Mir Adnan Aziz
The Post
"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one, if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled.... That isn’t preventive war; that is war….. It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ridiculous in itself, there is no use in going any further." (Eisenhower at a news conference on November 8, 1954).
All American interventions that end up in occupations stem from a fundamental ignorance of history. These post-colonial wars are not susceptible to Western imposed 'democracies' and military solutions. They can only be perceived by those subjected to their destructive power as occupiers violating the sovereignty and territorial sanctity of their lands.
President Lyndon B Johnson invaded Vietnam with his contrived “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.” In reality, suffering a civil war, North Vietnam was of no threat whatsoever to the United States.
After millions perished, a mauled America vacated Vietnam accomplishing absolutely nothing. For his part, President Johnson, when he absorbed the enormity of his mistake, died a deeply depressed and broken man.
Forty years later, President George W. Bush started the Afghanistan / Iraq Wars with his post September 11 preemptive war charade. In the lust for blood and oil, it was forgotten that the flying clubs of Florida and not the madrassahs of Pakistan made 9/11 possible.
The American policies regarding Pakistan are often crafted with the expectation that their dictates be met with little or no resistance. That we have remained servile for so long eliminates whatsoever little inhibitions they may have had in this regard.
In his recent report General Stanley McChrystal warned that Indian activities and their increasing influence in Afghanistan was likely to exacerbate regional tensions. In the same report asking for a troops' surge in Afghanistan, he further warned that the coalition forces were in danger of losing the war within a year unless this was done.
Richard Holbrook’s recently said when asked about what success will look like in Afghanistan: "We'll know it when we see it." Without an iota of legitimacy and any semblance of the rule of law, all such military ventures become clueless adventures. After eight years of occupation these lines epitomize American gains in this region.
The Pakistani people and army have long had an extremely suspicious view of the United States and its motives in this region. A recent survey by the Washington based Pew Research Center, recorded that 64 percent Pakistanis regard the U.S. "as an enemy."
These sentiments are grounded in the reality that making Pakistan a perpetual proxy battle-ground has cost us dearly with fueled insurrection in two provinces, further strengthened an ever belligerent enemy on the eastern front by 'providing' new-found havens across the western border too, damaged to the extent of abandoning the Kashmir cause and destroyed our economy.
This mindset strengthened immensely when a $1 billion plan was revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials. This was to build a citadel by massively increasing the size of the American embassy in the heart of Islamabad.
Embassies of yore were designed to enhance interaction with the people of a country. Diplomats visited local officials, shopped at local market places, socialized with community leaders and interacted with the general public. Diplomacy was seen as an art loath to be done by remote control. What this planned massive fiefdom brought home to all Pakistanis was that, in the present policy context, the United States planned an extremely unwelcome, extensive and long-term presence in the country.
There are indications that the government and our lame-duck politicians are encouraging the Americans to get involved in domestic issues especially as a hedge against the Pak Army. There are reports about the infamous Blackwater (Xe - what’s in a name!), Hummers at Port Qasim, Americans riding rough shod with sophisticated automatic weapons in Islamabad (and elsewhere) and armed American 'diplomats' verbally and physically assaulting Pakistani police officers.
President Obama has thus far proven unwilling to take charge of the war from U.S. military and national security elites. His reappointment of Robert Gates as defense secretary and appointment of former Marine Corps General James L. Jones as national security adviser shows how deeply militarized American foreign policy remains.
Things can change through broad-ranging diplomacy that complements the Obama-Clinton emphasis on global engagement and diplomacy. This can clearly be a welcome manifestation of the President's campaign slogans of change. Only this can do away with the futile quest for purely military solutions.
The engagement should start by reining in India to address Pakistan's genuine security concern and the resolution of the Kashmir issue consistent with the dreams and aspirations of the Kashmiri people.
Israel should be pressured to the point of cutting off all economic and military aid if it does not end its brutal policies; to halt and remove West Bank settlements and accept a viable Palestinian state.
With a functioning government in Iraq, the occupation there should end and Iran should be engaged diplomatically as a dignified sovereign state and not a vanquished feeble foe.
The visible shifting of the war theatre within Pakistan is imminent given the disunity and the spineless conduct of our political class. This, not defeat by the Taliban, is the real threat to Pakistan. Continued U.S. intervention in our politics and border regions will only serve as an issue to further alienate the people. Financial ‘support’ in the shape of Biden-Lugar Bills tailor-made for an enemy rather an ally is akin to selling our souls.
The US has limited options in Afghanistan. Financial constraints along with a resurgent Russia and rising China, loath to the growing American regional occupations, may well negate these limited options too.
In the end the coalition forces will be compelled to abandon the attempt to occupy Afghanistan. All they will leave behind is a trail of death and destruction and a legacy of hatred and bitterness that will last generations if not forever.
If President Obama accepts the prevalent War on Terror framework by pumping up the war in Afghanistan or shifting the cross-hairs to Pakistan; he may find himself a prisoner, like Lyndon Johnson, of a no-win situation. Prudence, ground realities and his promised change call for a total re-focus of American policies instead of escalating an inherited doomed war.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Oh that Pakistan!
Mir Adnan Aziz
A Rubik’s cube, invented by reclusive Hungarian inventor Prof.Erno Rubik, has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations on its six faces. It has only one solution. Governing a state is, if anything, a Rubik's Cube. An equal number of tried combinations will result in failure, only one combination solves the complex puzzle – honest and transparent governance.
In the fifth century, Emperor Honorius appointed whoever purchased the office of Procurator. The appointee was usually the son of a wealthy aristocrat or a Senator with no experience at all; most important was that he did not challenge the Emperor.
Honorius was so engrossed in his prize roosters, one of whom he named Rome, that when in 410 a messenger dashed into his throne room in Ravenna shouting, "Rome has fallen!" the alarmed Emperor started to run for his chicken coop. When the messenger explained he meant the city not the rooster, a relieved Honorius is supposed to have said "Oh, that Rome". Centuries later the pall bearers of our democracy deign not even to utter, Oh that Pakistan.
The tension-filled interaction between citizens and their rulers and the various means by which a government can either help or hinder its constituents' ability to achieve societal satisfaction and material prosperity is termed as Governance. It also means ensuring public participation, honesty, transparency, accountability, political legitimacy, fair legal framework, predictability, efficiency and effectiveness. Democracy thrives on transparency.
Governance covers three broad areas: the political structure; the capability of those in power to plan and implement policy and; to improve administration and the processes through which to administer and manage the social and economic resources of the country.
The Social Contract of Rousseau has evolved beyond the concept of the State being the protector of life and property, to being a guardian of the most deprived through various forms of social security, into being the provider of good governance with a view to creating enabling conditions for citizens to realize their full potential.
Democratization is not a matter of transferring power from one entrenched self selected group to another which ends up being the same. Henry David Thoreau said: Every one recognizes the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist a government when its tyranny or inefficiency are great and unendurable'. A people are the real source of legitimacy in any civil order.
In developed countries, citizens take it for granted that their leaders, acting as facilitators, will help them meet their fundamental needs. They also possess the tools to improve governance when dissatisfied by mobilizing interest groups, employing legal means or through the ballot box.
On the other hand, throughout our nascent history, we have been unable to hold our rulers accountable even when, rarely, having a representative one. Tragically, numerical supremacy has always legitimized itself for its own good as accountability is transformed into an expedient currency of rhetorical convenience. This has resulted in a glut of phoenix-like ‘saviours’ rising up, time and again, from the very ashes they created.
"If history teaches anything about the causes of revolution, it is that disintegration of a political system precedes a revolution. The telling symptom of disintegration is a progressive erosion of governmental authority. This erosion is caused by the government's inability to function properly, from which spring the citizens' doubts about its legitimacy".
Selfish classes, aplenty here, prefer an autocratic government. Tocqueville had it right when he said that we should be aware of the tyranny of the majority. The autocrat (in plain khakis or designer suits) is a tiny head on a bloated body.
Put an administrative machine, that is this bloated body, in place and answerable to none but the autocrat, it soon becomes answerable to no one at all. It is though responsive to its ‘own’, that is, the people who fill its top offices and their social equals and family connections. This chosen elite does not cease to function; it just works for its own personal interests and those of its relatives and cronies.
Poor governance, stark insecurity, bloody conflicts, abject poverty, outrageous power outages and obscene economic disparities are a telling sign of the total erosion of state authority. High-level disagreements impede progress, leading to ministerial additions and re-shuffles of an already grotesquely bloated body. A non existent policy of fiscal austerity adds fuel to fire.
A weak, troubled state that we have made sure we are, rhetoric notwithstanding, we will always prove to be happy hunting grounds for our self created demons and besotted plagues. The demonstrated link in our poor governance, poverty, and nation-state failure makes strengthening the quality of governance, leadership and enabling public participation, an extemely urgent task.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
A Rubik’s cube, invented by reclusive Hungarian inventor Prof.Erno Rubik, has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations on its six faces. It has only one solution. Governing a state is, if anything, a Rubik's Cube. An equal number of tried combinations will result in failure, only one combination solves the complex puzzle – honest and transparent governance.
In the fifth century, Emperor Honorius appointed whoever purchased the office of Procurator. The appointee was usually the son of a wealthy aristocrat or a Senator with no experience at all; most important was that he did not challenge the Emperor.
Honorius was so engrossed in his prize roosters, one of whom he named Rome, that when in 410 a messenger dashed into his throne room in Ravenna shouting, "Rome has fallen!" the alarmed Emperor started to run for his chicken coop. When the messenger explained he meant the city not the rooster, a relieved Honorius is supposed to have said "Oh, that Rome". Centuries later the pall bearers of our democracy deign not even to utter, Oh that Pakistan.
The tension-filled interaction between citizens and their rulers and the various means by which a government can either help or hinder its constituents' ability to achieve societal satisfaction and material prosperity is termed as Governance. It also means ensuring public participation, honesty, transparency, accountability, political legitimacy, fair legal framework, predictability, efficiency and effectiveness. Democracy thrives on transparency.
Governance covers three broad areas: the political structure; the capability of those in power to plan and implement policy and; to improve administration and the processes through which to administer and manage the social and economic resources of the country.
The Social Contract of Rousseau has evolved beyond the concept of the State being the protector of life and property, to being a guardian of the most deprived through various forms of social security, into being the provider of good governance with a view to creating enabling conditions for citizens to realize their full potential.
Democratization is not a matter of transferring power from one entrenched self selected group to another which ends up being the same. Henry David Thoreau said: Every one recognizes the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist a government when its tyranny or inefficiency are great and unendurable'. A people are the real source of legitimacy in any civil order.
In developed countries, citizens take it for granted that their leaders, acting as facilitators, will help them meet their fundamental needs. They also possess the tools to improve governance when dissatisfied by mobilizing interest groups, employing legal means or through the ballot box.
On the other hand, throughout our nascent history, we have been unable to hold our rulers accountable even when, rarely, having a representative one. Tragically, numerical supremacy has always legitimized itself for its own good as accountability is transformed into an expedient currency of rhetorical convenience. This has resulted in a glut of phoenix-like ‘saviours’ rising up, time and again, from the very ashes they created.
"If history teaches anything about the causes of revolution, it is that disintegration of a political system precedes a revolution. The telling symptom of disintegration is a progressive erosion of governmental authority. This erosion is caused by the government's inability to function properly, from which spring the citizens' doubts about its legitimacy".
Selfish classes, aplenty here, prefer an autocratic government. Tocqueville had it right when he said that we should be aware of the tyranny of the majority. The autocrat (in plain khakis or designer suits) is a tiny head on a bloated body.
Put an administrative machine, that is this bloated body, in place and answerable to none but the autocrat, it soon becomes answerable to no one at all. It is though responsive to its ‘own’, that is, the people who fill its top offices and their social equals and family connections. This chosen elite does not cease to function; it just works for its own personal interests and those of its relatives and cronies.
Poor governance, stark insecurity, bloody conflicts, abject poverty, outrageous power outages and obscene economic disparities are a telling sign of the total erosion of state authority. High-level disagreements impede progress, leading to ministerial additions and re-shuffles of an already grotesquely bloated body. A non existent policy of fiscal austerity adds fuel to fire.
A weak, troubled state that we have made sure we are, rhetoric notwithstanding, we will always prove to be happy hunting grounds for our self created demons and besotted plagues. The demonstrated link in our poor governance, poverty, and nation-state failure makes strengthening the quality of governance, leadership and enabling public participation, an extemely urgent task.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Friday, February 13, 2009
WOT: Make a wasteland, call it peace.
Mir Adnan Aziz
The Nation
February 12,2009
"They make a wasteland and call it peace" was the bitter complaint of Caligus, a Scottish commander, when the Romans attacked Scotland.
"Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts", thus spoke President Bush in his address to the nation soon after the events of September 11.
With these words the world got an endless war based not on realistic appraisals of the causes of conflict but on fables about human nature and a world divided between the absolutes of good and evil. Nowhere evident was the rationale to step back from the apocalyptic allure of this convoluted theory.
Fear was instilled in the people to justify the global threat of this terror whereas evidence belies it. Oxford Research Group, a global security think tank, paints an absolutely different picture of the fundamental threats that we all face.
In a book "Beyond Terror: The truth about the real threats to our world", it argues that the real global threats will come from four interconnected trends: Climate change, Competition over resources, Marginalization of the majority world and Global militarization.
The "paradigm of prevention," as the then US Attorney General John Ashcroft dubbed it, wrought nothing but utter devastation and human misery. The war on terror became the umbilical surrogate of self defense. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza epitomize the brutal futility of this doctrine.
At Guantánamo Bay, said to house "the worst of the worst," Pentagon's Combatant Status Review Tribunals' own findings categorized only 8 percent of about 775 detainees as fighters for Al Qaeda or the Taliban. More than half of them have been released, scarred for life, though they may never have been "the worst of the worst" after all.
President Obama has clearly stated that he wants to make Afghanistan, a country where nine million people face acute food shortage, the principal focus on the war on terror. According to the Brookings Weak State Index (eight years on) it is also the most insecure state of the world.
Historically in fighting counterinsurgencies population is the prize, not the target. For the insurgents the population is the "center of gravity" of the war. To survive, they need it to support them and hide them.
The "War on terror" has the gruesome tally of millions killed or maimed in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. These figures and other gory details are documented in various reports including that of the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.
Using brutally disproportionate force to impress upon an enemy that the price of fighting is more than it can bear pays exactly the opposite dividends - more recruits who seek vengeance, if nothing else. The tactical defeats inflicted on the insurgents; including the killing of their top leaders and foot-soldiers has no perceptible impact on the volume of the violence or its political consequences.
The word "guerrilla" was first used to describe the ferocious insurgency of the Spanish poor against their would-be liberators. On July 6, 1808, King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in the country's history offered an independent judiciary, press freedom and abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the aristocracy and the Church. Till that time, abbeys, monasteries and bishops owned every building and piece of land in 3,148 towns and villages. These were inhabited by some of Europe's most wretched tenants.
Despite the fact that the new constitution would have liberated them and let them keep their harvests for themselves, the Spanish peasantry failed to rise up in its support. Instead, they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader. This was because Joseph was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by French troops. That was all that mattered to most Spaniards - not the ideal constitution to better their lives but the perception about the man behind it.
President Karzai (who cannot trust Afghans as bodyguards) and our own President (by default the governing dispensation) is seen to be nothing but an extension of the US State Department. It is no secret that the US brokered our "ascension" deal when they were forced to ditch their erstwhile ally. Till the time this perception of bondage persists the endless war may never be won.
The sea-change in race relationships in America started with Martin Luther King changing the paradigm of race relations. He had a dream of "Black and White walking hand in hand" replacing the violent struggle against racism. That shift has brought America its first non-white President, an ultimate tribute to the power of peaceful means. President Obama too promised a change. What could be more welcome globally than changing the paradigm of this endless brutal war?
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
The Nation
February 12,2009
"They make a wasteland and call it peace" was the bitter complaint of Caligus, a Scottish commander, when the Romans attacked Scotland.
"Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts", thus spoke President Bush in his address to the nation soon after the events of September 11.
With these words the world got an endless war based not on realistic appraisals of the causes of conflict but on fables about human nature and a world divided between the absolutes of good and evil. Nowhere evident was the rationale to step back from the apocalyptic allure of this convoluted theory.
Fear was instilled in the people to justify the global threat of this terror whereas evidence belies it. Oxford Research Group, a global security think tank, paints an absolutely different picture of the fundamental threats that we all face.
In a book "Beyond Terror: The truth about the real threats to our world", it argues that the real global threats will come from four interconnected trends: Climate change, Competition over resources, Marginalization of the majority world and Global militarization.
The "paradigm of prevention," as the then US Attorney General John Ashcroft dubbed it, wrought nothing but utter devastation and human misery. The war on terror became the umbilical surrogate of self defense. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza epitomize the brutal futility of this doctrine.
At Guantánamo Bay, said to house "the worst of the worst," Pentagon's Combatant Status Review Tribunals' own findings categorized only 8 percent of about 775 detainees as fighters for Al Qaeda or the Taliban. More than half of them have been released, scarred for life, though they may never have been "the worst of the worst" after all.
President Obama has clearly stated that he wants to make Afghanistan, a country where nine million people face acute food shortage, the principal focus on the war on terror. According to the Brookings Weak State Index (eight years on) it is also the most insecure state of the world.
Historically in fighting counterinsurgencies population is the prize, not the target. For the insurgents the population is the "center of gravity" of the war. To survive, they need it to support them and hide them.
The "War on terror" has the gruesome tally of millions killed or maimed in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. These figures and other gory details are documented in various reports including that of the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.
Using brutally disproportionate force to impress upon an enemy that the price of fighting is more than it can bear pays exactly the opposite dividends - more recruits who seek vengeance, if nothing else. The tactical defeats inflicted on the insurgents; including the killing of their top leaders and foot-soldiers has no perceptible impact on the volume of the violence or its political consequences.
The word "guerrilla" was first used to describe the ferocious insurgency of the Spanish poor against their would-be liberators. On July 6, 1808, King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in the country's history offered an independent judiciary, press freedom and abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the aristocracy and the Church. Till that time, abbeys, monasteries and bishops owned every building and piece of land in 3,148 towns and villages. These were inhabited by some of Europe's most wretched tenants.
Despite the fact that the new constitution would have liberated them and let them keep their harvests for themselves, the Spanish peasantry failed to rise up in its support. Instead, they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader. This was because Joseph was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by French troops. That was all that mattered to most Spaniards - not the ideal constitution to better their lives but the perception about the man behind it.
President Karzai (who cannot trust Afghans as bodyguards) and our own President (by default the governing dispensation) is seen to be nothing but an extension of the US State Department. It is no secret that the US brokered our "ascension" deal when they were forced to ditch their erstwhile ally. Till the time this perception of bondage persists the endless war may never be won.
The sea-change in race relationships in America started with Martin Luther King changing the paradigm of race relations. He had a dream of "Black and White walking hand in hand" replacing the violent struggle against racism. That shift has brought America its first non-white President, an ultimate tribute to the power of peaceful means. President Obama too promised a change. What could be more welcome globally than changing the paradigm of this endless brutal war?
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A bewildered nation
Mir Adnan Aziz
The Frontier Post
February 2,2009
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm - Publilius Syrus.
Conventional wisdom dictates that people understand the limits of their ability. When someone takes up a job, it is understood that demands and expectations of the same have been reviewed. The foregone conclusion therefore is, that the person will deliver.
When we transitioned from an 'autocracy' to a 'democracy', the country was beleaguered with an extremely volatile FATA and Balochistan with the rest of the country increasingly in the cross hairs. To add to their woes people had, among many others, the judicial, inflation and the energy crisis.
President Zardari felt that he was qualified for the job. After the Liaqat Bagh tragedy he presented himself as a 'saviour of Pakistan'. This has ironically, over time, been a favourite cliché of most of our clueless rulers. A mandate was beseeched to lead us to greener pastures. Ignominious as the NRO and the road to 'return' was, the people were so fed up with the shenanigans of Musharraf and Co. that PPPP got the same.
By voting in the party, people thought that it was led by a person whom incarceration, exile and a great personal tragedy had made into a born again one. In Mr. Zardari and his pre-poll verbose the nation saw someone who would deliver and take them out of their misery.
The devastating part now is that we see somebody in the driving seat with eyes perpetually peeled to the rear-view mirror, seemingly oblivious to the rutted road ahead. Almost a year down the line, a sense of dejavu sees the 'saviour' wanting and lacking in many more ways than one. A sense of foreboding and gloom prevails as the nation ponders where it went wrong.
The extremely complex affairs that besot us were plainly evident when electoral promises were made. The beleaguered were promised and made to believe what statesman and author Benjamin Disraeli once said: "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" It is hard to believe now that President Zardari did not gauge the gravity of these issues or know the limits of his ability before vying for his 'exalted' status.
What we now hear is the incessant hyperbole of having just taken over the reins of governance and the 'inherited' ruin of a state. The President (and his party) does not seem to realize that to 'save Pakistan' it was his duty to create, if nothing else, an enabling political and economic environment.
For a majority who view the present set-up (rightly so) as an extension of the now lecturing Mr. Musharraf's rule; there is an uncanny resemblance to the same. Was it not in these recent years that offices of TV channels were attacked by mobs and police alike with journalists being brutalized? Was it not the former President who termed the deposed judges as nothing but anarchists? Were we not doves with olive branches aplenty for India, compromising spinelessly on Kashmir, yet brutal macho bravado for our very own? The similarities are eerily familiar.
We see 'inherited' crises festering into mortal wounds. The US sees it as a 'given' right to bomb us whenever they want while India, with a diminutive Parnab Mukherjee spewing threats, is at its saber-rattling best. There is a total erosion of the state's writ in Swat, what to say of the tribal areas with the much touted parliamentary FATA resolution consigned to the bottomless bin. The terrified ANP is bunkered away, their recipe of all that plagues the province being the renaming of NWFP.
For want of constructive things, a Governor (one of the four 'inherited' yet still functional ones) is seen to be destabilizing the Punjab government. The feeling of chaos is compounded with reports of all not being well between the two pillars of our 'democracy'. One also sees a dichotomy in the mind-boggling ease that enables the reinstatement of seven thousand political appointees but not a handful of judges who were removed unconstitutionally. Come spring and one can already hear the clarion call to 'Beware the Ides of March'.
Seemingly, President Zardari does not understand the premise on which he and his party were voted in. What we have instead is that perpetual paranoia, which ultimately stalks all our 'saviours', creeping in yet again. The latest fit, brought in by this phantasmal demon, has seen the journalists being reportedly branded as 'terrorists'. The President is seen to be increasingly prone to serious faux pas, be it FATA, (glaringly in) the post Mumbai fiascos or political matters within. He has taken to making splashes only to be mortified by the resulting ripples.
It is an unfortunate nation indeed whose leader, expected to provide a positive direction, is seemingly prone to back pedalling on grave issues, blaming all but himself. This feeling gains more strength when authoritarian Presidential powers are touted as a right instead of relinquishing the same. How can one person with the same be Dracula while another a Mandela? Is it then not but natural for the people to start asking questions and seeking answers?
We go alms seeking to run the state yet cannot do away with Davos like junkets. With our own house on fire, the serenity of Switzerland's ski resort is seemingly too alluring for the would-be fire fighters. Over the years, we have descended to this morass because of our collective wrongs. This was a visionless direction thrust by most of our rulers and our own culpability in the same. If blames must be assigned, our own share cannot be wished away.
It is time the politically 'omnipotent' President, with an increasingly eroding credibility, stop looking to cast blame and start putting action plans in place to correct the mess he 'inherited'. Credibility in ethical leadership derives from the conviction that the leader knows what he or she is doing and has the best interests of the people at heart. Throughout history, nations have had their share of 'competent buck passing saviours.' All they do is paralyze rather than energize the people.
President Zardari should prove himself a visionary who seeks solutions tailored to the needs of his own people rather than those of far off lands. History proves that there are no friends in global politics as are fruitless the wages of war; prudence beckons us too. The visage ahead is far challenging and demands focused un-divided attention. If the President does not owe this to himself, he surely does to a bewildered nation.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
The Frontier Post
February 2,2009
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm - Publilius Syrus.
Conventional wisdom dictates that people understand the limits of their ability. When someone takes up a job, it is understood that demands and expectations of the same have been reviewed. The foregone conclusion therefore is, that the person will deliver.
When we transitioned from an 'autocracy' to a 'democracy', the country was beleaguered with an extremely volatile FATA and Balochistan with the rest of the country increasingly in the cross hairs. To add to their woes people had, among many others, the judicial, inflation and the energy crisis.
President Zardari felt that he was qualified for the job. After the Liaqat Bagh tragedy he presented himself as a 'saviour of Pakistan'. This has ironically, over time, been a favourite cliché of most of our clueless rulers. A mandate was beseeched to lead us to greener pastures. Ignominious as the NRO and the road to 'return' was, the people were so fed up with the shenanigans of Musharraf and Co. that PPPP got the same.
By voting in the party, people thought that it was led by a person whom incarceration, exile and a great personal tragedy had made into a born again one. In Mr. Zardari and his pre-poll verbose the nation saw someone who would deliver and take them out of their misery.
The devastating part now is that we see somebody in the driving seat with eyes perpetually peeled to the rear-view mirror, seemingly oblivious to the rutted road ahead. Almost a year down the line, a sense of dejavu sees the 'saviour' wanting and lacking in many more ways than one. A sense of foreboding and gloom prevails as the nation ponders where it went wrong.
The extremely complex affairs that besot us were plainly evident when electoral promises were made. The beleaguered were promised and made to believe what statesman and author Benjamin Disraeli once said: "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" It is hard to believe now that President Zardari did not gauge the gravity of these issues or know the limits of his ability before vying for his 'exalted' status.
What we now hear is the incessant hyperbole of having just taken over the reins of governance and the 'inherited' ruin of a state. The President (and his party) does not seem to realize that to 'save Pakistan' it was his duty to create, if nothing else, an enabling political and economic environment.
For a majority who view the present set-up (rightly so) as an extension of the now lecturing Mr. Musharraf's rule; there is an uncanny resemblance to the same. Was it not in these recent years that offices of TV channels were attacked by mobs and police alike with journalists being brutalized? Was it not the former President who termed the deposed judges as nothing but anarchists? Were we not doves with olive branches aplenty for India, compromising spinelessly on Kashmir, yet brutal macho bravado for our very own? The similarities are eerily familiar.
We see 'inherited' crises festering into mortal wounds. The US sees it as a 'given' right to bomb us whenever they want while India, with a diminutive Parnab Mukherjee spewing threats, is at its saber-rattling best. There is a total erosion of the state's writ in Swat, what to say of the tribal areas with the much touted parliamentary FATA resolution consigned to the bottomless bin. The terrified ANP is bunkered away, their recipe of all that plagues the province being the renaming of NWFP.
For want of constructive things, a Governor (one of the four 'inherited' yet still functional ones) is seen to be destabilizing the Punjab government. The feeling of chaos is compounded with reports of all not being well between the two pillars of our 'democracy'. One also sees a dichotomy in the mind-boggling ease that enables the reinstatement of seven thousand political appointees but not a handful of judges who were removed unconstitutionally. Come spring and one can already hear the clarion call to 'Beware the Ides of March'.
Seemingly, President Zardari does not understand the premise on which he and his party were voted in. What we have instead is that perpetual paranoia, which ultimately stalks all our 'saviours', creeping in yet again. The latest fit, brought in by this phantasmal demon, has seen the journalists being reportedly branded as 'terrorists'. The President is seen to be increasingly prone to serious faux pas, be it FATA, (glaringly in) the post Mumbai fiascos or political matters within. He has taken to making splashes only to be mortified by the resulting ripples.
It is an unfortunate nation indeed whose leader, expected to provide a positive direction, is seemingly prone to back pedalling on grave issues, blaming all but himself. This feeling gains more strength when authoritarian Presidential powers are touted as a right instead of relinquishing the same. How can one person with the same be Dracula while another a Mandela? Is it then not but natural for the people to start asking questions and seeking answers?
We go alms seeking to run the state yet cannot do away with Davos like junkets. With our own house on fire, the serenity of Switzerland's ski resort is seemingly too alluring for the would-be fire fighters. Over the years, we have descended to this morass because of our collective wrongs. This was a visionless direction thrust by most of our rulers and our own culpability in the same. If blames must be assigned, our own share cannot be wished away.
It is time the politically 'omnipotent' President, with an increasingly eroding credibility, stop looking to cast blame and start putting action plans in place to correct the mess he 'inherited'. Credibility in ethical leadership derives from the conviction that the leader knows what he or she is doing and has the best interests of the people at heart. Throughout history, nations have had their share of 'competent buck passing saviours.' All they do is paralyze rather than energize the people.
President Zardari should prove himself a visionary who seeks solutions tailored to the needs of his own people rather than those of far off lands. History proves that there are no friends in global politics as are fruitless the wages of war; prudence beckons us too. The visage ahead is far challenging and demands focused un-divided attention. If the President does not owe this to himself, he surely does to a bewildered nation.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Monday, January 26, 2009
Reforming our Gulags
Mir Adnan Aziz
The Post
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
Prison, the name immediately conjures up images of infamous ones in yesteryears like Bastille, Alcatraz, Newgate, San Quentin and the Devil's Island. Today we have our share of Guantanamo Bay, Pul Chakri and Abu Ghraibs.
The right to be free is the most basic and fundamental of human rights. This can be subjugated only under exceptional circumstances and this includes sentencing as a result of a criminal act.
Reportedly the Punjab Prison Minister failed to answer pointed queries during the question answer session regarding his department. An attempt to frivilously parry the terpitudes faced by prison inmates is callous and degarding. It is a mind-set that speaks of a wilful neglection of thousands whom we tragically deem as societal outcasts.
It is a quirk of fate that our President and Prime Minister along with many others in positions of political power today have been unwilling inmates of our 'reform centers'. A friend who was incarcerated in Adiala Jail (on what later proved to be dubious charges) has set up a forum for 'like minded' people, including the President and the Premier, called the Adialians.
Prison conditions matter a great deal and the negative effects of a fallacious incarceration system often ripple throughout society. The vagaries faced by inmates induce rage against the system itself instead of the needed reform.
The criminal justice system and our prisons are some of the most dysfunctional aspects of our society and the most insulated from reform. Like most of our other ills, we have neglected our criminal justice system for so long that we have ended up dehumanizing it completely. It is therefore no surprise that prison riots from Dir to Karachi are a norm now.
Our prisons are incubators of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Corruption of the prison staff and gross treatment leads to the physical and emotional degradation of prisoners. The idea of the criminal justice system is to focus on rehabilitation with the aim of helping prevent a sentenced inmate from becoming a habitual criminal offender.
This is the heart of the matter. If the functions of punishment and prevention are fulfilled but fundamental rights are violated and rehabilitation is not just ignored but actually reversed; prisons will, as they have, fail miserably to achieve their societal function. Unfortunately today, if anything, our prisons and criminal justice system are helping create criminals rather than ensuring otherwise.
The treatment of prisoners should not be merely punitive but remedial too. We have come a long way from the days when people were treated brutally and callously in prisons globally. By doing so, it was hoped that the deterrent effect would be so great that they would never commit an offence again. This has and never will work.
Rehabilitation should start as soon as a prisoner enters the prison. Those most capable of rehabilitation are the first offenders and those with short sentences. In our prisons the system works in an absolutely convoluted way. The habitual offenders and hardened criminals, with their 'hallowed' status, are the ones who get to enjoy the most of benefits and privileges.
The conditions within are appalling. Many inmates are left for years, packed like sardines in a can, awaiting trial in their cells. According to HRCP there are 89,370 prisoners occupying 87 jails originally built to hold a maximum of 36,000 persons.
Children and adults are often held together. There is not a single facility for female juveniles in the whole country. They are all kept with women who may be drug dealers, addicts or even murderers. Despite the fact that around half of the population is under 18, the country has just one juvenile court.
Some prisoners are called 'forgotten inmates'. They never go to court, and even if they do, the criminal justice system is such a morass that nobody knows how much longer their detention will last. According to human rights monitors almost 50 percent of our prison population is awaiting trial whereas 33 percent of the female inmates are awaiting trial on adultery related offenses. Most of these cases were filed without supporting evidence. Trials often take years and bail is routinely denied.
The law stipulates that detainees must be brought to trial within 30 days of their arrest. Tragically many of these have spent more time behind bars awaiting trial than the maximum sentence they would receive if eventually convicted. Poet Robert Burns aptly summed up this agony when he said: "In durance vile here must I wake and weep - And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep."
The Pakistan Prisons Act of 1894 and the Prison Rules of Pakistan, both relics from the colonial era, permit the use of fetters and chains as instruments of restraint and punishment under certain conditions. It is a common sight to see prisoners, even juveniles, being brought to courts hand-cuffed and in iron fetters. Another example of archaic rules and a grossly funded system allocates an unbelievably paltry 20 rupees per inmate to cater for three meals a day!
Although there is relentless gloating about a rejuvenated 'independent' judiciary; in practice it remains evermore subject to executive branch influence at all levels. Vacant courts and inefficient procedures have resulted in alarming backlogs at both trial and appellate levels.
Lower courts remain corrupt, inefficient and subject to pressure from prominent political and feudal figures. The recent judicial putsch by the previous government has alarmingly enhanced this influence and pressure.
Criminal rehabilitation is a cost-efficient form of crime prevention. Not all criminals, even convicted ones, are unredeemable psychopaths. The great majority, if treated like human beings with rehabilitation in mind, are capable of changing.
It is imperative that the state and judiciary exercise their responsibility for monitoring prison conditions with, if not more, the same zeal with which it sends people to these overcrowded jails. It would also help if well known NGOs are involved to ensure independent monitoring of prisons. It would also be greatly beneficial to improve the recruitment, remuneration, training and management of the prison service personnel.
Our prisons are counter productive in the attempt to manage a civil society. The need for prison and criminal justice reforms need urgent and compassionate attention. We need to overcome the lock em up and throw away the key mentality.
This cannot be done by a stroke of the pen and requires the application of sustained and vigorous political will. PPPP had promised in its manifesto to usher in prison reforms. The prison reform package promised by the Premier, like many other promises, awaits materialization.
In their next get-together the 'Adialians', if none other, should take a trip down memory lane. If they conjure up cherished and nostalgic memories of their days behind bars, they can sleep easy; if otherwise they should try and reform the gulags that are our prisons.
The Post
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
Prison, the name immediately conjures up images of infamous ones in yesteryears like Bastille, Alcatraz, Newgate, San Quentin and the Devil's Island. Today we have our share of Guantanamo Bay, Pul Chakri and Abu Ghraibs.
The right to be free is the most basic and fundamental of human rights. This can be subjugated only under exceptional circumstances and this includes sentencing as a result of a criminal act.
Reportedly the Punjab Prison Minister failed to answer pointed queries during the question answer session regarding his department. An attempt to frivilously parry the terpitudes faced by prison inmates is callous and degarding. It is a mind-set that speaks of a wilful neglection of thousands whom we tragically deem as societal outcasts.
It is a quirk of fate that our President and Prime Minister along with many others in positions of political power today have been unwilling inmates of our 'reform centers'. A friend who was incarcerated in Adiala Jail (on what later proved to be dubious charges) has set up a forum for 'like minded' people, including the President and the Premier, called the Adialians.
Prison conditions matter a great deal and the negative effects of a fallacious incarceration system often ripple throughout society. The vagaries faced by inmates induce rage against the system itself instead of the needed reform.
The criminal justice system and our prisons are some of the most dysfunctional aspects of our society and the most insulated from reform. Like most of our other ills, we have neglected our criminal justice system for so long that we have ended up dehumanizing it completely. It is therefore no surprise that prison riots from Dir to Karachi are a norm now.
Our prisons are incubators of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Corruption of the prison staff and gross treatment leads to the physical and emotional degradation of prisoners. The idea of the criminal justice system is to focus on rehabilitation with the aim of helping prevent a sentenced inmate from becoming a habitual criminal offender.
This is the heart of the matter. If the functions of punishment and prevention are fulfilled but fundamental rights are violated and rehabilitation is not just ignored but actually reversed; prisons will, as they have, fail miserably to achieve their societal function. Unfortunately today, if anything, our prisons and criminal justice system are helping create criminals rather than ensuring otherwise.
The treatment of prisoners should not be merely punitive but remedial too. We have come a long way from the days when people were treated brutally and callously in prisons globally. By doing so, it was hoped that the deterrent effect would be so great that they would never commit an offence again. This has and never will work.
Rehabilitation should start as soon as a prisoner enters the prison. Those most capable of rehabilitation are the first offenders and those with short sentences. In our prisons the system works in an absolutely convoluted way. The habitual offenders and hardened criminals, with their 'hallowed' status, are the ones who get to enjoy the most of benefits and privileges.
The conditions within are appalling. Many inmates are left for years, packed like sardines in a can, awaiting trial in their cells. According to HRCP there are 89,370 prisoners occupying 87 jails originally built to hold a maximum of 36,000 persons.
Children and adults are often held together. There is not a single facility for female juveniles in the whole country. They are all kept with women who may be drug dealers, addicts or even murderers. Despite the fact that around half of the population is under 18, the country has just one juvenile court.
Some prisoners are called 'forgotten inmates'. They never go to court, and even if they do, the criminal justice system is such a morass that nobody knows how much longer their detention will last. According to human rights monitors almost 50 percent of our prison population is awaiting trial whereas 33 percent of the female inmates are awaiting trial on adultery related offenses. Most of these cases were filed without supporting evidence. Trials often take years and bail is routinely denied.
The law stipulates that detainees must be brought to trial within 30 days of their arrest. Tragically many of these have spent more time behind bars awaiting trial than the maximum sentence they would receive if eventually convicted. Poet Robert Burns aptly summed up this agony when he said: "In durance vile here must I wake and weep - And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep."
The Pakistan Prisons Act of 1894 and the Prison Rules of Pakistan, both relics from the colonial era, permit the use of fetters and chains as instruments of restraint and punishment under certain conditions. It is a common sight to see prisoners, even juveniles, being brought to courts hand-cuffed and in iron fetters. Another example of archaic rules and a grossly funded system allocates an unbelievably paltry 20 rupees per inmate to cater for three meals a day!
Although there is relentless gloating about a rejuvenated 'independent' judiciary; in practice it remains evermore subject to executive branch influence at all levels. Vacant courts and inefficient procedures have resulted in alarming backlogs at both trial and appellate levels.
Lower courts remain corrupt, inefficient and subject to pressure from prominent political and feudal figures. The recent judicial putsch by the previous government has alarmingly enhanced this influence and pressure.
Criminal rehabilitation is a cost-efficient form of crime prevention. Not all criminals, even convicted ones, are unredeemable psychopaths. The great majority, if treated like human beings with rehabilitation in mind, are capable of changing.
It is imperative that the state and judiciary exercise their responsibility for monitoring prison conditions with, if not more, the same zeal with which it sends people to these overcrowded jails. It would also help if well known NGOs are involved to ensure independent monitoring of prisons. It would also be greatly beneficial to improve the recruitment, remuneration, training and management of the prison service personnel.
Our prisons are counter productive in the attempt to manage a civil society. The need for prison and criminal justice reforms need urgent and compassionate attention. We need to overcome the lock em up and throw away the key mentality.
This cannot be done by a stroke of the pen and requires the application of sustained and vigorous political will. PPPP had promised in its manifesto to usher in prison reforms. The prison reform package promised by the Premier, like many other promises, awaits materialization.
In their next get-together the 'Adialians', if none other, should take a trip down memory lane. If they conjure up cherished and nostalgic memories of their days behind bars, they can sleep easy; if otherwise they should try and reform the gulags that are our prisons.
The unending tragedy of Palestine
The Nation
Mahmoud Darwish, the poet of Palestine, wrote in "State of Siege": "In a land where the dawn sears - We have become more doltish - And we stare at the moments of victory. There is no starry night in our nights of explosions. Our enemies stay up late; they switch on their light in the intense darkness of this tunnel".
Palestine was the biblical real estate most desired by many Jews as a national homeland. It, though, was not an empty land waiting for the Jews to establish their contemplated state. With Israel's "immaculate" conception in 1948 the Palestinians were forcibly evicted, brutalized and conveniently removed from all material or critical considerations. They were denied their right as a people and never considered as humans of any importance. In the world of today where the very denial of the "Holocaust" is deemed a criminal act, the same perpetrated by Israel is seen as their given right.
Many Jews think that there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. This argument goes to the heart of a dominant strand of Jewish thinking.
The state of Israel was created with the motto being "never forget" (the "holocaust"). Their acts today speak of willful amnesia as they eagerly set about destroying a people. The ferocity itself speaks of someone set out to vindicate the holocaust. That the people they choose to do so had nothing to do with it never seems to rein in their pent up demons.
Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense minister went so far as threatening the thoroughly tormented Gazans with a holocaust. Speaking to the Israeli army radio, Vilnai said "the more Qassam rockets fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our power to defend ourselves."
Israel blatantly bulldozes all resolutions and conventions, secure in the knowledge that in this new world order of selective morality it has a carte blanche to do so. It however justifies its repeated acts of aggression citing Article 51 of the UN Charter. It ignores the fact that the UN mandates this right subject to the scale and gravity of the attack. On the same premise Israel responded to Hezbollah's 'provocation' in 2006. Israel's Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, then, threatened to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years"; back to the dark days of civil war when Israel allegedly killed twenty thousand civilians.
The brutal Israeli 2006 offensive of Lebanon caused the deaths of over four hundred people, mostly civilians, many of them children. The war also displaced seven hundred thousand people and turned Beirut to rubble. In a horrific display of cold-blooded brutality Israel bombed ports, bridges, power stations, motorways, neighbourhoods, mosques, churches, the airport, a lighthouse, hospitals and people fleeing in their cars.
The present onslaught on Gaza is actually a merciless and brutal rampage of murder and terror waged against a blockaded, beleaguered and starved people who want to survive and be free. Were these not the aspirations of the hounded Jews under the Nazi occupation? The West led by America and Britain portray the inhabitants of Israel as a people who faced "horrors" at the hands of Hitler only to be preyed upon yet again by Hamas, the "Nazis" of today. People, whose very survival from a meal to the other is an ordeal, are vilified as vampires set out to annihilate an armed to the teeth nuclear Israel.
Today the major Western media, in a Jewish choke-hold, maliciously indicts an elected Hamas as the mother of all problems; as if all was hunky-dory before. It also portrays the current onslaught in Gaza as the first time Israelis are massacring Palestinians. The reality is that Israel has been killing Palestinians since 1948, forty years before Hamas was founded and seventy five years before it was elected in a free and fair election. The massacres and atrocities are of such magnitude that prominent Israeli academic and author Ilan Pape was moved to record the same in his book, aptly titled, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".
Hamas has also been coerced, over time, to lay down arms and recognize Israel. The perpetual bloodshed and misery of the Palestinians is hardly a preamble to encourage that. Yasir Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin for forging the Oslo peace accords. He also was the first Palestinian leader to recognize Israel only to be branded a "terrorist" and rewarded with Israel bombing his compound time and again. He was put under house arrest till he was airlifted, fatally sick, to die in a Paris hospital.
The hapless President, Mahmoud Abbas, can not leave Ramallah without an Israeli permit. He also can do nothing to prevent Israeli military from assassinating and kidnapping Palestinian leaders, bombing and killing his own police force even in the West Bank. The erection of a 703 kilometer ("Berlin") wall to fence the West Bank is purportedly yet another act of Israeli self defense. The International Court of Justice, in a 2004 decision, declared the construction illegal. Ironically the wall is set to be completed next year.
The apathy of the Muslim world on this atrocity, as it has been with Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq, are writ as large as never before. Israeli planes use Egyptian air-space to bomb Gaza that of Pakistan was used to devastate Afghanistan. Kuwait allowed its territory to be used for the occupation of Iraq while Saudi Arabia and Qatar are willing hosts to American military presence on their soil. The Arab League and OIC, toothless as they are, have even given up on the traditionally pathetic hand-wringing colloquy.
The Bush era meant nothing but disaster for the world. His legacy is one of brutal wars and global economic chaos. The world was forced to believe that 9/11 changed the world hence giving some a license to occupy and kill. If, in the process, children and innocents got killed it was justified as nothing but that grotesque term in vogue; "collateral damage".
Everything Bush touched turned to dust and ashes. The "birth pangs of a new Middle East" have morphed into painful throes of death. The catastrophic flash-points he leaves behind call for a fair and powerful mediator. The (hapless) United Nations has a given frame-work for arbitration but in reality it is (ironically) only the United States that can effectively work towards the re-creation of Palestine and also persuade Israel to accept the same.
Jews influence all spheres of life in America. Any move seen to under-mine Israel, as any "concession" to the Palestinians is viewed, is deemed a political kiss of death on Capitol Hill. President elect Obama will have to break away from these shackles and taboos at the very onset. If he gets caught up in the vortex of precedents he will jeopardize his own promised "change". It is impossible that a chaotic Middle East will usher in his promised "change" even within his own home-land. It is also imperative that the paradigm of "self-defense" and its umbilical surrogate "the war on terror" be changed.
It is time that the un-ending tragedy of Palestinians comes to an end with nothing less but the re-creation of a usurped Palestine.
Mahmoud Darwish, the poet of Palestine, wrote in "State of Siege": "In a land where the dawn sears - We have become more doltish - And we stare at the moments of victory. There is no starry night in our nights of explosions. Our enemies stay up late; they switch on their light in the intense darkness of this tunnel".
Palestine was the biblical real estate most desired by many Jews as a national homeland. It, though, was not an empty land waiting for the Jews to establish their contemplated state. With Israel's "immaculate" conception in 1948 the Palestinians were forcibly evicted, brutalized and conveniently removed from all material or critical considerations. They were denied their right as a people and never considered as humans of any importance. In the world of today where the very denial of the "Holocaust" is deemed a criminal act, the same perpetrated by Israel is seen as their given right.
Many Jews think that there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. This argument goes to the heart of a dominant strand of Jewish thinking.
The state of Israel was created with the motto being "never forget" (the "holocaust"). Their acts today speak of willful amnesia as they eagerly set about destroying a people. The ferocity itself speaks of someone set out to vindicate the holocaust. That the people they choose to do so had nothing to do with it never seems to rein in their pent up demons.
Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense minister went so far as threatening the thoroughly tormented Gazans with a holocaust. Speaking to the Israeli army radio, Vilnai said "the more Qassam rockets fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our power to defend ourselves."
Israel blatantly bulldozes all resolutions and conventions, secure in the knowledge that in this new world order of selective morality it has a carte blanche to do so. It however justifies its repeated acts of aggression citing Article 51 of the UN Charter. It ignores the fact that the UN mandates this right subject to the scale and gravity of the attack. On the same premise Israel responded to Hezbollah's 'provocation' in 2006. Israel's Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, then, threatened to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by twenty years"; back to the dark days of civil war when Israel allegedly killed twenty thousand civilians.
The brutal Israeli 2006 offensive of Lebanon caused the deaths of over four hundred people, mostly civilians, many of them children. The war also displaced seven hundred thousand people and turned Beirut to rubble. In a horrific display of cold-blooded brutality Israel bombed ports, bridges, power stations, motorways, neighbourhoods, mosques, churches, the airport, a lighthouse, hospitals and people fleeing in their cars.
The present onslaught on Gaza is actually a merciless and brutal rampage of murder and terror waged against a blockaded, beleaguered and starved people who want to survive and be free. Were these not the aspirations of the hounded Jews under the Nazi occupation? The West led by America and Britain portray the inhabitants of Israel as a people who faced "horrors" at the hands of Hitler only to be preyed upon yet again by Hamas, the "Nazis" of today. People, whose very survival from a meal to the other is an ordeal, are vilified as vampires set out to annihilate an armed to the teeth nuclear Israel.
Today the major Western media, in a Jewish choke-hold, maliciously indicts an elected Hamas as the mother of all problems; as if all was hunky-dory before. It also portrays the current onslaught in Gaza as the first time Israelis are massacring Palestinians. The reality is that Israel has been killing Palestinians since 1948, forty years before Hamas was founded and seventy five years before it was elected in a free and fair election. The massacres and atrocities are of such magnitude that prominent Israeli academic and author Ilan Pape was moved to record the same in his book, aptly titled, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".
Hamas has also been coerced, over time, to lay down arms and recognize Israel. The perpetual bloodshed and misery of the Palestinians is hardly a preamble to encourage that. Yasir Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin for forging the Oslo peace accords. He also was the first Palestinian leader to recognize Israel only to be branded a "terrorist" and rewarded with Israel bombing his compound time and again. He was put under house arrest till he was airlifted, fatally sick, to die in a Paris hospital.
The hapless President, Mahmoud Abbas, can not leave Ramallah without an Israeli permit. He also can do nothing to prevent Israeli military from assassinating and kidnapping Palestinian leaders, bombing and killing his own police force even in the West Bank. The erection of a 703 kilometer ("Berlin") wall to fence the West Bank is purportedly yet another act of Israeli self defense. The International Court of Justice, in a 2004 decision, declared the construction illegal. Ironically the wall is set to be completed next year.
The apathy of the Muslim world on this atrocity, as it has been with Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq, are writ as large as never before. Israeli planes use Egyptian air-space to bomb Gaza that of Pakistan was used to devastate Afghanistan. Kuwait allowed its territory to be used for the occupation of Iraq while Saudi Arabia and Qatar are willing hosts to American military presence on their soil. The Arab League and OIC, toothless as they are, have even given up on the traditionally pathetic hand-wringing colloquy.
The Bush era meant nothing but disaster for the world. His legacy is one of brutal wars and global economic chaos. The world was forced to believe that 9/11 changed the world hence giving some a license to occupy and kill. If, in the process, children and innocents got killed it was justified as nothing but that grotesque term in vogue; "collateral damage".
Everything Bush touched turned to dust and ashes. The "birth pangs of a new Middle East" have morphed into painful throes of death. The catastrophic flash-points he leaves behind call for a fair and powerful mediator. The (hapless) United Nations has a given frame-work for arbitration but in reality it is (ironically) only the United States that can effectively work towards the re-creation of Palestine and also persuade Israel to accept the same.
Jews influence all spheres of life in America. Any move seen to under-mine Israel, as any "concession" to the Palestinians is viewed, is deemed a political kiss of death on Capitol Hill. President elect Obama will have to break away from these shackles and taboos at the very onset. If he gets caught up in the vortex of precedents he will jeopardize his own promised "change". It is impossible that a chaotic Middle East will usher in his promised "change" even within his own home-land. It is also imperative that the paradigm of "self-defense" and its umbilical surrogate "the war on terror" be changed.
It is time that the un-ending tragedy of Palestinians comes to an end with nothing less but the re-creation of a usurped Palestine.
India a prisoner of history
The Frontier Post
The Post
"Of course the people do not want war. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism." – Hermann Goering.
India's animosity towards Pakistan is rooted in history. Hindu extremists have, as those in Washington had on President Bush, a dominating influence on their governments. They emphatically state that Bharat Varsha, the entire Indian sub-continent was Hindu land till Muhammad bin Qasim's attack in 711. After repeated invasions, Hindus lost Gandhaar (Afghanistan) to Muslims in 987, followed by the deepest cut of all - the creation of Pakistan.
History shows that multinational states such as India are doomed to breakup and failure. Countries like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and others prove this point. India is not one country; it is a polyglot like those countries, doomed to break up as they did. It was bound together forcibly for the convenience of the British colonialists and the present Indian rulers still desperately try to hold it together.
The likes of Bal Thackeray, head of the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, openly spews hate and enforces terror against Muslims, Christians and all other religous minorities in India. The right wing group, founded in 1966, draws on Hindutva, an ideology that views India as "not only the Hindu fatherland but also their punyabhumi - their holy land." To Hindu extremists, all others on this land are viewed as "aliens" who do not belong there. ("The Struggle for India's Soul," World Policy Journal, 2002).
In the Mumbai incident aftermath, economist turned Premier; Manmohan Singh rushed to make common cause with the always shrill on rhetoric BJP. The Congress has long been accused of being "soft" on terrorism. This is the same BJP, architect of the demolition of Babri Masjid and the pogroms which saw thousands of Muslims massacred in Gujrat and elsewhere, which is now furiously defending the Hindu extremists who carried out a campaign of terrorist bombings causing widespread fatalities in India.
Meanwhile the strategic thinkers have come up with a new doctrine vis-à-vis Pakistan. Named "Cold Start" it tends to transform Delhi's traditional focus on the lumbering mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops to one of nimble (surgical) strikes inside Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. The strategy assumes that surgical strikes or occupation of limited Pakistani territory would be the bargaining chip to force Islamabad to heel. It also assumes that it could do this without crossing the nuclear threshold. This, on its part, is an assumption destined to evoke calamity.
India has war-gamed this strategy since 2004. The strategy seeks to intimidate Pakistan to constrain militants or suffer the consequences. It could backfire terribly with any such strike lending credence and strengthening the hardliners. It can also put militants firmly in the driver's seat. We have seen the fallout of the drone/predator attacks on our western borders, where the US is loath to understand ground realities. By shamefully accepting these strikes as fate accompli we have given India the sense it can copy-cat the same from our Eastern border.
War-games may seem hugely satisfying in the smugness of well-secured ops-rooms over tea-breaks and banter. What India fails to understand, as has the United States in these recent years, that wars never bring peace. If anything, they precipitate the factors which they were supposed to eliminate. Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine are tragic bloody testaments of this fact.
India has taken up to demonize Pakistan for each attack it suffers in Occupied Kashmir or its own soil. It tends to overlook the fact that it has had its share of home-grown "terrorists" throughout its history. A hindu Nathuram Godse murdered Mahatma Gandhi, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh (Sikhs) assassinated Indira Gandhi and Dhanu, an activist of Liberation Tigers of Sri Lanka murdered Rajiv Gandhi. All of them were tied by a common string of trying to right (what they saw as) a committed wrong even at the cost of their own lives. It is also recent history that Pakistan was dismembered after the most blatant cross-border terrorism when the Indian forces crossed over into East Pakistan and fought side-by-side with the Mukti Bahani. It was none other than the then Indian Premier Indira Gandhi who exulted: "Today we have avenged a thousand years of our dark history".
The Mumbai attacks were timed superbly to the "elections" in Occupied Kashmir and President (elect) Obama, whose statement about trying to resolve the Kashmir issue sent Delhi into a tail-spin, taking over. We saw a hysterical resurgence of rhetoric and vitriol against Pakistan and India's phantasmal demon, the ISI. BJP, ably assisted by legal Hindutva outfits like the VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, wanted nothing less than their pound of flesh.
In the furor the death of Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror was gunned down. This was the same Karkare who exposed the Hindutva outfit which carried out the Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts initially blamed on the ISI. For his pains Karkare was branded a traitor not only by Hindu militant outfits but the mainstream BJP too. Reportedly Col. Purohit and co-conspirators now in custody celebrated the news of Karkare's death.
What also could be more damning in the world's largest 'secular democracy' than the resignation of India's Minister of Minority Affairs, Abdul Rehman Antulay? He was forced to resign after he voiced his suspicion in the Lok Sabha about the circumstances in which Karkare had been murdered. He too was branded a traitor and a crony of Pakistan.
The time has come for India to resolve the most critical incendiary, the dispute of Occupied Kashmir. It remains the eye of the ever threatening Pak-India vortex. It is the core issue which can never, until resolved, bring peace to this region. Improving trade relations, exchanging acting and singing troupes, running bus and train services will lead us nowhere. Years of CBMs vanish with a single shot fired in India or Occupied Kashmir. Confidence is built when you go for the root of the problem not by nipping at the buds whenever politically expedient on both sides of the divide.
India has always viewed Pakistan as an existential threat. The need of the hour for Pakistan is to do the same. With India actively trying to destabilize Baluchistan and our tribal and settled areas, at least a reciprocal forceful stand on the diplomatic front is merited.
India never accepted the creation of Pakistan always terming the partition a "historical blunder". What they should be given to understand, sans our ever-changing apologetic murmurings, is that the divide is irreversible and Pakistan is here to stay. It is in a bellicose India's interest that Pakistan performs as a stable, prosperous state. Only when India sheds its obsessive hostility towards Pakistan can we see an atmosphere conducive for peace in this region and the world at large.
The Post
"Of course the people do not want war. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism." – Hermann Goering.
India's animosity towards Pakistan is rooted in history. Hindu extremists have, as those in Washington had on President Bush, a dominating influence on their governments. They emphatically state that Bharat Varsha, the entire Indian sub-continent was Hindu land till Muhammad bin Qasim's attack in 711. After repeated invasions, Hindus lost Gandhaar (Afghanistan) to Muslims in 987, followed by the deepest cut of all - the creation of Pakistan.
History shows that multinational states such as India are doomed to breakup and failure. Countries like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and others prove this point. India is not one country; it is a polyglot like those countries, doomed to break up as they did. It was bound together forcibly for the convenience of the British colonialists and the present Indian rulers still desperately try to hold it together.
The likes of Bal Thackeray, head of the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, openly spews hate and enforces terror against Muslims, Christians and all other religous minorities in India. The right wing group, founded in 1966, draws on Hindutva, an ideology that views India as "not only the Hindu fatherland but also their punyabhumi - their holy land." To Hindu extremists, all others on this land are viewed as "aliens" who do not belong there. ("The Struggle for India's Soul," World Policy Journal, 2002).
In the Mumbai incident aftermath, economist turned Premier; Manmohan Singh rushed to make common cause with the always shrill on rhetoric BJP. The Congress has long been accused of being "soft" on terrorism. This is the same BJP, architect of the demolition of Babri Masjid and the pogroms which saw thousands of Muslims massacred in Gujrat and elsewhere, which is now furiously defending the Hindu extremists who carried out a campaign of terrorist bombings causing widespread fatalities in India.
Meanwhile the strategic thinkers have come up with a new doctrine vis-à-vis Pakistan. Named "Cold Start" it tends to transform Delhi's traditional focus on the lumbering mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops to one of nimble (surgical) strikes inside Pakistan and Azad Kashmir. The strategy assumes that surgical strikes or occupation of limited Pakistani territory would be the bargaining chip to force Islamabad to heel. It also assumes that it could do this without crossing the nuclear threshold. This, on its part, is an assumption destined to evoke calamity.
India has war-gamed this strategy since 2004. The strategy seeks to intimidate Pakistan to constrain militants or suffer the consequences. It could backfire terribly with any such strike lending credence and strengthening the hardliners. It can also put militants firmly in the driver's seat. We have seen the fallout of the drone/predator attacks on our western borders, where the US is loath to understand ground realities. By shamefully accepting these strikes as fate accompli we have given India the sense it can copy-cat the same from our Eastern border.
War-games may seem hugely satisfying in the smugness of well-secured ops-rooms over tea-breaks and banter. What India fails to understand, as has the United States in these recent years, that wars never bring peace. If anything, they precipitate the factors which they were supposed to eliminate. Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine are tragic bloody testaments of this fact.
India has taken up to demonize Pakistan for each attack it suffers in Occupied Kashmir or its own soil. It tends to overlook the fact that it has had its share of home-grown "terrorists" throughout its history. A hindu Nathuram Godse murdered Mahatma Gandhi, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh (Sikhs) assassinated Indira Gandhi and Dhanu, an activist of Liberation Tigers of Sri Lanka murdered Rajiv Gandhi. All of them were tied by a common string of trying to right (what they saw as) a committed wrong even at the cost of their own lives. It is also recent history that Pakistan was dismembered after the most blatant cross-border terrorism when the Indian forces crossed over into East Pakistan and fought side-by-side with the Mukti Bahani. It was none other than the then Indian Premier Indira Gandhi who exulted: "Today we have avenged a thousand years of our dark history".
The Mumbai attacks were timed superbly to the "elections" in Occupied Kashmir and President (elect) Obama, whose statement about trying to resolve the Kashmir issue sent Delhi into a tail-spin, taking over. We saw a hysterical resurgence of rhetoric and vitriol against Pakistan and India's phantasmal demon, the ISI. BJP, ably assisted by legal Hindutva outfits like the VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, wanted nothing less than their pound of flesh.
In the furor the death of Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror was gunned down. This was the same Karkare who exposed the Hindutva outfit which carried out the Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts initially blamed on the ISI. For his pains Karkare was branded a traitor not only by Hindu militant outfits but the mainstream BJP too. Reportedly Col. Purohit and co-conspirators now in custody celebrated the news of Karkare's death.
What also could be more damning in the world's largest 'secular democracy' than the resignation of India's Minister of Minority Affairs, Abdul Rehman Antulay? He was forced to resign after he voiced his suspicion in the Lok Sabha about the circumstances in which Karkare had been murdered. He too was branded a traitor and a crony of Pakistan.
The time has come for India to resolve the most critical incendiary, the dispute of Occupied Kashmir. It remains the eye of the ever threatening Pak-India vortex. It is the core issue which can never, until resolved, bring peace to this region. Improving trade relations, exchanging acting and singing troupes, running bus and train services will lead us nowhere. Years of CBMs vanish with a single shot fired in India or Occupied Kashmir. Confidence is built when you go for the root of the problem not by nipping at the buds whenever politically expedient on both sides of the divide.
India has always viewed Pakistan as an existential threat. The need of the hour for Pakistan is to do the same. With India actively trying to destabilize Baluchistan and our tribal and settled areas, at least a reciprocal forceful stand on the diplomatic front is merited.
India never accepted the creation of Pakistan always terming the partition a "historical blunder". What they should be given to understand, sans our ever-changing apologetic murmurings, is that the divide is irreversible and Pakistan is here to stay. It is in a bellicose India's interest that Pakistan performs as a stable, prosperous state. Only when India sheds its obsessive hostility towards Pakistan can we see an atmosphere conducive for peace in this region and the world at large.
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