The difference between Pakistan's Generals and Politicians

There is a widely held belief among the general public in Pakistan that the army is the ultimate arbiter of what happens in Pakistani politics. It is thought, for example, that most election results are predetermined by the 'agencies' - an oblique reference to the secret service apparatus of the Pakistani defense establishment. The agencies decide who will win and who will lose. And important government decisions especially those related to foreign policy and internal security cannot be made without the army's tacit consent or approval.

Does the army indeed exercise this level of control over Pakistani politics? It is difficult to affirm or refute this with any reasonable level of confidence. But the more interesting question, and one that perhaps can be answered, is: Why would the army want to interfere?

To understand this one has to understand two sets of people: Those who run the army - the generals. And those who run the civilian administration - the politicians. Politicians first: This is a motley set. They include feudal landlords, hereditary 'pirs'- the descendants of long deceased holy men, urban mafiosi, and a spattering of mullahs. This whole set is not usually associated, in the public eye, with integrity, honesty, decency, competence or for that matter patriotism.

The army on the other hand recruits its soldiers from across the social spectrum. The selection process - especially for the officer corps - is competitive and demanding. Only the best survive. In some sense the army is a complete meritocracy - it is 'up or out'. If you meet the cut you are promoted to the next rank. If you do not you retire. Hence those who run the army - the top generals - get to where they are on the basis of their merit and competence. Remember also that the army inculcates patriotism in all its soldiers - enlisted men and officers. The message that their raison détre is to defend Pakistan to the last breath is hammered into their minds again and again. In the end, whatever else you say about these men, you cannot say that they are not patriotic.

So on the civilian side, running the country, you have a set of politicians of dubious competence and integrity who get to where they are because of inherited privilege or deception, or coercion, or other even less savoury methods.  Ask the general public what they think of their politicians' patriotism and the response, stripped of expletives, would be that they will happily sell a close family member for a foreign passport.

On the other side, running the army, are a group of generals who have come up through the ranks based on their competence and professionalism. And etched in their conscience, by virtue of their training, is the paramount importance of protecting Pakistan from any perceived threats.

Now back to the question of why the army would want to interfere in politics: The generals, professional and competent patriots, do not trust the politicians, people of questionable competence, integrity and sincerity, to be faithful to the country. They believe, perhaps not without reason, that if these politicians are left to their own devices they would pose a real and present threat to the integrity and security of Pakistan. And since direct interference for the army is not an option they resort to other means - the agencies - to keep the politicians from doing too much damage.

This is clearly a dysfunctional way to run a democratic country. The politicians should be running the country with the generals focusing exclusively on the army. Running a six hundred thousand man army is difficult enough without the added involvement of keeping a set of dubious politicians in check. The generals would be happy to focus on their own domain and leave the running of the country to elected representatives of the people. But they will not do this until they have confidence that the peoples representatives have the integrity, competence, experience and sincerity to do so.

So we as a country need to try harder to bring into politics people who do have the qualities needed for national leadership. And once we succeed in doing this the army, reassured that the country is in safe hands, will no longer need to be involved in minding the minders.

The end of free market Capitalism

There is turmoil in the World.  A global cyclone, unprecedented in human experience, is gaining momentum.  By the time it has run its course, it will have blown away the seemingly rock solid ideological foundations that have underpinned the modern period.

John Maynard Keynes put it best: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” 

The theories and ideas that rule the world today run the gamut from Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', through David Ricardo's concepts of equilibrium to, efficient markets, free trade, perfect information, development, privatization, growth, risk, reward and, volatility, to more arcane concepts such as the Black Scholes model for equity pricing.  This 'ideological capital', if you will, is the theoretical bedrock on which the economies of the modern world are built.

The brilliant men and women - such as Keynes himself - who created this 'capital' suffered from no illusion.  They knew that theories are only as good as the premises on which they are based.  Change the premises or, prove them invalid, and the most elegant theory collapses into a pile of sand.  The 'creators' knew this, and had their ideological capital remained in their domain, there would have been no problem.  But it escaped to the grubby little hands of "practical men".  These are politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats, bankers, stock brokers and their ilk who mistook a carefully nuanced and elaborately conditioned set of ideas for gospel. 

And so there emerged a set of 'truths', unimpeachable, axiomatic, and universal in their application.  Privatization was good, government ownership bad.  Subsidies and trade barriers were bad.  Unfettered markets were good. To seek eternal growth -in willful ignorance of the inevitability of the law of geometric progressions - was good.   This is the 'bedrock' on which the modern economic order is built.  Could it be that the bedrock is in fact quicksand?

It is starting increasingly to look that way.  That things are not well in the world is clear. Climate change, skyrocketing oil prices, food shortages, rising poverty, and an increasing disparity between those who have and those who do not, all bear witness to a sad, but inevitable truth.  The ideological sub structure that supports the global economic order - congenitally compromised as it were - is starting to buckle.

Look carefully at this 'structure' and you will notice that it's linchpin is the premise that unabated, eternal economic growth is both possible and desirable. Never mind that the Earth is a closed, finite system with limited resources and - at best - a marginal capacity for abuse.  Point this out to Keynes' "practical men" and they will roll their eyes in amazement and disdain.  "Technology", they will say, "Have you not heard of technology - stupid?"  The implication is that technology will always be there - like a magic wand - to bail humanity out of its excesses.

 A Broken Wand

Technology, regrettably, has been overrated.  There is evidence that it may well be starting to reach limits of its own.  In some areas these limits were reached years or decades ago.  Witness space travel:  It takes the greatest nation on Earth, working at the outside edge of its abilities, with its best minds and resources, to put a few people in low Earth orbit for a few days. 

And how do these 'conquerors' of space ride into orbit? On 'technology' developed by the Chinese millennia ago.  For all its sophistication, the space shuttle remains a large Roman Candle, powered by the the same principles that to this day lift fireworks into the air.  More 'sophisticated' systems - ion propulsion for example - have been mooted.  Nothing much has come of these.  Lighting a fire under a rocket remains the only way to make it to space.

Or take air travel.  It took about half century for aeroplanes to go from a speed of about 10km per hour, achieved by the Wright Brothers biplane which took to the air at Kitty Hawk in 1903, to speeds of 900 km per hour achieved by jetliners such as the Boeing 707 and DC 8 that started to see service in the late 1950's.

A little more than half a century separates us from the flight of the first Boeing 707, and yet, all passenger airliners in service today still fly at about the same speed as the 707.  Yes, the innards of these new airliners have changed dramatically.  Hydraulics and cables have been replaced by computers, motors and wires.  Engines have seen dramatic improvements in efficiency due to improved metallurgy and computer aided design.  But the planes still travel at the same subsonic speeds, using the same fuel as their predecessors.

The technology to push aeroplanes to supersonic speeds has existed for more than half a century.  Yet it remains the domain - for reasons of cost and practicality - of military aircraft.

Even electronics is starting to push up against physical limits.  Gordon Moore - a founder of Intel - wrote in a paper published in 1965 that the number of transistors that could be placed on a semiconductor would grow exponentially, roughly doubling every two years.  Moore's law has turned out to be remarkably prescient.  Transistor counts have indeed doubled every two years over the past 4 decades or so.  But, as with all things physical, limits are eventually reached.  Miniaturization in printed circuits has reduced conductor widths to the extent that they are now measured on an atomic scale.  It is unlikely that Moore's law will hold for the future as it has for the past.  Conventional silicon based computing will no longer see breathtaking advances in computation speed.  There is talk of shifting to other materials, or relying exclusively on optics, or on 'biological' computing.  But all of this remains - like power through fusion - a mirage, tantalizingly close but magically evanescent.

James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 discovered, in Crick's words, 'the secret of life'.  And, for a while, it seemed like they had.  What they had discovered was the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid - DNA.  This molecule - an elegantly simple 'double helix' - resides at the center of all living cells.  'Encoded' in the double helix is the entire genome of the creature to whom the cell belongs.  This means, theoretically, that it if one had a single cell of any creature - living or dead - it should be possible to 'reconstruct' an exact replica of that creature.  And indeed, this was the sort of dream that scientists dreamed. 

But, it was not until several decades later, when the 'tools' became available to manipulate DNA, that the true power of Watson and Crick's discovery was unleashed. Biotechnology was born.  Scientists started to 'read' the double helix, to cut and paste it, and to 'unzip' it.  In doing so they were able to come up with some marvelous discoveries and drugs.  But even here, the initial excitement at discovering 'the secret of life' has given way to a realization that things are much more complicated than they seem.  Great expectations of cures to debilitating and fatal diseases have not materialized.  Read the literature on cutting edge research in biotechnology - such as is published in journals such as "Nature" - and you will be struck by the number of times the phrase "is not understood" appears.  Nature, it seems, has secrets it will not reveal.

One could go on.  But the point has been made.  Technology is not magic, and it will not save us.

The End of Oil

The modern world is defined by energy. Energy, or rather its ample supply, has shaped the way we live and work.  Most modern cities are designed so that people live on the outskirts and commute to their places of work.  Low energy costs - the cost of petrol and diesel - make commuting possible. 

Buildings and homes are built to be 'sealed' from the outdoors.  Energy is used to cool or heat them to a comfortable temperature.  It seems the architects of these structures - people of imagination and creativity -  do not imagine a day when the power will run out.  Particularly amazing are the gleaming new cities of the Arabian Gulf.  Cut the power cord to these cities and their homes and buildings will become tombs.  Could it be that the Burj al Arab and the Burj Khalifa will be the 'pyramids' of the next millennium?  Visitors to these barren, windswept ruins will be amazed that people actually lived here once.

Yes, a world without energy, or at least, without the ample availability that we are accustomed to, will be a very different place.  Cities will need to be redesigned to house people closer to their places of work.  Mass transit systems - a combination of rail and bus - will replace the car as the primary mode of urban transport.  The cities of the future will look very different from the cities of today.

There is much talk, now that oil is running out, of alternative energy sources.  Wind, waves, and the Sun are all mooted as sources of alternative power.  Of these the only one that shows real promise is solar power. Sharp declines in the cost of solar panels over the years have rendered it a viable alternative at least for household use. But none have the potential to substantially replace the power now provided by fossil fuels.

Not too much needs to be said of bio fuels.  They were tried and quickly discarded as a serious alternative.  One can do without energy but not without food.

In the heady days of the 60's nuclear fission reactors were heralded as sources of limitless power.  And this they were, and are.  The problem is that the spent 'fuel' is so dangerously radioactive that no one has yet figured out how to dispose of it.  And it does not help that its half life - a measure of the time it takes for the radioactivity to decay - runs into the millions of years.

There was also much talk, again in those heady days, of the imminence of thermonuclear energy from fusion reactors.  These marvelous reactors would produce tremendous amounts of power without any radioactive waste.  This is the mirage I referred to earlier.  It turns out that the extreme temperatures needed to achieve fusion, lead to issues of 'containment' that remain beyond our reach.  And one does not have to be a scientist to appreciate that for at least the rest of this century, or even this millennium, the only controlled thermonuclear reaction taking place in our universe will be in the engines of the starship Enterprise.

So where does this leave us?  Make no mistake, despite the recent addition to recoverable reserves due to the advent of fracking technology, oil and gas will run out.

Coal still remains in some abundance.  It will become the primary source of the world's power.  We have come full circle: The industrial revolution started with the power of steam engines fired by coal.

But coal is dirty, much dirtier than oil.  And you cannot, at least not yet, pump it into the petrol tank of your car. The technology to burn it cleanly has received new impetus from the skyrocketing prices of oil.  But even when burnt 'cleanly', to the extent that this is possible, it will still produce large amounts of that quintessential, planet warming, greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide.  There is talk even of addressing this issue by 'sequestering' the carbon dioxide in large underground reservoirs.  This may or may not be feasible.

No matter which way you look at this issue, the upshot is that energy, in the future, will be scarce and much more expensive than it has been in the past.

A Brave New World

Energy use, in general, is deemed to be measure of the level of development of countries.  It holds true that the developed countries have a much higher energy consumption per person of population (per capita) than developing countries.  As countries develop, and their standard of living improves the per capita consumption of energy rises as well.  In some sense, energy consumption is a proxy for a better quality of life.

The received wisdom in global development policy as enunciated by the likes of the UN and global development finance agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF is to raise the living standards of the developing world to those of the developed world.

The United States, with a population of 300 million people, consumes approximately 20 million barrels per day of crude oil.  This is about a quarter the total current world production of 80 million barrels per day.  China, by contrast, with a population of 1300 million people, consumes about 7 million barrels per day.  This means that U.S. per capita crude oil consumption is roughly 14 times that of China.

If the Chinese were to achieve the same living standards as the Americans then they would need to consume 91 million barrels of oil per day.  This is an increase of 84 million bpd over their present consumption.  It is also more than what the whole world produces today!  And we have not even mentioned India or the rest of the developing world.  Perform the same calculation for India and you would need another 77 million bpd. No wonder, then, that the current U.S. administration is falling over itself to give civilian nuclear technology to India.

Two deductions can be made.  First, the way in which the developed world now lives cannot be sustained.  It is living on borrowed time. Solutions of the nature now being proposed: conservation, offshore drilling, alternative energy sources, are useful.  But, in the end, will only serve to put off a day of ultimate reckoning.

And Second, the development model held up for the developing world to emulate is so seriously flawed as to merit being discarded completely. 

A Sustainable Model

Blinded - or perhaps intoxicated - by the dazzle of technology, modern man has recklessly discarded the wisdom of the past.  Wisdom accumulated over many millennia by countless generations is deemed old fashioned or irrelevant.  After all, do we not know better?  Are we not cleverer than all who have gone before us?  Have we not banished the diseases of the past?  Have we not improved the lives of many millions? Has our technology not given us the power to extend life, or maybe even to render death itself a delusion of the past?

Sadly, this soaring hubris has led modern man to believe that he, unlike his recent ancestors, is not subject to the laws of nature.  Yet, when the Sun rises tomorrow, not all who saw the last sunset will be there to greet it.  This has always been true, and it will always be true.

We abandon the values of the past at our extreme peril.  Any sustainable model for the future of humanity will involve a return to the principles that have guided civilization from the dawn of time.  These are the values of  frugality, modesty and humility.  They are rooted in the recognition that man is a visitor on this planet.  All of us stay a while, and then depart.  Our ancestors, regardless of race, religion or creed, understood this.  They sought to live in harmony with the Earth, recognizing that it was not theirs to do with as they pleased.

The overreaching ambition of today to consume and possess, beyond the limits of reason or need, or ability must be discarded.  This will mean changes that will ramify deep into the foundations of the world we have built.  No aspect of the way we live our lives will remain untouched.  The way cities are designed and built will change.  The basic premises on which Capitalism has operated will be reviewed.  The solitary focus on growth, profit and shareholder value will give way to a gentler corporate ethic focusing on the community, job stability, care for the environment, sustainability.  The financial services industry will change.  It will no longer be able to create buying power out of thin air.  The recent 'credit crunch' bears witness to these mindless excesses motivated by a strange mix of megalomania and avarice.

Governments will need to take back responsibilities they have thoughtlessly shed in the name of privatization, competitiveness and efficiency.  New models of economic output that seek to balance the urban - rural mix must be developed.  Jobs must move out of the cities to the countryside.  The world's - especially the third world's - cities, bursting at the seams, already places of filth, squalor and congestion, cannot take any more people.

Expectations will need to be managed.  Hollywood has pedaled the 'American Dream' to the whole world.  This 'dream' for many is already a nightmare.  The whole world, including America, needs to wake up.  A mansion in the suburbs, with a 4 car garage is just not going to be possible for most of the world's people. 

It is well beyond the scope of this paper, or indeed, the abilities of it's author, to suggest specific strategies that will be needed to steer mankind to safety.  That these strategies can be developed is not in doubt.  Especially since Mankind is not bereft of a guide to show the way; a guide, as sure as the North Star is to a desert traveller on a moonless night.  This is the wisdom of the ages.

Mustaqbil Pakistan 

My central concern as a Pakistani is Pakistan.  My colleagues and I have watched in anguish as our country descends slowly but surely into chaos.  We have decided that we can no longer be silent spectators to Pakistan's destruction.  This is why we are setting up a new political party called Mustaqbil Pakistan. 

This paper and the ideas expressed herein form the ideological basis for our new party and its policies.  You would not dream of building a physical structure without a foundation.  Similarly, an integrated set of strategies that seek a specific objective must be rooted in an ideological lattice made explicit to all.  If this lattice is not clearly defined then it becomes difficult to perceive the coherence, import or relevance of the strategies proposed.

The formulas that we have been spoon fed in the past by the likes of the World Bank, the IMF and their ilk will not save us.  Indeed, they may do more harm than good.  We have to find our own way forward.  This means that we have to think for ourselves, think 'outside the envelop', and discard any limiting preconceptions that cloud our ability to see our way forward. This is what Mustaqbil Pakistan will seek to do.

Note: This is an edited version of a piece written first in 2008

Imran of Hasu Balail

In the last three years, since Mustaqbil Pakistan was formed, I have traveled the length and breadth of the country. I am 56 years old. And during these last three years I have learned more about Pakistan and the suffering of its poor than I have in the previous 53. Nothing really shocks me anymore. Or at least I thought so, until last Friday.

As I walked out of a meeting in the impoverished village of Hasu Balail in Central Punjab, a little boy – who I'll call Imran - started to 'walk' with me. I noticed that he had a crutch and was able to use only one leg. He was 'walking' really fast. I caught up to him and asked him to stop. Here is my conversation with him:

'What happened to your leg?

...'I fell and broke it'

'When?'

...'One year ago'.

Surprised, I asked:'Why did you not go to a Doctor'.

Imran did not respond. But a village resident replied: His parents are poor and they cannot afford a Doctor.

I was astounded and ashamed. And I am still ashamed. Here is this little kid, whose leg has been broken for a whole year, walking around with a makeshift crutch because his parents cannot afford to take him to a Doctor. And here we are – affluent Pakistanis – sitting in our comfortable homes in Pakistan and further a field. We pamper our children, send them to the best schools money can buy, and get them the best healthcare possible. We socialize smugly at expensively catered dinner parties. We debate to no end the foibles of our incompetent and corrupt politicians. Yes, many of us do support NGO's and charities. And these are worthy pursuits. But they are not nearly enough.

The problem with Pakistan is that the best of our people – educated, competent, honest and decent - stay out of politics. And who can blame them? We know that politics in Pakistan is an unsavoury, dishonest, ruthless and dangerous business. It attracts the lowest of our low. And so we stay away. But there is a problem here. If the best of our people opt to stay out of politics then it is inevitable that ‘the lowest’ will occupy it. And they will run the country. Sadly, and devastatingly, for the Imran’s of Pakistan this is what has happened.

Those of us who think that setting up an NGO here, or supporting a charity there, absolves us of responsibility for the suffering of millions are wrong. No number of NGO’s or charities can do the job of a country’s government. It is tantamount to applying a bandage to a cancer patient. We must do more. We must reclaim the field of politics from the goons and thugs who now occupy it. This will not be easy. But sensible and responsible people do not do things because they are easy. They do them because they are right.

Imran is perhaps an especially egregious example of an appalling larger reality that we either do not know about or ignore. Those who have not been to Hasu Balail, or Peer Abdurahman, or Machiwal, or Keekarwala, or Rodu Sultan or Astana or thousands of other villages like these do not know the 'real' Pakistan. It is a place of hopelessness and despair. Millions of people live in unimaginable conditions at the edge of humanity. And they will stay there until we muster the courage and resolve to bring them ‘home’.

One Imran is one too many.

The real nemesis

The conviction of a Brigadier General for conspiring to set up an Islamic caliphate in Pakistan, and more recently the attack on an airbase by militants has led once again to speculation about the country’s stability and the threat it faces from extremist religious groups. Is the speculation justified? Do religious extremist groups really pose a threat to Pakistan’s stability?

Surprisingly, the real threat to Pakistan lurks not in the madrassas and the mosques but rather in chambers not usually thought of as treacherous. 

 It is indeed true that there are many extremist groups. And their violent methods make headlines around the world. But they pose no threat to Pakistan as a viable, stable, sovereign state. The fact of the matter is that these extremist groups enjoy no support at all amongst the masses. And such minimal support as they may have had is being lost as more and more innocent people fall victim to their often indiscriminate violence.

I know this because over the last two years I have campaigned across Pakistan. In remote impoverished rural areas I’ve talked to villagers and farmers. I’ve held corner meetings in sprawling urban slums and sipped tea with truck drivers at roadside cafes. I’ve addressed large rallies in the rumoured terrorist recruiting grounds of Southern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. And nowhere have I come across anyone who has expressed support for any of these groups or their actions.

The question that needs to be asked is: Can any group or groups that have virtually no support amongst the general population pose a threat to Pakistan? Yes, they can wreak havoc and spill blood, but in the end, without popular support, they cannot succeed.

Take the case of the Brigadier General. His conviction was for links - which he denied - with ‘extremist groups’. The ‘group’ in this case is widely thought to be the UK based Hizb ut Tahrir. The Hizb approaches influential people in society such as army officers, lawyers, bureaucrats with an intellectual argument that calls for the formation of a global caliphate. Their argument, however is riddled with inconsistency and most of these people are not impressed. I recently met a retired senior army officer in the Southern Punjab city of Bahawalpur who had been approached by the Hizb. He was dismissive in saying that they were not even able to answer some of his most basic questions.

The real threat to Pakistan resides not in the mosques and the madrassas but in the Houses of Parliament: Pakistan’s politicians are its nemesis. A strange confluence of history, fate, religion and culture has put people into Pakistan’s assemblies who are, generally speaking, corrupt, inept, and insincere. They do not have the capacity, the will or the desire to rule Pakistan. They are in politics solely to plunder an already impoverished people and enjoy the pomp and grandeur that go with high office. Witness, for example, the Swiss money laundering allegations against President Zardari which have led to the dismissal of one prime minister. Or the cases that now swirl around his new prime minister related to kickbacks on power rental contracts. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

It is this sad reality that is at the root of all, really, all of Pakistan's problems. Terrorism, economic collapse, sectarian violence, insurgencies, crime, and a host of other problems exist today because of the quality of those who run Pakistan.

Many people around the world are concerned about Pakistan. Societies and think tanks publish detailed reports prepared by smart, thoughtful and sincere people with a genuine interest in seeing change. There is a certain grim irony then in realizing that those who are the target audience for these reports - Pakistan’s politicians - do not have the ability or the desire to understand or implement them.

I am an optimist. And I know that Pakistan has a future. But those who care about it must now unite and bring a laser like focus to the central problem that it confronts: How to bring the best, the most competent and the most sincere of its people into politics?

Nadeem M Qureshi is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan

This article has been published previously in Khaleej Times

Could a Fukushima happen in Pakistan?

On a quiet Friday afternoon in March 2011 something was stirring in the Earth deep under the waters of the North Pacific Ocean. Unknown to people preparing for their weekend on the North Eastern coast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido they were about to be hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever to be recorded in human history.

What is now known as the Tohoku undersea megathrust earthquake struck at 2.15pm Japanese time. It’s hypocenter was 70 km off shore and it registered a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale. A few moments later a tsunami with wave heights reaching 100 feet washed ashore on the North Eastern coast of Hokkaido. The waters penetrated up to 10 km inland razing just about everything in their way. In a few minutes some 18,000 people had lost their lives.

But they were not the only casualties of that tragic day. At a nuclear power plant on the coast in Fukushima Prefecture the tsunami cut power to pumps supplying cooling water to the reactors and submerged backup emergency generators. With no cooling water the cores of 3 operating reactors overheated resulting in core meltdowns, explosions, and loss of radioactive containment. Radioactivity was released and continues to be released into the soil, air and water. A mandatory exclusion zone banning people from coming within 20 km of the plant remains in effect.

Three hundred tons of toxic highly radioactive water from the site continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean every day. The plant operator - Tokyo Electric Power Company - admitted recently that it has “lost control of Fukushima”. Radiation in the vicinity of the plant is so high that it would kill a human exposed to it in 4 hours.

The Fukushima incident is emblematic of the problem with nuclear power. A serious accident results in the release of radiation into the environment. And this is the good news. The real problem is that nuclear fuel and waste products generated in nuclear reactors remain radioactive from 10,000 to tens of millions of years. For example the half life - a measure of the rate of natural decay of radioactive materials - of the waste product Plutonium 239 is 24,000 years, and that of Neptunium 237 is two million years. When these waste products are released into the environment in an accident they are there to stay.

While the Fukushima accident was triggered by a natural disaster similar accidents have occurred at other nuclear plants as a result of human error or equipment failure. The most notable of these was the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 in the then Soviet Union. The reactor containment vessel exploded due to operator error. The environment was contaminated. Over the years 4000 people died of radiation induced cancer. The cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat were completely abandoned. A 30 km permanent exclusion zone remains in effect around the accident site. And it may well remain in effect for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Fukushima has had a chilling effect on the global nuclear power industry. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a physicist by training, understood immediately. Within days of the accident 8 of Germany’s 17 reactors were shut down permanently. The remaining 9 are all due to be closed by 2022. The Italian parliament voted to cancel all contracts awarded in the past few years to build nuclear power plants. Switzerland with 5 operating reactors announced that the reactors will continue to operate but “will not be replaced at the end of their life span”. Even China, with ambitious plans to build nuclear capacity suspended approvals for all new plants as it sought to review safety issues.

Pakistan, despite a few palliative statements of concern, seems unmoved. We have three operating nuclear power plants. One near Karachi at Paradise Point on the coast of the Arabian sea. And two at Chashma on the banks of the Indus River in Punjab. Disturbingly, two more reactors are under construction at Chashma and a third is planned. By the time the Chashma site reaches its planned capacity in 2020 it will have five operating reactors on the banks of the Indus River.

Imagine the consequences of a nuclear accident at Chashma: Contaminated radioactive water starts to leak into the Indus River. It is carried downstream to hundreds of cities and villages. Irrigation canals then carry it to most arable areas of the land. Within a few weeks much of livable Pakistan is contaminated.

Building the plants at all was a bad idea. But building them upstream on the Indus verges on suicidal negligence. If Japan, one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, is unable to cope with a nuclear accident, can we?

The plants at Chashma need to be shut down, and contracts for those being built cancelled. A disaster at Chashma will make our most intractable problem of today - terrorism - seem like a walk in the park.

Nadeem M. Qureshi is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan

As Linux stalks Windows poor countries will benefit

What do the International Space Station, the Czech Post Office, the French Parliament and the Turkish Government have in common? All have switched from using a proprietary Operating System (OS) on their computers to an ‘open source’ or free OS; or putting it simply: They have switched from Windows to a free OS called Linux. And they are not alone. A growing number of businesses, educational and scientific institutions, schools and governments are doing likewise. Why are they doing it? And what has all this got to do with Pakistan?

First some definitions: An OS is the software that manages the computer and its resources such as processors, storage, drives and the like. It plays host to the many programs called applications that people need for computers to be useful. Popular programs used for typing and editing documents, preparing spreadsheets and office presentations, and surfing the web would be useless without an OS. The OS provides the ‘operating environment’ for these programs to function so that you - the user - can do what you want to.

The most popular OS by far is Microsoft’s Windows. More than 90% of the world’s PCs run Windows. About 7% run Apple’s OS X. And just under 2% run Linux. But this is changing rapidly as people are beginning to discover the advantages of Linux. First, Linux is absolutely free. No need for a license. No need for a pirated copy. Second, it is just as easy to use. Third, in contrast to proprietary systems whose innards are known only to the companies that sell them, Linux is literally an open book. Anyone can see its innards - the programming or ‘source’ code which makes it tick - the reason it’s called ‘open source’. This means that it can’t do anything behind your back like send information about you to its makers without your knowing it. Useful in these post-Snowden days. And fourth, it is practically immune to viruses so no need for expensive and intrusive antivirus software.

Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds a computer engineer from Finland some 22 years ago. Since then an army of software programmers has worked to improve it and make it available for general use. As a result today there are several versions - or distributions as they are called - of Linux which can be downloaded readily and installed on personal computers. They have colourful names such as Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu and many more.

The last of these - Ubuntu - is perhaps the most popular. In fact, I am writing this article on a PC running Ubuntu which I downloaded and installed myself. People with relatively little computer savvy can download a distribution such as Ubuntu and install and run it on their computer in an hour or so. What’s more, it comes preinstalled with open source versions of the most popular applications: Microsoft’s Office is replaced by Libre Office, and Internet Explorer by Firefox. So it is usable out of the box. It makes no sense anymore for anyone to pay for proprietary software when just as good, and arguably better free software is available.

Many countries and governments - rich and poor - have realized this and have already initiated serious programs to switch all their computers to Linux based systems. Here are just a few examples of many: The US Army is the single largest user of ‘Red Hat’. Malaysia in 2010 switched 703 of its 724 government agencies to Linux. The Chief Secretary of the Malaysian Government justified the switch as follows: “the general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost”. The Turkish Government has created its own Linux distribution called ‘Pardus’, as has Cuba, whose distribution is named “Nova”. Iceland announced in 2012 that it will switch to open source software in public institutions. All schools in Iceland have already switched to Ubuntu from Windows. Brazil has 35 million students in over 50,000 schools using over half a million PC’s all running on Linux. Russia announced in 2007 that all its school computers will run on Linux. The list goes on, and on.

As a poor country Pakistan cannot afford proprietary software. In Linux we now have a powerful, globally accepted, and free alternative. We also have a large pool of talented young software engineers and programmers. Our government needs to put them to work in making Linux the preferred OS in every PC in every classroom and office in the country. The savings to Pakistan on licensing fees will be several hundred million dollars per year. Why should we, the poor, continue to enrich the Microsofts and Apples of the world when there is absolutely no need to do so?

Nadeem M Qureshi is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan.