May 17, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, May 16: The only choice for a peaceful South Asia, according to noted activist, journalist and novelist living in England for many years, Tariq Ali, lies, in, what he calls “striving in the direction of a South Asian union” comprising Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. He thinks that this could be sustainable only if somehow China could also be persuaded to join in an arrangement of this kind.

Tariq Ali delivered this lecture at the National Library Auditorium in Islamabad on Thursday, entitled: “The future of South Asia after the Iraq War. It was the second of the three Eqbal Ahmad Distinguished lectures he is delivering in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

The packed auditorium, besides Islamabad intellectuals, scholars, diplomats and bureaucrats, included a lot of many of his friends from his Government College Lahore days. The Oxford- educated (the first Pakistani who also became the president of the Oxford Students’ Union in 1965) writer of twelve books, five of them novels, some of which set in mediaeval Islamic times, and one who was among the “angry young men” of the Sixties, Tariq Ali has been a firebrand orator, radical student leader and left-wing journalist. His father, the late Mazhar Ali Khan once edited the Pakistan Times, Dawn and the Viewpoint. His mother Tahira Mazhar Ali founded the Democratic Women’s League.

Explaining the serious consequences that will flow from the American aggression in Iraq, he said that a large number of people including those in Pakistan had not fully comprehended the designs of a new empire that is so dominant that it can attack and occupy a sovereign and independent country without much opposition from any country of the world. He said the occupation would mark the politics and the battle-lines of the twenty first century. Millions of people from all over the world, especially the Western world, have understood the implications, and they have marched through the streets in protest. In Pakistan he thought nobody else seems to have cared.

He decried the tendency of some political parties whose leaders would be very happy to meet some low-level US officials, and would not like to make America angry. He thought that this war has changed the world. It has major implications and its designs are multi-fold. The reasons for this war went much beyond the desire to capture the oil resources of Iraq.

He elaborated the continuing atrocities committed by the new audacious, imperial power on Iraq since the first Gulf War. He pointed to the death of a one-and-a-half million children in Iraq before the present war, according to the UN, who died because of the UN sanctions and the effects of the depleted uranium used on the Iraqi people.

Talking of the protests worldwide against present aggression, he said that millions of people in London, in Rome, Spain, Athens, and other cities gathered to register their protest. He said this was because none of the reasons advanced for waging this war, including the presence of WMD in that country was believed in by the people of the world.

Talking of the “absurd” roadmap for the Middle East, he said it offered even less than the Oslo Accords to the Palestinians. He even thought that the new Palestinian leadership was a favourite of the Israeli politicians. He bemoaned the fact except Syria, not a single Arab or Muslim country opposed it, but even a small country like Qatar provided the biggest base from where attacks were launched. Free access to the use of the Suez Canal for the ships of the “new empire” was ensured. He thought that the Arab people are angry and within the next decade or so, many regimes would be swept aside. He spoke of the systematic way Arab nationalism was weakened after Nasser and the 1967 Arab Israel War.

Tariq Ali saw in the attitude of children in the Arab world a pointer of the coming resistance. He said a woman journalist who knew Arabic language, wrote in the Guardian that had the Western world understood what the Iraqi children were saying when they were talking to the American marines they would have known the amount of anger they were spitting out against the occupiers in their language.

He said that Iraq is not Kosovo or Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the superpower ran short of targets towards the end, he said. He remembered the brazenfaced manner in which recently the British Prime Minister Tony Blair replied to the journalists who asked him about what happened to the much talked about presence of WMD in Iraq. Blair gave them the reply that this war was waged to stop many other wars in the future.

Tariq Ali also talked about the powerful Likudist wing around President Bush, and the military in the US. He said that the British Empire brought about the Balfour Declaration that created Israel, and the American “empire” took over the country’s interests when the British left. He also felt that when empires overstretched themselves, their last days were in sight.

Speaking on South Asia he traced the history of confrontation in the region. He said that the core of this conflict was Kashmir. He reminded the audience of the flouting of UN Resolutions by India. He said Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, backed out of the promise that he had made at a public meeting in Srinagar about allowing the Kashmiris to decide their own future; which led Shaikh Abdullah to support him.

Talking about the war in Kashmir in 1948, he said it was lost due to our “stupidity”. Tariq Ali also bemoaned the tragedy of the loss of East Pakistan due to our own faults. He thought that we had gone in US servitude since 1954. He was equally critical of the role of the army and politicians in our country.

Tariq Ali felt that the situation was very dangerous in our region because of the presence of nuclear weapons, and both sides have said that they were prepared to use them. He said in Asia there were three crucial regions, namely China, Far East, Japan and the Korean peninsula, and South Asia. South Asia was the most crucial in terms of the resolution of the great conflict between India and Pakistan. He said the environment for a solution can be brought about through a deal between India and Pakistan by cutting down on the armed forces and opening of borders.

He also lashed out at the Hindu fundamentalism, and quoted Gujarat as its heinous example. The tragedy of the situation was that the BJP won elections there immediately after the great massacre of Muslims.

Replying to another question, he said he was alarmed the way tenants in Okara were being harassed by the establishment and said that he had been writing about it also.

Prof Z.H. Zaidi, the Editor-in-Chief of Quaid-i-Azam Papers project and chairman Quaid-i-Azam Academy, who was described as a teacher of Dr Eqbal Ahmad called his “pupil” as a preeminent academic, a man of unimpeachable integrity, a friend of the poor and a crusader for worthy causes. He said he would not for a, moment, hesitate to say that in this case, the teacher was eclipsed by the pupil. He also thanked Tariq Ali, “the distinguished speaker with worldwide reputation, for his unwavering commitment to certain ideals”.

Earlier Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy said that they have already three Eqbal Ahmad distinguished lectures by Noam Chomsky, Admiral Ram Das of India and Najam Sethi. Introducing the speaker, he talked of his commitment. He also remembered various wars, from Vietnam to the destruction of Beirut. On South Asia he spoke of India’s leadership being morally isolated, and according to him, Pakistan’s policy being no better, which he described as “successfully rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory”.— Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad