How the allies view war on terrorism

PRESIDENT George W. Bush’s impolitic call for a “crusade” by the civilized world against terrorism won more diverse support than he expected, but for reasons he did not anticipate.

The reason was that nearly everyone has his own “terrorism” problem, and each would like to invite the United States into his fight. They would at least like the United states to turn its official gaze away while they deal with their “terrorists” by using methods of which Washington in the past would not have approved.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin endorsed Mr Bush’s call because he wants Washington’s crusade to incorporate the brutal, but as yet unsuccessful, Russian attempt to crush the Chechen nationalists. Moscow has consistently identified the Chechen problem as a case of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Ariel Sharon launched a battering of Palestine Authority sites during the hours that followed the attacks in New York and Washington, and described Yaser Arafat as a second Osama bin Laden, whom America and Israel should cooperate in crushing.

Washington rejected the comparison, knowing that if it wants Arab cooperation in dealing with Mr bin Laden, Prime Minister Sharon has to be locked in a box.

Mr Arafat had equal pressure put on him by Washington to become a blood donor, unconvincingly condemn terrorism and to call off the Palestinians’ gunmen, all of which he did. China explained that its troublesome minorities and dissident provinces — such as Taiwan — are “terrorists and separatists.” They should be condemned by the United States, China said, in exchange for China’s support for Washington’s anti-terrorism campaign.

India said that separatists in Kashmir are terrorists. Sri Lanka says the same thing about its Tamil insurrection. Turkey identifies Kurd national resistance as terrorism. Serbia says that Mr bin Laden’s organization has branches in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and in Albania itself.

Even the Irish Republican Army, whose stalwarts were recently caught instructing Colombian rebels, and whose own record includes skyscraper bombings, saw that it was expedient to deplore the Trade Towers and Pentagon attacks.

The White House was eventually forced on Sept. 18 to clarify the matter. US policy, it said, is to “eliminate” terrorism around the world, but only “when it threatens the United States.” Your nationalists are my terrorists. My freedom-fighters are your terrorists. This is not a cynical observation, nor the judgment of a political relativist; politically, it simply is the truth.

What in principle distinguishes terrorism is indiscriminate violence. Civilians are considered legitimate targets in terrorist campaign meant to achieve what otherwise might be defensible goals: democratic self-determination for Kashmir; an independent Kurdistan; Britain out of Northern Ireland; Israel out of the occupied territories.

The terrorist justifies terror as the only weapon available to the weak. He claims for himself (or herself; terrorism is an equal-opportunity enterprise) an expedient morality: that terror works — as frequently it does.

Mr bin Laden, if indeed he is responsible for what happened on Sept. 11, has well and truly succeeded in getting the attention of Americans. Vengeance is cried now. Who is to say that the World Trade Towers and Pentagon attacks may not, in the long run, turn out to have influenced the US government to pull back from the Middle East?

It took a single act of terrorism in 1983 to get American troops out of Lebanon. President Ronald Reagan had sent them to sponsor order and democracy, but there were no complaints in Congress when he abruptly ordered home the survivors of a car bomb at US military barracks. Rhetorical excess about crusades and “eliminating” terrorism-sponsoring nations is not only a political error, opening the situation to the exploitation and opportunism of others, but it confuses the issues for Americans themselves.

For the attacks were not, as Mr Bush and his colleagues say, aimed “at Western civilization” or “at those who cherish liberty.” They were aimed specifically at the United States of America, for specific reasons.

They were meant to harm the United states, and no one else. They were retaliation for specific things done by the United States, and for specific American policies carried out over the years.

Americans may think those policies and those acts were entirely right and justified, or they may not. But they have to take responsibility for them, and accept their consequences. We they need to be lucid about what has happened. Logically, this terrible experience should lead us to a new and serious reflection on what we have done in the past, and should do now. But that will not happen until the dust has cleared, and vengeance has been had. The troubling thought is that it might not happen even then.—Dawn/Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

ID card drill: an absurdity on stilts

DOES any wiseacre in the bureaucratic cloisters of the government realize that the new drill for computerized National Identity Card has plunged this nation into a cauldron of torment, aggravated by humiliation?

For all but a very small privileged minority, the mere thought of preparing the application for the Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) is frightening. Meet the average adult citizen of Pakistan relevant to CNIC. He/She is one of the 75 per cent of the population: cannot read or write, lives in some village that may be a day’s journey from the nearest town. More than 51 per cent of the average citizen is a female, illiterate and totally village-bound. Also perhaps home-bound. The possibility of a professional photographer within easy reach is remote. Much more so for village folk in mountain valleys or the Thar desert.

Many may not find it very easy to muster Rs 3, the price of the prescribed application form, and Rs 30-plus to arrange for the passport size, full-colour photographs; and another Rs 35 that must accompany the application. All of this is on the assumption that the form would be available anywhere nearby. Which is not the case in most parts of the country.

This average citizen, who cannot read the application form, must face and answer 29 questions. The help needed may not be easily available or affordable. Suppose somebody at the village patwari office can help fill the form but there has to be a form, in the first place. Forget the small village, go and find one in a city like Karachi.

And now, to the plethora of questions in the application form. In a large majority of the cases the average citizen has no real estate, no education to speak of, no passport, no arms, no weapons, and, of course, no National Tax Number (NTN). But he/she must make solemn declarations in respect of all these utterly unrealistic and irrelevant inquiries. Why must you have them in the application form?

If bureaucrats do not know as much about the vast majority of their compatriots, they are not fit to be bosses in the home department, or in the ministry of the interior. What is the IQ of an officer who is so abysmally ignorant about the elementary facts regarding his own country and fellow citizens? Is it safe to have such clueless officers running the home department and the ministry of the interior? No wonder these departments are in such confusion.

What is the basic purpose of an Identity Card? It is simply to establish the fact of one’s being a citizen of this country — and nothing else. A citizen is entitled to all basic and fundamental rights.

What if I do not have any education, house, shop, job, income and income tax number, arms and weapons, a driving licence or even a roof above my head? When applying for no more than an Identity Card, proof of identity and existence ought to be enough. Period.

Much more insulting is the question about religion. This column is an unacceptable invasion on a citizen’s privacy. This question is an affront to the Father of the Nation. In his very first pronouncement after the creative of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam had declared that the state shall have nothing to do with the citizen’s religion.

Would the minister of the interior care to educate himself and his ministry eggheads on what the Founder of Pakistan had promised and the present government is now violating that solemn undertaking? They are expected to have read at least what the Quaid said in his very first speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.

The application form should have been available at all post offices, police stations, banks, stationers, railway stations and another hundred places. It is no favour. A citizen should find it at convenient places when he/she is going to pay for it cash down.

This one-sheet form is priced at Rs 3. With printing quality of the lowest standard and paper of the cheapest variety, this form should not cost the government more than 10 paisa at the maximum. Why Rs 3? With an allowance for wastage, the price should not be more than 20 paisa. Who is making a packet on this?

Filling this form without making any error is all but impossible. You are not permitted to over-write, or to make a correction. Banks permit a correction if initialled legibly. But this courtesy is not available here. You must do it all over again. Just try to think of the predicament of the rural, illiterate, poor, without any help. For such citizen this CNIC drill is not only a torment but an unmitigated agony, mad worse by humiliation.

Suppose the form has been filled without an error. Now so many details have to be attested to by at least a Grade 16 government official or equivalent. Where would a citizen in a remote village find a bureaucrat of requisite grade? And where is the guarantee that the official, if and when found, would oblige a poor citizen in a remote village?

Add to all this confusion the time deadline. How can you think of a deadline for a process that is one to run in perpetuity? Every day, so many hundreds of thousands of citizens are coming of age, becoming entitled to NIC. A deadline is utterly ridiculous.

For the purpose of an ID card all that the state should ask for is name, parentage, date of birth. The moment these three details have been furnished and established beyond reasonable doubt, the citizen’s identity is established. He should have his ID card in his hand as of right and, as far as possible — automatically. All the rest is utter nonsense — absurdity on stilts.

At home, civil liberties under attack

AS the Bush administration’s war on terrorism intensifies in Afghanistan with air strikes becoming more intense and human and property loss heavier, a major casualty in America has been the civil liberties and democratic rights.

With a minimum of debate, the Senate overwhelmingly approved an anti-terrorism bill on October 11 that would significantly enhance the powers of the law enforcement agencies to conduct searches, wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance. The House of Representatives, in similar haste, adopted a bill in less than 24 hours also aimed at giving the police sweeping powers to pursue suspected terrorists. Now a compromise bill is being worked out for the president’s approval.

It is the broadest anti-terror legislation in at least five years and both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have been under intense pressure since September 11 to act quickly so that more terrorist attacks, fears of which are being constantly fuelled by Al-Qaeda’s statements and rise in anthrax cases, were efficiently coped with. Many congressmen had no option but to vote affirmatively. For some, opposing the bill would have been tantamount to “political suicide.” The Democratic Party had already declared on the eve of Bush’s address to Congress that there was “no opposition party in America today.” As such, none questioned Bush’s demand for a blank cheque to wage a war abroad and curtail civil liberties at home.

On September 16, the US attorney-general, John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller met the congressional leaders to press for immediate action on a package of new laws which could give sweeping police powers to the federal government to contain terrorism. But it is interesting to note that the new laws, approved by both the houses, are now being presented as an urgent response to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The plain fact is that these are the measures long sought by the FBI, CIA and other security agencies. Similar measures were also sought by the Clinton administration but were strongly resisted by the Republicans on the grounds that these would have a curtailing effect on the Americans’ civil liberties and democratic rights. Such concerns are now being comfortably swept aside in the name of fighting terrorism.

How the new legislation (the House bill) tends to infringe upon civil liberties can be judged from a summary released by the Republican leadership: (1) It allows law enforcement agencies to obtain a search warrant usable nationwide to seize certain electronic evidence such as e-mails. Current rules require separate warrants.

(2) It allows a court to authorize agents to obtain certain phone records for all calls made by a particular suspect. Current rules require court permission every time a person switches from one cell phone to another.

(3) It allows the government to obtain court orders permitting eavesdropping on all phone calls made by a person being monitored in a foreign intelligence investigation. Current rules do not allow roving wiretaps.

(4) It gives agents greater power to seize voice mail messages as evidence and monitor internet traffic investigations.

(5) It allows the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to detain a foreigner for up to seven days before the authorities decide whether to press criminal charges or seek deportation. At present, the detention limit is two days.

(6) It toughens criminal penalties for acts of terrorism. Federal judges would be allowed to sentence people convicted of certain crimes of terrorism to life in prison.

(7) It gives certain federal agencies access to grand jury records, easing strict secrecy rules under certain conditions.

Thus, the House bill significantly expands the power of the FBI to spy on wireless telephone calls and the internet, to circulate the information thus obtained to other government agencies enabling them to detain immigrants on the orders of the attorney-general, all without court review. The lone dissenter, Democrat Russel Feingold, in case of the Senate bill, insisted that authorizing the FBI to keep surveillance over vast areas of American life had no conceivable relation to September 11 terrorist attacks. In other words, the bill represents militarization of the FBI and police agencies, which will no longer be engaged in mere law enforcement but actually act as the arm of the Pentagon.

Both pieces of legislation bear what a commentator described as “Orwellian” titles. The Senate bill is named the “Uniting and Strengthening America Act, 2001.” The House Bill is intended to, and titled as such, “Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, 2001.” It has been labelled so because the acronym is “PATRIOT.”

How the new anti-terror powers will work can be judged from the experience of thousands of Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans during a period of one month since September 11. More than 600 of them were arrested or detained by the FBI. Police kept information about those arrested under seal. Only a few names were released. In many cases, the families did not know where the prisoners were being held. Violation of immigration laws or traffic charges, under which most of them were held, never led one to end up in jail before September 11.

With a series of vague warnings about further terrorist attacks providing the needed spur, the Bush administration is seeking to create an atmosphere of panic to realize its plan to establish an entirely new institutional framework for targeting domestic opponents of American military campaign abroad. One such measure is the newly set up White House Office of Homeland Security. Similarly, the Pentagon has been asked to create, for the first time in US history, an office of commander-in-chief. It will integrate four existing military commands, including the southern command known for fomenting military coups in Latin America. The political implications of this measure were spelled out by Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who told a congressional committee recently that he favoured re-examining the legal doctrine of Posse comitatus adopted after the American Civil War which bars the use of the armed forces for domestic policing. It can pave the way for the deployment of troops in domestic operations.

These moves are not apparently a response to the September 11 attacks. They were worked out as part of a long-term plan devised by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and Wolfowitz when they took office early this year. As is evident, the Bush administration has, in fact, seized on the terrorist attacks to bring forward a political agenda that ushers in a less democratic dispensation in America.

An integral part of this agenda is curbing the press. The New York Times reported on October 7 that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said during a routine briefings: “It is not what the government officials are saying that is the issue; it is the type of questions that the reporters are asking that’s the issue. The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked or answered.”

On October 10, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice contacted five TV networks and asked them not to broadcast taped statements of Osama bin Laden or, if at all, do so only in a heavily censored form. On October 11, all the five networks issued a joint statement accepting the demand. One network executive told The New York Times that the action, the first of its kind in the history of the television medium that all networks agreed to a common limit on news coverage, was a “patriotic” decision.

On September 26, Fleischer condemned comments made by Bill Maher, the ABC host of a talk show, and warned that all Americans had to “watch what they say and watch what they do.” Maher had disagreed with Bush’s assertion that the hijackers were cowards and said,” We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” Fleischer’s remarks prompted a campaign against Maher, leading to the cancellation of ads for the talk show and ultimately Maher had to make a public apology.

It was not the only effort to silence the criticism of the US government’s policies. On September 24, when free speech and civil liberty advocates were called to testify before house judiciary committee on the anti-terrorism bill, the Republican staff quickly ordered the TV camera crews to leave.

The Bush administration has also sought to crack down on the part of the media that raises questions on the war on Afghanistan. The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, criticized the Voice of America — a propaganda arm of the government — for broadcasting a report based on an interview with Mulla Omar, the Taliban leader. Bush’s move to seize assets of businesses suspected to be supporting terrorists have led to the shutting down of some radio stations and websites in America, including Radio Free Eireann.

How even the judiciary is adjusting to the new national paranoia about terrorism is apparent from the remarks made by a judge of the Supreme Court on the eve of the opening of a campus of New York University School of Law on October 1. Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor bluntly said, “We are likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country.” She went on to say, “It is possible, if not likely, that we will rely more on international rules of war than on our cherished constitutional standards for criminal prosecutions in responding to threats to our national security.”

Never before in US history has a judge of the Federal Supreme Court gone public with such a blunt statement suggesting that individual rights should be curtailed in the name of national security.