As Chomsky sees it

IN a most appropriate setting and in the right city, American dissident and thinker Noam Chomsky has come out with an apt denunciation of India and of his own country. While he called the US a rogue country, he accused India of human rights violations in Kashmir. In fact, the words Chomsky used for India’s record in Kashmir were “state terrorism.” On the United States, Chomsky was the harshest, his epithets ranging from being “the biggest rogue state” to a practitioner of international terrorism. While he did refer to Washington’s military campaign in Afghanistan as terrorism, it was America’s role in Nicaragua that drew his fire. The International Court of Justice at The Hague, he said, had condemned only one country for international terrorism, and that country was the US. However, of special interest is what Chomsky told his hosts. “How about criticizing the (Indian) government for outright terrorism?” he asked the Indian media. What must have hurt his hosts most was that the American intellectual did not merely confine his criticism of Indian policies in terms of human rights violations. He equated them with state terrorism. Quoting such international human rights bodies as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the professor said these two bodies had “reams of material on Indian state terrorism in Kashmir and in fact elsewhere.”

India has always been the guilty party in Kashmir, having brazenly violated the Security Council resolutions and gone back on its own commitments to resolve the dispute with reference to the wishes of the people in the held state. However, its record for the last more than a decade has been criminal and genocidal. The people’s revolt in the occupied territory is a manifestation of the enslaved Kashmiri people’s desire for liberation from Indian bondage. India’s response to this war of liberation is not political but brute military force. In specific terms, this has meant the killing of nearly 70,000 Kashmiris, wholesale burning of Kashmiri villages, widespread use of torture, mysterious “disappearances” of thousands of youths, and the abuse of thousands of women. To Pakistan’s repeated pleas that the issue be resolved through talks, India has always turned a deaf ear. Under international pressure, it agreed to talk in July this year, but the Agra summit floundered on the rocks of Indian obduracy. All that Pakistan wanted was for the Indian government to realize the centrality of the Kashmir issue to Indo-Pakistan relations. However, talking about Kashmir is like showing the proverbial red rag to the bull. Instead, India has tried to hide behind the convenient plea that what was going on in Kashmir was the result of “cross-border terrorism” sponsored by Pakistan. Nothing can be more transparent as a blindfold for the realities in Kashmir.

Since the September 11 catastrophe and the ensuing war on terrorism, the world has realized more than ever before that the Kashmir dispute contains the seeds of a nuclear holocaust. No wonder, all those statesmen who recently visited Islamabad and New Delhi consistently stressed on both India and Pakistan to solve the issue through negotiations. However, one hopes India is not naive enough to believe that the advice from these quarters is based on expediency because of Pakistan’s pivotal position in the world coalition. Chomsky is not a politician or a diplomat. In fact, his own country’s establishment and media shun him because he speaks the truth that is unpalatable to both. True to his reputation as an upholder of truth and sanity, this eminent thinker and humanist has told the Indians bluntly how the world views their government’s record in Kashmir. One hopes New Delhi is not going to accuse Chomsky of expediency.

Trade route to Baghdad

SOME 5,000 businessmen and trade officials from 48 countries, including 14 trade and industry ministers, have converged on Baghdad to attend this year’s annual international trade fair. Among those attending are the official trade delegations from France, Germany, Russia, China, Italy, Spain, Austria, Turkey, Pakistan, the Scandinavian and all but two Arab countries. This is for the first time since the imposition of the US and Britain-backed UN economic sanctions in 1991, that such a large number of countries are participating in the Baghdad trade fair. The contracts signed at the fair are expected to materialize into several hundred million dollars being made available to help bolster the Iraqi economy, which is crippled by sanctions that have long ceased to make any sense. The success of the trade fair augurs well for 22 million suffering Iraqis who have been condemned to live in poverty and bad health for over ten years now.

That the trade fair is taking place at a time when Iraq’s arch enemies, the US and Britain, are waging war on global terrorism and looking for grounds for further action against Baghdad, perhaps delivers a message stronger than those delivered by the participating countries’ diplomats working behind the scenes. It is time to lift the sanctions on Iraq, where, according to the UN, the infant mortality rate is now 135 per 1,000 live births and some 250 children die every day because of non-availability of basic health care and malnutrition as a direct result of sanctions. The UN Security Council, when it meets next, should consider lifting the blanket economic sanctions that have only worked to mercilessly punish innocent Iraqi people.

Islamabad sit-in

EVER since the air strikes against Afghanistan began, parties opposed to the government’s policy of support for the action have been staging rallies regularly. The opposition to the air strikes is not confined to the religious parties alone; many non-religious parties and groups have also held demonstrations and staged marches to voice their opposition to the Anglo-American air strikes. Barring some exceptions, most of these rallies have been quite peaceful. Certainly, every party has the right to express its views on such a vital question as Pakistan’s decision to go along with the US-led world coalition against terrorism. Initially, the rallies were quite emotional and violent. For instance, three people were killed in Quetta, and in Karachi, too, there were cases of arson and attacks on property. Since then, things have definitely been relatively quiet. This goes to the credit of both the government and the parties holding anti-war rallies.

However, one fails to understand the reason behind the call for a countrywide “wheel-jam” strike next Friday. In addition, there is to be a sit-in at Islamabad for a number of days. It is not clear what purpose would be served by this form of protest. Blocking traffic and forcing a closure for long periods cause inconvenience to the public, and it is the national economy that suffers. When overdone, it is the parties behind such strikes and sit-ins which invite the suffering public’s opprobrium. That the religious parties should adopt this tactic is indeed unfortunate. Religious leaders are supposed to counsel patience and tolerance and teach their followers how to press a point peacefully and without bringing life to a grinding halt and without causing widespread disruptions. While one hopes that the government would use tact, restraint and persuasion to end the sit-in and keep the traffic going, the parties giving such a call should reconsider the matter in the interest of public peace and order. Inconveniencing the people at large and, in some cases, tormenting them in cases where there is a medical emergency are a bad strategy for serving any cause.