A deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and a constable were martyred on Friday night when unknown attackers opened fire on their vehicle in Lakki Marwat, an official said on Saturday.
DSP Gul Muhammad and Constable Nadeem Gul had set up a temporary checkpoint at the Manjiwala Chowk near the Indus Highway when unknown assailants opened fire on their vehicle, killing both, according to Bannu police spokesperson Bashir Khan.
A post on X of two of the martyred police officials.—KP Police
The bodies were shifted to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in the Sarai Naurang district of Lakki Marwat.
That same night, in a separate incident in the Sara Darga district of Lakki Marwat, Constable Sanamat Khan was martyred when unknown assailants opened fire at him near his house. He was stationed in Miranshah, North Waziristan and had returned home on leave.
The assailants in both incidents are at large.
On Saturday morning, funeral prayers for the martyred police officials were held with official honours at Iqbal Shaheed Police Line in Bannu.
District Police Officer (DPO) Bannu Ziauddin Ahmed, DPO Lakki Marwat Taimur Khan, SP Operation Bannu Sanaullah and army officers laid flower wreaths on the coffins of the martyred and prayed for them.
DPO Ahmed praised the martyrs as being brave, dutiful and noble, adding that the Bannu police stand with the bereaved families in their hour of grief.
“We are proud of such young people who died fighting bravely,” he said.
“The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain,” DPO Ahmed said, adding that “terrorists will not demoralise us with cowardly acts.”
DPO Khan said police forces have, in the past, sacrificed their lives for the country, which the entire nation values.
The attacks are the latest in a series of incidents targeting police officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On Tuesday, six policemen were injured when unknown miscreants attacked them in the Township area of Bannu.
In March, two traffic police constables were martyred when unknown motorcyclists opened fire on them in Darra Pezu town in Lakki Marwat.
RAWALPINDI: Former information minister in the PTI government Fawad Chaudhry, who had been granted bail by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), was released from Adiala Jail on Friday.
On Monday, an IHC division bench comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri granted bail to Mr Chaudhry in a case related to alleged corruption in acquiring land for a dual carriageway project in Jhelum.
The National Accountability Bureau had accused him of receiving “illegal gratification” from a contractor in the Lilla-Pind Dadan Khan-Jhelum dual carriageway project.
The bureau also accused him of approving a petrol pump along the dual carriageway road project “for his personal interest” and misusing his authority and influence to help his relatives and others with the purchase of land along the dual carriageway.
Mr Chaudhry’s counsel argued that the case against his client was politically motivated and brought just for political victimisation and to stop the petitioner from contesting the general elections. The lawyer said nothing was recovered during his client’s physical remand.
Sources said more than 28 cases have been registered against Fawad Chaudhry in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Attock, Faisalabad and Jhelum.
Islamabad on Saturday denounced the “provocative” remarks made by Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in a televised interview yesterday, in which he appeared to confirm that New Delhi was carrying out an assassination campaign in Pakistan, as reported by The Guardian.
“If any terrorist from a neighbouring country tries to disturb India or carry out terrorist activities here, he will be given a fitting reply. If he escapes to Pakistan we will go to Pakistan and kill him there,” Singh said in an interview to Indian TV news network News18 on Friday.
Singh’s remarks followed The Guardian’s investigative report, published on Thursday, which said at least 20 individuals had been murdered in Pakistan since 2020 at the behest of Indian intelligence operatives. The report said it had seen evidence provided by Pakistani security agencies, and noted that Indian officers confirmed the new policy of assassinating enemies and dissidents on foreign soil. India’s Ministry of External Affairs had denied the allegations.
Singh said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made it clear this policy was “right” and that “India has the capability to do so. Pakistan has also started understanding this.”
Singh’s comments are the first time that India has acknowledged any assassinations by its operatives on foreign soil, The Guardianreported in a follow-up story published on Friday.
In October 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had cited what he said was credible evidence of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder of a Sikh separatist leader. The following month, the US Department of Justice had said an Indian government official directed an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil.
On January 25, Foreign Secretary Syrus Sajjad Qazi had said in a press conference that there was “credible evidence” of links between Indian agents and the assassination of two Pakistani nationals in Sialkot and Rawalakot.
In the Foreign Office statement issued today, Pakistan has officially condemned what it describes as “provocative remarks” made by the Indian defence minister.
The Foreign Office detailed in the foreign secretary’s presser on Jan 25, Pakistan had provided “irrefutable evidence” of India’s involvement in extrajudicial killings and transnational assassinations on Pakistani soil.
“India’s assertion of its preparedness to extra-judiciously execute more civilians, arbitrarily pronounced as ‘terrorists’, inside Pakistan constitutes a clear admission of culpability,” the FO said. “It is imperative for the international community to hold India accountable for its heinous and illegal actions.”
It added: “Pakistan stands resolute in its intent and ability to safeguard its sovereignty against any act of aggression, as demonstrated by its robust response to India’s reckless incursion in February 2019, which laid bare India’s hollow claims of military superiority.
The FO said that India’s ruling dispensation “habitually resort to hateful rhetoric to fuel hyper-nationalistic sentiments, unapologetically exploiting such discourse for electoral gains”, stressing that such “myopic and irresponsible behaviour” not only undermined regional peace but also impeded the prospects of constructive engagement in the long term.
“Pakistan has always demonstrated its commitment to peace in the region. However, our desire for peace should not be misconstrued. History attests to Pakistan’s firm resolve and ability to protect and defend itself,” it concluded.
Yesterday, the Foreign Office had said that the Indian network of extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings was now a “global phenomenon” that required a coordinated international response.
In the Friday statement, the FO had said that India’s assassination of Pakistani nationals on Pakistani soil was a clear violation of the country’s sovereignty and a breach of the UN Charter.
“These cases exposed the increasing sophistication and brazenness of Indian-sponsored terrorist acts inside Pakistan, with striking similarities to the pattern observed in other countries, including Canada and the United States,” the FO said.
“It is critical to bring to justice the perpetrators, facilitators, financiers and sponsors of these extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings. India must be held accountable internationally for its blatant violation of international law,” the FO had said.
Nine years ago, farmer Sultan Ahmed Bhatti gave up tilling the soil and using most fertilisers and pesticides on his farm in Doober Bhattian, Pakistan.
His brothers at first derided him. But soon, his first experiment with growing wheat on raised beds was a runaway success. “We produced more wheat than what we grew on ploughed, flat land,” he said.
Sultan Ahmed Bhatti discussing his farming techniques with visitors. Photo credit: Sukheki farms of Sultan Ahmed Bhatti
Today, researchers, climate experts, and agriculture students visit his 100-acre farm, where he grows wheat, rice, maize, sugarcane, and vegetables, to see how he is able to reap bumper crops with minimal input costs.
The magic is in the soil, says Bhatti, picking up a fistful of soil in his calloused hand. “It’s all about respecting the soil that treats you so well.”
Bhatti is among a small but growing segment of farmers across Pakistan and India pursuing “regenerative” farming techniques. It’s part of a global movement to make agriculture more sustainable by increasing soil health through cutting back on chemicals, adding organic material to soil, and diversifying plants and animals on the farm.
Experts see regenerative farming as a climate solution
Farmer Sultan Ahmed Bhatti’s first experiment of growing wheat on raised but measured beds on one acre of land was a runway success. “We produced more wheat than what we grew on ploughed, flat land,” he said. — Photo credit: Sukheki farms of Sultan Ahmed Bhatti
“Changing agricultural practices is the most straightforward way to benefit the planet’s health while ensuring food security in the long term,” said Francesco Carnevale Zampaolo, programme director at SRI-2030, a UK-based global organisation that promotes eco-friendly farming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance carbon sequestration.
Bio-agriculture scientist Dr Farooq-e-Azam, based in Faisalabad, Pakistan, has been promoting these methods since the early 1970s. He thinks that regenerative agriculture might be the key to addressing food insecurity and reducing intensive farming’s role in causing human-induced land degradation.
But there is no one-size-fits-all formula for transitioning to regenerative agriculture. It may require a different set of farming approaches depending on the soil type, weather conditions, and biodiversity. But generally, it means applying a range of techniques to restore the soil’s health.
These techniques include adding crop residue, composted manure, and natural rock minerals, says Azam, director of the Research and Development unit at US-based Bontera BioAg.
Illustration by Kulsum Ebrahim
Indian farmers turning to nature for solutions
The same is happening across the border, in India, too, where more farmers are shifting to a natural way of farming.
More than two decades ago, Samir Bordoloi quit his government job to become a farmer. Now, Bordoloi cultivates crops such as turmeric, jackfruit, papaya, and king chilies on nearly 12 acres of land in Sonapur, about 30km from Guwahati, a city in northeast India. The once-derelict ground that Bordoloi took on lease is a flourishing food forest today.
Bordoloi uses zero tillage and no pesticides or chemical fertilisers. Among other innovative techniques, Bordoloi scatters “seed bombs” on his land and lets them germinate naturally. For example, he plucks uniform sized ripened chillies and keeps them aside for seven days.
“Then we slice and take out their seeds and cover them with a mixture made of biochar, cow dung, and bamboo, which is then shaped into a ball.”
Is conventional farming sustainable?
Conventional farming in India and Pakistan has taken a toll on agricultural land. Around 30 per cent of the land in India is degraded, according to the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning. More than 50pc of India’s farmers are debt-ridden, according to the 2019 National Statistical Office, and often seek alternatives outside of agriculture, or tragically, take their own lives.
In Pakistan, almost three-fourths of the land is degraded, according to Pakistan’s climate change ministry.
“Droughts, floods, deforestation, overgrazing, monoculture farming, excessive tillage, and the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides are the most glaring causes of land degradation on both sides of the fence,” said Dr Aamer Irshad, head of programme at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, in Pakistan.
Dr Vinod K. Chaudhary, an associate professor of sociology at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India, who is also a farmer, said farming methods in both countries are unsustainable.
While researching sustainable farming, he came across videos on YouTube and Facebook put up by Asif Sharif, a progressive farmer from Pakpattan, across the border in Pakistan’s Punjab province. “I learned plants require moisture, not water, which was the most difficult to believe, as we farmers believe in inundation.”
He also learned that soil should be covered, not tilled. Chaudhary decided to try Sharif’s techniques and found they worked well. Now he encourages farmers in Indian Punjab and Haryana to try them.
“The soil resets itself with this kind of farming,” Chaudhary said.
Experimenting and finding solutions
Regenerative farmers are experimenting and spreading the word.
Mahmood Nawaz Shah, a third-generation progressive farmer with 600 acres of farmland in Tando Allah Yar district of Sindh province, Pakistan, has adopted regenerative agricultural techniques “through hit and trial and finding solutions” now for 25 years.
Shah controls fruit flies on his 45-acre mango orchards through pheromone traps and lets parasites that eat borers loose in the sugarcane field.
“This allows us to delay pesticide sprays as late as possible as well as increase the intervals between two sprays,” he explains.
Shah also uses farmyard manure from livestock, grows peas, cauliflower, and black cumin amid 145 acres of sugarcane crop, and adds mineral-rich silt to his land.
“It has all been a gradual and experimental process,” he says.
Dhaniram Chetia, a farmer in the village of Pengeri in Tinsukia, in India’s Assam state, found an innovative way to keep insects off his harvest: He grows papaya, tomatoes, and bananas on 30pc of his eight acres of land to feed the local birds.
“The birds eat the pests that would otherwise prey on my cash crops. I don’t need to use insecticides,” he says.
Bordoloi in Assam says elephants have helped in turmeric farming.
“Elephants stamp on our turmeric plants, cut out the thatch and consume the green elephant grass after the rains; we barely need any labour,” he added.
Heaps of highly nutritious farmyard manure and silt from the river are spread to enrich and stabilise the soil’s pH levels, says Mahmood Nawaz Shah. Photo credit: Mahmood Nawaz Shah/IPS
Sugarcane waste, which otherwise was often burned, causing greenhouse gas emissions, is used to nourish the soil at Mahmood Nawaz Shah’s (right) farm. Photo credit: Mahmood Nawaz Shah/IPS
Does regenerative agriculture live up to the hype?
It’s hard to find definitive data on regenerative agriculture. Organic farming data may come closest. India has up to 2.66 million hectares of agricultural land under organic farming, according to the The World of Organic Agriculture 2023 yearbook, which places India among “countries with the most organic producers” alongside Uganda and Ethiopia. However, the data given by India’s department of agriculture and farmers welfare puts natural farming at just 0.65m hectares.
In Pakistan, the area under naturally organic agriculture in the country is about 1.51m hectares, or about 6pc of all agricultural land, according to the Pakistan Organic Association (POA), while land certified to be cultivated organically is just 64,885 hectares. “The government has not realised the virtues of this kind of farming and there is a complete absence of government policies and practices, particularly for organic food regulations and certification,” pointed out Dr Hasan Ali Mughal, founder of POA.
Further, 10pc of the landlords in Pakistan own 52pc of the land, where they prefer to carry out mono-cropping of wheat and rice, said the FAO spokesperson, Irshad. He predicted that regenerative agriculture “cannot become mainstream in Pakistan” due to poor soil conditions.
But soil revival using solutions from nature takes time, says Mohammad Zaman, 47, a farmer from Tando Jan Mohammad of Pakistan’s Sindh province’s Mirpurkhas district. He met with some initial resistance from his father when he decided to adopt a more “natural” way of farming on their 30 acres of mango orchards in 2017. But he has, so far, spared his 400 or so mango trees from all kinds of insecticides, fungicides, and pesticides. “I sell online and I’ve realised there is a growing demand for chemical-free fruits among consumers,” he said.
Seven years later, he is most satisfied. “I could not have chosen a better path for farming,” he said, as the soil fertility is even better than when his father was farming. He also grows ber, or Indian jujube, following the same principles.
“My water application is reduced by 50pc as the dead and live mulch cover keeps the land moist,” said Zaman, who also grows sugarcane and bananas. “We broke the myth that sugarcane and bananas are water guzzlers,” he said. He, however, uses fertiliser on the banana crop “sparingly” but intends to wean it off in two years.
This was endorsed by Indira Singh, lead at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlement (IIHS), in Bengaluru.
“Getting soil rejuvenation may take a little more time, but eventually, as the soil microbiomes bloom, they will see change, which will lead to a sustainable solution,” she said.
The once derelict ground that Bordoloi took on lease is now a flourishing food forest today in Sonapur, about 30 km from Guwahati city in Assam, India. Photo credit: Sanskrita Bharadwaj/IPS
Looking for larger solutions
Graphic credit: IPS
Graphic credit: IPS
Some would like to see more government support for regenerative farming.
Shah, currently the president of the Sindh Abadgar Board, an organisation of agriculturists in Sindh, said farmers are not being prepared for adapting to climate change and are not provided with solutions to counter those challenges.
Islamabad-based Dr M. Azeem Khan, former chairman of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, agreed. The governments, he said, will need to modify existing farm equipment, build new ones, and make them available, as most small farmers cannot afford them. Further, the state will need to build the technical capacity of its extension workers, who can not only convince but also train farmers to give up their “old ways” and to let nature take its course.
“Seeing is believing; only then will farmers accept change,” Khan said.
Khan said cheaper electricity, like solar, surety to procure produce, provision of timely and subsidised inputs, repair and maintenance of farm machinery, and an effective advocacy system focusing on how to move towards regenerative and environment-friendly agricultural practices would help.
“At the outset, the change may be costly,” but it is possible, he said.
This article was originally published as a part of a cross-border reporting workshop organised by the US-based East-West Center on Inter Press Service and has been reproduced with permission.
Header image: Farmer Samir Bordoloi showing a tea bud as he stands amidst his tea shrubs. He cultivates various crops such as turmeric, jackfruit, papaya and king chilies on nearly 12 acres of land. Bordoloi calls himself a “compassionate farmer”, and believes in zero tillage, no pesticides and chemical fertilisers. Photo credit: Sanskrita Bharadwaj/IPS
Rescuers in Taiwan faced the threat of further landslides and rockfalls in their search on Friday for a dozen people still missing from this week’s earthquake, as the death toll rose to 12 and some of the stranded were brought to safety.
Searchers discovered two more bodies after Wednesday’s quake of magnitude 7.2 struck the sparsely populated, largely rural eastern county of Hualien, stranding hundreds in a national park as boulders barrelled down mountains, cutting off roads.
As some 50 aftershocks rattled the area overnight, some felt as far away as Taipei, rescuers said about 400 people cut off in a luxury hotel in the Taroko Gorge national park were safe, with helicopters ferrying out the injured and bringing supplies.
“Rain increases the risks of rockfalls and landslides, which are currently the biggest challenges,” said Su Yu-ming, the leader of a search team helping the rescue effort.
“These factors are unpredictable, which means we cannot confirm the number of days required for the search and rescue operations.”
Taiwan’s fire department said two bodies were found in the mountains, but did not immediately update the death toll. It put the number of missing at 18, three of them foreigners of Australian and Canadian nationality.
It dropped from the list of missing an Indian national whose inclusion it called a mistake, but did not elaborate.
A group of 50 hotel workers marooned on a road to the national park are now mostly safe.
“I am lucky to survive,” said David Chen, 63, a security manager at the hotel, after his rescue. “We were terrified when the earthquake first happened. We thought it was all over, all over, all over, because it was an earthquake, right?”
Rocks were still tumbling down nearby slopes as the group left, he added. “We had to navigate through the gaps between the falling rocks, with the rescue team out front.”
Chen’s 85-year-old mother wept in relief on being reunited with her son, as the family had not known for some time if he had survived.
“I was happy when he returned,” said the mother, Chen Lan-chih. “I didn’t sleep at all last night and couldn’t eat anything.”
The quake came a day before Taiwan began a long weekend holiday for the traditional tomb sweeping festival when people head to their homes to spruce up ancestral graves.
Many others visit tourist spots, like Hualien, famed for its rugged beauty, but the earthquake has crushed business, with many bookings cancelled, some businesses said.
“This is a disaster actually for us because no matter (whether) hotel, hostel, restaurants (everything) really depends on tourism,” said hostel owner Aga Syu, adding that her main concern was the well-being of guests.
“I hope this won’t destroy their image of Hualien.”
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes. More than 100 people were killed in a 2016 quake in its south, while one of magnitude 7.3 killed more than 2,000 in 1999.
LAHORE: An anti-terrorism court on Thursday granted post-arrest bail to 39 activists of the PTI in a case of attacking Lahore corps commander’s residence, also known as Jinnah House, during May 9 riots.
Judge Arshad Javed allowed the bail petitions of the jailed activists subject to furnishing of surety bonds of Rs100, 000.
Those granted bail include Shan Ali, Nadir Mahmood, Awais Ali, Yar Gul, Waqar Jamil, Zeeshan Butt, Kashif Khan, Awn Abbas, Naqeeb Ahmad, Riaz Ahmad and Tasawur Hussain.
Lawyers for the activists mainly argued that they had not committed any illegal act.
They said the police have failed to produce any evidence establishing charges against the petitioners. They said the investigation rather showed the petitioners were peaceful participants of a political march.
The counsel said the police levelled general accusations against the petitioners without attributing any specific role to them.
They further argued that the petitioners were not nominated in the FIR and police implicated them at a later stage without conducting identification parade of the suspects.
They pointed out that many suspects having similar roles had already been released on bail and, therefore, the rule of consistency was applicable to these petitioners also.
Sarwar Road police had registered FIR No 96 against PTI leaders and workers on charges of attacking and vandalising the Jinnah House during the May 9 violent protests which had erupted after the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan in a graft case by NAB from the Islamabad High Court.
Over the last two months, over 200 male and female activists of PTI have been granted bail in the Jinnah House attack by different trial courts.
Besides terrorism charges under Section 7 of the Anti-Tterrorism Act, 1997, various offences were added to the FIR.
I start with a simple premise that seems to have been forgotten during the intellectual gymnastics at play — judges should always be independent.
Our legal canon has led to the sacrifice of many trees to fill law books with pages exalting the independence of the judiciary, for independent judges are impartial, and impartial judges promote justice. Ergo: impartiality must always be safeguarded.
An incentive that undergirds such impartiality is a judge’s desire to avoid harsh consequences for the decisions they render. Threatening a judge with coercive measures may compel them to decide a particular case a particular way. If we accept the absurdly-simple premise I started with, such pressure is, obviously, undesirable for society, meriting an immediate response to curb the menace.
Not so simple
This is a simple enough notion, until it’s not, as shown by the polemics on the six Islamabad High Court Justices’ alarming description of interference in their judicial functions — allegations that should perturb every citizen, but which are being tactfully dismissed by framing the debate around the timing of the reveal. “Why now?” critics ask, when confronted with the shocking material in the Justices’ letter to the SJC. “Where was this courage when Justice Shaukat Siddiqui was targeted?” they ask, equally rhetorically, in response to praise meted to the Justices, for the latter’s attempt to stand by their oaths.
Those who read diligently, and enjoy craniums free of tinfoil hats, need only peruse paragraph six of the Justices’ letter to observe that their contentions did not originate overnight. It appears that, by May 3, 2023, both the Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court and the Chief Justice of Pakistan had been apprised of the Justices’ objections.
The letter details follow-up meetings. Nothing came of them, until the apex court took cognisance of the matter (more on this later).
Those deriding the Justices for not taking a stand for Justice Siddiqui, perhaps conveniently, ignore the fact that five of the six judges were not even on the bench in 2018. Information available on the subject does not show that any of the six opposed Justice Siddiqui’s cause, so any apathy to Justice Siddiqui’s plight cannot be inferred.
The situation, today, is materially different — five of these six Justices are no longer private persons, but constitutional office-holders, tasked with dispensing justice. This captures how the debate on timing only obfuscates the thornier issue — do we displace our preference for judicial impartiality, if we accept the premise that the Justices were not active enough in condemning what came before? Would one’s perception of the adequacy of their earlier response be the metric for determining whether the Justices may seek insulation from intimidation?
Surely not. We want judges to only be guided by their conscience and intellect when they issue verdicts. Therefore, an attack on their independence should elicit consternation, and not cynicism.
Plenty of reasons have been provided for the former, all rooted in the Justices’ inability to, individually, counter the invasion of their privacy or the torture of their loved ones. The law on contempt does not permit the Justices to initiate contempt proceedings where they are parties to the dispute; the law only permits the Justices to “refer” the matter to the chief justice, and this referral, by the Justices, did not bear fruit.
The code of conduct too does not prescribe a mechanism for reporting the executive’s meddling in the Justices’ sphere of operation.
Pen in a sword fight
When Justice Siddiqui spoke out, the SJC found him guilty of misconduct for breaching the same code; his six-year legal battle culminated only in “benefits and privileges of a retired Judge”. Justice Siddiqui’s exoneration did, however, demonstrate the extent of executive intrusion in the judiciary’s affairs, reaching the point where a nation-wide reckoning within the institution is necessary to formulate a coherent push-back strategy.
Armed only with the pen in a sword-fight with the executive, the Justices, recognising their limitations, now seek such “institutional consultation” among their brethren.
Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani agreed with this approach, opting to recuse himself from the prime minister’s one-man inquiry commission; safeguarding his legacy in the process, he posits that the matter is best left to the SJC or the Supreme Court.
With the one-man inquiry commission having lost its only man, the committee constituted under Section 3 of the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023, ended up agreeing with Justice Jillani. Out came the notification that the Supreme Court is taking suo motu notice of the matter, leading to the first hearing on Wednesday, April 3.
The high courts’ inability to immunise against executive overreach, naturally, trickles down to the lower courts, where judges are more susceptible than their high court counterparts. This vulnerability affects litigants throughout the system, which should concern us.
Impressive though the Justices’ crusade to uphold their oath has been, being forced to fight this fight at all should concern us. And the fact that — even when truth is being spoken to power — some of us have conveniently forgotten first principles, regardless of how intuitive these principles may be, should concern us.
Some of these concerns appear to have registered with the Supreme Court. Wednesday’s hearing contained multiple references to the “independence of the judiciary” and the need to determine “the way forward”, for which a full bench of the court may hear the rest of the case.
During the hearing, the CJP poignantly remarked that the proceedings would prompt listeners to open law books and read them carefully enough. Solely dusting off the treatises, however, may not be enough; as plenty quote, “justice must not only be done, but should also be seen to be done”.
ISLAMABAD: Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence has claimed that nearly 10 million devices fell victim to data-stealing worldwide in 2023.
According to Kaspersky’s data, 443,000 websites worldwide have experienced compromised credentials in the past five years. The .com domain leads to compromised accounts; nearly 326 million logins and passwords for websites on this domain were compromised in 2023. While the compromised accounts of .pk domain in Pakistan reached 2.4 million.
According to a statement, the latest reports on data stealing show a 643 percent increase over the past three years.
“The actual number of infections is likely to be even higher than 10 million. According to Kaspersky’s assessment of info-stealer log-file dynamics, the number of infections that occurred in 2023 is projected to reach roughly 16,000,000,” it stated.
With cybercriminals pilfering an average of 50.9 login credentials per infected device, the threat posed by data-stealers is growing for both consumers and businesses. In light of this growing threat, Kaspersky has launched a dedicated web page to raise awareness of the issue and provide strategies for mitigating associated risks.
Threat actors either utilise these credentials for their own purposes, including perpetrating cyberattacks, or sell or distribute them freely on dark web forums and shadow Telegram channels.
These credentials may encompass logins for social media, online banking services, crypto wallets, and various corporate online services, such as email and internal systems.
“The dark-web value of log files with login credentials varies depending on the data’s appeal and the way it’s sold there. Credentials may be sold through a subscription service with regular uploads, a so-called ‘aggregator’ for specific requests, or via a’shop’ selling recently acquired login credentials exclusively to selected buyers.
Prices typically begin at $10 per log file in these shops. This highlights how crucial it is for both individuals and companies—especially those handling large online user communities—to stay alert.
Leaked credentials carry a major threat, enabling cybercriminals to execute various attacks such as unauthorised access for theft, social engineering, or impersonation,” says Hafeez Rahman, technical group manager at Kaspersky.
To guard against data theft, individuals have been advised to use a comprehensive security solution for any device.
PHUKET: China’s Olympic gold medallist Zhihui Hou broke her own snatch world record at weightlifting’s World Cup in Phuket on Monday, before North Korean Ri Song-Gum equalled it and won the women’s 49kg competition by earning a new record total.
Hou, who lifted 96kg in the snatch in July 2021 to win gold in Tokyo, lifted 97kg to take the lead at the World Cup, before Ri matched her effort.
Ri lifted 124kg in clean and jerk to earn a total of 221, a new world record in the weight category, while Hou lifted 120kg and finished second with a total of 217.
Hou qualified for this year’s Olympics as the best performing Chinese athlete.
Ri is not eligible for the Paris Games because North Korea entered the qualifying programme too late, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said in a statement.
Ri, who also holds the current world record in clean and jerk having lifted 125kg at the Asian Championships in February, attempted unsuccessfully to lift 126kg.
MOSCOW: Russia accused International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach on Tuesday of taking part in a “conspiracy” with Ukraine to exclude its strongest athletes from this year’s Paris Games.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made the allegation after two Russian pranksters known as Vovan and Lexus published a recording of a conversation with Bach in which he was falsely led to believe he was speaking to an African sports official.
Bach said in the call that the IOC had established a special panel to monitor the media and the internet and ensure that Russian athletes who had made political statements in support of their government could not take part in the Olympics.
“We have also offered to the Ukrainian side — not only offered, but asked them — to provide us with their knowledge of the behaviour of such [Russian] athletes or officials,” Bach could be heard saying in English on the recording.
Zakharova posted on Telegram that Bach had “entered into a political-administrative and, apparently, criminal conspiracy with one specific party” — meaning Ukraine — “to exclude strong sports competitors from international competitions”.
She added: “The relationship of IOC president Bach with the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and its officials, and the admissions of a ‘request to monitor Russian athletes’ should be the subject of a thorough investigation.”
Relations between Russia and the IOC have worsened sharply in the run-up to the Olympics, at which Russian and Belarusian athletes will compete as neutrals, without their flags and anthems, because of the war in Ukraine. They have also been banned from taking part in the opening parade.
Pre-empting the publication of the prank call, the IOC said last month that Bach had been the victim of a hoax.
The IOC has publicly announced the establishment of a review panel to evaluate the eligibility of every Russian or Belarusian athlete who qualifies for Paris. In order to be cleared to compete, athletes must not have actively supported the war in Ukraine and must not be contracted to any military or security agency.
As part of reforms urged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Privatisation Commission said on Tuesday that it was putting on the block a stake ranging from 51 per cent to 100pc of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
The disposal of the flag carrier is a step past elected governments have steered away from as likely to be highly unpopular, but progress on the privatisation will help pursue further funding talks with the IMF.
In a newspaper advertisement, the panel set a deadline of May 3 to receive statements of interest in PIA, which has piled up arrears of hundreds of billions of rupees, and it appointed EY Consulting as the financial adviser for the deal.
“The restructured PIA is being offered to potential investors in its ‘debt-lite’ new structure for a 51pc-plus stake,” the Privatisation Commission said in a website presentation.
The panel aimed to sign a share price deal by June 24, after completing all steps in the transaction, it added. “The restructured PIA provides an opportunity to invest in a a full-service airline.”
PIA’s 23pc share of Pakistan’s aviation market is the biggest, and the airline could grow further to exceed historic levels of 30pc, the panel said.
With a fleet of 34 aircraft comprising 17 Airbus A320s, 12 Boeing B777s and 5 ATRs, the airline loses traffic to Middle Eastern carriers, who have a market share of 60pc, because of an absence of direct flights to destinations.
The carrier has air service pacts with 87 countries, and landing slots at key destinations such as London Heathrow.
Restructuring
The re-organisation of the business will separate the aviation-related aspects from non-core components, so freeing the operating subsidiary of a large portion of legacy debt.
The restructuring will move out 603 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) of liabilities, leaving 203 billion ($730 million) on the balance sheet for the acquired business.
The presentation added that PIA broke even at earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation, and restructuring or rent costs (EBITDAR) level in 2023, which the panel projected to continue in 2024.
Besides the losses and debt, however, global aviation regulators have questioned PIA’s governance and safety standards for some years.
In 2020, after a PIA plane crash in Karachi killed nearly 100, followed by a fake pilot license scandal, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) banned the airline from its most lucrative routes in Europe and Britain.
The ban continues, costing the airline annual revenue of nearly Rs40 billion.
“PIA plans to restore its network, starting routes into the United Kingdom, Western Europe and the United States,” read the investment presentation.
Privatisation and the IMF
The offer of the stake, which carries management control, follows the agreement to implement fiscal discipline plans with the IMF, from which it secured a $3-billion bailout in June.
The government is now looking to start talks with the lender for a medium-term programme key to shoring up an economy bedevilled by high inflation, low reserves of foreign exchange and high external financing needs.
The IMF wants reforms to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that more clearly define ownership and government roles.
Shares of the airline dropped 7.5pc in intraday trade to hit the lower limit, after soaring more than 403pc in the last six months.
A 12-year-old opened fire on Tuesday at a school outside the Finnish capital Helsinki injuring three other children, police said, adding that the attacker was in custody.
The school in Vantaa has around 800 pupils and 90 staff. Children in grades one to nine, or aged seven to 15, attend the school.
“There are people injured in the shooting incident”, police said shortly after 10am (7am GMT).
Police were alerted to the scene at 9:08am and later specified that the suspect and the injured were all 12 years old.
The city of Vantaa’s crisis group was activated following the shooting, local media reported. Images from the scene showed a large number of police at the school.
Police officers talk to family members of pupils at the Viertola comprehensive school in Vantaa, Finland on April 2. — Reuters
In an update around 11:30am, police said the suspect, who was carrying a gun at the time, had been arrested in an area of Helsinki in a “calm manner”. Parents of pupils attending the school told the media that the shooting had occurred in a classroom.
Police urged the public to stay away from the area and remain indoors. “Do not open the door to strangers,” they said in a statement.
Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said in a post on X that the day had started in a “shocking way”.
“I can only imagine the pain and worry that many families are experiencing at the moment,” she said.
Nine children were killed in a blast in southeastern Afghanistan caused by a landmine, laid during the country’s decades of conflict, a provincial official said on Monday.
The mine went off as a group of young boys and girls were playing with it in the Geru district of Ghazni province on Sunday, said the provincial head of the information and culture department, Hamidullah Nisar.
“An unexploded mine left over from the time of the Russian invasion went off when they were playing with it,” Nisar told AFP. “Unfortunately, it killed nine children.”
Ghazni police said the children — five girls and four boys — were aged from four to ten years old.
Swathes of Afghanistan are littered with unexploded mines, grenades and mortars from decades of conflict, spanning from the Soviet invasion in 1979, the civil war that followed, and the 20-year Taliban insurgency against foreign-backed governments.
Violence has reduced dramatically since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, ending their insurgency.
Unexploded ordnance and mines, however, still claim lives regularly, with the International Committee of the Red Cross saying children are the main victims.
Also on Sunday, another child died and five other people were wounded when unexploded ordnance went off in Herat province, local police said on social media platform X.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan conceded defeat on Sunday in the country’s local elections, saying the vote was a “turning point” for his party after two decades in power.
Partial results from across the nation of 85 million people showed major advances for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) at the expense of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Istanbul’s mayor, the opposition’s Ekrem Imamoglu, claimed re-election with nearly all ballot boxes opened, telling a euphoric crowd of supporters: “Tomorrow is a new spring day for our country.”
Final results are expected to be released on Monday (today) by the country’s electoral commission.
Erdogan, 70, had launched an all-out personal campaign to win back Istanbul, the economic powerhouse where he was once mayor. Rampant inflation and an economic crisis have, however, hit confidence in the ruling party.
Large crowds filled the square outside the opposition party’s Istanbul city headquarters waving Turkish flags and lighting torches to celebrate the result.
After casting his vote, Imamoglu emerged to applause and chants of “Everything will be fine”, the slogan he used when he first took the city hall from the AKP in 2019.
The 52-year-old is increasingly seen as the biggest rival to Erdogan’s AKP ahead of the next presidential election in 2028.
In Ankara, mayor Mansur Yavas — also of the CHP — claimed victory in front of large crowds of supporters, declaring “the elections are over, we will continue to serve Ankara”.
“Those who have been ignored have sent a clear message to those who rule this country,” he added.
Yavas led with 58.6 per cent of the vote to 33.5pc for his AKP opponent, with 46.4pc of ballot boxes opened.
Opposition supporters celebrated victory in Izmir, Turkiye’s third-largest city, as well as in the southern city of Antalya.
Some AKP stronghold towns were at risk of being lost, results indicated. “Voters have chosen to change the face of Turkiye,” said CHP chairman Ozgur Ozel as the results emerged.
“They want to open the door to a new political climate in our country.”
‘Respect the decision’
Erdogan acknowledged the electoral setback in a speech to supporters at the headquarters of his party.
“Unfortunately, we have not obtained the results that we wanted,” he told a subdued crowd.
“We will of course respect the decision of the nation. We will avoid being stubborn, acting against the national will and questioning the power of the nation,” he added.
Erdogan has been president since 2014 and won a new term in May last year.
He had called Istanbul the national “treasure” when launching his campaign to retake the city.
But while he dominated the campaign, his personal role did not help overcome the widespread concerns over the country’s economy.
“Everyone is worried about the day-to-day,” said 43-year-old Istanbul resident Guler Kaya as she voted.
“The crisis is swallowing up the middle class. We have had to change all our habits,” she said. “If Erdogan wins, it will get even worse”.
Although opposition parties had been fractured ahead of the poll, analysts predicted a stormy political future for the AKP and its allies.
Berk Esen, an academic at Sabanci University, said that the CHP had pulled off “the biggest election defeat of Erdogan’s career”.
“Despite an uneven playing field, government candidates have lost even in conservative strongholds. This is the CHP’s best results since the 1977 elections,” Esen said on his social media account.
Unrest in southeast
“Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkiye,” Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.
The election was held with the country reeling from an inflation rate of 67pc and having seen the lira currency slide from 19 to a dollar to 32 to a dollar in one year.
Clashes were reported in Turkiye’s Kurdish-majority southeast, leaving one dead and 12 wounded, a local official told AFP.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party said it had identified irregularities “in almost all the Kurdish provinces”, in particular through suspicious cases of proxy voting. Observers from France were refused access to a polling station in the region, according to the lawyers’ association MLSA.
About 61 million people were eligible to vote for mayors across Turkiye’s 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.
Last week, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb reported “very good progress” on privatising loss-making Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and outsourcing three airports.
Meanwhile, the Privatisation Commission of Pakistan is reportedly busy devising a new three-phase strategy to privatise state-owned entities (SOEs), barring those considered of national or strategic importance.
The current privatisation list focuses on loss-making public enterprises and prioritises entities like PIA and power distribution companies to reduce the government’s involvement and haemorrhage of taxpayers’ money.
The massive annual losses of Rs500 billion incurred by the SOEs, which form a part of growing public expenditure, have become a major drag on the national budget, with their accumulated losses topping Rs2.5 trillion or nearly $9bn. Moreover, the financial burden of these resource-guzzlers, apart from haemorrhaging government budgets, has also become a source of systemic risk for the financial sector.
‘Haste can do more damage than good, with the risk of oscillating towards creating a private sector monopoly in lieu of a public sector’
The World Bank has pointed out in a report that the profitability of SOEs in Pakistan had been declining and turning into losses for about a decade. Things have come to a stage now where “the profitability of Pakistan’s federal SOEs is the lowest in the South Asian Region” as their aggregate profit at 0.8 per cent of GDP in 2014 turned into losses worth 0.4pc of GDP in 2020 and, growing, thus becoming a major driver of fiscal deficit and source of substantial fiscal risk.
But successive governments, despite being cash-strapped, have gladly bankrolled these SOEs with borrowed money. However, many believe that with little easy money available to continue financing their losses through borrowings, the government has no option but to eliminate them.
The current privatisation initiative, undertaken under the army-backed Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), aims to sell shares of certain public assets to investors from friendly Gulf countries.
The authorities expect a massive investment of more than $50bn from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia alone over the next five years. So far, however, only a fraction of the investment has been made by investors from these two countries in Karachi Port and a private oil marketing company.
Privatisation of loss-making public entities and improvements in the governance of others are also major goals of the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue loan as part of structural reforms. They will also be major conditions of the next medium-term bailout Pakistan is seeking from the lender of last resort. According to reports, the IMF wants early privatisation of PIA, Pakistan Steel Mills, RLNG power plants, and electricity distribution companies.
According to Muslim Commercial Bank Limited chairman Mian Mohammad Mansha and former State Bank of Pakistan Governor Shahid Kardar, successive regimes have overstretched the mandate of the Pakistani state, burning huge holes in its budget.
“This has resulted in its inability to perform, efficiently and effectively, what should be its core functions — security of life and property of its citizenry, and provide justice and some basic social services, responsibilities that it must pay for and provide.
“This private behaviour is rational since these choices are being made based on service quality. But they resist privatisation because there would be reduced opportunities for ‘patronage’ [an appropriate all-embracing term in our context] or earnings as fees or junket trips as directors of these publicly owned entities,” they have argued in a joint op-ed for this paper.
Pakistan started privatisation of the state-owned enterprises in the late 1980s under the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) when the first Benazir Bhutto government offloaded 15pc shares of PIA through the stock exchange. The privatisation transactions have returned a gross value of Rs650bn (approximately $2.36bn) to the government during the last three decades.
In addition, it has saved recurring losses of billions of rupees per annum and brought in efficiency and profitability in several privatised SOEs, if not all of them.
The privatisation of banks, the telecom industry, and electronic media is often underlined as huge success stories that must encourage policymakers to disinvest the remaining SOEs to save taxpayers’ money, improve efficiency, create more market competition, and encourage greater private sector investment and participation in the economy.
However, people like former investment minister Haroon Sharif think the government must decide as to why it wants to privatise SOEs. “Before heading into privatisation, the government and SIFC should clearly state and communicate the reasons for their decision to choose this path.
“Do they want to get rid of loss-making entities because they can’t manage them? Or have they determined, in principle, that it is not the government’s job to run these businesses? There is a difference between the two,” Mr Sharif told Dawn.
“They must spell out a clear-cut policy. Otherwise, these transactions would not only not fetch the desired revenues but also risk ending up in litigation [as has happened in the past in many cases],” he concluded.
He is of the view that privatisation is only one tool to transfer management to private investors — it has produced mixed results in different countries. “There are other solutions as well to invite private participation in the management of SOEs without the typical sale of shares, whether it be concessions, franchise or management contract.
“The authorities must consult widely and involve professionals to make the process a success. The ultimate goal should be to stop the bleeding of public money.”
The World Bank has also raised concerns over Pakistan’s approach to privatising its SOEs. The bank has identified economic volatility, judicial activism and resistance from trade unions, litigation, fears of monopoly creations, weak political commitment, and perceptions of corruption cost post-2007 as key factors leading to unsuccessful privatisation efforts.
In its Public Expenditure Review 2023, the lender cautioned the government of looming litigation in divestments to foreign states under government-to-government contracts and instead advised public offerings through stock exchanges followed by privatisation under the transparent oversight of a special joint committee of the parliament.
“Such a move (under government-to-government contracts) could lead to litigation, raise questions about transparency and full disclosure and may slow down the privatisation process further.
“Judicial decisions in the Pakistan Steel Mills privatisation and Reko Diq mining contract cases badly hurt Pakistan’s image as an untrustworthy country where international contracts are not honoured, and businesses always run the risk of falling victim,” the Bank said.
It has also advised revamping the privatisation commission by staffing it “with able professionals who can prepare a financial model for each entity to be privatised” and ensuring that privatisation promotes efficiency and competition in the economy.
Zafar Masud, the president/CEO of the Bank of Punjab, believes that sustainable growth is impossible without a thriving private sector, for which the starting point is a Private-Public Partnership (PPP). He also cautions that privatisation — awarding concessions or ownership transfer— must be undertaken with extreme care.
“While it’s an absolute must, its pursuit in haste can do more damage than good, with the risk of oscillating towards creating a private sector monopoly in lieu of a public sector. Therefore, we need to do at least two things before we embark on privatisation. Firstly, regulators should be made independent and stronger, with the appointment of top professionals on merit and on market terms to protect people.
“Secondly, transaction structure and selection criteria of successful private parties shall be such that it would promote competition and have a broader view of long-term economic prosperity rather than myopic bottom-line approach. Investors with a private equity mindset, backgrounds, for example, shall be discouraged and prohibited,” he told this correspondent.
However, the authorities have decided to move ahead with their privatisation plans, and it is amply clear that progress will remain chaotic at best without extensive reforms and greater transparency.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 1st, 2024
