US ‘road map’ for Palestine designed to defuse anger over Iraq

DUBAI: US President George W Bush’s promise to unveil the Middle East “road map” toward a Palestinian state by 2005 has very little to do with ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — and a lot to do with trying to defuse Arab and European anger over the imminent war on Iraq, say analysts.

With the last of the US-driven political reform conditions — the Palestinian parliament ratified the post of prime minister on Tuesday — Washington is expected to make good any time now its recent announcement of publishing the peace proposal.

“Bush’s announcement is a damage-limiting exercise,” said Rima Sabban, international relations professor at the Dubai University College.

“With the Iraq war plans running into trouble at the United Nations and the Arab world angry at the lack of US initiative to settle the Palestinian conflict, the statement was a diplomatic coup.,” she said.

Sabban said: “The timing is astonishing. Peace in the Middle East has been at the bottom of the present US administration’s agenda. To suddenly come up with the announcement is not a very convincing proposition.”

Most significantly, the road map is being seen as a sop to opponents of war in Britain — which have always been more sympathetic toward the Palestinian cause — and Jordan, where a large number of Palestinian refugees reside alongside US troops who will indirectly aid war efforts against Iraq.

Bush’s decision signifies nothing, says independent political analyst Inad Khairallah. The road map that emerged from negotiations last year between the “Quartet” — United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia — is not an end itself, he said.

Among the conditions set forth for the road map to move ahead are the need for Palestinians to halt violence and to carry out sweeping democratic reforms, including the creation of the new post of prime minister.

Israel is then expected to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

“Israel has demanded 100 revisions in the road map, effectively rejecting it without total renovation in accordance with its specifications,” Khairallah said in an interview.

“The main demand is for the removal of all mention of an ‘independent’ Palestinian state. There will be no ‘further withdrawals’ from territory meant for the Palestinians under the Oslo accords. This would leave the Palestinians in control of just about 19 per cent of the West Bank and only 55 to 60 per cent of the Gaza Strip,” he added.

The Israeli daily ‘Haartez’ reported on Sunday that Tel Aviv wants the road map to stipulate a Palestinian state with “certain attributes of sovereignty,” which would have to be “credible” and “law abiding”.

How the road map takes shape will depend on the outcome of imminent war on Iraq, Sabban said.

“If there are high causalities in the Iraq war, Arabs will have more bargaining power. On the contrary, if the US-led forces finish the war in quick time with limited casualties, Washington and Tel Aviv will call the shots.”

For now, however, “the road map is meant to pacify the Arab public mood in anticipation of a heavy civilian death toll,” the academic added in an interview.

An editorial in Jordan’s ‘Al Dustour’ newspaper called the White House a “political bribe”. It added: “It would have been better for the US president to keep his goods for himself, because this bribe will only increase Arab and Muslim misgivings and hatred for American arrogance.”

The prevalent mood of scepticism stems from past Arab experiences with US promises to create a Palestinian state.

While waging war against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1991, US President George W Bush vowed to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict soon after that conflict in return for Arab support. Twelve years later, an independent Palestine is still a dream.

The Palestinians are also concerned that Bush has left the door open to more discussion and amendments to the road map, rather than ensuring it is implemented straightaway.

It is also unclear how President Yasser Arafat’s retention of the power to negotiate peace — as opposed to the Israeli demand that the new prime minister must be in charge — will affect the road map.

According to Sabban, negotiations after a war on Iraq will not yield a state that will meet the expectations of the Palestinians.

“Remember, the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won elections earlier this year on an anti-Palestine vote. Like the 1993 Oslo agreement forced the Palestinians to accept peace on Israeli terms, the next deal will also eat into Arab aspirations.”

Knowing very well the Palestinian hunger for freedom and independence, compromise formulas will be thrust of future discussions, and these, unfortunately, will be accepted, she added.

A Kuwaiti official statement carried by the state Kuna news agency said it hoped Bush’s announcement “represents a positive and serious beginning to reviving efforts” to end the Palestinians’ ordeal and restoring their legitimate rights.

‘Al Ittihad’ newspaper of the United Arab Emirates said the US statement has renewed the hope of resuming a real and effective international move to end the tragedy of the Palestinian people and the Israeli forces’ atrocities against them.

“Bush’s reaffirmation of his personal commitment to the peace plan nullifies the accusations flung at the international community for forgetting the Palestinian issue,” it added.

Israeli political commentators, however, are not satisfied.

Chemi Shalev of Israeli newspaper ‘Maariv’ dismissed it as “a publicity stunt, predominantly as a public relations ploy intended to help his poor friend, Tony Blair, and to try to salvage something from Washington’s diplomatic downfall at the United Nations and in world public opinion”.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

Matching grants for projects demanded: DATELINE SIALKOT

THE Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and several other trade organizations want the federal and provincial governments to provide matching grants for the completion of projects under the city package programme.

The package was initiated by the SCCI in 1999 in collaboration with other trade bodies in Sialkot to construct roads and drains. Under the programme, the exporters are voluntarily contributing 0.25 per cent against their export invoices, and so far Rs180 million have been collected for improvement and widening of roads in the city.

The provincial government was committed to providing a matching grant in the ratio of 1:3 against the total contribution of the exporters. Against a total collection of Rs180 million, the Punjab government’s share becomes Rs540 million, and there is a shortfall of Rs360 million.

President Pervez Musharraf had also promised to provide a matching grant out of export development funds equivalent to the total collection for the project during a meeting with the chamber delegation held in Lahore on Dec 21, 1999.

PUNJAB Minister for Housing Syed Raza Ali Gillani has announced that an international standard housing colony will be set up in the city.

Speaking at a reception at the Sialkot Fort here on Tuesday, the minister said the Punjab government had prepared a feasibility report in this regard, and residential plots would be allotted to all deserving low-income working people.

The minister also allocated a special five per cent quota for Sialkot-based journalists in this colony.

He said the Punjab government had accepted the longstanding demand of the people of Sialkot for establishing a well-planned government housing scheme. He said the government had also included Sialkot in the “Big city package” and it would soon declare Sialkot as a big city in the second phase of this package.

“The government will also establish a ring road around Sialkot district for speeding up the development of this city,” he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Punjab Minister for Labour and Human Resources Akhtar Husain Rizvi announced a proposal to establish another international standard workers colony on the Sialkot-Uggoki Road. This colony would be established on 200 acres at a cost of Rs600 million under the supervision of the Labour Department for providing better and modern residential facilities to Sialkot-based labourers and industrial workers. The paper work of this scheme had been completed.

He said the capacity of the under-construction Sialkot Social Security Hospital had been enhanced from 25 to 50 beds. Construction work on this project would be started before June 30.

Speaking on the occasion, Punjab Minister for Mines and Minerals Sardar Mohammed Sibtain Khan and Minister for Industries Ajmal Cheema hailed the unique export culture of Sialkot and assured that efforts would be made for the uplift of the city on a priority basis.

In Hekmatyar’s shadow: COMMENT

AFTER several years of semi-occultation, Engineer Gulbadin Hekmatyar has surfaced once again. And in a big way too, as about the second most wanted man after Osama. He is wanted by both America and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The multi-lingual Kabul weekly, in its issue dated September 26, 2002, had carried a front page story headlined: “Hamid Karzai asks for Hekmatyar’s cooperation”. That was soon after his return from New York where he had gone to attend the 57th session of the UN General Assembly. In a personal appeal, Mr Karzai had asked Hekmatyar to stop opposing the (his) government and to cooperate with him.

I happened to be in Kabul just then and was lucky enough to pick up the weekly, just out. The news came to me as a big surprise, knowing Hekmatyar’s declared opposition personally to Mr Karzai as an ‘American agent’ and politically to his essentially non-Pathan, Tajik-dominated government.

Hekmatyar is a Ghilzai Pathan hailing from eastern Afghanistan with his stronghold in Kunar around where he is still supposed to be. Mr Karzai’s reported statement would have hardly served his best interests as incumbent president, but would have helped protect Hekmatyar from adverse public criticism. Even on the basis of my limited interactions with the Kabulis, I could vouch for the unpopularity (amounting to contempt) in which Hekmatyar was generally held. Just the same, Hekmatyar’s shadow appeared to linger, dark and long, especially in the east and south-east.

On a visit to Afghanistan in 1992, I had found Kabul, where Professor Burhanuddin Rubbani was then enconsed as president, under constant bombardment from Hekmatyar’s artillery deployed at Charsaryab, some 30-35 km west of the capital. That was soon after the Peshawar agreement of April 1992, hastily clobbered by the ISI and blessed by prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Lt. General Javed Nasir, then the ISI czar, and his in-charge of the Afghan cell, Brigadier Muhammad Ashraf, had scripted and imposed the agreement with the expedient support of the Peshawar-based Mujahideen leaders, each trying to beat the other in the ensuing mad rush to Kabul to proclaim himself king.

Just about a week earlier, President Najibullah had resigned under the mounting pressure of the mutinous militias of generals Dostum and Ahmad Shah Masud. Najibullah’s sudden resignation had created a power vacuum in Kabul, ideal for a free-for-all struggle. Hekmatyar, defence minister-designate under the Peshawar agreement, would have all but ditched his president- designate, Professor Sibghatullah Mojededdi, in his race for Kabul. He was, however, out-maneuvered by the Masud-Dostum forces concentrated on the northern edge of the capital city while their leading elements had already secured a firm base in the heart of the city.

Mojededdi also carried the stigma of a foreign-sponsored head of state. Hekmatyar, for his part, had to stop short of Kabul and establish his base to the east and south-east around Paktia and Jalalabad. He would hover around these general areas until he was thrown out by the Taliban in 1995.

Dame luck’s favoured child as much as a clever operator and an opportunist, Hekmatyar had come to Pakistan as a guest of prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto then in a not-too-easy relationship with president Sardar Daud after the latter’s successful anti- royalist (republican) July 1973 coup.

Through the Afghan war, I met Hekmatyar several times at his Peshawar home and headquarters. About the youngest and smartest of all the Peshawar-based Afghan Mujahideen commanders, he might have been the very picture of unflinching firmness and strength without mercy or compassion. He had a working knowledge of English and could hold forth without an interpreter even if briefly.

His Wahabism, to my mind, was little more than a garb for his unrelenting resistance to any sort of compromise or accommodation with his rivals. This was the reason why his most trusted lieutenant, Maulavi Yonous Khalis, broke away from the mainstream Hizbe Islami to form his own faction of the Hizb. Professor Rabbani blamed him for the mass murder of his Jamiat-i-Islami commanders in Takhar sometime in 1986-87.

He would switch sides, depending on his perceived interest and concern for personal safety. His religious fundamentalism would not stop him from joining hands with the communist General Shahnawaz Tanai, president Najibullah’s defence minister, in his abortive coup against his boss, in March 1991.

Hekmatyar sought sanctuary in Tehran after being hounded by the Taliban in 1995. He would change sides once again and offer his full support to the Taliban at the height of their power (1996-2001). Today, Hekmatyar remains easily the Soviet-Afghan war’s sole surviving soldier of fortune, still up in arms and successfully dodging his pursuers.

(The writer is a retired brigadier.)

Balance in relationships: FRIDAY FEATURE

THE low point of my recent visit to Pakistan was meeting a friend that has essentially severed relations with his mother. Seeing that an adorable young boy, easy-going and cheerful, was now a seething resentful mess was truly painful. And more so for I was ineffective in helping him set things straight.

This apple of Ammi’s eye is now interested only in the material possessions: the division of assets and the return of a suite of rooms to his control. People don’t metamorphose overnight and my efforts to get the caterpillar to transform into a butterfly fell pathetically flat. He was too far down the road of resentment, antipathy and bitterness and mine was a faint cry in his inner cacophony.

In a similar situation several years ago a relative, after his marriage, had behaved similarly. Married to an insecure woman who could have earned the Nobel in nagging, the person had decided that the only way to survive was to surrender completely. Men such as these begin to believe the fallacies that are promoted around them and after a while they become the greatest proponents of that propaganda.

There are many wives that are culpable in this arena. In order to maintain a stranglehold on the husband, the in-laws are painted the darkest shade of black. My relative’s mother was an ailing woman and he too had been her favourite son. In Islam a grudge is to be kept only for three days and then one wonders, a grudge against one’s own mother? I did a quick “back to the future” and thought of the awful guilt that this man would have if his mother was to die with their relations still strained and her still longing to see him.

Able to talk to him alone whilst running an errand, I told him to understand that all relationships were different and that all needed to be compartmentalized. Life was not like a Ven diagram or intersecting circles. Parents have their place and spouses their own. Though lives and routines intersect, the dynamics of a relationship should not. At least not if you want to avoid big trouble, especially in the Department of Religious Affairs, read God.

I told him to mend his relations with his mother soon, for later regret would taste terrible. On my return from work that evening I found his wife pacing my bedroom like a caged lion. To think that a Good Samaritan could descend into a hysterical fit was beyond my calculation. “If he divorces me, I am not a professional and I have nowhere to go etc. etc.” My reassuring remark “I never told him to divorce you” resulted in a hissier fit. Clearly the lady’s insecurity was so enveloping and had been so entrenched in her mind that all she knew was that her survival depended on the demonization of her mother-in-law.

Various verses in the Quran deal with sileh rehmi and qitey rehmi (maintaining and not severing relations) Surah Nisa (4:8, 4:36), Surah Nahl (16: 90), Surah Isra (17:26) and Surah Nur (24:22) but Surah Muhammad (47:22) states succinctly: “Then, is it to be expected of you, if you were put in authority, that you will do mischief in the land, and break your ties of kith and kin?” The commentary of these verses is worth reading for it underscores the premium that is placed on the maintenance of relationships despite disagreements and conflict.

When I was able to calm her and explain my actual intent, she came up with a conspiracy theory: the mother would get her son to divorce his wife as soon as he started speaking to her on a regular basis. I persisted, albeit weakly in the face of ludicrous illogic. And cursed myself for trying to act in Mission Impossible. The ranting of the lady and the venom she spat on me and about me, is still a vivid memory. Thank God, however, that after a few weeks the man normalised relations with his mother, without divorcing his wife. His mother died within a year.

The Quran places a high premium on good treatment of parents and describes in Surah Luqman 46:15 “We have enjoined on man’s kindness to his parents: In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth. The carrying of the (child) to his weaning is (a period of) thirty months...” and Surah Ahqaf 31:14 “And We have enjoined on man (to be good) to his parents: in travail upon travail did his mother bear him, and in years twain was his weaning: (hear the command), “Show gratitude to Me and to thy parents: to Me is (thy final) goal.” And have we all not heard the Hadith that “heaven lies under the feet of the mother”?

God in His infinite wisdom knew that the love a parent has for a child is unconditional and that the reverse does not apply. For those of us that are parents, especially South Asian ones, the love that we feel for our children, as a general rule, is different from what we feel for our parents. And perhaps that was why Allah has stated clearly that in terms of love, top spot goes to God, followed by the Prophet (pbuh) and then come parents.

Allah in Surah Yasin (36:68) says: “If we grant long life to any. We cause him to be reversed in nature...” alludes to the senility or dementia that older people develop and how they then become child-like and irrational. He describes this and then commands us to be good to our parents. He goes on to command that do not even say “uff”, or a word of contempt to your parents.

Islam strives to maintain equitable relationships. Having created man, Allah knew well his weakness: that once the parents grew old and senile, they would be a burden and might be badly treated by their children. He therefore time and again in the Quran mentions that parents be treated well.

“A daughter is a daughter for all her life, a son is a son till he gets a wife” goes an American saying. The charms of love and marriage have a way of distraction that can put us in a state of heedlessness. It is important to do a quick accounting or a muhasiba of one’s day when we go to bed at night, and this can help keep us on the straight and narrow.

Men must understand their duties towards their parents and not turn into fried-brained morons the day after they get married. Women must know that they should not be the spouses that operate on the premise “mujhe chaaho mujhey poojo mujhey tum pyar karo” (love and worship me) to the exclusion of all other relationships. Wives should understand that the short term gain in material terms and affection is a great loss in the long term, for the exclusive relationship that they are fostering with their husbands at the risk of his other obligations will hurt them in a magnified manner. And if the Hereafter seems very remote, there will assuredly be fallout in this world.

This is not to say that parents are always just so docile and sweet. Some could challenge Buddha I’m sure. It is just that the onus for the maintenance of a good relationship rests largely on the children. If you are in the unenviable position of dealing with an irrational, emotional or abusive parent, seek professional counselling to determine what adjustments need to be made to cope. Perhaps the parents could be counselled as well.

Abusive treatment, banishment or severing the relationship should not be an option. Whilst your parents are alive, especially your mother, you can ask her to pray for whatever your wants are and rest assured it carries straight to heaven. And know that when she dies people cry more so for the most potent prayer for you has gone. And if you doubt what I say read the writing on the back of a truck or rickshaw next time: maa ki dua (a mother’s prayer) it says simply. For those that understand, it does not get more profound.