AT a time when Pakistan stands in dire need of large scale investment to speed up its economic growth and reduce its socio-economic problems, very substantial help has come from an unexpected quarter. China has always been very helpful to Pakistan in the economic sector and other areas, but not on a scale that it has now committed following the visit of Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali to Beijing.

An investment package of 2.4 billion dollars has been announced almost suddenly and without the kind of fanfare that accompanies even modest US aid which takes a long time to be finally committed. And in this case not only the package is large enough but also covers exceedingly useful projects which Pakistan needs to complete urgently.

When the former Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji visited Pakistan two years ago, there were large headlines of Chinese aid to come and more specific than before. There were commitments to build Gwadar port, and the Coastal Highway through a soft loan of 400 million dollars. He had offered to study several other projects, including Thar Coal, and a 100 million dollar loan to provide Pakistan with 200 locomotives and 700 coaches. But he set the momentum of big time aid rolling.

And now following the visit of premier Jamali to Beijing the Chinese aid would rise to 2.4 billion dollars, inclusive of 700 million dollars for expansion of the Pakistan Steel, 800 million for another nuclear power plant at Chashma and 500 million dollars for expansion of the largely neglected Pakistan railways.

As far as Pakistanis are concerned the most significant project is raising the capacity of Pak Steel to 3 million tonnes. That was the originally conceived capacity of the project which began with an initial capacity of 1.1 million tonnes. The Russians might have helped in the expansion of the project originally set up by them. But they got pre-occupied with Afghanistan and we were on the opposite side.

The US and the Western donors were never interested in the project which they thought was a white elephant for us from day one. Pakistan did not have the money for its expansion. Successive governments kept on posting their favourites as chairman of the company who often proved to be very corrupt or exceedingly incompetent, and dumping its political workers on its pay rolls often for doing no work.

But now following President Musharraf’s visit to Moscow the output of the steel mills is to be raised from 1.1 million to 1.5 million tonnes with an initial aid of 90 million dollars or loan. The Chinese would then raise the capacity to 3 million tonnes which should reduce the unit cost of production of the mills a great deal. This is almost a dream come true for those associated with the mills and had seen that go down and down.

The second nuclear power plant at Chashma following the first built there by the Chinese is a welcome project at a time of rising cost of fuel oil which raises the cost of thermal power. Forty per cent of the project is to be built by Pakistan, and it will be under the surveillance of the International Atomic Energy Commission, like the first one. At a time when the northern parts of Pakistan are getting industrialised and agricultural expansion, too, needs power which is in short supply, the additional supply of 300 mw nuclear power to the national grid is a welcome development.

Under the 500 million dollar aid for expansion of Pakistan railways 175 locomotive engineers are to be provided along with 2,500 freight wagons and coaches. China has also agreed to give 42 million dollars, including 33 million as soft loans for the erection of a Floating Glass Unit in collaboration with the Police Foundation of Pakistan.

Pakistan is also trying to buy a steel mill in Beijing which China is trying to move out of the city to accommodate the 2008 Olympics and locate the same in Pakistan profitably. That can be an addition to the Karachi Steel Mills.

China has also shown interest in setting up textile mills in Pakistan as joint ventures and setting up such units in the Export Processing Zone in Karachi and the new EPZ to be setup in other parts of the country.

The additional power units to be set up, including the new Chashma nuclear power plant and the power to be produced by the unit using Thar coal should increase the output of power and make the industrial units feel easy.

Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Advisor on Investment for the Prime Minister, says that a China specific investment conference is to be held in Pakistan soon to make the Chinese businessmen aware of the investment opportunities and rewards in Pakistan.

Pakistan is also to offer a number of scholarships for Pakistani students for study in China so that we understand the country better. Prime Minister Zhu had called for exchanges between NGOs of the two countries to enable people on both sides to understand each other. If there has to be large scale trade between the two countries such people-to-people exchanges are imperative and needed on a large scale with official assistance.

Having received a great deal of foreign investment which rose to 52 billion dollars last year the Chinese are interested in going out to invest and make use of their technology which is suitable for developing countries. A joint delegation of two major companies — Dec and ZELW — is already here discussing the manufacture of electrical locomotives in Pakistan through transfer of technology for our Risalpur locomotive factory. They really are moving quick as in the case of Gwadar port which is to be commissioned next year.

It is imperative that as many locomotives, coaches, wagons and allied equipment should be manufactured in Pakistan not only to enable us benefit from the transfer of technology but also to provide employment to a large number of unemployed workers in the country. After all, we had made notable progress in such areas in the Moghulpura workshop and elsewhere and then neglected it. It is time we return to the old accomplishments in these areas.

Shaukat Aziz says 25 Chinese companies are already working in Pakistan, and their number will increase now in diversified areas.

Pakistan is also expanding its economic relations with Russia after overall trade with it had sunk to a very low 80 million dollars which needs to be increased rapidly now.

Following the visit of President Musharraf to Russia in February Moscow has agreed to expand the capacity of Pakistan Steel to 1.5 million tonnes from 1.1 million. Pakistan also wants to buy the textile mills which had become surplus to the needs of that country following the break up of Soviet Union. Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar is also speaking of having a warehouse and showroom in Moscow to store Pakistani goods saleable in Russia.

The President has also invited a delegation of Russian businessmen to visit Pakistan to familiarise themselves with the conditions here. He has also offered the use of Gwadar port for the export of Russian Goods and receive imports from abroad. The President spoke of “a new partnership” between the two countries.

The fact is the deals now being struck are between the governments of China and Pakistan and between the governments of Russia and Pakistan. Such cooperation or exchanges have to come down to the level of businessmen and investors who have to be far more enterprising and the government has to agree to under-write a part of the losses when necessary.

The Pakistani businessmen prefer to go along the familiar path and deal with familiar partners abroad. At the same time their expectation of the profit rates is very high. Hence they make small headway in new areas, and the trade with Russia is only 80 million dollars.

On the official side there is lack of adequate research in regard to market conditions and demand for Pakistani goods, and on the other side the exporters don’t show enough enterprise or initiative. But by the beginning of 2005 the quota system for export of textiles to the Western countries and other states will discontinue and it will be a free for all in the textile trade. The survival of the fittest and smartest will prevail. Along with that, the exporters of textiles, which form 60 per cent of our exports, have to be more innovative on a constant basis to beat competition.

Having signed major agreements with China and Russia we should follow them up diligently. There should be enough earnestness on the part of the government and the businessmen to make a success of the deals.

President Musharraf says that in economic terms we have come to the take-off stage. But that had been said by several of his predecessors as well. In fact, we have been moving in fits and starts or in one-step-forward and one-step-backward manner for long, due among other factors to political setbacks and frequency of military rule and political witch-hunting.

Dr. Akram Shaikh, secretary, ministry of Industries, says that as a result of spending 100 million dollars on the first phase of the expansion of Pakistan Steel the value-addition of its products would be doubled and it would increase its profits from Rs 500 million to Rs 2 billion. If so why did we not try hard to get hold of the 100 million dollars, expand the steel mills and earn Rs 1,500 million more profits? The delay is inexcusable or the new claim is exaggerated.

What is obvious is China will be ready to assist Pakistan economically far more and set up more joint projects if we discharge our part of the bargain diligently. This is a great opportunity in an uncertain world and in uncertain times. And we should make the best of that without fail. That is how poverty will go from our midst and not through driblets of Western aid.

SIR Anthony Eden was the prime minister of Britain when his country and France, in collusion with Israel, invaded Egypt in 1956. Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized his own waterway, the Suez Canal. The purpose was to recapture and run the Canal as an international waterway. Eden personally supervised the intended liquidation of Nasser. Nasser survived but Eden disappeared from the scene after the US under the presidency of Eisenhower intervened to stop the invasion.

Nearly half a century later, two Anglo-Saxon leaders have embarked upon a war to remove Saddam Hussein, ruler of Iraq, who holds no threats either for the US or for Britain. Everyone knows that behind personal animosities in both the cases, there are designs of economic hegemony. Iraq, they say, floats in oil. The rest is simple rhetoric.

The difference between then and now is more significant in the field of international law and comity of nations. During the Suez crisis jurists looked for legal justification for armed intervention in Egypt. They called it a case of preventive self-defence, a concept universally scoffed at. But the concept of preventive self-defence was floated as the use of force against another’s territory was totally prohibited by the UN Charter except in defence against an armed attack. The earlier concept of just and unjust war proved dangerous and therefore the UN Charter banned war as a means of settling disputes between states. In the 1956 Suez crisis, at least an apology was offered and later on the UN engaged actively in bringing peace.

But today the United States is spearheading an unprovoked armed attack on Iraq ostensibly to replace its ruler with a person of its own choice. The move was loudly opposed by most of the members of the UN Security Council, including the permanent ones. Yet the United States, along with its Anglo-Saxon ally, Britain, ignored the role and relevance of the United Nations in the matter and arrogantly bypassed it by going ahead with its war plans. Instead of asking the Security Council to condemn the action and bring peace through collective penal action against the aggressors, the secretary-general of the UN simply expressed his sorrow over the invasion of Iraq.

The United Nations Charter has been openly and blatantly sidelined with impunity. A dangerous precedent has been set by a superpower. There is not even a dispute between the states involved to settle. The excuse that Iraq has failed to comply with the Security Council resolution 1441 on disarmament is also pointless as enforcement of such resolutions is the exclusive domain of the Security Council under the UN Charter.

There is absolutely no justification to invade a country on mere assumptions or suspicions. The motive is essentially political and economic and if might-is-right comes to be accepted as a working hypothesis for powerful nations, it will lead to a chain of conflicts and aggressions around the world. Such a notion also presents a great challenge to the survival of the United Nations.

There is no need for a new United Nations, as some would suggest. The Charter of the UN and the empowerment of the General Assembly are enough to meet threats of aggression provided there is a will to work for peace and harmony amongst nations and the courage to unitedly oppose all forms of hegemonism and unilateralism.

But Baghdad is burning. It is the contemporary version of the Mongols who rained death and devastation on Iraq. The region which was the cradle of civilization as far back as 500 BC is being torched by barbarians whose history does not go beyond a couple of centuries. Bush’s morbid and cynical message to the ordinary men and women of America seems to be: ‘If I do not kill and subjugate Iraqis, they will harm, even destroy you.’ The message is no more appealing to the ordinary Americans as it was when Truman dropped atom bombs on the already surrendering Japanese to save the life of a few American soldiers.

Hard core of American society is conservative. They are self-righteous and place much higher value on the lives of Americans than on those of other people, especially from the Third World. This aspect is visible in America’s war strategy. After fighting a senseless war in Vietnam with enormous loss of life on both sides, the warlords of America prefer to create a paralyzing effect of ‘shock and awe’ by dropping thousands of bombs on the invaded territory and then moving in over dead bodies and rubble to capture without losing soldiers. It is savagery at its worst.

Today’s neo-imperialism is totally market-oriented. Industrial interests behind pygmy politicians of today’s developed world need more markets and more money. Their pursuit of new pastures is more ruthless than that of territory-grabing old colonialism. It is insatiable gluttony with scant regard for human values. Iraq’s oil resources have become its curse. Apart from Israel’s insecurity syndrome, this is one single factor for Iraq’s subjugation. Already there is controversy as to who will occupy its oilfields in the name of its reconstruction after its destruction. There used to be mutual check when the Soviet Union and the United States confronted each other.

With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, world peace is hostage to today’s sole superpower. The emergence of France to lead a European resistance to Anglo-Saxon hegemony may prove beneficial for the time being unless it succumbs to the temptation of sharing in the booty of war in Iraq after that country is conquered by the invaders.

Peace in the Middle East may bring another sobering factor in the given situation. Israel persecution has brutalized the Palestinian people. It has also resulted in Israel’s desire to weaken countries, which are supposed to threaten its existence. The United States is too willing to do this job for Israel.

Current policies of the powers that matter in the Middle East are no help in bringing peace to this region. Duplicity in defining terrorism has worsened the situation. A concerted effort to project Muslims in a particular light has far-reaching consequences. The events of 9/11 are being ruthlessly exploited to advance ambitions for control and domination.

Postscript: Millions of people are coming out on the streets around the world against the invasion of Iraq, which also includes those living in countries of the invaders. Such demonstrations shine like a light of hope in the surrounding haze of gloom, uncertainty and fear.

The writer is former attorney-general of Pakistan.

IN the highly politicised city of Damascus where anger over the invasion of Iraq alternates with pride in the resistance, there is one sure way to lighten the mood.

Suggest that George Bush and Tony Blair launched their war because of Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction. Hoots of derision all round. Whether they are Syrians or members of the huge Iraqi exile community, everyone there believes this is a war for oil. In nearby Jordan and across the Arab world the view is the same.

Some suggest a second motive - Washington’s desire to strengthen Israel. Under one theory US hawks want to break Iraq into several statelets and then do the same with Saudi Arabia, to confirm the Zionist state as the region’s superpower. Others cite Donald Rumsfeld’s recent comments about Iran and Syria as proof that war on Iraq is designed to frighten its neighbours, who happen to be the leading radicals in the anti-Zionist camp.

Oil is the war aim on which all Arabs agree. While the Palestinian intifada is resistance to old-fashioned colonialism with its seizure and settlement of other people’s land, they see the Iraqi intifada as popular defence against a more modern phenomenon. Washington does not need to settle Iraqi land, but it does want military bases and control of oil.

Many Arabs already define this neo-colonial war as a historic turning point which might have as profound an effect on the Arab psyche as September 11 did on Americans. Arabs have long been accustomed to seeing Israeli tanks running rampant.

Now the puppet-master, arrogant and unashamed, has sent his helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles to Arab soil.

The US has mounted numerous coups in the Middle East to topple regimes in Egypt, Iran and Iraq itself. It has used crises, like the last Gulf war, to gain temporary bases and make them permanent. In Lebanon it once shelled an Arab capital and landed several hundred marines. But never before has it sent a vast army to change an Arab government.

Even in Latin America, in two centuries of US hegemony, Washington has never dared to mount a full-scale invasion to overthrow a ruler in a major country. Its interventions in the Caribbean and Central America from 1898 to 1990 were against weak opponents in small states. Three years into the new millennium, the enormity of the shift and the impact of the spectacle on Arab television viewers cannot be over-estimated. Is it an image of the past or future, they ask, a one-off throw-back to Vietnam or a taste of things to come?

Blair sensed Arab suspicions about the fate of Iraq’s oil when he persuaded Bush at their Azores summit to produce a “vision for Iraq” which pledged to protect its natural resources (they shrank from using the O word) as a “national asset of and for the Iraqi people”. No neo-colonialism here.

Unfortunately, the small print is different, as could be expected from an administration run by oilmen. Leaks from the state department’s “future of Iraq” office show Washington plans to privatise the Iraqi economy and particularly the state-owned national oil company. Experts on its energy panel want to start with “downstream” assets like retail petrol stations. This would be a quick way to gouge money from Iraqi consumers. Later they would privatise exploration and development.

Even if majority ownership were restricted to Iraqis, Russia’s grim experience of energy privatisation shows how a new class of oil magnates quickly send their profits to offshore banks. If the interests of all Iraqis are to be protected, it would be better to keep state control and modify the UN oil-for-food programme, which has been a relatively efficient and internationally supervised way of channelling revenues to the country’s poor.

Drop the controls on Iraq’s imports of industrial goods. End the rule that all food under the programme has to be imported, thereby penalising Iraqi farmers and benefiting rich exporters in Canada, Australia and the US. But maintain the programme for several years to keep helping the 60 per cent of Iraqis who depend on subsidised food (it will be more after this war) rather than channel revenues to a new Iraqi government or a World Bank-administered trust fund which will be under pressure to pay it to US construction companies to repair the infrastructure which Bush’s war machine has destroyed. US and UK taxpayers should finance the peace as they have financed the war. Iraqi oil earnings must stay out of US and British hands.

If Downing Street has a better grasp than Washington of the need not to appear to be occupying Iraq, it was equally misinformed about Iraqis’ views of invasion. Both governments confused hatred of Saddam with support for war. War has its own dynamic, trapping millions in the desperate business of daily survival. Naturally they blame US and British troops for the chaos. Yet, even before the first bomb fell, most Iraqis were against “liberation” by force.

People living under Saddam Hussein’s rule do not give opinions easily but British and US officials should have done a better job of talking to Iraqis in Jordan and Syria who are in close touch with their families in Iraq.

On the eve of the war, I interviewed 20 Iraqis in Amman individually or in groups of two or three friends for an hour each on average. They included Sunni and Shia, property owners, artists, factory workers and several unemployed. Most were fierce critics of the Iraqi president. But on the over-riding issue of whether Bush should launch a war, a majority was opposed. Nine were against, four were torn and only seven were in favour. Now that war is no longer a theoretical option but a reality affecting every Iraqi at home and abroad, patriotic feelings are stronger.

Western governments apparently confined their research to people with a narrow vested interest. They financed exiled politicians who want a share in US-supplied power and then talked to them as though they were independent. They listened to businessmen eager to cash in when the US privatises the economy. They were fascinated by nostalgic Hashemite monarchists.

The voices of the poor and the professional classes were not deemed of interest, although these are the people who benefited from the surge in social investment from 1975-85 and later fell back under sanctions. London and Washington convinced themselves that Saddam Hussein had ruined the economy without asking whether Iraqis shared this view. If they now divert Iraq’s oil revenues, they will be following a long tradition of blunder and exploitation.—Dawn/Guardian Service

THE American invasion of Iraq on March 20 occurred after Britain and the US lost the hope of getting nine votes in the Security Council in favour of armed action against Baghdad. A day before, the UN secretary-general recalled the UN arms inspectors who were making rapid headway in the disarmament of Iraq with the cooperation of that country.

From the legal point of view, therefore, the Anglo-US invasion is in contravention of the UN Charter which permits armed action against a delinquent state only under two conditions: (i) individual and collective self-defence in the event of aggression on the territory of a state as provided for in Article 51 of the UN Charter and (ii) in furtherance of enforcement action by the Security Council under Chapter VII, Articles 39-47 of the Charter. Judged by the standards set by the UN Charter, Iraq did not attack the US territory that lies eleven thousand miles away, nor does it have the capability to do so.

It is indeed ridiculous that while the invading Anglo-American troops have forcibly entered Iraqi territory and their warplanes have been pounding the Iraqi cities, towns and the neighbourhoods in a bid to occupy the country, George Bush keeps harping on the threat that an armed Iraq poses to the US. No wonder, he and his surrogate, the British prime minister, are hard put to it to find credulous audience even in their own countries. The mounting agitation by the anti-war activists in the US, Britain, Spain and Australia, the so-called coalition partners, and across the world, have clearly rejected the American-led invasion as illegal and immoral.

His Holiness the Pope is horrified by the blatant American invasion and has rightly condemned America as ‘imperialist democracy’. The broad masses of the world have also rejected the fake theory of the ‘clash of civilizations’ propounded by the US arms manufacturers and the Pentagon war mongers whose business it is to provoke wars and test their lethal weapons in Third World countries.

Though it is difficult to stop the war since a superpower has run amok, and the Security Council is too weak to restrain it, it is nevertheless important for the world community to have a clear view of the legality or otherwise of the conflict. It is important at this juncture to inquire into the meaning of the word aggression. It may be recalled that the United Nations General Assembly defined the term in 1974. According to Article 1, the ‘first use’ of armed force by a state in contravention of the UN Charter constitutes prima facie an act of aggression. Article 3 goes on to enumerate specific acts of aggression such as invasion by the armed forces of a state on the territory of another state; military occupation resulting from such invasion; annexation by use of force; bombardment or use of weapons against the territory of another state; blockade of the ports or coasts of a state, etc. Article 5 rejects any political, military or other consideration as justification for aggression.

It is important to bear in mind that the specific acts of aggression enumerated in Article 3 are not exhaustive since other acts, too, may be characterized as aggression. Article 2 says that the Security Council is not bound by the prescribed definition of the term and may set forth its own definition of aggression which may be different from the acts enumerated in Article 3. In 1951, however, the International Commission of Jurists favoured the view that the threat or use of force for any reason other than the right of individual and collective self-defence and UN enforcement action, constitute aggression.

Judging the events that led to the present hostilities, the American attack on Iraq is, doubtless, an act of naked aggression. Washington and its camp followers obstructed the work of the UN arms inspectors, forcing them to discontinue their task. So the American action against Iraq is illegal from the very outset. It committed another illegality by violating the laws of war as set forth in Geneva Conventions I, II, III and IV and the Additional Protocol.

All the above conventions have in common two principles essential for the conduct of hostilities. They are based on the principle that the belligerents do not have unlimited right to choose methods and means of warfare. Therefore, the first prohibits the use of weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause unnecessary injury. The second enjoins upon the belligerents to protect the civilian population and civilian property and to distinguish them from the combatants and military objectives. The earlier Geneva Protocol of June 17, 1925, clearly prohibits the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare.

Article 85 (3) of Additional Protocol I, 1977, further prohibits attack on civilian population and individual civilians as well as indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attacks would cause excessive loss of life and injury to civilian population and damage to civilian objects. The 1980 UN Convention prohibits or restricts the use of certain conventional weapons which may cause unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury. The Framework Convention includes four protocols.

Protocol I prohibits the use of weapons that cause injury by fragments which are not detectable in the human bodies by x-rays. Protocol II prohibits or restricts the use of mines, booby traps and other devices. Protocol III prohibits the use of incendiary weapons that set fire to objects or burn persons (Article I); they cannot be dropped on military objects located in the midst of civilian population (Article 2). Article I of the Protocol prohibits the use of laser weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness. The Framework Convention applies customary rules of international humanitarian law to specific weapons and may include other weapons as well provided the state parties deem it necessary.

These, in short, are the limits set by the above-mentioned Conventions to the choice and use of weapons by the combatants. If any state resorts to a prohibited category of weapons, it would be guilty of war crimes punishable by an international tribunal. That the guilty party or persons are so powerful that the international community cannot penalize them should be no reason to absolve them of their crime. There is no knowing when the nemesis strikes and in what form. Who could foretell until the day of reckoning that the Nazi leaders and Japanese warmongers will be tried at Nuremburg and Tokyo, respectively, and executed? Strange indeed are the ways of destiny.

Let us now consider whether the invaders are conducting the war according to the above-mentioned conventions and rules. The United States has been deliberately inflicting heavy casualties upon the civilian population of Iraq and causing total destruction of that country’s public utilities and infrastructure in order to force the Ba’athist government to surrender to the invaders.

The bombing of Baghdad’s central market, the dropping of bunker-busters, and the cutting off of water supply to the civilian population of Basra, the destruction of 75,000 metric tons of foodstuff there, and the raining of cluster bombs on Iraqi towns and cities are calculated to kill, hurt and demoralize the Iraqi people. In the 1991 Gulf war, it may be recalled, that Colin Powell, who was then the Joint Chief of Staff of the US army, had threatened to bomb Iraq into the Stone Age. And he very nearly did it. It seems that US wants to finish that unfinished agenda.

Since the US has committed naked military aggression against Iraq, the UN should not recognize any territorial dispensation of the occupied territory by the attackers or else it will be setting a dangerous precedent for the future. For Pakistan, in particular, it should be an eye-opener because if it acquiesces in the American aggression against Iraq and the occupation of that country by the invaders, the Vajpayee government may embark upon a similar adventure against our country. It is therefore in Pakistan’s national interest to call for an immediate end to the war and the withdrawal of invading forces from Iraq.