PTV received so much mail about it that a room in its headquarters in Islamabad would be flooded with fan letters.

“I suppose people liked my causal style of compering,” Tarar says. “People would think I was talking to them. Sometimes I would randomly say, ‘Beta, wipe the milk off your mouth.’ If one million kids were watching me, I knew at least a few thousand would have a milk moustache,” he says, laughing. “My friendly attitude was considered unique as our hosts had a wooden attitude and did not believe in being casual,” he explains, an unmistakable hint of nostalgia flitting through his eyes. “Once I sneezed on air. I casually turned to the camera and said, ‘I am not a robot. It’s okay if I get sick.’”

He remembers that almost no attention was paid to the set of his show. The compere was the focus, not the props. “If you are taking a helping hand then you are not a compere, you are an announcer,” he says, referring to the 21st century morning shows that are often flooded with guests, co-hosts, and fancy, brightly-lit sets. “I also made it a point never to lie to the audience,” Tarar says. “After Zia’s plane crash, I was asked to act devastated, but Zia had banned many of my books and I felt differently towards him. So I refused and instead went on air and just read the news like a newscaster.”

Tarar says he does not watch the morning shows of today. “Why would I watch shows of foolish people?” he says, bluntly. Once Nadia Khan, a popular television host in the late 2000s, invited him to her show and introduced him as the father of morning shows. “I said, one or two of these kids may be mine but not all of them. I cannot produce such stupid children.”

Quratulain Ali was hosting a live morning show when a news anchor sitting beside her lost balance due to a faulty chair. The host did not make any attempt to cover up the incident. Instead, she commented on it on camera, saying, “We never know when one loses one’s chair!” The same evening, Benazir Bhutto was removed as prime minister. The Urdu daily Nawa-e-Waqt printed a big story the next morning. Its headline said kursi khisak gayee (the chair slipped away) and mentioned that Quratulain Ali had forecast the prime minister’s downfall on her show. Such was the appeal of morning shows back in the day!

Quratulain was Tarar’s co-host on PTV’s first morning show. Often referred to as phuppo jee – a title she is not fond of – she was one of the first Pakistani women to appear on a live television transmission. Before becoming a host, she worked as a teacher and English-language newsreader for Radio Pakistan.

She would walk on to the set of her show wearing her own clothes instead of a designer-sponsored wardrobe. General Ziaul Haq would often watch the morning transmission and send his comments to PTV on the attire worn by the host, she says. “One day I got so sick of the interference that I said, please ask him to do the show himself.”

Quratulain explains how, in the past, the content of each morning show would be different, requiring the host to thoroughly prepare for it. She would study all night to research the topics she needed to discuss the next morning. “The hosts of today speak without any information or preparation. They just decorate the set and put in some glamour, music and a lot of noise,” she says.

Another problem, according to her, is that the hosts of today are loud and uncivilised. They are not trained to listen and often interrupt their guests, she says. “They lack culture, knowledge, information and a sense of media ethics … to anchor the show forward,” she remarks in an interview at her residence in Islamabad. “The hosts of today look so nice but everything is ruined the minute they start talking.”

Sitting on a couch with her shoulders straight and her head held high, Quratulain is an astounding combination of grace and confidence. When she speaks, her words come out clear and crisp with an emphasis on each letter. She is worried that no attention is paid to the way language is spoken on morning shows. “Yes, the requirement of the audience has changed but that does not mean you cannot focus on pronunciation.”

The media had hardly any freedom in the late 1980s due to Zia’s dictatorial stranglehold over the state and society, but the hosts of that time still managed to have an on-screen presence, says Quratulain. The hosts today have so much freedom, she says, but it is disappointing that they do not use their influence productively and instead focus more on commericalisation.

Talat Hussain was once the host of a morning transmission segment titled Sawairay Sawairay on a show called Roshan Pakistan that aired on PTV in the late 1990s. He now hosts an evening talk show on Geo News.

He is seated behind a big desk in his office in Islamabad’s Blue Area on a recent March day, wearing a dark green T-shirt that stands out in his predominantly blue office. “Current affairs on a live show were a no-no at that time because anything could go wrong. Also, a journalist working at a government-controlled television channel was considered to be a lowly act. Nor was there any money in it,” says Hussain, as he explains why his decision to be a part of the show was not easy. And then he had an additional worry: the producer of the show was deliberately set up for failure.

The show, however, turned out to be a success. “Our task was to fill the airtime with semi-soft content,” says Hussain. The guidelines included advice to steer clear of political controversies, avoid demoralising people, highlight talent and showcase stories of resilience and success. “The content we presented was productive but it was not jazzy. The fact is real people are not jazzy.”

In one of the video clips of Sawairay Sawairay available on YouTube, Talat is sitting on a minimalistic set. The camera is zoomed in to focus solely on the anchor and a guest. Visually, it offers little, yet the conversation grabs one’s attention. “We did not have any props. The only drama in the show was the conversation,” he says, leaning back in his chair.

Tauseeq Haider is another morning show host from the past. Videos of his show, aired from 2004-2009, are hard to find online except for a few clips on YouTube. In one, he is interviewing Ali Moeen Nawazish who scored 21 As in his A-level exams, achieving a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Seated on a simple set comprising a kitchen table, chairs and two flower vases, Haider exudes a warm, welcoming aura. The chemistry between the host and guest is friendly and respectful. There is no soundtrack or commotion in the background; the speaker is the focus of attention. The interview itself is inspiring and thought-provoking. “Is the race to achieve high grades more important than seeking knowledge?” Haider asks.

He believes an emphasis on the youth and children is missing from contemporary shows. “When I was young, there were programmes that included advice on career and education,” he says over the phone. “Television was the third parent and it really had a positive effect on our mindset.”

However, he points out a crucial difference between the older shows and the new ones. “It is very important to differentiate between morning shows and breakfast shows,” he says. “The shows we were a part of were breakfast shows, aired at the 7:00-9:00 am slot that targeted a general audience. The 9:00-11:00 am shows we see nowadays are morning shows with women as their target audience.”

Zafarullah Khan, the host of News Morning, a show aired on PTV between 2000 and 2002, offers another explanation for the difference between the past and the present. “In our times, PTV had a monopoly and it offered whatever it wanted. Nowadays, there is a buffet of choice and there is appetite for everything being aired.”

Nor does he discount the importance of providing entertainment to television audiences. “You cannot ignore entertainment. Even print has tabloids,” he says in an interview at the Islamabad office of the Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services, a state-owned think tank where he works as a director.

Seated in a spacious office behind a wooden desk flooded with files, Zafarullah, however, says there is one aspect of morning shows that bothers him the most: dramatising content to such an extent that it feels like an artificially concocted reality. “Where is the segment of society we see on television?”

The writer is a staffer at the Herald

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

Additional reporting by Manal Faheem Khan

Amidst chants of “Wazeer-e-Azam Nawaz Sharif”, the former (and now jailed) prime minister addresses a seminar in Islamabad on April 17, 2018. In attendance are political leaders of smaller democratic parties: Awami National Party’s (ANP) Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUIF) Fazlur Rehman, and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party’s (PkMAP) Mahmood Khan Achakzai.

Occasionally switching into folksy Punjabi, eliciting laughter from the audience, Sharif’s demeanour remains self-effacing, soft-spoken and non-threatening — almost. “The purpose of this seminar can be summarised in four words,” he says, gently removing his glasses from his coat’s front pocket. “It’s a short phrase, but for millions of Pakistanis, it has become the most important one.” He puts on his glasses, getting a clearer look at the audience: “What is it?”

The audience roars back, without hesitation: “Vote ko izzat do! Vote ko izzat do! Vote ko izzat do!”

Following his disqualification and subsequent arrest, amongst assertions of political victimsation and conspiracy, these four words – “Vote ko izzat do” (Honour the vote) – have become Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PMLN) rallying cry in 2018. They were heard on campaign rallies and television advertisements leading up to the election; by supporters as they went to cast their vote on the day of the election; and by the thousands who had gathered to receive their fallen leader’s arrival in Lahore on July 13. Some loyalists had the words etched on placards; others had it painted on their bare backs. One of the party supporters present, Chaudhry Kashif, says that he did not “become a PMLN supporter, but was born one,” as his entire family has supported Nawaz Sharif since his military-backed Islami Jamhoori Ittehead (IJI) days. “The success of ‘Vote ko izzat do’ is because people realise that – until there is civilian supremacy – there won’t be progress,” Kashif explains.

Such slogans and songs are inseparable from the election campaigning process. In a democracy where citizens have to be persuaded to come out and cast their votes on the day of the elections, slogans hold meaning and promise: they echo the aspirations of voters, and reflect the issues of the time they are created in. Some highlight the party symbol; others seek to create unity along ideological, ethnic or religious lines; nearly all create a cult of personality around their leader. Many fail to catch on, while only a handful endure long after the campaign ends. Here are the life and times of a few of Pakistan’s most memorable political songs and slogans, focusing on the three most popular political parties: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), PMLN and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

1970 – 1977

Perhaps the first political party to understand the importance of populist sloganeering to appeal to public consciousness was the PPP with “Maangta hai har insaan, roti kapra aur makaan”. First used by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto around the time the PPP’s manifesto was drafted in 1966, it helped Bhutto win the 1970 elections in West Pakistan.

The Pakistan that Bhutto rose in was overwhelmingly rural. According to the central statistics office, in 1972, nearly 85 per cent of the population lived in villages. Inspired by what was termed Islamic socialism – a political and intellectual trend in the Muslim world in the 1960s and 1970s – Bhutto offered a shift in power and resources from an elite minority to the vast poor majority.

This purely materialist sloganeering – as opposed to the moral sloganeering of right-wing parties (“Pakistan ka matlab kya? La ilaha illala”) – appealed to the masses that had to struggle for these basic necessities: peasants, labourers, and the working class. It also attracted politically engaged, leftist students and the urban youth. “During the days of Ayub Khan, socialist and progressive organisations were crushed: trade unions, literary societies, student unions. Those were the days of the Vietnam War and Mao in China, and there was a revolutionary upheaval all over the world,” recalls Taj Haider, one of the founding members of PPP.

For many, Bhutto’s unapologetic attitude and strongman persona also enlivened the country after the loss of East Pakistan (Bangladesh). Noor Muhammad was just a boy living in Keamari when he witnessed Bhutto tear up the Polish Resolution calling for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan at the United Nations Security Council. That moment converted Muhammad into a lifelong jiyala. “Roti, kapra, makaan is what all citizens need, but Bhutto articulated it,” says Muhammad. During the 1970 elections, he would attend every rally he could. “There was the slogan ‘Daal roti khaiyen gey/Bhutto ko laiyen gey’ [We will eat simple fare/but we will ensure Bhutto wins]. And also, ‘Note bhi deyen gain/vote bhi deyen gey’ [We will give our money/our vote [to Bhutto]. Every child would shout these slogans.”

When Muhammad sees politicians speak today, or hears anyone from a marginalised community demand their rights – the manner in which they speak, the causes they espouse – he sees Bhutto in them. “Bhutto Sahib taught us how to speak, he gave us a voice. Till then, there was no concept of speaking up for oneself, for demanding one’s rights.”

Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 by (the self-appointed “Mard-e-Momin, Mard-e-Haq”) Zia-ul-Haq, but the promise of a truly representative people’s government – the promise of “a better Pakistan, a greater Pakistan” – did not die with him. The establishment and opposition were never quite able to exorcise the ghost of Bhutto from Pakistan’s politics — “Bhutto” became its own slogan, with strong meaning and association (“Jeay Bhutto”, “Naraye Bhutto”). With his hanging (and subsequently, his daughter’s assassination) something else entered the party’s propaganda machine: the language of martyrdom and sacrifice. Slogans like “Kal bhi Bhutto zinda tha, aaj bhi Bhutto zinda hai” and “Tum kitne Bhutto maro ge? Har ghar se Bhutto nikle ga” being the most recognised.

“One of the greatest assets that PPP has is the martyrdom of its leaders. It gives us strength and acceptance from our workers: it shows them that we are ready to die for what we believe in. So much folk literature has been written, so many poems. People link it with the shahadat of Karbala, which is part of our culture,” Haider concludes

1988 – 1997

In the late 1980s, Pakistan witnessed the emergence of new realities in the political landscape — new parties, manifestos, songs and slogans. There was a sudden vibrancy, noise and chaos as different parties competed for power after “Bhutto ki Beti” returned to mammoth crowds in 1986. Cassettes of various party songs inundated the market. Jubilance, music, and dance followed PPP to its victory in the 1988 elections, with the Balochi-titled Dilla teer bijja. When PPP’s sword (‘Zulfikar’) symbol was banned by the Election Commission of Pakistan, the party chose the next closest object: the arrow. “When the party symbol is changed, it takes a while for people to understand that it’s the same party, so it helped us to have songs on the arrow,” says Haider.

Other slogans at the time included “Charoun souboun ki zanjeer, Benazir Benazir” , “Mashriq ki beti”, and “Benazir aati hai, inqilaab laati hai”, but it is Dila Teer Bijja which remains the most used, sampled and copied song in politics, even played at weddings and non-political events. It’s a song of victory against the opponent, but also of love for Benazir, referring to her as the peoples’ ‘daughter’ and ‘sister’.

In the late 1980s, as the Cold War was coming to an end and neo-liberal, right-wing politics dominated the global stage. Pakistan, aligned with Western powers, aided in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. By the time Zia died in a plane crash in 1988, after 11 years in power, he left behind a far more radicalised society: the judiciary and education curriculum were ‘Islamised’, and thousands of religious seminaries were opened. There was an influx of refugees into the country, and new wealth was being created through legal and illegal means.

Zia also left behind a protégé: the son of a wealthy industrialist, an economic minister in his cabinet, with a personal vendetta against the Bhuttos. As one of the most prominent leaders in the military-backed, nine-party alliance, IJI – and previously with the other nine-party opposition alliance, PNA – Nawaz Sharif also spoke of martyrdom and carrying on a legacy: that of Zia’s. One of PNA’s slogans had been: “Nau sitaare bhai bhai, Bhutto teri shaamat ai”.

But what really made Nawaz and his brother, Shehbaz, successful in Punjab – the bastion of power – was a particular brand of Punjabi chauvinism to counter what was perceived as PPP’s Sindhi domination. There was a shift in Punjab’s cultural and intellectual class towards Punjabi nationalism. After losing in the National Assembly by a large margin, IJI was afraid it would also lose the provincial elections. So the very first slogan that announced the arrival of the Sharifs in Pakistani politics was a highly xenophobic one: “Jaag Punjabi jaag, teri pag nou lag gya dagh. [Wake up Punjabi, your turban is stained]”. The Sharif brothers had cemented their presence in large parts of urban and semi-urban Punjab, particularly Lahore. “Lahoris have always had a political romance with Mian Sahib,” says Kashif.

Additionally, they attacked PPP’s ‘socialism’ with the language of ‘economic prosperity’ that attracted Punjab’s traditional (and rising) middle class and urban poor. PPP was presented as “corrupt, inefficient, and anti-Pakistan”. Moreover, they were “infidels”. That socialism equated to godlessness was a common misperception in Pakistan, and the right-wing exploited this sentiment. PPP’s slogan of “Roti, kapra aur makaan” was attacked because it was not the state, Sharif argued, but God who provides “rizq” to his people. Anti-Benazir propaganda blared from loudspeakers in mosques.

Taj Haider thinks religious zeal (as opposed to nationalism) in Punjab played a role in Nawaz’s rise in his early years. “He had no ideology or slogans of his own [in the 1980s]. It was just that whenever progressives stepped ahead, the elite played the religion card.”

After 1990, Nawaz Sharif began to carve an independent identity from IJI. He changed his election symbol to the ‘sher’, which became associated with him and was heavily used in slogans and campaign imagery in all the following elections since. Never mind that the animal is native to Bengal and not Punjab, it symbolised masculine strength, power and flamboyance — and is also a term of endearment (“Sher humara”). Later, as Nawaz would campaign across Punjab in 1993, large crowds gathered to greet him, chanting: “Qadam barhao Nawaz Sharif, hum tumharay saath hain.”

The 1990s witnessed a near-constant battle for power between Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. The two (seemingly) represented opposing dichotomies: left-wing versus right-wing politics, socialism versus capitalism, feminine versus masculine. But in 1996, a new party emerged, one that argued that both PMLN and PPP were one and the same: corruption was perceived to be endemic to politics.

In his first speech to the public, in front of small crowd in Lahore on June 11, 1996, a visibly nervous Imran Khan would apologise repeatedly for his sore throat, let out an embarrassed laugh and timidly request silence each time supporters shouted “Jeevay jeevay Imran Khan” and “Qadam barhao Imran Khan”. The PTI founder began his campaigning with the promise of delivering “insaaf” (justice), “ehtesaab” (accountability), and ridding the country of “corruption”. It would take another 12 or more years before he would finally be taken seriously. In the meanwhile, however, another military dictator – General Pervez Musharraf – launched a coup in 1999. Two years later, the Twin Towers fell in the United States, and Pakistan entered yet another war in Afghanistan.

2008

With Benazir’s assassination in 2007, the music stopped — for a while. Pakistan was gripped with terrorism: 25 bombings claiming hundreds of lives took place in just the four months between Benazir’s arrival and the day of the elections. Music that was played was mournful, such as Bhutto ki beti ai thi”. There was a pervading anger and anti-establishment sentiment. Her husband Asif Ali Zardari was able to quell some of it, particularly in Sindh, with the following words: “Pakistan Khappay”.

Nawaz Sharif also returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia. Now a completely different party, in both temperament and ideological leanings, PMLN took jabs at the military general. Naveed, a lawyer who has supported PMLN since that point – “when the party changed its narrative from right-wing to centre-right” – says he appreciated Nawaz Sharif’s newfound “anti-establishment stance”, with the formation of the All Pakistan Democratic Movement and support for the Lawyers’ Movement. “It’s true that he exploited religious and communal sentiment in the past, but he did a lot for Punjab as well,” claims Naveed.

2013 – 2018

Two massive rallies in Lahore and in Karachi announced the arrival of Imran Khan as a serious contender in politics in 2011 — with the promise of “tabdeeli”. The Pakistan that this ‘repackaged’ PTI was able to draw huge crowds in was a land of contradictions, with muddled ideologies. This allowed him to appeal to an assortment of people. There was the apolitical middle class that benefited from privatisation of the education and economy in the 1990s and 2000s; it had little interaction or expectations from the state apparatus. There were overseas Pakistanis who had been exposed to systems that worked. There were the conservatives and nationalists that were drawn to his religious and anti-West stance.

And many were very young, connected through social media and cell phones. In 2013, figures released by the Election Commission of Pakistan showed that nearly half of the 84 million registered voters – 47.8 per cent – were aged between 18 and 35. Part of the repackaging were large rallies that resembled concerts, with an assigned DJ — something not missed by detractors (though later imitated, too). Countless songs have been composed for PTI since, but perhaps the one that really took hold was “Naya Pakistan”.

This generation – crudely, millennials – that grew up idolising Imran Khan as a national sporting legend and successful philanthropist were of voting age around the time of the 2013 elections. This generation did not grow up with the Bhuttos or Sharifs. They were not aware of the early struggles or history of each party, only their failures when they looked around them. Their concerns weren’t “Roti, kapra aur makaan” – they already had these – but “gas, bijli aur paani ki pareshani”.

Maria, a Phd student from Peshawar, says she was in primary school when she started ‘supporting’ Imran Khan: she raised the highest amount of funds for his cancer hospital in her school. “I thought he was an honest person, but I wasn’t interested in politics. My group of friends was more interested in fashion. This changed with the 2013 elections.”

If Bhutto stirred the consciousness of the poor, Imran Khan seemed to have done the same for the privileged. Those who were cynical or apathetic or fed up with the ‘old’ ways saw someone who was ‘clean’ (“saaf chali, shafaaf chali, Tehreek-e-Insaf chali”), and politically untested — so offered reason for hope

Naseem, a doctor from Peshawar, says, “I was disappointed with the democratic system in the country, and the two parties that were taking turns ruling. I believed Imran Khan was an honest person and his core group will make policies that will control corruption and put the country on the right path.” She had voted just once before 2013, during Musharaf’s referendum. “It’s not that I want the army to rule the country, but a benevolent dictator is better than a sham democracy.”

Imran Khan could slip between various identities with ease: one of them being highlighting his Pakhtun ancestry. Astham, a driver from Battagram who came to Karachi for work in 1997, says he was never interested in politics before, and had only once voted in his village in 2008 for a PMLQ candidate. “We just vote for the nawab/khan of our area. So I did what everyone else was doing, what was expected of me.” What appealed to him about Imran Khan was his autonomous stance, whether against the status quo or foreign powers. “Whether it’s America or any other country, we’ll be friends but not slaves. All Pakistanis are nationalist, but Pakhtuns in particular do not bow in front of anyone.”

Perhaps inspired by PTI’s success in utilising catchy songs as effective propaganda tools, and recognising the young vote bank, other parties also released a number of new tracks in 2013. PMLN had the upbeat Dekho dekho kaun aya, sher aya, sher aya and Mian de naray, sung to the tune of Jugni. In 2018, however, the confident, flamboyant sher imagery took a backseat to a more sombre implore: Vote ko izzat do.

PPP continued to rely heavily on old songs and slogans with a few new ones. Despite being seen as unpopular, Zardari has a song celebrating his political prowess (Khatron ka Khilari), which subverts the insult: "Aik Zardari sab pe bhaari”. There are songs written specifically for Bilawal, though none have matched the popularity of the earlier slogans. In fact, most of these new songs speak about Bilawal being a reflection of his mother (“Bibi Shaheed rani ki tasweer Bilawal”) and grandfather (“Bilawal ki soorat main Bhutto nazar aya”).

But, for now, reigns PTI’s "Rok sako toh rok lo, tabdeeli ai re" — a song for the season.

The writer was previously a staffer at the Herald.

The most pestering question about the general election 2018 for the last one year has been whether it will be held at all, rather than who will win it. Among the many reasons behind this uncertainty were constitutional compulsions arisen out of the population census conducted in early 2017, after 19 long years. Redrawing constituency boundaries – known as delimitation in election terminology – is a constitutional requirement that needs to be fulfilled once the census results have been publicised. But the timeline that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics announced this time round for publicising those results left no time to complete the protracted exercise of redrawing constituency boundaries and to hold elections – as per another constitutional requirement – before the end of July 2018. The bureau stated that it would only publish provisional census results by August last year and would require almost another year to finalise them.

Even from a purely electoral perspective, it was obvious after the census that delimitation was urgently required in order to take into account the population concentration map of the country that had significantly changed since the last population count. The provisional census results showed that Pakistan’s population had jumped from 132 million in 1998, when the previous census was carried out, to 208 million. The data revealed that population growth rates were higher in some provinces than in others. Even within provinces, different districts had different population growth rates. Urban areas across all provinces had grown at a higher pace than rural ones.

These differences were important electorally since provinces and districts are allotted seats in the national and provincial assemblies proportionate to their shares in population. Holding an election with the existing constituency limits would not only have lacked legitimacy but could have easily become controversial for not being representative of the current demographic profile of the country.

The catch-22 that the Election Commission of Pakistan faced was that there was no provision in the Constitution to carry out the delimitation exercise on the basis of provisional census results, but waiting for the final results meant that the new constituencies could not be drawn in time for the 2018 elections. The problem was only solved when, after some initial prevarication, Parliament amended the Constitution, allowing a one-time exemption for redrawing constituency boundaries using provisional census results.

However, the question remained as to whether the Election Commission of Pakistan would be able to complete the delimitation process in time for the 2018 elections. An additional factor that made the delimitation exercise more drawn out than before was that it was to be carried out for the first time under election rules duly devised by the election commission and approved by the government in strict accordance with the provisions of the Election Act, 2017. In the past, election authorities had total freedom in interpreting legal provisions regarding delimitation as they pleased.

General Yahya Khan’s Legal Framework Order divided the four provinces, of what was then West Pakistan, into 138 National Assembly constituencies. The 1973 Constitution, enacted after the separation of East Pakistan, raised the number to 200 and decided that these would be distributed among the federating units in proportion to their population. The constituencies were accordingly demarcated in 1975-77 after the passage of the Delimitation of Constituencies Act, 1974.

Then came General Ziaul Haq. Soon after taking over power, he arbitrarily decided that some provinces needed to have more representation. He raised the total number of National Assembly seats to 207, giving four more seats to Balochistan and three more to Sindh — including two to Karachi. The new seats were added by a presidential order — in disregard of laws and without following the processes given in the Constitution.

This capricious act by the general set the pattern for redrawing constituency boundaries over the next 40 years. Election authorities started regarding delimitation as their prerogative rather than following a rule-based process open to public scrutiny.

This new approach was embodied in subsection 10-A — added by Zia to the Delimitation Act and given constitutional cover through the 8th Constitutional Amendment in 1985. The subsection read: “the [Election] Commission may, at any time, of its own motion, make such amendments, alterations or modifications in the final list of constituencies … or in the areas included in a constituency, as it thinks necessary.”

In practice, the military government itself hurt the delimitation process more than what the subsection could do. Zia took some random decisions when the first delimitation exercise was carried out before the party-less general elections in 1985. For one, he declared that the constituency boundaries were not to be redrawn in accordance with the latest census that was conducted in 1981. Through a decree, he replaced the word ‘census’ with ‘1972 census’ in the Constitution in order for delimitation to happen on the basis of 13-year-old population data. For some odd reason, he did not want the provincial shares of the National Assembly seats changed in accordance with demographic changes.

When Ghulam Ishaq Khan took over as President of Pakistan after Zia’s death in an air crash, he removed this aberration through an ordinance before the next delimitation exercise was carried out in the wake of the 1988 elections. But just before the new constituency boundaries were to be made public, he realised that the share of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) had gone down from eight to five and that Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then known as North West Frontier Province) was given one extra seat each.

Members of the National Assembly elected from Fata were important for the political chessboard Ghulam Ishaq Khan was laying in the country at the time. They would join or ditch any government on the first signal from the right quarters throughout the 1990s. They, therefore, held high regard for those who wanted to keep the democratically elected governments on a tight leash. So Ghulam Ishaq Khan issued an ordinance and froze the number of National Assembly seats for Fata at eight. This effectively meant that the number of seats for each of the four province remained the same as it was in the 1985 election. Ghulam Ishaq Khan would later also use subsection 10-A to favour his hand-picked caretaker prime minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi by jerrymandering his home constituency in central Sindh’s district of Naushahro Feroze before the 1990 elections.

The pattern of non-elected governments overseeing the politically fraught process of delimitation continued for at least one more round.

Before the results of the census conducted in 1998 could be used to redraw constituencies, the army overthrew the elected government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) in 1997. Pervez Musharraf, who replaced Nawaz Sharif as the chief executive of Pakistan, was subsequently given three years by the Supreme Court to hold elections. The judges also gave him the power to change the Constitution, including the power to change the delimitation process.

Musharraf used that power to raise the total number of National Assembly seats from 207 to 272. Seats in all provincial assemblies were increased likewise. This gave the general the opportunity to carve out 65 new National Assembly constituencies by combining, dividing and subdividing the earlier constituencies as he pleased.

Critics pointed out the elections would be too expansive, and also expensive, in larger constituencies. On the other hand, voters in smaller constituencies would become more ‘representative’.

Since the Constitution was not in force, the delimitation was carried out under the Conduct of General Elections Order, 2002 by an election commission appointed by Musharraf himself through the discretionary powers he enjoyed under another decree, the Election Commission Order, 2002.

Though the election authorities maintained a semblance of transparency while carrying out the delimitation, there was no gainsaying the fact that Musharraf had the final say in it. To cite one instance of his power to manipulate the process, he fixed the number of National Assembly seats for Fata at 12, almost double of what the region would have had according to the census results.

It is in this background that the Election Act, 2017, passed by Parliament in October last year, becomes a seminally important piece of legislation. Besides bringing some other improvements in the conduct of elections, it has ensured the return of a rule-based delimitation process. The Election Commission of Pakistan, too, has tried its best to implement the new law both in letter and spirit and devised elaborate mechanisms for delimitation for the first time in our history.

The Parliament was also diligent in removing constitutional obstacles that arose later in the path of delimitation. One of these was related to the Constitution’s Article 50(3) which allocates seats to constituent parts of the federation. The provisional figures thrown up by the 2017 census demanded that Punjab’s share in the National Assembly seats be reduced by seven, and four of these be given to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, two to Balochistan and one to the federal capital.

The seats set to disappear were concentrated in Punjab’s central districts that are a power bastion of PMLN which was in government at the time. This implied that the net impact of the delimitation would be negative for the party and positive for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ruled by its arch rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Showing political maturity, however, PMLN opted to become a part of the solution and not that of the problem. It led efforts to amend the Constitution quickly to facilitate a timely delimitation which – after the one done before the 1977 elections – was to be the first carried out under a democratic dispensation.

These noticeably positive developments would not guarantee that there were no controversies later on. The reason was simple: the lacunae of a law become known only after it is implemented; it was difficult at the time of drafting and the passage of the amendments to envision what those problems could be.

Secondly, any changes in electoral space always create winners and losers since they take some space from one political stakeholder to give it to another. Some negative reaction to them is unavoidable.

One of the early problems that the delimitation process faced was the number of Fata seats. A parallel legislative initiative to bring Fata into the national mainstream was halfway through Parliament when the delimitation-related amendments were being passed. Any change in the number of those seats could have resulted in stalling consensus on Fata’s merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. So the number of Fata seats was again fixed at 12 — double the region’s share in the population and contrary to the provisions of subsection 5 of the Constitution’s Article 50 that allocates the National Assembly seats to every region/province commensurate with its population.

Fata was merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the passage of the 25th Constitutional Amendment on May 31, 2018, the last day of the tenure of the previous government. This amendment has reduced Fata’s share in the National Assembly to six seats but this change will not come into effect for this election.

The Election Commission of Pakistan started its delimitation work early in January this year and published the preliminary delimitation proposals in March, inviting objections from prospective candidates, voters, political parties and civil society. One of the major criticism that emerged was that the delimitation had created constituencies of unequal sizes. The population, and by extension the number of voters, in new constituencies was not equal despite the fact that the new law had bound the election authorities to create constituencies that did not have more than 10 per cent population variation.

The critics pointed out the elections would be too expansive, and also expensive, in larger constituencies. On the other hand, they argued, voters in smaller constituencies would become more ‘representative’ than those in others.

Some constituencies were more unequal than the others. Take, for example, the neighbouring districts of Bannu and Tank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Both were allocated one seat each in the National Assembly even though Bannu has a population of 1.2 million and Tank only has 400,000 people. This meant that running an election campaign in the former district would require more effort and resources than in the latter. What made this comparison even more skewed was the fact that one voter in Tank would be equal to three in Bannu.

These two were not the only unequal constituencies.

According to the latest population figures, the 260 National Assembly constituencies (excluding 12 for Fata from the total of 272) should have an average of 780,000 inhabitants. The legally allowed 10 per cent variation set this number between 741,000 and 819,000. But the preliminary delimitations showed that the population of seven constituencies was in excess of one million while that of five others was below even half a million. This was by no means an acceptable situation as it violates the equality of vote as given in the one-person, one-vote rule that sits at the heart of an electoral democracy.

The problem was mainly caused by another rule that made a district the biggest unit of a constituency: no constituency can cross the boundaries of a district. In other words, no district can share some part of a constituency with an adjoining district. The problem that arose from this rule was that districts rarely have populations that are an exact multiple of the average number of inhabitants per seat as determined by the election commission. Bannu’s share of National Assembly seats, for instance, was calculated to be 1.49 as per its population while that of Tank came to be 0.50. By following the rule that gives whole seat/seats to each district, the fractional shares of the two districts had to be rounded off to the nearest whole number in both cases even though their populations varied from the average population per seat by way more than 10 per cent.

Strictly abiding by the 10 per cent population variation rule would have resulted in multi-district constituencies which need to be avoided because there is evidence to show that the quality of governance suffers in a constituency if its administrative and electoral boundaries do not coincide.

In a few exceptional cases, though, even the whole seat/seats for a district rule had to be modified. The three districts of Torghar, Lower Kohistan and Kolai-Palas Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtuhkhwa have such tiny populations that they could not be given a whole seat each without violating the average population per seat rule by a huge margin. They, therefore, have been clubbed with their adjoining districts as far as delimitation is concerned.

The same is true for most of the 34 districts in Balochistan. Quetta is the only district in the province that has three seats of its own. Only five other districts have a population that is close to the stipulated average per seat. These five, thus, have been given one seat each. The rest of the districts have been grouped together in such a way that each group forms a National Assembly constituency.

What the election commission has ensured is that variations in constituency populations within each district do not exceed the 10 per cent limit. Lahore district’s 14 National Assembly constituencies are only five per cent smaller or larger than the average. Same is the case in other districts that have more than one seat.

The only outlier is Karachi. Its 21 seats do not seem to follow the average population rule. This is mainly because the city is divided administratively into six districts, requiring the election authorities to allocate whole, not fractional, seats to each of these districts regardless of population variations among them.

To sum it up, the two rules – 10 per cent variation in population and whole seat/seats for a district – in many, if not all, cases worked against each other. The only possible solution to address this paradoxical situation was to redraw the boundaries of both districts and electoral constituencies in a coordinated manner. That was definitely not possible in order for delimitation to be completed in time for the polls, especially as the authority to redraw district boundaries lies with the provincial governments and not with the election commission.

The problems with the new delimitation were not limited to inequality among constituencies and districts. The actual drawing of lines within each district had its own challenges. The election commission tried to solve it by employing a unique rule which required delimitation officials to start from the northernmost smallest unit – revenue circle in rural areas and census circle in urban areas – within a district and then take a clockwise direction in a zigzag manner to include as many smallest units as were required to make a constituency’s population equal to the set average.

This was certainly not the only rule that officials had to follow. They also had to consider geographical features such as rivers, mountains, communication links and other similar things to decide the boundaries of a constituency. It was not always easy to come up with constituencies that abided by all the laid down rules and procedures.

To address the problems arising out of this complicated process, the election commission made the proposed delimitations public and invited objections about them — as it was required to do by law. It received around 1,285 objections from across Pakistan. The hearings on objections were open for the public to attend.

Many objections were subsequently addressed, though, it is difficult to know how many. It is also difficult to find out what changes were eventually made and by which yardstick in cases where the objections were accepted.

Publicising documents related to the proceedings and the verdicts over objections would have offered an important peep into the adjudication process. These would have allowed observers and analysts to understand how the election commission had weighed different delimitation parameters to finalise the constituency boundaries.

This could not be done perhaps because of the limited time allotted for adjudication. As per legal provisions, all the objections received by the election authorities had to be addressed within 30 days. In contrast, preliminary proposals for the first delimitation under the 1973 Constitution were publicised in November 1975 and were finalised in January 1977. Other countries also allow a much longer time to make the process thorough and credible. In the United Kingdom, the Constituencies Act, 2011 has introduced two stages of inviting objections. It gives the public 12 weeks to raise objections during the first stage and four more weeks to do so at the second stage. That the British constituencies have an average population of 70,000 – a good 11 times lower than that in our National Assembly constituencies – makes the time available there even more sizeable.

But no matter how much time could be given and how much effort and energy the drafters would have invested, a redrawing of electoral boundaries would always create winners and losers. There was, thus, a lot of hue and cry in the National Assembly immediately after the publication of the preliminary proposals. To allay the apprehensions of the legislators, speaker Ayaz Sadiq formed a parliamentary committee to examine the proposed delimitations and make recommendations. The election commission, however, pointed out to the parliamentarians that a mechanism to raise objections and have them addressed already existed and that the parliamentary committee had no legal locus standi. The committee still went ahead with its proceedings and recommended that delimitation be abandoned and old constituencies be revived for the 2018 elections.

There were no takers for this proposal so it fizzled out quickly.

Daniyal Aziz, then working as a federal minister, was one of the most agitated and vocal opponents of the new delimitation that had reduced the number of seats in his home district of Narowal from three to two. In the 2013 elections, he was elected on a PMLN ticket from one of the three constituencies. The other two constituencies were also won by the same party. The reduction in seats meant that the PMLN could nominate only two of its associates for the National Assembly in the district for the 2018 elections — with Aziz fearing that the axe might fall on him.

His anxiety was shared by many others in his party. The reason being that Punjab’s loss of seven constituencies and redrawing of the boundaries of many other constituencies had pushed them into electoral no-man’s-land.

A look at the redrawn constituency boundaries shows that 11 districts in northern and central Punjab have lost one National Assembly seat each — seven to other provinces, one to the province’s own capital, Lahore, and three to southern Punjab districts. So, essentially, National Assembly constituencies in 15 districts of the province have been readjusted. Another five districts in northern and central Punjab have lost one provincial assembly seat each – though they have not lost any National Assembly seats – and another district in the same region has gained one provincial assembly seat. On the whole, 21 of Punjab’s 35 districts have been affected by ‘seat adjustment’ during the delimitation process.

Sindh’s share in the National Assembly seats has remained the same as before – at 61 – but the number of districts in the province has substantially increased since the last delimitation. In 2002, the province had 16 districts but since then it has created 13 new ones. So, the same number of seats that were once spread over only 16 districts had to be divided between 29 districts this time round — with each of them having whole seat/seats rather than fractions of them as was the case in 2008 and 2013. This has had a similar impact on Sindh’s electoral map as witnessed in Punjab.

Consider the example of Larkana district which was given four National Assembly seats in the previous delimitation. Qambar Shahdadkot district was carved out of it in 2004 and in such a manner that the boundaries of two of the four constituencies in both districts cut across them. Under the new delimitation process, each district has got two seats but their readjustment means that the boundaries of all four constituencies had to be redrawn.

The administrative boundaries of only five districts in Sindh – Khairpur, Ghotki, Tharparkar, Naushahro Feroze and Shaheed Benazirabad (old Nawabshah) – have remained unchanged since the last delimitation in 2002. But Naushahro Feroze and Shaheed Benazirabad have lost one provincial assembly seat each while Khairpur has gained one. So, in essence, only two of Sindh’s 29 districts – Ghotki and Tharparkar – have the same seat shares in the assemblies as they did under the previous delimitation.

Khyber Pakhtunkwa has largely been a ‘winner’ in the delimitation process. The province has created three new districts since the last delimitation (Torghar, Lower Kohistan and Kolai-Palas Kohistan) but none of them qualifies to have a National Assembly seat of its own. Similarly, 14 of the province’s 39 National Assembly constituencies are already stretched over a single district and thus required no redrawing.

More importantly, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has gained four National Assembly seats due to its high population growth rate — one each having gone to Peshawar, Swat and Lower Dir districts and the fourth one allocated to Tank which earlier shared its single seat with one of the two seats that Dera Ismail Khan had. The addition of these seats has created opportunities for new political players and, perhaps, it may also help some older ones to extend their electoral outreach even further. Either way, it is a positive development for the residents and the politicians of these districts.

In Balochistan, the provincial capital, Quetta, had only one whole seat earlier and shared another with its neighbouring districts but this time round it has qualified for three whole seats — garnering both additional seats the province has received from the national pool. The delimitation, thus, has redrawn almost the entire electoral landscape of the country — especially that of the more populous provinces of Sindh and Punjab. This change will certainly have an impact on electoral outcomes and it is this impact that has made many political actors nervous.

More intriguingly, the impact will be the strongest in the provinces where provincially leading parties – PMLN and PPP – are already under pressure from various quarters. The newly drawn constituency boundaries have given their detractors among the powerful military establishment yet another tool to browbeat them.

Correction: In a previous version of this story, we stated that General Zia wanted delimitation to happen on the basis of 15-year-old data. It is, in fact, 13-year-old data. We apologise for this error.

The writer works with Punjab Lok Sujag, a research and advocacy group focused on understanding governance and democracy.

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

In most developed democracies, an important component of a pre-election analysis is to look at changes in victory and defeat margins for major political parties. The underlying assumption in this type of analysis is that there is stability within political parties, a certain level of consistency in their respective constituencies and a high degree of certainty in the larger political system. It also assumes that many voters maintain a fairly stable set of electoral preferences across different election cycles while many others remain undecided till the very end of an election campaign.

These undecided voters are usually swung one way or the other by the economic or social policies (taxation, investment in certain social services, job creation, etc) that different contenders for power promise to follow. In constituencies where victory (or defeat) margins between two contenders are narrow, this swing proves decisive in determining the outcome of elections.

Democracies in developing countries are generally much less stable, with many unpredictable factors playing crucial roles in determining the outcome of their elections. This is mainly due to instability in party structures, volatility in voter turnouts and a general uncertainty in economic, political and social spheres. Consider how the issues that determined voters’ behaviour before and during the 2008 elections in Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, suicide bombings, intensification of public anger against Pervez Musharraf, etc) changed entirely before the 2013 elections.

The issues that had a major impact on the last general poll included the almost sudden rise of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Nawaz Sharif’s return to electoral politics after 16 years, serious security threats and a large-scale resentment, particularly in Punjab, against the government of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Asif Ali Zardari.

The sheer number of factors that may impact voters’ preferences and their willingness to come out to cast their votes for the 2018 elections renders the predictive power of a swing analysis uncertain. It is, therefore, important to look into some of these factors in order to carry out a meaningful analysis of victory or defeat margins and swing votes as a means to forecast the likely outcome of the upcoming elections.

First of these factors is demographic.

After the 2017 census, the Constitution required that electoral constituencies in all four provinces as well as in Islamabad and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) be revised to accommodate changes in the country’s population. Parliament, working under severe time constraints, decided to keep the total number of constituencies constant but allowed a revision in their numbers and boundaries both within and across regions and provinces.

As a result of the subsequent delimitation exercise, Pakistan’s entire electoral map changed. Karachi, for instance, gained one National Assembly seat but another district in Sindh, Kashmore, lost one; Islamabad, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa got one, two and four additional National Assembly seats respectively but Punjab’s seat count came down by seven.

Since the total number of constituencies has not increased, the number of people living in each of them has dramatically increased. The average population of a National Assembly constituency was roughly 316,000 in 2002 but it has increased to over 780,000 in 2018. This means that the money required by election candidates to reach out to their constituents will be much higher during this election than it was in the past. This increase alone has made it difficult for many less resourceful candidates and parties to be viable electoral competitors.

An even more important issue is how constituency boundaries have changed after their post-census delimitation. A rough estimate suggests that constituency areas have shifted by a minimum of 20 per cent and by a maximum of more than 50 per cent in a majority of the 272 National Assembly constituencies. Comparing constituency-level outcomes of the three elections that have taken place between 2002 and 2013 and projecting them onto the 2018 elections will, thus, be akin to comparing apples and oranges.

Alterations in constituency boundaries have also had an important effect on those contestants who have been running in the same constituencies for close to two decades now. The communities, biradaris (clans) and factions they have politically and financially invested in for long have ended up in other constituencies in many cases. As such, they now need to cultivate new groups and factions and that too on a much larger scale given the massive increase in the size of population per constituency. These changes further complicate forecasts about electoral fortunes of specific candidates or parties, especially when this has to be done with reference to what happened in previous elections.

The second factor is premised on a public perception of the prevailing political situation. Hawa – a colloquial term for the expected direction of political change – has always played a crucial role in election outcomes, particularly in Punjab and to a lesser degree in Sindh.

The cobbling together of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ) in 2002 on the debris of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) or Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and Nawaz Sharif’s return from exile in 2007 or PPP’s tattered image in 2013 — all signalled to ‘electables’ as well as to the electorate as to who will form the next government in the centre and the provinces. The subsequent voting patterns, thus, became self-fulfilling prophecies.

In 2018, signals have been sent out loud and clear that PMLN will not be allowed to form the federal government and possibly also the provincial government in Punjab. This is likely to turn the tide in many a constituency in Punjab — a change that is already quite apparent in northern and southern parts of the province where a large number of ‘electables’ previously associated with PMLN have jumped ship either to join PTI’s ‘Naya’ Pakistan bandwagon or to contest as independents, using ‘jeep’ as their electoral symbol.

Whatever victory margins PMLN commanded in these areas in the last election may swing a long way to its opponents along with the candidates who have left the party and joined the opposite camp.

Whether this headwind blowing against PMLN sweeps central Punjab as well is conditional upon how successfully Nawaz Sharif can mobilise popular opinion on the slogan of vote ko izzat do (honour the democratic verdict). It is this region that will decide whether the hawa has been successfully resisted or not.

Although the political situation has become even more fluid than it already was after Nawaz Sharif’s – and his daughter Maryam Nawaz’s – conviction in a corruption reference and his subsequent defiant posture, it is obvious that victory margins and vote swings in central Punjab will be significant factors in determining the outcome of the upcoming election. It is also highly likely that electoral outcomes in this region end up deciding who will form the next federal and Punjab governments.

The third factor is statistical though it is directly linked to politics.

Any analysis of victory margins and possible swing in votes is highly contingent on how many people turn out to cast their ballots on polling day. In 2013, aggregate turnout in Pakistan crossed the 50 per cent mark for the first time since 1970. It was actually 55 per cent, a good 10 per cent higher than it was in 2008. A significant change in turnout, say of 10-20 per cent, can substantially alter margins of victory or defeat as the case may be.

PPP’s voter is said to have not turned out to vote in Punjab in 1997 so the party lost all seats in the province in that election regardless of how large – or small – the winning margin of its candidates was in the previous election. In 1993, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) boycotted the National Assembly election – national and provincial elections were held on different days back then – so the turnout in Karachi declined by a good 20 per cent.

If voter turnout increases significantly, it can similarly disturb past electoral patterns. In the upcoming elections, too, the number of people getting out to vote will have an important impact not only on election results but also on government formation later. Turnout in central districts of Punjab, in particular, will have an important bearing on the fortunes of PMLN. If the party’s resistance to the trials and tribulations of its leaders finds resonance among the electorate and the turnout hovers around 60 per cent in this area – just as it did in 2013 – this will help PMLN in countering the impact of the hawa that is working in PTI’s favour.

A 10-15 per cent reduction in turnout in central Punjab, on the other hand, will signify that the hawa has prevailed and the PMLN voter has stayed home after seeing the writing on the wall. In that case, PTI may win seats it had lost even by a wide margin.

As compared to the 2013 elections, voter turnout may change significantly in 2018 in at least three regions.

It is expected to go down in Karachi, considering that there will be no stuffing of ballot boxes that MQM would indulge in during past elections. With its ability to capture polling booths gone and its unified leadership structure fizzled out, the party is struggling to mobilise its supporters. This may also cause many of its genuine voters not to turn up to vote. Both MQM’s margins of victory and the seats it has been winning will be affected negatively.

Another region where the turnout is expected to change significantly is Fata. People in the tribal areas are expected to cast their votes in significantly larger numbers than before because of a substantial improvement in law and order and the full participation of political parties in electioneering. A higher turnout, in turn, will change the pattern of election outcomes in Fata, helping a larger number of candidates contesting on party tickets to get elected.

Another factor that will increase voter turnout in the tribal areas is the legal requirement that election in any constituency will only be valid if at least 10 per cent women voters have cast their votes in it. Earlier, women participation in voting in Fata used to be minimal. Their participation even this time round, however, may not alter results on its own because women in these area usually vote the same way men from their families do.

The fourth factor concerns ‘electables’ who are all the rage these days — as is their likely impact on elections.

The term ‘electable’ essentially refers to those individuals who exert control or have influence over a large number of biradaris, communities and political factions within their constituencies. It goes without saying that they have sufficient financial resources to fund their election campaign and, perhaps more importantly, run an efficient network for patronage distribution locally. It is, thus, money and influence and not necessarily the “science of elections” as Imran Khan would have us believe that defines the phenomenon of ‘electables’. They tend to change party affiliations almost every election cycle after assessing whether a party will come to power or not.

The influence of ‘electables’ is the most salient in Punjab where their current crop belongs to two main categories. Many of them who have abandoned the perceptibly sinking ship of PMLN are fair-weather hunters. They had earlier abandoned PMLN in 2002 to join PMLQ but after 2008 they ditched PMLQ to re-enter PMLN. Now they are nesting in PTI. Many others are erstwhile PPP bigwigs who have joined PTI simply because their former party’s political brand has collapsed in Punjab.

Within Punjab, ‘electables’ have the highest presence in southern parts of the province where their electoral impact has the potential to obliterate PMLN, at least in the upcoming election. In central Punjab, ‘electables’ will have a significant impact mostly in rural areas. In this region’s urban areas, their impact will depend on the extent to which Nawaz Sharif’s call for resistance resonates among the electorate. In either case, we should expect wild swings in electoral outcomes.

Balochistan is another region where the phenomenon of ‘electables’ changing parties in the run-up to an election is quite pervasive. A large number of them – including former ministers in the last provincial and federal governments – have recently joined a newly formed political entity, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP). In Balochistan’s chaotic and fragmented political landscape, they are expected to dominate electoral outcomes at the expense of other mainstream and federal parties.

The last important factor is the competitiveness of political parties and candidates at the provincial level. Its level can be directly gauged from margins of victory and defeat in the National Assembly constituencies in a province: higher margins mean low competitiveness and lower margins signal high competitiveness. By this measure, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan turn out to be the most competitive provinces in the country on the basis of the 2013 election results.

Victory (or defeat) margin on more than 40 per cent of the National Assembly seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was 10 per cent or less. This means that ‘electables’ did not matter on these seats as much as they do elsewhere. The competitiveness level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is so high indeed that only a few National Assembly candidates in the province have been able to hold on to their seats for two consecutive elections since 2002.

Also, on most seats in the province, there were more than two parties – or candidates – that polled more than 10 per cent of the votes in 2013.

The vote share of different parties is also quite dispersed in the province rather than being concentrated in a single region. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF) polls votes in Mardan and Charsadda just as it does in Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu. Similarly, both Awami National Party and PPP have been receiving votes in many parts of the province — Peshawar district, Malakand division and Dera Ismail Khan. Same is the case with PTI. It polled sizeable number of votes in all the regions of the province in 2013 — even in areas where it candidates lost the election.

Elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may become even more competitive if, as is being expected, turnout increases as compared to what it was in 2013.

Higher competitiveness in Balochistan could be a result of severe curbs on free and fair participation in elections in the province since the 2006 insurgency. Voter turnout has been low for the last two elections and results have been often contrived to keep Baloch nationalist parties out of power.

The most surprising reduction in competitiveness has happened in Punjab after both victory margins and the rate of retention of seats rose dramatically in the province in 2013. This perhaps has to do with PMLN’s landslide victory in the last election and the concomitant collapse of PPP vote. One should expect competitiveness to increase this time round, particularly in northern and central Punjab.

In southern Punjab, electoral competitiveness could be lower in 2018 than it was in 2013, especially if PMLN’s support collapses in this region due to the party’s unwillingness to back local calls for a separate province and a comprehensive victory for ‘electables’ who have changed sides from PMLN to PTI. The only likely factor that can keep the competitiveness level high in southern Punjab is a revival of PPP’s historical vote share in the region.

In contrast to Punjab, Sindh became marginally more competitive between 2008 and 2013. The question is whether the province will become more, or less, competitive in 2018.

The recently cobbled together Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), comprising pro-establishment parties, powerful ‘electables’ and Sindhi nationalist groups, is expecting that electoral competitiveness continues to improve in Sindh. To ensure that, the alliance has entered into multiple seat adjustment deals with other parties and candidates — as is the case in Thar and Umerkot districts where GDA and PTI are cooperating with each other or in Ghotki and Badin districts where the candidates opposing PPP have the backing of almost all the major parties and alliances in the province. As the evidence suggests, a similar union in 2013, the Sindh Democratic Alliance, did manage to increase competition on some seats though victory margins on most others were big enough for PPP to sail through without much of a hiccup.

Given that Punjab-centric mainstream parties – PMLN and PTI – have not taken any interest in institutionalising themselves in this province, and hence giving an electoral blank cheque to PPP, not much is expected to change. Even if hidden hands wish to upset the political applecart, victory margins are generally so high in rural Sindh in PPP’s favour that any behind-the-scenes manoeuvring is unlikely to make a major difference.

Urban Sindh, however, is altogether a different country in 2018 when it is compared to 2013. With MQM having fragmented in at least two parts (MQM-Pakistan and Pak Sarzameen Party) and with continued internal differences hampering it from functioning smoothly, electoral space in Karachi and Hyderabad has opened up for the first time after 1988. Who will benefit the most from this window of opportunity is perhaps the biggest blind spot of the 2018 elections.

The problem has been compounded by some very peculiar constituency delimitations done in Karachi. Boundaries of the constituencies have been altered in such a way that some of them barely have geographical contiguity. Delimitation of certain other constituencies in the city looks like a painstaking exercise in creating ethnic homogeneity within them.

Regardless of such purported gerrymandering, keen and competitive elections in most, if not all, constituencies in urban Sindh are expected. Since Karachi and Hyderabad have around 40 per cent of the province’s National Assembly seats, an increase in competitiveness in these cities will also increase the aggregate level of competitiveness in the whole province.

For the purpose of this analysis, those constituencies have been considered to be competitive where the winner’s victory margin over the runner-up was 10 per cent (or less) of the total votes polled in 2013. To overcome the problems posed by recent delimitations, competitiveness data has been collated district-wise rather than constituency-wise. A district has been deemed competitive if more than 50 per cent constituencies in it have been won or lost by a margin of 10 per cent (or less). Here is how these numbers may help us explore trends for the 2018 elections:

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

In 2013, nine out of the 23 districts in this province were competitive. One of them, Charsadda, is home to the leadership of ANP and Qaumi Watan Party (QWP). It saw its traditional representatives losing ground to others in the last election: JUIF secured one local seat and came second on the other. This election will be a test for both ANP chief Asfandyar Wali and QWP head Aftab Sherpao. The question staring them in the face is whether they will be able to salvage themselves electorally in their home base in the face of stiff competition from MMA and PTI.

Mardan, similarly, was a stronghold of ANP and PPP but they were virtually drowned by a PTI tsunami in 2013. ANP’s Amir Haider Hoti, who was chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between 2008 and 2013, could win his seat by a margin of less than two per cent of polled votes. Two other seats in the district were won by PTI. Will the older parties make a comeback in Mardan? Signs are that all – except one – contests in the district are going to be between ANP and MMA rather than between ANP and other parties.

Hangu, the most electorally competitive district in the country, has never chosen the same candidate for two consecutive National Assembly elections. PTI is hoping that it can buck the trend in the district — as well as in the whole of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It won Hangu’s lone National Assembly seat in 2013 by a narrow margin and is not quite comfortably placed to win it in the upcoming election.

Battagram and Haripur – two of the eight districts in Hazara division – also figure high on the competitiveness index. They have been PMLN (or, generally, Muslim League) strongholds but PTI and JUIF won local constituencies in 2013 though by the thinnest of margins. The incumbents look set to win again. If they do, their achievement will prove that some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are not as keen on throwing out the incumbents as they have been in the past — something that PTI’s leaders have been claiming for quite some time now.

In the northern, mountainous regions of the province, Chitral, Buner, Shangla and Lower Dir are also competitive districts. In Buner and Lower Dir, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) won seats with very narrow margins. With JUIF vote added to that of JI under their collective MMA banner, these seats will be under close scrutiny. They will determine how much electoral life is still left in JI which, otherwise, is fading out across Pakistan.

Punjab

Since electoral and political dynamics are different in different geographical areas in Punjab, it is best to assess its competitiveness by dividing it into northern, central and southern regions. Three out of four northern Punjab districts were competitive and this is where a major political change in expected once again. Rawalpindi is the biggest district in this region and one where a number of political luminaries contest elections. In 2013, four of the seven constituencies here saw the star-studded cast of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Imran Khan and Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad all struggling to win their seats. In this election, PTI may carry the district thanks to the hawa and local ‘electables’ who have joined the party in droves. An aggressive Pakistan Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan eating into PMLN votes in almost all the constituencies in Rawalpindi will also end up benefitting PTI.

PMLN won the districts of Chakwal and Attock by very narrow margins in 2013 — as it did in Rawalpindi. These districts are expected to go to PTI this time round — and for the same reasons that exist in Rawalpindi.

Then there is an additional reason too.

A large part of the army recruitment is traditionally done from Chakwal and Attock. It is, therefore, unlikely that Nawaz Sharif’s politics of resistance against the army-dominated establishment will find much resonance here.

PMLN’s dominance in 16 districts of central Punjab, however, was so absolute in 2013 that only four of them – Jhang, Hafizabad, Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin – were competitive. If the party can maintain its electoral domination of the non-competitive districts, it may still be in a position to at least lay a legitimate claim to form its government in Punjab and have a shot at coming back into power at the federal level as well.

Conversely, the same region is critical for PTI. The results of 80-odd National Assembly seats in central Punjab will decide if the party will be able to form governments in Islamabad and Lahore and whether this will be achieved with or without help from other parties.

What works in PMLN’s favour is that its resistance narrative is resonating strongly in this region. What goes against the party is that many of its star candidates have already joined PTI in many places. And, as in northern Punjab, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan has the ability to get a few thousand votes in almost every constituency in central Punjab, hurting thereby the electoral prospects of PMLN.

Some other signs are also emerging in districts such as Jhang and Gujrat that suggest that PMLN is in trouble in some parts of central Punjab. Local ‘electables’ have either joined PTI or have opted to contest elections as independents in the former district; and PTI has made a seat adjustment deal with PMLQ in the latter. In both places, PMLN’s presence has been shrinking of late.

These developments suggest that the momentum is not on PMLN’s side even in central Punjab and may remain so unless Nawaz Sharif’s legal troubles and defiance mobilise his supporters in this region to a degree not observed before. The so-called hawa being contrived in PTI’s favour may, additionally, help the party win not just competitive seats but also secure many other previously non-competitive ones through ‘electables’.

One important reason to temper this assessment is that PTI may have overplayed the ‘electables’ card. Its award of election tickets to people of all political hues and colours to ensure victory has caused widespread and intense resentment among its own associates and supporters. Many who have failed to secure a PTI ticket are now either contesting elections as independents or they have decided to support the party’s opponents. In tight races in Punjab’s heartland, the votes secured by some of these spoilers will be the difference between PTI winning an outright majority and forming governments on its own in Islamabad and possibly Lahore and it having to depend on other parties and independents to get into power.

In southern Punjab, PMLN won big in 2013 though only after a keen contest with both PPP and PTI and that is why nine out of 13 districts in the region were competitive in the last election. While PMLN secured close to two thirds of the seats in these districts, a fair number of independents went past the post first because of a large presence of ‘electables’ in the region. Most of them were big land owners. Others were custodians of some famous shrines. Some were both.

Four factors suggest that PMLN will not be able to win most of the seats that it won in this region in the last election. Firstly, the defection of local ‘electables’ to PTI has been almost total. Secondly, some ‘electables’ who have not joined PTI are contesting as independents with ‘jeep’ as their election symbol. Seven of them, in fact, had returned their PMLN nominations to run independently only a day before the election authorities finalised the candidate lists, leaving the party high and dry since it could no longer field alternative candidates.

Thirdly, PMLN is not taking a clear position on creating a separate province in southern Punjab which may lose the party a sizeable chunk of Seraiki-speaking voters throughout the region. Lastly, even though PPP lost the 2013 elections in southern Punjab, as it did elsewhere in the province, its vote share in these 13 districts was higher than in other districts in the province. If the party increases its vote bank in the region that will also put a dent into PMLN’s vote share.

The combined effect of all these factors is likely to take away many seats from PMLN in southern Punjab, with PTI benefitting the most from this change.

Sindh

As observed earlier, Sindh has traditionally been the least competitive province. PPP and MQM have accounted for around 80 per cent of the vote share in the province in most elections and have usually won with large margins in their respective strongholds. Interestingly, all the competitive districts in the province in 2013 happen to fall in the rural parts of the province which suggests that various challengers confronting PPP have secured some solid ground for themselves in certain areas. This competitiveness will cost the party between three to seven National Assembly seats out of the 38 that lie outside Karachi and Hyderabad.

One of these seats is spread over the desert region of Khairpur district and the other is in the neighbouring district of Sanghar — both strongholds of Pir Pagara’s Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PMLF). A third seat in Naushahro Feroze district has been traditionally held by the family of former prime minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi.

PPP may also lose in Ghotki due to defection by the chieftains of the local Mahar tribe who have joined hands with GDA and other anti-PPP players. Similarly, in Badin district, former PPP leader Zulfiqar Mirza and his wife Dr Fehmida Mirza are challenging the party with help from all its traditional opponents. Apart from a family vote bank that the Mirzas have cultivated over the years, some ‘extraneous’ influences may also be working in their favour.

On at least three other seats, PPP is facing tough challenges. Two of them – one in Jacobabad and the other in Thar – were actually won by the party in 2013 by very narrow margins.

In Karachi, however, PPP may outperform itself compared to 2013. It won only one National Assembly seat from the city last election but for the upcoming elections it is in the lead in at least three out of 21 local seats.

As pointed out earlier, the level of competitiveness in Karachi is expected to increase significantly as compared to the past due to constituency delimitations and MQM’s troubles. This is best illustrated by the fact that heads of three major parties – PMLN, PTI, PPP – are contesting elections from the city. No one can recall if that has happened before.

The new delimitations have created a number of ethnically homogenous constituencies thus incentivising further what is already a norm in Karachi: voting along ethnic lines. This may benefit PPP, which tends to get Sindhi and Baloch votes in the city, in at least one constituency in district West. PTI and MMA could, similarly, be the beneficiaries of the consolidation of Pakhtun votes in the same district.

With its Bahadurabad and PIB factions having finally come together after a lot of bad blood, MQM is expected to win votes from Urdu-speaking communities – as it has always done – in Central, East and Korangi districts. Its share in seats, though, may decline significantly from 17 out of 20 in 2013 to somewhere between 10 and 12 out of 21 (since the city has got an additional seat in new delimitations).

Balochistan

The province is divided into three distinct regions with their own unique political dynamics. The northern parts are predominantly Pakhtun, with Quetta city being the only mixed population area. Then there is the old Kalat state area which is inhabited by the Baloch and is also the hub of Baloch nationalist politics. The third distinct region comprises areas bordering Sindh and Punjab – Lasbela, Jaffarabad and Nasirabad, Dera Bugti – which have been traditionally pro-Pakistan and relatively stable in political terms (except, of course, Dera Bugti which has experienced a lot of violence as well as military operations since the 2006 assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti).

Nine out of the 14 National Assembly seats in Balochistan were competitive in 2013 — five of them being in Baloch areas. Much has changed since then though.

The Senate elections last year unleashed a flurry of events that have culminated in the elimination of PMLN from the electoral scene of the province. Concomitant to this has been the emergence of a pro-establishment entity, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), which mainly comprises of former provincial heavyweights of PMLN and members of the pro-Islamabad political elite. Their coming together suggests that electoral outcomes in the Baloch-dominated National Assembly constituencies will be decided as much in polling booths as in back-room pacts and deals.

BAP is trying to make its electoral debut in areas traditionally dominated by Baloch nationalist parties — Akhtar Mengal’s Balochistan National Party (BNP)and Hasil Bizenjo’s National Party (NP). The latter is facing two major problems: criticism by voters over its failure to deliver on its development promises as well as its inability to address human rights abuses – such as the missing persons phenomenon – that arise out of separatist violence and military operations to counter that violence. NP is also considered close to PMLN, another reason why it may not do well in the polls.

As far as Akhtar Mengal and his BNP are concerned, it is not yet clear whether their relationship with the establishment is of cooperation or of hostility. He may get some electoral traction because of the multisided electoral deals he has made — with PPP in southeastern Balochistan, with MMA in central parts of the province and with BAP elsewhere.

The region comprising Lasbela, Nasirabad and Jaffarabad districts is the least electorally competitive area in the province. It is dominated by Pakistani nationalist politicians such as the Jams of Lasbela, Bhootanis, Jamalis and Khosos. Electoral competitions on seats in these districts are usually intra-tribe or inter-tribe affairs. In Jaffarabad, for instance, an interesting contest will take place between two Jamalis: a PTI candidate backed by former prime minister Zafarullah Jamali is pitched against Changez Jamali, a PPP leader whose father Taj Jamali was once chief minister of Balochistan.

In Pakhtun areas, the four seats that were competitive are mostly contested in each election by the representatives of JUIF and Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP). The two parties also dominated the 2013 electoral contests for those seats — as winners and runners-up on most of them. PKMAP, that has been firmly pro-Nawaz Sharif for more than a decade now, may be at a disadvantage for the upcoming election for the same reasons that are hurting PMLN nationally. The likely beneficiary of this will be MMA (of which JUIF is a major component). PTI, and to a lesser extent PPP, may also gain foothold in some of these constituencies.

The writer is a senior research associate at the Collective for Social Science Research.

Data coordination: Namrah Zafar Moti

Data compilation: Amal Hashim, Saad Sohail, Maisam Hyder Ali, Sarah Dara, Umair Javed and Kabeer Dawani

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

The by-election in Lahore last year was historic for many reasons. A former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, accused of corruption and money laundering, was making a renewed bid for power in his home constituency through his wife Kulsoom Nawaz. The leader of the main opposition party, Imran Khan, who had been pushing and pedalling an anti-corruption agenda at rallies and sit-ins for years, was finally expecting to win in Sharif’s home constituency — or at least give him a real electoral scare.

The National Assembly constituency, NA-120, where the by-poll was held in September last year, has been a stronghold of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) for more than two decades. Now mostly included in a new constituency, NA-125, it encompasses Anarkali, Mozang, Data Darbar, most of the neighbourhoods along The Mall and commercial and residential parts of Hall Road, Beadon Road and McLeod Road, alongside the old localities of Krishan Nagar and Sanda — essentially the heart of Lahore.

Many important government offices – including the provincial civil secretariat – are located here, as is the Lahore High Court. There is an old world feel to these areas even though dilapidated houses are giving way to shiny new buildings and plazas every day. In the end, the PMLN’s Kulsoom Nawaz won the election and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) came second.

Two other parties won far fewer votes but received as much attention as the winner and the runner-up: indeed, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and the Milli Muslim League had been formed merely 20 days before the by-election and yet their candidates came third and fourth, respectively — much ahead of the nominee of one of the oldest political organisations in the country, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Sohail Faraz, a shopkeeper in Sanda, remembers the election campaigns of both the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and the Milli Muslim League as an “immense effort”. Their door to door canvassing was far stronger than that of the PMLN and PTI, he says. They had many volunteers at the polling station where he cast his vote and were far more active in facilitating voters than other parties had been, he adds.

This high visibility suggests that the two parties had well-oiled electoral machines in the constituency — something they could not have managed to put in place in less than a month. And indeed, they did not.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is a successor to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah that has been organising public meetings and holding rallies for years in favour of Mumtaz Qadri, a police guard for Punjab governor Salman Taseer whom he assassinated in January 2011, purportedly over blasphemy.

The Milli Muslim League has emerged out of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a religious organisation founded and headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, also the founding head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned militant entity. Images of Saeed appeared on all the election propaganda material that the Milli Muslim League used in the by-election.

The two parties have also taken part in other by-elections held more recently and performed somewhat similarly to how they had in Lahore. An independent candidate supported by the Milli Muslim League secured 3,789 votes in a by-election held in Peshawar in October 2017. In a bypoll in Lodhran in February 2018, an independent candidate backed by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan polled 11,494 votes, securing third position.

It is a Friday morning and day five of a sit-in protest just outside Lahore’s Data Darbar. A small crowd is lazing around under a large tent. Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who heads the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, has just issued an ultimatum to the provincial government of Punjab that it release all the members of his party arrested across the province. He also wants the authorities to drop all 27 criminal cases registered against him and 480 of his associates over violence, disruption of law and order and damage to private and public property, among other offences. If these demands are not met, he warns, there will be more agitations all over Punjab.

The provincial government budges a week later, on April 14, 2018, after he threatens to block road traffic to and from Lahore. The authorities agree to release his arrested associates and rescind many of the cases against them. He responds by announcing an end to the sit-in at Data Darbar. Two days later, a court indefinitely defers the hearing of a terrorism case against him.

The venue of the sit-in is important. It is right opposite the shrine of Data Gunj Bukhsh Ali Hajveri, one of the most revered Muslim saints in Pakistan. The people visiting the shrine in thousands every day come from the Barelvi-Sunni sections of society — the community that the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is trying to attract into its fold.

The venue is also within a kilometre of a mosque where Rizvi started his career as a Friday preacher employed by the Punjab Auqaf Department. For more than two decades, he worked there as a little known neighbourhood mullah with no mass following.

That changed when he started mobilising support for the release of Mumtaz Qadri. Rizvi portrayed the assassin of Punjab’s governor as a devout Muslim, motivated by his love for the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him). He averred that Qadri should be treated as a national hero rather than a murderer on trial. He also led, along with other religious personalities, a massive public funeral in Rawalpindi for Qadri after he was hanged in February 2016.

At 52, and despite being bound to a wheelchair because of an accident, Rizvi exhibits a youthful energy and excitement when it comes to protecting the honour of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him). It was for this cause that he led protests at the Faizabad Interchange last year, blocking road traffic linking the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad for more than two weeks. The agitation was triggered by government-backed changes in election nomination forms. These changes were seen as a dilution of the political and legal constraints on Ahmadis who, under the law, are heretics because they do not regard the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him) as the final messenger of God. “All we want is to unveil the lobby behind the amendments,” says Sheikh Azhar Hussain, a 40-year-old businessman, who was the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan nominee for the Lahore bypoll.

The protest ended only after a series of clashes with law enforcement personnel and a traffic shutdown across central Punjab for a whole day.

Rizvi always occupies a central place in public events held by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. What makes him even more prominent is his trademark black turban and crude language. He delivers his invective-laden speeches predominantly in Punjabi to keep them accessible to an audience driven more by passion than logic.

The protest at Data Darbar is a follow-up of sorts to the sit-in at Faizabad. Rizvi and his associates are demanding, among other things, that the government publicise a report prepared by a parliamentary commission tasked with ascertaining who proposed and drafted the controversial changes in election nomination forms.

As the time for Friday prayer approaches, some people join the protest, though most of the pilgrims coming to the shrine ignore it. Beggars roam around as they would on any ordinary day, throwing flower garlands around your neck when you are not paying attention and then demanding money. Women zigzag through the protesters to make their way past the sit-in tent. Some have their heads covered, others not.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan did not allow women to take part in its public meeting at Minar-e-Pakistan earlier the same month. Now it seems considerably more relaxed about their presence, though the protesters are still refusing to allow them to sit inside the tent. The party has nominated a few women as its candidates for the 2018 polls because, as one of its male candidates says, it is mandatory under the election law. A poster can be seen of a woman nominee in NA-125 in Lahore with her silhouette, and not any part of her face, appearing on it.

Barring women from public spaces is not peculiar to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. Many religious parties have a similar attitude towards them.

The only major outlier is the Pakistan Awami Tehreek, a political party set up and headed by a Lahore-based religious scholar, Dr Tahirul Qadri. It has always had women participating in its public activities in large numbers. Its sit-in protests in 2013 and 2014 in Islamabad had hundreds of women participants, if not more. Yet there is a strong link between the Pakistan Awami Tehreek and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. Both draw their leadership and supporters from among the Barelvi population.

The conservatism of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan may have something to do with what an academic calls “competition in piety”. The party is trying to convey to its potential supporters that it is as puritanical (if not more) as other religious organisations in the country. There is a bit of history behind this competition.

Deobandis have been more prominent and organised in the political sense than Barelvis have been throughout the first four decades since the independence of Pakistan. Dr Tahir Kamran, a teacher in the history department of Lahore’s Government College University, has quantified their comparative institutional strength in a recent research paper. There were 1,840 registered Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan in 1988 while there were only 717 registered Barelvi madrasas in the country in the same year, he states.

Many graduates of these Deobandi madrasas got jobs under the military dictatorships of Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq in government-run mosques and madrasas as well as other public entities such as the Council of Islamic Ideology and national and provincial textbook boards. Even schools and colleges hired teachers of Arabic and Islamic studies from among the graduates of Deobandi madrasas. Some Deobandi groups came even closer to the state during the 1980s when security and intelligence agencies employed their cadres in jihadi activities in Afghanistan and later in Kashmir.

All these factors combined gave them a big edge in social, religious and political competition with Shias and Barelvis, leading to a sectarian scramble for social and political space. This scramble, in time, manifested itself in deadly sectarian violence that beset Punjab during the 1980s.

Barelvis felt left out throughout this period. Their oldest political organisation, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, set up in 1948, was unable to make its mark on national politics as vigorously as the Deobandi-dominated Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. It did win a few legislative seats in the general elections of 1970 and 1977, mostly from Karachi, Hyderabad and Mianwali, but it failed to develop support in other parts of the country. By 1990, the party started to factionalise. Its Punjab-based leaders – particularly Abdul Sattar Niazi – joined hands with the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, a mainly right-wing alliance led by Nawaz Sharif, while its Karachi-based founder, Shah Ahmed Noorani, continued to fight the election from his party’s own platform. The Punjab faction disappeared after Niazi’s death in 2001. The other faction, too, has fared poorly in recent elections even though it still exists nominally.

Some new Barelvi organisations emerged almost simultaneously with the demise of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan. The first was Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek. When it was launched in Lahore in the early 1990s, many public personalities including actors, sportsmen and former government officials joined it in droves, but it never took off electorally. The only time it reached Parliament was in the 2002 election, when Tahirul Qadri won its lone National Assembly seat. He resigned from Parliament in 2005, with the proclamation that he would not take part in electoral politics again.

Though Tahirul Qadri has a large-scale following in central Punjab and his party is quite well-organised – as was evident in its two prolonged sit-ins in Islamabad in 2013 and 2014 – he has failed to convert these strengths into political and electoral gains. Rather, he has discredited himself with his opportunistic support for the military establishment, his frequent and long disappearances from the country and his inconsistent stance on many social, religious and political questions.

The other Barelvi organisation that emerged in the 1990s was the Sunni Tehreek. Soon after its advent, it acquired a violent reputation and engaged in pitched battles with various Deobandi organisations, especially the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, for the control of mosques in Karachi and Hyderabad. At one point in the mid-2000s, it became so powerful that it started challenging the political hegemony of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in these two cities.

Its frequent clashes with other religious and political organisations soon started taking a toll and many of its frontline leaders, including its founder Saleem Qadri, were killed in targeted attacks. The biggest blow to the Sunni Tehreek came in 2006 when its entire leadership was assassinated in an explosion during one of its public meetings in Karachi’s Nishtar Park.

Barelvi politics received a shot in the arm in the 2000s when the military government of Pervez Musharraf and its foreign backers saw it as a possible substitute to the often violent Deobandi politicking. Many Deobandi organisations had joined hands with anti-state groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan besides having sent their militant cadres to fight international forces stationed in Afghanistan. A religious solution was urgently required within Pakistan to stem the tide of violent extremism.

The Musharraf administration and its Western allies, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, thought that a Barelvi Islam, centred on shrines and love for the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him), could offer a benign, moderate and non-violent counterpoint to Deobandi Islam. Foreign dignitaries visited Barelvi madrasas and provided funds for their expansion and modernisation of infrastructure, and attended graduation ceremonies and other religious events there.

In 2006, Musharraf also formed the National Council for the Promotion of Sufism. It did not have any clerics or religious leaders, but aimed to propagate the same Sufi beliefs and practices that most Barelvis swear by. Many small Barelvi organisations coalesced to form the Sunni Ittehad Council around the same time. It received 36,607 US dollars from the United States in 2009 to hold anti-Taliban rallies. The council was also instrumental in putting together a fatwa that declared that the suicide bombings and jihadi activities being carried out by non-state actors were un-Islamic.

This bonhomie did not last long. It was, in fact, doomed even before it began.

Various Barelvi organisations led violent protests across Pakistan in 2006 against the publication of caricatures in a Scandinavian newspaper. They found the caricatures offensive and blasphemous.

Salman Taseer’s murder in 2011 also brought Barelvi organisation to the forefront of mass agitations for the release of his assassin. One of the largest Barelvi groups at the time, Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan, released a statement signed by 500 Barelvi clerics. It asked people not to attend the funeral prayers for Taseer or feel any sympathy for him.

Protests over the release of an anti-Islam film in America were, similarly, led by Barelvi clerics. They erupted across Pakistan in September 2012 and immediately degenerated into mob violence.

The clarion call at these agitations, gustakh-e-rasul ki aik saza, sar tan sey juda (there is only one punishment for the blasphemer, beheading), was made popular by none other than Rizvi and his Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah. They first raised it to justify Taseer’s murder.

Ali Hajevri Data Gunj Bukhsh, the saint buried at Lahore’s Data Darbar, appeared in the dream of Abid Hussain, a young villager in central Punjab’s Narowal district. By the dreamer’s own account, the saint asked him to avenge the damage done to the finality of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him) through changes in the election nomination forms. Many other prominent saints, he later said, exhorted him in his dreams to do the same.

A resident of Verum village near Narowal city, Abid Hussain has been a frequent visitor to a Barelvi madrasa, Darul Uloom Ghausia Rizvia, located in a nearby village. A religious speaker associated with the madrasa, Shahid Rafiq Madni, was renowned in the area for delivering sermons on the finality of the prophethood.

In late 2017, Madni toured villages and asked people to join the Rizvi-led sit-in at Faizabad. Inspired by his sermons, Abid Hussain travelled all the way to Islamabad to participate in the protest. It was there that he decided to “send to hell” those who, in his opinion, had harmed the honour of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him) through changes in the election nomination forms. Ahsan Iqbal, interior minister at the time and a member of the National Assembly from Narowal district, became one of his targets.

On May 6 this year, Iqbal addressed a public meeting in Verum. As he was leaving after the address, Abid Hussain shot at him with a pistol from 15 yards away. Multiple bullets hit Iqbal but he survived the attack.

The assailant was arrested immediately. He acknowledged his association with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and admitted to being inspired by Madni’s speeches. He also told investigators that he maintained a personal journal about his plan to kill someone (anyone) responsible for the changes in nomination forms and had left that journal at Darul Uloom Ghausia Rizvia before shooting Iqbal. The police soon took Madni into custody as well.

The madrasa is located in a simple building. Its rooms are painted bright green and walls adorned with religious motifs. A lone poster in one of the rooms announces a public event by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan.

Qari Fayaz Muneer, a 20-something man who runs the place, confirms that Abid Hussain was inspired by Madni’s speeches but categorically denies the allegation that the madrasa or Madni helped him to plot and carry out the attack on Iqbal. “I have read his journal. There is no mention of a plot in it. He did not even name who he wanted to kill.”

Muneer, though, avoids condemning the attack as a criminal act and instead claims that Iqbal had been saying hurtful things about the leadership of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan while the sit-in at Faizabad was going on. He also believes changes in nomination forms have made Iqbal lose public support in Narowal that, according to Muneer, is predominantly Barelvi.

Perhaps banking on this last fact, Madni announced early this year that he would contest the 2018 election from a provincial assembly constituency where his madrasa is located. His arrest has upended his plan.

Another recent incident not very far from Verum similarly shows the reputation of instant public mobilisation and destruction that the leaders and activists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan have acquired.

According to eyewitness accounts, a mob gathered on the evening of May 23, 2018 in a Sialkot neighbourhood inhabited by a tiny Ahmadi community. A few municipal officials had arrived there a little earlier in order to demolish a building. A demolition video shows scores of excited young men vigorously wielding different tools as the slogans of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan are heard in the background.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadi faith, had once stayed in the building during his visit to Sialkot in the early 20th century. The place was originally owned by Hakeem Hissamuddin, a paternal cousin of Allama Iqbal’s teacher, Maulvi Mir Hassan. Over a year ago, the local Ahmadi Jamaat took it over from its owners and decided to turn it into a museum. “We wanted to conserve the structure, which was falling apart,” says Ijaz Ahmad, a member of the Ahmadi community in Sialkot.

The conservation project had to stop midway. A local citizen, who also happened to be a member of the Barelvi organisation Sunni Tehreek, moved police to take action against what he called illegal construction activity. On May 12, the police sealed the building, pending an official investigation into its legal status.

The sealing did not stop municipal authorities from approving its demolition. The mob and the officials, says Ijaz Ahmad, came right after night prayers and remained at work till early dawn. “They came back after morning prayers to resume the demolition.”

By the time the mob left, the building had been stripped of its windows and doors and its newly laid wooden staircase was smashed to bits — all this while the police seal on its entrance remained intact. Parts of a nearby building, an Ahmadi prayer hall, were also reduced to rubble.

Paglon Ki Basti, or a settlement of the crazy, sounds like an apt name for a volatile place. A Facebook group in Shahdara, a big town just north of Lahore, perhaps had this in mind about its own neighbourhood when it gave itself the moniker. The group had both Christian and Muslim members. They were mostly poor young men with nominal education.

On January 15 this year, Patras Masih, a 22-year-old Christian member of the group who worked as a janitor at a local bank, is reported to have shared online an image that showed the imprint of a foot on the Mausoleum of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him). Muslims in the group were infuriated.

Local activists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah soon started making online demands from the government to put Patras to death. This was followed by posters appearing in many Shahdara neighbourhoods, including Dhair village where Patras lived, calling for his immediate arrest, trial and conviction. Fearing violence, he and his family fled to an unknown place for safety.

Their escape did not lessen the anger provoked by the sharing of the image. Religious activists reminded local authorities on a daily basis that they were failing to do their duty. The public was also routinely mobilised to agitate on the issue.

When all this did not produce tangible results, members of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah put together a large procession on February 19 and marched through Dhair. They wanted the local administration to move urgently to arrest and punish Patras and warned of serious consequences if their demand was not met. The threat of a mob attack on Christian houses in Dhair loomed large.

The administration complied and registered a first information report (FIR) against Patras under sections 295-B and 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code — the latter section providing for the death penalty for blasphemy against the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him). The FIR was registered on the complaint of one Hafiz Muhammad Owais, who happened to be associated with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah.

The FIR, however, failed to quell the disquiet in the area.

Sensing imminent threats to their safety, some Christian elders decided to talk to religious activists for a negotiated settlement. The talks resulted in binding the Christian community to produce Patras before the authorities. In return, they got guarantees that they would not be subjected to harassment and mob violence.

The cyber wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) subsequently took Patras into custody for investigation. He reportedly named his cousin, Sajid Masih, 24, a janitor at a college in Shahdara, as the original sender of the offensive image. Sajid was also taken into custody on February 23.

What followed is narrated differently by different parties involved.

The FIA officials say Sajid jumped out of a fourth floor window at their office on Lahore’s Temple Road in order to avoid interrogation. Sajid told his family that he was forced to perform oral sex on his cousin and, to escape the shameful act, he dashed to the window and jumped out.

Sajid sustained severe injuries to his neck and other parts of his body and spent many weeks in hospital before he could get back on his feet. Hearings in the case against Patras have gone on in the meanwhile. There is little likelihood that he will escape punishment.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan was similarly instrumental in the registration of another blasphemy case in Faisalabad around the same time. And just like in Shahdara, there is more than one version of what transpired.

One version says the case was triggered by religious graffiti written by a small Christian community in Ilahi Abad neighbourhood on the wall of a shop in front of a church. “Every year the Christians write Merry Christmas or Happy Easter on our wall,” says Munawar Shehzad, the complainant in the case and the Muslim co-owner of the shop along with his brother.

Activists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan painted their own slogans over the graffiti on February 23. Shehzad also started playing religious hymns in praise of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him) in his shop. A few young Christians, infuriated and armed, barged into his shop, threw things and told him – in what he reports to be blasphemous words – to stop playing the hymns. They also fired at him and his brother.

An elderly Christian man living in Ilahi Abad offers an alternative account. He claims that the attack on the shop had nothing to do with religion. It was carried out by drug dealers, four of them Christians, and its origin lay in a dispute over kite flying between the attackers and the shop owners, he says.

A day after the attack, more than 2,000 members of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan held a public demonstration on Satiana Road that passes by Ilahi Abad and links some of Faisalabad’s main residential areas with nearby villages. They blocked traffic for hours to press their demand of registering a blasphemy and terrorism case against those involved in the attack. The local police registered the case the same day.

A banner hangs at the entrance to Ilahi Abad on a recent day in March. It reads: “Protection of minorities is their constitutional right and our duty but if anyone tries to blaspheme against the Holy Prophet, we will make an example out of them.” Four policemen lounge under the banner.

The two cases in Shahdara and Faisalabad bring into sharp relief the people involved. The alleged blasphemers were poor, young non-Muslims; the protesters were of the same demographic and economic origin but they were all Muslims.

The two incidents also took place in slums on urban fringes usually inhabited by unskilled labourers and lower middle-class professionals who have recently migrated from villages to big cities. The psychological, social and economic anxieties caused by their precarious urban living often lead them to take solace in something bigger than themselves and their immediate families. Religious groups are often the sole source of that solace in Pakistani cities. These are the people who form the backbone of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s public support.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a security analyst who also writes frequently about the link between religion and politics, believes the party’s supporters can be split into two groups. “One consists of illiterate types,” she says. The other, according to her, is an educated lower middle class. This second group consists of people who are “extremely unhappy about the fact that the older Barelvi leadership is not doing anything to push back against Deobandi and Ahle Hadis groups.”

Matthew J Nelson, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) whose work focuses on religion and politics in Pakistan, points to another factor. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, he says, has simply channelled a special love [among Barelvis] for the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him) in a way that rallies people around an anti-blasphemy (and often anti-Ahmadi) agenda. “Barelvi commentators like Amir Liaquat have also helped to whip up this dangerous pattern.”

But this, according to Nelson, is not something new. “Pakistan has been wrestling with this trend for many years.”

He calls the trend a “worrying spiral” that has its origin in what he terms a “competitive piety” race among the members of different religious and sectarian groups. Barelvis, according to his analysis, are just trying to prove that they are better placed to protect, preserve and promote religious values in society than Deobandis. “It may be just a matter of time before some other groups try to carve out their own ‘competitive’ space.”

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed comes from a Gujjar family in Sargodha. He is said to have travelled to Saudi Arabia to receive education in the 1980s. There he became influenced by Wahabi Islam, practiced and promoted by the Saudi kingdom officially. After his return to Pakistan, he started teaching Islamic studies at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore

In 1986, Saeed set up the Markaz Dawat-wal-Irshad in Muridke town, a few kilometres to the north of Lahore. His partners in the project were a university colleague, Zafar Iqbal, and Sheikh Yusuf Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Islamist ideologue who at the time was teaching at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. The Markaz, as its name suggests, was meant to call people to religion and provide moral guidance. By 1993, it was running several educational institutions.

The graduates of these institutions were recruited to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), also founded by Saeed, to help Afghans fighting the Soviet occupation of their homeland. When the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the LeT sent its fighters to Kashmir, reportedly with covert support from the Pakistan Army.

Saeed ran the LeT for over a decade. After the 9/11 terrorists attacks in the United States, Pakistan came under intense American and European pressure to ban religious and militant groups directly or indirectly associated with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and various militant groups operating in Afghanistan. The pressure increased after the LeT reportedly carried out a daring attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, bringing Pakistan and India to the verge of war.

Saeed was arrested and spent most of 2002 either in jail or under house arrest. He was released later that year on the orders of the Lahore High Court. The government also banned the Markaz Daawat-wal-Irshad and the LeT from functioning inside Pakistan. Saeed, however, managed to bypass these restrictions by renaming the Markaz Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and separating its organisation from that of the LeT that, he claimed, was to operate from then onwards only in and from Kashmir under its own command and control structure.

Saeed was placed under house arrest once again in 2006 for the same reason: his reported links to militancy in Kashmir and his role in instigating and facilitating acts of terrorism in India. The ostensible charges brought against him to justify his detention, however, included making speeches that incited violence, collecting donations for his various organisations and attending public activities without legal permission.

His 2006 arrest came after an improvement in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad in the wake of a South Asian summit in Islamabad in January 2004 and amid reports that the two sides were reaching some kind of agreement to resolve the long-standing Kashmir issue. Like in the past, however, the Lahore High Court declared his detention illegal and ordered his release in October that year.

Saeed was arrested for the third time in 2008 after a series of terrorist attacks in India’s financial capital of Mumbai killed more than 150 people. These attacks are alleged to have been carried out by Pakistani militants trained, dispatched and directed by the LeT. One of the attackers, Ajmal Kasab, was arrested and later hanged in an Indian jail after trial. A Pakistani court, too, has been hearing an antiterrorism case for close to a decade now against various LeT operatives, including its chief, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, for facilitating the Mumbai attacks. But so far no decision has been made.

This time around, too, the Lahore High Court ordered Saeed’s detention illegal, but the government, unwilling to release him due to international pressure, appealed against the decision at the Supreme Court. It lost the appeal.

His latest detention came in 2017 and met the same fate. After the Lahore High Court ordered his release in November last year, he came out of detention amid a shower of rose petals from his followers.

The Muridke Markaz consists of many buildings and open spaces inside a vast walled compound. It has recently put up a shiny new board at its entrance that reads: “Government of Sheikupura, Educational and Medical Complex.”

The complex is not open to visitors. On a recent day in June 2018, its entrance remains closed, manned by an armed guard wearing a faded green shalwar kameez with JuDP written on it.

The government has taken over the Markaz in order to avoid the international sanctions being threatened by the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog for money laundering. After a meeting earlier this year, the task force put Pakistan on a grey list, warning that it could be put on a black list if it did not take sufficient measures to curb money laundering and terror-financing. If put on the blacklist, Pakistan’s banks and financial institutions will face massive difficulties in handling foreign transactions including those involving foreign trade.

Faced with this dire situation, the government has taken a number of steps to stop the flow of money to the JuD and LeT — both of them listed as terrorist organisations by the United Nations.

The government has also stopped the charitable activities of the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation – closely associated with the JuD – and taken over many schools, healthcare facilities, rescue services and madrasas it ran in various parts of the country.

These restrictions led senior members of the JuD to launch the Milli Muslim League in August last year. The attempt was nipped in the bud. The Election Commission of Pakistan refused, in October 2017, to register the Milli Muslim League as a political party eligible to take part in elections. The application for registration was rejected on the ground that the federal interior ministry had not given the new organisation a mandatory security clearance.

The Milli Muslim League moved the Islamabad High Court to have the decision reversed. During one of the hearings in the case, the interior ministry presented a report that stated that the Milli Muslim League was closely associated with the LeT and JuD. The report also said the party “would breed violence and extremism in politics…”

This assessment could be based on the fact that some members of the Milli Muslim League have known links with terrorism. Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh, popularly known as Sheikh Yaqoob, who was the party’s candidate in the Lahore by-election, was designated a “global terrorist” by the United States treasury in August 2012.

Hearings in the case over the registration of the Milli Muslim League went on for a few months. In the end, the high court decided on March 8, 2018 that the grounds for refusing the registration were not sufficient. The Election Commission of Pakistan was, therefore, ordered to reconsider the application. Three months later, a renewed bid for registration was also turned down.

There is nothing that distinguishes the Milli Muslim League’s ideology from that of many new political parties. It has a message of change and it promises to rid people of corrupt politicians and corrupt parties. “We believe that the games political parties have been playing for the past 70 years cannot continue,” says Tabish Qayyum, spokesperson of the Milli Muslim League.

His party sees the answer to Pakistan’s political problems in returning to what he calls the country’s foundational ideology. “We will go back to the roots. The country was formed to protect the Muslims of South Asia and the minorities who live with them,” says Qayyum. This and the Kashmir issue, according to him, are the most important pillars of his party’s agenda.

He insists the Milli Muslim League has no affiliation with Saeed and various organisations linked to him: “Its founding leader is not Hafiz Saeed but Saifullah Khalid who is no longer associated with the JuD.” This, according to Qayyum, should have earned his party the registration.

But Khalid was once a part of the JuD. Qayyum acknowledges this but adds that Khalid was among a group of people within the JuD who always believed in democratic politics. “Political parties are not formed all of a sudden. This is something we have been discussing for a while,” he says.

There is a problem here: even if the Milli Muslim League is not part of the JuD in an institutional sense, it cannot make its electoral presence felt strictly on its own. Those who are likely to vote for it will be doing so because they are familiar with either the JuD or the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation or both — as Qayyum admits. The fact that Saeed’s image appears on campaign material used by candidates supported by the Milli Muslim League only makes this connection obvious.

The Saeed factor also strengthens the suspicion that the Milli Muslim League is nothing more than another attempt by the JuD – and by extension the LeT – to be able to operate legally within Pakistan.

Ayesha Siddiqa believes this to be the case: the Milli Muslim League is a bid to provide a legitimate cover to the JuD, she says. “The world is breathing down Pakistan’s neck and Pakistan has to do something, so it makes [the JUD members] political actors,” she adds. “The world is not buying into this.”

Sheikh Azhar Hussain is confident that the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan will win public support all over Pakistan in the coming general election. In a measured, deliberate tone, he says: “We do not think politics and religion are separate.”

His party was registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan in the wake of last year’s by-election in Lahore that he contested, and has now nominated around 150 candidates for the National Assembly all across the country. Some of them are entirely new entrants to politics. Many others were once associated with older Barelvi political organisations.

He also does not rule out electoral cooperation with other political entities. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, he says, will be open to collaboration with any political party that helps it achieve its objective of protecting the honour of the Prophet of Islam (may peace be upon him).

The Milli Muslim League, too, is adamant about staying in the electoral field even if it does not have legal permission to field its own candidates. It has pitched 80 candidates for the National Assembly and 185 for the provincial assemblies, including a son and son-in-law of Saeed, under the banner of the Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek. This little known party is headed by a doctor, Mian Ihsan Bari, who is based in the town of Haroonabad in south Punjab’s Bahawalnagar district. As is obvious from its name, the Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek has a religious agenda that includes putting an end to co-education.

The staying power the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and the Milli Muslim League are exhibiting makes many analysts suggest that they have been launched to play the role of a spoiler in the coming election. Siddiqa does not mince her words when she says that a major objective of their entry into electoral politics is to siphon away religious voters from the PMLN and hinder it from winning the 2018 elections. She also claims the two parties enjoy the patronage of the all-powerful security and intelligence agencies – collectively called the military establishment – in achieving this objective.

Matthew J Nelson of SOAS also says the votes the two parties have won in various by-elections may not be as important as the military establishment’s support for them. He agrees with Siddiqa that the establishment would like the Milli Muslim League and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan – as well as some other religious groups – to take votes away from the PMLN. “The by-election in Lahore indicated that this could actually happen,” he says.

The suggestion that the establishment could be behind the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan was reinforced during the protests at Faizabad, partly because Rizvi and his associates insisted that they would negotiate only with the military leadership to end their agitation. Video footage that emerged later showed a senior army officer, Director General Rangers Punjab Major General Azhar Naveed, distributing money among the protesters after they agreed to vacate the roads they had been blocking. “The nation wants to know why money was distributed among the protesters of the religious party,” Nawaz Sharif said later.

His statement can be seen as a backhanded acknowledgement of the political and electoral damage that his party may suffer at the hands of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan whose core supporters, Barelvis, constitute around half, if not more, of Pakistan’s overwhelmingly Sunni population. They have already shown their street power in recent years in multiple protests and rallies held across Pakistan and through various acts of violence on blasphemy-related issues.

That the PMLN may lose some support among its religious voters also seems plausible when viewed in the context of some recent political developments. A couple of dissenters who once belonged to the inner coterie of the party’s senior leadership – former Punjab ministers Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor Mayo and Zaeem Qadri – have both criticised the PMLN for ignoring popular sentiments on changes to the election nomination forms as well as on improvement in relations with India. The two issues, respectively, form the core of electoral messages by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and Milli Muslim League.

Data obtained from the Election Commission of Pakistan also confirms that there are pockets of religious voters that the two parties may attract. The votes that the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan obtained in the Lahore by-election, for instance, were mostly scattered across the entire constituency but were heavily condensed in a few neighbourhoods. The concentration was the strongest in Sanda, on the eastern edge of the constituency.

The fact that the Milli Muslim League also won a high number of votes in Sanda further substantiates the presence of religious voters in certain parts of perhaps every constituency in the country. The support for the two parties overlapped so much that they often got their higher vote tallies at the same polling stations.

This could be because Sanda’s transition from a pre-independence village to a purely urban neighbourhood has been neither smooth nor yet complete. The locality remains largely poor and conservative. Old ties of religion, sect, clan and caste are still more salient here than they are in some richer and more solidly urban parts of Lahore.

Yet a walk through Sanda does not reveal any major signs of support for the two parties. Even Sufi shrines and mosques in the area – where religious voters are more likely to be found than on the streets – do not have any public markers of political association with either the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan or the Milli Muslim League. Indeed, plaques and posters showing the names of local PMLN leaders can be found both outside and inside these places. Most prayer leaders and custodians of shrines also exhibit staunch support for the PMLN.

Muhammad Afzal, a diehard PMLN voter in the constituency, scoffs at the idea that the two parties may pose a serious electoral threat to his party in the coming election. The fact that they together polled only 12,952 votes in a constituency where the winner alone took around five times as many votes shows the lack of support for them, he says. Many other voters in Lahore are similarly dismissive about the electoral significance of the two parties.

Nelson also cautions that their ability to take away religious votes from the PMLN “is probably overstated” — especially that of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. The reason for overstating its electoral significance, according to him, lies in the failure of traditional Barelvi parties like the faction-ridden Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan and Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek. They have failed in elections so spectacularly that even the “ripples” being created by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan can be construed as a “wave of sorts”, he says.

In Nelson’s opinion, the significance of the two parties does not exactly lie in how many votes they may obtain but in the fact that they are trying to do something that has not been attempted by the larger and older religious parties in the past. “The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan wants to bolster its position as a legitimate political actor by mobilising Pakistani ‘religious’ opinion in a Barelvi doctrinal direction. The Milli Muslim League wants to bolster its position as a legitimate political actor by mobilising Pakistani ‘religious’ opinion in a very different – Salafi – doctrinal direction,” he argues.

This is different from what the older religious parties – the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – have tried to do: consolidate religious voters irrespective of doctrinal differences. This explains why they have often willingly formed broad alliances, such as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, with other religious parties, including the Shia and Barelvi ones.

Nelson, therefore, warns against looking at the two new parties in the same way that the older religious parties are looked at. “Many analysts will probably continue to ignore these doctrinal differences and clump all of these groups together as Islamists [working] with the military establishment’s support.”

Come polling day, that perspective may not be entirely helpful.

The writer is a staffer at the Herald.

Additional Reporting by Sher Ali Khan

This story was originally published in the July 2018 issue under the headline "A vote for the hereafter". To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

By Ghulam Dastageer | Danyal Adam Khan | Aurangzaib Khan | Danial Shah

If things are falling apart for the established political order in entire Pakistan, the centre does not hold in Malakand division either. And yet, the 2018 election brings a semblance of hope to a region recovering from years of devastating militancy and displacement.

Voters in the country’s first National Assembly constituency, NA-1 Chitral, have traditionally rallied around religious parties and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) for ideological reasons. Pervez Musharraf left a big impression locally by building the Lowari Pass – originally envisioned by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – giving the remote mountain district access to the rest of Pakistan.

With ideology out and money in, the crony-capitalist model of politics practiced by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), and the depending-on-influential-electables model being tested by a buoyant Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), have found cachet in a region where politics was once a philosophy.

Come polling day, two significant shifts in voters’ attitudes will decide where their votes go in Chitral. The first – a divide between Sunnis and Ismaili Shias – always existed as a social fault line but is manifesting itself politically only now. In the past, most Sunnis would vote for religious parties while most Ismailis would vote for PPP – and later for Musharraf’s nominees – regardless of the sectarian affiliation of candidates themselves. The two groups may now vote for candidates only from their own sects.

This surge in political sectarianism will deprive PMLN of Ismaili votes but will win it Sunni support because its candidates come mainly from Sunni-dominated lower Chitral. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of five religious parties including the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF), will have even wider support among the Sunni population. Its ranks in Chitral, however, are rent by divisions. These splits will strengthen PTI, which is expecting the sectarian, tribal and youth vote, alongside that of the disgruntled JI supporters.

Across the Lowari Pass, in Upper Dir district, the election brings hope that women will be enfranchised after decades of voting bans, enforced through mutual agreements between political parties, both religious and secular. New election rules require that at least 10 per cent of valid votes polled in a constituency must be cast by women. Female madrasa students of JI, a major political force locally, are mobilising women to vote. Other parties are asking for separate polling stations for women with women staff. Still, bringing out women to vote will be a challenge in the northeastern reaches of the district where tribalism is dominant and people are deeply conservative. As for the women themselves, says a Dir-based observer, they have little choice and even less political consciousness. “Some are happy with the Benazir Income Support Programme but cannot stand up to pressure from men in the family. Their vote will go to whoever the men vote for.”

JI has been a main political force in Lower Dir too, thanks to having placed its candidature in influential families – the Sahibzadas, for instance – to the extent that it is hard to say whether the party made them or they made the party. Its local prominence is matched only by that of PPP. The hold of the two parties has been so strong that they are rumoured to have entered pacts in the past to deny space to a third player in the district.

This changed in 2013 when JI sought PTI’s support for one of the two National Assembly seats in Lower Dir. The ‘third force’ has upset more than just the established political structure. In keeping with its brash image, PTI has hit the very factor – the influential family – that has kept older political groups entrenched. The traditional voting pattern steeped in rural Pakhtun values of loyalty to the family or elders has been eroded, in part by the young, who are more susceptible to social media trends than decisions taken in hujras or mosques.

The same family that supported only JI in the past is now split into four, with brothers and cousins contesting under competing banners. JI has also lost its star candidates to PTI. One disgruntled candidate even left to join the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) — not to win but to fragment his former party’s vote. Even as JI still leads, with PPP and PTI close behind, it does so as a much weaker, riven force — a trend also evident in the rest of Malakand, including Buner where JUIF has all but disappeared and JI is in total disarray.

The other political player in the area, PPP, too has to work hard to retain its support base in the neighbouring Malakand district. This much can be gauged from the fact that the party’s chief Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has chosen a National Assembly seat (NA-8) from Malakand as one of the three constituencies (apart from his native Larkana, and Lyari in Karachi) from which to launch his electoral career. He probably wants to minimise the damage that a group of dissidents, headed by a senior party leader, Lal Mohammad Khan, can do to PPP’s vote bank. He is also seeking to offset Imran Khan’s appeal too. “Imran cannot be young. He is 65. [But] Bilawal is,” says Humayun Khan, PPP’s president in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

But the politics of money and electables has bolstered PTI and PMLN respectively and has shrunken PPP in Malakand too.

Party politics die out almost completely in Kohistan and the focus shifts to tribal allegiances and individuals

Ameer Muqam, a PMLN stalwart and a native of Malakand division’s Shangla district, brings a ‘contractor’s approach’ to politics, responding to local demands for roads, electricity and gas. This has made him popular not just in Shangla but also in Swat, where he is contesting on NA-2.

PMLN has also fielded its chief Shehbaz Sharif in Swat’s NA-3, mostly banking on Muqam’s engagement with local voters. “Voters in Swat remember how Shehbaz Sharif, as the chief minister of Punjab, turned away people displaced from Malakand due to militancy in 2009,” says a political observer based in Mingora. “If they vote for him, it would only be on the condition that he does not vacate the seat later.” An embattled PMLN may find it difficult to make such a decision right away.

Perhaps the greatest hope that Swat offers is for the Awami National Party (ANP) — if not to win then to figure back into local politics. Its rank and file were decimated by militancy and insecurity in the district and beyond. Suffering from the trauma of a calculated slaughter of its leadership – as part of a peace committee that resisted the Taliban in Swat – an anxious ANP could not campaign freely due to threats during the 2013 election. It has been quietly reorganising since then to reclaim territory ceded to PTI. A group of workers unhappy with the way PTI’s affairs are handled by its top leadership have set up a nazaryati, ideological faction that may help a resurgent ANP in at least one National Assembly constituency in Swat.

All this party politics, though, has not supplanted traditional power brokers. Clan affiliations are strong and tribal chiefs exert influence over the voting of their communities. They will decide who wins.

Any observer of electoral dynamics in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will testify that Hazara division is a PMLN stronghold but the party is struggling to maintain its support base here.

The three lower districts of the region – Haripur, Abbottabad and Mansehra – are at the heart of PMLN’s electoral politics because it is here that five out of seven National Assembly seats in the division are located. The remaining two are spread over the Pakhtun-dominated districts of Battagram, Kohistan and Torghar. This geographical division manifests itself in electoral politics as well. Religious parties are dominant in Pakhtun areas. Other parties have generally done well in the lower districts where speakers of Hindko are in majority.

The regional politics has changed little over the last many election cycles even though PTI, with an agenda of change, has been a major challenger to PMLN here since 2013. Ethnic splits, religious associations, clan-based vote banks and, most importantly, the dominance of political heavyweights, remain major factors that will decide the outcome of the upcoming election.

For decades, the region’s politics revolved around Ayub Khan’s Tareen clan and former chief minister ‘George’ Sikandar Zaman’s Raja family. Omar Ayub, PTI’s candidate from NA-17 Haripur, is the son of former National Assembly speaker Gohar Ayub and the grandson of military dictator Ayub Khan. He served as a state minister in the Musharraf-led government between 2004 and 2007 but could not win in two previous general elections. In 2013, he was defeated as a PMLN candidate by a Raja family scion, Amir Zaman, who was a PTI nominee at the time. It is a testament to the personality-based politics of Hazara that the two families have now switched parties.

Omar Ayub’s main rival for this election is Babar Nawaz Khan. He is in his early thirties, represents a recently moneyed family, has a PMLN ticket and is backed by Zaman. Babar, much like his father Akhtar Nawaz Khan who was killed in 2008, is perceived to be an easily approachable candidate. This reputation is marred by widespread allegations that he and his family are involved in drug smuggling and human trafficking. In fact, he is facing court cases linked to these very allegations.

In NA-16 in Abbottabad city, PTI appears decisively ahead of its competitors. In 2013, Dr Azhar Khan Jadoon, a PTI candidate with no previous electoral success to his credit, won the seat by a wide margin. His opponent, Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan Abbasi, had not lost any election since 1985, having worked as a federal minister many times and also as chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Azhar Jadoon’s unremarkable record as a public representative has prompted his party to award the nomination to Ali Jadoon, the young son of a former federal minister, Amanullah Jadoon. The new candidate had made his political mark only a few months ago by winning as district nazim, a post he has now vacated to run in the general election.

Facing him from the PMLN camp after a last minute change is Malik Mohabbat Awan, who is known to have a close association with Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar. Awan was not his party’s original choice. The nomination was first given to Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan Abbasi’s son Sardar Sherhyar Khan. This changed when the party refused to give Abbasi senior a ticket for the neighbouring constituency, NA-15, as well. Incensed that the ticket went to a Safdar loyalist, Murtaza Javed Abbasi, both the father and the son decided not to contest the poll.

Ali Asghar Khan, the man PTI has chosen to run against Murtaza Javed Abbasi, is equally divisive. He enjoys a clean reputation bolstered by his late father Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan’s larger than life personality and his own professional status as a UK-trained architect. He has failed to win any election so far and his progressive but docile politics seems distant to local voters. A PTI dissident candidate, Sardar Mohammad Yaqoob, who had been elected as a member of the National Assembly from the same area in 2002, may further damage Ali Asghar’s prospects.

Probably the closest contests in the Hazara region will take place in Mansehra’s NA-13, where former religious affairs minister Sardar Muhammad Yousaf’s son, Shahjehan Yousaf, is pitched on a PMLN ticket against a powerful independent, Haji Saleh Mohammad Khan.

Shahjehan Yousaf is seemingly the guaranteed recipient of Gujjar votes – the second-largest tribe in Mansehra after the Swatis – because of being Gujjar himself, but his rival not only has the potential to consolidate all non-Gujjar votes but also has the backing of both PTI and a Safdar-led group within PMLN. The contest is delicately poised.

An erstwhile predictable contest in the nearby constituency, NA-14, has suddenly become highly interesting. The constituency is home to PMLN’s Safdar. He contested his first election from here in 2013 and won by a whopping margin. With a resourceful federal government on his side, he is said to have pumped in a good four billion rupees into the area. This, of course, is quickly countered by allegations that he made massive amounts of money through kickbacks and launched schemes of personal benefit. His imprisonment in a corruption reference involving his in-laws’ London properties has only intensified these allegations. Yet he would have easily won — but for his disqualification to contest the polls. His brother, Muhammad Sajjad Awan, has now replaced him as a PMLN-backed candidate.

Confronting Muhammad Sajjad Awan is PTI’s regional president Zar Gul Khan, who most recently won a provincial assembly seat in Kohistan district without a contest. Along with his brother, Zareen Gul, he had considerable say in who got a PTI nomination in Hazara and who did not, resulting in multiple conflicts between the party’s old workers and new entrants. Further up the mountains, Battagram district is famous as a JUIF stronghold that, except for a loss in 2008, has maintained a consistent winning streak for both federal and provincial legislatures. Its candidate, an unassuming Qari Muhammad Yousuf, is a close aide of the party’s chief Fazlur Reman.

His rival, Nawaz Khan, heads the one-time ruling family of Allai area – now a tehsil in Battagram district – and had won the seat in 2008 by a thin margin. He joined PTI after losing the 2013 elections as an independent and is hoping that a JI-associated candidate, Rasheed Ahmed, remains in the run so that MMA does not put up a united front against him.

Party politics die out almost completely in Kohistan and the focus shifts to tribal allegiances and individuals.The district has been divided recently into three parts – Upper Kohistan, Kolai-Palas and Lower Kohistan – but there is still only one seat for all three districts.

Before the 2013 elections, Kohistanis from the central district got together to form the Pattan Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz, an unofficial alliance of local tribes. The joint candidate of this alliance defeated Mehboob Ullah Jan, a former member of the National Assembly who also comes from Pattan.

This time round, the Mahaz has selected Dost Muhammad Shakir, though he does not enjoy support from all the tribes. Residents of Kolai-Palas are split between Shakir, Jan and PTI’s Malik Aurangzeb. Shakir is facing a tough fight from another candidate from Dasu in Upper Kohistan, Afreen Khan, who is a newcomer to politics but has MMA’s ticket. The fact that PMLN’s nominee, Haji Misar Khan, has withdrawn his candidacy in Afreen Khan’s favour, makes him a strong contender.

Habiba Falak, a young lawyer at Charsadda’s sessions court, subscribes to a Pakhtun nationalist ideology. She hopes ANP revives itself in the upcoming election but knows “the chances of that are very bleak”.

Charsadda district is home to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who is known as Bacha Khan, and who set up his red-shirted Khudai Khidmatgaar social welfare movement in the early 20th century. He was also one of the chief exponents of Pakhtun nationalism and, thus, the ideological father of ANP, which is led by his grandson Asfandyar Wali.

Over time, religious politics has made strong inroads into this erstwhile bastion of Pakhtun nationalism. JUIF’s Hassan Jan first defeated ANP’s then chief Abdul Wali Khan in the 1990 election. In more recent times, PTI has also been gaining popularity in the district.

The oldest challenge to ANP in Charsadda came from the Sherpao family that, initially from the PPP platform and now through its own Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), has been a strong contender for power in the district. The scions of the two families do not fight elections against each other any longer, but their rivalry still impacts poll results throughout the district.

Consider Charsadda’s first constituency, NA-23, formerly known as NA-8. Aftab Sherpao, as a QWP nominee, won here by a thin margin. His main rival, JUIF’s Musammir Shah, was only around 3,000 votes behind him. PTI, too, polled more than 30,000 votes against him. All these contenders are in the run again which makes ANP’s role crucial. Its candidate won approximately 16,000 votes in 2013 and can hurt any of the three main candidates by polling the same, or possibly a higher, number of votes.

Aftab Sherpao remains a strong candidate though. His son Sikandar Sherpao has succeeded in bringing four billion rupees of government money to the district for irrigation projects while he was irrigation minister in the last provincial government. But PTI seems to have an advantage here: more than 90,000 new votes have been added to the constituency and many of them are young voters who may prefer PTI over other parties.

In the second constituency, NA-24, Asfandyar Wali Khan bagged 38,264 votes and came third, trailing the winner, JUIF’s Muhammad Gohar Shah, by more than 15,000 votes. JI’s candidate was fourth: he secured 22,664 votes.

MMA, which now combines JUIF and JI, is a leading contender in this constituency. On the other hand, PTI is struggling because it did not launch any major development projects in Charsadda district. What may offset this is the addition of 87,296 new votes, mostly of the young, to the constituency.

In neighbouring Nowshera district, however, PTI seems in the lead. It has nominated former chief minister Pervez Khattak on NA-25 while his son-in-law Imran Khattak is its nominee for NA-26. This hogging of party nominations by a single family has caused some resentment among many PTI supporters but it may not have any electoral impact.

What may have an impact is that Pervez Khattak is facing a PPP rival, Khan Pervez, who has the potential to woo away many of Khattak’s voters living in 22 villages of Nizampur area. This may benefit ANP’s Malik Juma Khan, though he may still fail to beat Pervez Khattak.

In NA-26, ANP’s candidate, Jamal Khan Khattak, appears to be a strong challenger to Imran Khattak mainly because Pakhtun nationalism here is stronger than the Khattak tribal links. A district where PTI appears in even better shape than it does in Nowshera is Peshawar (which now has an additional National Assembly seat, taking its total to five). During the last election, PTI won all four seats from Peshawar district but has not awarded tickets to any of its previous winners.

All five of its candidates for the 2018 election belonged to other parties in 2013. The policy of fielding ‘electables’ to ensure election victories, indeed, has started from what can be called PTI’s alternate home to Mianwali and Lahore.

In NA-27, the PTI nominee is Noor Alam Khan, who contested the 2008 and 2013 elections on a PPP ticket. His former party has fielded Asma Alamgir who – though she is the daughter-in-law of former chief minister Arbab Jehangir Khan Khalil – has two disadvantages: she is contesting on a general seat for the first time and is running from the conservative Pakhtun-dominated suburbs of Peshawar where a woman’s ability to canvass voters remains limited. Another major candidate here is MMA’s Haji Ghulam Ali, who previously headed Peshawar’s local government but does not seem to be in a strong position.

In NA-28, PTI has fielded Arbab Amir Ayub who ended his family’s decade-long association with ANP in 2017 to fight a by-election on a PTI ticket, and won it by a margin of 20,000 votes. His family has strong influence in the constituency so his departure is a major setback for ANP, whose candidate, Shafi Akbar, does not seem to be doing well. The same is true for MMA’s candidate Sabir Hussain Awan who, at best, may retain around 28,000 of the votes that JUIF polled in this constituency in 2013.

Nasir Khan Musazai, who was defeated as a PMLN candidate by Arbab Amir Ayub in the 2017 bypoll, has also joined PTI and received the party’s nomination for NA-29. He will face a tough contest from PMLN’s Amir Muqam, who has proven himself a skillful public mobiliser. Arbab Kamal Ahmed of ANP is also a serious candidate in this constituency.

A tough contest between PPP’s Arbab Alamgir and Sher Ali Arbab (both close relatives) is expected in NA-30. The former’s father, Arbab Jahangir Khan Khalil, never lost an election in this constituency even though he changed parties on a regular basis. The latter enjoys nomination from PTI, which has developed a considerable vote back of its own in the last five years.

PTI chief Imran Khan won NA-31 (previously NA-1) with a huge margin of 65,000 votes in 2013, but his party could not retain the seat in a by-election and lost it to ANP’s Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour who is in the run this time too. On July 10, Haroon Bilour, a nephew of Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, was assassinated in a terrorist attack during a campaign event in this very constituency — as was his father, Bashir Bilour, six years ago in similar circumstances. This may hamper the Bilour family’s – and by extension, ANP’s – campaigning in Peshawar as well as other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Though a non-Pakhtun family, the Bilours have always enjoyed strong support among Pakhtun Mohmands living in various Peshawar neighbourhoods. PTI’s candidate, Shaukat Ali, who is a former PPP member, may succeed in breaking this association and garner a sizeable portion of votes from the Mohmands since he himself belongs to the same tribe.

PTI’s electoral success in Mardan division in 2013 was only marginally less remarkable than it was in Peshawar — that is, in terms of seats won.

The party won two out of the three seats in Mardan district. On the third seat, it was only marginally behind the winner, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, who had carried out development projects worth billions of rupees in Mardan as chief minister in 2008-13.

But these results become a little less impressive if deeply looked into. On the two seats that PTI won, its total votes were less than the combined votes of the candidates from JUIF and JI. In NA-20, PTI’s Ali Muhammad Khan secured 46,531 votes but the joint votes received by the two MMA component parties were 58,376. Similarly, PTI’s Mujahid Ali received 38,233 votes in NA-21 whereas the total votes the candidates of JI and JUIF received for the same seat were 42,159.

The fact that JI and JUIF have now joined hands and formed MMA may make it difficult for PTI to repeat its 2013 performance. An additional factor going against the party is that its local members of the National Assembly have alienated their supporters. Ali Muhammad Khan, for instance, was seen more often on television talk shows than in his own constituency. PTI has also launched no development projects in the area with which to woo voters.

Possibly to overcome some of these problems, the PTI leadership decided to replace Ali Muhammad Khan with former provincial minister Iftikhar Mohmand as its election nominee but changed the decision later. Mohmand could have attracted voters from his own Mohmand tribe that has a large presence in the constituency. PTI is now banking on possible support from the 263,642 new voters registered in Mardan between 2013 and 2018.

In Swabi district, too, PTI’s win was facilitated by divisions among its rivals. The party’s stalwart, Asad Qaisar, in fact, polled around 1,500 fewer votes than his two main opponents, JUIF’s Attaul Haq and PMLN’s Iftikhar Ahmed Khan.

Swabi’s second seat was secured by Usman Khan of the Tarakai family that is famous for its highly profitable tobacco business. The family formed its own party, Awami Jamhoori Ittehad, in the run-up to the 2013 elections and romped to victory on one National Assembly seat and two provincial assembly ones. The party has since merged with PTI, with one member of the family having now became a PTI senator.

The combined votes polled by PTI’s own candidates in 2013 and those supported by the Tarakai family exceeded the combined votes of other major candidates in almost all local constituencies. This gives a strong boost to PTI’s electoral fortunes in the district.

PTI’s ‘wave’ in the last general election helped it win all three National Assembly seats in Kohat division. For the 2018 elections, the going has gotten a little tough.

When Shehryar Afridi won the sole National Assembly seat in Kohat district with 68,129 votes on a PTI ticket in 2013, his vote tally was more than double of his nearest rival’s, but he is not comfortably placed for the upcoming election. Like in most parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa other than Peshawar and Nowshera, PTI has not initiated any noticeable development schemes in Kohat. Additionally, Shehryar Afridi did not maintain contact with his electorate during his stint as a member of the National Assembly. His party was initially reluctant to give him an election ticket for that very reason. What may still go in his favour is that 96,924 more votes have been added to the district recently. A large number of them are young people who may favour PTI over other parties.

Shehryar Afridi’s main rival, JUIF’s Gohar Muhammad Khan Bangash, locally known as Gohar Saifullah, was a distant runner-up in the last election. He is now running on a ticket from MMA that includes a Shia party, Tehreek-e-Jafaria Pakistan. This may help him get Shia votes in his constituency through a Shia associate running for a provincial assembly seat in the same area.

Abbas Afridi, a PMLN candidate, is also being considered a strong candidate because of what is locally known as ‘transformer politics’ — providing electricity connections and carrying out other development work.

Karak, the second district in Kohat division, is known for being a stronghold of religious parties, particularly JUIF, but its only seat was won by a PTI candidate, Nasir Khattak, in the last election. PTI is still popular among the youth. Many of the 89,492 new voters the district has added may also vote for it.

The main challenger to PTI’s new candidate Shahid Ahmad Khattak is Mir Zakim Khan, an MMA nominee, but his prospects have been impacted negatively because many senior JUIF officials have announced that they will not support him.

Another notable candidate in the district is PMLN’s Rehmat Salam Khattak.

In Hangu district, it is PTI that is riven by divisions. Some of its activists are not happy over provincial assembly nominations and their dismay has the potential to hurt the party’s National Assembly candidate, Khial Zaman Orakzai, as well. He, in any case, is being criticised for residing in Dubai most of the time and only occasionally visiting his constituency. PTI is also facing criticism over its poor performance in terms of developing the district.

What adds to Khial Zaman Orakzai’s woes is that his victory margin was thin. His opponent, Mian Hussain Jalali of JUIF, was only 2,930 votes behind him. Most of the votes polled by Jalali will now go to Atiqur Rahman, MMA’s candidate for the upcoming election, who additionally enjoys good ties with the local Shia community that has 15-20 per cent of the total votes in the district.

Bannu division has been a JUIF stronghold for the last decade. The party stemmed a PTI tide here by winning both National Assembly seats in 2013.

For the upcoming election, Imran Khan himself has opted to contest from the seat won in the last polls by JUIF’s Akram Khan Durrani (who is now an MMA candidate). The PTI chief’s personal charisma has the potential to take over Durrani’s stronghold in the district though it will require a lot of doing. In his tenure as chief minister in 2002-07, Durrani had invested huge amounts of government money in the district.

Wrangling between JI and JUIF, however, does not augur well for him. A number of senior JI members have decided to support Imran Khan against him.

PTI is also being supported by Nasim Ali Shah, a JUIF dissident, who bagged over 45,000 votes against Durrani’s 78,294 votes in the last election — PTI’s own candidate secured 25,392 votes. In order to cement its ties with Nasim Ali Shah, PTI’s provincial government allocated hundreds of millions of rupees earlier this year for his madrasa, Al-Markaz Islami.

The addition of 134,872 new votes to the district gives PTI another advantage (though many of the young, first-time voters in Bannu could be students of madrasas run by JUIF).

MMA and PTI are also vying for Lakki Marwat’s lone National Assembly seat. It was won easily by JUIF chief Fazlur Rahman in the 2013 elections but his brother, Attaur Rahman, could not retain it in a by-election and lost to PTI’s Amirullah.

In the upcoming election, MMA has pitched a strong candidate, Muhammad Anwar, while PTI has made an alliance with the famous Saifullah family of Lakki Marwat that has had multiple members in various legislative houses for decades, representing different parties at different times. PTI reportedly gave the family a free hand to choose election nominees in the district. This resulted in the party’s National Assembly ticket going to Ishfaq Ahmed Khan who joined PTI in April this year and got only 39 votes in 2013.

This has upset Akhtar Munir, a brother of the late parliamentarian Anwar Kamal Khan Marwat. Having secured more than 22,000 votes in 2013 as a PMLN nominee on a provincial assembly seat, he was expecting a PTI nomination for the National Assembly. His unhappiness may go in MMA’s favour.

A commuter in his mid-twenties gestures towards newly built roads as he rides a motorcycle-rickshaw on the main highway that links Dera Ismail Khan with Bannu. He says Ali Amin Gandapur, a confidant of Imran Khan and a former provincial minister, has changed Dera Ismail Khan for the better. He also credits Gandapur for setting up the city’s first public park where “no hooligans are allowed” and where women and children have exclusive entry rights a few hours each day.

Gandapur is now a candidate for NA-38, one of the two National Assembly seats in Dera Ismail Khan. He is counting on development schemes – a new emergency ward at the district hospital, sewerage lines in some neighbourhoods, roads and solar-powered street lights in others – as well as the popularity of his party, PTI, especially among young voters.

His opponent is a political heavyweight, Fazlur Rehman, who has deep-rooted political and religious influence in Dera Ismail Khan, and beyond. His family has been politically active in the district since the days of his illustrious father Mufti Mehmood back in the 1960s. Fazlur Rehman has also capitalised on the anxieties of the district’s Pakhtun population vis-à-vis its relatively larger Seraiki population. He opposes the merger of Dera Ismail Khan with a proposed Seraiki province if and when that materialises. To his advantage, none of his opponents have the ability to consolidate the Seraiki vote, a big chunk of which in recent times has gone to PTI.

Faisal Karim Kundi, another serious contender in the constituency, has been trying to win over Seraiki voters but success has eluded him. Otherwise, he has sizeable support thanks to the political legacy of his father Fazal Karim Kundi who won the local National Assembly seat as a PPP candidate in 1990.

The other major political fault line in the district is the difference between urban and rural voters. The former vote on the basis of party-ideology-performance and the latter on the basis of tribe, clan and other social and religious considerations. How the two main candidates utilise this difference will largely determine their victory or loss.

Fazlur Rehman is also a candidate in Dera Ismail Khan’s second constituency. In this mainly rural Pakhtun-dominated area, he is depending on the conservative and religious ethos of his constituents for support. One of his main rivals is Sardar Umar Farooq who has developed a strong electoral machine in the constituency, mainly working through kinships, tribal affiliations and patronage distribution networks.

The second district of the division, Tank, has always followed Dera Ismail Khan’s politics, mostly because the two districts shared a National Assembly constituency until recently. It is for the first time that Tank has got its own constituency, though its politics it still tied to its larger neighbour.

One of the main contenders here is Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s son Asad Mahmood. His father secured this seat, along with two others, in 2013, but then a PTI candidate, Dawar Khan Kundi, won it in a by-election.

Asad Mahmood’s main challenger is Habibullah Khan Kundi, a PTI nominee who was earlier in PMLN, but Dawar Khan Kundi is also in the run as an independent. This will divide the votes of the Kundi tribe that resides in both Tank and Dera Ismail Khan, and will also split the anti-JUIF vote.

There is, essentially, nothing new about these electoral battles. What is new is how some voters are behaving towards candidates. In one neighbourhood in Tank city, people have asked for two million rupees for 1,200 votes. They say they need the money to get gas connections. In another part of the city, people are asking for 15 million rupees in exchange for around 800 votes. They want to use the money to build a five-kilometre road.

Another major election issue here is the scarcity of irrigation water. Many candidates are promising that they will address the problem by building small dams. Whom the voters trust will be known only after polling day.

Danyal Adam Khan and Ghulam Dastageer are staffers at the Herald. Aurangzaib Khan is a Peshawar-based freelance writer. Danial Shah is a travel photographer and writer.

Islamabad

By Umer Farooq | Danyal Adam Khan | Sher Ali Khan | Danial Shah | Fareedullah Chaudhry | Rizwan safdar

Islamabad has finally attracted the electoral attention it deserves. Three national level politicians, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and Imran Khan and Asad Umar of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are contesting for two of the three constituencies in the federal capital.

This also sets the tone for electoral battles throughout northern and central Punjab where the two parties are vying for supremacy. The battle is fierce for its outcome will determine who makes a government in Islamabad and also in Lahore.

Voters in Islamabad’s NA-53 will partake in this clash on the side of either a former prime minister or a prospective one. An urban-rural mix, the constituency includes Imran Khan’s house on a hill in Bani Gala. For Abbasi, it is an unchartered territory since he lives in, and contests elections from, nearby Murree. The odds do not seem to favour him.

In NA-52, PMLN’s Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry is a local resident and appears to be a strong contender. He has been winning from more or less the same parts of the capital since 2008. His PTI opponent, Raja Khurram Nawaz, who heads his party’s Islamabad chapter, has his work cut out for him — to overcome PTI’s deficit of around 36,000 votes in 2013.

Afzal Khokar, a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate, is also a serious contender here. His brother Nawaz Khokhar has won in the 1990s from this area more than once and his family wields a strong influence in the constituency.

The last constituency in Islamabad includes many urban neighbourhoods that existed only in planning papers when the last constituency boundaries were drawn in 2002. These are mostly low-income areas where urban sprawl is haphazard and civic facilities bad.

Asad Umar, a corporate boss-turned-politician, won a by-election from these very neighbourhoods in 2013 (when these were a part of the capital’s oldest constituency to the east). His main challenger, PMLN’s Anjum Aqeel Khan, won as a member of the National Assembly in 2008, also from the federal capital. The third main contender, Mian Muhammad Aslam of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), too, was elected to the National Assembly from Islamabad back in 2002. He may not make much of a difference to an apparently two-horse race, with PTI seemingly ahead of PMLN.

Punjab

By Umer Farooq | Danyal Adam Khan | Sher Ali Khan | Danial Shah | Fareedullah Chaudhry | Rizwan safdar

Rawalpindi’s electoral politics is dominated by two former PMLN stalwarts, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. Both have enjoyed the confidence of the party’s top leader Nawaz Sharif to varying degrees in the past.

They are now running on two National Assembly seats each, the former with PTI’s support and the latter in opposition to it.

In one of the two constituencies he is contesting from, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is also up against a PMLN candidate, Raja Qamrul Islam, who is in the custody of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) over allegations of corruption. His campaign is being run mainly by his teenage children which may help him get some ‘sympathy’ votes though winning the constituency will take much more than that.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has won eight consecutive elections from more or less the same areas since 1985. This time round, though, he is campaigning with a couple of handicaps: firstly, he does not have the support of a party machine that not just ran his campaigns in the past but also provided human resources to man polling stations on polling day; secondly, he will not get the votes of diehard PMLN supporters who number at least a few thousand in both constituencies he is running from.

These factors give his old rival Chaudhry Ghulam Sarwar an edge in both constituencies. Whether he will win is not certain but what is certain is that PMLN will lose — thanks to the challenge from within by Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and the offensive launched from the outside by PTI.

PMLN, similarly, is disorganised in the two constituencies being contested by Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad. One of his opponents, Daniyal Chaudhry, is the son of Chaudhry Tanveer Ahmed Khan — a PMLN senator and real estate magnate in Rawalpindi who is considered close to Nawaz Sharif. This link could be a bane. Nawaz Sharif’s imprisonment in Rawalpindi may require Chaudhry Tanveer Ahmed Khan to be at the beck and call off his jailed leader. This may distract him from campaigning.

Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad’s second opponent is Hanif Abbasi who, by virtue of his proximity with former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif, was given a say over large state funds to spend in his constituency even when he held no elected office. He is trying to canvass voters, touting development schemes launched by him — a tactic not quite countering the combined strength of personality, party and biradari that characterise Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad’s campaign.

The lone seat where PMLN seems ahead of its opponents in Rawalpindi district is being contested by Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in his home constituency. He – and his father Khaqan Abbasi before him – have been running from this area since 1985, having lost just once in 2002.

The nearby constituency, comprising Gujar Khan tehsil, is the only Rawalpindi seat where PPP has a strong candidate, former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. He has the potential to upstage his PMLN and PTI opponents.

Three districts adjacent to Rawalpindi – Jhelum, Chakwal and Attock – were PMLN’s strongholds in the last election. For the upcoming elections, the party is in trouble there just like it is in Rawalpindi.

The main reason for the change is PMLN’s campaign rhetoric of victimisation at the hands of the army-dominated establishment. The more the party intensifies its anti-establishment slogans the less popular it gets in these districts because they have been main army recruiting grounds since the early 20th century. A large part of their population consists of working and retired army officials and their families.

“People in the region are extremely loyal to the army. They turn against anyone who speaks against the army,” says reporter Razi Khan who works at a conservative daily in Attock. In Jhelum, like in many other places, some senior PMLN members are not supporting its candidates. One of its serial winners, Raja M Afzal, has lost his electoral mojo and the other, Nawabzada Iqbal Mehdi, has recently passed away. Many notable local ‘electables’, who once flocked together in PMLN, have now flown to PTI.

For the district’s two National Assembly seats, PTI has given its ticket to two members of the same family. Fawad Chaudhry, the party’s spokesperson, is running in one constituency and his cousin Farrukh Altaf, whose father Chaudhry Altaf Hussain served as Punjab’s governor in the 1990s, in the other. The two appear stronger than their PMLN rivals — barring a last minute surge in public support for a jailed Nawaz Sharif.

In Attock, PTI has given its tickets for the district’s two National Assembly seats to the same man: Major (retd) Tahir Sadiq Khan. He is closely related to Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Chaudhry Pervez Elahi – the Gujrat-based leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ) – and has headed Attock’s local government in the 2000s. His reputation of a ‘doer’, combined with his skill in handling group-based and biradari-driven electoral dynamics, makes him a very strong contender.

One of Sadiq’s challengers is a known PMLN leader, Sheikh Aftab Ahmed. He has worked as a federal minister more than once but seems to be struggling against his powerful rival. Same is the case with Malik Sohail Karamyial, PMLN’s candidate in the other constituency in Attock. In Chakwal, PMLN has won many elections by challenging local land owners called sardars (chiefs). Its candidates generally come from an educated, salaried class that appeals to government employees and their families, mostly consisting of serving and retired soldiers. PMLN has lost support from many of these voters in recent months. A tough fight is still expected between sardars and anti-sardar candidates, says a local journalist.

A main leader of a sardar group, Sardar Ghulam Abbas, is a habitual turncoat who put together a strong influence-wielding network after he was elected to head the district government in the 2000s. He joined PTI in 2011 but quit in 2012 to join PMLN. A few months ago, he rejoined PTI but, after his own National Assembly nomination has been rejected by courts, he is not supporting PTI’s candidates in the district.

PTI seems clearly ahead of PMLN in one of the remaining constituencies of the district, thanks to eminently ‘electable’ Rana Nazir Khan.

Sardar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Dullah, who has replaced Sardar Ghulam Abbas as a PTI candidate, was originally a PMLN candidate for a provincial assembly seat. He joined PTI just before party nominations were finalised. As local rumour has it, he has been pushed by a ‘hidden’ hand into PTI.

The other National Assembly seat in Chakwal will see a keen contest between former chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Muhammad Faiz Malik, who won as a PMLN candidate in 2008 but has been hopping parties since 2002. The former is not a native of the district but has fought and lost an election here in 2013, by a thin margin, to the latter who is a member of an influential local clan. Chaudhry Pervez Elahi now enjoys PTI’s support as well as the backing of PMLN’s 2013 winner Sardar Mumtaz Tammam, who is also the uncle of Muhammad Faiz Malik; add to that his own vote bank, he has an edge over his rival.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is highly visible across this region. Its candidate secured more than 16,000 votes in a recent by-election in Chakwal, showing its ability to cause some serious electoral damage to PMLN.

The battle between PMLN’s anti-establishment mobilisation and the supposed groundswell for PTI’s slogan of change will be won or lost either way in Gujranwala division. In one corner in this fight is PMLN’s politics premised on trader-financed, biradari-led voter networks that are run through patronage distribution and are held together with development schemes. In the other is PTI whose ‘insurgent’ ideology is defined by a youthful demand for expansion in the political pie to include emerging middle-class professional groups (though, of course, it is already quite tampered by the large-scale arrival of those who have mastered PMLN-style politics over decades).

Throughout the division, the two competing brands are doing whatever it takes to outsmart the other. PTI, in many places, seems ahead of PMLN which, nevertheless, is fighting back strongly in many other places. Both sides have their weaknesses: PMLN is ridden by factions and PTI is facing widespread resentment from its old guard over the entry of ‘electables’.

While PMLN’s core supporters in Gujranwala city have been excited by Nawaz Sharif’s defiance in the face of his conviction and imprisonment, the party’s local leaders – Barrister Usman Ibrahim and Khurram Dastagir Khan – were quibbling till very recently. Their tussle ended only after the man they were fighting over joined PTI.

Both Khurram Dastagir Khan and Barrister Usman Ibrahim could be facing their toughest election after 2002 when PMLN lost all the seats in the district.

In NA-81, Mehr Siddique is looking more formidable than he ever was as a PPP nominee in previous elections. Flush with money and buoyed by the rise of his new party, PTI, he is facing Khurram Dastagir Khan who could be hurt by the revival of an old Kashmiri versus araeen biradari fault line in his constituency. He will have to convince his non-Kashmiri voters that he is not the representative of a single community. It does not appear as easy as it sounds: Mehr Siddique is bent upon strengthening the cleavage while he himself is banking upon a Kashmiri candidate for the provincial assembly to deliver Kashmiri votes to him.

In the city’s second constituency, there is a similar split between Ansaris and Mughals. PMLN’s Barrister Usman Ibrahim belongs to the former and his PTI rival, Ali Ashraf, the scion of a known industrialist family, comes from the latter. PMLN’s candidate is helped by the fact that a Punjab Assembly candidate for his party in the same area is a Mughal.

The deciding factor here will be the level of mobilisation among core supporters of the two parties. If PMLN workers come out in massive numbers on polling day in a show of defiance against the establishment, Barrister Usman Ibrahim will sail to victory. On the other hand, a PTI youth charge on the day of election can easily knock him down.

PTI seems clearly ahead of PMLN in one of the remaining constituencies of the district, thanks to eminently ‘electable’ Rana Nazir Khan. His son Umar Nazir Khan is in the run against a PMLN candidate who was defeated in 2013 on a PPP ticket by 60,000 or so votes.

On another seat, PTI has fielded Chaudhry Bilal Ijaz who secured 70,000 votes in 2013 as an independent. He is running against PMLN’s Azhar Qayyum Nahra. The contest is delicately balanced and will be decided in the rural hinterland of Nowshera Virkan tehsil where caste and clan connections count much more than anything else.

In a city-meets-village constituency, the fight is between Tariq Mehmood, who recently left PMLN and joined PTI, and Mehmood Bashir Virk who was federal law minister in Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s cabinet. Here, the battle between the traditional and the new is fierce and will be won or lost based on whether Tariq Mehmood’s urban voters turn out to vote in greater numbers or Mehmood Bashir Virk’s rural ones do.

The last constituency in the district is witnessing yet another round of a traditional electoral rivalry between the Cheemas and the Chathas of Wazirabad tehsil. Muhammad Ahmed Chatha, whose father Hamid Nasir Chatha was a nationally known politician in the 1990s, is running against Dr Nisar Ahmed Cheema, a former bureaucrat whose brother Justice (retd) Iftikhar Ahmed Cheema has represented the same constituency in the two previous elections. Their third brother, Zulfiqar Cheema, has worked on prized police posts in Punjab under former chief minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Parties here matter as a complementary, not a primary, factor — which is why the same set of candidates have been moving from one party to another almost every election cycle.

In Gujrat district, PMLN’s 2013 dominance is gradually declining. A seat adjustment deal between PTI and PMLQ in two National Assembly constituencies has weakened PMLN’s prospects on both. It, indeed, has struggled to pitch a serious candidate against Chaudhry Pervez Elahi in one of these constituencies. His own cousin Chaudhry Mubashir Hussain finally agreed to be a PMLN candidate though he was initially reluctant to even contest the polls.

In the second constituency, NA-68, Hussain Elahi, a nephew of former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, is running on a PMLQ ticket against former PPP leader Nawabzada Ghazanfar Ali Gul who is now a PMLN nominee. The election will be yet another round in the perennially ongoing contest for supremacy between the district’s two most eminent clans, Nawabzadas and Chaudhrys. The latter may have an edge, courtesy support from PTI.

In NA-70, it is not PMLN’s Jaffar Iqbal but PPP’s Qamar Zaman Kaira everyone is talking about. The two come from the Gujjar clan which has dominated this constituency for three decades. There however, can be only one Gujjar winner and last time it was Jaffar Iqbal. Will it be Qamar Zaman Kaira’s turn is one of the most asked questions within the constituency.

Their PTI rival, Syed Faizul Hassan Shah, has to defeat both. His task will be made easy if the two Gujjars take a high number of votes from their own clan but fail to muster much support from the rest of their constituents.

The fourth seat of the district will see a re-run of the 2013 contest between Abid Raza and Al-Haaj Muhammad Ilyas Chinioti. The former has often managed to get a majority of his constituency’s conservative Sunni votes but this time round some of these votes could be taken away from him by Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan which has been campaigning aggressively throughout Punjab against PMLN’s candidates.

In Mandi Bahauddin city (and its adjoining rural areas), PMLN does not have a prominent candidate. Its local representative in the last National Assembly, Mumtaz Ahmad Tarar, refused to take part in the polls citing ill health.

PTI’s candidate in this constituency is Haji Imtiaz Ahmed Chaudhry whose brother Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed won as an independent from this constituency in 2013 but was later disqualified from being a member of Parliament.

The contest on Mandi Bahauddin district’s second seat is important for more than one reason. A former PPP federal minister Nazar Muhammad Gondal is contesting here as a PTI nominee. He was once among politicians cited by Imran Khan as Pakistan’s most corrupt. His brother is allegedly implicated in a multibillion scam at the Employees Old Age Benefit Institution. Will this demoralise PTI’s core anti-corruption supporters in the constituency?

Secondly, the constituency has been a traditional battleground between two dominant clans: Gondals and Bosals. They have often taken turns at coming into power. Will this trend continue in the 2018 elections as well?

Lastly, PPP’s candidate here – as well as its nominee in the other constituency in the district – faces a serious test. Can they retain their core party support, regardless of victory or defeat, in an area that PPP has won multiple times since 1993?

Another party – Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan – faces a test on Hafizabad district’s lone seat. It has its best chance of winning a legislative seat here (at least for the provincial assembly).

Liaqat Abbas Bhatti, a state minister in 2012-13, is running on a Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan ticket against his nephew Shaukat Bhatti who is a PTI nominee. Their PMLN rival is former federal health minister Saira Afzal Tarar whose father Afzal Hussain is the head of the district council. Shaukat Bhatti’s father Mehdi Hassan Bhatti remained undefeatable in 1993, 2002 and 2008.

The constituency’s result will also show whether Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan worked with laser precision to hit its intended target (PMLN) or, like many things in electoral politics, it followed the law of unintended consequences and ended up hurting its supposed beneficiary (PTI).

Another district where Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is campaigning vigorously against PMLN is Sialkot. Former federal law minister Zahid Hamid’s son, Ali Zahid, who is running as a PMLN nominee in Pasrur area, is being particularly targeted due to his father’s alleged role in making supposedly pro-Ahmadi changes in election nomination forms back in 2017.

This may help Ali Zahid’s main rival, former student leader and long-time PPP associate Ghulam Abbas, break an electoral jinx he has been experiencing for the last three decades. He will additionally have to overcome differences within the local members of his new party, PTI.

PMLN still has a visible edge over PTI on at least two seats in Sialkot — one where Armaghan Subhani is running against Firdaus Ashiq Awan and the other on which former foreign minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif is pitted against Usman Dar. The contest is fierce but not entirely a cliffhanger.

A combination of development schemes and sway over biradari votes seem to be working well against Firdaus Ashiq Awan who quit PPP last year to join PTI. In the second constituency, Khawaja Muhammad Asif is buoyed by a recent Supreme Court verdict that has overturned his lifelong disqualification by a high court judge from being a member of Parliament. The level of an establishmentarian mobilisation among PMLN’s local cadre is also higher than the excitement for PTI’s agenda for change is in Usman Dar’s camp.

In Narowal district, former federal interior minister Ahsan Iqbal is a favourite on one seat – unless Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s canvassing against him gathers enough momentum to deprive him of thousands of Sunni-Barelvi votes. Otherwise, his PTI rival, singer Abrarul Haq, will find it hard to win here.

In the second Narowal constituency, PMLN’s nominee, Mehnaz Akbar, has to work really hard to put her own house in order before she can pose a serious challenge to her PTI rival Mian Rasheed (who was in PMLN in 2013). Her disqualified husband, former federal minister Daniyal Aziz, will be running her campaign.

Sargodha division has been dominated by ‘electables’ of different types. Parties here matter as a complementary, not a primary, factor — which is why the same set of candidates have been moving from one party to another almost every election cycle.

In the most recent round, PTI has managed to attract several well-known ‘electables’: former PPP leader Nadeem Afzal Chan, relatives of former PPP senator Ehsanul Haq Paracha, former legislator Ghias Ahmad Mela (whose family has changed many parties over the last three decades) and the family of former PMLQ stalwart Chaudhry Anwar Ali Cheema (who won seven elections in a row). This roster is further strengthened by the presence of Pir Qasim Sialvi, one of the custodians of the district’s most respected Sufi shrine in Sial Sharif town, and Nadia Aziz, a young educated politician who has been in both PPPP and PMLN previously.

Anyone will struggle against this ‘dream team’.

But these ‘electables’ have created many splits within PTI. In NA-88, to cite just one example, Nadeem Afzal Chan is facing the resentment of Haroon Paracha who has been in PTI for quite a few years now. He is contesting as an independent now.

Similarly, in NA-90, consisting of Sargodha city, Nadia Aziz’s nomination has angered PTI’s former ticket holder Abdullah Mumtaz who, too, has announced to contest independently. In NA-91, too, a senior PTI member, Nazir Sobhi, is not supporting his party’s nominee, Anwar Ali Cheema’s son Amir Sultan Cheema.

NA-92, perhaps, has seen the most curious PTI nomination in Sargodha. The party originally gave its ticket to a former senior official of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Zafar Qureshi. His brother, Mazhar Qureshi, has won the same constituency twice in the past. The ticket, however, was withdrawn later and given to Pir Qasim Sialvi who had not even applied for it. An angry Zafar Qureshi parted his ways with PTI.

PTI looks set to sail through in spite of these differences. Its chances, indeed, have been bolstered with Sialvis inclusion. His family is believed to have influence over thousands of voters across Sargodha district as well as in many parts of nearby Faisalabad division. PMLN, on the other hand, is struggling because of its internal problems. In NA-88, it has given its ticket to its former member of Punjab Assembly, Dr Mukhtar Ahmad, denying it to its 2013 winner Aminul Hasnat Shah. The latter comes from an eminent religious family of Bhera and is a follower of the Pir of Sial Sharif. A disgruntled Hasnat is not campaigning for his party’s nominees.

For NA-90, PMLN initially nominated Dr Liaqat Ali Khan, a former local government representative, but later changed the decision. The ticket finally went to Hamid Hameed who has faced many problems in launching his campaign mainly because his cousin and main financer, Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal, has joined PTI.

In NA-92, too, a former PMLN member of the National Assembly, Shafqat Baloch, has been denied nomination so he is campaigning against the party’s nominee Syed Javed Hasnain Shah.

PPP’s most prominent candidate in Sargodha is former state minister Tasneem Qurehsi. Having lost ground in much of Punjab after 2008, the party is trying to stop, or at least slow down, its decline in many parts of the province. The number of votes he gets will determine whether these efforts are succeeding in Sargodha.

In Khushab, like in Sargodha, PMLN is split within and challenged without. The party is spilt in three major groups here — the Sangha group headed by district council chairman Ameer Haider Sangha, the Sumaira Malik group and the parliamentarians group. These are campaigning against each other and may, thus, hand the advantage over to PTI.

In NA-93, the PMLN nominee is Sumaira Malik who was a state minister in Musharraf’s regime. She is pitted against PTI’s Malik Umar Aslam Awan. Her other challenger, Malik Mazhar Awan, is the paternal uncle of Shakir Bashir Awan who heads the parliamentarians group and himself is a PMLN nominee in NA-94. The Sangha group is also backing Malik Mazhar Awan. This will seriously dent Sumaira Malik’s support base.

Though Malik Shakir Bashir Awan is not facing any internal challenges in NA-94, he is running against a powerful PTI nominee, Malik Ehsanullah Tiwana. The two have strong sway over local biradaris and are being backed by influential groups and individuals. A nail-biting contest is expected between them.

In Mianwali, the contest appears to be rather one-sided. PTI is visibly ahead of its competitors in both the National Assembly constituencies here. This is rather unprecedented for an area that has mostly, if not entirely, voted along tribal lines since the mid-1990s. Rokhris, Niazis and Shadikhels have dominated local elections for long.

Imran Khan has been working to turn Mianwali – his father’s home district – into a PTI bastion since 2002. His party won both the National Assembly seats in Mianwali in 2013 with a wide margin (though it could not retain in a by-election the one later vacated by Imran Khan himself). This time round, PTI’s flag is flying even higher here. The party’s supporters are happy to vote for anyone nominated by Imran Khan. They are excited by the possibility that the next prime minister could be from Mianwali.

PMLN, on the other hand, has lost its image in the district. Its National Assembly candidates, Obaidullah Khan and Humair Hayat Khan Rokhri, come from families that have won many elections in the past but their prospects have been dimmed since the hanging of Punjab governor’s assassin Mumtaz Qadri in 2016 during their party’s tenure in power.

The issue of blasphemy has been salient in Mianwali as far back in the past as 1920 when the district saw big protests in the favour of Ilm-uddin who had killed a Hindu publisher of an anti-Islam book in Lahore. One of the earliest initiators of anti-Ahmadi agitation in Pakistan, Abdul Sattar Khan Niazi, also belonged to Mianwali. He remained prominent in local politics till his death in 2001.

This explains how – by celebrating Qadri as a ‘martyr’ of the blasphemy issue – Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is gaining popularity in Mianwali. One of its National Assembly candidates, Malik Sajjad Bhachar, appears more prominent in some areas than his PMLN rival even though the chances of his victory are slim.

While party politics is seeing a sort of revival in Mianwali under the aegis of PTI, the same party is strengthening politics in Bhakkar that follows the familiar lines of personality, clan and tribe. On one of the two local National Assembly constituencies, PTI has given its ticket to Dr Afzal Khan Dhandla, a highly influential land owner who was in PMLN very recently.

He is looking strong though he is facing a tough competition from two independents Naeemullah Khan Shahani and Saeed Akbar Khan Nawani. Abdul Majeed Khan Khanan Khail, running for the other seat in the district, is the only local ‘electable’ running on a PMLN ticket. Others have stayed away from the party, sensing it may not return to power.

Religion, sect, Sufi shrines and their hereditary custodians, or pirs, play important electoral roles in Faisalabad division as do big land owners, biradari elders, transporters and industrialists. In between these, parties, too, have found some footing.

In district Chiniot, for instance, a combination of party affiliations, pirs, personal influence and religious/sectarian identities is operative across the electoral landscape.

In NA-99, one of the two National Assembly seats in the district, Ghulam Muhammad Lali, an influential land owner with a near total support of his Lali biradari, is running on a PTI ticket. He successfully contested the last election as a PMLN nominee.

His main challenger is Syed Asad Hayat, a PPP nominee, whose elder brother, former federal minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, lost this seat by a margin of around 13,000 votes in 2013. Their close relative, Syed Abid Hussain Imam, also polled 17,220 votes. If Syed Asad Hayat manages to combine these two vote tallies, he will be ahead of Lali — though electoral math does not always work so smoothly.

PMLN’s candidate in this constituency is Rehan Qaiser. He is the son of a businessman, Qaisar Ahmed Sheikh, who has been running in the adjacent constituency, NA-100, since 1993.

Qaisar Ahmed Sheikh finally won in 2013 on a PMLN ticket but is facing serious challenges in retaining the seat. A major setback to him has been the refusal by Ilyas Chinioti, a former PMLN member of Punjab Assembly, to run on the party’s ticket. Like his father Maulana Manzoor Ahmad Chinioti, he is a local leader of the movement against Ahmadis whose religious headquarters is based in the nearby town of Rabwah.

Ilyas Chinioti did not want to associate himself with PMLN because of the allegations that the party made changes in election nomination forms to secretly facilitate Ahmadis’ participation in the election process without having to reveal their faith.

The other problem for Qaisar Ahmad Sheikh is that, just like him, a Japan-based businessman, Sheikh Qaisar Mahmood, is contesting the election as an independent, banking on his ability to outspend his rivals.

The other notable candidates in the constituency are PTI’s Zulfiqar Ali Shah and PPP’s Syed Inayat Ali Shah. The former was PPP’s candidate in 2013 (when he came second after Qaisar Ahmed Sheikh); the latter came a distant third as a PTI candidate back then. Before that, between 2008 and 2013, Syed Inayat Ali Shah was a PPP member of the National Assembly. Zulfiqar Ali Shah was Chiniot’s tehsil nazim between 2001 and 2009 and has been the initiator of many development schemes. He also enjoys strong support among the local Shia population (which traditionally votes for PPP).

If a PTI surge uproots PMLN from NA-107 AND NA-108 too that will mean that Nawaz Sharif’s monopoly over central Punjab’s politics is well and truly over — at least for the 2018 elections.

Electoral politics changes only slightly in Faisalabad district, with parties playing a relatively bigger role than other factors.

Voters and ‘electables’ in the district are also good at following the direction of the political wind: in 2002, six of Faisalabad’s 11 seats were won by the nominees of PMLQ that subsequently formed the government; in 2008, six seats were won by those associated with PPP which later came into power; in 2013, the district was swept by PMLN that ruled the country for the next five years.

Following their political instincts, local ‘electables’ have now joined PTI in droves. It remains to be seen whether voters will also support the same party.

In NA-101, PTI’s candidate is Zafar Zulqarnain Sahi whose uncle Afzal Sahi was Punjab Assembly’s speaker in 2002-07. The Sahi family enjoys a positive public image (notwithstanding frequent changes in its party affiliations) due to its ability to bring government money into the area for development projects and provide jobs in the public sector.

PMLN has not awarded its ticket to anyone here but an independent candidate, Chaudhry Muhammad Asim Nazir, enjoys its support. He has previously won three times as a member of the National Assembly and happens to be the younger brother of district council Faisalabad’s chairman Chaudhry Zahid Nazir. He also has strong biradari links with local Arain elders who possess sizeable vote banks.

PPP’s nominee, Tariq Bajwa, has also won the same constituency in the past and has the potential to give a strong fight to other contenders.

PTI has awarded its ticket in NA-102 to Nawab Sher Waseer who was previously in PPP. He is pitted against former state minister for interior Talal Badar Chaudhry who seems to be facing trouble in convincing his constituents to vote for him again. People complain he was seen more on television screens than among his voters during his tenure in power. It was mainly for this reason that his own uncle Akram Chaudhry decided to run against him but senior members of their biradari have effected a truce between the two. Now, Akram Chaudhry is a covering candidate for Talal Chaudhry who is facing a contempt of court case at the Supreme Court. If he is disqualified then his uncle will contest the election in his place.

All three main contenders in NA-103 come from Baloch families who have been winning from this area for the last three decades. PMLN has awarded its ticket to Ali Gohar Khan Mahar whose elder brother Rajab Ali Baloch won the poll in 2013 but died of cancer in May this year. PTI’s nominee, Saadullah Baloch, is their nephew. He polled only 11,000 votes on the same party’s ticket in 2013.

PPP has fielded Shahadat Ali Khan Baloch who took more than 23,000 votes in the last election but has the potential to snatch the seat from his rivals this time round.

In NA-104, PMLN’s ticket has gone to former member of the National Assembly, Shahbaz Babar whose family has always been loyal to his party. In contrast, PTI’s candidate, Sardar Dildar Ahmad Cheema, has contested elections from the platform of many parties. He is also known for spending big on his election campaigns. His vast Jutt vote bank, however, could be damaged by an independent candidate, Khalid Mehmood Gill.

PPP’s candidate in this constituency, Rana Farooq Saeed, is also an old war horse. He has previously worked as a federal minister and has influence over a large network of biradari-led vote banks. But he may still be haunted by the poor performance of PPP’s 2008-13 government. A triangular fight between PMLN’s experienced parliamentarian Mian Farooq, PTI’s Raza Nasrullah Ghumman and Chaudhry Masood Nazir, the son of district council Faisalabad’s chairman Chaudhry Zahid Nazir, is taking place in NA-105. The last candidate’s late grandfather Chaudhry Nazir Ahmad Kohistani (who made his name and money by running a successful bus service in the 1980s) won three elections from this constituency. A critical role will be played here by committed party voters. Whichever party is able to bring out its core voters in big numbers on polling day will win the seat.

A cliffhanger of a competition is expected in NA-106 where two-time former member of the National Assembly, Nisar Ahmed Jutt of PTI, is running against PMLN’s former Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah Khan. The former has been in various parties since 2002, including in PMLN. The latter is one of Shehbaz Sharif’s closest confidants.

Though he is running for the first time for a National Assembly seat, Rana Sanaullah Khan is deftly deploying his influence over local government representatives in Faisalabad to his advantage. What may go against him is his defence of PMLN in the wake of the controversy over changes in electoral forms last year. Many Sunni-Barelvi votes in his constituency are likely to go to his opponent.

Within Faisalabad city, PMLN looks stronger than PTI on both NA-107 and NA-108. In the former constituency, Akram Ansari will be attempting to record his sixth win. His PTI rival, Sheikh Khurram Shahzad, will require a massive shift in voting patterns in this constituency to be able to cause an upset. The latter constituency, too, has been a PMLN stronghold since the 1990s and PTI’s Farrukh Habib does not look like he is capable of changing that.

If a PTI surge uproots PMLN from these two constituencies too that will mean that Nawaz Sharif’s monopoly over central Punjab’s politics is well and truly over — at least for the 2018 elections. In the next two constituencies, NA-109 and NA-110, PMLN is already struggling. Its candidates, Mian Abdul Mannan and Rana Afzal, respectively, are facing formidable challenges from their PTI rivals Faizullah Kamoka and Raja Riaz.

Party politics in the neighbouring district of Toba Tek Singh district is next to absent. It hosted a historic conference of peasants in 1970 but, today, local politics is all about influential individuals and biradari-based vote banks.

An intense contest is expected in its NA-111 constituency between two brothers, Chaudhry Khalid Javed Warraich (running on a PMLN ticket) and Amjad Ali Warraich (contesting as the nominee of his own party, Pakistan National Muslim League). PTI, too, has fielded a strong candidate, Osama Hamza, whose father, Hamza, retired as a PMLN senator in March this year and has strong support in the area. Hamza will further benefit from the political influence of Khalid Bashir, a known local transporter, who is running on a PTI ticket for a provincial assembly seat. In NA-112, PTI has fielded its 2013 runner-up Chaudhry Muhammad Ashfaq, the owner of ChenOne luxury stores, against PMLN’s Junaid Anwar who won the seat in the last election. Ashfaq, though, may have an upper hand this time round.

PTI has made an interesting decision to award its ticket for NA-113 to former federal minister Riaz Fatiyana who had also formed his own party recently. He is believed to be capable of defeating PMLN’s Chaudhry Asadur Rehman whose close ties with Nawaz Sharif through his brother, former Supreme Court justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday, are a major factor in his electoral prowess.

The trend of personality-based politics has been even stronger in Jhang district. So has been the flight of ‘electables’ from the PMLN camp here. The party has all but disappeared in all three local National Assembly contests.

In NA-114, PTI’s Sahibzada Mehboob Sultan is running against a formidable foe, PPP’s Faisal Saleh Hayat. The former is heir to Sultan Bahu, a famous Sufi saint, and the latter is the custodian of a revered shrine in his hometown of Shah Jewna. The contest is evenly poised. Ghulam Bibi Bharwana, who quit PMLN only months ago to join PTI, is running in NA-115 against Sheikh Waqas Akram (who is contesting as an independent after having rejected a PMLN nomination). The two have their own distinct electoral legacies to carry forward. Ghulam Bibi Bharwana is the granddaughter of Ghulam Haider Bharwana, one of the first politicians in the district to deploy the Sunni-Shia divide for his electoral benefit. Sheikh Waqas Akram’s family has also been in local politics since the 1980s, mostly in opposition to sectarian mullahs.

The third main contender here, Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, is the inheritor of another political bequest — of violent anti-Shia sectarianism. He, however, is embattled from within his own camp. Masroor Jhangvi, whose father Haq Nawaz Jhangvi founded Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan to have Shias declared as infidels, is up in arms against Ludhianvi’s nominee for a provincial assembly seat, Muavia Azam, who happens to be the son of another Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan stalwart Azam Tariq. This infighting will further diminish the already eroded influence of sectarian politics on the local electorate.

On a recent Sunday evening, a Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan rally holds sway over empty roads that pass through PMLN’s home turf: National Assembly’s constituencies between Lahore’s Qartaba Chowk – on the confluence of Jail Road and Ferozepur Road – and the shrine of Data Gunj Bukhsh. It passes through an election office inaugurated only days earlier by former chief minister Shehbaz Sharif’s son Hamza Shehbaz. The office is eerily quiet.

For only the second time since 1985, Lahore is witnessing an election campaign that does not feature Nawaz Sharif and his PMLN. At least not as prominently as in the past and certainly not as conspicuously as the party’s real and self-imagined challengers – PTI and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, respectively – do in the city.

This may have to do with many factors. Firstly, PMLN is distracted due to Nawaz Sharif, and his daughter Maryam Nawaz, being in jail. Secondly, the Election Commission of Pakistan’s code of conduct has sucked all life out of electioneering. Strict limits on the size of campaign banners and fliers, etc and where they can be displayed or not, have dampened the spirit of festivity usually associated with election time. Lastly, general political uncertainty and a widespread perception that the election process and its outcome are rigged have diluted popular excitement about and engagement with campaigning. As a collective result of all these factors, we are having an election that does not even remotely look like what we had in 2013. That election could well have taken place in a different country.

Back in Lahore’s various constituencies, many of PMLN’s National Assembly candidates are confused at best and inactive at worst. They are finding it difficult to engage their constituents in voter mobilisation events. In any case, many of these constituents are unhappy that their lives have changed little over the last five years when the party was in power. Others are angry that their elected representatives did not maintain in regular touch with them.

In 2013, PMLN’s top leadership was out and about to address such problems. Nawaz Sharif was mobilising core PMLN supporters all over the country with big public gatherings. Shehbaz Sharif was ensuring that many public grievances were addressed there and then through his strong sway over Punjab’s bureaucracy and many second-tier leaders went from street to street to urge people to get out and vote for the party. Returning to power in Punjab was a certainty. Making a government in Islamabad also appeared a strong possibility.

All that is absent this time round — as is the certainty that PMLN will sweep polls in Lahore. In NA-123, the party’s two-time member of the National Assembly, Muhammad Riaz Malik, is struggling to retain a seat that he won in 2013 by a comfortable margin of around 60,000 votes. For the upcoming election, he is facing a new PTI challenger, Wajid Azeem, who polled more than 35,000 votes in 2013 in a provincial assembly constituency. In a subsequent by-election, he only lost by just over 300 votes to a PMLN candidate despite the fact that the party was ruling both in Lahore and Islamabad at the time. Yet the seat is PMLN’s to lose.

What may work in Riaz’s favour is PTI’s internal discord. Some old party workers are unhappy that they have been overlooked in the nomination process and, instead, Azeem has been imported into the constituency from another part of Lahore. In NA-124, Hamza Shehbaz will romp to victory as he did in the last election. His PTI opponent, Nauman Qaiser, is a resident of another part of the city and his nomination, at the expense of the party’s 2013 nominee Muhammad Madni, has not gone down well with many PTI activists in the constituency.

In NA-125, PTI heavyweight Dr Yasmin Rashid looks ahead of a rather lightweight PMLN nominee Waheed Alam Khan, who in 2013 fought election from a different constituency. She has old family ties in some parts of her constituency and knows it well, having served as a gynaecologist in various hospitals located here. Maryam Nawaz was originally nominated to run in this constituency but she later decided to contest in NA-127 and was then disqualified altogether from running.

PMLN’s cause will be further hurt here by its dissident Zaeem Qadri running as an independent and the candidates of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and other religious parties. Between the three of them, they can poll many thousand votes at the party’s expense. Former Punjab governor Mian Azhar’s son Hammad Azhar will have a re-run of his 2013 election contest on a PTI ticket against his PMLN rival Mehar Ishtiaq Ahmad in NA-126. The contest may go down to the wire.

The same can be said about NA-127 where Ali Pervaiz, son of PMLN leader Pervaiz Malik, is contesting his first election against PTI’s Jamshed Iqbal Cheema. It looks like a safe PMLN seat but the party’s candidate is inexperienced and lacks political stature which may lead to a tougher than expected fight.

Though PMLN’s Sheikh Rohail Asghar has lost a big chunk of his traditional stronghold north of the historic Shalimar Gardens, he is still the strongest contender in NA-128. His PTI challenger, Ijaz Ahmad Diyal, may have support in some rural parts of the constituency thanks to his family’s history of winning – and losing – elections in this part of Lahore but he does not look like a winning horse.

NA-129, however, may see one the toughest electoral battles in Punjab’s capital. While former National Assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq will be trying to score his fourth election win in a row as a PMLN nominee, senior PTI leader Aleem Khan will be trying to secure a victory that eluded him by an extremely narrow margin in a 2015 by-election. The contest is as even as it could have ever got.

In NA-130, PTI’s Shafqat Mehmood will be trying to ward off a challenge from PMLN’s Khwaja Ahmad Hassan. The same two candidates were squared off on this seat in 2013, with Shafqat Mehmood winning by a margin of more than 7,000 votes. While PTI is expected to do well in rich and middle-class areas such as Model Town, Gulberg and Muslim Town, PMLN’s neighbourhood-level network may help its cause in the less well-off parts of the constituency. And even though many voters are unhappy that Shafqat Mehmood did not pay them much attention in the last five years, this is unlikely to slow down PTI’s electoral juggernaut by much. The fight is too close to call.

The next constituency, NA-131, will similarly see a very close contest between PMLN’s Khawaja Saad Rafiq and PTI’s chairman Imran Khan. Consisting of some of the city’s most upscale areas of Cantonment and Defence, the constituency looks like an archetypal PTI stronghold – with highly educated, high-income constituents for whom ideas like justice, merit and transparency hold higher value than development schemes. If, however, they do not come out in large numbers to vote for PTI as they did in 2013, the contest will be decided in the poorer parts of the constituency where the two sides are evenly poised, with PMLN having a bit of an edge.
In NA-132, Shehbaz Sharif is expected to win easily though he will face some resistance from PPP’s Samina Khalid Ghurki (who has won twice in 2002 and 2008 from areas that form the northern parts of this constituency) and PTI’s Muhammad Mansha Sindhu who enjoys considerable support in many southern neighbourhoods.

PTI’s senior leader Ejaz Chaudhry, PPP’s Aslam Gill and PMLN’s Pervaiz Malik are all outsiders to NA-133 which consists of many middle-class and working-class localities in the southern part of the city. None of these three candidates is a vote-puller on his own. It is here that the relative strengths of the three main parties will be decided on their very own merits or demerits. PMLN, though, may receive some damage from its dissident, Zaeem Qadri, who is running as an independent.

In NA-134, PTI’s Zaheer Abbas Khokhar is pitted against PMLN’s Rana Mubashir Iqbal, who won a Punjab Assembly seat from this area in 2013 but was later disqualified from being a member of the legislature. The former won from this part of the city in 2002 on a PPP ticket but has failed to repeat that since. Odds still seem to be in favour of the PMLN candidate unless a PTI wave sweeps across Lahore and also carries its local candidates to victory.

NA-135 and NA-136 see contests in which two Khokhars from PTI are running against two Khokars from PMLN. The latter also happen to be brothers.

PMLN is facing many challenges here due to the incumbency factor. One of its candidates, Afzal Khokhar, was a member of the National Assembly between 2013 and 2018. The other, Saiful Mulook Khokhar, was a member of the Punjab Assembly in the same period, apart from being a confidant of Hamza Shehbaz. Their constituents complain the two have not looked after their voters as they should have.

The two still look stronger than their PTI counterparts, Karamat Khokhar and Malik Asad Ali, who both have not won an election so far. If PMLN’s campaign fails to gain momentum but that of PTI does take off in a big way before polling day, close fights will be expected on both these seats. While PMLN looks decidedly ahead of PTI in Lahore, electoral battles in nearby Kasur will all be hard fought. The former party has fielded its tested candidates — except in one case where its former member of the National Assembly, Sheikh Waseem Akhtar, has been disqualified from running in election and his son, Saad Waseem, is now contesting in his place. The latter party has given tickets to ‘electables’, as it has done elsewhere in Punjab.

In NA-137, PTI’s candidate is former foreign minister Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali who joined the party in 2012, then left it only to rejoin again recently. He comes from an old elite family and brings its influence to bear upon election results — and that is what counts for PTI.

His main rival is PMLN’s Saad Waseem who, because of his youth, may not be as effective a campaigner as his jailed father would have. The third notable contestant is PPP’s Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad who is running probably his best campaign since 2002 when he won in the same constituency.

Malik Rashid Ahmed, a PMLN nominee in NA-138, will be trying to retain the National Assembly seat he won in 2013 by fighting off a challenge from PTI’s Rashid Tufail whose late father Sardar Tufail Ahmed was a member of the National Assembly and Punjab Assembly in the past. The contest in the constituency is a tough one and will be ultimately decided by whether enough local voters believe that PTI will come into power after the 2018 elections. That is not a difficult thing to believe in this election.

A tough fight is expected in a constituency that includes Sahiwal city.

In NA-141, PTI has fielded Azeemuddin Lakhvi who was in PMLQ in 2013 — and before that in PMLN. His PMLN rival is Rana Ishaq Khan whose brother Rana Muhammad Iqbal has worked as the speaker of the Punjab Assembly between 2008 and 2018.

In NA-142, a traditional rivalry between the Ranas and their Nakai opponents has taken the form of a clash between two parties. Here, Rana Hayat Khan is representing PMLN and Sardar Talib Nakai is a PTI nominee. The former seems to have an edge.

In Kasur, as in Lahore, PMLN’s electoral monopoly does not appear to be as total as it was in 2013 though there have been no notable defections from the party to PTI. In the neighbouring districts of Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib, though, the party has lost only one of its members of the National Assembly, Bilal Virk, to PTI. He is now contesting against PMLN’s star candidate in the area, Chaudhary Barjees Tahir, in NA-117. This is not Bilal Virk’s home turf. Since his own constituency has disappeared amid redrawn constituency boundaries, he does not seem to pose a serious threat to his opponent.

Another PMLN defector to PTI, Chaudhry Asghar Ali, is a former Punjab Assembly member. He is running in NA-120 against former federal minister Rana Tanveer Husain who – along with his brother Rana Afzal Hussain (contesting in NA-119) – has been a serial winner in this part of Punjab. PTI’s search for winning ‘electables’ has been unsuccessful in these two constituencies. Still PTI seems to be offering a strong fight in a couple of constituencies in Sheikhupura — as in NA-121 where PMLN’s Mian Javed Latif is facing a serious PTI challenger, Saeed Virk, besides having to contend with a local revolt within his own party. Another strong candidate in this constituency is former member of the National Assembly, Khurram Munawar Manj, who is running as an independent. His father, Munwar Manj, also won from Sheikhupura in the 1990s before his arrest and conviction in a drug smuggling case.

In NA-122 Ali Salman – whose father, Salman Siddique, is a former federal secretary – is running a strong campaign as a PTI candidate. He is pitched against PMLN’s many-time winner Sardar Irfan Dogar.

In district Nankana’s second constituency, NA-118, PMLN’s Shazra Mansab Kharal is facing multiple challengers but the most serious of them is PTI’s Ijaz Ahmed Shah who polled 56,050 votes in this constituency as an independent in 2013, coming second by a narrow margin of around 5,000 votes.

In Sahiwal division, a mélange of factors constitute local politics — political parties being an important part of it. Though influential families and individuals dominate the political scene across the division, many of them seem to realise that they cannot win an election without party support. This explains their desperate search each election cycle to get into a party that helps them win. The most notable change in the division has taken place in PPP’s camp in Okara district. After its 2013 rout in Punjab, the party was hoping to revive itself in the district, relying on its central leader Manzoor Ahmad Khan Wattoo’s ability to regain his own electoral strength in his home district but then all those hopes came crashing down. He first refused to contest election in NA-144 on a PPP ticket and then let his son and daughter get PTI’s nominations for provincial assembly seats.

His main challenger, Mian Moeen Wattoo, has been representing PMLN since long and will be a tough competitor to beat. If, however, Manzoor Ahmad Khan Wattoo succeeds in making an alliance with a PMLN dissident, former provincial minister Raza Ali Gilani, his chances will be boosted, particularly given that PTI is also supporting him.

Raza Ali Gillani is upset with his party because, rather than nominating him from his provincial assembly constituency, PMLN is supporting an independent, Lahore-based journalist Jugnu Mohsin, who is also the wife of Pakistan Cricket Board’s chief Najam Sethi. Her father’s family has also remained active in Okara’s district politics in the past.

PTI’s National Assembly nominee in this area, NA-143, is a former parliamentarian, Syed Gulzar Sabtain, who has been in PMLN and PMLQ previously and appears well-suited to give PMLN’s ticket holder Rao Ajmal a run for his money.

In NA-141, another party hopper Syed Sumsam Ali Bokhari, who was a state minister in PPP’s 2008-13 government, is running on a PTI ticket against PMLN’s 2013 winner Nadeem Abbas Rabera. The latter has the wherewithal to beat the former.

Riazul Haq, running from a constituency that includes Okara city, famously won a by-election in 2015 as an independent on the back of his ghee manufacturing family’s deep pockets and then joined PMLN. The party has given him the ticket, pitching him against PTI nominee Rao Hasan Sikandar whose father, Rao Sikandar Iqbal, was a PPP stalwart before he joined Pervez Musharraf’s government in 2002.

Compared to these frequent changes in party affiliations, Sahiwal district looks like an island of consistency. Most battles here are being fought along the same party lines as in 2013. A tough fight is expected in a constituency that includes Sahiwal city between Chaudhry Naurez Shakoor on a PTI ticket and PMLN’s 2013 winner Imran Shah whose lead in his last victory may prove too much for his competitor to nullify. A PTI surge, that has yet to materialise in the district, is the only way for Chaudhry Naurez Shakoor to score a win.

Another major contest in the district is expected in NA-149. PTI’s candidate here, Rai Hasan Murtaza, is the nephew of Rai Hasan Nawaz, a former parliamentarian who was disqualified after winning the 2013 elections, also as a PTI nominee. In a subsequent by-election, PMLN’s Tufail Jutt defeated Rai Hasan Murtaza. The two rivals are facing each other again – and none seems to have an advantage.

In a bid to revive its declining vote bank, PPP has also fielded its candidates on three seats in Sahiwal. If they get more votes than their party did in 2013 here that would give them hope that all is not over yet. Otherwise, a PPP revival will become a dream that never gets realised. In Pakpattan district, both PTI and PMLN are facing internal challenges. The former party’s nominee, Muhammad Shah Khagga, is being challenged by Rao Naseem Hashim, PTI’s own district president. Similarly, Mansib Ali Dogar, a two-time member of the National Assembly and a previous PMLN nominee, is running as an independent against his party’s ticket holder Ahmed Raza Manika whose brother Khawar Raza Manika’s former wife Bushra Begum is Imran Khan’s third wife.

In NA-146, Pakpattan’s second constituency, PMLN’s Rana Iradaat Sharif and PTI’s Mian Amjad Joyia are pitted against each other. The former’s father Rana Zahid Hussain was a member of the National Assembly from this area but he has been barred by a court from taking part in the polls.

PTI’s candidate looks better placed on this seat even as he is being challenged by his own party’s Waseem Zafar Jutt who is contesting as an independent. Rana Iradaat Sharif will have to work hard to convince many disgruntled voters to support him. He will also have to neutralise the electoral impact of another PMLN associate, Talha Saeed, who is running as an independent.

In all three divisions in southern Punjab – Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur – tribal chiefs, pirs, influential land owners and even some businessmen dominate the electoral scene. They also often change parties in each election cycle and have done the same this time round. This has resulted in PMLN losing a large number of its 2013 winners to defections. They are now either in PTI (having taken a brief detour through Junoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz, a hurriedly put together platform to justify their desertion from a ruling party that they remained a part of for five years).

In five districts in this region that together have 25 National Assembly seats, PMLN seems to have been left with just seven notable local candidates: Awais Leghari and Shamoona Ambreen in Dera Ghazi Khan; Abdul Ghaffar Dogar and Syed Javed Ali Shah in Multan; Haroon Ahmed Sultan Bokhari in Muzaffargarh; Arshad Leghari in Rahim Yar Khan; and Alam Dad Laleka in Bahawalnagar. These are all legacy politicians with solid electoral records but only one of them, Awais Leghari, looks in a position to win his seat in the 2018 elections (provided there are no dramatic changes in local politics).

In contrast, PTI’s camp is brimful of ‘electables’. Just to name a few: Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Fatima Tahir Cheema (wife of former PMLN member of the National Assembly Tahir Bashir Cheema), Mustafa Khar, Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa and Makhdum Khusro Bakhtiar. Those who have not joined PTI – such as the Gorchanis in Rajanpur – are running as independents.

In Bahawalpur, PTI has, additionally, cut seat adjustment deals with both PMLQ and the family of the former nawab of Bahawalpur. It is also supporting Ziaul Haq’s son Ijazul Haq on a National Assembly seat in Bahawalnagar (that he has won multiple times in the past) in return for his support for PTI’s provincial assembly candidates.

And in at least three districts, PPP appears well-placed to win a few seats.

Former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and his two sons (in Multan); Mehr Irshad Sial, former foreign minister Hina Rabbani’s brother Raza Rabbani Khar and renowned politician Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan’s son Nawabzada Iftikhar Ali Khan (in Muzaffargarh); and Murtaza Mehmood and Mustafa Mehmood, both sons of former Punjab governor Ahmed Mehmood (in Rahim Yar Khan) may romp home, barring some last minute developments.

In five other districts in the region, PMLN still has a strong list of candidates in most of their 16 constituencies: Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Muhammad Balighur Rehman, Saud Majid and Najeebuddin Awaisi in Bahawalpur; Siddique Baloch and Abdul Rehman Kanju in Lodhran; Sajid Mehdi, Saeed Ahmad Manais and Tehmina Daultana in Vehari; Sahibzada Faizul Hassan and Saqlain Bukhari in Layyah; Aslam Bodla, Iftikhar Nazir and Muhammad Khan Daha in Khanewal. How many, and which, of these seats PMLN can win is not easy to answer but a mere look at the roster of its opponents shows that its own ‘electables’ are being matched constituency by constituency by those in PTI’s camp. Raza Hayat Hiraj, Ahmed Yar Hiraj, Zahoor Hussain Qureshi and Ghulam Murtaza Maitla in Khanewal; Akhtar Kanju in Lodhran; Ishaq Khakwani, Aurangzeb Khichi, Khalid Mehmood Chohan and Tahir Iqbal in Vehari; Syed Samiul Hasan Gilani and Khadija Amir Warran in Bahawalpur and Niaz Ahmed Jhakkar in Layyah — this list is as impressive as there can be in this part of the country.

The contest on these seats is further complicated by the presence of many strong independents such as Syed Fakhar Imam in Khanewal and Ayesha Nazir Jutt in Vehari and also by an occasional notable nominee by PPP such as Natasha Daultana, also in Vehari. South Punjab, it seems, is all set to do what it always does best: finding the direction of political wind and moving along it.

Danyal Adam Khan, Sher Ali Khan and Amel Ghani are staffers at the Herald. Umer Farooq is an Islamabad-based journalist with an interest in politics, security and foreign policy issues. Danial Shah is a travel photographer and writer. Rizwan Safdar is a PhD scholar of sociology at Government College University Faisalabad and contributes regularly to the Herald. Shafiq Butt is associated with Punjab Lok Sujag, a development organisation focusing on governance. Fareedullah Chaudhry works as a district correspondent for daily Dawn.

Sindh

By Moosa Kaleem | Bilal Karim Mughal | Manoj Genani | Subuk Hasnain | Momina Manzoor Khan

Muhammad Ali Behleem, a 50-year-old resident of Larkana city, has been a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) supporter since his childhood. He has voted for the party in every election in the last three decades but has decided not to vote for it in the 2018 polls. “PPP has failed to follow the policies of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto to deliver public goods. This is why I have decided to stop supporting it,” he says.

A number of urban residents in the two upper Sindh divisions of Larkana and Sukkur have similar complaints against the party. They, though, do not know who to vote for if not for PPP. There is no alternative, many of them say.

The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), a combination of many parties and influential individuals, is trying to offer that alternative. It is also supporting candidates of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) as well as some independents in a patchwork of seat adjustments spread across Sindh as an attempt to consolidate all anti-PPP votes.

The largest component of this alliance is Pir Pagara’s Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PMLF) that first appeared on the national scene in the 1980s as the only legally functional political entity at a time when General Ziaul Haq had placed a ban on organised politics. Some other parties in the alliance, Sindh United Party, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party and Awami Tehreek, are all offshoots of Sindhi nationalism that was a potent ideology across Sindh until a couple of decades ago.

The assumption behind the formation of GDA is that anti-PPP votes get split among various candidates who sometimes collectively poll more vot es than PPP does in a constituency. Throw in seat adjustment deals with other alliances, parties and candidates outside GDA and there will be the possibility to defeat PPP even in its strongholds — at least in theory.

Rashid Mehmood Soomro, who heads JUIF in Sindh and is an MMA candidate in Larkana’s NA-200 constituency against PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, believes the theory is being put into practice this time round. “In the last election in this constituency, total anti-PPP votes were 30,000 more than those polled for PPP,” he says. Claiming that both GDA and the Larkana Awami Ittehad, an alliance headed by the family of PPP’s dissident former senator Safdar Abbasi, are now supporting him, he adds: “All those votes will be polled in my favour. It will be an easy win for me against Bilawal.”

The numbers do add up. The second and third runners-up, PMLF’s Mehtab Akbar Rashidi and Moazzam Ali Khan, together polled 60,751 votes. PPP’s Ayaz Soomro polled around 10,000 votes less than that and yet he won.

Moazzam Ali Khan Abbasi, who is also a leader of the Larkana Awami Ittehad, is supporting Rashid Mehmood Soomro but 16 other candidates, including one from PTI, are still in the run against Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. The votes against him may still split but by a lesser degree. But he is not Ayaz Soomro, a third-tier party worker with no personal appeal. “He is Benazir Bhutto’s son and is contesting his first election,” says Ghulam Hussain Katpar, a teacher in Naudero town near Larkana. “Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will win with a good margin,” he adds.

Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, a senior PPP parliamentarian from Sukkur, offers another explanation. Only 50 per cent votes of each component party get transferred to the candidate of an alliance, he argues. His contention is that many voters of a party in an alliance will not feel motivated to cast their ballot for someone who they do not associate with politically. “This is why it is a wrong assumption that all votes polled by various candidates against PPP in previous elections will be pocketed by a single candidate,” he says.

PPP’s candidates have another edge over their rivals in Sindh. They have vast experience of electioneering and possess the ability to convince voters to support them even at the eleventh hour.

Women voters and a majority of non-Muslim voters in many constituencies across Sindh are an additional reason why PPP wins. “[The party] has strengthened women financially through its Benazir Income Support Programme,” says Kalpana Devi, a member of a lawyers’ association in Larkana. “It has also done some important legislation that has benefitted religious minorities,” she says. “This is why a good number of women and non-Muslim voters are with PPP.”

The competition for NA-196 in Jacobabad district is going to be tougher than it was in 2013. A large number of voters belonging to urban areas appear unhappy with PPP. Resentment towards the party among local traders is high. “A majority of traders and their families are not ready to support PPP in this election,” says Ahmed Ali Brohi, who heads the Jacobabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Some leaders of the local Hindu community are also disgruntled because of bad law and order, abductions and forced conversions of Hindu girls. Most Hindus living in Jacobabad do not seem inclined to vote for PPP, they say.

Muhammad Mian Soomro, a former Senate chairman and caretaker prime minister in 2007-08, is running on a PTI ticket in NA-196 against PPP’s Aijaz Hussain Jakhrani who has won the seat in the last three elections. The former is the scion of a local family that has been eminent in Sindh’s politics for decades. His cousin Ilahi Bux Soomro was the National Assembly speaker in the 1990s. But, as local writer S B Khoso says, Muhammad Mian Soomro neither lives in Jacobabad nor is accessible to people. “This is why Jakhrani has an edge in the election.”

In NA-197 in Kashmore district, PPP’s Ehsanur Rehman Mazari and GDA’s Abdul Ghani Bijarani are opposing each other. Their contest seems to favour the former over the latter. PPP is in a similarly strong position on Qambar Shahdadkot district’s two seats – NA-202 and NA- 203 – and its candidate in Larkana’s second seat, NA-201, is also leading.

The same cannot be said about Shikarpur district’s two constituencies — NA-198 and NA-199. Ibrahim Jatoi is running as an independent in the first and Ghaus Bux Mahar is contesting as a GDA nominee in the second. They have a history of defeating their PPP rivals. For the 2018 elections, however, Ibrahim Jatoi is not as comfortably placed as he would be in the past because constituency boundaries have been redrawn and a large number of his supporters have ended up in a different constituency. Ghaus Bux Mahar is facing a new PPP challenger and the changed boundaries of his constituency are also posing some problems but he may still win.

PPP’s electoral prospects have suffered a jolt in Ghotki district where the Mahar Brothers – Ali Muhammad Khan Mahar and Ali Gohar Khan Mahar, who both won National Assembly seats as the party’s nominees in 2013 – decided to run independently for the 2018 elections (Ali Gohar Mahar is running from Sukkur this time). They were upset because the party had welcomed into its fold some of their arch rivals in local politics such as Khalid Ahmed Khan Lund (who quit PPP and joined Pervez Musharraf’s government after winning a National Assembly seat in 2002). He is now PPP’s ticket holder in NA-204 where he is leading against Abdul Haque who is being backed by the Mahar brothers as well as GDA.

PPP is set to win both the seats in Thatta and Sujawal districts — thanks to the inclusion of the powerful Shirazis in its fold a few weeks earlier.

On the neighbouring seat of NA-205, Ali Mohammad Mahar is ahead of his relatively little-known PPP rival Ahsanullah Sundarani. But the Mahar clan itself is divided. Ali Mohammad Mahar’s bother Ali Nawaz Mahar is a PPP nominee for two provincial assembly seats and their cousin Muhammad Bux Mahar is canvassing on the party’s behalf. This has turned the contest into a very interesting one.

In Sukkur district, GDA is backing PTI on the district’s two National Assembly seats, NA-206 and NA-207. This will help their unanimous candidates to put up strong fights but PPP’s candidates – Khursheed Ahmad Shah and Nauman Islam Sheikh – seem to be doing fine. PPP is also leading in Khairpur district that has three National Assembly seats: NA-208, NA-209 and NA-210. Nafisa Shah Jillani, a known writer and human rights activist whose father Qaim Ali Shah has been Sindh’s chief minister multiple times, is running on a PPP ticket in NA-208 against former chief minister Ghaus Ali Shah who is contesting as a GDA nominee. It is a close fight though PPP may have a bit of an edge.

In NA-209, GDA’s Pir Sadruddin Shah Rashidi, the younger brother of Pir Pagara, is ahead of his PPP rival Fazal Shah Jillani. In NA-210, however, PPP’s Syed Javed Ali Shah Jillani is a little ahead of GDA’s Syed Kazim Ali Shah in what, otherwise, is a very close contest. PPP is leading on both seats in Shaheed Benazirabad (Nawabshah) district – NA-213 and NA-214 – as well. These are being contested by Asif Ali Zardari and Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah, respectively. In the neighbouring district of Naushahro Feroze, the party has nominated strong candidates on both NA-211 and NA-212. Its opponents on these seats, Zafar Ali Shah (who has been in and out of PPP more than once since the 1980s) and Ghulam Murtaza Jatoi (who has been a federal minister in every government except one since 1997), have joined hands as part of GDA and are supporting each other. Yet Zafar Ali Shah will find it difficult to win a seat that he would secure only as a PPP nominee. Ghulam Murtaza Jatoi, too, will have to work hard to maintain his lead against his traditional rival, Zulfiqar Ali Behan.

What may have worked in the favour of PPP candidates in these two districts is that Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari addressed large gatherings here during his campaign tour of Sindh earlier this month. This has energised the party’s supporters and voters.

Mirpurkhas is an agricultural district, affected by water shortage in recent months. Though many local residents hold PPP’s last provincial government responsible for the problem, there are no signs that this will result in an electoral debacle for the party. A revolt by a local dissident is, in fact, causing more heartburn to the party than complaints by agriculturists.

The dissident, Syed Ali Nawaz Shah, was denied a PPP nomination for a provincial assembly seat so he decided to challenge the party’s nominee for NA-218, Pir Hassan Ali Shah, who nevertheless enjoys lead over all his opponents. If Syed Ali Nawaz Shah gets GDA’s support, he has the potential to win a provincial assembly seat where his own nephew, Zulfikar Ali Shah, is a PPP nominee.

Sanghar, historically, has been a PMLF territory where PPP has made strong inroads of late. In 2013, the former party won two of the district’s three seats but, later, PPP claimed one of them in a by-election.

This time round, Khuda Bux Rajar, a former federal minister, is a GDA nominee for one of these seats, NA-215. His PPP rival is Naveed Dero whose uncle Fida Dero was a runner up in this constituency in the 2013 elections. A tough fight is expected here though Khuda Bux Rajar may secure the seat.

In NA-216, PPP’s Shazia Marri is leading against GDA’s Kishan Chand Parwani who is an outsider to the area but has deep pockets to spend his way into voters’ hearts. Shazia Marri, however, has developed a strong vote bank in the constituency after winning there in a by-election in 2013.

Roshan Din Junejo, a 2013 winner, is PPP’s nominee in NA-217 against Mahi Khan Wassan of GDA who has been a PMLF member of the Sindh Assembly between 2002 and 2007. Junejo is seen as a stronger candidate since he is also being backed by his former rival Imamuddin Shouqeen who is now a PPP senator.

PPP has, similarly, expanded its electoral influence in Tharparkar district that has two National Assembly seats. Traditionally a bastion of Arbabs (who have a long history of switching parties), the district now offers a competitive electoral space where many candidates and parties are vying for victory.

PPP won in Tharparkar in 2013 and looks set to retain at least one of its two seats easily, thanks to a successful mobilisation of the district’s large Hindu population in its favour. Its candidate in NA-222, Mahesh Malani, is leading his opponent, GDA’s Arbab Zakaullah, who is a nephew of former chief minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim. Another of his nephews, Arbab Lutfullah, however, has joined PPP and is contesting in a provincial assembly constituency against his own famous uncle. Arbab Ghulam Rahim may win the contest but it will dent Arbab Zakaullah’s prospects by dividing their family’s traditional voters. In NA-221, PPP’s 2013 winner Noor Muhammad Shah is facing a very serious challenge from GDA-supported and PTI-nominated Shah Mehmood Qureshi who has a large-scale spiritual following in the area. The vote difference between the two in the last election was tiny: just above 2,000 votes. Noor Muhammad Shah is facing an additional challenge. Ghani Khan Khoso, a senior PPP worker from the area, is contesting a provincial assembly seat as an independent as a show of resentment against the party’s election nominations. He has the potential to snatch a few thousand votes from the party and, thus, cause it to lose the seat. But, like in the last election, the contest is a cliffhanger.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi is also contesting in NA-220 against PPP’s former federal minister Nawab Yousaf Talpur. Their last encounter in 2013 was won by the latter by a clear margin of 13,566 votes. Barring some last minute change in the situation, he may have a similar lead this time round too.

PPP is set to retain Tando Muhammad Khan district’s lone seat, NA-228, as well as Tando Allahyar’s only seat, NA-224. But the competition will be tough on Dadu district’s two seats – NA-234 and NA-235. Even though anti-PPP candidates for these constituencies are more or less the same – family members of former chief minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi, who contested and lost the last election – a couple of factors may work in their favour, giving their chances a boost. Firstly, Liaquat Jatoi and his son Karim Jatoi have left PMLN and joined PTI (though this change hardly matters in most of Sindh’s rural districts) as an attempt to tap into the resentment among educated young voters against older political parties in general and PPP in particular. Secondly, a former PPP parliamentarian, Dr Talat Iqbal Mahesar, is supporting the Jatois. Together, the two factors will help them increase their vote tally but they may still fall short. Corruption allegations against Liaquat Ali Jatoi and his ineffectual tenure as chief minister back in 1997 are some of the negative factors that may still work against him and his son.

In nearby Matiari district, PPP’s top leadership’s love-hate relationship with the Makhdooms of Hala continues. This has been going on since the 1970s but the two sides have managed to muddle along despite differences that crop up every now and then. This time round, too, there were issues on which they did not see eye to eye, such as election nominations for some prominent spiritual followers of the Makhdooms in other parts of Sindh — Thar, in particular.

These problems notwithstanding, Makhdoom Jamiluz Zaman (whose father Amin Faheem won seven times from the same Matiari-Hala area between 1977 and 2013) is well placed to win in NA-223 against his GDA rival Makhdoom Fazal Hussain. The two candidates are also distantly related.

NA-233 in Jamshoro also remains a PPP stronghold even though the party has changed its candidate from its serial winner Malik Asad Sikandar (who is now contesting for the provincial assembly from the same area) to a former nazim of Sehwan taluka, Sikandar Rahupoto. His rival is GDA’s Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah who also heads the Sindh United Party and is a grandson of the doyen of Sindhi nationalism, G M Syed.

The ethnically divided Hyderabad district has had a set electoral pattern: two of its three seats go to Urdu-speaking contestants (who, without, exception have been associated with MQM since 1988) and one to a Sindhi-speaking candidate (usually a PPP nominee). Three new factors may determine whether the pattern will continue.

First of these is a seat adjustment deal between Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan’s Abul Khair Muhammad Zubair (who won a downtown area seat in 2002 and has been receiving around 10,000 votes since then) and PPP which has withdrawn its candidate against him in exchange for his support for the party’s provincial nominees in the city. Whether this will be good enough to break the monopoly of MQM’s associates on NA-227 is conditional on the second factor: how much internal damage MQM’s various factions, including the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), can cause to each other.

The third new factor is the entry of a media house owner, Ali Kazi, in the district’s politics as the head of his Tabdeeli Pasand Party. He has been running a strong campaign in Qasimabad area which is a PPP stronghold. Will he be able to defeat the deeply entrenched PPP electoral machine in Hyderabad is a question that will be answered on polling day but the challenge from him means that PPP’s candidates have to work extra hard to ensure continued support for themselves.

PPP is set to win both the seats in Thatta and Sujawal districts — thanks to the inclusion of the powerful Shirazis in its fold a few weeks earlier. Though some old party workers are not happy with the move, none of them is contesting the election to hurt the party’s electoral fortunes.

The district where PPP is in a tight corner is Badin. There, Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, former Sindh home minister and a close friend of Asif Ali Zardari, has joined hands with GDA in his bid to defeat the party’s nominees. He himself is a contestant for a provincial assembly seat, as is his son Hasnain Mirza, but his wife, former National Assembly speaker Fehmida Mirza, and another son, Hassam Mirza, are running for the National Assembly.

On one seat, NA-229, PPP has nominated Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur, a landlord with a large personal vote bank, against Hassam Mirza. The contest is extremely close and both candidates have their work cut out for them.

In NA-230, Fahmida Mirza is pitted against PPP’s Haji Rasool Bux Chandio whose brother Muhammad Nawaz Chandio has been a member of the provincial assembly in the past. The battle for Badin will be ultimately decided by voter turnout: whichever side is able to mobilise a larger number of voters to get out and vote will win both seats. The intense level of campaigning in the district suggests the two sides will do whatever they can to ensure just that.

Who will win in Punjab is perhaps the most asked question during this election cycle — as it perhaps always is. Another, only slightly less asked, question this time round is: who will win in Karachi?

The city is by all means important. One in every 13 Pakistanis is living here. And its 14.9 million inhabitants are more diverse than people in any other part of the country: it has the largest concentrations of Pakhtun and Baloch populations in the world; it is Pakistan’s largest Sunni city and is also its biggest Shia one. It also houses the largest Ismaili and Dawoodi Bohra communities in the country. Parsis, Goan Christians and Hindus are all major partners in its cultural and economic life.

This election cycle, the city has finally got what it lacked: an election in which every citizen of Karachi can take part without feeling discriminated against, threatened or coerced. While various political parties have always tried to challenge Karachi’s largest political force, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (now registered as MQM-Pakistan), in previous elections, many a time those challenges were drowned out by one-sided results — polling station after polling station, constituency after constituency.

Karachi has the highest number of National Assembly constituencies. One in every 13 seats in the National Assembly is in Karachi.

This time round, it appears to be different. Rather than discussing no-go areas for other parties in MQM’s strongholds, politicians are talking lightheartedly about such trivial issues as chewing paan. The reference to paan, first made by former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif during a campaign event in Karachi, can be a serious indicator of the state of our political discourse: no party has come up with a well-thought out plan to address Karachi’s multiple economic, social, environmental and administrative issues but, instead, every party is focused on how to grab the seats that a split MQM may not be able to win any more.

The city also has the highest number of National Assembly constituencies. One in every 13 seats in the National Assembly is in Karachi. If nothing else, this number should offer political parties an incentive to invest themselves in the city in order to win as many of these seats as they can.

Many important electoral changes have also taken place in the city since the last election. It now has six districts instead of the five that it had in 2013 and it also has one additional National Assembly seat.

A look at the city’s constituencies suggest that electoral opportunities for non-ethnic parties may have expanded. In district Malir, for instance, only one seat – mostly comprising Karachi’s rural outskirts – has an overwhelming majority of Sindhi and Baloch voters. The other two have a mix of Sindhi, Baloch, Pakhtun, Punjabi and Urdu-speaking communities.

PPP is looking to win at least two of these seats — NA-236 and NA-237. It may win the former rather easily though on the latter it will face competition possibly from every party in the city including Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and MMA. It enjoys an advantage in the sense that its candidate, Hakeem Baloch, was a winner (originally as a PMLN candidate) from many areas now a part of this constituency.

The next constituency, NA-238, has large pockets of PPP support but its diverse population has encouraged candidates of all types to throw their lots in here. One of them, Aurangzeb Farooqi of the Rah-e-Haq Party (another reincarnation of the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan), is seen as a serious contender here. Another important contender here is Shahi Syed, the head of ANP in Sindh. His presence suggests the presence of a sizeable Pakhtun vote in the constituency.

District East’s NA-244 has also become a multi-ethnic constituency that may go to any party. Two other seats in this district, NA-242 and NA-245, mostly have Urdu-speaking contestants and could also go MQMP’s way. Two of the most well-known politicians in the city, Farooq Sattar and Amir Liaqat Hussain, are competing in NA-245, respectively on the tickets of MQM-Pakistan and PTI (which has some serious support among Pakhtun communities living in the constituency).

The district’s last seat, NA-243, has gained a lot of media attention because Imran Khan is contesting in it against MQMP’s Syed Ali Raza Abidi (who may have a small edge against other contenders). Another notable candidate in this constituency is PPP’s Shehla Raza who was deputy speaker in the Sindh Assembly in 2008-13.

District Korangi’s three seats have major concentrations of Urdu-speaking population. The competition here will be among MQM-Pakistan, MQM-Haqiqi and PSP though PTI, PPP and MMA are also trying their luck here. MQMP, at the end of the day, may win all of these three seats.

District South used to have three constituencies but now has two and both of them are often in the news: NA-246, because Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is a contestant in it (and also because he has received unexpected resistance in one of its neighbourhoods while campaigning here); and NA-247, because it includes Defence and Clifton, two of the city’s richest areas, alongside some of Karachi’s slummiest slums (and also because it was here that voter resistance pushed MQM to the defensive and helped a PTI candidate snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat).

District Central’s four constituencies, NA-253, NA-254, NA-255 and NA-256, are being contested mostly by Urdu-speaking candidates though they come from a variety of parties. The main contests will be between MQMP and PSP and may result in victory for the former’s candidates though their victory margins will not be as big as they used be in the days of MQM’s domination. A notable, though not strong, candidate in NA-256 is actor Sajid Hasan who is running on a PPP ticket.

District West, that starts from around Karachi Port and ends up joining Malir, will also see some intense fights — and many of them may not feature MQMP as a main contender. This is already apparent in NA-249 where Shehbaz Sharif is contesting without having to face a serious MQM-Pakistan challenger. Like in parts of Malir and East districts, this district, too, will see a roster of successful candidates that is not dominated by a single party and also not by those belonging to a single community.

Moosa Kaleem, Subuk Hasnain and Momina Manzoor Khan are staffers at the Herald. Bilal Karim Mughal is a multimedia producer at Dawn.com. Manor Genani is a freelance photojournalist and documentary photographer.

Balochistan

By Maqbool Ahmed | Masood Hameed | Wazir Ali

A suicide blast in Mastung that killed around 140 people, including a provincial assembly candidate, Siraj Raisani, on July 13 has served as a tragic reminder that all is still not well in Balochistan. There have been some other minor instances of violence as well. In Kech district, grenades were thrown on the house of an election candidate. Shots were fired on the convoy of another candidate in the same district. A meeting inside the house of a third candidate, also in Kech, was attacked with gunfire.

These incidents suggest two obvious things: there are gaps in the security of both, the candidates and the electorate; and there is a certain degree of impunity enjoyed by the members and leaders of some groups that were banned but have been revived under new names. Some of them are running in elections; others are campaigning across the country for candidates they are backing. This means that religious hatred (as well as other violent ideologies) remain strong forces for sowing discord and creating violence — perhaps a little too strong to control.

Still, Balochistan is going to the polls with a law and order situation markedly better than it was in 2013. Hazara Shias were being mass murdered in Quetta back then and separatist violence was rampant in many southwestern and central parts of the province. Electioneering was impossible to carry out in a number of Baloch-dominated districts because of threats from non-state actors and large-scale deployment of security forces.

Districts of Kech, Panjgur, Turbat, Awaran, Kharan, Khuzdar and Kalat, that were hubs of Baloch separatist militancy a few years ago, are all calmer and more peaceful than they have been for over a decade. Political parties and candidates are freely carrying out their election activities in all these areas — holding corner meetings, displaying party flags, putting up banners and posters.

There are also expectations that voters will turn out in large numbers to vote on the day of polling due to improvement in law and order and also because of vigorous campaigning.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – often in competition with Pakhtun nationalists – has long been a major political force in Balochistan’s Pakhtun-dominated districts in the west and northwest of Quetta. Today the party stands divided into three factions — Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Sami (JUIS) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Nazaryati (JUIN). The last faction emerged just before the 2008 general elections. Its leader, Asmatullah, went on to defeat a JUIF stalwart, Muhammad Khan Sherani, in his home constituency of Zhob-cum-Sherani-cum-Killa Saifullah.

JUIF has dropped Muhammad Khan Sherani from its list of nominees for the upcoming election. He is reportedly so upset over the decision that he has told his followers not to vote for Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) – which includes JUIF – in NA-257 where the alliance has fielded Abdul Wasay who was leader of the opposition in the Balochistan Assembly between 2013 and 2018.

The divisions within JUIF are so sharp that its members are opposing the nominees of their own party in several places. A senior JUIF leader, Haji Behram Khan, for instance, is running as an independent against Salahuddin Ayyubi, an MMA ticket holder for a provincial assembly seat. This can seriously affect MMA’s chances of victory in Killa Abdullah’s NA-263 against PkMAP candidate Mahmood Khan Achakzai.

There are similar rifts within the Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), the other main contender for Pakhtun votes in the province. One of its senior leaders, Akram Shah, has fielded his son, Muzammil Shah, as an independent candidate against his party’s nominee, Abdur Rahim Ziaratwal, for a provincial assembly constituency, PB-6 Harnai-cum-Ziarat. This could damage the party’s prospects in NA-258 Loralai-cum-Musakhail-cum-Ziarat-cum-Dukki-cum-Harnai. Local pundits, in fact, do not consider PkMAP’s candidate, Sardar Habibur Rehman Dammar, as a serious contender and forecast a tough competition among Maulvi Amir Zaman of MMA, Sardar Israr Tareen of Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), Sardar Buland Khan Jogezai of PPP and Sardar Yaqoob Nasir of PMLN.

Two other parties are also struggling in Balochistan — Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) for having lost its former parliamentarians and main leaders to the newly formed Balochistan Awami Party; and National Party (NP) because of voter resentment over its failure to deliver social and economic development in Baloch areas.

Within this broad situation, the fight for Balochistan’s 16 seats is intense.

For NA-262 in Pishin district, PkMAP has retained its 2013 candidate Essa Roshan while MMA has nominated Kamaluddin. Roshan says he will benefit from his constituency having become a single district seat — detached from the nearby district of Ziarat. People in Ziarat vote more on the basis of religion than on the basis of Pakhtun nationalism, he says.

NA-264 in Quetta is a new constituency. Abdul Rehman Bazai of PkMAP, Asmatullah of MMA, Muhammad Raza of Hazara Democratic Party, Yousaf Khilji of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Amir Afzal Mandokhail of PMLN, Saifullah Khan of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Ali Mohammad Nasir of BAP are the main candidates in the constituency. The local electorate is divided along multiple lines of sect, ethnicity and ideology. This confusing mix makes it almost impossible to pick one leading contender here.

The voter here generally votes on a tribal basis — for the chief of their tribe or on his directions. Parties do not matter

In NA-265, a Baloch leader, Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani, is contesting elections as a nominee of Balochistan National Party (BNP) that is headed by former chief minister Sardar Akhtar Mengal. The constituency has a predominantly Pakhtun population – about 75 per cent of the total – but Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani says that his party has Pakhtuns among its senior leaders and that everyone living in Quetta, regardless of ethnicity, faces the same problems of water shortage, gas and electricity outages, choked drains and dilapidated roads. One of his main rivals is PkMAP chairman, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, who won from this area in 2013 but is being criticised by voters for remaining busy in Islamabad and not focusing on improving the living conditions of his constituents.

Another notable candidate in this constituency is JUIF’s former senator Hafiz Hamdullah Saboor who is an MMA nominee. PTI’s Qasim Khan Suri, who came second in the last election, seems to be lagging behind other candidates. Rahila Khan Durrani of PMLN and Rozi Khan Kakar of PPP are also in the run but are rather weak candidates.

In NA-266, JUIF has fielded its senior leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed as a nominee of MMA. He was overlooked in his party’s nominations for two previous elections though he had won in 2002 from more or less the same areas that now form NA-266. He seems to be among the main contenders in the constituency though the redrawn boundaries make it uncertain to predict which party or candidate is really ahead of others.

NA-259 includes the restive areas of Dera Bugti and Kohlu districts where security forces are deployed in large numbers and the atmosphere for campaigning is still rather restricted. Dostain Khan Domki, the 2013 winner, looks set to retain the seat— barring some political development that changes the entire security situation and political balance in the constituency. He ran as an independent in the last election but is a BAP nominee now. One of his main challengers is Shahzain Bugti, a grandson of slain Baloch chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti. Another notable candidate is PPP’s Mir Baz Muhammad Khetran.

In NA-260, that comprises the districts of Naseerabad, Kachhi and Jhal Magsi, the competition is between Khalid Magsi (whose brother Zulfiqar Magsi has been both the governor and the chief minister of Balohistan in the past), and Yar Muhammad Rind (a Musharraf-era federal minister). The former is running as a BAP candidate; the latter is a PTI nominee.

NA-261 is spread over Sohbatpur and Jaffarabad districts. Chiefs of Jamali tribe have dominated the constituency since long and have always remained a part of either the provincial government or the federal government — or both. Mir Zafrullah Jamali (former prime minister), Taj Jamali (former chief minister) and Jan Muhammad Jamali (former provincial assembly speaker) have all been in power. Their main competitors are chiefs of the Khosa tribe which also has its own share of ministers, including a caretaker prime minister (Hazar Khan Khoso in 2013).

The voter here generally votes on a tribal basis — for the chief of their tribe or on his directions. Parties do not matter which explains why candidates can routinely switch parties without losing face among the electorate.

PTI’s Mir Jan Mohammad Khan Jamali, who is being backed by Mir Zafrullah Jamali, seems to be leading in the constituency with PPP’s Changez Jamali and BAP’s Zahoor Hussain Khosa trailing him closely.

In NA-267, that comprises Mastung, Kalat and Shaheed Sikandarabad districts, former chief minister Sanaullah Zehri is pitched against 20 other candidates. Another notable candidate here is PPP’s Ayatullah Durrani. The constituency is vast and thinly populated, with many contenders enjoying their respective pockets of support. The outcome here will be mainly decided by variations in voter turnout and the strength of tribal affiliations.

NA-268, that consists of Chagai, Nushki and Kharan districts, will see a strong competition between Abdul Qadir Baloch of PMLN, Hashim Notezai of BNP, Sardar Al-Haj Mohammad Umar Gorgage of PPP, Usman Badini of MMA and Sardar Fateh Muhammad Hasani who is running as an independent candidate. Each of these candidates has his own area of influence which makes the contest difficult to predict. Sardar Fateh Muhammad Hasani may have a slight edge because BAP’s nominee, Ejaz Raisani, has withdrawn from the contest in his favour.

Two former chief ministers, Sardar Akhtar Mengal and Sanaullah Zehri, are fighting for votes in NA-269 (Khuzdar district). This is home turf for both of them but Sardar Akhtar Mengal may have an edge because of the incumbency factor that may go against Sanaullah Zehri. He was heading a largely inept provincial administration till late last year. A notable candidate here is Shafiq Mengal who is alleged to have an association with anti-Shia sectarian groups and who, a few years ago, ran an anti-separatist hit squad in Khuzdar.

In two constituencies in Makran division – NA-271, NA-270 – voters are not generally mobilised by religious, sectarian, ethnic and tribal considerations. Most, if not all, of them rather vote on the basis of ideology. This explains why Makran division was the hub of Baloch nationalist politics between 1988 and 1993. Even though the glory days of Baloch nationalist politics have been long over, people still prefer to vote for candidates who have been associated with any of its many variants.

NA-270, spread over three districts of Panjgur, Washuk and Awaran, is quite sparsely populated. For the upcoming elections, BNP’s Mir Nazeer Ahmad, MMA’s Haji Attaullah, BAP’s Ahsanullah Reki, BNP-Awami’s Mohammad Hanif, PMLN’s Abdul Qadir Baloch (who was a federal minister in 2013-18) are in the run here. The constituency is too vast to throw up a single idea about the behaviour of voters in its various areas. Here, too, like in another constituency, area-wise difference between voter turnout will be a key determinant of the result.

In NA-271, comprising Kech district, writer and former bureaucrat Jan Mohammad Dashti, contesting on a BNP ticket, appears to be the leading candidate. He, however, is facing a tough competition from BNP-Awami’s ticket holder Ahsan Shah and BAP’s candidate Zubaida Jalal.

NA-272 is the last constituency in the country and also the longest. It starts from the northern outskirts of Karachi and goes all the way along the sea to the border with Iran. An intense three-way contest is underway here between BNP’s Sardar Akhtar Mengal, BAP’s Jam Kamal Khan (who was a federal minister till recently) and an independent candidate, Aslam Bhootani. The latter two candidates come from Lasbela district that forms the thickly populated northeastern part of the constituency. The contest is too close to call.

Maqbool Ahmed is a staffer at the Herald. Masood Ahmed has a master's in international relations from University of Karachi. Wazir Ali has a master's in international relations and in education.

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of the Herald. To read more, subscribe to the Herald in print.

Opening image: JUIF party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his son Asad Mahmood addressing supporters for the NA-37 seat in Tank | Danial Shah