Africa

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from some EU member countries. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Aug 2 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of migrant minors placed in reception facilities upon arrival in Italy, as a first step in identification and later relocation into other structures for asylum seekers, are untraceable and feared trafficked.

A report, Tiny invisible slaves 2018, released this week by the non-governmental organisation Save the Children, states that 4,570 minors migrating through Italy are untraceable as of May.

Once they escape the facilities, their vulnerable position—having no money, not knowing the language and being often traumatised after their trip to Italy—places them at the mercy of traffickers and exploiters.

Many of these children end up in networks of sexual exploitation, forced labour and enslavement. Save the Children reported that some girls are forced to perform survival sex—to prostitute themselves in order to pay the ‘passeurs’ to cross the Italian border or to pay for food or a place to sleep.

“I left Nigeria with a friend and once we arrived to Sabha (Libya) we were arrested,” Blessing, one of the victims, told Save the Children.

“I stayed there for three months and then I moved to Tripoli. For eight interminable months I was forced to prostitute myself in exchange for food,” she added.

Blessing then reported that her nightmare continued in Italy where she was sexually exploited by a compatriot. She ultimately was able to enter a protection programme thanks to Save the Children. But her story is a rare case of rescue as many other children find themselves enslaved with no end in sight.

According to testimonies collected by the NGO, minors leave reception facilities because they judge the processes of entering the child protection system as a useless slowing down towards the economic autonomy they aspire to and usually leave the centres a few days after identification.

This has been occurring largely in the southern regions of Italy.

But according to the report, “the flow of minors in transit through Italy to northern Europe is, by its own nature, difficult to quantify.” Though it noted that minors transiting through Italy between January and March, make up between 22 percent and 31 percent out of the total transitioning migrants across the country. The minors are mostly Eritrean (14 percent), Somalis (13 percent), Afghans (10 percent), Egyptians (9 percent) and Tunisians (8 percent).

“The fact that the European Union relocation programme was blocked in September 2017, has contributed in an important way to forcing children in transit to re-entrust themselves to traffickers, or to risk their own lives to cross borders, as well as it continues to happen for those minors who transit through the Italian north frontier with the aim of reaching the countries of northern Europe,” Roberta Petrillo, from the child protection department of Save the Children, Italy, told IPS.

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from the EU member countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary.

The EU’s initial plan provided for the relocation of 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to other European countries within two years. As of May, 12,690 and 21,999 migrants were relocated from Italy and Greece respectively. To date, the Czech Republic has accepted only 12 refugees, Slovakia 16, with Hungary and Poland having taken no refugees.

According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), almost 10 million children and youth across the world were forced into slavery, sold and exploited, mainly for sexual and labour purposes in 2016.

They make up 25 percent of the over 40 million people who are trafficked, of which more than seven out of 10 are women and girls. According to the ILO estimates, nearly one million victims of sexual exploitation in 2016 were minors, while between 2012 and 2016, 152 million boys and girls aged between five and 17 were engaged in various forms of child labour. More than half of these activities were particularly dangerous for their own health.

“When we talk about data of this kind we must be very cautious because we are dealing with numbers that only concern the emergence of the phenomenon, without keeping track of the submerged data,” Petrillo added.

There were 30,146 registered victims of trafficking and exploitation in 2016 in the 28 EU countries with 1,000 of them minors.

However, according to 2016 figures from the ILO, 3.6 million people across Europe were reportedly modern day slaves.

According to the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, second only to the illegal drug trade. It is estimated to be an industry worth USD32 billion annually.

The most targeted

Nigerian and Romanian girls are amongst the most targeted by the trafficking networks.

According to Save the Children, for the journey that will take them to Italy, the Nigerian girls contract a debt between 20,000 and 50,000 euros that they can only hope to repay by undergoing forced prostitution.

Like their peers from Romania, they enter a mechanism of sexual exploitation from which they cannot get free easily.

While Nigerians escape mainly for security issues and political instability, Romanian girls flee their country because of a total lack of opportunities and economic autonomy there. Their deep economic deprivation makes them highly vulnerable and easy targets for traffickers, who deceive or coerce them to enter into networks of sexual exploitation. 

According to the Save the Children Report, in 2017 there were a total of 200 minor victims of trafficking and exploitation who were put into protection programmes. The vast majority of these, 196, were girls with about  93.5 percent Nigerian girls aged between 16 and 17 years.

In addition, almost half of the minors were sexually exploited 

Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy,  told IPS that migrant men were welcomed with open arms because they were useful for working under exploited conditions.

However, migrant women were welcome only because they were used for prostitution.

“By not guaranteeing legal and safe paths for those fleeing wars and persecution, by not organising and recognising the presence of migrant workers, we just do a favour to the criminal groups, who build real fortunes on trafficking in human beings,” Noury told IPS.

While Petrillo said that “the Italian and the EU legal framework is solid and a good one,” she cautioned that  “what is needed, instead, is a unitary intervention that closely links the issue of anti-trafficking reality with that of minors in transit. And we must be able to guarantee universal protection for the victims.”

Related Articles

• Latin American Migrants Targeted by Trafficking Networks
• Benin – the Launchpad and Home for African Migrants

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The post The Sun Powers a Women’s Bakery in Brazil’s Semi-arid Northeast appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Kelsey Davenport is director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association

By Kelsey Davenport
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 1 2018 (IPS)

Rhetoric escalated between the United States and Iran when U.S. President Donald Trump irresponsibly tweeted July 22 that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani must “NEVER EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN” or else suffer consequences the likes of which “FEW HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”

The meeting for a Comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program in 2015. Attendees included John Kerry of the United States, Philip Hammond of the United Kingdom, Sergey Lavrov of Russia, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Laurent Fabius of France, Wang Yi of China, Federica Mogherini of the European Union and Javad Zarif of Iran.

In response to Trump’s threat, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted July 23 that Iran is “UNIMPRESSED” by the bluster and ended his message with the warning “BE CAUTIOUS.”

The Trump tweet was likely prompted by Rouhani warning July 22 that the United States should know that “war with Iran is the mother of all wars” and if Iran’s oil exports are blocked, “no other country in the region” will export oil.

The sanctions that Trump reimposed May 8 when he violated and withdrew from the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), include measures penalizing states if they fail to significantly reduce imports of Iranian oil every 180 days.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated in a July 22 speech that the U.S. focus is to get states importing Iranian oil to “as close to zero as possible” by the Nov. 4 180-day deadline (see below for details).

Pompeo said little about the JCPOA in his speech, which criticized the Iranian regime and reiterated that the United States is engaged in a “diplomatic and financial pressure campaign” to cut off funds used by the government to “enrich itself and support death and destruction.”

While Trump’s tweet prompted pushback from some policymakers, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton July 23 reiterated and appeared to broaden the vague and reckless threat, saying “if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before.”

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said July 24 that Trump is making “very clear” that Iran is “on the wrong track” and called for Tehran to “shape up and show responsibility.”

The exchange of threats between the United States and Iran is taking place as the P4+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom) are looking for options to sustain sanctions relief and keep Iran in the JCPOA (see below for details).

The P4+1 face a ticking clock, as the first U.S. sanctions re-imposed by Trump will be enforceable Aug. 6, when the 90-day wind down closes. These measures target certain banking activities, trade involving certain metals, coal, and the automotive sector, and the purchase of U.S. dollars by the Iranian government.

The Treasury Department will also revoke authorizations allowing carpets and Iranian foodstuffs to be exported to the United States and revoke licenses issued for the sale of commercial aircraft parts and services to Iran.

The remaining sanctions penalties, including those that target Iran’s oil sales, will be effective Nov. 4.

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Excerpt:

Kelsey Davenport is director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association

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Troops open fire in the capital Harare after opposition MDC Alliance supporters go on the rampage.

Radish production at West Africa Farms, in Northern Senegal. Credit: Sarah Farhat / World Bank

By Alice Lloyd
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 2018 (IPS)

The world’s food systems face two immense challenges today. One, to produce enough food to nourish a global population of seven billion people without harming the environment. Two, to make sure food systems deliver nutrition to everyone, particularly the world’s poorest, many of whom suffer from chronic under-nutrition.

Like the Economist’s 2017 Food Security Index, a new report released earlier this summer looks at the complex connections between the ways we organize and produce our food, and the implications for the environment, human health, and social wellbeing.

With input from over 150 experts from 33 countries, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Agriculture and Food: Scientific and Economic Foundations Report, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project, makes the case for a global agri-food systems transformation. It argues that our agri-food systems today are being viewed and evaluated through a narrow, incomplete and distorted lens by focusing on per-hectare-productivity. To fix our food system, our food metrics need to be fixed.

The way we are currently producing food is negatively impacting climate, water, top soil, biodiversity and marine environments. If we do not change course, we will seriously undermine our ability to deliver adequate food for future populations. In addition to the negative environmental impacts, we are struggling to deliver nutritious and healthy diets in an equitable way. Diet-related chronic diseases are on the rise even as we fail to deliver nutritious food to millions of poor people around the world.

The consequences of our current food systems outlined in the report include:
• Agricultural production alone contributes over one-fourth of global GHG emissions.
• However, when considering the entire ‘agri-food value chain’ (including agriculture-related deforestation, farming, processing, packaging, transportation and waste), this number climbs to a staggering 43 to 57 percent of GHG emissions.
• 70 to 90 percent of global deforestation is from agricultural expansion.
• If women had the same access to resources (land, credits, education, etc.) as male farmers, they could raise yields by 20 to 30 percent, and lift as many as 150 million people out of hunger.
• Approximately one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted, enough to feed the world’s hungry six times over.
• Around 40 percent of available land is used for growing food, a figure that would need to rise to an improbable 70 percent by 2050 under a “business-as-usual” scenario.
• 33 percent of the Earth’s land surface is moderately to highly affected by some type of soil degradation mainly due to the erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification, or chemical pollution of soils.
• Diets have become the main risk for human health. Six of the top eleven risk factors driving the global burden of disease are diet-related.
• The World Health Organization estimates the direct costs of diabetes at more than US$827 billion per year, globally.
• Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases. An estimated 600 million people fall ill after eating contaminated food, while 420,000 die every year.
• 61 percent of commercial fish populations are fully fished and 29 percent are overfished.
• In a “business-as-usual” scenario, the ocean will contain more plastic than fish (by weight) by 2050.

The agricultural revolution is still very strongly influencing our food production. While food production has successfully been increased, the environmental impacts have received a lot less attention. They have been either been ignored or been considered as a necessary trade-off.

The Economist’s 2017 Food Security Index for example, in considering how resilience to natural resource and climate related risks pose long term threats to food systems across countries, includes a tool to explore how individual countries perform on a natural resources and resilience adjustment factor.

“If you look at food production only from a price perspective, and the old paradigm of the cheaper the better, you run into a trap because the long-term sustainability of our food production system is not a given,”says Alexander Müller, Study Leader of TEEBAgriFood.

“The task for agriculture and food systems in the years to come is huge, says Muller: ‘feeding a population projected to reach 10 billion in 2050, achieving the four dimensions of food security (FAO 1996) for all people by providing healthy food, drastically reducing the impacts of different types of agricultural production on the world’s ecosystems, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change and to adapt to it, developing rural areas to create jobs and to improve livelihoods of poor people, maintaining ecosystem services such as clean water and air for a rapidly urbanizing planet are only some of the challenges.”

Tackling these challenges requires a systematic approach. This report looks at all the impacts of the value chain, from farm to fork to disposal, including effects on livelihoods, the environment, and health. It identifies theories and pathways for transformational change in government, business, farming, and consumer contexts while providing a framework for evaluation that supports the comprehensive, universal and inclusive assessment of eco-agri-food systems.

Recognizing the interlinkages, in terms of impacts and dependencies that food systems have with our economies, societies, health, and environment is a crucial first step. Using the report’s Framework and its language can allow for the next generation of agricultural and food research to provide a more comprehensive basis for decision-making and together with the 2017 Food Security Index, provides a comprehensive assessment of food systems as well as natural resource availability and resilience.

The post Transforming Food Systems: Today’s Realities and Tomorrow’s Challenges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By International Organization for Migration
KABUL, Aug 1 2018 (IOM)

It is with profound sadness that the United Nations family in Afghanistan confirms that an employee of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was killed in yesterday’s attack on the Department of Refugees and Returnees in Jalalabad.

Our immediate thoughts are with her family and friends.

The United Nations expresses its deep sense of revulsion at this senseless attack that claimed the lives of at least 13 civilians. Among the 20 others injured was another IOM colleague. The UN wishes him and all the injured a speedy and full recovery.

“I condemn this heinous crime which has already taken the life of one of our brave IOM colleagues in Jalalabad yesterday and left another grievously injured. It is a loss for IOM, our partners and Afghanistan,” said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing.

“Equally tragically the attack claimed the lives of at least 13 civilians, including an IRC colleague. My heart goes out to the families of all the victims. Everyone in IOM is thinking of our colleagues working in difficult conditions across the country on behalf of the Afghan people in the aftermath of this senseless attack,” added DG Swing.

Our colleague’s life was taken while she was working in the noble cause of assisting some of the most vulnerable communities in Afghanistan. There is no justification for such acts of terror. She is one of thousands of Afghans who form the backbone of the daily work of the United Nations in the country to help the most in need, supporting development and contributing to the restoration of peace and stability.

This young woman, who was 22, lost her husband in a bombing in Kabul three years ago. She leaves behind a six-year old daughter, now an orphan.

“We mourn the loss of our colleague and, in tribute, commit ourselves to re-double our work to serve Afghanistan and its peoples,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

The deliberate targeting of civilians and the places where they work, such as the department in Jalalabad, is an appalling crime. The architects of this crime must be brought to justice.

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By GGGI
SEOUL, South Korea, Aug 1 2018 (GGGI)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has received an A+ rating in the UK Department for International Development (DFID)’s 2017 Annual Review, highlighting the excellent progress made last year.

The United Kingdom is a founding Member of GGGI, a contributing member that provides multi-year core funding to GGGI, and currently serves on GGGI’s Council that approves and oversees GGGI’s work plan, budget, and results.

This is the first time that GGGI has been awarded an A+. Previously DFID had awarded GGGI with an “A” score, exceeding expectations and demonstrating impressive development as an organization.

DFID conducts rigorous annual reviews of activities, assessing performance standards for all programs financially supported by the UK.

GGGI has performed exceptionally well in the areas of finance and knowledge generation and continuously showed improvement in the quality of its reporting, assurance and risk management systems.

The rating clearly demonstrates that GGGI is strategically moving in the right direction in scaling up its in-country impact by being an effective organization that has a sound risk appetite and achieves increased value for money, through the smart delivery of its programmatic interventions.

GGGI has been working also to strengthen its results-based management system and corporate results reporting to fully meet its obligations to donors for accountability, transparency and good governance.

DFID is primarily responsible for administering the UK Government’s overseas aid with a primary focus to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty.

Relatedly, as part of GGGI’s effort to expand its partner network, the Institute has recently worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to qualify as a Public International Organization (PIO) in order to be eligible for USAID financing opportunities worldwide. This PIO status allows GGGI to engage with USAID missions in its Member countries in a country-specific approach to seek joint opportunities in the implementation of green growth objectives.

GGGI looks forward to identifying these opportunities with USAID and to forming a long term productive relationship to advance its mutual objectives around the globe.

About the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

Based in Seoul, GGGI is an intergovernmental organization that supports developing country governments transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. GGGI delivers programs in 27 partner countries with technical support, capacity building, policy planning & implementation, and by helping to build a pipeline of bankable green investment projects. More on GGGI’s events, projects and publications can be found on www.gggi.org. You can also follow GGGI on Twitter and join us on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

About the UK Department for International Development (DFID)

The Department for International Development (DFID) leads the UK’s work to end extreme poverty. DFID is tackling the global challenges of our time including poverty and disease, mass migration, insecurity and conflict. DFID’s work is building a safer, healthier, more prosperous world for people in developing countries and in the UK.

About United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

USAID is the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.

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Former Newcastle and Portsmouth striker Lomana LuaLua surprises players by turning out for non-league Tilbury FC in a pre-season friendly.

Burkina Faso international Bakary Kone and Senegal's Zargo Toure join Turkish Super Lig clubs Ankaragucu and Trabzonspor respectively.

By WAM
ABU DHABI, Aug 1 2018 (WAM)

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) and Airbnb, the online community marketplace which provides access to millions of unique accommodation and Experiences around the world, have teamed up to promote the UAE capital’s offerings.

DCT Abu Dhabi’s Emirati Experiences initiative offers visitors to the emirate a selection of 20 different tours and experiences designed and led by Emirati nationals which provide firsthand insight into Emirati culture, heritage and history.

These tailor-made experiences are echoed by Airbnb’s own ‘Experiences’ – unique excursions and activities designed and led by local hosts – which Airbnb offers across 800 cities worldwide. This new joint initiative means all 20 Emirati Experiences will now be included on Airbnb’s popular global platform for the first time.

“This collaboration with our friends at Airbnb to showcase Emirati Experiences on their hugely popular service makes perfect sense and is in line with our mandate to promote our emirate to the widest possible audience,” said Sultan Al Mutawa Al Dhaheri, Executive Director, Tourism Sector, DCT Abu Dhabi. “Each year, millions of tourists come to Abu Dhabi to experience our history, traditions and heritage and there is no better way for visitors to experience the uniqueness of Abu Dhabi and its districts, and to learn about our rich history than by spending time with an Emirati tour guide, which is what Emirati Experiences offers. With this new initiative, the demand for these unique experiences should increase as more potential visitors are exposed to the wonderful things on offer in Abu Dhabi.

“This co-operative initiative will no doubt result in greater visibility of our emirate to an international audience, which can only positively impact visitation numbers going forward.”

Emirati Experiences currently offers 20 unique tours and excursions, including the Bait Al Oud Visitor Experience, the Emirati Ladies Experience, the Emirati House Experience, Capture the Moment – a four-hour guided photography tour with professional photography tips and Desert Safari.

Also available are the Zayed Tour – a journey around various historic and important locations in Al Ain city that highlights the extraordinary life of HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Explore & Shop, Traditional Shopping in Abu Dhabi, the Sandals Handicraft Experience – a guided tour of the Al Dana shoe-making Factory, Top Traditional Food in Abu Dhabi, the Discover Al Ain tour, which includes a visit to a date factory and a traditional souq and the Fossil Dunes and Flamingoes experience.

Emirati Traditional Crafts, the Food Experience Tour, the Carpets and Antiques experience, The Pearl Journey, Amazing and Affordable Abayas, Emirati Women’s Handicrafts and a Modern Islamic Architecture experience are also available, the latter taking in the amazing Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, as does the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and Palaces of Abu Dhabi experience.

“We are delighted to be partnering with the DCT Abu Dhabi to help grow the number of Experience hosts on the Airbnb platform,” said Hadi Moussa, Airbnb General Manager for Middle East and Africa and Head of EMEA Business Development. “Experiences on Airbnb enable passionate, local hosts to share the very best of their destination with millions of travellers from around the world, whether it’s an authentic cooking class or a chance to enjoy an insider view of the city. Following the success of Experiences in Dubai, this partnership will attract new guests to experience Abu Dhabi’s famous hospitality and discover one of the most dynamic and fast-growing tourism destinations in the world.”

Further information is available on https://visitabudhabi.ae and www.airbnf.ae.

WAM/Hatem Mohamed

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Assam register: politics, citizenship and beyond.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Aug 1 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Shakespeare had once observed, through his character Marcellus addressing Horatio in the drama Hamlet, that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark. Thereafter, he sought to analyse those remarks by weaving an incredibly complex scenario that focussed on the woefully morbid persona of his brooding and indecisive hero, Prince Hamlet. Were the English bard to return to the present times and be asked on his view as to what ails contemporary Pakistan, he would perhaps respond, with incontrovertible logic and certitude, that it is the economy. Prime Minister-elect Imran Khan would agree. Mr Khan would also conclude that the indecisiveness of the young Dane would be a luxury that he could ill afford.

Mr Khan cannot be faulted for any absence of zeal during the preparatory process, leading up to the polls, to go about this task. In his election manifesto issued early July, he entitled his aspirations as the “Road to New Pakistan”. It was, if not influenced by but certainly reminiscent of, a similar document of the British Labour Party of Mr Clement Attlee in 1945 called “The New Jerusalem”, based on a mystic poem by Robert Blake. Mr Attlee set these as goals for post-war Britain. He used it effectively as a tool to unseat the war hero Sir Winston Churchill, despite the latter’s derision, belied by the election results, that Mr Attlee was a “modest man with much to be modest about!” In Pakistan, Mr Khan rendered his plans more attractive to his right-wing supporters by stating that his idea was to emulate the state apparatus emplaced in the city of Medina in the seventh century by the Holy Prophet, as components of an “Islamic welfare state”. To his more contemporary constituency, he explained the model as being similar to the politico-economic culture prevalent in Scandinavia. The explanations seemed to have gone down well with the electorate.

The big challenge to Mr Khan will be as to how this is to be implemented. Alas, the road to a “New Pakistan” appears to be extremely uneven, unusually steep, and full of potholes. That is because he has unfortunately inherited an economy that is, by all accounts, in shambles. The World Bank estimates that Pakistan’s growth rate will be only 5 percent in 2019. This is not above India’s so-called “Hindu growth rate” of yesteryears (which would be a bitter pill to swallow in Pakistan). Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have plummeted to USD 9 billion. This is less than a third of that of Bangladesh, which is often held out by analysts as a frame of reference. It is just about sufficient to finance two months of imports instead of three, which is the norm for comparable countries. The rupee is in free fall, devalued four times over the last six months, and is now at a rock-bottom par of 128 to the US dollar. The 200 or so state-owned enterprises in Pakistan (SOEs) are inefficient, mismanaged, politicised, and corrupt, costing the national exchequer well over half a trillion rupees. Direct taxes amount to a mere 11 percent of the total collection. Less than 1 percent pay income tax. These numbers are enough to daunt any incoming government anywhere.

The “Team Khan”— including Mr Asad Umar, the likely finance minister—have plans. Mr Umar is an extremely qualified technocrat-turned-politician who was once the highest paid CEO in the land. They will seek external funding, possibly an over USD 13 billion credit from the IMF, some of which will be used for paying off debts. China, which Mr Khan extolled as perhaps Pakistan’s closest friend, will also be approached. Of course, any IMF balance-of-payment support will come with restrictive conditions likely to dampen the enthusiasm for public expenditure for social sectors. Mr Khan, however, may be intellectually persuaded that a “government must do what a government must do”. The SOEs would be depoliticised with experts brought in to head them, as well as to fill government posts where deemed fit. Ministries would be streamlined, their numbers in the federal structure reduced from 37 to 17. The Federal Board of Revenue would be made autonomous, perhaps somewhat like the Central Bank. They would be urged to increase tax collections up to 5 percent of the GDP. Five percent of the GDP would be spent on education within five years, in place of the current 2 percent, to create a pool of schooled girls and boys. A new agriculture policy will be designed to optimise subsidies (not necessarily increase), reduce input costs, and provide credit.

A sticky wicket for this legendary cricket captain would be handling the military finances. The implementation of Mr Khan’s “five-point emergency plan”, the initial phase of his overall programme, would logically entail reduction of the army budgetary allocation. Currently, it stands at USD 9.6 billion, nearly 20 percent of the total national budget. Any downsizing would need to be carefully balanced by perhaps an augmenting of privileges to the uniformed through what the writer Ayesha Siddiqa has critically called the “Milbus”, or providing business opportunities to the military. Indeed, Mr Khan’s overall relationship with the military will be an important element as to how his governance will pan out. He is said to have the blessings of the army, far more than what is enjoyed by his rivals. It is also true that the army does not have too much choice. Mr Khan is a strong personality. Moreover, he is also popular. If things work out for him, he may become more so in the future. Many of his views coincide with those of the military. But there are also some differences, as with regard to military action in the Pashtun frontiers. Mr Khan and the army need each other for now, and both are well aware of this reality.

To lift Pakistan up from the economic morass, trade would be key. Mr Khan has emphasised this aspect while mentioning his relations with India in the post-polls speech. The figures currently are abysmally low. There are many common elements between Messrs Khan and Narendra Modi of India. Both possess tremendous self-confidence in their self-assessments. Mr Dayan Jayatilleka, a Sri Lankan scholar and diplomat, once a colleague of the author in Singapore, has written: “South Asian politics had only one charismatic star in the firmament… now it has two.” When they meet, as they perhaps will sooner than later in this era of “surprise summits”, the region and the world may see the adage play out—that “when Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war!” The other important protagonist would be the United States. As of now, Mr Donald Trump has demonstrated remarkable self-restraint by not tweeting his initial thoughts on Mr Khan.

As one awaits the unfolding of further political developments in Pakistan, Mr Khan’s capacity and capabilities are being meticulously scrutinised. His second wife Ms Reham Khan has recently published a book which contains an elaborate laundry list of Mr Khan’s shortcomings. This was doubtless timed to do damage to Mr Khan’s reputation and electoral ambitions. However, not many Pakistanis seemed to have taken note. In it, Ms Reham Khan, among other things, has accused Mr Khan of ignorance. To make her point, she has said that she was baffled by his unawareness of the fairy tale of Rapunzel. In this children’s story, a princess had laid down her long hair from a window in a castle in which she was imprisoned to enable a handsome prince to climb up to rescue her. Mr Khan might not have been clued in on this detail. But he was nevertheless, in the meanwhile, creating his own fairy tale by climbing the ladder of power reaching up to the highest public office of his country.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former foreign adviser to a caretaker government of Bangladesh and is currently Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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After 11 years in exile and prison, ex-Vice-President Jean Pierre-Bemba wants to run for president.