PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf has once again spoken of the “silent majority.” Yes, there is a “silent majority” in the country. It is composed of sane and sensible people, who refuse to reconcile with the irrational extremism of any religious sect, or the extremism of the rigid, hard-core political right.

It is time the question was posed to the President: On which side does he, his government and his interior minister stand in principle — not as a matter of present expediency or perceived compulsions? He must also ask himself what factors or forces have compelled the sane majority to fall “silent”?

As a supplementary, one might ask: Was it not his duty, and the duty of his government, to ensure that the majority was not forced into silence? One should like to believe that a government not only represents the majority, it ought also to be conscious of its duty to protect and serve the majority that it claims to represent. It is from this majority that it receives its sanction to stay in power.

In order to arrive at a reasonably reliable answer to the question why the “majority” in this Islamic republic is “silent,” one will probably have to go several years back. It is of course more convenient to return to the Zia dictatorship and the distortions that were injected not only into the Constitution of this country but also into its consiousness and psyche.

All that is largely true but let us stay close to the present. We are grateful to Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider who has stated in clear enough terms that some political elements were spawned and draped in religious garb by some very highly placed hands within the sanctum of the government. This was a reference straight to the manner in which a political party was crafted and given a religious name and its success at the polls was stage-managed.

This ought to be seen as a manipulated tactic to browbeat, intimidate and scare the majority into holding breath. Let it be noted that this was neither the beginning, nor the end of the conspiracy to work up such din and noise as to drown the voice of the majority to near silence. That conspiracy continues. One must note with regret that little has been done by the government to rescue the majority from the strangulating grip of the artificially boosted fanatic fringe, supported sometimes with public funds.

In its own civilized and subdued way, the “silent majority” has been issuing warnings, that the country was drifting into hideously dark alleys. Not unlike previous governments, this one has opted for the line of least resistance. Time and again, it has been pointed out that the phenomenal proliferation of ‘deni madaris’ was not a natural growth and ought to be monitored.

This growth has been almost ten times the increase in the number of normal schools. Whom do we thank for the armed Sipahs, Lashkars, Jaishs and Jan Nisars, now on the prowl in our streets? They choke the city centres, torch buses and private cars, burn tyres, block thoroughfares and disrupt life at will.. They collect funds at what is the threat of blackmail when not on all but gunpoint. Surely, the government is not unaware of this manner of fund collecting.

When obliged by public opinion, the interior minister felt prevailed upon to recognize the menace of these nurseries of the militant religious extremists. In such lucid moments, he would promise to take steps to bring these madaris into the mainstream of the country’s education system. At other moments the same minister would be heard voicing praise of the deni madaris for their “free education.” Do we have to believe that this generosity and indulgence towards these madaris has been in aid of the “silent majority.”?

Time and again, the government was advised to monitor the growth of private Sipahs, Lashkars, Jaishs and what have you. It was suggested that under the law, and the fundamental law, of this Islamic republic only the Pakistan National Army (under the Army Act) could exist. There was just no room for any other organized armed force. Nobody in the government would listen to these wailings of the “silent majority.”

These private armies have been operating without much let or hindrance from the government. They have been engaged in not just killing but carnage, in places of worship. To this day, no culprit has been apprehended and taken to court. If any apprehended, few have been convicted after due process. The “silent majority” has watched all this and kept its silence — not by choice.

One elected prime minister will be remembered for having planted a known religious extremist virtually on top the ministery of foreign affairs of this republic. That Maulana hosted a huge extravaganza in honour of scores of fellow Maulanas from an Indian madrassa whose graduates and scholars distinguished themselves in opposing the Pakistan movement tooth and nail and calling its leader a ‘Kafir’. Is it possible to believe that the government was not aware of this? The “silent majority” watched this in horror but not in dumb resignation. When the “silent majority” was not dumb, the government was deaf.

For the “silent majority” the father of the nation, the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah remains the guide. Can anyone honestly deny that during the last three decades, amendments have been planted into the Constitution that are a series of calculated violations of the explicitly enunciated principles of politics and policies of governance given to us by the great leader? Protests by the “silent majority” have been overwhelmed by the cacophony from the religious extremists, backed by some powerful forces, not all of them unofficial.

Until only a few months ago, our foreign minister was in ecstasies when talking of the Taliban in Afghanistan. His uninterrupted refrain was that the “Taliban control 95 per cent of Afghanistan.” He could not convince when asked to explain how a government is seen to be in such sovereign control when signally unable or unwilling to arrange for the repatriation of millions of its people in unmitigated misery and humiliation, roughing it out in foreign lands. Let him controvert the suggestion made to him again and again that his perception of the religious fanatics in Kabul was flawed. Subsequent events have proved the “silent majority” right and the Talibanophiles in the government manifestly in error.

The interior minister has occasionally spoken to leave the impression that he is not unaware of the proliferation of ‘mosques’ all over the country and that not all of these are genuine houses of worship. If his officers in the field are not short of sight and hard of hearing, they ought to know at least what the man in the street knows so well: that many of these mosques stand on land that is not cleanly acquired and the mosque managers may be ex-Pakistan mercenaries.

Can such structures qualify to the status of House of God which is what a mosque is in Muslim perception? The interior minister is on record saying he would look into this matter and a survey would be made to establish the links and loyalties of mosques with sectarian entities. We have had only hollow assurances that the government will control abuse of loudspeakers mounted on mosques. To this day the concerned “silent majority” is waiting to see evidence of any action on the ground.

Going by the record of the ‘silent majority” and the government to date, one must feel persuaded to give full credence to the President’s claim that between his government and the majority of the country there is a latent bond of trust and support. If the majority is “silent” the government is manifestly more so.

The turn in the events in Afghanistan poses to this country many profoundly serious problems and throws up soul-testing choices. Maybe, the American have solved their Taliban problem in Afghanistan. We have our Taliban problem, if anything, in a gravely aggravated form. If the Taliban were ever in control of 95 per cent of Afghanistan, for them the situation now could hardly be more different. Their five years today look like a flash in the pan that was.

Poet Ghalib reminds us of the phemeral glows

Farogh-e-shola-e-khus yek nafas hai

The flame of the straw is but for a moment.

IN the absence of any credible evidence that the state of Afghanistan, as opposed to a group of disparate individuals, had launched an “armed attack” on the United States, there could be no legal “collective or self-defence” arguments which could justify engagement in military hostilities against that country.

As a precedent the World Court at the Hague had itself ruled in the Nicaragua case of 1986 that the United States had acted illegally by engaging in military action against Nicaragua and that the alleged collective self-defence argument did not apply. The US was ordered to pay compensation in what is perhaps the nearest judicial determination of guilt in an international case which raised many issues including what today may be called state terrorism as it involved the death of thousands of civilians.

However, the question arises as to how the enormity of the terrorist attacks of September 11 can be legally addressed and punished if indeed an “armed attack” as required under Article 51 of the UN Charter cannot be proven. Under Resolution 1373 which was passed unanimously by the Security Council on September 28 there is outlined a course of action in “the war on terrorism” in general but it does not specifically entitle states to join in a collective military attack against any particular state. Under the self-defence doctrine as enshrined in customary international law there has to be proven “an instant and overwhelming necessity” for hostile retaliation and it cannot really be asserted that invading Afghanistan is necessary in this sense to protect America.

But it has recently been suggested by eminent lawyer Geoffrey Robertson Q.C. (author of the reputed work “Crimes against Humanity”) that the international law principles permitting action even across state frontiers to prevent and punish “Crimes against humanity”, may well provide legal cover for the assault on an alleged criminal state. He has said that the September 11 atrocities fit the definition of “crimes against humanity” which covers not only genocide and torture but also “multiple acts of murder committed as part of a systematic attack against a civilian population.”

Much has rightly been written about the need to address the root causes of terrorism and the intolerable situation existing in many Arab regions including the illegally dispossessed people of Palestine. However these situations cannot blind one to the fact that Osama bin Laden has consistently incited the murder of Americans and has practically confessed to involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. However, he has denied any involvement in the September 11 attacks and has challenged anyone to produce any proof to the contrary. Nevertheless he clearly has the blessings of the Taliban government and he could be said to be their agent and ally. As such the Taliban regime could at least be accused of aiding and abetting bin Laden’s allegedly murderous actions against the Americans and their client states One’s strong disapproval of the policies of such states cannot alter the fundamental criminality of violent attacks against civilians on their territories.

However, the most important caveat against taking any military action under International Law including action to prevent and punish crimes against humanity, is the need to protect civilians at all costs and the requirement to bring the alleged assailants to trial before an impartial court which has the confidence of the whole international community and not just of a few western states.

The United Nations has already established international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and they are working efficiently under difficult circumstances. Dozens of machete wielding murderers in Rwanda have been convicted and Slobodan Milosevic and many others are being tried at the ICT for their atrocities in Yugoslavia, sitting at the Hague. Another such court could be established for Afghanistan under the auspices of the UN.

There is, however, an even more preferable option, which is to try the accused before the international criminal court whose establishment has already been ratified by 44 countries including Britain, France and Russia but regrettably not yet by the US, which is said to fear prosecution for its actions in Vietnam, Latin America and other places. Although this court has not yet been formally established (it requires 60 states to ratify it), it cold easily be set up by a further Security Council resolution initiated by a group of states and this time around the US is bound to agree to it in the present circumstances.

One thing is clear, justice American style like a quickie trial in Florida, New York etc. with a summary judgment for incarceration for 30 years or more in a US prison, or execution by lethal injection, would certainly not be good enough and would only lead to more recriminations, and perhaps produce even more lethal Osama bin Ladens in the future. The recent lifting of the ban against CIA assassinations by the Bush administration is already ominous.

It is worth recalling that even Churchill preferred the straight forward execution of the top Nazi leadership at the end of the Second World War and it was President Truman who insisted on their trial at Nuremberg because in his own remarkable words “undiscriminating executions or punishments, without definite findings of guilt fairly arrived at, would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.”

These are fine and honourable sentiments which should be remembered by President George W. Bush to control his crude desire to get certain culprits “dead or alive.”

Trial by an open international criminal court, composed partly also of recognized Arab jurists is what should be insisted upon for the Taliban and their allies and the verdict should be left to such a tribunal and not to the media spin pronouncements of the Oval Room. In this context, Pakistan as the old ISI-led ally of the Taliban, and which for reasons of economic expediency is now part of the US-led coalition, should rigorously impress on the US and its allies that a fair trial on neutral territory should be the goal at the end of the hostilities, whenever that may be. Moreover, the international community will not for long tolerate or absolve any glib and “crimes against humanity” labelled intervention in Afghanistan which is carried out with huge cluster bombs whose specific function is to maim and kill human beings.