THE North Korean nuclear weapons programme is a direct challenge to the international system, not primarily to the United States. None of the treaties inhibiting nuclear proliferation will be worth the paper they are written on if a nation whose conduct is so universally regarded as beyond the pale succeeds in openly producing nuclear weapons in the teeth of freely accepted international obligations. And when scores of countries can threaten each other with nuclear weapons, global catastrophe and seepage of these weapons into terror operations beckon.

This is the nightmare scenario currently confronting the world. But the public debate on it has taken an odd turn. The crisis began when North Korea informed US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, on a visit to Pyongyang in pursuit of a political dialogue, that it had evaded an eight-year-old agreement with the United States not to produce weapons-grade nuclear material by secretly engaging in a uranium enrichment programme. And, shortly afterward, Pyongyang evicted the UN inspectors and restarted its plutonium reactor. Increasingly, however, diplomatic and media attack has been not on the violator of agreements but on the Bush administration’s reluctance to talk with Pyongyang until North Korea returns to the nuclear status quo ante.

The administration has now gone the extra mile in offering to “talk” to North Korea about the implementation of its signed agreements, warning at the same time that it will agree to no quid pro quo. But the fundamental problem has not changed. The only outcome of these talks that will not constitute a major setback to the cause of nonproliferation is a restoration of North Korea’s previous nuclear status by shutting down its plutonium reactors, returning their fuel rods to storage under international inspection and readmitting IDEA inspectors to all facilities. Any quid pro quo — however disguised — would represent a triumph for North Korean nuclear blackmail.

And blackmail seems to be North Korea’s principal negotiating tactic. This is a regime that sent a missile over Japan while the agreement was in force — clearly implying a nuclear threat. It launched a war of aggression against the South a half-century ago; set off a bomb in Burma that assassinated half of the visiting South Korean government; placed a bomb on a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people; admitted kidnapping more than a dozen Japanese citizens and is suspected of kidnapping many more, as well as hundreds of South Koreans.

Over the last decade, Pyongyang has been driving toward a nuclear military capability. Missiles that can carry weapons of mass destruction have become its principal export. Making concessions under its nuclear threats would establish nuclear blackmail as a permanent recourse and not only in North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world; it would create incentives for other nations to follow a similar path.

The key members of the international community — and particularly those with special responsibility for international security — must unite in quelling the danger. America’s critics seem to forget that it is other nations that would bear the principal burden of failure. The combination of missile defence and a vast retaliatory arsenal enables the United States to manage a world of nuclear proliferation better than any other country and to protect its allies. Any diplomacy that begins with stigmatizing the United States as the principal cause of tensions evades the issue. This is a case, if there ever was one, for a multilateral approach.

This is why the United States should begin urgent consultations, looking toward an international conference on the North Korean nuclear programme, composed of the countries most affected — the United States, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea — to decide on a common strategy. In its first phase, this conference should endorse the restoration of the nuclear status quo ante. When that has been accomplished and verified, North Korea should be invited to join to discuss the ultimate destruction of its nuclear capability. In that context, the political assurances it has requested for its security can be discussed. In pursuing such a course, the United States has to navigate between two extremes: preemption is prevented because North Korean artillery is holding Seoul hostage, but appeasement would hold the world community hostage to perhaps the most brutal and repressive regime in the world.

The challenge to American diplomacy is to distil the overriding common interest in preventing nuclear proliferation from the partially competing interests of the various nations affected by North Korea’s nuclear programme. On the one hand, the vital interests of many countries intersect in North-east Asia. Located at the border of China, Korea also faces Japan, which for centuries has considered its security closely related to the Korean peninsula.

For Japan and China, Korea is like Mexico to the United States, a permanent factor beyond even the most crucial immediate disputes. Since the end of the 19th century, Russia has competed for influence in Korea. Since the end of World War II, the United States has borne the principal burden in defending South Korea with the troops it has maintained there and the 40,000 deaths it incurred during the Korean war. And most intensely, the future of North Korea is inseparable from the politics and security of our ally in South Korea.

But for some of these countries, the fear of the proliferation of nuclear weapons to North Korea is almost matched by the fear of the consequences of chaos were the North to implode. While no neighbour of Korea will officially oppose unification, most would prefer to postpone it to an indefinite future. China does not want a major industrial power armed with nuclear weapons on its borders. And it knows that if a nuclear weapons capability remains on the Korean peninsula, the nuclear rearmament of Japan is nearly certain. Yet China would prefer to thwart North Korea’s nuclear ambitions by methods that do not jeopardize the survival of the Pyongyang regime.

Japan’s perceptions are likely to be comparable. Because of the history of Japanese colonialism in Korea, Japan calculates that the main thrust of a unified Korea’s foreign policy will be suspicion of Japan. Moreover, if the world acquiesces in a nuclear North Korea and if, as a result, the presence of American forces in South Korea becomes doubtful, Japan is likely to conclude that independence requires turning its already significant nuclear industry toward weapons production.

For Russia, the emergence of a North Korean weapons capability has a primarily symbolic significance. It magnifies the impetus behind potential nuclear programmes along its southern borders. And from a geopolitical point of view, Russia prefers a divided Korea to one allied with the United States or China.

As for the United States, it has a stake in a prosperous and stable Asia, especially since the region is far behind Europe in the development of regional mechanisms to cope with disputes. And it has two major long-standing alliances — with Japan and South Korea — directly affected. America favours the unification of Korea and the end of nuclear proliferation but in a manner that does not destabilize North-east Asia.

South Korea’s position is the most complex of all. Nuclear weapons do not add a great deal to the threat of the thousands of artillery pieces located along the Demilitarized Zone within reach of Seoul. In these circumstances, to many Koreans, unification seems more important than denuclearization. Leftist groups treat the United States as the source of tensions; pacifists justify the North’s nuclear programme as a response to American threats; nationalists see in the North Korean programme as an affirmation of Korean dignity. A combination of these trends dominated the recent South Korean election and has seeped into the South Korean establishment.

The new South Korean government seems to imagine itself as an intermediary between North Korea and the United States. It has sent emissaries to China, Russia and Japan, asking these countries to mediate the dispute as if South Korea were a bystander. This is an expression of the so-called sunshine policy, which, in some of its formulations, implies unification under the aegis of the South at the price of a reduction of US influence in Korea.

The United States has no reason to oppose the sunshine policy so long as it involves reasonable reciprocity; it is, in its way, a tribute to the success of a half-century of alliance. America supported a similar approach on German unification a generation ago — albeit after some hesitation and in the framework of a continued alliance. But such a strategy can work only on the basis of close coordination between Washington and Seoul, as it did in the German case. A South Korean policy that bases domestic politics on finding a position between Washington and Pyongyang will erode the very basis of the alliance.

South Korea’s leaders must not forget that a primary purpose of the American deployment in Korea is to maintain the local strategic balance in Asia and to prevent Korea from becoming engulfed by the conflicts of three powerful neighbours whose competition produced five conflagrations in the last century. The United States should be prepared to adjust its arrangement in South Korea to the heightened sense of autonomy of its ally. But if the South Korean government manoeuvres itself into a position whereby the price of the alliance is American acquiescence in a nuclear weapons programme in the North, this deployment cannot be sustained, either in South Korean or American public opinion. If North Korea agrees to return to the nuclear status quo ante, and after it has implemented it, it should be invited to preparatory talks regarding three principal agenda items:

(a) the destruction of North Korea’s nuclear military capability;

(b) if North Korea is genuinely concerned about its security, some multilateral formula similar to that which evolved from the European Security Conference by which the parties renounce the use of force for the purpose of changing frontiers, but the United States has no reason to stigmatize itself by signing a separate nonaggression pledge;

(c) if North Korea were prepared to become a normal nation seeking to raise the standard of living of its population, possible economic cooperation. But it must be clear that there are limits that can only be modified by an improved human rights record in Pyongyang. The outside world must not be asked to sustain one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.

It will be argued — as it was a generation ago — that such a renunciation of force would legitimize the partition of Korea. In fact, the European Security Conference marked a major step toward Germany’s unification. For its Final Document included the phrase that “frontiers can be changed in accordance with international law by peaceful means and by agreement.” And it is the peaceful evolution that will bring about the collapse of the North Korean dictatorship — as it did in Eastern Europe — rather than military confrontation.

What if North Korea refuses such an approach, or it proves impossible to organize a multilateral consensus? I cannot believe that nations on which the security of the world depends will tolerate the permanent possession of nuclear weapons by the most ruthless contemporary nation. If that were to happen, the United States would be obliged to find its nuclear partners where it can and reserve its freedom of action for when its fundamental security is challenged. And then the world will be in the position described more than two centuries ago by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He predicted that the world would ultimately achieve universal peace either by human insight or, failing that, by catastrophes that leave it no other choice. — (c) 2003, Tribune Media Services International.

THE phrase ‘Pakistan is now at a crossroads’ has cropped up with monotonous regularity in the political writing in the past. It has surfaced whenever men in battle fatigues usurp political power and depict, at least in the initial stages, a world of reticence, reserve and chin-up correctness.

It has also made an appearance when members of the feudal aristocracy , dressed up as democrats, come up with colloquially written treatises, bristling with worn erudition, full of promises and commitments which they have no intention of keeping, or, as in the case of Mohammed Khan Junejo, are prevented from carrying out. Why does one get the impression that one has heard all this before, at least a dozen times?

If one is permitted the luxury of a cliche, Pakistan is once again at a crossroads, thanks to the manipulation and chicanery of the power brokers who have ensured that the will of the people is not reflected in the formation of some of the provincial governments. But this time the traffic lights appear to have been switched off. In fact, things don’t look at all good in the Sindh Assembly.

Ministers in the 15-member cabinet are still squabbling over portfolios. There is evidence of considerable confusion and uncertainty. The leader of the party which bagged the largest number of seats in the province, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, will sit in the opposition, and is currently wondering when the assembly will be summoned. No policy guidelines have been issued and no priorities have been allocated.

The chief minister appears to be engrossed in the unenviable task of placating his cabinet colleagues from the king’s party and the National Alliance, who are quibbling over the allocation of portfolios, rather than summoning the secretaries and getting on with the business of government. Files are apparently piling up, gathering the proverbial dust, waiting for the rubber stamp of the ministry mandarin. This is what happens when the will of the people is subverted.

The trouble started when the MPAs of the National Alliance expressed their disenchantment over what they called a flagrant breach of agreement on the part of the king’s party. Things got to the stage when the aggrieved party members threatened to quit the cabinet. The power brokers, especially the principal secretary to the president, Tariq Aziz, jumped into the fray and ensured that the allocation of portfolios was delayed until matters were sorted out.

Two days after the initial formation of the cabinet , the public was informed that Dr Saeeda Malik of the king’s party, (whom few people in Karachi had heard of) and who had initially been given the portfolio of education, would now be heading the ministry of women’s development, a department, one presumes, which will also tackle the problems of the lower caste Hindu females in the interior of Sindh.

Precisely what her duties and responsibilities are have not been spelled out. Nor is it very clear how she will deal with the rights of women when she comes into conflict with rapists and wife beaters and those who indulge in the practice of marrying off teenage girls to settle financial accounts.

By default, the portfolio of education fell into the lap of Irfanullah Marwat, son-in-law of a former president, who had initially been promised mines and minerals. The choice of candidate for the portfolio of education apparently wasn’t a very popular one, and there was a storm of protest from various women’s organizations, human rights activists and also Dr Rahim-ul-Haq of the king’s party. The fly in the ointment, however, is that education had been initially promised to Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh, head of the Sindh Democratic Alliance, who was offered an olive branch and made an adviser to the chief minister.

This is probably the first time in the history of the province that ministers have queued up in an attempt to enlighten the people and mould the minds of the youth. Surely this has nothing to do with the fact that huge donations are made every year by foreign governments to improve standards of education. There is evidence to suggest, however, that a cabinet reshuffle will take place after elections to the Senate are held. Meanwhile, Ali Mohammed Maher has been holding forth on what he intends to do to improve the lot of the people.

The latest gaffe is the exhortation of the leader of the house, sodden with emotion and aware of urban disquietude, that he is going to do something about the law and order situation in the province. Nevertheless, as Mr Maher has made a gesture, and news has trickled down the grape vine that, unlike the president, the chief minister of Sindh is not averse to receiving suggestions from members of the public and the press, this writer would like to offer two suggestions.

The time has come to apply the rule of law with an iron hand, like the British did in India, without fear or favour. And let nobody assume that the only people entitled to protection are the privileged who own large cars and generators, and live in the more opulent residential areas in towns and cities. Law and order does not only mean scouring the country for terrorists, catching narcotics peddlers and gun-runners and nabbing motorists who cross the red light. It also means protecting the dignity and self-respect of the poor and defenceless, especially destitute women in the rural areas, who for 54 years have been abused and treated like the Untermenschen of the Nazis. And that, too, in a country that claims to be an Islamic republic. Everybody has equal rights under the Constitution or so the judiciary has led us to believe.

For starters, the chief minister, or the competent ex-civil servant, Sardar Ahmed of the MQM, who heads the home ministry, should haul up the station house officers who have recently featured in two sensational crimes in which they allegedly accepted bribes to hush up the brutal stoning to death of a young girl by her two uncles, and the gang rape of a 17-year-old peasant girl by five armed landlords. After that, they should arrest the culprits and have them tried in an anti-terrorist court.

The rule of law was the greatest gift of the British empire to a people who had lived under a system of functional anarchy for hundreds of years. This could be the chief minister’s moment of glory. The question is, does he have the courage of his conviction? And is he going to be faithful to the promise he has made? Or is he going to betray the sacred trust as others before him?

In the oath taken under Articles 131(4) and 132(2) of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of Pakistan, the chief minister of Sindh swore, among other things, that he would not allow his personal interest to influence his official conduct or his official decisions, and he also swore to do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. Aren’t the little girl whose life was brutally snuffed out by two vicious murderers, and the peasant girl who was ravished by five armed rapists, covered by the phrase ‘all manner of people’? Or are women excluded from this category?

The basic issue revolves round the rights of women, or rather, as Walter Lippmann would have put it, what men who live in the world of their pseudo-environment, believe to be the rights of women in a patriarchal society. On January 6, I had the rare privilege of listening to a talk by a highly enlightened feminist Islamic scholar, Dr Riffat Hassan, who has been teaching the tenets of Islam in a university in the United States for over 20 years. In a very elegant presentation she analyzed differences between the actual Quranic texts and the ways in which patriarchal biases have crept into its interpretation over the years. The thrust of her thesis was that the Holy Quran does not discriminate against women in any way, and that evidence can be found in it and the Islamic tradition for affirming women’s rights and the equality of men and women in relation to God and to each other.

PRIME Minister Zafarullah Jamali breathes religion and he makes no bones about it. He tells me that he had the Prime Minister’s House, including its sprawling luscious lawns, washed and had the Holy Quran recited in every room before moving in. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lived in a way which Mr Jamali did not consider clean or holy.

Mr Jamali visits Makkah once a year, some times twice. He is already in Saudi Arabia to offer thanks for the prime ministership. President General Pervez Musharraf appears to have selected him to placate the religious forces which have increased their strength in the National Assembly many times over, although their voting is up by only 10 per cent.

The other option before President Musharraf for prime minister was reportedly Mr Khurshid Kasuri, now foreign minister, who studied abroad. He wears western clothes. This is not a handicap. But what may stall him is his anxiety to mend fences with India. His first statement on normalizing relations with New Delhi did not go down well with an influential section which believed that their anti-India stance represented the Pakistan ideology. He is cautious now.

People would like to see normality with India. Apart from Islamabad’s policies, New Delhi comes in the way. It is not issuing visas, not even to those who fight against their government to foster contacts in India at the people’s level. The denial of visas was one criticism which all, particularly the intelligentsia, made. Checking with the Indian High Commission in Islamabad I found that the average of visas issued last year had come down from 800 to three a day. In contrast, the Pakistan foreign office says that instructions to them are to let ‘any intellectual come in’.

IT IS an established principle of law that the executive cannot take away the life and liberty of a person unless it has the support of some legal provision for doing so and is acting within the bounds of law. In England, the right to personal freedom means a person’s right not to be subjected to imprisonment, arrest, or coercion in any manner that does not admit of legal justification.

That anybody should suffer physical restraint in England is prima facie illegal and can be justified on two grounds only, that is to say, either because the prisoner or a person suffering restraint is accused of some offence and must be brought before an ordinary court to stand trial or because he has been duly convicted of some offence and must suffer punishment for it. The law provides for redress for unlawful arrest or imprisonment by means of the writ of habeas corpus. Failure to obey the writ exposes the offender to summary punishment for contempt of court.

The right to personal freedom is also guaranteed in our Constitution, but the courts often seem helpless to enforce it. Dr Amir Aziz Khan, a highly respected orthopaedic surgeon, was arrested on charges of having links with the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership and released after a month-long detention. Some ‘unknown person’ dropped him at his house in the Lahore cantonment in the early hours of the morning. He was never produced before the Lahore High Court even though a writ petition was filed there by his mother. Following his release, the High Court disposed of the petition “as it had become infructuous”.

“I [was] in the custody of Pakistani Intelligence agencies in Islamabad where the FBI and CIA questioned me”, Dr Aziz told the press after he was released. In England, Dr Aziz could have caused all persons responsible for his arrest and detention to be brought to trial as offenders. He could have obtained legal action against each and all of them; he could have sued the policeman who arrested him and threw him into jail and also the jailer who kept him there. In Pakistan, such remedies are unheard of and are not available to the citizen. No wonder, all the wrong-doers go unpunished.

Dr Aziz got no compensation for the damage inflicted on him by the wrong done to him. What is most regrettable is the failure of the court to cause Dr Aziz to be brought before it in order to ascertain the reason why he was imprisoned and to set him free if his detention was unlawful. Dr Aziz’s incarceration was not an isolated case. Within a month of his release, the FBI, assisted by its local allies, struck again. In the darkness of the night, Dr Ahmed Jawed Khawaja, a highly respected physician and his family members, were picked up on suspicion of involvement with Al Qaeda. They were interrogated by the CIA at a secret detention centre in Pakistan where the American due process does not apply. Lower level captives are normally handed over to local intelligence agencies with a list of questions the agency wants answered.

These “extraordinary renditions” are done without resort to legal process. In contrast to the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where military lawyers, news reporters receive occasional access to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA’s interrogation facilities in Pakistan are off-limits to outsiders, and often even to our own government agencies. Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of wars, the CIA and its intelligence service allies in Pakistan have the leeway to use harsh physical and psychological coercion techniques.

The alleged terrorists are blindfolded, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. Prisoners are packaged for transport, fitting them with hoods and gags and binding them to stretchers with duct tape. In some cases, the CIA is able to observe through one-way mirrors the live interrogation carried out by local agencies.

It all started with a telephone call by Armitage to General Mahmud, the ISI chief, inviting him to a meeting at the State Department. “This is not negotiable”, Armitage told General Mahmud, handing him a single sheet of paper with seven demands. “Pass the word to General Musharraf. You must accept all seven parts”. At around 1:30 PM, General Musharraf, to General Powell’s complete surprise, capitulated, conveyed total acceptance of the seven demands and promised “unstinted cooperation”. “The strong do what they can”, the Athenians told the intractable Melians, “and the weak suffer what they must”.

On the eve of World War II, a similar ultimatum was presented by Adolf Hitler to the Austrian chancellor. “I repeat to you, this is the very last chance. Within three days I expect the execution of this agreement”. At 11 PM, Chancellor Schuschnigg signed the ‘protocol’. As Papen drove back with Schuschnigg to Salzburg, he commented. “Yes, that is how the Fuehrer can be; now you have experienced it for yourself. But when you next come you will have much easier time. They Fuehrer can be really charming”.

How can a sovereign, independent, self-respecting country allow foreign security and intelligence agencies to operate within its borders without any let or hindrance? What is the legal authority for allowing them to arrest and interrogate our nationals? How can a state which compromises its sovereignty and exposes its nationals to humiliation by foreign security agencies have any claim on the loyalty of its citizenry? Nothing is more unworthy of a nation than to be governed by people who inflict such indignities on their countrymen.

Why is there no moral outrage? Why are the better part of the nation so silent? To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of us. Why have we sunk so low? What can you expect from a people who show no sign of life even when they lose half their country? What can you expect from a people who have unlimited capacity to become inured to the worst possible conditions of existence and the loss of everything that makes life worth living without perceiving that anything is wrong?

The tragedy is that each man feels what is wrong and knows what is required to be done, but none has the will or the courage or the energy needed to seek something better; all have lofty ideals, hopes, aspirations, desires, regrets, sorrows and joys which produce no visible or durable results, like old men’s passions ending in impotence. They deserve the fate that has now descended on them. And this is not the end of our humiliation; this is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proffered to us in the days to come.

We lie in the grip of even worse perils and humiliations than those we have faced so far. An evil spirit now hangs over Pakistan. Is it our destiny that for us there must always be darkness at high noon, there must always be a line of shadow against the sun?

Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who was sent to Dachau for resisting the Nazis, summed up in his memorable words the plight of the people like us who for one reason or another do not speak up. “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time nobody was left to speak up”. Where are the men to be found who will dare to speak up? If we do not speak up, who will? If we do not act, who will?