IT always feels nice to open a New Year with good news. But that indeed is the message on the democracy front this week. It began in Kenya with the defeat last Sunday of the hand-picked candidate of the long time corrupt autocrat of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi.

On Friday, January 3, the election winner, Mwai Kibaki takes over as president and there is some hope that this clever ex-finance minister will be skilled enough to start to put the country back on its feet and to release the wealth of talent and energy that it has in abundance.

Despite the gloomy headlines that speak of war and dictatorship, Africa is in fact becoming more democratic. A decade and a half ago few African countries held open elections. Now most do. On January 1, the working class hero, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was sworn in as president of Brazil.

In an interview I made with him 25 years ago when he was a young leader he spoke of his vision of a new Brazil where terrible disparities in wealth would be reduced enough for the poor to be at least able to eat three times a day. Against most of the predictions of the last decades, he has finally won the presidency, supported by a majority that encompasses rich, poor and the middle.

His mandate, in part, is to implement this long held vision, while enabling the vast Brazilian economy to grow at a steady pace. Also on Wednesday, Greece, not that long ago a brutal military dictatorship, took over as president of the European Union and on Sunday, January 5, Lithuania, until quite recently a submissive corner of the Soviet Union but now proudly independent, will vote on whether its president deserves a second term.

Also on this day, Milan Milutinovic leaves office as president of Serbia and is likely voluntarily to surrender himself to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague where he has been charged with brutal offences committed in Kosovo.

All this is to remind us that despite the rattling of sabres over Iraq, growing fears of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the absence of true democratic rights for the Palestinians and the ever present threat of terrorists who abjure democracy, the world, in the round, is moving forward.

A new report from the authoritative Freedom House speaks of “significant worldwide progress in 2002” in expanding freedom and democracy. “Real gains outnumbered setbacks by a nearly three-to-one-margin”. Notable improvements were made in parts of the world where terrorism poses a direct threat, including in majority Muslim and Arab countries.

Muslim Senegal entered the top category in Freedom House’s league table — Free, meaning it has a full and open democracy and free expression. Bahrain moved from Not Free to Partly Free and there was significant pro-democracy ferment in Iran, Kuwait and Qatar. Muslim Afghanistan, Albania, Comoros, Tajikistan and, perhaps most important, already democratic Turkey took significant strides toward allowing more political and personal freedoms.

Contrary to much loose thinking there is no unchangeable correlation between democracy and religious persuasion. Of course it is a historical fact that democratic expansion first took place in the Protestant world. But as recently as the 1970s commentators were arguing that there could never be an equal explosion in the Catholic world.

But it happened in the 1980s, as it did in the authoritarian-inclined Orthodox world in the 1990s. Hindu India has long been democratic and the concept of “Asian Values”, whereby it was argued that tradition bound societies, influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism, could never accept democracy, has shown to be so much nonsense by the remarkable steps taken by Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand.

It is true that the Islamic world remains a democracy backwater but it is difficult to argue that there is some kind of inexorable link between tyranny and Islam. The Islamic world has been dominated by two extreme ideologies secular Ba’athism (best known in Iraq) and revolutionary or jihadist Islamism. Both were shaped in the 1930s at a time when totalitarian movements dominated the European landscape.

Tragically, as a high official in the Bush administration Richard Haass recently admitted in an unusual speech, the US has made a grave historic mistake in supporting many of these tyrannical regimes for its own short term needs. If that could change, much else could change in the Islamic world.

According to the Freedom House survey, 89 countries are now Free, up from 43 in 1972. 56 countries are judged to be Partly Free, up from 38 in 1972. Of the 2.2 billion people in the world who live in the Not Free countries 60% live in China.

The message for the world’s enlightened democracies is that they must make sure that China never decides to set about undermining free Taiwan and that the freedoms inherited by Hong Kong are not wheedled away. These two outposts of freedom must be encouraged and preserved if mainland China is ever to be persuaded that openness and democracy would be better ways of governing the mainland’s complex society. Change China and the world will take a great leap forward! That and real democracy and independence in Palestine are the two departures the world of 2003 badly needs. —Copyright Jonathan Power

IT was nice to read in the papers that a millionaire made $314,900,000 honestly (before taxes).

Andrew “Jack” Whittaker, a native of Hurricane, W.V., held the winning ticket in the Powerball lottery.

Hollywood immediately went to work on a movie.

The producer says, “OK, this a great story. It has everything — suspense, inspiration, and of course, money. Everyone dreams of winning a lottery. Jack Whittaker is a hero, and we want to show a simple man caught up in a unbelievable world.”

Writer: “We open with a shot of a Super Serve gas station in Hurricane.”

Producer: “We have to change the town’s name. No one would ever win a lottery from a town named Hurricane. If we are going to cast Jack Nicholson, it should be called Bedford Falls.”

Writer: “Good thinking, boss. OK, Jack is a good man but down on his luck.”

Producer: “But the lucky guy who won was a millionaire before he won the lottery.”

Writer: “You have no plot if he doesn’t have financial worries at the beginning.”

Producer: “Right-o. The theme of the picture is, you can still have monetary problems even if you’re a millionaire.”

Writer: “Like the guys at Enron. Now for the plot. Suppose on the way to the bank Jack’s uncle loses the winning ticket.”

Producer: “Good idea. The whole town knows about it, but they don’t believe him. They think Jack has put his money in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.”

Writer: “Jack looks everywhere to find his ticket. In desperation he goes to the mean Bedford Falls banker, Anthony Hopkins. Jack begs the banker to loan him $315,000,000 until he finds the ticket. The banker laughs at him. ‘I wouldn’t even loan it to you if you put up your WorldCom stock as collateral’.”

Producer: “Where do we go from here?”

Writer: “Jack is about to commit suicide, when who should show up but an angel?”

Producer: “An angel. Haven’t I seen that before?”

Writer: “Who’s going to remember it? The angel has been assigned to find Jack’s lottery ticket.” Producer: “Do you mind telling me how?”

Writer: “The angel tell him he gave it to the parking lot attendant by mistake the night he went to the movies.”

Producer: “What a finish!”

Writer: “At the end, Jack appears on Jerry Falwell’s TV show. Falwell says if Whittaker wants to get with the Lord he should give the $315 million to Falwell’s ‘Old-Time Gospel Hour’.”

Producer: “What an ending. We’ve got another ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

IN THE aftermath of the 9/11, India has tried hard to exploit the issue of terrorism in a manner that obscures the crux of the 50-year-old Kashmir dispute arising from the state’s forcible occupation by New Delhi and its refusal to allow the people of Kashmir to exercise their right of self-determination that was promised to them.

New Delhi would like the world to forget that the people of Kashmir have been carrying on a determined struggle for their democratic rights that had been acknowledged by the UN Security Council. It wants to capitalize on the current world-wide concern over terrorism, and to depict itself as a victim rather than the oppressor it has been. It has sought to put Pakistan in the dock and even tried desperately to have it included in the category of terrorist states that are international pariahs.

Has India succeeded in its efforts to portray the popular movement in the occupied state in which tens of thousands of Kashmiris have lost their lives, as a threat to peace and legitimate state authority? The answer is no. An objective assessment of the situation obtaining in the state would arrive at the conclusion that India has resorted to state terrorism to suppress of popular struggle for self-determination. Nowhere else in the world is a force numbering 700,000, engaged in putting down a mass movement, with chilling statistics of over 75,000 dead, many more injured and jailed, with arson and rape practised on a scale unacceptable in a civilized world.

The international community continues to regard Kashmir as disputed territory. A recent paper prepared by the Research Service of the US Congress stated: “The long-standing US position on Kashmir is that the whole of the former princely state is disputed territory”. That is also the position of China, the UK, France and many other countries. Therefore, the Indian view that the struggle being waged by the people of Kashmir is being sustained by terrorists does not find general acceptance.

In fact, the result of the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, that led Pakistan also to carry out its own tests to acquire the means of deterrence, has been to arouse international concern in favour of a peaceful settlement of all differences and disputes between India and Pakistan. Of these problems, the Kashmir dispute finds specific mention in the Security Council Resolution No 1172 of June 6, 1998.

Responding to widespread international pressure, as well as to the heroic struggle of the Kashmiri people, India started a dialogue with some Kashmiri groups, which was in progress during 2001. At Agra, a joint declaration virtually agreed between India and Pakistan at the summit level was torpedoed by the hardliners in the Indian cabinet, headed by Mr. Advani.

The Agra process was set to resume on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York, where President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee had agreed to meet on September 25. The terrorist attacks on the US on September 11 changed the situation dramatically, and India decided to take advantage of the international focus on terrorism to achieve its objective of resolving the Kashmir dispute on its own terms. Since then, New Delhi has adopted the strategy of keeping Pakistan under pressure, by accusing it of sustaining the Kashmiri struggle through “cross-border terrorism”.

Side by side with its campaign to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state, India has stepped up repression in an effort to crush the popular movement. An attempt was also made to find an ‘internal’ solution by holding state elections in October. The BJP and its ally, the National Conference of Farooq Abdullah did rather poorly in the pools, and eventually, a coalition of the Congress and the People’s Democratic Party, headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, formed a government.

However, the APHC, which is the authentic voice of the Kashmiri people, did not participate. Therefore, this ‘internal’ solution lacks credibility. In the meantime, the popular movement against the Indian occupation has continued.

Neither the heightened repression, with the use of Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) providing unlimited coercive powers, nor the so-called ‘internal solution’, has brought about any real let-up. Indeed, any workable solution can be evolved only with the participation of all three parties to the dispute: India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir. The hard-liners in the BJP government seem to think that they can impose a solution by force, as Israel is trying to do in Palestine. But peace and tranquillity cannot be established in Kashmir unless the genuine aspirations of the people of Kashmir are accommodated.

The chances for a peaceful solution of the Kashmir problem do not seem very bright in the short run. The US is interested primarily in preventing an armed conflict between India and Pakistan, but is otherwise sensitive to Indian allegations of terrorism in the state by “Islamic fundamentalists”. US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld expressed almost a similar view at one time when he alleged that Al Qaeda was operating near the LoC. US trade interest in the vast Indian market also discourages any active engagement for resolving the Kashmir conflict that would be unwelcome to India. Indeed, India has exploited its current leverage with the US to win support for its strategy of seeking an internal solution through state elections.

With little prospect of an outside initiative or of an active UN role, the question arises as to what can be done to facilitate a Kashmir solution, when militancy is in disfavour because of its perceived links with Islamic fundamentalism. Now that democracy has been restored in Pakistan, the expression of opinions by popularly elected leaders should carry greater weight with world opinion. Militancy was a phase that helped heighten the awareness of the Kashmir issue; it is now time to take cognizance of the anti-terrorist wave. Without sacrificing the principle involved, alternative means of keeping the world’s attention focused on the issue have to be found.

There is also an interesting phenomenon so far as “third party intervention” in Kashmir is concerned. New Delhi actively seeks to involve third parties, including the US and the EU, to back its claim that “cross-border terrorism in Kashmir” has not ceased. It also insists that Kashmir is a matter of domestic jurisdiction, as it is “an integral part” of the country. Until recently, major players on the international stage were offering their good offices on Kashmir, provided they were acceptable to both parties. Now, few are keen to play such a role in view of India’s adverse reaction to the idea of a third-party mediation over Kashmir.

With Pakistan pursuing a policy of preventing infiltration, whose effectiveness has been conceded even by India and the new government in Kashmir trying to placate the people, the militant phase of the struggle is likely to taper off. Since a military solution to the problem is out of the question, our thinking and planning must be attuned to maintaining and upholding our principled stand through legitimate and peaceful means.

Since Pakistan’s support to the Kashmiri struggle is to be extended through moral, political and diplomatic means, these avenues should be utilized systematically and effectively. The media has acquired an added role, with radio, TV and Internet reaching all parts of the globe. Diplomatic backing should be coordinated with media projection.

The current effort by India to exploit the issue of terrorism cannot be a long-term strategy. Ultimately, a political settlement that takes into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir will have to be found. In the meantime, we must build up our internal strength through economic and social development, but also to withstand pressures from an India seeking hegemony through military and economic muscle.