American values on trial

THE Bush administration’s first plans for the trials of captured Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters threatened to make the U.S. justice system a casualty of the war on terrorism. Even when memories of Sept. 11 were rawest, the idea of holding secret military proceedings, denying defendants a choice of lawyers and making the president the sole court of appeal struck many as un-American.

A much-needed review by outside experts prompted the Defense Department last week to change some rules and moved the adjudication of the cases closer to this nation’s ideals, including the rule of law.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now says trials will be public, not secret, unless secrecy is necessary to protect classified information or safeguard those involved. Panels will consist of three to seven military judges. Two-thirds agreement will be sufficient to convict of lesser crimes, but seven judges will need to agree to convict in death penalty cases.

In addition, defendants will be presumed innocent, will not be forced to testify, will not be tried twice for the same crime and must be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The government will provide military lawyers for the accused, who will also be allowed to hire civilian attorneys.

None of this is to say that the tribunals will be the same as a trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Hearsay evidence, for instance, would not be excluded. But Rumsfeld has raised the possibility of further modification of rules. One such change should be allowing appeals to federal courts, not limiting them to a military panel (which could consider appeals under the changed rules) and ultimately the president.

This need not mean a lengthy, complex process for most crimes. A special civilian panel could be established to handle the reviews with dispatch.—Los Angeles Times

Which is a rogue state?

BY confirming a leaked press report that the United States has a contingency plan to use nuclear weapons against seven countries in case its conventional assault fails to achieve the desired objective, the Bush administration has brought the world much closer to the actual use of nuclear weapons.

And it is for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked that a country, possessing the largest number of nuclear weapons, has formally announced that it intends to use nuclear weapons as a first-strike option.

The seven countries mentioned in the Pentagon draft report, called the “Nuclear Posture Review”, delivered to Congress on January 8, and leaked to Los Angeles Times on March 9 and then a day later to The New York Times, are China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.

The swift White House confirmation of the Los Angeles Times report and the willingness of the Pentagon officials to discuss the issue, which is normally regarded a closely guarded secret, shows that the so-called leak was deliberate and a part of the Bush administration’s scheme to mobilize public opinion in favour of such a venture at home and intimidate inimical forces abroad. But what Washington has, meantime, unscrupulously done is that it has signalled an end to the universally accepted notion, on which the international security regime rested, that a nuclear weapon is a deterrent, not a weapon for use.

The key significance of these changes is to transform nuclear bombs from the “last resort” into weapons which can be used at will. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says, “This clearly makes nuclear weapons a tool for fighting a war, rather than deterring them.” So, within the ultra-right circles that play a decisive role in the formulation of the US government policy, the use of nuclear weapons is no more seen as an unthinkable last resort, but rather as a desirable option.But for the Muslims nothing could be more provocative than the idea, now being circulated in certain US circles, that even Makkah can be nuked. In a discussion on March 7 on the website of the National Review, one of America’s leading extreme-right publications, its editor Rich Lowry said that among the people he spoke to there was “lots of sentiment for nuking Makkah”.

When another National Review writer pointed out that destroying Makkah might cause permanent outrage among one billion Muslims, Lowry observed: “This is a tough one, and I don’t know quite what to think. Makkah seems extreme, of course, but then again, few people would die and it would send a signal.”

Rich Lowry and his colleagues have the closest political and personal ties with the Republican Party, the Bush administration, and the Pentagon brass. At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, of which National Review was a major sponsor, the speakers included National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson.

One of the magazine’s contributing editors, Ann Coulter, had recently declared herself in favour of a new version of the mediaeval Crusades. In response to Arab ‘terrorism’ (freedom movement), she wrote in National Review Online: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

Later, the magazine issued a public apology because of the embarrassment it caused to the Bush administration in its Mideast diplomacy. Coulter stuck to her posture and protested against the apology. However, she was dropped as a contributor.

According to The New York Times, the secret Pentagon report, outlining a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy, calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya. The report stresses the need for developing earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy heavily fortified underground bunkers, including those that may be used to store chemical and biological weapons. It also hints at the need for resuming nuclear testing. Had any other country been seen planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against certain non-nuclear powers, Washington would have declared that state a ‘dangerous rogue state’.

The leaked report says the Pentagon should be prepared to use nuclear weapons in contingencies like an Arab-Israeli conflict, in a war between China and Taiwan, or in an attack from North Korea on South Korea. They might also become necessary in the wake of an attack by Iraq on Israel — a reference to Iraq’s Scud missile attack on Israel in 1991 — since the US is openly preparing for a military assault on Iraq. The firing of such missiles from mobile truck-mounted launchers could be answered by the dropping of an atomic bomb on Iraqi military facilities in the western desert, or even on Baghdad.

Even more sweeping is the suggestion that nuclear weapons could be used “in the event of surprising military developments” — meaning a terrorist attack like that of September 11, which the Bush administration claims came as a total surprise. The Nuclear Posture Review authorizes nuclear retaliation in the event of any such attack. The document also calls for a wider range of tactical uses for nuclear weapons through the development of smaller-scale and lower-yield warheads that could reduce “collateral damage”.

The report declares: “Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope, and purpose will complement other military capabilities.” The Air Force would modify its extended-range cruise missile and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to carry nuclear warheads. Even US Special Forces operators would be able to call in nuclear strikes, playing the same intelligence gathering and targeting roles for nuclear weapons that they did for conventional bombs and missiles in Afghanistan.

The US is bound, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers. The Bush team’s approach does not violate the letter of the treaty, but it asks the Pentagon to make necessary preparations to do so. It is an announcement in advance that the US government will violate the treaty whenever it deems it desirable. But according to Robert McNamara, the former US defence secretary, it now seems that the Bush administration has made up its mind to add the NPT to its list of scrapped treaties.

The US has already decided to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Treaty and put aside improvements in the Biological Weapons Convention. It has refused to continue the formal strategic arms reduction process.”Should this happen”, says McNamara, “and should this administration’s practice continue, nuclear weapons can be expected to spread around the world. We will then live in a far, far more dangerous world, and the United States will be much, much less secure.”

The Nuclear Posture Review also appears to set forth a 40-year plan for developing and acquiring new nuclear weapons. The supposed gains will take years to achieve, since it takes time to design, test and deploy any new weapon, nuclear or conventional. But the diplomatic fallout will be immediate. America’s allies in the Europe and the Islamic world are likely to find the report unsettling — the Europeans from an arms control perspective, the Arabs because the targets include several Muslim countries.

The rulers must act with wisdom: Balochistan in a federation-II

IN the elections of 1970, the National Awami Party which maintained that Pakistan comprised five nationalities — Bengali, Punjabi, Pathan, Sindhi and Baloch — won three of the four National Assembly seats and eight of the 20 Provincial Assembly seats in Balochistan.

The NAP was able to form a coalition government in early 1972 with the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam and ran the affairs of the province until their government was dismissed by the federal government on February 12, 1973.

The military action that followed made the Baloch more conscious of their separate entity and hardened them in their belief that they could not expect justice at the hands of a non-Baloch majority personified in their eyes in a predominantly Punjabi bureaucracy and a non-Baloch army.

After the imposition of Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law in 1977 and the tightening of his grip on the country, the fears of the nationalist elements amongst the Baloch increased and they began to look around for an opportunity to shake off the economic and social domination of their province by the non-Baloch.

The Soviet entry into Afghanistan in December, 1979, created a new situation and increased Soviet and United States interest in this area of now increased strategic importance.

By 1981, the Great Powers’ policy towards Balochistan became clear. The United States, after the induction of President Reagan’s Republican administration, decided to prop up Zia-ul-Haq’s regime with military and economic aid and use Afghanistan as a lever to bleed the Soviet Union the way it had bled the United States in Vietnam. It did not wish to see the Soviets increase their influence in Balochistan and took comfort in the thought that communist cadres or communism had made no inroads into the feudal pattern of Baloch society.

Moreover, the Soviet Union, in spite of considerable discomfort in Afghanistan, did not appear to want to destabilize Pakistan. The Soviet Union appreciated that developments in Pakistan and the long term trend of its economic and political growth were likely to bring the whole of Pakistan into the Soviet sphere of influence. It was, therefore, not willing to take an initiative in Balochistan that might provoke the United States to move into greater support of Zia-ul-Haq’s regime or into taking an independent initiative in this area.

The developments in Iran and the nature of the Iranian revolution also increased the interest of Arab countries in Balochistan. Some of these saw the situation in Iran and the Iraq-Iran war as an opportunity to destabilize the fundamentalist Iranian Shiite regime by encouraging separatist tendencies in Sunni Iranian Balochistan. However, the danger as a consequence of the development of a ‘Greater Balochistan’ move and its effect on Pakistani Balochistan restrained these Arab countries from taking any major initiative in the area.

In the Power Game the attitude of the more influential Baloch Sardars had, over the years, crystallized. Ataullah Mengal, the former chief minister of Balochistan and Khair Bakhsh Marri, the former head of the NAP in the province, went into self-imposed exile, and spoke of an independent Balochistan. They appeared to have given up all hope of an adjustment within Pakistan. They appear to have been convinced that no arrangement with the Islamabad government, consistent with the honour and interests of the Baloch, was possible.

Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, a more flexible politician, though an equally ardent nationalist, however, did not abandon hope of a settlement within a federal structure. As the head of the Pakistan National Party, he advocated a place for Balochistan within Pakistan just short of a confederation. The main features of this proposal were the keeping of all residuary powers, except defence, foreign affairs, communications and currency by the federating units. He also advocated enhanced powers for the Senate comprising equal representation of the four federating units.

Bizenjo suggested that the federal government should have no right to interfere in the affairs of the provinces except by a majority vote in the Senate. It was, therefore, significant that the sanctity of the 1973 Constitution — to which the Baloch leaders elected in the 1970 elections were signatories — had in their eyes eroded. This had happened because of the unjustified dismissal of the Balochistan ministry in 1973 which was a flagrant violation of the Constitution by the Bhutto government, military action in Balochistan between 1973 and 1977 and the imposition of an unrepresentative and despotic martial law regime.

Despite the hardened position of these and some other Baloch leaders, there were certain factors, which kept the centrifugal forces in check.

The secessionists among the Baloch found no support for an independent Balochistan among the world powers, who found their interests better served by maintaining the unity of Pakistan. Moreover, Arab countries for similar reasons were not willing to encourage secessionist tendencies in Iranian Balochistan.

However, it does not necessarily mean that this will always remain so and some of the Arab countries may under certain circumstances find the temptation to encourage separatist tendencies amongst the Iranian Baloch on Iran’s eastern frontier too great to resist.

The Soviet Foreign Minister, Gromyko, speaking in New Delhi on February 12, 1980 had warned that, “If Pakistan continues to serve as a puppet of imperialism in the future; it will jeopardize its existence and its integrity as an independent state.”

The United States, too, could in certain circumstances accept the dismemberment of Pakistan as it did in 1971.

Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State during President Nixon’s administration, had said: “In my conversation with Ambassador Jha I reiterated my constant theme that we considered Indian and American long term interests as congruent .... I emphasized that the United States did not insist that East Bengal remain part of Pakistan.

On the contrary, we accepted autonomy as inevitable and independence as possible. A war was senseless; Bangladesh would come into being by the spring of 1972 if present procedures were given a chance. We differed over method, not aim.

“On October 7, I told WSAG meeting that if India would accept an evolutionary process, it would achieve most of its objectives with our assistance. If they would cooperate with us we could work out 90 per cent of their problems, like releasing Mujib or attaining some degree of autonomy for Bangladesh, and these steps would lead eventually to their getting it all.”

With the return of a Republican administration and keeping United States global interests in mind, it would be prudent to assume that should the US interests in the future be better served by sacrificing Pakistan or a part of it, Henry Kissinger’s successors would not hesitate to do so. Pakistan must, therefore, strive to keep itself together by weakening those forces that are pulling it apart and this cannot be done by force of arms. The use of strong arm methods has shown that the situation did not, to say the least, improve.

By trying to find military solutions to political problems, Balochistan was kept in a state of insurgency for over two decades. Its contacts with political thought outside its own area had therefore not developed. Wisdom would suggest that the situation should be handled in a manner that the people of Balochistan feel convinced that their future lies in Pakistan. The only sensible course appears to be to give all Pakistanis including the Baloch, an opportunity to live in freedom and allow all political parties to function so that the Balochs are woven into the political fabric of national politics.

It has been a sad political experience that the people’s elected representatives have in the past, behaved in a highly irresponsible manner and nowhere has this been more apparent than in Balochistan. Billions have been squandered and misappropriated by so-called public representatives who have mercilessly looted the already impoverished people.

However, with the experience that the country has gone through, it can be hoped that in the new system that is being introduced they will show a greater sense of responsibility. In any case, the views of those who enjoy the people’s support must be given due weight through a constitutional process and if the elected representatives of the federating units want greater powers for the Senate, this must be done. It must be recognized that nations are not made in a day, nor necessarily in 50 years. Sometimes the process takes much longer and rushing through it can destroy the unity of the country. The interest that the world powers have in this area suggests that the rulers of Pakistan move with wisdom and restraint — qualities they have not always shown in their handling of this problem over the last 50 years.