VICTORY is not simply a matter of winning the war. True victory comes from winning the peace after the war. True victory for Washington would be Iraqi acquiescence in the installation of a Garner-Chalabi interim authority. The signs are, though, that having won the war against Saddam Hussein it could end up losing the peace to its most powerful ideological foe: political Islam. If so, it would be hard to conceive of anything more ironic.

Of all the predictions made before this war started, military success is just about the only one that has come true (that too with considerable hiccups: recall Iraqi resistance and ‘friendly fire’). The grateful, cheering, welcoming crowds that were supposed to hail coalition victory have most definitely not materialized. Yes, there was celebration after the collapse of the Saddam regime. But that was for the ouster of Saddam, not for the arrival of the Americans. The fact that Iraqis do not equate hatred of Saddam with love of American ‘liberation’ is becoming more and more obvious by the day.

Less than a week into ‘liberation’ and American troops were forced to fire on hostile crowds in Mosul twice in as many days, killing 16 Iraqis. Less than a week into ‘liberation’ and there are huge demonstrations in the Iraqi capital calling for the Americans to go home. Less than a week into ‘liberation’ and some Iraqis are complaining they were better off under Saddam Hussein.

All this anti-US feeling it is made infinitely worse, from Washington’s perspective, by the accompanying Islamist sentiment. The demonstrating crowds in Baghdad were largest on Friday. They streamed out of the mosques chanting ‘No to America! No to Saddam! We want an Islamic state!’ Among the earliest political groups to emerge in post-Saddam Iraq is the United Islamic Movement, which mobilized Friday’s demonstrations. Shi’a religious leaders led the boycott against American-supervised talks to set up an Iraqi Interim Authority. With Saddam Hussein out of the picture, political Islam is flexing its muscles.

Had the Americans spent as much time planning for the consequences of this war as they did putting together the huge arsenal to wage it, they would have foreseen this phenomenon. Iraq is home to Shi’ite Islam’s holiest sites: Karbala and Najaf. Sixty per cent of its people are Shi’a. Much of Iraq — be it the Shi’a south or the Kurdish north — is deeply conservative. But under Saddam Hussein they were forbidden to express their religious feelings. Shi’as, for example, could not beat their chests to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain.

Remove Saddam and how will the Iraqis react? Only planners in the Pentagon and White House could have predicted wholesale adoption of western values. Anyone else could have foreseen what actually transpired: Iraqis using their new freedom to vent out years of suppressed religious feelings and frustration. Saturday’s pilgrimage to Karbala was the first since 1977.

Lack of religious freedom under Saddam is, however, only part of the answer. Lack of political freedom is another part. The Iraqi dictator ruthlessly suppressed all voices of political opposition. After 24 years of such suppression, there is no political leadership left within Iraq to take up the mantle now that he is gone. America’s attempts to import an Iraqi leadership — most notably in the form of Ahmed Chalabi — is already proving to be a non-starter. Outside Iraq, Chalabi is viewed as a fraudulent opportunist; inside the country he is either unheard of or despised as an American stooge. Iraqis are not about to pledge their loyalty to him. All of which leaves a big political vacuum.

That political vacuum is being filled by religious leaders. They are becoming the rallying point for, and the voice of, popular Iraqi sentiment, especially among the Shi’as.

The strength of any political leadership depends in large measure on the potency of the ideology it propagates. Islam on its own is a powerful ideology but in Iraq it is being expressed by the growing opposition to American and British occupation, in terms of nationalism. The strength of nationalist feeling in Iraq should not be underestimated. As water, electricity, sewage and other conflict-induced hardships increase, so does Iraqi anger at their ‘liberators’. Religious leaders are providing the outlet for the ventilation of that anger. In doing so, their own standing as de facto political leaders is increasing.

In sum, the lack of secular political leadership in Iraq coupled with the need to vocalize strong nationalist sentiment, is pushing Islamists to the forefront. The political views they are expressing reflect the dual ideologies of nationalism and Islam. Their slogans are: ‘end American and British occupation’, ‘let Iraqis run their own affairs’, ‘let them establish an Islamic state’.

It is too early yet to predict who will eventually get control of Iraq — the Islamists or America and its secular Iraqi partners. But there is a very good chance that Iraqi Islamist-nationalist opposition to the US will grow, and with it the price of occupation (demonstrations, suicide bombings, ambushes, etc.). The US will not be able to hold onto Iraq by force for a long time. Civil resistance, especially when the cause is so manifestly just. has a habit of breaking down the greatest of powers. The logical outcome of this would be a new and more powerful (because it has the public on its side) anti-US regime in Baghdad, one with its roots firmly in Islamist ideology.

But the irony does not end there. Also on the American war agenda was transformation of the wider Middle East region. The dictatorships, monarchies and populist Islamist sentiment that currently pervade the region would give way to western-style, western-minded democracies. (How exactly that would happen, through invasion or by some other means, is not at all clear.) Reality, as in the case of Iraq, could turn out to be the complete opposite — a region in which political Islam becomes the dominant ideology, both in public thinking and in government.

Should that happen, America will have only itself to blame. For, thanks to channels like Al Jazeera, the real human impact of the war on Iraq (thousands of Iraqi civilians killed) has been beamed direct into homes across the region. Those images have provoked huge anger at the United States, of course, but also at their own pusillanimous leadership. Ordinary Arabs contrast the weak anti-US stance taken by their governments with the courage of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder. They also look at the way their governments kowtow to the US: Saudi Arabia playing host to American forces, for example, and Egypt and Jordan having diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Arab Muslim street is seething. And since, as in Iraq, political opposition in most of those countries is suppressed, popular anger is being vented through the only outlet left: the mosques and seminaries. If there are regime changes, say, in Egypt and some other Arab countries, it is not secularists who will replace them but Islamists — particularly those who are vehemently opposed to the West. A precedent of sorts has already been set for this here in Pakistan. Popular anger at the US for invading Afghanistan and at President Musharraf for helping it, led the Islamist MMA to make huge gains in national elections last October.

Victory for political Islam in the wider region is less certain than it is in Iraq. Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah and other despots and dynastic rulers will probably still be in power tomorrow. Overturning entrenched governments and monarchies like those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is not easy. Their grip on power, though, will be weaker and the Islamist opposition to them stronger.

The irony, then, is that America’s occupation of Iraq could end up giving the biggest boost to the fortunes of political Islam in the Arab world since the Iranian revolution of 1979. George Bush may well rue the day he got rid of Saddam Hussein.

PAKISTAN’s ambitious new strategy for attracting foreign capital in a large measure has to be realistic and should not contain the usual unduly optimistic assessments and predictions. It should be based on economic considerations and not on sentiments, religious affinity tradition or historicity. The investor wants a fair and long-term return on a sustained basis and security of his investment. That is what the government will have to provide if it wants foreign investment to come flowing into Pakistan.

It is not satisfying for investors if President Musharraf tells them Pakistan is an excellent country to invest in, or if Prime Minister Jamali tells them that we are a haven for investors, or the Sindh government claims that the province is a paradise for investors. Resounding rhetoric unmatched by reality and past performance does not make the investors believe what they are being told.

The fact is that Pakistan is not one of the few developing countries seeking foreign capital but one of many developing countries. All these nations now realize that foreign investment is far more profitable than seeking foreign loans and accumulating large debts (with their critical repayment problems).

Our rulers should also ask themselves that if the country really is a haven for investors or if Sindh is a paradise for investors why aren’t even our own investors not investing. The government does not have a ready or credible answer to this. In fact, such questions have been asked at earlier investment conferences by foreign delegates and the only response they got were that they embarrassed the officials present.

The fact is that every country and every major company has a website telling its own story. But the investors do not go by what the rulers say or the policy papers state but prefer to pay a small sum and get the right information about the country they want to invest. Such investment experts cannot only tell the investors about the policy and performance of a government but also of the reality of the country they may want to invest in.

Pakistan’s rulers were delighted by the presence of over 300 delegates from OIC countries and Pakistan at the two-day investment conference held recently in Islamabad. The fact that the conference took place even before the US intervention in Iraq could come to an end and the region could stabilize was a significant event.

This shows that the delegates were earnest in exploring investment opportunities in Pakistan. The OIC, too, is interested in promoting investment of its member states in the OIC states instead of only trade. Pakistan now wants Arab capital and the time is favourable for this to happen.

The peak of the Iraqi conflict is almost over. The Arabs are not too happy about investing these days in the West particularly in the US where discrimination against them can be pronounced and their civil rights restricted. They would prefer investing in Europe but the dominance of Jewish capital there is strong. So they may prefer Muslim countries like Pakistan along with some European states; but the Muslim states have to really qualify for such investment and promise substantial and sustained returns along with security of capital and real growth prospects.

In Pakistan, instead of investing in the building of new companies they prefer companies with a profitable track record and good prospects for better profits like the United Bank which the Abu Dhabi sheikhs and others acquired recently. And they may participate in privatization and acquire shares of the very profitable PSO, Habib Bank, PTCL, etc.

The Sheikhs of the Gulf region feel more at home in Pakistan as they are shown a great deal more respect than in other countries. And they are sure of the administration supporting them and of the security of their capital in case of disputes.

They are now happy with the low interest rates in Pakistan and the freedom they have to raise capital locally as well. And they are impressed by the manner the rupee is getting stabilized and getting stronger. And they also take note of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves of $10.3 billion and the steadily stabilizing macro-economy of the country.

They welcome the offer of one-window operation for foreign investors and now the offer of President Musharraf to act as a bridge between the investors and the government in case they have problems. And the special exports processing zones for foreign investors can also be very convenient to Arab investors if they would like to group together.

Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, minister for investment and privatization, who has worked in Saudi Arabia and Cairo as an officer of the World Bank, knows the Arab investors. And so does Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz who had handled their finance as the global head of private banking in Citibank. When President Musharraf inaugurated the investment conference he listed the various concessions available to foreign investors in Pakistan now. The list sounded impressive. It included export processing zones, generous incentives, no curbs on flow of profits and dividends, economic stability based on sound macro-economic indicators, large foreign exchange reserves, enough tax receipt, high remittances etc. But there are the concessions available in many countries avidly seeking foreign investment. And in any case investors need far more than these factors for assured and sustained profitability.

First, they need political stability. The fact is that three years after military rule we had the general elections of a rather controversial nature. And yet the government has not settled down six months after the election. Law and order is a major factor. The World Bank has stressed the need for law and order and rule of law. The Japanese ambassador has stressed the same point for attracting larger Japanese capital. The unfortunate fact is that policemen instead of maintaining law and order are themselves involved in too many crimes. Most of them seldom get punished. And getting a FIR registered in a police stations remains an uphill task.

Last week the climax of police excess was reached when a police officer shot dead a lawyer in the Sindh High Court inside a court room. Criminals in large numbers get freed from police stations in Sindh if they are arrested. Such a weak judicial system is the bane of the foreign investors. Not too long ago, the Egyptian-American chief of Mobilink was shot at recently in Islamabad reportedly due to a dispute between the top owners of the company.

Investors have been calling for not only political stability but also economic and fiscal stability. The country has too many taxes and industrialists have been protesting that they have to pay over 40 federal, provincial and local levies. The spread of the general sales tax is continuing, upsetting both manufacturers and consumers who find that their income’s purchasing power is constantly being reduced.

Industrialists have been agitating for an end to import duties on machinery so that they can invest more. The government agrees to that in principle, but not in practice as it wants larger tax revenues. At the same time the latest tax survey shows that only a third of the total number of people who registered as potential payers of GST actually paid the tax. Foreign investors have been complaining that while they have been paying their taxes in full many domestic companies and investors don’t pay or pay too little.

At the same time we are told that the banks are complaining they have too much liquidity but do not have the means to invest and make money and because of that they have to lose out on potential income. And this is happening at a time when the Karachi Stock Exchange index has crossed its peak of 2,900 points.

Many investment conferences have been held in Pakistan and abroad during the last 20 years, yet what we see emerging is far from the rosy picture that the prime minister is talking about. We have regional, political, economic and social instability. We have a law and order problem, which is like a perennial a Achilles heel. We cannot just wish them away or make the foreign investors believe that they (the problems) don’t exist.

The fact is that if our own investors will not invest we can’t really expect foreigners to do the same. It is true that instead of the average foreign investment of half a billion dollars a year in recent years we are getting a billion dollars, with a target of $1.5 billion for next year. That enhanced investment has gone to areas which normally do not attract much domestic, such as the oil and gas sector. But we need far broader and employment-creating investment opportunities to be realized. In the US, President Bush is talking of a jobs and growth plan as the two are interlinked together. The US has a far lower unemployment rate than ours and yet we are not focusing on that.

We have multiple industrial problems. We have about 4,000 sick industrial units of which half are closed while the other half are operating at below capacity. And we have large sick public sector units that need to be privatized urgently but one roadblock or the other keeps cropping up to prevent that from happening.

Reducing the number of taxes on industry, lowering cumulative taxation, and cutting the high electricity rates are essential if Pakistan is to become more attractive for investors. But these are tough tasks when 40 per cent of the power generated by the KESC is lost before it even reaches the bill-paying subscriber, or when the country faces a budget deficit that is 5.3 per cent of GDP.

Clearly, Pakistan has to compensate to offset the negative effects of its bad law and order situation and the feeble judicial system. Above all, we have to induce our own investors to invest more, especially in major industries like textiles, cement and sugar.

What is imperative after such a conference is a sustained and productive follow-up and this does not mean having more investment conferences following this one. The nitty-gritty of the problems has to be addressed diligently. And if President Musharraf will now act as a bridge between investors and the government that will be a very welcome step. That is what Lee Kwan Yew did in Singapore to transform his country from developing into a developed one. His book should be mandatory reading for our public servants particularly when he says that the primarily problem of Pakistan is governance and without good governance no other major problem can be solved. Hence, instead of the win-win situation that Prime Minister Jamali is talking about we should have a problem-solving approach so that small problems do not become big problems and bottle up the whole process of development.

AMERICA’S “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, under the concept of pre-emptive strike without UN approval, has set a bad precedent. If other powerful countries follow this principle against smaller states, not only would the UN would become irrelevant, lawlessness would be the “new world order”.

Already India is threatening a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan. Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali retorted, saying that there should be no “misunderstanding” on the part of India about Pakistan’s capability to defend itself. He also made it clear that the people and the armed forces of Pakistan were “fully capable of defending the country and no one should have any doubt about it.” This was in reply to Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha who in an interview to the Hindustan Times on April 3 described Pakistan as a “fit case” and asked the United States for military action against it as in Iraq.

It is a fit case because, as he says, “Pakistan has weapons of mass destruction, shelters terrorists and lacks democracy.” He further said, “We will keep pointing out the activities of Pakistan and in them the role of the army, the drug business centred in Pakistan ... and the people in [Azad Kashmir] are repressed and trampled on.” A week earlier he had made a statement that India itself had a case for a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan.

In tit-for-tat rhetoric, Pakistan’s information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, warned Yashwant Sinha of grave consequences if India embarked on any “misadventure” under the garb of pre-emptive action. He said: “The Indian aggressive designs were not concealed from the international community. India was piling up weapons of mass destruction and chemical and biological weapons... The Indians committed genocide of the Muslims and desecrated the Babri Mosque. They committed brutalities on Sikhs, torched churches and burnt alive many Christians.”

US State Department spokeswoman Joanne Prokopowicz commented that “any attempts to draw parallells between the Iraq and Kashmir situations are wrong and are overwhelmed by the differences between them.” She also asked India “to restrain itself from using the US-led pre-emptive war against Iraq as a pretext for an attack on Pakistan.”

Earlier, President Musharraf had referred to speculations that Pakistan would be the target of western forces after Iraq and that there were chances of such an eventuality. He warned, “We will have to work on our own to stave off the impending danger. Nobody will come to our rescue, not even the Islamic world. We will have to depend on our own muscles.” He added that “Muslims are suffering everywhere but in the hour of need no Muslim state would help us because everyone has his own interests.”

The recent Indian threat of a pre-emptive attack on Pakistan is not new. India actually attacked Pakistan in 1965 and then in 1971. During 1971, when the situation in the then East Pakistan had become hopeless for Pakistan, India was keen to take full advantage. K Subramaniam termed it “an opportunity the like of which will never come again.” US President Nixon, through his intelligence, learnt that “India also planned to launch a major attack against West Pakistan.” In December 1963, when India was being armed by the US, they had given a verbal assurance to Pakistan that it “can count on American help should India attack.” Accordingly, the US dispatched the aircraft carrier Enterprise towards the Bay of Bengal as a warning signal.” This facilitated a ceasefire on the borders of West Pakistan.

The real intentions of India again became apparent from its leaders’ statements made immediately after the nuclear explosions of May 8, 1998. On May 15, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee warned that his country was a “nuclear weapons state” and would not hesitate to use the bomb if attacked and that they had “the capacity for a big bomb now.” On May 18, the home minister of India, L K Advani, warned Pakistan that it would be “futile and costly” if it did not reverse its policy, especially on Kashmir, because a “qualitatively new stage in Indo-Pak relations had been brought about by the country becoming a nuclear weapons state.” On May 21, 1998, the minister for parliamentary affairs and Tourism Madanlal Khurana said, “India was ready to fight a fourth war with Pakistan”.

Under the circumstances, Pakistanis should not be swayed by emotions. They have a country next door casting an evil eye on it. We should know our enemy. We cannot afford enmity with anyone, least of all our neighbours. We should do our utmost to have a detente with India. But as long as India remains hostile to us, realpolitik dictates that we should not invite enmity of any other country, be it located in our neighbourhood or elsewhere, especially the US, Russia, China or the European Union. We should adhere to the advice of the Quaid-i-Azam who laid down Pakistan’s foreign policy in the following words: “Maintain cordial and friendly relations with our immediate neighbours and with the world at large. We have no aggressive designs against anyone. We stand by the United Nations Charter...”

The Indians think that Pakistan is an obstacle to their becoming a great or superpower. “India is destined to be compared with Pakistan until it can accommodate Islamabad, or Pakistan ‘withers away’ to the point where it is no longer a major factor in Indian strategy,” says Stephen P. Cohen. Accordingly, Indians are working hard on a two-pronged strategy to harm Pakistan. They are actively promoting the propaganda to antagonize the western countries against Pakistan. Perhaps Indo-Israeli relations are partly meant to achieve this objective. Sometimes one hear the baseless charges that Pakistan is patronizing and harbouring terrorists, is responsible for “cross-border” terrorism or terrorist attacks in India and sometimes it is linked with nuclear development in North Korea or its nuclear assets passing into the hands of the terrorists. At the same time, the Indians may be encouraging all those who are creating anti-US or anti-West feelings in Pakistan or anti-Pakistan feelings in the West. Pakistanis should beware of Indian intentions and designs.

At present the Indian threats are part of their coercive diplomacy. Indian magazine Outlook has reported that “the army wants war, but the US pressure and Pakistan’s nuclear capability make the government favour coercive diplomacy”.

E-mail: noor@ipri-pak.org

SUCCESSIVE Presidents of the United States, as a matter of policy, followed the strategy of deterrence and containment to prevent wars. Regrettably, however, President George W Bush abandoned this policy and enunciated a new national security strategy for his country.

His doctrine of ‘pre-emption’, embodied in the document ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, issued on September 20 last year, has signalled a shift from the policy that had been followed by his predecessors during the cold war era. The new policy flies in the face of international law and runs counter to the collective security system of the United Nations.

The Bush administration has justified its doctrine of pre-emption by arguing that “given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the US can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. We cannot let our enemies strike first. As a matter of common sense and self-defence, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed”. The new strategy envisages a right to use pre-emptive force by the United States even if there was no threat to its own security.

President Bush also made this abundantly clear when he, at West Point, stated that “the military must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world. All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price”. It follows from this that the United States no longer wants to operate within the existing global system of power balancing.

The new US strategy is fraught with serious implications. It confers on the United States the right to impose its coercive order on other nations anywhere in the world. This will amount to trampling on their sovereignty which has been guaranteed in the UN Charter as sacrosanct and as forming one of the fundamental principles of international relations. The doctrine of pre-emption is also a challenge to the UN Security Council’s authority.

The international law, as well as the UN Charter, recognize the right of states to use force in self-defence. However, under international law, a pre-emptive strike by a country could be considered legitimate only if the perceived threat of attack on it was real and imminent. A pre-emptive attack, based on false notions or threat assessments made unilaterally by one state or a group of states, cannot be recognized as lawful. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, on March 20, did not meet the criterion of an ‘imminent threat’ it was an act of aggression under international law and the UN Charter.

In its resolution 1441, adopted on November 8 last year, the UN Security Council gave Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations and set up “an enhanced inspection regime”. This resolution, however, did not specifically authorize the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Iraq fully cooperated with the UN weapons inspectors. The process of inspection was still in progress when the United States and its allies, impatient to attack Iraq, moved a resolution in the Security Council seeking its authorization to do so. As France threatened to veto this resolution it was withdrawn by its movers.

The resumption of rigorous UN inspection was the most effective way to disarm Iraq. However, the United States and its allies chose to disarm it without exhausting all alternatives to war and thus set a dangerous precedent which others may be tempted to follow. In fact, India, citing the US-led pre-emptive strike against Iraq as a precedent, has already threatened Pakistan with a similar strike against it. The fear is that from now on there would be more and more temptations for such pre-emptive strikes. It may be pertinent to point out that in the case of Iraq the issue involved was the enforcement of the UN resolutions and not the pre-emption.

However, the United States and its allies, which were already salivating for Iraq’s oil wealth, invoked the doctrine of pre-emption which was devoid of legal or moral force. The perceived Iraqi threat to the United States and its allies was neither established nor imminent.

Iraq’s disarmament of the weapons of mass destruction and the ‘liberation’ of its people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s rule was the justification put forward by the United States and its allies for their forcible occupation of that country. After the termination of Saddam’s rule and the war coalition’s failure to recover the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq there is absolutely no justification for their forces’ stay there. It is, however, generally believed that the coalition will stay in Iraq for a long time not only to have an exclusive access to its oil but also to effectively expand its sphere of influence and control over other Middle Eastern and Central Asian states.

It is now established beyond a shadow of doubt that the United States intends to use its unrivalled military power to manage the global order with its national interests and also to assert its authority as the sole superpower. However, its ambitions for the domination of the world and control of its resources pose a threat to the fabric of the international community. Opposition has already begun to emerge against the United States’ desire to impose its hegemony over the rest of the world. This is bound to intensify in the coming months and years, particularly resistance from the major world powers, which are equally keen on asserting themselves to promote their own national interests.

The most essential element of the collective security system of the United Nations is the prohibition of arbitrary use of force under all circumstances. It is the prerogative of the UN Security Council to determine, in each case, the nature of the conflict and the threat arising from it and to decide the measures to be taken against an aggressor to protect its victim. Regrettably, the UN security system has not worked, as stipulated in its Charter. However, despite all the limitations of the UN system of collective security, no state can be allowed to act unilaterally against a prospective or supposed aggressor. The UN Charter is emphatically against such use of force by states.

The doctrine of pre-emption is indeed a usurpation of the UN Security Council’s role as a peace-keeper and, if not effectively checked, may severely undermine its position. Let the international community act soon and resolutely, otherwise the world would be faced with chaos and anarchy of unpredictable magnitude.

The writer is a former ambassador