A NUMBER of innocent Pakistanis along with citizens from over fifty other nationalities are now interred in a communal grave on the site of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. To those who will continue to grieve for them, that site will always be hallowed ground.

For them, New York’s Ground Zero has become an east coast equivalent of Washington’s Arlington cemetery, a symbol of a sacrifice beyond the call of duty if only because its victims were never given the time to hear that call.

Should tomorrow something else be built by itchy-fingered property developers on that vacant plot of land, there will be no need to sacrifice anything living when its foundation stone is laid: blood has already been shed, human blood, sprinkled and mixed into its soil.

The dereliction at Ground Zero appears closer in many ways to that other necropolis in New York — the United Nations. If a cemetery is the final repository of human remains, the United Nations can be described as the graveyard of human hopes, of international norms, and of civilized ideals.

If the United Nations once displayed gifts in its corridors and council chambers subscribed by its member states, today these should be removed and in their stead should be placed newer emblems — a tombstone each for the innocent victims of its member states, for the uncounted casualties in the Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, and now Afghanistan — conflicts that the United Nations was too blasi or too powerless to prevent. As the voice of moral authority in the international community, even the Pope can boast more divisions than the United Nations does.

It is ironical therefore that the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan — a diplomat who speaks many languages but is heeded in none — should have been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He has received only half a prize; his employers got the other half. Perhaps such a division was intentional. Perhaps it was felt that he deserved only half the prize for leaving the job half-done.

Kofi Annan’s demi-prize matches another half-prize awarded some years ago to Dr. Henry Kissinger, who shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with his former Vietnamese enemy Lee Duc Tho (the Vietnamese had the better grace to refuse the prize.) for negotiating a peace over Vietnam.

Peace, the Chinese once lectured Dr. Kissinger, is not an objective. The objective has to be justice. If there is justice, there will be peace. If there is no justice, there can never be peace.

Does the accord recently signed in Bonn offer the people of Afghanistan peace and also justice? Can any Afghan today — man, woman or child, maimed and left to stump through the rubble of their lives — look forward to any form of peace after twenty years of unremitting war? Can these Afghans expect to receive justice for all the wrongs that they have had to endure at the hands of outsiders and more damagingly from those who governed them?

Or is such a humane expectation no longer their right? Today, an Afghan national like the Afghan currency note stands utterly devalued. His nationality is a slur, his value as a human being has been depreciated to a level where his physical presence (or for that matter his absence) is a mere statistic. If Afghans continue to exist, it is because Afghanistan itself has not yet been erased from the map of the world.

I as a Pakistani would like to believe that I know how an Afghan feels, for am I not also a human being? Do I not understand pain, deprivation, suffering and death? As a neighbour to this landlocked country, was I not the thoroughfare for all its imports?

Did I not ferry into it and then smuggle out of it those luxury goods that I knew no Afghan could afford but only Pakistanis would buy? As a frontline state, was I not the conduit of arms that fuelled the war waged throughout the 1980s?

As a backroom boy in today’s world coalition against terrorism, am I not a party to the premeditated destruction and decimation of Afghanistan? Will I not also bleed when my own turn comes?

And my turn shall come. I doubt whether I will be allowed to escape the fate of those whose policy has been to sponsor, and consort with, terrorists. I doubt whether I shall be able to shrug off my association with the Taliban with the same insouciance as many an Afghan has done, switching sides to escape culpability, or as the Saudis will be permitted to do because they have oil and I do not.

I should expect to share

their fate, because I share more than a common border with them.

Like Afghanistan, I am too large a political presence in my area to be ignored, and too small to be taken seriously. Like Afghanistan, I want to follow the past but wish to live in the present.

Like Afghanistan, I do not have the courage to demand what I am told is my unalienable right of democratic self-expression. And like Afghanistan, I too stand defeated twice over — I am subjugated by my own kind and I am cowed by outsiders.

The government has convinced most of us that we in Pakistan had no choice but to put our Afghan policy into reverse gear and to join the US-led coalition. The truth is that if we did have other options (even a cornered rat has options), we were simply not prepared to accept the consequences.

Anyone familiar with American policy over the past fifty years would have learned that if there is anything worse than being a fresh enemy of the United States, it is being a stale ally.

There are some today who would have us believe that the feelings of the United States for Pakistan have reverted to the expansive amity of the Lyndon Johnson years, when Johnson told Ayub Khan that ‘he had never visited a country where he was treated better or that he loved more’, adding that ‘he did not know how two heads of state could leave each other with more feeling of brotherly love.’ He gave Ayub Khan the reassurance: “If the Pakistani people are in danger of being gobbled up, the United States would be there, just as they are in Vietnam.”

There are others who remember the “tilt” that Richard Nixon made in favour of Pakistan during the 1971 crisis over East Pakistan. And there are still a few alive who recall Bill Clinton’s visit to Islamabad in March 2000, when he spent deliberately as many hours in Pakistan as he had spent days in India.

He advised Pakistan to reconcile itself to a position of diminished relevance, cautioned that it could not expect to be rescued from its own fiscal errancy, and said bluntly that a military form of government was not acceptable to the international community.

Today, we are being told by his successor George W. Bush (who has learned his geography after September 11) that Pakistan is a pampered frontline state, that it can expect debt relief beyond our most avaricious calculations, and that we should, like Patti Hearst, begin to love our captors.

To those who understood from Clinton’s broadcast that democracy was just around the corner, it is now clear that the road to democracy has many more miles to go and the military rulers with their civilian collaborators having many fractured promises to keep before that corner is reached. Perhaps the reason we can so readily accept this apparent volte face in American attitudes towards Pakistan is because it mirrors our own about-turn on Afghanistan. We still refuse to learn that expediency is always a poor substitute for policy.

Now that the fifth Afghan war in history is almost over and the Bonn accord inked in with the blood of hundreds of innocent Afghans, the diplomatic component of US policy has been consummated.

With Afghan cities where carpets were once woven having been reduced to rubble with carpet bombing and now occupied by American and British forces, the second military objective has also been more or less accomplished.

What remains is the third objective — the humanitarian — which in the eyes of some should have been the prime objective for an impoverished backward people, who were supplied for decades with arms and weaponry they could not afford and then made to pay for them with their lives.

Many years ago, a short story by a Turkish writer described how the breadwinner of the family had died. As was the custom, rich neighbours from the nearby mansion house sent food to the grieving family during the period of mourning. After that, the widow tried to eke out a living for herself and her two sons, unsuccessfully. In time, the elder boy also fell ill, and as he faded, the younger undernourished child asked the mother expectantly: “If he dies, will we receive food from the big house again?”’

To those who survive, such solicitude from the White

House as humanitarian aid

and handouts for poverty alleviation often carry a similar after-taste.

IN THE bad old days neither kings nor their functionaries made any pretence of expressing or implementing the “will of the people.” Even during periods of enlightened rule, governance was considered to be none of the people’s business. As an old Farsi saying had it, kings understood best the mysterious affairs of their kingdom (“ramooz-e-mumlakat-kheesh khusrawan danand).

Then we heard of a different way. The books we read and the teachers we heard in schools and colleges during British rule taught that the people had the right to decide how they would be governed. We learned also that in some countries they chose representatives who, acting on their behalf, sat down together, debated issues, and then decided by majority vote what their government would do for them. This was all strange news, and many of us have still not quite absorbed it.

Having failed to expel our British rulers by force of arms (1857), we began to confront them with the political norms they themselves professed and practised at home. They might have been embarrassed, but said we were too incompetent to govern ourselves, and that we needed their guidance. With time many of us became as clever as the best of them and saw no reason why they, and not we, should occupy positions of power and authority in our own country. They allowed us to criticize their rule and admitted us to decision-making bodies in gradually increasing measure, but we thought the process was much too slow.

Unable to use physical force to overthrow them, some of the more ingenious Indian politicians devised techniques to make the task of ruling us much too burdensome for the British. Broadly known as passive resistance and civil disobedience, these included processions, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, non-payment of taxes, violation of various regulations, and frequent disruptions of public order that became increasingly difficult to control. All of this did tire out the British, and they left on August 14 of 1947. We have been self-governing and in dependent since that day.

The departing British as well as the domestic political leaders expected that post-independence India and Pakistan would be democracies. India has been democratic in terms of certain formal procedures, and Pakistan has experimented with forms of democracy periodically. But in both countries resort to “civil disobedience” continues to be made even though the rulers are no longer foreign. Processions and “demonstrations” that block roads; protest marchers who break open and plunder stores, smash and burn public and private vehicles; political mafias that force strikes which cost the economy billions of rupees; boycotts of official meetings, and walkouts from sessions of legislative assemblies are common occurrences in both countries. Why?

Let us leave India alone and focus on Pakistan and, of the various expressions of the opposition’s discontent, discuss the “walkouts” from meetings of public bodies, such as boards, committees, councils, and legislatures. Those who stage them want it understood, especially by the public outside, that the objectives and proceedings of the body concerned are so reprehensible that they, the dissenters, do not wish to be associated with them in any shape or form. Their action results basically from a misunderstanding of the democratic process.

Among other things, democracy is a system in which representatives of the people reach decisions by reasoning together, the idea being that their collective wisdom may be brought to bear upon the process. Issues are debated, meaning that questions are asked and answered, and arguments made back and forth. When one member speaks, others listen. Debate is the core characteristic of the democratic process, and listening to one another is essential to its efficacy.

Listening to an opponent presupposes respect for him as someone worthy of attention. Members of an assembly are not equally well informed or wise, but they are all equal in terms of their representative status; they are equally spokesmen of their constituents. Quite often legislation does not involve questions of good and evil but the felt needs of the people which do not require much wisdom to discover or express. Nor is it to be assumed that education and good sense reside on the treasury side of the aisle to the exclusion of the opposition benches.

Several attitudes of mind, rooted in our tradition, militate against the idea that the opposite side may, after all, have something worthwhile to contribute. First, our culture tends to treat the adversary as an ‘enemy’ who deserves to be incapacitated, if not destroyed. Second, disagreements are not regarded as contributions to the improvement of one’s mind. They are barely tolerated, more likely resented, especially if the parties are placed in a superior- subordinate relationship. Third, in spite of the oft-repeated Quranic injunction to settle public affairs by mutual consultation (shura), our tradition does not recognize debate as a preferred mode for identifying the public interest and the means of achieving it. Fourth, politics is treated as rulership of some over others for the former’s gratification, and not as the noble profession of serving the public good.

One does not hear of the opposition in the House of Commons, or of the minority party in the houses of US Congress, walking away from the floor, en masse, to register its disapproval of the proceedings. Its members stay in their seats to ask questions, express their own positions on the issues at hand, and point out weaknesses in the government’s presentation. They perform this role even when they know that, in the end, their objections will fail. They do so because of the general understanding that one of the purposes of debate is to educate the outside public. The idea that debate spreads political education is one that has not penetrated our understanding of its rationale.

An essential operating principle of democratic governance is that the majority prevails. Justifying it, John Locke, one of the more influential democratic theorists, argued that it was “natural” for things to go the way the greater weight pulled them. This is true of the inclination of “things,” but its relevance to issues of public policy is dubious. We also have Rousseau’s admonition that the majority cannot always be relied upon to have a correct understanding of the public good and, based on our own observation and experience, we know that to be true.

Needless to say, absolute truth and a perfect statement of the good, if these could be found, would be great to have. But in human affairs generally, and in politics particularly, perfection is forever elusive. More often than not, we have to settle for less than the whole loaf. Since certitude is beyond our reach, we settle for majority rule in political decision-making because it is more likely to be on the right track, and because the alternative procedures are far more hazardous to both our liberty and our welfare.

Majority rule is also something that our political culture has not fully accepted. Minority members in our legislatures feel that they have not only the right to be heard but that their position should, at least in some measure, be accommodated. When this is not done, which is usually the case, they call the outcome a case of “majoritarian tyranny.” Another element in this disposition should be mentioned: it is the view that issues should be settled by “consensus.” Once in a while consensus does materialize. In our own experience, the Constitution of 1973 was adopted without any negative votes. More recently, the United States Congress unanimously authorized the president to do whatever was needed to be done to fight international terrorism. But these are exceptions; democracies do not normally look for consensus in the process of making laws.

The opposition members’ walkouts from the assemblies-or disruptive behaviour on the floor, including occasional fistfights-are fostered in considerable measure by the low esteem in which the ruling party holds them. For one thing, it does not allow them (and often even its own members) enough time to express their views on bills under discussion. Rules of business are often suspended to minimize debate and rush the house to pass bills. Amendments proposed by opposition members hardly ever receive attention; they are routinely voted down without consideration. During the second term of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, proposed amendments to the Constitution were adopted within the space of one hour or less.

I have watched the proceedings of the National Assembly on many occasions and seen that the prime minister, the majority of his ministers, and a large number of members on both sides of the aisle were often absent from the floor, and the Speaker had to adjourn the house for lack of quorum. Except when issues of great moment were involved, a debate was generally perfunctory and speeches irrelevant, because many of the participants had come unprepared to deal with the agenda for the day.

It would seem then that neither the politicians in power nor their opponents place a whole lot of value on democracy, its institutions, and procedures of which debate is the foremost. Deep down they prefer personal rule to institutionalized governance. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif wanted to be rid of the hassles and constraints of the democratic process. How else does one explain her decision to have herself named as her party’s chairperson for life, or his sponsorship of a constitutional amendment that would have enabled him to expel a dissenter from parliament?

IN the current wave of national jingoism sweeping the world, Pakistan has come to be identified by its debts, Jaishes, Lashkars, and, above all, by its ISI. It is a bizarre image of militancy and penury cohabiting.

The “amazing” concessions won from the lenders at Paris and Washington may avert threat to the economy of the country but not to its stability. It might, in fact, become more vulnerable as the remnants of the defeated al-Qaeda and Taliban straggle into Pakistan despite vigil at the borders and find sanctuary in the refugee camps and madressahs.

Mingling with three million Afghan refugees in their camps and numerous unsurveyed settlements they are likely to take recourse to subversion to avenge the humiliation they have suffered because of Pakistan siding with America in its invasion of Afghanistan. Instinctively some of them would now try to sneak into Kashmir to fight alongside the people there. Posing greater danger to Pakistan however would be their impulse to strike at targets in India because the distinction between the Line of Control in a disputed territory and international frontiers is immaterial for the zealots who fight for religious glory and not for a national cause.

Following the suicidal attack on the Indian parliament, the Americans have advised India greater patience and Pakistan greater control on its militant organizations. This advice is at a time when Pakistan has played a key-role in the Afghan war and the Americans have to continue to rely on Pakistan’s support to subdue both the warlords and the guerilla fighters. Once the new coalition has consolidated its hold on Kabul, the Indians may strike at the targets of their choosing across the Line of Control unrestrained by America.

Pakistan may pre-empt a raid or retaliate with greater effect. Important, however, would be not winning or losing the war of nerves or bombs but making economic progress to rescue one-third of the population from dire poverty and to provide education and other basic amenities to all the people.

The reduction in the bilateral debt liability and soft loans for the eradication of poverty would be of little avail if relations with India remain tense and are carried to the verge of war at intervals. The very first bomb falling would mark the flight of capital from the country. The public expenditure will go up, borrowing will increase, so will inflation and the cycle of self-destruction will continue.

It is alleged not just by the enemies but believed by our own people as well that Pakistan’s foreign policy for more than two decades now is conducted not by the cabinet and ministry of foreign affairs but by the ISI. This military approach to diplomacy has exacted a heavy price in that at home it has divided the civil society and kept it economically backward and abroad it has earned only hostility. At home the regional, religious and ethnic strifes have taken a heavy toll. Abroad, besides leading the country into the quagmire of Afghanistan it has cast a deep shadow on our old painstakingly forged relations with Iran, Turkey and China and driven away the newly-independent Central Asian republics.

The involvement of the ISI in the domestic and external affairs and the closeness of its head to the chief executive of the country has tended to undermine the authority and confidence of the ministries in dealing with their subjects. Appointments proposed by ministers, howsoever routine or inconsequential, cannot get through if opposed by the ISI.

For the general heading the ISI, politics gets precedence over service discipline. That became obvious when General Ziauddin tried to take over the army command in the absence of General Musharraf abroad. Most ISI generals remain vocal in politics after retirement to spill the beans or to make hey.

The armed forces have their own intelligence services. So have the federal and provincial governments. The straddling role of the ISI, and the very justification of its existence,needs to be reviewed now that it has earned the country much obloquy but no laurels. Without ISI the politics and diplomacy will get a human face. India for once shall have to look for another scapegoat for its own insurgencies.

After domestic politics and external relations, public administration is now a subject of the ideas and exertions of the military establishment. The demolition of the old structures came quick and easy. Raising new ones is proving far more intractable. In the void of confusion, the newspapers are full of the pillar-to-post stories for the public.

In its new diminished role and career prospects, the public service has lost whatever little attraction it had for the youth. This year in the Federal Public Service Commission’s competitive examination for the Superior Services, only one candidate from Karachi (in fact all of urban Sindh) appears at number 68 in a merit list of 200. All the talented young men seem to find more respect and satisfaction in selling shampoos and credit cards at ten times the salary of a public servant. Further, for the first time in the long history of competitive examinations in the subcontinent three out of five candidates heading the merit list have opted for the police service.