5 Main Crisis of in Pakistan

Energy crisis

Political crisis

Polio disease crisis

Pakistan-India crisis

Education Crisis

Pakistan-India crisis

The conflict between India and Pakistan originated as a clash between Indian and
Muslim nationalism during British colonial rule. The relations between Pakistan and
India are characterizes by periodic ups and downs.

Throughout 1949-51, there was no direct military conflict between two dominions
and several meetings, conferences and agreements were signed on different
questions which were prevailing in the initial important years of independence.

Major crisis between Pakistan and India in 1949-51 were legitimate and were under
consideration throughout these years.

There are number of conflicting issues between India and Pakistan but Kashmir is
the core issue that has decisively led to the worsening of their relationship. The
disputed Kashmir State has assumed much strategic importance for both countries
and has become the cause of arms race between them. Throughout these three
years, a number of series of direct and indirect talks have been held between India
and Pakistan to normalize the relationship for seeking a just solution of Kashmir
dispute but every attempt has failed primarily due to Indian indifferent approach
towards the issue.

The war on Kashmir which had started earlier, ended on 1 January 1949, with the
establishment of a ceasefire line through a resolution by Security Council. The
status of the territory remained in dispute because an agreed referendum to
confirm the accession was never held. The cease-fire has remained in existence
since 1949. No plebiscite has been held and thus the Kashmir issue still remains
disputed and unresolved.

At the time of independence, many communal riots broke out in different areas of
India and Pakistan. These riots had a great impact on the status of minorities in the
two nations. Due to brutal killings by the majority community, a huge number of
Muslims migrated from India, and Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan. Yet, the mass
migration failed to solve the minority problem. Even after the migration, almost half
of the Muslims living in the Sub-continent were left in India and a great number of
Hindus in Pakistan. Those who were left behind were unable to become an integral
part of the societies they were living in. The people and government of their
countries looked upon them as suspects. In this critical situation, Prime Minister of
Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan urged to reach a solution to the problem. He also
proposed a meeting with his Indian counterpart to determine how to put an end to
the communal riots and the fear of war.
The two Prime Ministers met in Delhi on April 2, 1950, and discussed the matter in
detail. On April 8, the two leaders signed an agreement, which was later entitled as
Liaquat-Nehru Pact. This pact provided a bill of rights for the minorities of India and
Pakistan. Its aim was to address the following three issues:
1. To alleviate the fears of the religious minorities on both sides.
2. To promote communal peace.
3. To create an atmosphere in which the two countries could resolve their other
differences.

The most important of Indo-Pakistan disputes was the question of sharing the
waters of the Indus basin. On April 1, 1948, India cut off the supply of water from
the two headworks under her control. This dispute was existing till a solution
acceptable to both governments was agreed upon in 1960 at the Indus Basin
Development Fund Agreement at Karachi. This treaty is commonly known as the
Indus Water Treaty.

Despite the 1947-1948 war in Kashmir, propaganda campaigns against each other
and non resolution of bilateral problems that led India and Pakistan to oppose each
other at the regional and international levels on a number of issues.

Time period between1949-51 was consisted of diplomatic constrains and both the
countries had tried to resolve their differences by avoiding any military conflicts but
the relations over Kashmir question remained less flexible and stiff.

Education Crisis
As we know, education is the key to success and getting an education is the
fundamental right of every human. However, in the country of Pakistan 23 million
children are out of school. While some may think those23 million children are out of
school due to no law for education in Pakistan, they would be wrong. In Pakistan
Article 25 guarantees the right to free and compulsory education . By this law, the
government is responsible to give free and compulsory education to every citizen of
Pakistan from age 5 to 16 years old. In tribal areas of Pakistan, 3 million children are
out of school. In one city of Pakistan, Lahore and the surrounding area, 1.5 Million
children are out of school.

Below I describe some of the main issues in this education crisis:

Lack of interest: Children are not interested in going to school. They cannot see
the benefits to attending school and do see there are many punishments
Poverty: Parents cannot afford school expenditures for their children, so instead
children go to work. Many parents in tribal areas also are not aware about
importance and benefits of education in tribal areas.
Lack of adequate schools: In Pakistan, in many cities and rural areas there are not
adequate schools recently, earthquakes have damaged 805 schools in the KPK
province.
Terrorism: In the Federally Administrated Tribal Area of Pakistan, 750 schools have
been completely destroyed by terrorists violence and bombs. Terrorism has also
forcibly displaced many people from their homes. Traveling and relocating to IDP
camps has further limited their access to education. e.g Khyber and Waziristan
agency etc
Madrasa system: In the KPK province, 1 out of 3 children receive an education in
the Madrasa system, a religious education system. These children to not receive a
modern education, and are not taught subjects like Engilsh and science.
Gender issues and gender inequality: There are separate schools for boys and girls;
Boys cannot study in a girls school and girls cannot study in a boys school. In some
areas only boys schools exist. Due to gender inequality, some parents do not want
their daughters to get an education, feeling that it brings them shame.
These are some issues contributing to the lack of educational access for children in
Pakistan. Another problem is the quality of education. Many may leave school
without being proficient in basic math and reading. Because there is no quality

education. There is also no national systemthe textbook, policies, and curriculum

differ across the 4 provinces of Pakistan.

While this problem is very complex, I have some recommendations to improve the
number of Pakistani children receiving an education.

To interest children in attending school, arrange workshops, seminars and activities

in school. Provide games in school and playgrounds. Reduce the punishment rate. To
address the issue of poverty, allow students to study part time and work part time.
In school, provide children with practical schools they can use to work and earn
income. The government must build new primary and secondary schools and .
provide funds to repair schools that have damaged or destroyed from earthquakes
and bombs. In IDP camps, the government must build temporary schools and hire
trained staff.

The government must issue an order to schools using the Madrasa education
system to include science education in addition to religious education in both the
curriculum and textbooks.

For gender inequality, the government must pass a law to protect the right of free,
compulsory education for girls in the whole country.

Polio disease crisis

Pakistan is one of two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the other
being its neighbor Afghanistan.
Last year, Somalia became polio-free, and the World Health Organization (WHO)
removed Nigeria from the polio-endemic list, thanks to government-led efforts in
those countries to launch cross-nation immunization campaigns against the disease.

Pakistan, however, faces several challenges that have impeded the governments
plans to eradicate polio. Sceptics have claimed that such a drive is another CIA plot.
They base their claims on an admission by the U.S. intelligence agency that it used
the Hepatitis B vaccination program in 2010 to track down Osama bin Laden.

As such, opponents of an immunization campaign have actively spread rumors

across Pakistani communities claiming the vaccine will make their girls infertile.
Furthermore, the Pakistani Taliban have said that they can only be fully supportive
of vaccinations once the U.S. ceases its drone strikes in Pakistan.

Polio, a devastating disease that affects children, leads to deformed limbs, paralysis
and, in extreme cases, death. The virus thrives as a result of the countrys low
immunity levels as well as poor hygiene and sanitation conditions.
Among the most affected areas are Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Baluchistan and
Karachi, mostly due to inaccessibility of religious conservatism and the sheer
number of children.

Vaccination campaigns are launched regularly across Pakistan, but are constantly
marred by violence.
In January, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a heavily guarded polio eradication
center, in Baluchistans capital Quetta, killing 15 people most of whom were
security personnel.

Energy crisis
Pakistan is in the midst of one of the worst energy crises in its history. This is both
slowing the pace of economic activity and causing public unrest with prolonged
outages of electricity and gas. Capacity utilization in some key industries has fallen
to nearly 50 percent. Worst affected is the fertilizer industry, which faces
interruptions to its gas supply and forced closures. Pakistan has the capacity to
produce more than one million tons in exportable surplus urea, yet in 2011-12 it
imported more than 1.1 million tons. This eroded the countrys foreign exchange
reserves and effectively entailed the payment of millions of dollars in subsidies,
being the difference between the cost of locally produced and imported urea.
Pakistan urgently needs to make some strategic decisions and change the national
energy mix.

Immediately after assuming power, the government of Nawaz Sharif came up with
two policy decisions: pay half a trillion rupees (just under $5 billion) to energy
companies and announce a new power policy. Both steps are aimed at resolving
problems plaguing the companies belonging to the energy chain and bringing
change to Pakistans energy mix to optimize the average cost of electricity
generation.

Pakistans government paid Rs260 billion in cash to independent power plants (IPPs)
to clear outstanding debt. It also issued bonds to pay off liabilities pertaining to
state-owned companies such as exploration and production firms and oil and gas
marketing entities. After clearing the debt of the IPPs, it was expected that they
would be able to generate 1,700MW in additional electricity, attenuating the
shortfall that currently exceeds 6,000MW. The situation is likely to improve over
time.
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According to the available data, at present installed power generation capacity in

Pakistan is estimated to about 22,500MW (excluding the Karachi Energy Supply
Company, more on which below), but actual power generation hovers around
15,000MW, partly because of outdated and inefficient power plants and partly
because of a cash crunch, which often does not permit power plants to operate at
optimum capacity because of the inability to buy the required furnace oil. This could
be best understood when one looks at the available data on power plants operating
in the public sector, which have an installed capacity of over 4,800MW but actual
generation hovering around 1,200MW.

At present, the bulk of electricity supply comes from hydroelectric plants (6,500MW)
and IPPs (6,500MW). The output of the hydro plants is dependent on water
availability in the dams, and can fall to as low as 2,500MW when water levels drop
drastically. And as we have seen, IPP output is limited by money problems.

Pakistans woes have been exacerbated by its excessive reliance on thermal power
plants, mainly using furnace oil. Two factors contributed to the emergence of this
situation: a change in lenders from the public to private sector, and Pakistans
failure to complete a hydroelectric project in recent decades. The last mega dam,
Tarbella, was completed in the mid seventies and no other dam has been
constructed since. After the signing of the Indus Water Treaty with India, Pakistan
was required to complete construction of one mega-size hydroelectricity plant per
decade to ensure year-round availability of low cost electricity and irrigation water.

Of Pakistans 6,500MW hydro capacity, the bulk is contributed by three projects:

Mangla, Tarbella and Ghazi Brotha. There are nearly two dozen IPPs, but the major
players are Hub Power Company, Kot Addu Power Company and Uch Power Plant.
Pakistan also has three nuclear power plants, two in Punjab and one in Karachian,
with aggregate capacity of over 800MW. However, the Karachi plant is at the end of
its effective life and its capacity cannot be termed dependable.

Unlike the rest of Pakistan, Karachi gets its electricity from a compact utility, Karachi
Electric Supply Company (KESC), which handles generation, transmission and
distribution. The bulk of its generation comes from the Bin Qasim Power Plant, which
has an installed capacity of 1,260MW. Another 500MW comes from smaller units.
Since privatization, KESC has added another 500WM capacity at Bin Qasim but its
output has remained erratic because of the inconsistent supply of gas.

Political crisis
It seemed too good to be true. Pakistan had a judiciary asserting
itself. The media was feeding a nascent democracy movement. The
military was being challenged. Even the intelligence services were
being asked to produce those it had been "disappearing" for years. If
you were accustomed to CNN quiescence and had grown up in a Pakistan
with one state channel on which hyper-formal anchor-people
mechanically read the news in an Urdu inaccessible to most of the
nation, this new noise was evidence of a genuine political vitality.
This might seem a strange thing to say; there was much to be
depressed about this year. Islamist radicals, the product of
Zia-ul-Haq's era, were holed up in Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque) in the
heart of Islamabad, and were demanding the imposition of Sharia upon
the land. They had accused Chinese nationals of running brothels
posing as massage parlours, abducted the "madam" of another joint
which might actually have been a brothel and made her apologize in a
public shaming ritual, were now unleashing women in burqas armed with
sticks upon the city. There were reports that male students of the
madrassa attached to the mosque had been recording the license plate
numbers of women drivers in Islamabad--presumably to cleanse the city
of this obscenity. But if all this seemed like the long expected
outcome of the plague unleashed upon Pakistan by the joint forces of
the U.S. and Zia-ul-Haq, further fuelled by an ever growing rage at
the U.S.'s war on terror and the Musharraf government's forced
alliance with George Bush, it was still hard not to feel some glimmer
of hope at the fierceness of the media, which criticized the

government and the U.S. and asked tough questions of various religious
leaders. The media's alliance with the judiciary even made one feel
proud. Perhaps, just perhaps, there would be an end to military rule.
And then came Saturday's announcement of the Emergency--effectively an
imposition of martial law.
It's tempting to blame all of Pakistan's political woes on the
military, but to understand the reason military rule continues in
Pakistan, it's useful to think about the corruption and complacency of
Pakistan's elites: military, business, political. The
authoritarianism that is right now so much in evidence--as the
government cracks down on the political opposition, jails lawyers,
tear gases political protesters out on the streets--is also rife in the
drawing rooms of the rich and affluent or just (no easy task) the
borderline comfortable. An example, which is quite typical, from this
summer: right after the Lal Masjid nightmare I was at a dinner in
Karachi. The event was nominally religious--an evening-long open house
of great food and people I hadn't seen for years. In waltzed a woman
resplendent with long bob and bangs, dressed in the height of Karachi
fashion, who started proclaiming very loudly that the Red Mosque
should just have been flattened (bombs, bazookas, bulldozers--she
didn't specify; it seemed any weapon would do). She then went on to
say that the only thinking people in Karachi lived in Defence Housing
Society--which is a bit like arguing that the only thinking people in
L.A. live in Bel Air. It turned out that she was a civil servant and
had done some work with the Pakistani embassy in DC--she managed to
insinuate all of this loudly without any prompting into a conversation

with a husband conveniently tucked at the far end of the room. All of
this information could then be shared with her hapless audience
trapped on sofas and armchairs strewn in the path of the soundwaves.
The civil service resume, especially with its American stamp, was
presumably meant to shore up her mosque flattening credentials. She
then proceeded to praise the Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, solely on
the basis of his World Bank affiliations, which conferred, it seemed,
an automatic guarantee of brilliance. The media was roundly
criticized. Business was lauded. English was spoken, and the
non-English speaking mass outside Defense Housing Society consigned to
the dustbin of bare, lumpen existence. The problem was also democracy
(we aren't ready for it the room was told and many assented). The
people are uneducated, primitive, foolish. And these sentiments--that
the people aren't ready for democracy, that the media illustrates this
unreadiness in its reckless agitation, that politics is the business
of the educated (meaning English speaking elites)--find more takers
than we might want to think. The fact is that democracy is noisy and
Pakistan's elites (rather like America's at this point) are not used
to any noise but their own.
Let's add to the mosque flatteners--who are not, it must be noted,
secular either--the people who often assert Pakistanis don't want
Taliban rule or Islamist vice squads banning music and shrouding
women. These people may seem similar but are not always the same.
They produce as counterevidence South Asian Sufism, Pakistan's shrine
culture, its wonderful tradition of devotional and antinomian music.
But this vision is also balanced on the wobbliest foundation: all it

takes is a determined and destructive minority to shut down the

traditions of religious openness and dissent, to turn them into
memories held in huddled solitude. This is, in fact, what has slowly
been happening since the eighties when Zia-ul-Haq launched his assault
on Pakistani culture.
What faces Pakistan, then, is a kleptocratic military, arteries pumped
with money from the US, a reckless, inbred and corrupt middle class,
feudals, (Benazir Bhutto included) who seem to belong in some
Transylvanian nightmare, exercising their seigniorial rights, and a
growing body of petty bourgeois Islamist clerics who want their piece
of the national and global pie, and are determined to leave anything
that's heterodox and wonderful about the Muslim tradition smoldering
and ruined.
Meanwhile, as in Swat, where an Islamist cleric is trying to set up a
little mini state, the radical Islamists of the Pakistani kind try to
ensure that children don't get polio vaccinations and forbid education
for girls in the name of God. One of the most heart wrenching sights
during the Lal Masjid catastrophe was that of parents and family
members of students of the madrassa who had come to get their children
back--they seemed lost and reduced, caught between a contemptuous
bureaucracy they didn't know how to negotiate and clerics who had
promised their children a free education and turned them, instead,
into indoctrinated cannon fodder. Most striking, though, was that
they had sent their sons and daughters from villages across the NWFP
for an education. It is in the absence of a functional educational
system and the presence of tremendous poverty that such crises thrive.

Yet the Musharraf government and its supporters seem to think that
BMW and Porsche outlets in the major cities that are now, more than
ever, centres of consumption will fix the ills of the nation.
Segments of Karachi have begun to seem like a giant mall--people
dashing back and forth in greedy paroxysms while the poor watch the
carnival of consumption. It's not even so much that we have mimic men
and women--we always had those--our cities are becoming mimic malls.
There is for dissenters then--especially of the secular stripe who
want music and all it symbolizes, education for girls (and not just
snuck in under the cover of a women's piety group) and economic
justice--a much bigger problem: when people like Musharraf don the
mantle of the secular or of the moderate (not always, it must be said,
the same) the very foundations of the heterodox and humane traditions
seem diseased. The problem, then, is simply one of credibility: how
can an alliance of a deluded military despot, drunk on his own power,
and a corrupt and blank feudal princess deliver Pakistan from the very
real threats that engulf it? How can those who are seen as at the
very source of the violences that assail ordinary Pakistanis, claim
the moral authority to deliver them from the violence of the
barbershop burning militant?
We had an alliance like this once: Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, was ushered in by Yahya Khan (the military leader) as Chief
Martial Law Administrator. That alliance gave us half a nation,
unparalled atrocities against the soon to be Bangladeshis and
(eventually) Zia-ul-Haq--the most systematically destructive leader in
a nation glutted on destructive leaders. He shattered the left, had

his own ministers tortured, gave Pakistan the prohibition on alcohol

and the declaration that Ahmadis were non-Muslims in an attempt to
revive his ailing political career. The PPP, the party he helped
build, and whose principles he systematically betrayed, is still one
that has tremendous following--precisely because it is the party that
has a language of economic emancipation. And that emancipation is
what the alliance between the dictator and the princess pushed by the
United States will not provide. It is not that Pakistan is not facing
tremendous dangers--it is--it is rather that these leaders, and their US
backers, cannot deliver us from them.