Tyrannies of private power

LIKE millions of other people in Pakistan and abroad I read of the gang rape of a young woman in Meerwala (Muzaffargarh district) and then her forced nudity in public view. That the report was shocking would be a gross understatement. I wanted to write about it several weeks ago, but coherent thinking and words failed me. Reasoned discourse requires tranquillity and, in retrospect, I think it was good that I waited.

What does the crime tell us about ourselves as a people? Was it an isolated incident or is it a common happening? Rape is committed in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world every day, and cases of gang rape are frequent enough. Needless to say, every such case, regardless of where it happens, is lamentable. The Meerwala event is particularly disgraceful, and alarming, for two reasons. First, it was not the act of a bunch of young boisterous rowdies; it was an act ordered by a quasi-official, quasi-representative body (a “jirga”) that is normally expected to mediate and conciliate local disputes and otherwise safeguard the well-being of its people.

Second, stripping the woman, after she had already been raped by four men in succession, and forcing her to walk naked on the street, while scores of persons watched her, is an act of barbarity to which even the mafiosi would not resort. Third, one may be certain that the “elders” in the “jirga” had nothing against the woman herself. They subjected her to unspeakable humiliation because they wanted to humiliate, punish, even terrorize the woman’s family or clan, that belonged to a lower caste or social status, and one of whose very young male members (a boy of 12) had allowed himself to be approached by an older upper class girl.

The folks in Meerwala are said to be a tribal community. My friends from Pathan and Baloch tribes, and my own readings, confirm that tribal ethos is not the agent that instigated the atrocity under reference here. Members of a tribe, each acting of his own volition, may punish infidelity or other sexual misconduct by killing the woman concerned and her lover, but they will not send out their own men to rape the other side’s women, much less parade them naked on the street. (In this connection, I should like to commend a book, “And Then the Pathan Murders,” written by a former advocate-general of the NWFP.)

It will bear re-emphasis that the more important issue here is the intention of imposing indignity and humiliation on persons belonging to a lower social class. Otherwise, as many of us know, there are tribes in parts of Africa and India whose women go around bare-breasted without anybody paying any attention to it. Both men and women stay bare in nudist colonies in America and Europe. But note that they do so of their own free will, their style is not seen as a negation of dignity, and it has not been imposed on them.

The feudal ethos, much more than the tribal, is likely to hold an explanation of Meerwala’s disgrace. The lines of class and status distinction in a feudal society are rigid and upward social mobility rare. Generations of lower-status persons have regarded those in the upper classes as their “masters,” given them unquestioning obedience, and served them without any awareness of their own rights in the relationship. The typical feudal lord owes his peasants and other social inferiors no respect. The notion that they are entitled to some basic human dignity is foreign to his thinking. He knows that parading their women naked in the village would be an indignity, but he thinks he should be free to impose it on them.

The feudal ethos is not limited to areas where big landlords, each owning tens of thousands of acres of land, prevailed. It has spilled over to other parts of the country, rural and urban, encompassing a great many relationships beyond those between landowners and peasants or tenants. The assumption that each person is, by reason of being human, possessed of a certain basic dignity is the original source of some of our professed beliefs, such as that all men and women are equal in the sight of the Lord, and that they should therefore be equal before law. Our people have not fully internalized these premises with the result that persons belonging to a higher caste, social status, or income level feel free to insult and oppress lower-ranking persons in a variety of ways.

Going beyond the landed aristocrats, we encounter numerous centres of private power that coerce, exploit, and oppress people. The great “robber barons” of the “gilded age” of America towards the close of the nineteenth century, and their counterparts in England and Europe, were the most notable among them. They bought votes in city councils, state assemblies, and Congress to obtain tax exemptions, access to public land and natural resources, and many other privileges without owning any obligations in return. They paid workers a mere pittance and, through resort to trusts and monopolies, plundered the consumer. Public power has restrained their grasping hand to a considerable extent since then, but they still engage in plunder and oppression if and when they can get away with it. Indeed, with increasing emphasis on “deregulation,: their ability to have their way is on the increase

If you will allow me a slight digression to give the “devil his due,” I should like to mention the curious fact that the “robber barons” diverted a substantial part of the proceeds of their plunder to the advancement of public purposes. Hundreds of colleges and universities, libraries, museums, research organizations, endowments and foundations for the advancement of knowledge and promotion of international understanding and peace came up and got going mostly with private money.

We in Pakistan do not have the industrial “robber barons” of yesteryear, but we do have extremist organizations and a variety of mafias as other nations do. Some of them will kill persons simply because they subscribe to a different persuasion. They will hurt those who oppose their way of violence. They will extort money from individuals and establishments by threatening death and destruction to those who do not oblige. Then we have organized gangs of hoodlums who collect “protection money” from shopkeepers in return for nothing more than leaving them unmolested.

We have drug dealers who have converted a substantial proportion of our younger people into addicts. They corrupt government and politics, essentially to remain free to continue their nefarious trade. They will resort to physical violence too when it suits their purpose. Lastly, in this catalogue, we have political and/or religious organizations that call for strikes, primarily to demonstrate their capacity for causing trouble. Their supporters, and others who join them because they have nothing better to do, will destroy stores that are open and vehicles that are moving. Some of them will even vandalize and rob stores that are closed and wreck parked vehicles.

It is well understood that public authority came into being, whenever and howsoever it did, to protect individuals from the rapaciousness of private power. This has been accomplished to a greater degree in some places than in others. In Pakistan the pernicious centres of private power go about their business virtually unrestrained, because their coercive capabilities are far greater than those of the government that is to control them. And, there are some in our land who are not even sure that it wants to control them.

It may be that the government does not want to go all the way to demobilize and disable these power centres because it is scared of them. There is reason to be scared. Numerous high-ranking civil and police officials who were serious about apprehending the directors of militant groups were killed and others threatened with a similar fate if they did not back away. The late Mr. Riaz Basra (reportedly killed in an “encounter” at a time when he was supposed to be in police custody a long distance away from the scene of his demise) was alleged to have ordered and engineered dozens of murders but remained not only at large but free to talk with journalists for years. The vast majority of the sectarian killers in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have never been caught. The government does not even attempt to arrest the “demonstrators” who break into stores and burn or steal vehicles during strikes. Nor does it call their leaders to account and require them and/or their organizations to pay for the damage to private and public property their zealous followers have caused.

We should never have a military government, but we do have one now as we have had several times in the past. Such governments in other places and times used to have an agency called the “firing squad,” which they employed to do away with persons they regarded as public enemies. Our military rulers have never brought this squad out, probably because they are coy about their identities. Consequently, they are neither here nor there; neither really military, nor civil. Like its civilian predecessors, the present government has all the “power” (as a legal concept) that it could want, but little of it is seen as an operational capability to get things done.

No wonder then that General Musharraf spends his time pondering the political system under which our grandchildren will live instead of concentrating his administration’s energies, such as they are, on rapists, murderers, and feudalistic oppressors of the people. I should like to ask also why our politicians — “mainstream” and other — have taken Meerwala so lightly and why the people at large are not up in arms over this horrible act of national disgrace and dishonour?

E-mail: anwar_syed@cox.net

New contenders for power

PRESIDENT Musharraf must be a disappointed man. Three years of his didactic therapy has made no difference to the rough trade of Pakistan’s politics.

Now new political force or personality has emerged. The second-line leaders who were marked by the regime to gain control of their parties in the forced absence of their chiefs have either remained steadfastly loyal or fallen apart fighting. Coming out most mauled is the break-away or, if you will, the real (Q) Muslim League. Spared the rigours of accountability and shown official indulgence, it started fighting for the crumbs of power before they fell from the military table. Its leaders might consider themselves still in the race but the political prognosticators have counted them out.

The PPP and Nawaz’s PML thus should remain the chief contestants, that is if they are allowed to contest, in the October election, as they were during 1988-1999, without disowning their party heads. The PPP, by floating a satellite party, and the PML, by electing Shahbaz Sharif as party chief under the guidance of his disqualified brother in exile, will now be holding Musharraf to his claim that he loathes not any party but only the individuals who abused their public office and that he had no qualms in working with the rest.

It needs no pundit to predict that unless the National Accountability Bureau brings up some charge against Shahbaz Sharif — hidden or not pursued so far — and the election commission finds the PPP ineligible, the elections will be once again dominated by these two old rivals. The future course of politics in Pakistan, thus, will be determined by whether the PPP would be permitted to contest the elections via the “Parliamentarian” loop and, secondly, whether Benazir Bhutto herself would be held eligible to contest despite her sentence of three years.

Another set of questions to be answered concerns the Nawaz PML. Will Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to return and lead the party? And, secondly will the party itself be able to contest when its elected president is a convict in exile and barred from politics under an agreement with the government?

The final answers to these questions relating to both the PPP and the PML will have to come from the election commission and the Supreme Court. In the first instance the election commission will have to rule whether Benazir Bhutto is disqualified from being a candidate because of her conviction even though it is not for a moral offence but for wilful absence from court.

The election commission will also have to rule whether the PPP remains eligible to take part in the elections despite its chairperson being a convicted person and, secondly, whether its “Parliamentarian” offspring fulfils the eligibility criteria because of its hurried formation and election of office-bearers.

Dispelling earlier rumours of a “deal” with the PML, the government has now categorically stated that Shahbaz Sharif will not be allowed to return from exile and if somehow he does he would be instantly deported. The questions of fundamental rights arising here would be equally fateful.

Can an agreement, which is no more than an informal understanding, deprive a citizen (who disowns it) from returning to his own country and, second, having come, will it be legal for the government to deport him? In the event the government action in preventing Shahbaz’s entry or deporting him is upheld, yet another question arising would be whether a citizen living abroad can lead a party and contest elections.

In a simple and straight layman’s view, the answers to these questions should go in favour of the two political parties. But arguments under the fast-changing laws and extraneous pressures can take a long and weird course. The worrisome thought at this stage is not who wins or loses but that the legal battle in the election commission and in courts might not end before the date of election resulting, say, in its postponement which may turn out to be indefinite.

The second, and more worrisome, thought is that if the PPP or PPP-P and the PML-N abstain or are kept out of the contest, the elections will lose their vigour and, consequently, the representative base of the emerging parliament would be too narrow and fragile to sustain a government for five years.

It would, thus, be good for the president as well as for the country if no party were to be barred from taking part in the elections for procedural deficiency or for proven or alleged malfeasance of its leaders. The president must have realized by now the futility of the mandatory party elections which changed neither their office holders nor their policy. All rushed through the formality with ease and remained unbruised.

The only change coming out of the charade was the birth of Ijazul Haq’s Muslim League. Parties are made and unmade by the people, not by law. The ambition to reform or remould them only breaks them apart. Every military government leaves behind a few splintered parties as its legacy. Ijazul Haq’s is the latest and, perhaps, the eighth Muslim League.

President Musharraf in his fight against terrorism, which is expected to be long and gruesome, would need strong political allies. Sidelining the mainstream political forces might drive him into the arms of the very groups who spawn terror. He will thus be undermining his own agenda which has brought him the world-wide political support, arms and money to check extremism in public life.

Out of sheer political necessity after the elections, Musharraf should not find himself aligning with those very religio-political elements to whom the Taliban of Afghanistan and their home-grown counterparts are the heroes and martyrs while he hunts for them in the mountains, and their frequent deadly strikes defame the country and brutalize society.

A sure way for Musharraf acting against his own interest and that of the country would be to keep the moderate majority out of the parliament through disqualifications and, worse, rigging.

Ukraine and the West

NATO’s coming eastward expansion and its new partnership with Russia have prompted a major change in direction by one of Europe’s largest and most unsettled nations, Ukraine.

A country of more than 50 million people that is still struggling to gain its political and economic footing after a decade of independence, Ukraine has abruptly dropped its longstanding policy of balancing itself between the West and Russia.

Its government recently requested talks on becoming a full member of both NATO and the European Union. The reaction has been guarded: Both European governments and the Bush administration seem unsure whether Ukraine should be a part of the Western alliance in the future, and there is resistance even to upgrading its relations with the EU. But Ukraine is too big to be safely kept on the back burner. The United States and Europe must formulate a clear answer.

In some respects, the question of what to do about Ukraine seems easy. Given its huge size, strategic location in southern and central Europe and relatively sophisticated industrial economy, Ukraine is a natural member of the transnational organizations that are slowly spreading across the continent.

Without Ukraine, the longstanding Western goal of a Europe “whole and free” will remain incomplete; without an anchor in those institutions, the country’s long-term stability and even its viability as an independent nation could be seriously threatened.—The Washington Post

Preemption as a principle not in US interest

AS the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre draws near, the administration is facing the most consequential foreign policy decision of the George W. Bush presidency. The president and Secretary of State Colin Powell have repeatedly stated that the United States insists on regime change in Iraq.

In an eloquent address in June at West Point, President Bush stressed that new weapons of mass destruction no longer permit America the luxury of waiting for an attack, that we must “be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty.”

At the same time, the administration’s formal position is that no decision to resort to force has yet been taken. Ambiguity often can help create awareness without encumbering the discussion with the need for decision. But when ambiguity reaches the point of inviting leaks concerning military planning, congressional debate and allied pressures, the time has come to define a comprehensive policy for America and for the rest of the world.

The new approach is revolutionary. Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which, after the carnage of the religious wars, established the principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other states. And the notion of justified preemption runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self-defence only against actual, not potential, threats.

Therefore, an American military intervention in Iraq will be supported only grudgingly, if at all, by most European allies. The Middle East will be split into an inarticulate group, which will be weighing relief from radical pressures authored by Baghdad against the rising dangers from the local Arab street, and radical Islamists, already enraged by the American presence in the region. As for other nations, Russia will balance the blow to Arab radicalism against its economic stake in Iraq and the benefits of American goodwill against its fear of being marginalized.

China will view preemptive action in terms of its reluctance to justify intervention in its own country against its desire for a cooperative relationship with the United States during a period of political succession and integration into the world economy via the WTO. The most interesting, and potentially fateful, reaction may well be India’s, which will be tempted to apply the new principle of preemption against Pakistan.

To find our way through this thicket, the administration needs to establish a comprehensive strategy for itself and a clear declaratory policy for the rest of the world. Nor can a conflict of such import be sustained as an expression of executive power alone. A way must be found to obtain adequate congressional and public support for the chosen course.

The administration should be prepared to undertake a national debate because the case for removing Iraq’s capacity of mass destruction is extremely strong. The international regimen following the Treaty of Westphalia was based on the concept of an impermeable nation-state and a limited military technology which generally permitted a nation to run the risk of awaiting an unambiguous challenge.

But the terrorist threat transcends the nation-state; it derives in large part from transnational groups that, if they acquire weapons of mass destruction, could inflict catastrophic, even irretrievable, damage. That threat is compounded when these weapons are being built in direct violation of U.N. resolutions by a ruthless autocrat who sought to annex one of his neighbours and attacked another, with a demonstrated record of hostility toward America and the existing international system. The case is all the stronger because Saddam expelled U.N. inspectors installed as part of the settlement of the Gulf War and has used these weapons both against his own population and against a foreign adversary.

This is why policies that deterred the Soviet Union for 50 years are unlikely to work against Iraq’s capacity to cooperate with terrorist groups. Suicide bombing has shown that the calculations of jihad fighters are not those of the cold war principals. And the terrorists have no national base to protect. Therefore, the concern that war with Iraq could unleash Iraqi weapons of mass destruction on Israel and Saudi Arabia is a demonstration of self-deterrence. If the danger exists today, waiting will only magnify possibilities for blackmail.

There is another, generally unstated, reason for bringing matters to a head with Iraq. The attack on the World Trade Centre had roots in many parts of the Islamic, and especially the Arab, world. It would not have been possible but for the tacit cooperation of societies that, in the words of George W. Bush, “oppose terror but tolerate the hatred that produces terror.” While long-range American strategy must try to overcome legitimate causes of those resentments, immediate policy must demonstrate that a terrorist challenge or a systemic attack on the international order produces catastrophic consequences for the perpetrators, as well as their supporters, tacit or explicit.

The campaign in Afghanistan was an important first step. But if it remains the principal move in the war against terrorism, it runs the risk of petering out into an intelligence operation while the rest of the region gradually slides back to the pre-9/11 pattern, with radicals encouraged by the demonstration of American hesitation and moderates demoralized by the continuation of an unimpaired Iraq as an aggressive regional power.

The overthrow of the Iraq regime and, at a minimum, the eradication of its weapons of mass destruction would have potentially beneficent political consequences, as well: the so-called Arab street may conclude that the negative consequences of jihad outweigh any potential benefits. It could encourage a new approach in Syria; strengthen moderate forces in Saudi Arabia; multiply pressures for a democratic evolution in Iran; demonstrate to the Palestinian Authority that America is serious about overcoming corrupt tyrannies; and bring about a better balance in oil policy within OPEC.

For this reason, the objective of regime change should be subordinated in American declaratory policy to the need to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from Iraq as required by the U.N. resolutions. The restoration of the inspection system existing before its expulsion by Saddam is clearly inadequate. It is necessary to propose a stringent inspection system that achieves substantial transparency of Iraqi institutions. Since the consequences of simply letting the diplomacy run into the ground are so serious, a time limit should be set. The case for military intervention will then have been made in the context of seeking a common approach.

At that point, too, America’s allies will be obliged to face the choice they have thus far evaded: between their domestic opposition or estrangement from the United States. Dissociation from U.S. actions will not save the allies from the consequences of abdication in a world of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and distancing themselves from an ally of half a century.

Special attention must be paid to the political and psychological framework vis-a-vis the Arab world. An explanation is needed of why Iraqi weapons of mass destruction impede the solution of all matters of concern in the area — not in Western categories of security but in terms relevant to upheavals in the region. This is why it is so important to couple military pressures with a programme of economic and social reconstruction in which allies and moderate Arab regimes should be invited to participate.

At the same time, the administration should reject the siren song that an Iraqi intervention should be preceded by a solution of the Palestine issue. It is not true that the road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem. Much more likely, the road to Jerusalem will lead through Baghdad. The president has committed his administration to a three-year programme for the creation of a Palestinian state. He has left no doubt about his determination to bring progress on this timetable. But that timetable should not be used to defer decisions that cannot wait.

In the end, however, Iraq policy will be judged by the way the aftermath of military operations is handled politically. Precisely because of the precedent-setting nature of this war, its outcome will determine the way American actions will be viewed internationally far more than the way we entered it. And we may find many more nations willing to cooperate in reconstruction than in warfare if only because no country wants to see an exclusive position for America in a region so central to energy supplies and international stability. This could be the way to relate unilateral American action to an international system.

Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed. For, in the end, the task is to translate intervention in Iraq into terms of general applicability for an international system. The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, the demonstrated hostility of Saddam combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action. But it is not in the American national interest to establish preemption as a universal principle available to every nation.

And we are only at the beginning of the threat of global proliferation. Whatever the views regarding Iraq, the nations of the world must face the impossibility of letting such a process run unchecked. The United States would contribute much to a new international order if it invited the rest of the world, and especially the major nuclear powers, to cooperate in creating a system to deal with this challenge to humanity on a more institutional basis. — Los Angeles Times Syndicate