America Seeks to Prevent Pakistan from Uprooting its Presence
The Dawn reported on 27 October, “Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif will visit the United States next month for talks with senior US military commanders and defence officials. This will be Gen Sharif’s first visit to the United States as the army chief, a position he assumed on Nov 29, 2013… During the week-long visit, starting on Nov 16, he is expected to meet Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, Gen Dempsey, Commander of the US Central Command Gen Lloyd J. Austin and other members of the American defence establishment.” The visit is the first after the 30 September bilateral treaty agreement which allows deployment of some 10,000 US troops to remain in Afghanistan after a UN-sponsored international combat mission ends on Dec 31. The agreement goes into force on Jan 1, 2015 and remains in force “until the end of 2024 and beyond” unless either side terminates it with two years’ notice. Kabul signed a similar agreement with NATO on Sept 30 to allow 4,000 to 5,000 additional troops — mostly from Britain, Germany, Italy, and Turkey — to stay in Afghanistan in a noncombat role after 2014.
Regarding the permanent crusader presence in Afghanistan, America knows the great capability of Pakistan’s armed forces in ending foreign occupation of Muslim Land. It observed that when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the highly capable intelligence of Pakistan’s armed forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), organized and enabled the tribal fighters against the Russian occupation, bloodying Russia’s nose such that it withdrew completely and never dared to return since. So, now that America itself invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan’s armed forces have the ability to drive it out of the region forever. And America also knows that North Waziristan is the key to Pakistan’s strategic depth in the region, protecting its lands and people from harm.
As for the purpose of General Raheel’s visit, in order to simultaneously divide the Muslims, sink the armed forces into a quagmire of civil war and amputate Pakistan’s strategic depth, America demands operations in North Waziristan by the Pakistan Army against the tribal fighters. Thus, traitors within Pakistan’s military and political leadership are toiling day and night to strengthen the American occupation of Afghanistan. They care not for the Muslims of the tribes or the armed forces or the civilians in their blind obedience to our enemies. Moreover, they do so at a time when America is weak, stumbling and collapsing. From Syria, to Iraq to Afghanistan, America’s cowardly troops fear the Muslim fighter, even if he is armed with meager weapons. America’s collapsing economy is unable to stretch to fulfill the demands of its over-extended and shaking Raj. Indeed, America fears entering in to a conflict with Muslim groups, so what to speak of Pakistan’s armed forces, the world’s most powerful Muslim armed forces, if they were to be mobilized to raise the word of Allah سبحانه وتعالى the highest, backed with the support and duaa of the entire Ummah?
Electricity is Public Property and Its Privatization is Forbidden in Islam
Days after the government imposed a 30 paisa per unit surcharge, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) allowed on 27 October, a 53 paisa per unit increase in electricity tariff for all distribution companies, except K-Electric. The people of Pakistan are broken by electricity crisis, not only are there shortage of electricity, with electricity cut off as much as most of the day, it has become hugely expensive. The situation is that people are paying five to ten times what they paid ten years ago, when they had twenty-four hour electricity. Electricity has become expensive and in short of supply because of its privatization.
Privatization of electricity is a crime because it not only deprives the people of a great source of revenue to look after their affairs, it also means that private owners, who have limited resources, only provide electricity when they can profit. They cannot provide electricity as a service and a right for all citizens, for that is the job of a responsible and caring state. This is why privatization is directly responsible for the power shortages, the load-shedding. So, private owners reduce electricity generation to prevent falling into loss through debts owed to them. Or they reduce generation to only the more efficient power plants because they give a better profit, keeping less efficient power plants idle. So, even though Pakistan has over 20,000 MW installed capacity against a peak demand of 17,500 MW, less than half of that is produced, causing huge electricity shortages, twelve hours a day or even more, with people unable to cool themselves even by means of a fan in the scorching summer heat. And that is asides from these highly disruptive shortages destroying local industry.
As for increasing the price of electricity, it is to guarantee profits for the private owners of the power sector. The regime has already guaranteed profits on investment for private owners of power, by increasing the electricity charges many fold. It has also made sure that the private owners are paid from the revenues of the state, even when they are not generating electricity because of fuel shortages. Electricity has become so expensive that there is now a huge circular debt owed to the private owners of power. Last summer, in July 2013, the regime paid Rupees 270 billion to the private power producers, the IPPs. This enormous amount also alerts the people to just how much wealth there is in power, which they will not see a single Rupee of it. And this year as the debt mounted yet again, the regime defaulted, and power was cut off to many government institutions on 29 April 2014, including to the Ministry of Water and Power itself!
And the rulers are privatizing the Ummah’s resources, even though Islam has declared that energy is a public property for the Muslims. RasulAllah صلى الله عليه وسلم said,
«المسلمون شرکاء فی ثلاث الماء والکلاء والنار»
“Muslims are partners (associates) in three things: in water, pastures and fire (energy).” [Abu Dawood]
Thus under the Khilafah, with its Islamic constitution, the benefit of electricity will be for the public, with the state supervising the matter to ensure that.
Raheel-Nawaz Regime Holds its Ground in Support of the Hindu State
India is fighting a mini border war against Pakistan across the LoC and the working boundary. Yet the Dawn reported on 27 October that Pakistan’s government is holding its ground to grant India ground access to Afghanistan to export wheat, despite growing protests from Pakistan local wheat producers. It is not just that the rulers are granting favor to the Hindu to the loss of the Muslim, when the Hindu state is bent upon “teaching Pakistan a lesson”. The transit trade facility would not only adversely affect Pakistan’s wheat export to Afghanistan, but also risk Indian wheat disease spreading to Pakistan.
It is clear where the blame lies. It does not lie with Nawaz Sharif only. His negligence of the Muslims of Pakistan and his willingness to serve the Americans and bow before the Hindus is well-known. The blame is shared with the leadership of the armed forces. Their silence is their support for this treachery. They have wrongly prioritized America’s war in FATA as their top priority and have ignored their responsibility to protect the Muslims of Pakistan and Kashmir from Indian aggression. They wrongly believe the false promises America has made to them, that it will reign in India, if they turn a blind eye towards the Hindu state and help America strengthen its occupation in Afghanistan.
Where are the war drums, where are the war songs, where are the sounds of low flying jets? Doesn’t the aggression from the Hindu State justify that they are heard? Isn’t it clear that these rulers would rush to war to serve the Americans and would act like a paralyzed man when Muslim sanctities are violated? It is time the armed forces uproot these rulers and establish the Khilafah and give bayah to a ruler who would lead them to war against the belligerent Kuffar while unifying the Muslim ranks within.
Raheel-Nawaz Regime Turns Guns Away from India and onto Ourselves
The Dawn reported on 30 October, “The United States and Pakistan are likely to discuss the future of drone attacks during Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif’s visit to this country, according to the US Army Times Newspaper.” Jason Campbell of the Rand Corporation, another US think-tank, told the Army Times that unlike past Pakistani military leaders, Gen Sharif believed the internal threats to Pakistan’s security were more dangerous than external ones. “He had a role in changing the way that the Pakistani military trains and prepares,” Mr Campbell said. According to him, Gen Sharif was ‘influential’ in turning a large conventional force trained to fight India into a counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency force. Gen. Sharif “brings a new mindset to his position. I think it’s one that conforms pretty well with the way US strategists see the threats in the region”, he said.
The Raheel-Nawaz regimes mindset not only pleases America, India now senses the weakness imposed upon our armed forces by regimes which blindly follow America to the extent that the Indian Prime Minister declared with confidence on 12th August 2014 while addressing his troops in Kargil that “Pakistan has lost the strength to fight a conventional war.” Moreover, the recent Indian aggression and the submissiveness by the Raheel-Nawaz regime is part of the American plan for the region. America is supporting India’s rise as the dominant regional power to both counter its rival China and the Muslims’ emergence as an Islamic Khilafah state. America fully realizes that Pakistan has the power to overturn its plan should it oppose it, whereas its submission will ensure its success. That is why every regime that serves America has played a critical role in furthering this American plan by striking hard at Pakistan’s capabilities. America fears the love of Jihad within the Muslims, which is their most powerful weapon on the battlefield, so America’s agents abandoned and then persecuted the groups fighting India for the complete liberation of Kashmir. The American agents then ensnared Pakistan’s armed forces in America’s war against the Muslims in the tribal regions. These agents, including General Raheel, then made radical changes in the Army’s Green Book, so that Pakistan’s military was focused inwards, rather than towards India, shifting the majority of our forces from the Eastern border to the Western border. And whilst these lowly agents claim to dealing with internal threats, they leave the American and Indian embassies and consulates within Pakistan’s borders untouched, even though they are the bases for conspiracies launched against the Muslims.
Islam did not allow the bending and prostrating of the Muslim before aggression from the lowly mushrik, whether Hindu or other than the Hindu. It did not allow submission to the kuffar in our affairs. Rather Islam demands that Muslims counter the enemy with all that the Muslims possess, whether great means or little. RasulAllah صلى الله عليه وسلم said,
«جَاهِدُوا الْمُشْرِكِينَ بِأَمْوَالِكُمْ وَأَنْفُسِكُمْ وَأَلْسِنَتِكُمْ»
“Fight the mushrikeen with your wealth, yourselves and your tongues.”
Yet, rather than mobilizing our considerable strength against the enemy, the regime is striking at it to allow India’s rise as part of America’s larger strategy for the region. It is high time that the regime was uprooted and the Khilafah re-established over these lands.
Privatization of OGDCL: Depriving Ummah of its Asset
On Wednesday 29th October, almost 24 employees of the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) were arrested by police after shelling and baton charge. The employees tried to protest against the privatization of the golden goose. Earlier, in response to government petition challenging the stay order of Peshawar High Court against the sale of 10% stake in OGDCL, the Sup¬re¬me Court allowed the federal government on Friday 24th October to proceed with the sale of the OGDCL shares and collect bids. The Cabinet Committee on Privatization (CCOP) on 3 October 2013 and the Privatization Commission (PC) on Jan 8-9 this year had decided to put on sale 10 per cent or 322 million ordinary shares of the government in OGDCL to international and domestic investors. The PC Board even approved the appointment of a consortium consisting of American giants Messer’s Merrill Lynch International and Citigroup along with KASB Bank to act as financial advisers for the transaction. This is being done at a time when the 17th Annual General Meeting of the company was informed that the sales revenue of OGDCL has grown up by 15% to mark the Rs 257 Billion peak. This increase in sales is followed by a record 36% increase in company profit from last year, taking the total profit after tax to Rs 124 Billion. Further, the company has added Rs 132.6 Billion to the national exchequer on account of corporate tax, GST, excise duty etc.
The privatization of such an entity will consequently deprived the people of revenue of hundreds of billions of rupees. Keeping in view ever-increasing expenditure of the government, the natural outcome will be imposition of more taxes on the people. Furthermore, as per the 17th Amendment in the constitution, the Legal Framework Order (LFO), 90% of the capital received from the privatization of national asset will be used in servicing the debts to international donors i.e. people will be deprived of a huge yearly revenue from a national asset, whilst most of the income received as a result of privatization will flow out of country. This is the treachery that the people of Pakistan are facing today.
In this treachery, we see our governments toeing the policy of privatization on the one hand and increasing the tax to GDP ratio on the other. The current Raheel-Nawaz regime has set to launch privatization of seventy public entities, including OGDCL, as per the conditions agreed with IMF. In addition it has announced the target to increase tax to GDP ratio from 10.2 % today to 14.5 % within its five year term. Similarly we see the same approach towards economy from the proponents of “Naya (New) Pakistan.” In its manifesto, the PTI has introduced the privatization policy in following words, “We believe that privatization has an important role to play in the development of our country, but disposing off national assets must be done in a planned and transparent manner, with the proceeds being used for debt retirement or for other clearly stated national priorities.” And the PTI economic expert, Asad Omar, has announced an economic goal to increase the tax to GDP ratio to 15 % by 2018, if elected, saying, “Everyone knows that a modern economy cannot be run in a manner that meets the expectations of its citizens, and is globally competitive, with a tax-to-GDP ratio of less than 10 percent”. So, what is the difference between existing regime and the opposition?
Every party participating in Democracy carries the same capitalist policies, because Democracy is the ruling system of Capitalism. Democracy secures freedom of private ownership, so allows each and every commodity to be privatized to whoever can afford to pay its price. This allows big corporates to own the Worlds energy resources and raises their turnover to more than the GDP of many entire countries. Furthermore, after privatizing all the resources and institutions, the Capitalist states are left with no means to earn revenue and so impose excessive taxation on the common man, breaking his back. That is why we see most of the world’s developed nations today taxing people heavily, such as Denmark (49%), Sweden (46%), Germany (40%), UK (39%) and the US (27%).
Despite toeing the policy of privatization of energy and imposing excessive taxes upon the people, the West has failed to deliver basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing, education, health etc. to its people. So, how can we expect the similar policies resolving our economic issues? The only solution is to abolish the kufr system and establish the Khilafah in its place. Islam will end the capitalist economy and establish an Islamic one. Islam ensures the distribution of wealth and one of its mechanisms is the public ownership of resources such coal, oil and gas. Such these resources are owned neither by the state nor by individuals. Instead, the state administers this resource to ensure that its benefit is used for all the citizens, regardless of race, color, school of thought and religion. RasulAllah صلى الله عليه وسلم said,
«المسلمون شرکاء فی ثلاث الماء والکلاء والنار»
“Muslims are partners (associates) in three things: in water, pastures and fire (energy)” [Abu Dawood]
Thus under the Khilafah, with its Islamic constitution, the benefit of public properties like OGDCL will be for the public, with the state supervising the matter to ensure that.