IN the 1930s an English astrologer predicted that the Prince of Wales would leave the throne for the sake of a woman and that when the British Empire ended in India, the country would break into two. Both things came to pass.

Now it seems that another of his predictions is also about to come true: this was that the ultimate war, Armageddon, would take place between Islam and Judeo-Christianity and that when Islam was defeated, a great law-giver would appear and usher in an era of peace, progress and prosperity in the world. George Bush denies that the Iraq war is a war against the Muslim world (which it obviously is not since a number of Muslim countries are supporting it) but does explain his war aims in terms of Cheiro’s predictions.

We are coming, he tells the people of Iraq, “to end the reign of your oppressors. We are coming to bring you food and medicines and a better life.” Hearing this, some Iraqis may think of the half million Iraqi children dead as a result of US-backed sanctions and recall what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had to say about it: “It is a price worth paying.”

Only the Americans appear to be surprised that their troops have been met not by cheering crowds, as their fathers did in Normandy in 1944, but by armed resistance from all sides — the regular forces, citizen militias, suicide bombers. The world at large is sceptical of America’s expanding list of war aims and shifting priorities: eliminating Iraq’s mass-destruction weapons, getting rid of Saddam, liberating the Iraqi people, reforming the Arab world.

There is a suspicion that some larger, over-arching purpose has driven America to war in the face of opposition from almost all major powers, against the tide of world opinion and at a time when Iraqi disarmament through peaceful means was entirely possible: Iraq’s oil, Israeli ambitions, super-power hubris — in varying degrees, probably all of the above.

Given the background and Israeli connections of some of the Bush administration’s top policy advisers (given also Israel’s ostentatious detachment from the war itself), there is little doubt that Israeli aims and objectives are the main driving force behind the venture.

At any rate, the war is on and is not going as expected. This is not unprecedented for few wars go as planned. However, the fact that in the very first weeks of a war, long-prepared and planned, its basic strategy is being debated, confirms that the assumptions on which it was launched were mistaken — that the Iraqi forces could be subdued by “shock and awe” and that the people would rise up in rebellion against an oppressive regime. Now the war may have to be fought on Saddam’s terms and Saddam’s ground — house-to-house fighting in the warren of city streets, with increasing body-counts on both sides.

American leaders affirm nevertheless — a little too emphatically perhaps — that at the end of it all the United States will “prevail” and achieve its aims: Saddam will disappear from the scene one way or another, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction will have been eliminated (if none are found, it can be said that the potential of their being produced has been eliminated), an American or American-dominated regime established in Iraq. One need not doubt that this will be the case.

Then what? There are a number of possible scenarios. Resistance to American occupation is one, specially if the occupation is prolonged and is viewed as having a pro-Israeli bias. A guerilla war of attrition, like the Afghan war against Soviet invasion, may not be practical in Iraq but the type of situation the Israelis are facing in the West Bank — suicide attacks, truck bombs, etc. — is entirely possible.

The Americans are not likely to pack up and leave, as the Soviets did in Afghanistan or the Israelis in Lebanon, for they have too much at stake in the region. But to deal with the situation, they will be tempted to play off various Iraqi groups against each other and perhaps, eventually, they may let the country come apart, retaining a hold where it matters, such as the oil-producing regions.

Such a development would have repercussions in the neighbouring countries, in particular, Turkey, Iran and Syria and also further inflame fury and resentment, directed equally at the United States and its client governments, in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This may lead to upheavals in these countries, strengthen Islamist movements and fuel more terrorism world-wide.

The other scare scenario is that the Bush administration may decide to go for the other “baddies” in the region — Syria and Iran, perhaps others. This cannot be ruled out even though one supposes that there are limits to how much even the world’s sole superpower can bite off and chew at one time Secretary of State. Colin Powell’s warning to Syria the other day was no doubt only a shot across the bows. But his wildly cheering audience was the annual gathering of the AIPAC (the Israeli lobby that wields a powerful influence on American elections at all levels) and included the Israeli foreign minister.

And that tells one how the land lies and explains why the idyll drawn by the Bush administration: a new Iraq, democratic, united, at peace with itself and its neighbours is the least probable outcome of the war. America’s ignorance or disregard of local realities is evident already in the difficulties it is facing in the war. A more fundamental difficulty is America’s Israeli connection which has always and unavoidably governed its Middle East policy and never more so than under the Bush administration with its almost total identification with Ariel Sharon’s policies and actions.

A democratically elected Iraqi government is not likely to be less hostile to these and less resentful of American support for them . A puppet regime could come to a violent end as did the British-sponsored ones in earlier times. The outlook therefore is of continuing trouble in the Middle East unless the United States can bring itself to do the one thing that can bring peace to the region — use its power to enforce a just settlement between Israel and Palestine. Of this there is little prospect. With the presidential elections approaching, it is doubtful that Bush will even make a serious effort to that end.

FOOTNOTE: “What then shall we do, Oh nations of the East?” asked Iqbal the poet. We can reform, reconstruct, reinvigorate our societies, our people, our thinking. Or we can go out on the streets, burn effigies, raise slogans in helpless rage.

The writer is former foreign secretary of Pakistan.

I WAS there, at Ayodhya, a day before the Supreme Court’s decision on the government’s reference with regard to allowing construction on the government-acquired land around the disputed site. There was no tension in the city. I wondered whether the few people on the street — it was last Sunday — were aware of the fact that the court would deliver an epoch-making verdict on the reference the next day. Maybe, they were not bothered about the verdict at all. They were indifferent.

And how stately did the Hanuman garhi (temple) stand in the midst of political and religious sparrings! It looked proud that there had been no Hindu-Muslim riot in Ayodhya. The key to the temple’s entrance door was with a Muslim family when I visited the place several years ago. Probably, this is still the practice because Ayodhya knew no Hindu-Muslim polarization before L.K. Advani vitiated the atmosphere in northern India through his rath yatra. By opening the lock at the disputed site Rajiv Gandhi had prepared the ground.

Returning from Ayodhya by road to Lucknow I did not see any pilgrims going towards the place. I had feared that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) would build up religious frenzy on the eve of the judgment. There was nothing like that. This may be because the Mayawati government does not favour disturbing the present situation although it is dependent on the BJP for its majority in the state assembly.

That the VHP now threatens to start an agitation should not come as a surprise. It wants to keep the pressure on and the atmosphere vitiated. In fact, its insistence had made the Vajpayee government to refer the matter to the Supreme Court. It was ill advised to do so because a categorical judgment to maintain the status quo was already there.

Granted the BJP could not say ‘no’ to its mentor, the RSS, which wants the Ram temple at the disputed site. But the reference ran counter to the Supreme Court’s earlier judgment: all the acquired land must remain with the government till the decision to whom the site of the Babri masjid belonged. The court had, in fact, sustained the spirit of government’s acquisition. It rightly appreciated that the purpose was to maintain communal harmony. Any construction on the land around the site would have disturbed the status quo.

It is not difficult to guess why the VHP is keen on getting the acquired land. It is undisputed. It belongs to Hindu owners who can always be pressured in the name of religion or otherwise to hand it over to the VHP. Once the land is in its possession, the VHP will lose no time in building the temple — the walls, the pillars and the doors of which have already been made somewhere else and kept ready.

Even if the disputed site is not touched, the temple without the sanctum sanctorum will be ready. It will be surrounding the disputed site. How will any government stop the VHP from extending the temple to the disputed site? A similar situation arose before the demolition of the Babri masjid when lakhs of kar sevaks were allowed to assemble at Ayodhya with shovels and baskets despite the Supreme Court’s order not to disturb the status quo. Kalyan Singh of the BJP was the state chief minister then.

No doubt, the BJP now has a problem. When the VHP, the party’s parivar member, and the head, RSS, are ‘disappointed’ over the judgment, the Vajpayee government is expected to ‘rescue’ them. That may not be possible since the government, as Law Minister Arun Jaitley said, was obliged to ensure the implementation of the judgment. Restraining the likes of Thagodia and Singhal may be difficult for the parivar. But they are all under the overall control of the RSS. It will see to it that they do not go beyond a point. It cannot see the pulling down of its own government — the government which has saffronised every sphere of the central government.

It looks as if the BJP will play a dual roles — one as a party and the other as the leading member of the ruling coalition. As a party it will continue to make noises and keep the temple issue alive. There is no way by which it can withdraw from the field. For it has come to believe that the call to build the temple at the disputed site helps the party harness the support of the Hindu electorate.

The BJP will test the waters in the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Delhi later this year. Even defeat will not deter the BJP from pursuing the temple line in the Lok Sabha election after September next year because it has developed no plan other than Hindutva.

One thing the reverses may do is to convince the BJP not to go for a mid-term poll. Some tall members in the Sangh Parivar still want the BJP to dissolve the house and go for the general election on the temple plank. But they are not absolutely sure how things will turn out. The party has found that all the coalition members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are not in favour of an early election — definitely not supporting the BJP’s temple line.

The RSS wants the NDA to bring before parliament legislation to hand over the disputed site to the Hindus for the construction of the temple. Such a move may provide drama and propaganda but the BJP does not have a majority, neither in the Lok Sabha nor in the Rajya Sabha.

Several ideologues and leaders of the parivar are working on various permutations and combinations, even a joint session of the two houses, to have a bill, although it is doomed from the beginning. A rejected bill, the parivar believes, will provide its propaganda mills with the grist they require.

Strange, the Parivar is not keen on settling the issue with the Muslim community. In fact, it has ruled out any talks with it knowing well that the judgment my take a long time. Significantly, the supreme court has said in its judgment that the hearing at the Allahabad High Court is in the last stages.

A formula which is attributed to former President Venkataraman may give the country a breakthrough. His proposal is that the Muslim community, as a gesture towards its Hindu brethren, withdraws its claim on the disputed site. The Hindus, in turn, give a constitutional guarantee to honour the existence of all Muslim mosques, dargahs and the like prevailing on August, 15, 1947, when India was divided.

This may look like a political solution but it is a practical one. And coming from Venkataraman as it does, it has the touch of the impartiality and ethics that he represents. Leaders of the two communities, religious or political, should rise to the occasion and remove the impediment of the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid from the way of Hindu-Muslim unity. Without it India cannot go far.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

The US policy “has weakened a civilisation that is also its own” wrote Juan Luis Cebrian, the founding editor of Spain’s principal newspaper, El Pais, the other day.

Everywhere one goes here one runs headlong into what the polls say, that over 85% of the population is against the decision by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to support George Bush in his war against Iraq. Since the demise of Franco, with the savage civil war behind it, Spain has been in a mood of relatively quiet politics, intent on healing division rather than provoking it.

Politics has not been, as in its Mediterranean Latin sister, Italy, either a subject for bitter party contest or over heated conversation. No more perhaps. I go up to the police station to report the theft of my car papers and all the policeman wants to talk about are his strong feelings on the war.

I go out swimming on Sunday far into the Atlantic with the two young sisters who grew up metres from the sea and know these dangerous, turbulent, waters inside out, whom I befriended 5 years ago whilst briefly living and writing a book here, and find instead of our usual conversation about the state of the sea and their parents’ leather goods shop in which they work that they are cross examining me about the war.

Even the old lady who runs the haberdashery in my writer’s hideaway — an unspoilt village in the island of Tenerife — hangs out a notice “No a la Guerra”.

In all my life I have never met such a vociferous anti-war feeling. I grew up in England through the Suez crisis when tempers ran high and my father thrust the strong opinions of the Manchester Guardian under my nose, studied in the US during Vietnam and its protests, lived at various times all over Europe, most recently in Sweden, during times of peace and war but never have come across such a coalescing of opinion, such deeply held conviction that war is a blunt tool, and for sophisticated peoples probably an unnecessary one, and such heartfelt desire to put war behind us for all time.

What is different this time round it is not just the students and the thinking liberals who are against this war, it is every man and woman in the street who never cared tuppence about politics before unless it concerned the income tax they paid and the state of their health care. This mood I suspect is no temporary one, cut to the cloth of George Bush’s Texan swaggering insensitivity which, as Cebrian says, “has earned the contempt of wide sectors of western public opinion, losing capacity for leadership, squandering the fund of support and solidarity that the world gave it after the September 11th attacks”.

It is a profound sea change in the culture of West European society, one that has been bubbling up almost unnoticed it for decades but which is now exploding like an unplugged volcano. Knowing about if not experiencing the terrible world wars, the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the humbling of the superpowers in Vietnam and Afghanistan and even the very mixed bag of results in Bosnia and Kosovo when war was waged for purely humanitarian reasons, it appears now that a large majority has concluded that waging war seems to make little political sense when compared with the havoc and mayhem wrecked on both human life and human artefacts.

Also having created the European Union out of the ashes of the Second World War there is a tangible sense that if in history’s book the most war prone part of the earth could find a way to live side by side then other societies can do it too. Not least is the growing conviction, that once beat slowly but has reached a rude and striking tempo of confidence, that if democracy can be spread by non-violent means to the four corners of the planet — it has already jumped in a relatively small space of time from 25% of the world to 65% (80% of its peoples if one excludes China)- then democracies will not go to war with each other.

I don’t know how much my friends, the mermaids, understood of all this argument as I laid it out between strokes across the ocean, but I suspect from their nodding and thoughtful interjections that even the less educated have somehow got the picture, the work of thousands, no trillions, of hours of hard work over 50 years by educators of all types, school teachers, priests, journalists, novelists, filmmakers, and non-governmental organisations — big ones like Amnesty International and Oxfam and more specialised ones like Sweden’s Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, that has at last bitten deep into the soul of Europe.

After the thousandth book on the holocaust or Vietnam has been published, millions of kilometres of film bringing us close up to the ugliness of war have rolled across the television, after article after article by journalists who feel a deep compassion for war and hunger’s victims, after educators have set to work determined that the next generation should be raised with different attitudes.

It is far too early to say that European societies will never sanction war again, but we should not underestimate how profound a step has been taken.—Copyright Jonathan Power

THE PNAC document asserts that the driving force behind peace-keeping missions must be “American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations.” It goes on to argue that even after the removal of the Saddam regime from power, bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait must be maintained permanently despite regional opposition in the Gulf to the stationing of US troops because “Iran may well prove to be as large a threat to US interests as Iraq.”

The intimate and passionate association of key Bush administration figures with the Zionist cause is widely known and acknowledged as a catalyst for US aggression against the Muslim world. Guardian columnist Hugo Young wrote that some high-ranking Bush administration figures are “as much Israeli as American nationalists” and that Washington DC is fast gaining the reputation of being an “American outpost for Likud.”

In September 2002 Bill Keller profiled Paul Wolfowitz for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, revealing his close links with Israeli generals and Likud politicians and remarked that many in Washington hint at Wolfowitz’s “dual loyalties.”

In 1996, a group headed by Richard Pearle, now Bush’s foreign policy adviser, produced a report for the then Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” in which they advocated a clean break with the on-going peace process and military action against Iraq.

Pearle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson’s office in the seventies when the National Security Agency caught him passing highly classified national security documents to the Israeli embassy.

He later also worked for an Israeli weapons manufacturing firm named Soltram. Douglas Feith, deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, and his father, received awards from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in 1997 and were lauded as “noted Jewish philanthropists and pro-Israeli activists.”

ZOA is an ultra-conservative organization that attacks even moderate Jews. Feith also runs a small law firm whose only international offices are located in Israel and a majority of the firm’s work consists of representing Israeli interests, particularly the Israeli war machine.

Prior to his appointment in the Bush administration, his firm’s own website stated that Feith “represents Israeli arms manufacturers.”

Ari Fleischer, official White House spokesman, is a prominent member of the American Jewish community and is reported to have Israeli citizenship. Robert Satloff, now Bush’s national security council adviser, has served in the past as executive director of the Zionist think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Steve Goldsmith, Senior Adviser to the president, a former mayor of Indianapolis, is a close friend of the Jerusalem mayor, Ehud Olmert, and often visits Israel to coach Israeli mayors on privatization initiatives.

The list goes on. It does not warrant any great leap of the imagination to understand which direction these men in high places in Washington are likely to steer the president and his foreign policy. It has been a widely acknowledged fact since long that Zionism shapes US foreign policy.

Never before has this been more true than now, and never before with more dangerous consequences for the Muslim world and world peace in general.

On September 11, 2001, when American Airlines flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld was present in the building in the National Command Centre. About five hours later, while the CIA was still piecing together strains of preliminary information and evidence that tentatively pointed at a possible Al Qaeda connection to the incident.

CBS news reported that, according to the notes of Pentagon aides, Donald Rumsfeld instructed Pentagon officials to consider whether the evidence collected was “good enough to hit S.H. (Saddam Hussein) at the same time. Not just UBL (Usama bin Ladin).” The aides further quote Rumsfeld as saying that the US should “go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related or not.”

Immediately following the 9/11 incident Paul Wolfowitz submitted a plan to the Pentagon calling for the bombing of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Pentagon insiders referred to this as “Operation Infinite War.” Robert Dreyfus, senior correspondent for the American Prospect, pointed out that Pentagon’s “well-placed hawks” were muzzling the CIA so that any intelligence data that contradicted the case for war on Iraq may not reach the White House.

“For Pearle, Wolfowitz and Feith an attack on Iraq is a strategic necessity, not because Saddam is a threat, but because America needs to display an overwhelming show of force to keep unruly Arabs and Muslims all over the world in line.”

The war mafia was in perfect accord regarding the strategy for the Gulf region well before George W. Bush came to occupy the White House.

Saddam Hussain and the likes of him had to be taught a lesson and an unforgettable precedent had to be established for troublemakers in the Muslim world to see. The question remained how to give this military initiative some cover of justification.

Since 9/11 offered no shred of pretext to plough into Iraq, Saddam’s presumed non-compliance with the weapons inspection requirements was used as an excuse. In this too Saddam outmanoeuvred the war mafia on the diplomatic front by complying fully with UN Security Council requirements, causing formidable international pressure to be brought to bear on the United States to hold off a military strike and give the weapons inspectors more time.

But just as the PNAC document of September 2000 and the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz letters to President Clinton and subsequently to Senator Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich advocated, trivial matters like international law, world opinion, consensus in the United Nations Security Council and the sanctity and future of the United Nations were not allowed to stand in the way and President Bush let lose the dogs of war on Iraq.

This war is not about Saddam Hussain or even Iraq. It goes much deeper than that. It concerns the future position of Muslim states in the Middle East and Gulf in the New World Order as defined by American interests in accordance with the hawkish perceptions of George W. Bush’s dogs of war.

What we are witnessing in Iraq today are the opening salvos of a protracted US military engagement in the region. All Muslim states in the region are now in the same boat. Whereas some of these states, like Kuwait and Qatar, have chosen to follow the path of least resistance, others continue to play the ostrich, seeking cover in diplomatic camouflage. Their turn will also come.

Only then will they understand the painful difference between a polite condemnation of evil and uniting in defence against a common predatory aggressor.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has announced that the United Nations is to have a strictly limited role in the post-war set-up in Iraq. He has stated clearly that the Unites States has not waged war on Iraq to hand it over to the United Nations when the objectives have been achieved. There can be little doubt that, along with any perceived security concerns and objectives, the future of Iraqi oil weighs heavily on US policy makers as they are adamant about not yielding control over to it once the dirty deed is done.

Also, one hundred and twenty thousand more American troops are on their way to Iraq to further fortify the allied forces present there, already numbering close to three hundred thousand. This is not just a knee-jerk reaction to the stiffer than expected opposition encountered by the coalition forces, but part of a long-term plan to establish a strong and permanent US military presence in the Gulf.

Furthermore, Donald Rumsfeld has issued a stern warning to Iran and Syria against interference in the shape of supplying arms and personnel to Iraq.

The United States has also announced trade and aid restrictions on Pakistan’s nuclear laboratory in Kahuta, signalling displeasure over Pakistan’s lack of open support for the war on Iraq and hinting ominously that our programme for the development and construction of weapons of mass destruction is very much on their minds.

The macabre horror show in the Persian Gulf is unfolding in accordance with the script produced by the PNAC in September 2000.

Concluded