STATES, like individuals, want to be loved. Surely the US should be no exception. The Washington-based Pew Research Centre recently published the results of its Global Attitudes comprehensive survey. It interviewed 16,000 people in 20 countries. The survey shows, in a sentence, that the world has fallen out of love with America.

Of immediate concern to us are those parts of the survey relating to relations between the US and Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan. The main thrust of the survey was whether the US posed a threat, whether those questioned were opposed to the US, whether the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam Hussein, and about the role of President George W. Bush.

It shows that more than 70 per cent of Pakistanis, Indonesians and Nigerians are worried about coming under the threat of an attack one day from the US. According to the survey, the majorities in seven countries with mainly Muslim populations shares the same concern. It concludes that the people of the Muslim countries are overwhelmingly opposed to the US. Even those previously holding positive views about the US have changed their position dramatically, with those in favour dropping from 75 to 15 per cent in Indonesia, and from 77 to 27 per cent in Morocco.

Even though the survey was conducted more than a month after the fall of Saddam Hussein, 60 per cent of Pakistanis and 85 per cent of Palestinians believe that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam. However, on the positive side, the survey shows that “the speed of the war in Iraq and the prevailing belief that the Iraqi people were better off as a result have modestly improved the image of America”. President Bush does not rank high in the popularity stakes. In Pakistan, while 31 per cent blame the US generally for the problems, 62 per cent attribute these to President Bush personally.

The official US view is that the problem lies in the Muslim world, where there is a lack of democracy and freedom and envy of American wealth and military power. Some say it is a manifestation of the so-called clash of civilizations. Very few blame the US itself. Is this correct or fair?

First, it should be noted that the survey shows that the great majority of non-Muslims, including French, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, do not view the US favourably. Indeed, the Russians even fear that some day the US would attack them.

The Muslim world has some valid and specific reasons for their concerns because it sees the US attitude as both hostile and unfair to them. This is apparent from the US approach to Muslim problems, be they in Palestine, Kashmir or Chechnya.

The US has declared the war on terrorism as its first priority, but here too it is aimed at the Muslims. The National Security Strategy announced in September 2002, a year after the 9/11 attack, stated that the US aim was to destroy any terrorist or a state sponsoring of terror which attempts to gain, or plans to use, weapons of mass destruction; to exercise their right of self-defence by acting preemptively against such terrorists; to make it clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate, and to support moderate and modern governments “especially in the Muslim world”.

At no time has the US contemplated any action against such terrorist organizations as ETA in Spain, which seeks Basque independence, and the IRA in Northern Ireland. Only recently, when some IRA activists were caught training revolutionaries in the US backyard of Colombia, did funds cease to flow into IRA coffers. It seems only Muslims are to be branded as terrorists. Is it therefore surprising if the war on terror is seen as a war against the Muslims?

Iraq was militarily attacked for being in breach of the resolutions of the UN Security Council. Israel and India have been in breach of innumerable resolutions over Palestine and Kashmir for 50 years, but no action whatsoever has been contemplated. On the contrary, the US has exercised its veto when the other members of the Security Council have sought measures against Israel.

The belief of the whole world that the central issue of Palestine had to be addressed before there could be peace in the Middle East compelled the Bush administration to convene the recent Aqaba summit with the prime ministers of Israel and the Palestine Authority. But the ‘roadmap’ for peace in the Middle East is patently one-sided, and cannot succeed, let alone endure.

To start with, Yasser Arafat, the elected Palestinian leader, was deliberately excluded from the talks. The roadmap mainly disclosed the concept of a ‘provisional’ state of Palestine with provisional borders to be achieved within three years. Sharon will only remove settlements established illegally under his rule. And, most critically, the central issues of Jerusalem, the right of refugees to return, and settlements in general have been obfuscated. Within days the roadmap lies littered with dead bodies of Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian. Targeted killings by Israel and suicide bombings by the Palestinians have resumed with a vengeance.

To secure the support of Muslim countries for the roadmap, the leaders of relevant Arab countries were summoned to meet President Bush. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were cajoled into voicing agreement. Iraq had been earlier defeated militarily. That left only two important Muslim states in the region opposed to Israel-Syria and Iran.

Syria has been bullied on the pretext that it is supporting Saddam’s Baathists, whereas, quite to the contrary, Syria has been traditionally and openly hostile to Saddam. Syria was the only Arab country to support Iran in the decade-long Iran-Iraq war, while the US and the UK supplied arms and even chemicals to Saddam. Clearly, pressure is being put on Syria to stop supporting Palestinian groups opposed to Israel, and, in the future, to take a less rigid position on the return of the Golan Heights.

Iran too is being subjected to similar aggressive tactics on the ground that it is harbouring Al Qaeda elements and secretly developing nuclear weapons capability. Iran has throughout been opposed, if not downright hostile, to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It vehemently denies developing nuclear weaponry and has offered full access to IAEA inspectors to its nuclear facilities. Once again, it is obvious that Iran, a prominent Muslim country, is being singled out because of its anti-Israel stance.

All this is in stark contrast to the inaction against North Korea, which actually claims to have developed a nuclear capability. Is that because it is non-Muslim? What then, one may ask, will happen to Pakistan once the need for a Muslim ally in the region is no longer felt? Already there appear to be US moves to make India the guardian of South Asia, with influence extending into South-East Asia. To this end, the US has recently approved the sale of Phalcon jets by Israel to India and is also considering allowing the sale of the Arrow-2 anti-missile system, produced by Israel in collaboration with the US.

Muslim states are not only pressured and singled out for military attack, but receive very little aid for reconstruction. It should come as no surprise that the total amount actually spent on Afghanistan is per capita less than half that given to East Timor, Rwanda or Kosovo, despite the massive bombing and destruction in Afghanistan. The Iraqis are required to pay for their own nation-building, or rather re-building.

In his recently published book, The Great Terror War, Richard Falk has pointed out that the word ‘terrorism’ was initially used to describe state aggression against civilians. This is what we have witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. To compound matters further, we are at the dawn of an era of unchecked use of force by the world’s sole superpower. But the world cannot be managed indefinitely by the use of military might. Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be policed by missiles and bombs, however ‘smart’.

The use of force might help produce circumstances or conditions conducive to a settlement. But for any settlement to take effect or to endure, it must necessarily be fair and even-handed. This surely is one lesson of history about which there can be little doubt. The ‘war to end all wars’ was brought to an end by the Treaty of Versailles, but in 20 years it was followed by the horrors of the Second World War.

There have been enough wars and enormous blood has been shed over Palestine and Kashmir in the past 50 years. Now all non-extremist elements seek peace, but if it is to come and endure, it cannot be peace at any price. And, in our present unipolar world, there can only be such a peace if the US wants it.

A new approach is required by the American administration if it is to halt the deterioration of relations with the Muslim world. Madeleine Albright, a former US secretary of state who chaired the Pew Global Attitudes survey, has rightly pointed out that “in the long run we know what happens to imperial powers”. She however expressed confidence that she did not “foresee the United States going down that path”. Let us hope the present administration shares her foresight.

The US may not want to be loved, but surely it does not want to be hated. Superpowers, like individual dictators, prefer awe to respect and love. But the awe lasts only as long as the power does, bringing hatred, and often destruction, in its wake.

THE drafting of a national budget is not the kind of exercise that a politician with ambition looks forward to. There are no ideologies that have to be promoted, no slogans to hurl at the public, no promises to be made.

Preparing a national budget in a developing country like Pakistan is often an unrewarding task — whether it involves the capricious manipulation of numbers based on some tried and tested formula, or the result of a genuine attempt to push through some programme of reform. Irrespective of the extra amount of money doled out to hitherto grossly neglected areas like education and health, incentives that carry the whiff of inducement, and slashes in the huge military budget that always appears to take precedence over everything else, there will always be the odd critic who will find fault with the document which is to see the country through the next twelve months. This year has been no exception. Though the criticism has, on the whole, been fairly mild.

How often have we heard the familiar rebuke: the budget is about figures when it should be about values ? And, the budget is about the economic consequences of imbalance, when it should be about its moral propriety ? It’s always a no-win situation for the people who produce the blueprint.

The budget for 2003-2004, which was presented by the urbane finance minister, Shaukat Aziz, has a special significance. To start with, it was presented before a National Assembly which has surfaced after a gap of four years. And the presentation was made in an atmosphere which was charged with tension, ignited by the on-going confrontation over the controversial Legal Framework Order. Fortunately, the opposition displayed a certain restraint and restricted its disapproval to desk-thumping, instead of physically disrupting the proceedings, as it has done in the past.

Shaukat Aziz must be given full marks. Exuding breezy confidence, buoyed no doubt by the recent economic recovery and the reduction in debt-servicing, he kept his composure in a difficult situation. Of course, he knew that he wasn’t the real target of the opposition’s ire. And he must have felt a certain satisfaction that a tacit agreement appears to have evolved between the government and the opposition, which, while it allows the latter to continue its protest, requires a certain parliamentary decorum being maintained. And knowing a thing or two about the low boredom threshold of parliamentarians, Mr Aziz kept his presentation to a little under 45 minutes.

In a nutshell, the main thrust of the budget was an attempt to meet the five challenges which the minister identified at the start of his speech. These are: accelerated growth designed to reduce poverty and create employment; an increased outlay on education, health and human development; exercising control over losses sustained in public sector enterprises; the development of a proper infrastructure in those areas where it is inadequate; and a further increase in investment levels with businessmen chipping in by playing a more significant role in economic development.

It was a good delivery which had the virtue of precision and brevity unvarnished by pedantry or verbiage. There were a few depressing statistics, though — like the point that out of the total resources of the government which will touch 805 billion rupees, debt servicing will take up 256 billion rupees, and defence outlay another 160 billion. Shaukat Aziz also spouted the usual platitude about not introducing any new taxes, which a cynical public knows can always resurface in various arcane and less obvious ways, like raising the cost of utilities or the introduction of a mini-budget.

He also threw in a bagful of statistics, some of which are at variance with those published by the Planning Commission and other agencies of the government. Among these is the raising of the growth figure from 4.5 per cent to 5.1 per cent, and next year’s growth projection from 5.0 per cent to 5.3 per cent. This is stirring stuff. It looks jolly good on paper and certainly gives the impression that prosperity is just around the corner and that Pakistan is heading towards a take-off point.

But, are the figures and the predictions really correct ? The collection, rationalization and presentation of statistics in this country have always been a major problem, compounded by the receipt of politically motivated instructions and the recruitment of untrained staff, In the past, governments have often published glowing statistics, especially in the area of agrarian reform, which have little or no connection with reality, only because some head of state was trying to make a point, or because some ministry was trying to obtain a loan.

How else can one explain the rather ludicrous statistic presented by the finance minister for the unemployment and under-employment which exists in Pakistan today? The ten per cent figure was obviously distilled exclusively from registered urban sources and did not take into account the thousands engaged in operating the black economy and the vast army of the rural unemployed who continue to face a bleak future.

Most people don’t really have the time to go through the plethora of facts, figures and percentages contained in the budget. But if one did, one would find a few decisions which are grossly unfair and which stick out like sore thumbs. Like the heavy reduction in the import duty of cars with 1800 c.c. engines, which one wit described as crass pandering to vital market demographics. One cannot see any logic in this, except a reaffirmation of the saying that Pakistan is a poor country with rich people. It is the rich, some of whom don’t pay any taxes at all, who buy automobiles with powerful engines. Surely they can afford to pay the old duties.

The other bad decision, looked at from the perspective of the white collar employee, who dutifully pays his dues and cannot fiddle his tax return, even if he wanted to, is to tax all allowances previously enjoyed by him. Many salaried workers are finding it increasingly difficult to make both ends meet, and this imposition will hit him hard. Naturally, he is going to view with increasing resentment the decision to give government employees an across - the - board 15 per cent salary raise, without a proper merit check, and also to increase their pensions.

That hoary chestnut — poverty alleviation — which one doesn’t come across in budgets in the western democracies, is going to receive 185 billion rupees next year, in spite of the fact that everybody in the finance ministry in Islamabad knows that poverty cannot be ‘alleviated’ unless something really drastic is done to the birth rate, and a little more attention is paid to M2 (money in circulation) as a proportion of GNP, which determines the state of the black economy in a country. The black economy, as everybody in the finance ministry also knows, provides employment, but it doesn’t contribute to the exchequer.

The additional 15 per cent, the finance minister tells us, will be in the areas of education, health, population planning, water supply, sanitation, rural development and housing. The story doing the rounds is that officials in the education, health, population planning, water supply, sanitation, rural development and housing departments are already laughing all the way to the bank They’ve never had it so good. And 2004 promises to be even better.

E-mail: a-mooraj@cyber.net.pk

“We know where [the weapons] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, north and south somewhat.”

— US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 30 March 2003

“It is...possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict.”

— Donald Rumsfeld, 27 May 2003

SURE, Don, that’s probably what happened: ‘They’re going to attack us, boys. Quick, destroy all our weapons.’ The issue of the missing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq is not going to go away, even though all the American and British leaders who hammered away on this issue before the war now just sound irritated when you bring it up.

“It’s not crucially important,” said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on 14 May, but it is. And although the political uproar over the lies and distortions that were used to manoeuvre the public into supporting the was is much greater in Britain at the moment, with allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office ‘sexed up’ the intelligence reports on Iraq and deliberately misled parliament, the furore will grow in the United States as well. Probably just in time for the presidential election campaign.

Insiders always understood that the WMD issue was a red herring. Nobody really believed that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and its alleged chemical and biological weapons, if they existed, were the sort of thing that every country with pretensions as a power has been messing around with for generations. Iraq had no way to deliver them over long ranges even if it had them, and the terrorist issue was irrelevant. There were no known ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and besides, if terrorists wanted such weapons, they could just cook them up themselves. It isn’t hard.

The WMD story was needed to scare the US public into supporting the invasion, but also to give Britain some legal cover for taking part in the war. Americans were not much concerned about the legality of invading Iraq, but it was crucial for Blair to have UN cover in order to retain the support of his own Labour Party — and the war would only be legal under United Nations rules if Iraq were violating the UN resolutions that ordered Saddam Hussein to get rid of his WMD. Indeed, the Bush administration only went to the UN at all because it needed Britain as an ally. American public opinion was very doubtful about the need for a war and needed to be shown that at least one of its traditional allies shared Mr Bush’s views.

When the Security Council, unconvinced of the urgency of attacking Iraq to ‘disarm’ it, refused to support an invasion, Blair took Britain to war alongside the United States anyway, but it left him horribly vulnerable, particularly within his own Labour Party. Over a quarter of the Labour members of parliament voted against an attack on Iraq, and as many more only backed it because of Blair’s blood-curdling accounts of Iraqi WMD “ready to launch within 45 minutes”.

So now, seven weeks after the war’s end, with no WMD found in Iraq and British intelligence sources protesting to the media about Blair’s misuse of their reports, his position has become very difficult — but his worst problem is what they are saying in Washington. Consider US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz’s cynical remarks in the forthcoming issue of ‘Vanity Fair’: “...for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.”

It makes perfect sense for the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration who cooked up the war on Iraq to admit now that it wasn’t really about WMD. Their real purpose, after all, was to scare all of America’s rivals and enemies into submission by demonstrating US military power and making it clear that no considerations of international law would stand in Washington’s way. But they are putting Blair into a dreadful corner, and storing up trouble for Bush as well.

A great many Labour MPs deeply resent having been lied to by their own party and government, and neither they nor the British press will let the matter drop. For the moment, there is much less outcry in the US, but the smarter Democrats are just biding their time. Right now questioning the wisdom of the war would still leave them open to the charge of being unpatriotic, but as Iraqi resistance and American casualties grow — five US soldiers killed and thirteen injured last week — that calculation will change.

By next winter, Mr Bush will be facing harsh questions about why it was necessary to invade Iraq. With the US economy unlikely to recover dramatically in the next year, that could spell electoral disaster unless he wraps himself in the flag again, so another war before November, 2004 and a ‘khaki election’ are not out of the question.

The likeliest target would be Syria, which could be conquered quickly and cheaply, rather than Iran or North Korea — but whichever it is, he should not expect to have Britain along next time. Tony Blair has not enough credit left. — Copyright