EX-PRIME minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not say so that openly, while sustaining feudalism in reality but Mir Zafarullah Jamali has said categorically there will be no land reforms under his government.

Simultaneously he has said, rather inexplicably the days of big landholdings are over. And he has asked the landowners to extend their cultivation without fear or hesitation which could mean larger farms than they have now.

What that means is that feudalism is safe and sound in Pakistan, while it has vanished from the rest of South Asia, including India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And that is almost inevitable when a landholder like Mir Zafarullah Jamali is the prime minister, Ali Mohammad Maher is chief minister of Sindh, Jam Yousuf is C.M. of Balochistan and Chaudhri Pervaiz Elahi is the C.M. of Punjab.

Feudal lords are packing the parliament and provincial assemblies. And if the pre-condition of being a graduate kept some of the feudal lords from the assemblies, their sons, nephews and brothers have taken their seats and their nieces and daughters have added to the number to the greater glory of their families.

What is striking is the manner in which the newspapers have treated the PM statement that there will be no more any land reforms. It has been presented as a kind of no-news with hardly any headlines as if they had not expected any change from the present or immediate past.

And that is because land reforms of the past, including those of Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto have been too partial, if not a sham. The clever landlords got the better of both the reforms. While the reforms prescribed the maximum land holding for each landlord they quickly divided the land among the many members of their large family and in some cases got some of the land registered in the names of their servants or benami owners. The Haris got some of the barren or uncultivable land. As a result Ali Mohammad Maher is said to be owning 80,000 acres of land in Sindh and finds the large chief minister’s house too small for him.

So a Balochistan opposition leader Kachkol Ali Baloch says while Gen Pervez Musharraf had promised to do away with feudalism when he had assumed his office, prime minister Jamali has promised to sustain and strengthen feudalism. Prime ministers and chief ministers since the days of Z.A. Bhutto took certain steps to deal with the wrath of the farmers. They distributed government land, particularly in Punjab and Sindh, to the landless farmers and gave them small loans as well.

Chaudhri Pervaiz Elahi has now ordered distribution of 1,00,000 acres of land in 24 districts of the Punjab to the landless farmers at 12.5 acres per farmer by June 30. He has also directed the local government secretary to prepare a report within a week to distribute Katchi Abadis to the poor in cities. Benazir Bhutto does not take her father’s land reforms as lightly as his critics did. She says her family lost several hundred acres of land.

A serious challenge to land reforms has come in recent years in the form of the move for corporate farming. Such farms could be very large in size and be owned by many, including foreign companies. When they are permitted, they can include cattle farming and dairy farming checks on large landholding by others becomes a debatable issue in such a context.

At the time of Ayub Khan’s land reforms, too, very large farms in the shape of shikargahs and orchards were permitted. Some of them were diverted for normal farming later.

A new kind of large farms came to be developed later. Mr Mustafa Khar says he bought 350 acres of land at Rs 4000 per acre and developed that into a big farm. As minister for water and power he could ask WAPDA to run a canal into his farm belt and then electrify the area. Land prices shot up, and he was reported to have sold some of the area at far higher prices.

With modern farming machinery coming into vogue, big farmers find it profitable to buy land and obtain higher yields and larger profit. The realization has also dawned among the rich modern farmers that if they have to improve the productivity of the farms, corporate farming is imperative with the use of advanced techniques. If we need clean cotton and disease-resistant cotton to export and earn far more we need corporate farming with its large capital. Farmers also need better storage facilities and efficient transport equipment.

But the unfortunate fact is that while there is talk of corporate farming, co-operative farming has made little headway. The co-operative movement has a tragic history in Pakistan. That has been exploited by the land owners or other vested interests as the extensive co-operative scam highlighted. The small farmers do not have the strength and resilience to organise themselves even in the better developed areas of Punjab, not to talk of the less developed areas of Sindh with the dominance of feudal lords.

When the big farms and corporate farming are permitted the issue of the rights of the farm workers will come to the fore. Their rights need to be protected instead of more of them being allowed to become bonded labour. Will the feudal lords permit farmers’ unions along with minimum wage or wages per hour of work? Will their over-time too be regulated in the harvesting season? And when corporate farming comes into vogue, will the workers be given shares and enabled to enjoy profit sharing?

Of course, effective crop insurance has to be a part of the new agricultural set-up so that the interests of both the farmers and workers are safeguarded. The scheme may have its initial missteps, but can succeed at the end.

There is more to feudalism than large farms and under nourished workers or bonded labour. The opposition of the feudal lords to the opening of schools in their areas or even extending rural credit direct to the farmers are some of the ugly features of feudalism. Above all, feudalism is a rigid mindset or a set of ancient values which hold down society and promote pervasive waste. The feudal mindset is pervasive in the urban areas as well.

Today it is not the old feudal lords and their family members alone who have the feudal mindset. Because of the status and profit which large landholding ensures, senior civilian officials have come to own lands. The generals and other senior military officials have vast lands. Together the trinity sustains and strengthens feudalism and it uses that as a springboard to political powers. So the industrialists, too, acquire vast tracts of lands, and now they are talking of corporate farming on the lines of what they have seen in Australia or Canada.

They are encouraged further in wanting to adopt such a course because of the higher importance given to agriculture now by the government and the economic planners. They are also confident of getting larger loans for modern farming bolstered by crop insurance. The fall in interest rates, particularly for agriculture, encourage them further.

The farmlords feel assured that more and more water will be available for cultivation from the numerous small or medium sized dams proposed by Gen. Musharraf. Work on many dams has started. Some of them are hoping to rely on electric power generated by them, including through wind and solar energy.

A major deterrent to some of them is the worsening law and order. They want to see distinct improvement in that soon.

Unlike the traditional farmers, they also want to set up agro-based industries close to their farms. Small and medium industrial units in their areas can also improve their profitability.

We need more productive farms and richer farming areas for a variety of economic reasons. Rural employment can reduce the rush to the cities and leave us with small katchi abadis. If the rural folks are educated and they stay in the villages, they can reduce their feudal power and make a contribution to the development of democracy. Clearly, if the feudal lords are to be given a free hand in the area of land ownership, the rights of the workers in the rural areas should be protected. And the rights of the people should be protected from the political dominance of the feudal lords.

We need a balance between the two forces so that a healthy economic and political order develops. Feudalism should be seen in all its dimensions instead of a simplistic approach being adopted to it. An institution which has developed or degenerated over the years does not surrender its multiple hold too easily. The people are aware of that. The rulers, though feudal, have to become aware of that now and come up with the right remedies. The last bastion of feudalism in South Asia should be reformed, made less offensive to its people and more productive. That can happen only if civil society becomes more alive to its hazards if allowed to go its own way ad develop new tentacles to add to the old.

The political power of feudalism will add to its economic and social power and the economic power would bolster its political strength. Hence the attempts at the diminution of its power and prestige should be at every level instead of those in the cities leaving the masses in the villages at the mercy of their feudal lords and trying to copy some of their ugly features and inflict the same on their far less fortunate brethren.

POLITICALLY things are a bit shambolic in Pakistan. For instance, it was total lack of imagination which prevented the repeal of the floor crossing provision of the Constitution. Floor crossing is not a good thing, but preventing it makes matters worse.

To get around this self-created problem, the president suspended the application of this provision. Once enough votes had been gathered to support the incumbent prime minister the guillotine came down and the provision was reinstated. As a result the government now has egg all over its face; and the whole electoral process has been brought into disrepute.

Any general taking over the country through a coup is in a no-win situation when trying to move over to an electoral process and, at the same time, legitimize his own position within the electoral system. Even Ayub Khan, through the introduction of indirect elections and reducing his electoral college to 80,000 Basic Democrats, could not win convincingly.

The Nawab of Kalabagh privately claimed to have rigged even these elections. But then the field Marshal had a formidable opponent in Miss Fatima Jinnah. Yahya Khan made such a fool of himself over East Pakistan that he never got to the stage of needing to legitimize his position with an elected parliament.

Ziaul Haq took the referendum route with unhappy results. General Musharraf repeated the same with the addition of speeches all over the country decked out in fancy headgear, but fared no better in the public mind. All it did was to dent his own credibility and destroy the credibility of the election commission. In order to stay in power, he has had to indulge in all sorts of unseemly manipulation.

Proclaiming himself as president might have been a better course. It still leaves open the question of how his successor will be elected and how he will be entitled to exercise his authority to dismiss the prime minister for bad governance. Should the decision be justiciable in the Supreme Court?

What can one do with a country where the elected prime minister engages in an attempt to alter the Constitution in such a manner that he emerges as an unchallengeable dictator and not a single member of parliament objects to this action. We were luckily saved by the Senate.

When the prime minister abuses the Supreme Court in public and the Chief Justice proceeds to take action against him for contempt, his goons storm the court and make the bench run for its life. In addition, the prime minister simultaneously manages to ‘persuade’ the other judges of the Supreme Court to sack the Chief Justice. This ruined the credibility of the Supreme Court itself, which is certainly not in the interest of the citizens of this country.

The whole point of elections is the ability of the electorate to kick the rascals out if they behave irresponsibly. During the 1990s with the alternation of PPP and PML governments, one lot was guilty of excessive avarice and the other of stupidity combined with a somewhat lower level of avarice. What can one do with an electorate which continues to elect the same rascals again and again and again.

It is obvious that we need to seriously rethink our entire constitutional arrangements. Taking all this into consideration one wonders what constitution is Mr Zafarullah Jamali planning to protect.

(1) Given the critical role of the National Security Council, how is the next COAS to be chosen? Under the present arrangement General Musharraf will probably make the choice, but what about the next COAS?

(2) If the president has the powers to dissolve parliament and/or dismiss the prime minister, how should he be elected?

(3) One province has a permanent majority of votes and seats against the other three provinces combined. General Musharraf can do nothing about this. A leader from Punjab would stand the best chance of doing something. Shahid Javed Burki, a former colleague, has suggested the creation of three provinces out of the existing province of Punjab.

(4) We have adult franchise but a barge part of our electorate is illiterate. Reduction in the voting age to 18 is likely to push up the literacy rate over a period of time.

(5) Voters are disinterested and turnouts at elections are small. Compulsory voting is beyond our administrative competence.

(6) What should normally be the life span of a parliament? The British have experimented with terms of three, five and seven years and have finally settled on a five-year form as best suited to their conditions. Between 1985 and 1999, governments in Pakistan lasted around three year each or less.

Many think that for Pakistan the term of a government should be three years as in Australia and probably in Canada. Some adjustments would be needed vis-a-vis the Senate, but this does not appear to be insuperable.

(7) What are the checks on the exercise of power by the prime minister when his party members cannot revolt against him and the president is powerless to do anything about it? British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for instance, has to take into account the views of his party in his apparent commitment to war on Iraq. In Pakistan, because of the “no floor crossing” law being in force, in effect means no dissent by any member is possible. It is undemocratic in spirit and intent.

(8) The Senate can provide an element of balance provided it is at least as powerful as the National Assembly and is not directly elected by the National Assembly. Punjab may also agree to be reorganized if it thereby obtains more seats in the Senate. One way around this would be to have the Senate elected on the basis of proportionate representation for the provinces.

The lists have to be announced within one week of elections. I recall that this or a similar suggestion was made by General Naqvi.

(9) Should we stick to the first-past-the-post (FPP) system of the British or go over to proportional representation (PR) or some sort of hybrid of FPP and PR as they have in Germany. The 10 per cent threshold for PR suggested by General Naqvi for the Senate was too high. He probably borrowed it from the Turkish constitution. Since people wanted to stick to the old system of manipulation, they objected on the grounds that independent candidates would have no say in Senate elections. They could have been allowed to pool their votes with a party of their choice after the announcement of election results, and before elections to the Senate.

General Musharraf always talks about ‘real’ democracy except that he has never elaborated on its meaning. When others talk of real or true democracy they simply talk of the Westminster model, which is probably inapplicable to Pakistan in its present form.

The pillars on which democracy can be constructed are first freedom of speech; secondly, independence of the judiciary; thirdly, a process in which governments have to periodically seek the approval of the electorate; and fourthly, a competent, honest and relatively independent bureaucracy. This last is the most difficult to achieve in practice.

BRITAIN’s Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed a ‘compromise’ recently to the deadlocked UN Security Council: President Saddam Hussein of Iraq should go on TV and admit he had weapons of mass destruction and had committed five other transgressions.

Blair’s offer, reeking of mock sincerity, was clearly crafted to dampen down a storm of Labour Party criticism over his sycophantic and highly unpopular support of President George Bush’s impending crusade against the Saracens of Iraq. But it was an offer Iraq was certain to reject.

Small wonder French call Britain ‘perfidious Albion.’ Blair’s demarche was high hypocrisy, even by Downing Street’s usual standard. Why doesn’t the relentlessly sanctimonious Blair go on TV and explain why Britain still retains nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in sizable quantities. Are they to stop a cross-channel invasion by France or Vikings?

Perhaps Blair could discuss Churchill’s plan to use poison gas against any German landing during World War II. More to the point, Blair should explain to his own people why Britain and the US supplied Iraq with all its germ and many of its chemical arms during the 1980s (confirmed in US Senate hearings). Why British government technicians discovered by this writer in Baghdad in 1990 were producing anthrax and Q-fever germ weapons for Iraq?

Instead of harping on Iraq’s brutality, Blair might discuss Britain’s savaging of Ireland, colonial conquest of almost half the known world, forced addiction of millions of Chinese to British-grown opium, and crimes in India, Africa, and Burma. And admit that some of today’s worst political problems — Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, India v. Pakistan — are the poisoned fruits of British imperialism.

Blair may well owe a political debt to the financiers and press barons who launched and funded his meteoric political career and badly want this war. But plunging Britons into an unjust, unnecessary war to please these born-again imperialists is intolerable. The only other explanation, that Blair is doing all this out of conviction, is even more frightening.

Bad enough born-again George Bush apparently believes he is commanded by God to go to war. That his chief advisers on the Mideast want to recreate Biblical Israel for Prime Minister Sharon. And that Bush’s core Christian fundamentalist supporters believe this war will hasten the conversion of Jews to Christianity and bring the world’s end through Armageddon. Blair is too intelligent to swallow such medievalism.

Every ‘Iraqi weapons of mass destruction site’ claimed by British and US intelligence turned out, when inspected by the UN, to be clean. If Blair still actually believes these clearly debunked claims, he needs help. CIA and MI6 still claim they know Iraq is still hiding stores of germs and nerve gas. So then why not give the locations to UN inspectors?

Iraq’s feeble, 150km ranged al-Samoud missiles might have exceeded their permitted range by a inconsequential 10-15 kilometers. Big deal. They are being destroyed. Worry instead about North Korea’s new Taepodong-II, which CIA says can deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States. Unbelievably, Iraq-obsessed Bush dismisses menacing North Korea as only a ‘regional problem.’

Saddam’s notorious ‘Winnebagos of death’ — germ-making trucks — turned out, on inspection, to be mobile food testing labs. The latest US-British-promoted canard: Iraq’s ‘drones of death:’ three rickety model aeroplanes unworthy of World War I, rather than Fu Manchu dispensers of germs, as the Pentagon ludicrously claimed. Only one had managed to fly — two miles.

Iraq’s only true potential weapons of mass destruction, VX nerve gas and perhaps some germs, remain an open question. But Iraq lacks any offensive capability to deliver either, aside from a few hidden Scuds. The sole use of germs or gas is as defensive battlefield weapons, CIA Director George Tenet noted.

Iraq’s most important defector, Gen Hussein Kamel, who headed its biowarfare projects, stated he personally supervised destruction of all of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons in 1991, a fact suppressed by the White House. Other experts say any germs or gas still held by Iraq have by now deteriorated through age into inertness. As for Bush’s charge Saddam might give such weapons to anti-American groups, why didn’t he do so from 1990 to 2003, when the US was daily bombing Iraq and trying to overthrow his regime? Because he’s not suicidal.

Unable to locate Iraq’s US-British supplied weapons, unable to link Iraq to Osama bin Laden, Bush and Blair shifted gears. They now claim Iraq’s suffering people must be ‘liberated.’ But why weren’t they liberated when Saddam committed his worst rights violations during the 1980s, when Iraq was a US-British ally? And what about the startling revelation by the former CIA Iraq desk chief that the gassing to death of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja — an event endlessly reiterated by Bush — was accidentally caused by Iran, not Iraq.

As fast as one fabrication is exposed, more pop up. The US-British propaganda machine is relentless. For Bush, the war against Iraq will conveniently be both his re-election campaign and culmination of Biblical prophesy. For the more worldly British leader, all we can say is Blair, your pants are on fire. What next in this laughable, pre-war propaganda circus that has made the Bush administration and Blair look silly and deceitful? Will Iraqis be accused of smoking indoors or hiding lethal nail clippers?— Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2003.

IT would be hard to find anyone outside Downing Street or Whitehall who believes the official reason for the coming war against Iraq, that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous despot whose armoury includes weapons of mass destruction with which he plans to attack the West and to dominate the Middle East.

If the US and UK governments were simply worried about his destructive potential, they would have sought to curb it in 1988, when his power was at its peak and he did use chemical weapons against the Kurds, as he had done against Iranian soldiers during the war of 1980 to 1988. At that time, however, Saddam was the golden boy of the West, its leaders looking to him to halt the spread of Islamic fundamentalism from Iran to the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.

In 1987, the US navy entered the Gulf so as to provide Iraq with back-up against the Iranian army. In July 1988, the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, killing 290 people. It was following that tragedy that Iran decided it could not fight the US in addition to Iraq and essentially capitulated.

Moreover, far from condemning his crimes, or trying to curb his power through cutting off aid, the US actually increased it, supplying him, in addition, with material that could be used for the production of chemical and biological weapons. What about his appalling human rights record? The line then was that the West could better deal with his human rights abuses if they subsidized him.

However, even in 1988, Iraq couldn’t decisively defeat Iran, a country whose officer corps had been eliminated following the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah — not even with the support provided by the US, Britain and the Arab states. Today, Saddam is much weaker, as a result of four factors: (a) the spectacular defeat suffered in the 1991 Gulf War; (b) twelve years of brutal economic sanctions; (c) the destruction of Iraq’s weaponry by the UN inspections regime between 1991 and 1998; (d) regular bombing of the no-fly zones and the onslaught of December 1998.

The real reason for the war lies in the economic and geo-political interests of US capitalism. The East European revolutions in 1989, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, resulted in the US becoming the world’s sole superpower. Its writ now ran through regions of the world previously under the aegis of the Soviet Union but which were now open to penetration by US corporations and its military. The US ruling class saw great opportunities for both consolidating and extending their wealth and power. They could achieve this by asserting control over regions rich in natural resources, especially energy sources, such as the Middle East and Central Asia.

This acquired added urgency with the advent of the economic crisis which in 2000 abruptly terminated the booming nineties and continues to wrack the US. The 9/11 attack provided the US ruling class with a tailor-made opportunity to assert their global hegemony in the guise of the ‘war against terrorism’. The first crucial aspect of this strategy is the need to eliminate regional rivals, that is, local challenges to US global power. The first Gulf War, the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, the removal of the Taliban following 9/11 were all examples of the eradication of ‘corporals’ aspiring to become ‘generals’.

Secondly, however, the US ruling class is looking further ahead, to the possible emergence of larger-scale challengers to its monopoly of power, that is, to much bigger fish than Al Qaeda or even Iraq. In the decades ahead, it sees a fast-growing state such as China, or a revived Russia , as potentially capable of displacing it as sole world superpower. It aims to widen its control over crucial areas of the world so as to pre-empt challenges from future rivals. And even if there is no immediate need to control these areas, there is a need to deny them to other present or future claimants.

But within this broad framework, there is a more specific reason for the looming attack on Iraq, one which helps explain its timing and gives it added urgency. This is the US rulers’ fear of the spread of the spirit of the Palestinian intifada to other Arab states — to begin with, Saudi Arabia. In recent years, there has been an important shift in the relations between the two countries. Once the closest of allies, since the first Gulf War, there has been a growing rift fuelled, initially, by the resentment created by the presence of US bases and troops. This has developed alongside an improvement in relations between Saudi Arabia and its Muslim neighbours, in particular Iran. Between 1980 and 1988, the Saudis, like the US, aided and abetted Saddam’s war against Iran. Therefore, Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait was seen by the Saudi rulers not only as a military threat but also as a gross betrayal.

Now, the Saudi ruling family claims to rule in the name of Islam and has throughout its history sought the approval of the dominant Wahhabi clerics. King Fahd turned to them for permission to allow American troops to be stationed on Saudi soil(normally out of bounds to non-Muslim soldiers). This was grudgingly given. The Iraqi threat was quickly removed by the 1991 war but the US troops were not. Their continuing presence has aroused deep resentment among Islamic fundamentalists.

Anti-American sentiment has been hugely reinforced by Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip and its brutal repression of the Palestinian intifada. The extent of the Saudi people’s support for the intifada can be gauged by several factors: the funds raised on its behalf, the highly risky demonstrations that have taken place, the bombings that have targeted westerners and the arrest of activists. Last April a telethon raised some $92 million in 11 hours for the families of Palestinian martyrs.

In the same month, the Arabic al-Jazeera television station based in Qatar reported that thousands of Saudis had been arrested following a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the eastern Saudi city of al-Khuber, though the Saudi authorities claimed it was no more 200. Saudi police also prevented thousands of demonstrators from gathering in front of the US consulate in al-Zahran. Moreover, last November, Prince Nayef, the Saudi interior minister, admitted that more than 100 people had been detained and 700 questioned on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda. There have, furthermore, been a number of bomb attacks on Westerners for which seven Britons? have been jailed or are awaiting trial.

The Saudi rulers have felt the increasing grassroots pressure on the Palestinian question. At the outbreak of the intifada in October 2000, they pledged one billion dollars in aid to the intifada. They also donated funds to build some 600 houses in Palestinian cities

However, Iraq is not immune from the groundswell of radical opposition that has been enveloping Saudi Arabia. Iraq has a Sh’ite population that is 60 per cent of the total(compared to a Sunni minority of 17 per cent), concentrated in the poorer districts of Baghdad and in the oil-rich south around Basra. At the end of the first Gulf War, George Bush Senior let the genie out of the bottle, calling on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The southern Sh’ites took him at his word. Led by dissident generals, they rose up in rebellion against their regime.

These generals did not ask the US for help, merely for access to captured Iraqi equipment. But the US refused and put the genie back in the bottle by allowing the tanks of Saddam’s Republican Guard to hurry south, watching from the sidelines as the uprising was brutally crushed. The US rulers remembered the Iranian revolution of 1978/79 that overthrew the Shah, one of the West’s staunchest allies, which in turn led to the Islamic victory. Shi’ites have long suffered severe discrimination at the hands of the Sunni regime, but since 1991, this policy has become one of brutal oppression, with Shi ‘ite leaders routinely assassinated.

So today, the fear is that the spirit of radicalism that has enveloped Palestine is unlikely to stop there. William Cohen, Clinton’s defence secretary, put it starkly in November 2000: “There is so much violence in the Middle East. Every day brings a new funeral, every funeral brings new outrage, until some day it goes out of control.” He added that the violence, which has raged in the Palestinian territories, could spread to other countries. So, the US wants to get rid of Saddam Hussein but, above all, to prevent the Iraqi people from being the ones to achieve this. “Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime,” stated Richard Haass, former director of Middle East affairs on the National Security Council.

The war on Iraq is also Sharon’s war. An important bonus for the US and Israel would be their ability to impose a settlement on Palestinians demoralized by an Iraqi defeat. Moreover, there is a real danger that Sharon will try to use the war as a cover behind which to carry out the ‘transfer’ of Palestinians from the West Bank either to Jordan or to Gaza or both.

Moreover, the US rulers have the confidence that flows from their monopoly of superpower status. On January 12, The Observer (London) quoted the number three at the US state department, John Bolton, as saying: “There is nothing as the United Nations... only the international community, which can only be led by the... remaining superpower... the United States.”

As The Boston Globe put it (9/10/02): “As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region’s transformations...”

It is right that the second slogan of the February 15 demonstration should be ‘Freedom for Palestine’ since their struggle for freedom remains at the heart of the coming war.