The clash of ignorance

SAMUEL HUNTINGTON’s article “The Clash of Civilizations” appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, where it immediately attracted a surprising amount of attention and reaction. Because the article was intended to supply Americans with an original thesis about “a new phase” in world politics after the end of the cold war, Huntington’s terms of argument seemed compellingly large, bold, even visionary.

He very clearly had his eye on rivals in the policy-making ranks, theorists such as Francis Fukuyama and his “end of history” ideas, as well as the legions who had celebrated the onset of globalism, tribalism and the dissipation of the state. But they, he allowed, had understood only some aspects of this new period. He was about to announce the “crucial, indeed a central, aspect” of what “global politics is likely to be in the coming years.” Unhesitatingly he pressed on:

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Most of the argument in the pages that followed relied on a vague notion of something Huntington called “civilization identity” and “the interactions among seven or eight [sic] major civilizations,” of which the conflict between two of them, Islam and the West, gets the lion’s share of his attention. In this belligerent kind of thought, he relies heavily on a 1990 article by the veteran Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, whose ideological colours are manifest in its title, “The Roots of Muslim Rage.”

Certainly neither Huntington nor Lewis has much time to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization, or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture. More troubling is Huntington’s assumption that his perspective, which is to survey the entire world from a perch outside all ordinary attachments and hidden loyalties, is the correct one, as if everyone else were scurrying around looking for the answers that he has already found.

In fact, Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make “civilizations” and “identities” into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and counter-currents that animate human history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing. This far less visible history is ignored in the rush to highlight the ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare that “the clash of civilizations” argues is the reality.

When he published his book by the same title in 1996, Huntington tried to give his argument a little more subtlety and many, many more footnotes; all he did, however, was confuse himself and demonstrate what a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker he was. The basic paradigm of West versus the rest (the cold war opposition reformulated) remained untouched, and this is what has persisted, often insidiously and implicitly, in discussion since the terrible events of September 11.

The carefully planned and horrendous, pathologically motivated suicide attack and mass slaughter by a small group of deranged militants has been turned into proof of Huntington’s thesis. Instead of seeing it for what it is, the capture of big ideas (I use the word loosely) by a tiny band of crazed fanatics for criminal purposes — international luminaries from former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have pontificated about Islam’s troubles, and in the latter’s case have used Huntington’s ideas to rant on about the West’s superiority, how “we” have Mozart and Michelangelo and they don’t. (Berlusconi has since made a half-hearted apology for his insult to “Islam.”)

But why not instead see parallels, admittedly less spectacular in their destructiveness, for Osama bin Laden and his followers in cults like the Branch Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones at Guyana or the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo? Even the normally sober British weekly ‘The Economist’, in its issue of September 22-28, can’t resist reaching for the vast generalization, praising Huntington extravagantly for his “cruel and sweeping, but nonetheless acute” observations about Islam. “Today,” the journal says with unseemly solemnity, Huntington writes that “the world’s billion or so Muslims are ‘convinced of the superiority of their culture, and obsessed with the inferiority of their power’.” Did he canvas 100 Indonesians, 200 Moroccans, 500 Egyptians and fifty Bosnians? Even if he did, what sort of sample is that?

This is the problem with unedifying labels like Islam and the West: They mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality that won’t be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that. I remember interrupting a man who, after a lecture I had given at a West Bank university in 1994, rose from the audience and started to attack my ideas as “western,” as opposed to the strict Islamic ones he espoused. “Why are you wearing a suit and tie?” was the first retort that came to mind. “They’re western too.”

He sat down with an embarrassed smile on his face, but I recalled the incident when information on the September 11 terrorists started to come in: how they had mastered all the technical details required to inflict their homicidal evil on the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the aircraft they had commandeered. Where does one draw the line between “western” technology and, as Berlusconi declared, “Islam’s” inability to be a part of “modernity”? One cannot easily do so, of course. How finally inadequate are the labels, generalizations and cultural assertions. At some level, for instance, primitive passions and sophisticated know-how converge in ways that give the lie to a fortified boundary not only between “West” and “Islam” but also between past and present, us and them, to say nothing of the very concepts of identity and nationality about which there is unending disagreement and debate.

In a remarkable series of three articles published between January and March 1999 in DAWN, Pakistan’s most respected daily, the late Eqbal Ahmad, writing for a Muslim audience, analyzed what he called the roots of the religious right, coming down very harshly on the mutilations of Islam by absolutists and fanatical tyrants whose obsession with regulating personal behaviour promotes “an Islamic order reduced to a penal code, stripped of its humanism, aesthetics, intellectual quests, and spiritual devotion.” And this “entails an absolute assertion of one, generally de-contextualized, aspect of religion and a total disregard of another. The phenomenon distorts religion, debases tradition, and twists the political process wherever it unfolds.”

As a timely instance of this debasement, Ahmad proceeds first to present the rich, complex, pluralist meaning of the word jihad and then goes on to show that in the world’s current confinement to indiscriminate war against presumed enemies, it is impossible “to recognize the Islamic — religion, society, culture, history or politics — as lived and experienced by Muslims through the ages.”

The modern Islamists, Ahmad concludes, are “concerned with power, not with the soul; with the mobilization of people for political purposes rather than with sharing and alleviating their sufferings and aspirations. Theirs is a very limited and time-bound political agenda.” What has made matters worse is that similar distortions and zealotry occur in the “Jewish” and “Christian” universes of discourse.

It was Conrad who understood that the distinctions between civilized London and “the heart of darkness” quickly collapsed in extreme situations, and that the heights of European civilization could instantaneously fall into the most barbarous practices without preparation or transition. And it was Conrad also, who described terrorism’s affinity for abstractions like “pure science” (and by extension for “Islam” or “the West”).

For there are closer ties between apparently warring civilizations than most of us would like to believe; both Freud and Nietzsche showed how the traffic across carefully maintained, even policed boundaries moves with often terrifying ease.

Hence, the altogether more reassuring battle orders drawn out of Huntington’s alleged opposition between Islam and the West, from which official discourse drew its vocabulary in the first days after the September 11 attacks. There’s since been a noticeable de-escalation in that discourse, but to judge from the steady amount of hate speech and actions, plus reports of law enforcement efforts directed against Arabs, Muslims and Indians all over the country, the paradigm stays on.

Then there is the persisting legacy of monotheism itself, the Abrahamic religions, as Louis Massignon aptly called them. Beginning with Judaism and Christianity, each is a successor haunted by what came before; for Muslims, Islam fulfils and ends the line of prophecy. There is still no decent history or demystification of the many-sided contest among these three followers — not one of them by any means a monolithic, unified camp — of the most jealous of all gods, even though the bloody modern convergence on Palestine furnishes a rich secular instance of what has been so tragically irreconcilable about them. Not surprisingly, then, Muslims and Christians speak readily of crusades and jihads, both of them eliding the Judaic presence with often sublime insouciance. Such an agenda, says Eqbal Ahmad, is “very reassuring to the men and women who are stranded in the middle of the ford, between the deep waters of tradition and modernity.”

But we are all swimming in those waters, Westerners and Muslims and others alike. And since the waters are part of the ocean of history, trying to plough or divide them with barriers is futile. These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis. “The Clash of Civilizations” thesis is a gimmick like “The War of the Worlds,” better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.—Copyright Edward W. Said, 2001.

New campus for IIU

TOMORROW, October 25 will be a red-letter day in the history of Islamabad’s International University, for it starts its journey to its new home, its own home.

For the last sixteen years the IIU has lived as a guest in the annexe of the grand Faisal Masjid, that beautiful mosque which has become the pictorial symbol of the federal capital. Shifting to the new site is going to be a painstaking process, but when one is going home one doesn’t mind the problems of uprooting and re-settlement.

Building a university is not easy, even if the institution has been in existence academically for so many years and you have only to house it physically. The IIU has been around since 1985 but so far it has not had to worry about a campus of its own. Space in the Faisal Masjid complex was necessarily limited, but the university managed to accommodate itself. It is a vast organization, and one of its academies and two of its departments — business management and computer science, as also the women’s section — have had to be located in hired premises in the city.

For the last two years the university administration has been goading the consultants and contractors to expedite work on the new campus in Sector H-10. Ever since he joined as Rector last year, Justice (retd) Khalilur Rahman Khan has made it a point of prestige that the shifting must commence in October. Along with him, Dr Hasan Mahmud al Shafie, the IIU’s Egyptian President (Vice Chancellor), has been acting as a sort of chief engineer-cum-planner. When the task is over Dr Shafie can add the qualification of university designer to his many scholastic accomplishments.

Leaving aside the other trappings of a big university, there are some 5,000 students on its rolls, including 1,200 girls. Even if everything were ready to the last detail at the new campus, their transfer would be a stupendous task. And everything is not completely ready yet. Part of the work on utilities like roads, electricity, gas, water, furniture, etc., is still going on, though at hectic speed. That is why it has been decided that students will only shift when everything is on the ground so that neither they nor the teaching faculty should suffer inconvenience. This reminds me of August 1947 when the personnel of the new Pakistan government reached Karachi to find that, what to say of office space, there was not even stationery to start work with.

The present premises in Faisal Masjid will be retained because there is no necessity to vacate them. The law that created the International Islamic University stipulated that the entire complex, including the mosque itself, will be under the control of the IIU. That is why the President has been performing the functions of khateeb of the masjid on occasions like the Eid congregations. However the Capital Development Authority (CDA) looks after maintenance, just as it does in the case of all government buildings in Islamabad.

The new site is a magnificent 700 undulating acres comprising the whole of Sector H-10. It was gifted to the university by the government in 1989, a most munificent and generous gift, reportedly much opposed by the bureaucracy of the day. The question may be asked why building work couldn’t start soon afterwards when the architects had done with the designing. Here again the slack hand of the bureaucracy manifested itself. The area was still under the occupation of the original rural owners of the land, and the problem of moving them after compensation, etc. took many years. Thankfully that problem has been resolved by the CDA.

The first to be transferred to the new campus will be the teaching faculties for which the buildings are almost ready. They will be followed by the students for whom four hostels are complete, except for minor details. The contractors have promised to hand over two hostels for girl students by January. It is hoped that by that time all the hostels, for boys and girls, will be finally ready for occupation. Once the new site gets into stride the IIU will be in a position to expand its ambitious academic scope, with ventures into medicine, engineering and technology and the social sciences.

Already, initiation of degree-level and post-graduate studies in new non-religious disciplines every now and then has convinced the people of Pakistan that the IIU is not a glorified deeni madressah. It is a university that, apart from studies in shariah, fiqh and usuluddin, offers the highest level instruction in economics, computer science, business management, Arabic and English language and literature. The medium of instruction are English and Arabic.

The campus is to have a grand central library which should become the pride of Pakistan, as well as a beautiful central mosque, and many other features. It is being ensured that the campus should be self-sufficient in every facility and amenity, and that too of the best and most modern standard. More than fourteen million dollars have been contributed for the new campus by Muslim philanthropic individuals and agencies abroad and the Islamic Development Bank.

Significantly the Islamic University is financed almost totally through the philanthropy of Muslims from the Arabian peninsula. The Pakistan government gives a grant but it is barely sufficient to defray the salaries of the Pakistani staff. A majority of the faculty, well-known scholars of Islam, comes from Arab countries and are paid highly attractive salaries and allowances by their respective governments. Among the students more than half are from 58 foreign countries. Most keen for admission are boys and girls from countries where Muslims are in a minority and where Islamic education is available with considerable difficulty or not at all.

A casual visit to the International Islamic University is an inspiring experience. Just stand and watch the students, coming and going, talking and laughing, hurrying to their classes or just lounging in the cafeterias, and as you hear a variety of languages and see the various ethnic types you begin to feel that you are in a miniature world of Islam. I am sure they will prove better ambassadors for Pakistan when they go back than the stuff that goes out from here to make money.

Afghanistan: now & henceforward

AFGHANISTAN has rightly been called the roundabout of the East for centuries. It is at the confluence of routes coming from and going in every direction. Guns are booming once again in Afghanistan.

Anglo-American forces, backed by almost all the powers of the world are forcing their way into Afghanistan, not to conquer that country but to flush out terrorists suspected to be involved in the September 11 suicide bombings in the US. To soften psychological effect of the war, they have expressed many pious hopes. In fact, along with firing missiles they are also air-dropping food packs for the people of Afghanistan.

But the unity of the international coalition against terrorism is already showing cracks. Many Muslim countries have condemned the attacks. Religious organizations in Pakistan and other Muslim countries have staged protest rallies and are gearing up more as military action in Afghanistan continues. In all likelihood, the perception that Islam is under attack in Afghanistan will grow and spread rapidly.

Every Afghan is familiar with the use of the gun. Many of them may be living in caves, hovels and shanties, practising shepherding or primitive agriculture, selling dry fruits in subcontinental towns and villages, or giving loans at high interest rates and being called Kabuliwalas, but their expertise in the handling of guns is extraordinary.

They are their own policemen and defending soldiers, their own lawmen, prosecutors and judges, self-sufficient in all their meagre requirements. During the last two decades in particular, they have been involved in war, a protracted civil war and their different variants. In fact, fighting has been a way of life for them for centuries.

The Afghan is a formidable enemy as the British learned to their cost during the two Afghan wars. Czarist Russia was smarter. It was content with having some leverage with Kabul. Afghanistan remained a buffer between the Czarist Russia and the British Empire for more than a century. In a sense, this tribal conglomerate was left out of the mainstream of history.

The Afghans’ way of life, code of conduct and values are today more or less the same as they were at least three hundred years ago. Of course, their guns have always been up-to-date. The Soviets marched into Afghanistan in 1979 on what they mistakenly thought was a minor police action but got stuck in the abyss. Thousands were killed in action but many more by disease.

The strategic importance of Afghanistan cannot be overstated. It is at the point of convergence of many frontiers and of historical trade and strategic routes. It is on the route to India, Pakistan and China, and on the other side, to the Central and West Asia and beyond, to Europe. Peshawar has a Qissakhawni Bazaar where trade caravans met and exchanged merchandise. Such caravanserais (motels) are found all over Afghanistan, with the most important one being in Kabul, the capital city. With their deadly guns and forbidding mountains the Afghans could ensure peace and safety for themselves and their country when it suited them, and chase away and make short work of any invader who dared them.

The on-going Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan may or may not be an invasion as such. They say they are not out to conquer Afghanistan. Its territory is not being coveted. The declared objective of the military offensive is to target the suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, his terrorist network and those who shelter them. The US demanded the Taliban to hand over bin Laden for trial. Pakistan sent more than one mission to Afghanistan trying to persuade the Taliban regime to comply with the demand. But they refused. Pakistan has also said that the proofs provided by the US is sufficient to suspect that bin Laden is involved in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Pakistan has been a more steadfast friend of the Taliban regime than anyone else.

At the moment it is the only country in the world that still recognizes the Taliban regime. Two others — Saudi Arabia and the UAE — who also did so have severed diplomatic ties with Kabul following the terrorist attacks on the US. With Afghanistan under attack, Pakistan is burdening itself with a fresh influx of refugees. Pakistan has also been the conduit for food supplies and fuel reaching Afghanistan and that country’s dry fruit and other trade commodities being sent out to Pakistan and markets beyond for sales.

Along with invading Afghanistan, efforts are being made to bring together influentials and elders and former King Zahir Shah to form a broad-based government to take charge and ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan. Pakistan is lending a helping hand in this task also. With its long-standing friendship with Afghanistan, the Afghans can have the confidence that Pakistan will never do anything harmful to their Afghan brethren. If the invading forces do not quickly complete their job in Afghanistan and pull out, they will be inviting trouble for themselves. History is witness to the fact that Afghanistan is a human and territorial Bermuda Triangle from where no one ever comes out or at any rate in one piece.

The UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has said that the US strikes against Afghanistan are legitimate self-defence. He has called for a multi-ethnic broad-based government for Afghanistan. But the fact remains that while every country is free to exercise the right of self-defence within its own territory, in rushing into another country and invading it in the name of ‘self-defence’ is something else again and may create more problems than it will solve. Before a modicum of governance is restored there, anarchy and violence can rack Afghanistan further. Terrorism emanating from Afghanistan or from elsewhere are dealt better by the world body. The UN can set up terrorist crime tribunals on the pattern of wars crime tribunals so that the trial proceedings are fair and impartial and are conducted without any political or religious bias.

What is going on in Afghanistan my be unfortunate. But it also has the potential of good. The country can now pass through a long over-due process of transformation with an accent on modernization. The world community can see to it that not only peace and stability returns to Afghanistan, but the country is developed socially, economically and infrastructurally and has adequate provisions of education, health and social welfare for its largely impoverished people. A reasonably developed Afghanistan can be a strategic cross-roads more meaningfully than an underdeveloped one.

The UN can sponsor a Marshall Plan type of financial package for Afghanistan as America did in the case of post-war Europe. It will be a friend to all its neighbours and enemy to none. It can become an Asian Switzerland, useful to all and a threat to no one. Such a country cannot be a hotbed of terrorism or a citadel of fundamentalism. If the world community moves in this direction it will not only be helping a chunk of humanity in Afghanistan; it will also be removing a forbidding bastion of backwardness and primitiveness.

Pakistan has expressed the hope that the military action will be targeted and short. It has also outlined the post-Taliban dispensation calling for it to be broad-based, multi-ethnic, representative and stable. It has stressed the urgent need of rehabilitation measure. It has also said that the post-Taliban dispensation in Afghanistan should be friendly to Pakistan. That is how it should be. The new Afghan dispensation should be friendly to all its five neighbours and the world at large. One may add that Afghanistan must be updated and modernized so that it may no longer be a big liability for the rest of the world community.

Manipulating research

IF you are one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, whose acceptance of a research article for publication confers instant legitimacy, it doesn’t seem a lot to ask that the people submitting manuscripts to you be willing to vouch for the independence of their research and the integrity of their conclusions.

And yet the decision by a group of pre-eminent medical journals to seek such assurances has caused a stir. The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, The Lancet and other scientific publications are expected to lay out new guidelines for journal submissions. To qualify for publication, authors of the studies — not their corporate sponsors — must have final say over the conclusions in the paper, and they must have full access to all the data in the study.

These seemingly modest requirements reflect editors’ concern about the growing influence of drug industry funding on academic research and the multiplying accounts of data withheld, spun or otherwise manipulated when the results proved disadvantageous to the funder.

It’s an important step, though there is more to do. The escalating financial stakes in drug research have sharpened worries about conflict of interest all across the research enterprise. —The Washington Post

Australia’s khaki Election

A CERTAIN phenomenon witnessed of late in parts of the Western world must have excited the envy of many a Muslim ruler, elected or — more likely — not. Nine-Eleven, as last month’s horrific events in New York and Washington have been dubbed by the imaginative Americans, and the declaration of war against virtually defenceless Afghanistan appear to have been accompanied by an extraordinary surge in support for incumbent leaders, particularly in the US, Britain and Australia.

George W. Bush desperately required reaffirmation of his leadership, not least because in last year’s farcical presidential contest he obtained less votes than his Democratic opponent. The recently re-elected Tony Blair, faced with insignificant parliamentary opposition, must have relished the globe-trotting opportunity that arose more for narcissistic reasons than short-term political gain. No politician objects to approval ratings of more than 90 per cent, and Mr Blair has evidently been delighted to assume the role of de facto deputy leader of the so-called free world, oblivious of the irony that he has fallen in line with the absurdly simplistic “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” dichotomy by his White House chum just when a “third way” could have offered a viable antidote to blunderbuss militarism. The British prime minister would do well to note that when history takes them to task for perpetuating terror in the name of combating it, Mr Bush will at least be able to plead diminished responsibility.

It is conceivable, of course, that the momentum he has unexpectedly gained, courtesy of Al Qaeda, will help Mr Bush to overcome the re-election hurdle in 2004, although three years is a very long time in politics. As for Mr Blair, he will need little extraneous help to maintain Labour in power as long as masochism remains the driving force of his Conservative rivals. In electoral terms, therefore, the chief political beneficiary of the terrorism ruckus could well turn out to be Australia’s John Howard, who has cynically been milking the crisis for all it is worth in the run-up to polling day on November 10.

Actually, Afghanistan had proved its value to Mr Howard even before September 11. A few months ago, he was lagging in opinion polls and most analysts were writing him off as a no-hoper. At the 1998 general election, Mr Howard had barely managed to be returned to power with a sharply reduced majority. His misnamed Liberal Party, which rules in a coalition with the even more conservative National Party, had polled fewer primary votes than the Labor opposition (which presumably provides grounds for a special affinity with Mr Bush). That didn’t prevent the prime minister from claiming a mandate for his regressive GST — but in the years that followed, the problems associated with the introduction of that tax did little good to his image as an economic manager. On the basis of the 1998 result, Labor required only a one per cent swing in its favour to wrest federal power; with one exception, all the state governments are already in Labor’s hands.

Then, a couple of months ago a Norwegian vessel, the MV Tampa, was requested by Australian naval authorities to rescue more than 400 Afghan refugees, who were in danger of drowning while attempting to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. They had apparently sailed from Indonesia, and Mr Howard’s government told the Tampa to take them back to that country. The Tampa was closer to Christmas Island, however, and its captain felt, naturally enough, that since he had been alerted to the plight of the refugees by Australia, it was the latter’s duty to take them off his hands. During the stand-off, Australia’s inhumane intransigence was denounced the world over, but on the domestic front it was reported that up to 90 per cent of Australians supported the government’s hard line. That was almost certainly an exaggeration; and there can be equally little doubt that groundless insinuations about the wealth, possible origins and intentions of the refugees affected the views of many Australians.

It has recently emerged that a UNHCR-proposed solution was rejected by Canberra (evidently on purely political grounds) in favour of the convoluted compromise whereby the refugees are currently being processed on Nauru and in New Zealand — at a considerably greater cost to Australian taxpayers than if the logical thing had been done by permitting them temporary access to Christmas Island.

Mr Howard happened to be on an official visit to the United States when the terrorists struck last month, and, a trifle worryingly, was incommunicado for a while. A planned address to a joint session of Congress had to be cancelled, and a visibly shaken Mr Howard pledged at the first available opportunity to contribute to the American war against terrorism. The first specific offer was limited to 150 Special Air Service commandos; it has since been expanded to 1,500 troops — with Mr Howard stressing the likelihood of some of them being “killed or badly maimed”. The deputy leader of the Liberal Party — and Mr Howard’s designated successor — Peter Costello, the federal treasurer, has meanwhile been doing his two bits to reassure the populace by pointing out that Australia’s viability as a terrorist target is next only to that of the US and Britain. A plethora of anthrax-related false alarms and hoaxes appear to contradict rather than reinforce the blatant effort to cast Australia as an internationally significant player.

Much to the consternation of Mr Howard, the assault on Afghanistan continues to be treated as a US-British effort. Australia, which still recognizes Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, is widely seen as a British subsidiary. Ironically for the prime minister, who vociferously campaigned for the “no” vote in the republican referendum organized a couple of years ago, Australia’s contribution, practically irrelevant though it may be in strategic terms, would nonetheless have been accorded greater respect had the nation opted to break free from its colonial moorings.

Delusions about Australia’s place in the world are also common on the island-continent. Mr Howard’s Labor predecessor, Paul Keating, tried to make amends by recognizing geopolitical realities and trying to establish better relations with Australia’s neighbours, such as Indonesia. Oddly enough (or perhaps not), Canberra enjoyed closer ties with Jakarta under the Suharto dictatorship than it does now. President Megawati Sukarnoputri returned none of Mr Howard’s calls when he was desperately trying to contact her during the Tampa crisis, and she was decidedly cool to him during the APEC summit in Shanghai, having been advised to steer clear of him.

The Australian Labor Party has, with some justification, made much of Mr Howard’s failure to establish a cooperative dialogue with Indonesia in the boat people context. Unfortunately, on that issue as well as the so-called struggle against terrorism, Labor has been unable to distinguish itself sufficiently from the Liberals. Whenever Mr Howard tries to convert his occasional telephone conversations with US Vice-President Dick Cheney and Mr Bush into political capital, Labor leader Kim Beazley responds by elaborating on his chats with Mr Blair.

In a recent television debate with his rival, Mr Beazley delivered a considerably stronger performance than Mr Howard. But his problem is that he is, generally speaking, not much more inspiring than the prime minister. On refugees and the subsequent international crisis, Mr Beazley has been unable to distinguish himself sufficiently from the government position. The Liberals have been trying extremely hard to press home the message that under the exigent circumstances obtaining at present, it is best to leave the government in “safe hands”. Unfortunately for them — and for Australia — Mr Beazley’s hands, clumsy though they may be, are no less “safe”. Nor any more, for that matter.

However, far more interesting than the domestic ‘noora kushti’ is the phenomenon whereby, barring the possibly motivated opinion polls, public opinion appears to be great deal more diverse than the politicians are willing to admit. On television as well as radio talk shows, more than half the audience invariably questions not just the decision to turn away refugees who clearly required a safe haven but also the government’s resolve to commit troops to what is widely perceived as an American war against intangible foes. Nobody views Osama bin Laden as innocent. Nor does anyone consider the Taliban to be innocent in the broader context.

But a large number of people wonder whether the guilty parties are being targeted in the US assault via Pakistan. The rational doubters probably do not constitute a sufficient proportion of the voting population to make a huge difference. Yet there’s enough of them to give Mr Howard a bit of a shock on November 10. Notwithstanding the poor quality of the opposition, it will be unfortunate if they fail.