PEACE is under increasing threats from the triangle of arrogance made up of Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi. The US, and its faithful ally, Britain, appear determined to ‘discipline’ and punish some Islamic countries. Both are currently obsessed with the tenacity of President Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq.

At the second end of this triangle, Israel shreds the Middle East peace plan by decimating the Palestinian Authority with impunity in the hope of replacing it with a puppet regime yielding to the terms dictated by Tel Aviv. At the third end of this triangle, India commits brutal acts of state terrorism to absorb Kashmir and malign Pakistan. The BJP-led Hindu fundamentalist coalition now ruling ‘secular’ India held elections in Gujarat state on December 12 on the slogan of, ‘this is not an election. This is a religious war (against Muslims)’.

The terrible tragedy that hit the US on 9/11 like a thunderbolt “created a wave of anger against unknown and not yet identified perpetrators of that heinous crime and generated sympathy for the victims, their relatives and their respective countries. The US was then on a high moral ground and its determination in locating the culprits and brining them to justice was globally shared. This moral ascendancy started eroding when accusing fingers began to be raised within minutes of the tragedy even before an investigation process had been initiated.

Despite the passage of over one year the mystery remains unsolved. Identity of the masterminds behind the crime and the attackers remains largely obscure. These incidents may go down in history as the worst intelligence failure in modern times. Such an indictment presents the US security agencies in a very poor light. The Bush administration faces a terrible dilemma. It diverts US public attention from internal failures to assumed threats from abroad as perceived by Washington. A sustained media blitzkrieg condemns ‘suspected’ culprits and their media trial is relentlessly conducted in an atmosphere of fury and ferocity.

The US-led coalition has crushed the Taliban peanut in Afghanistan with the heaviest sledgehammer in its military inventory. How many people died in aerial attacks, during field operations and elsewhere remains unknown. The defeat of the Taliban has brought only a modicum of peace in some parts of war-ravaged Afghanistan. National unity remains elusive.

Interim president Hamid Karzai deserves support but regional loyalties are strong and the writ of his government runs in a limited area. The fate of Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar is unknown. The promised reconstruction plan of Afghanistan is yet to start.

While hapless Afghans wait for food, medicine and shelter, search operations continue to fish out Al Qaeda suspects. It is still doubtful if Al Qaeda is a real monster, as it is made out to be in the western media, or is it a mythical body overblown for political reasons? The US priorities do not seem to run parallel to the needs of the people of Afghanistan. Washington’s attention has gradually shifted over to Iraq.

‘Get Saddam’ is the buzzword in Washington and London. The CIA is mandated and has the budget to topple President Saddam Hussein’s government. In compliance with the UN Security Council resolution, Iraq has submitted a dossier of about 12,000 pages denying that it possesses weapons of mass destruction. This dossier is secretly whisked away from the UN weapons inspectors to Washington. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan laments that this act is ‘unfortunate’ and announces that “the UN is not a US puppet”. This reaction raises eyebrows. Even before this dossier is read, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accuses President Saddam of persistently “telling lies”. US Senator Joseph Liberman dismisses it as “12,000-page, 100-pound lie”. The propensity to rush to the press remains unexplained.

Iraq dismisses the allegations of Washington and London and challenges them to provide evidence in support of their contention that it has weapons of mass destruction. It also alleges that the US is working on a grand plan to control Gulf oil. Washington denies this charge. But, one US Congressman states that his country should take control of the oil-rich Gulf region. The tone and tenor the US and British media tirade are offensively biased and self-serving. President Bush sets the pace with threats, “Iraq must disarm its weapons of mass destruction or US will disarm Iraq with or without the support of UN”. Are these strong words a political rhetoric or a warning for an impounding military attack is open to question.

The US has launched a three dimensional attack on Iraq with coercive diplomacy, media blitzkrieg and military threats. If Bush can push the UN Security Council, he along with some allies and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, may decide to deal with Iraq by other means. Remember, the US had supported Saddam during Iraq-Iran war. President Bush may wish to go down in US history as a two-term president and he asserts authority to accomplish his ambition. Former US President Jimmy Carter comments thus, “For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences”.

One such example is the recent unlawful seizure and search of a merchant vessel in international waters that was carrying some missiles from North Korea to Yemen. This act of arrogance damages the US image.

Israel’s influence over US financial institutions, media and strategic think-tanks is vastly out of proportion to its size. It enjoys a special status with the US and greatly influences Washington’s policy options in the Middle East. America’s massive and unqualified support to Israel has made it a regional bully. The Middle East may keep simmering with violence as long as the basic cause of conflict there remains unaddressed.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw blames his nation’s own imperial past for the chronic troubles in this region. He belatedly confesses that “the Balfour Declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to Israelis, is an interesting history for us but not an honourable one”. Correcting the past imperial blunder to promote peace in the Middle East and provide security to all regional countries has been long overdue.

At the third end of the triangle mentioned at the outset, India blows hot and cold and often breathes fire while dealing with its small neighbours in South Asia. Its relations with all South Asian states are marked by arrogance, coercive diplomacy and conflict. This spoiler of regional peace prevents Saarc from playing a constructive role in promoting security, amity and cooperation in the region.

The Saarc summit due to be held in January next had to be postponed because India failed to indicate its willingness to attend. Its eyes are focused in the opposite direction. “Let us fight it out face to face”, says the super hawkish Indian deputy prime minister L.K. Advani, adding, “We have fought thrice, let there be a fourth war”, with Pakistan. All freedom loving people in the world should condemn such incendiary outbursts.

Those who preach war for settling political problems and disputes show their mindset and bloated ambitions. The underlying causes of contentious political issues should be politically resolved and fairly addressed. This should be the cherished goal of all. The world needs peace, not conflict. One Hitler was enough for this age.

The writer is a retired general of the Pakistan Army

ANY hope that political Hinduism could be on its last legs was emphatically shattered on Sunday as Narendra Modi — a super- hawk in a party of extremists — swept to a landslide victory in India’s Gujarat state. The result there is an indication of how badly values have become messed up in India, and a warning of worse to come.

Many commentators described the contest in Gujarat as one between Hinduism and secularism. Should India be an officially secular state, or should it adopt the creed of Hindutva and become an officially Hindu state? This description would have been apt for previous elections in which the BJP was pitted against non-communal parties like Congress. But it is not apt for the Gujarat elections: these were a contest between Hindutva and basic values of justice, tolerance and humanity — barbarism versus civilization.

The BJP that contested in Gujarat was far more extremist than the BJP that campaigned on the platform of Ayodhya or the Shah Bano case. Narendra Modi’s BJP sought re-election with its hands drenched in the blood of Muslims. The man who oversaw the biggest pogrom of Muslims in ten years (in a country notorious for killing its minorities) campaigned solely on the basis of that slaughter. And he won solely on the basis of that officially inspired massacre.

Modi could not have won on the basis of his record as chief Minister. Judged by all the conventional criteria for governmental performance, that record was abysmal. GDP growth under his government fell to an all-time low of 1.1 per cent (it was once 8 per cent), industrial output slipped to eighth in the country (once third), power and water shortages increased, health and education provision deteriorated. All these are, of course, minor failings compared to Modi’s failure to perform the most basic function of government — maintain law and order.

February’s fire on the Godhra train sparked an anti-Muslim pogrom that, by the most conservative estimates, claimed 2,000 Muslim lives. Thousands more were displaced from their homes, their properties and businesses were destroyed. The guiding and abetting hand of the state government in all this was all too apparent. Hindu mobs rampaged with official lists of Hindu and Muslim houses and businesses in their hands: they systematically destroyed everything Muslim and spared anything Hindu. The police were either bystanders or participants in acts of rape, murder and arson — never preventers.

Narendra Modi was very much a hands-on leader in the violence. This was not a case of the government failing to take preventive measures, or of the lower echelons of authority acting on their own initiative. The killing in Gujarat was encouraged and facilitated by the chief minister himself.

Thus, when Modi stood for re-election, there was absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what he had or had not achieved as chief minister. He had failed to improve socio-economic conditions in the state — indeed worsened them — but he had overseen the biggest slaughter of Muslims in recent history. It is a telling indictment of the values of Gujarat’s Hindus that they voted for Modi because of the latter, and despite the former. For just as there was no doubt about what Modi stood for, there can be no doubt about what Gujaratis voted for: political and religious Hindu extremism.

Narendra Modi, the BJP and all those who voted for him are equally and utterly contemptible. But there is another culprit in Gujarat’s desertion of humanity: the Congress. Many commentators characterized Gujarat’s election as a struggle between Hindutva and secularism. Just as they were wrong with regard to Hindutva (they should have said barbarism), so they were wrong in describing the Congress as the voice of secularism.

The Congress in Gujarat did not stand for secularism. Had it done so, it would not have fielded a former RSS leader as its candidate for chief minister. Had it done so, Sonia Gandhi would not have chosen the pilgrimage site of Ambaji to launch her campaign in the state. Had it done so, it would have made the BJP’s anti-Muslim pogroms the main plank of its offensive against the BJP: it would not have ignored these in favour of mundane (comparatively) issues like employment and water.

To be sure, the Congress in Gujarat was not the champion of secularism. As in other ignominious periods in its history, it was the champion of ‘soft’ Hindutva. It sought to win the Hindu vote by making the same appeals as the BJP. The Congress’ message in Gujarat was not as extremely communal as that of the BJP, but it did definitely use Hinduism to get votes. And as in previous elections, this strategy failed for a very simple reason: why would Hindus vote for a pale saffron impersonation when they could get the deep saffron real thing?

Secularism can never be defended through the back door of Hindutva; it can only succeed through a full-frontal assault on the extremist creed. Sonia Gandhi should have lambasted Narendra Modi for the massacres carried out by his ultra-Hindu cadres. She should have stood up for secularism as the only way a country as religiously heterogeneous as India can move forward — as the only guarantee of freedom and security for all its citizens.

Despite being of Italian origin, Sonia Gandhi failed to realize how vital secularism is to a multi-cultural India or the dangers inherent in pandering to Hindu sentiment. Gujarat — in the riots earlier this year and the election results now — is a vivid illustration of those dangers. Rabid Hindu fundamentalism is a threat to the lives and property of all minorities in India; to the economic growth and prosperity of all Indians (minorities especially, but Hindus too); to all the accepted norms of governance and rule of law. Saffronized India might be an infinitely worse place for Muslims, Christians and untouchables, but it would also be a significantly worse place for ordinary Hindus.

The BJP’s victory in Gujarat has brought the nightmare scenario of saffronized India several steps closer. Narendra Modi is already being tipped to replace Atal Behari Vajpayee (a liberal compared to the Gujarat CM) as prime minister. The party will definitely seek to replicate his Gujarat landslide in other forthcoming state elections by using the same tactics. Killing Muslims and burning their homes and businesses will be the new strategy to win votes - be poised for large-scale communal polarization and carnage.

Hindu fundamentalists today are out celebrating in the streets of Ahmedabad and other riot-ravaged parts of Gujarat. Their barbarism crushed the soft Hindutva of Congress. Justice, tolerance and humanity are nowhere to be seen: pity the Muslims of India.

ONE should not speak ill of the dead, but an exception is justified in the case of Burma’s late dictator, Ne Win.

He was responsible for almost forty years of tyranny and poverty in his country, and most Burmese would gladly dance on his ashes if it were allowed. By the time he died at 91 on 5 December, however, the process of undoing his malignant legacy was well underway.

Last May, Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman who is as much the symbol of democracy in Burma as Nelson Mandela was in apartheid South Africa, was freed from house arrest by the generals who are Ne Win’s successors. “My release should not be looked on as a major breakthrough for democracy,” Suu Kyi warned — but she added: “I would cautiously say that where we are is better than where we have ever been.”

Even as he neared death, Ne Win tried to kill the hope for democracy in Burma: his son-in-law and three grandsons were arrested last March while trying to organise a coup that would have unseated his successors and aborted the talks for Suu Kyi’s freedom. They were sentenced to be hanged, and Ne Win died a lonely and unhonoured death under house arrest at his home on a lake in central Rangoon — just across the lake, in fact, from the house where Suu Kyi had been confined for so long. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Other South-East-Asian countries also had liberation heroes who turned into monsters and blighted their people’s lives — Indonesia’s Sukarno and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh spring to mind — but none lasted so long or did as much damage as General Ne Win. One of the legendary ‘Thirty Comrades’ who began Burma’s war for freedom from Britain, he overthrew the country’s shaky democracy in 1962 and ruled with an iron hand for the next 28 years.

Ne Win was so superstitious that he once replaced the country’s existing paper currency with 45-kyat and 90-kyat notes because nine was his lucky number. He was so suspicious of foreigners that he walled Burma off from almost all outside contact, imposing an erratic ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ that turned the region’s richest country into its poorest in only three decades. And then, when popular protests broke out in 1988, he abruptly resigned.

A new kind of non-violent democratic revolution was toppling dictators all across Asia in the late ‘80s — in the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, South Korea — and in 1988 Burma was swept along. So was Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma’s greatest independence hero Aung San.

Long settled in Britain with her English husband and their two sons, Suu Kyi just happened to go home that year to nurse her dying mother.

To most Burmese her father, who had been assassinated when she was just two, was still the most powerful symbol of the future that had been betrayed, and so she suddenly found herself leading a democratic revolution. Then the frightened generals massacred thousands of citizens in the streets of Rangoon to save their power, Ne Win came back to power in another coup, and Suu Kyi discovered her destiny.

Ne Win’s new junta opened the country to foreign investment in an attempt to revive the devastated economy, and so much oil and timber money poured in that the regime was emboldened to hold an election in 1990.

But the brief burst of prosperity changed nobody’s mind: 82 per cent of the voters backed Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy against the generals. So Ne Win simply refused to accept the election’s outcome, jailed most of the NLD’s elected members, and embarked on a long duel with Suu Kyi (who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991) over the future of Burma.

Knowing she would never be allowed back into Burma if she left, she remained in Rangoon, mostly under house arrest, while her children grew up without her. Her husband eventually died of cancer without even being allowed a visit to say goodbye. The military regime’s propaganda called her a “foreign stooge” and a “genocidal prostitute”, but most ordinary Burmese know her simply as ‘The Lady’, and trust her completely.

The ageing Ne Win eventually withdrew from power, leaving three lesser generals to carry on the struggle against democracy. But Burma’s economic plight grew ever worse as a trade embargo by democratic countries tightened during the later 90s, and early this year the junta decided to seek a deal with Suu Kyi. Ne Win, in character to the end, tried one last coup to stop it, but Suu Kyi was released seven months ago, and Burma began to emerge from the long darkness. —Copyright