| December 10, 2002 | Tuesday | Shawwal 5,1423 |
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Saarc postponement
Bangladesh tragedy
EVEN before the Iraqi dossier as required under Security Council Resolution 1441 had been read much less studied and analyzed, reaction in the Anglo-American world has been condemnatory. The Iraqi dossier consists of nearly 12,000 pages. They need to be examined by experts against data collected by the UN inspectors — present and past. The International Atomic Energy Agency has to examine it against hundreds of thousands of its documents collected on Iraq. In addition, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection team has to study the Iraqi document against its own database of nearly one million words. However, it is already being dismissed out of hand. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it remained to be seen whether Iraq had made an accurate declaration, and added that the only thing President Saddam Hussein had been consistent was in the “telling of lies.”
The US State Department had not yet come out with a reaction, and the White House merely said the US government would “analyze this declaration with respect to its credibility and compliance” with the UN resolution. But others in the US have not been as circumspect. Senator Joseph Liberman, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential polls and at present head of the Senate’s powerful government affairs committee, began denouncing the Iraqi dossier even before he had access to it. Mr Liberman called it a “12,000-page, 100-pound lie.” If, “as would be the case,” the Iraqi documents did not contain the truth, this constituted “a material breach” of the UN resolution. Going by his “hunch” about the Iraqi declaration, he said, the stage was set for war. This speaks of a paranoia pure and simple in which verified truth about Iraq’s weapons status or even a technical violation by Baghdad is not what is needed to justify military action against it.
The Anglo-American media has not helped matters either. In fact, experts and TV commentators are vying with each other in Iraq-bashing and preparing public opinion for war. The CNN, for instance, flashed a “breaking news” sign as if some earth-shaking development had taken place, even though the news merely concerned the Iraqi handover of the documents to the UN and IAEA. This was followed by interviews with generals about an anti-Iraq war strategy. Even the competence of the UN inspectors has been questioned.
War now looks imminent. It is only a question of time. Israel may gloat over America’s destruction of Iraq, but that will not be the end of the story. In fact, no one can predict which way the Middle East will go after the war is over. The terrible anti-American backlash it will unleash in the Muslim world will only help the forces of religious extremism and defeat the very purpose of the US-led coalition’s war on terror. President Bush’s visit to the Washington Islamic Centre on the occasion of Eid was a welcome step. But such gestures of goodwill would be rendered meaningless if they are not backed by some balance in the US policy in the Middle East — of blind support for Israel and of Iraq-bashing regardless whether that country is engaged in making weapons of mass destruction or not.
AFTER weeks of bickering, the inevitable has happened. The Saarc summit due to be held in Islamabad next month has been postponed. India had been throughout prevaricating on whether or not the summit would be attended by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Media reports recently suggested that he might send his foreign minister instead. The Pakistan foreign office found this unacceptable, postponed the seven-nation meeting, but was careful in saying on Monday that the summit had not been cancelled, with new dates to be worked out later in consultation with members. A valuable early opportunity for India’s leader to visit Pakistan, meet the new government leaders here, and thus help to reduce the acrimony and bitterness between the two countries has thus been lost.
India had first been fairly open-minded on Mr Vajpayee’s participation. But then every day that rolled by reflected a new hawkish attitude. It said it would not take part unless Pakistan stopped cross-border infiltration, then it said it believed that Islamabad would try to use the summit to raise the Kashmir dispute, and then it came up with the argument that since Pakistan had made no progress on Saarc economic and trade issues, there was no point in going to the summit. This is a lot of humbug. Pakistan has given assurances that it will not let its soil be used to launch any terrorist activity across the border, and India’s army chief himself said on Sunday that there had been a considerable reduction in what he called “infiltration”. Bilateral disputes in any case fall outside the purview of Saarc, and Islamabad could not have put Kashmir on the agenda. Where economic and trade agreements are concerned, how many of the decisions taken previously in these areas have actually been implemented? India’s excuses are lame, and it almost appears as if it does not now or in the near future wish to move towards normalization of relations. This is a regrettable development that holds Saarc hostage.
THE identity of the perpetrators of the weekend bomb blasts in Bangladesh remains unknown. Seventeen people were killed and more than 300 injured in the blasts in or around four cinema houses in Mymensingh. The theatres were packed with cinegoers celebrating Eid, one of the few joyous occasions in the Muslim calendar, a fact which lends particular poignancy to the tragedy. The attacks came in the midst of an anti-crime drive launched by the military at the behest of the government. There have been reports that over two dozen people have died of torture in military custody, and concern has been expressed at human rights violations during the campaign. Many of those targeted by the crackdown are said to be associated with the opposition Awami League, and several of those arrested following the cinema bombings are also stated to belong to that party.
This does not necessarily establish a link between the weekend incidents and the country’s bitter political divide, but the latter is a cause of constant friction and has tended to turn violence into an acceptable mode of political action. Both the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League are equally to blame for resort to agitational methods that provoke strong emotions among their followers. The country’s fundamentalist elements have made their own contribution by stirring the broth of intolerance. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s government has denied Indian accusations that Bangladesh is giving sanctuary to Muslim extremists, but this charge needs to be thoroughly investigated to lay such allegations to rest. The government has also not so far satisfactorily explained why it has detained two foreign journalists and their Bangladeshi associate. The government should make every effort to get to the root of the Eid massacre and unmask the culprits and their motives. In the longer term, the two main parties ought to end their perpetual hostility and learn to work within a democratic framework.