MMA in troubled waters

RULING on a petition by the PML(Q)’s Iftikhar Gilani, the Peshawar High Court Election Tribunal has disqualified Mufti Ibrar Sultan, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) MNA from Kohat, on the grounds that his madrassah sanad is not equivalent to the bachelor’s degree mandatory for contesting elections under Section 8-A of the Conduct of General Elections Order 2002. While the decision may be challenged in the Supreme Court, it imperils the fate of over 60 other MMA legislators whose election has also been questioned before the apex court on a similar basis.

With the MMA taking the battle to the streets, the ruling could open a Pandora’s box. For one, it could create the grounds for the disqualification of almost the entire MMA membership in parliament and the provincial assemblies. In that sense, it is clearly a warning shot for the religious alliance to fall in line or face the consequences. The MMA will now have to decide whether it wants to play ball or risk losing its parliamentary seats and much more by continuing its hardened posturing on the LFO.

But the onus is also on the federal government to resolve the crisis before it erupts into a full-blown confrontation. The signs are not encouraging in the least. That the attorney-general took sides on the issue leaves little to the imagination. Citing a 1973 National Assembly resolution to plead that madrassah sanads were only equivalent to graduation for “teaching:” purposes, the AG went so far as to castigate the University Grants Commission (UGC) for overstepping its authority. Blaming the commission leaves many questions unanswered though. The UGC could not have possibly dared to grant equivalence to sanads from religious seminaries against the wishes of the then military-led regime. When the Election Commission allowed sanad-holders to contest elections, it too could not have done so without the acqueisance of federal high-ups.

Perhaps it is pointless to take issue with the government’s top lawyer for carrying out its orders. But this latest attempt by the government to browbeat the judiciary into a favourable ruling is a reflection of a deeper problem besetting our polity — that of authoritarian manipulation of the constitutional and legal systems for a regime’s ends. Repeated interventions and long bouts of military rule have all but defaced the institutional structure of Pakistan, with the result that almost all poles of state power stand usurped by the military. No institution worth its name remains in the civilian realm.

General Musharraf’s regime too has made a unique contribution to this institutional and political sclerosis. Weeks before the elections, it bulldozed an elaborate set of ordinances with the aim of undermining the military’s two main civilian opponents, the PPP and the PML-N. The graduation condition was just one part of the game plan to consolidate the military’s political dominance. Overnight, this wholly arbitrary clause disqualified a large portion of the membership of the national and provincial assemblies dissolved after the October 1999 coup. In contrast, the military’s right-wing clients were given a clean bill since their dubious madrassah degrees were extended equivalence, no questions asked.

But that was then, this is now. Then, the clerics held much utility for the domestic agenda of the military. Since splintering the PML-N into the Q League and dissuading PPP members from remaining in the party was not enough, the intelligence services helped carve an exclusively religious alliance to split the anti-PPP, right of centre vote between the PML(Q), its allies and the MMA. This was not the first time a right-wing alliance was engineered at the military’s behest. But in all the previous alliances — the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, the Islamic Jamhoori Mahaz and the Pakistan Islamic Front — propped up for successive elections in the 1990s, the religious parties needed the support of the moderate, secular parties to stake a claim to power.

With anti-Americanism at its peak across Pakistan, reaping the potential benefits of a new united platform was nothing less than an opportunity of a lifetime for the religious parties. The hurriedly crafted alliance among a motley group of Islamist parties was partially facilitated by the awareness within the senior leadership of its component parties of the counterproductivity of competing against one another.

But even before the MMA was formed, the military-led regime made little effort to conceal its partisan stance. As the Islamists were given a free hand, political activities of the moderate opposition parties were forcefully proscribed. Consider the following.

In June 2002, several senior leaders of the PML-N were arrested by the police as they gathered to address a public rally in Rawalpindi. The First Information Report (FIR) was later amended with a section of the Anti-terrorist Act to re-arrest three PML-N members who had earlier been granted bail. Two days before the police baton-charged these leaders, a 20,000-strong rally of Islamic parties, also attended by banned extremist groups, was allowed to congregate in Lahore. As the speakers castigated the Musharraf regime for selling out to the US on Afghanistan and Kashmir, the authorities looked the other way. Similarly, when angry mobs rampaged in Quetta in the aftermath of the US bombing of Afghanistan, police officials were reportedly instructed to lay off.

The political managers of the military-led government had hoped that their engineering would ensure a hung parliament too weak to challenge the military’s control over the political system. Once in place, the logical next step was to use carrots and sticks to induct the desired kind of government. But politics hardly ever lends itself completely to manipulation. Despite the heavily rigged nature of the October 2002 elections, the PML(Q) barely managed to form a government after enlisting the support of mainly discredited turncoats from the two mainstream parties. Almost a year later, the deadlock created by this democratic half-way house is threatening to take the country down the familiar path of political instability.

The ties of mutual expediency between the establishment and the Islamist parties still remain strong. Their transcendent ideologies and the recent realignment of electoral cleavages, however, make them averse to total subservience to the establishment.

There is every likelihood that their most impressive electoral showing to date has emboldened the Islamists, particularly the JI, to achieve a semblance of autonomy from their traditional patrons. That may or may not be how the MMA actually responds to the Sword of Damocles now hanging over its head, but it will be the real test of how far it is willing to go to preserve its political interests. Taking the route of public agitation could involve a direct confrontation with the government which is what many in the MMA leadership would prefer to avoid at all costs. In any case, the alliance’s main goal is to capitalize on its newly gained electoral clout to eventually capture state power. It does not seem its intent to challenge the state’s military might.

For its part, the establishment is working overtime to drive a wedge between the component parties. Despite strong denials from senior MMA leaders, cracks within the alliance are already visible. The JUI-F would like to strike a compromise with the general in return for a free hand in the NWFP (and even Balochistan). But hardliners in the JI so far remain determined to stick it out on Musharraf’s uniform, sensing victory either way.

If he backs down (well nigh impossible right now), the MMA can claim to have snatched democracy from the jaws of the military. If the deadlock persists, and Musharraf decides to pack up the democratic facade, these hardliners feel the next elections could return them in greater strength on the double whammy of an anti-US, anti-Musharraf plank. It is too early to predict with any certainty the outcome of the ensuing tussle between the military and the MMA. But the gloves have come off on both sides. Unless one of them backs down, we could be in for a bumpy ride.

In the name of honour

NEWSPAPER readers in Karachi must be getting a little turned off by seeing the same old subjects popping up week after week: the LFO, human rights abuses in Kashmir, poor education standards, cheap transport for the masses and corruption in high places.

This writer has been guilty of having dipped his wick in at least three out of the five themes, all of which appear to be incapable of solution. Fully aware of the reader’s low boredom threshold, he would, however, crave the reader’s indulgence one more time, because there appears to be a fresh stirring in the political wind of Sindh, which might, once and for all, tackle the issue of karo-kari head on.

On July 2, the very day when honour killing claimed the lives of two people in Shikarpur and Gabar Junejo village, and a 14-year old boy in Badin, the governor of Sindh, Dr Ishratul Ibad, asked the chief secretary’s recommendations on amending the existing laws which protect karo-kari. The reason why critics believe some kind of action is forthcoming, is because the governor represents a party that is wholly committed to eradicating this savage practice.

It is not very clear if there is a need for amending the existing penal code. No law now in force recognizes honour killing as an acceptable practice to be treated with understanding and tolerance. The eminent jurists whom this writer has consulted all claim that the so-called honour killing must be treated as murder and the perpetrators tried under Section 302 of the penal code of Pakistan.

What the governor should do, instead of getting bogged down in bureaucratic gobbledygook and endless deliberations of sub-committees, is to call a conference of all the senior police officials in the province and tell them that the government is now determined to eliminate the menace of karo-kari, and that in future any policeman who looks the other way when a brother kills his sister, a father his daughter and a husband his wife, often on more of suspicion of fornication, will be immediately suspended from service and prosecuted.

The inspector-general of police is anxious to improve the unfortunate image that policemen in the interior have acquired over time. A strong rebuke by the governor will certainly strengthen the IG’s hand in the matter. The official position taken by the police in the interior is that they only act when somebody presses a charge. If the victim’s family is a partner in the crime and decides not to register a case, what can the police do?

The police may have a point, but there is evidence to suggest that when the member of a victim’s family has tried to file an FIR, as happened on two occasions in Mirpur Mathelo, he faced considerable resistance, either because the station house officer just couldn’t be bothered, or because the killers had allegedly greased his palm. The policeman’s readiness to register an FIR has often to do with the importance of the person making the request.

There is an unfortunate misconception that honour killing has the blessing of the religious orthodoxy in Pakistan. This is not quite true. The rightist Jamaat-i-Islami party, though it supports Islamic laws that human rights groups consider to be discriminatory to women, publicly declared three years ago that honour killing had nothing to do with Islam. The Muslim faith does not advocate or allow the killing of women in the name of honour. That was a categorical statement.

In fact, it is not the mullahs but the feudals and a section of the so-called ‘progressive’ political elements in the country who support honour killing. When women’s rights groups took to the streets in well organized demonstrations four years ago, after that dreadful episode which involved the gunning down of Samia Sarwar in the office of the HRCP in Lahore by a man accompanying her mother, the leader of the Awami National Party took the floor in the Senate and opposed a resolution condemning honour killing.

It is also a matter of record that when that poor unfortunate woman in Meerwalla was subjected to a four-hour gang rape by a group of hooligans on the instructions of a vindictive panchayat, the only member of the National Assembly who expressed his disgust and publicly registered his protest, was the Jamaat-i-Islami chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed.

Where were all those chameleon-like Muslim League turncoats who were returned to power on the promise of improving the lot of the people? And all those PPP liberals who wax eloquent about the rights of women and the minorities, but whose real objective is to get the president to exonerate their leader of all the charges levelled against her and to get Asif Zardari out of prison? Both groups appear to be mindful of the norms and values of a patriarchal society that believes that honour is something that is defined by men, and women who defy these standards must suffer the consequences.

The president and the top military brass are totally against this practice which, on an average, accounts for 1,100 female deaths a year. But they appear to be unable to do anything about it. Dr Ishratul Ibad has cast the first stone. If it lands on its target, he can rest assured that he has the support of the large majority of the people.

Pakistan is apparently not the only country where this barbaric, stone-age custom is practised. Allegedly, hundreds of women are killed every year on this count in Gaza, the West Bank, Turkey and other parts other parts of the Middle East. Egypt and Jordan, with their own records of dirty secrets, are also fellow travellers on the road to infamy.

And some of the cases that I came across during my research gave me the impression that Jordan was slightly ahead of other Muslim countries when it comes to sanctifying honour killing, possibly because of Article 341 of Jordanian law.

This article considers murder a legitimate act of defence when “the act of killing another or harming another is committed as an act in defence of his life, or his honour. Or somebody else’s life or honour.” The significant word in this article is ‘honour’. And as every student of law knows, the definition and interpretation of honour differs from country to country. In Sicily it usually refers to a betrayal of trust or breaking a vow of silence, and in Japan, where men are known to rip out their entrails, it is associated with failure and the disgrace that failure might bring. In Jordan it means that a woman has tarnished the family image.

There is a body of opinion in the Hashemite Kingdom that believes this law should be repealed as it is giving a bad name to a growing democracy and the most modern country in the Arab world.

As it is, the western media is always on the lookout for sensational stories which show the Muslim world in a poor light, like the story filed four years ago of a young man in a Jordanian village, who shot his sister in their drawing room.

Her crime was that she had supposedly been raped, which was, of course, her fault. CNN did considerable damage when it did a live coverage of another slain sister, showing a crowd of villagers celebrating the brutal killing of the girl as she lay dead in the street, and a brother who didn’t suffer the slightest pangs of pain.

One only hopes that Pakistan takes the lead and stamps out this barbaric custom. The eyes of the world are on this country and it would be good if the West had something nice to say about it for a change. Mr governor, keep at it. All sensible thinking men and women are behind you on this issue.

The general at Camp David

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf was granted the honour of an audience at Camp David, Maryland, with President George W. Bush who, three years ago, when asked by a reporter to name the leader of Pakistan, could not, and referred to him as ‘some guy’. This time, a better-briefed Bush hailed Musharraf as a ‘statesman’ and ‘friend of freedom’.

Gen. Musharraf was offered a conditional US three billion dollar aid package, provided: a) Congress, which hates Pakistan, approves; b) Musharraf continues to hunt Osama bin Laden, arrest Islamic militants, and support the US military occupation of Afghanistan; c) makes no trouble with India over Kashmir; d) doesn’t supply nuclear technology to North Korea.

Regarding the last item: the same Washington ‘experts’ who assured us Iraq was bristling with deadly weapons that could annihilate the US and UK ‘in 45 minutes’ now claim Pakistan aided North Korea. Pakistan denies this far-fetched claim.

In a startling public insult to a ‘friend and ally’, President Bush refused Musharraf’s request to release the by now famous F-16 fighters bought by Pakistan in 1989. Pro-Israel members of Congress blocked delivery of the aircraft to punish Pakistan for its nuclear programme. Ironically, Pakistan’s inability to acquire modern warplanes to counter India’s state-of-the art French Mirage 2000s, Russian MiG-29s, and SU-30s compelled Islamabad to rely ever more heavily on its nuclear capability to deter hostile India, whose powerful military seriously outnumbers and outguns Pakistan.

I’ve felt a certain sympathy for Gen. Musharraf, who overthrew Pakistan’s inept prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in a 1999 coup. When I interviewed Musharraf in 2000, he was truly struggling to reform Pakistan’s squalid, corrupt politics. Then came 9/11. The Bush administration put a gun to Musharraf’s head, ordering him to ditch ally Taliban, open Pakistan bases to US forces, arrest anti-American militants, and fire the capable nationalist officers — and close friends — who put him into power, generals Aziz and Mahmoud. Watching Pakistan fire these two patriots and gut ISI on orders from Washington was an ugly sight.

Obey, Washington warned Islamabad, or we will foreclose your loans, impose trade sanctions, cut off spare parts, and give India a green light to go after you. Tough Ziaul Haq would likely have stood up to American bullying. Clever Benazir Bhutto would have somehow managed to finesse or sidestep Washington’s threats. But Musharraf, his nation nearly bankrupt, and faced with what he viewed as a Hobson’s choice between obedience and ruin, caved in to Washington’s demands. Before the 9/11 attacks on the US, Washington called Musharraf a dictator and demanded a return to democracy. Only days after 9/11, the now compliant general was hailed as a ‘statesman’. There was no more mention of democracy.

One couldn’t fail to notice the contrast last week between the leaders of Pakistan and India. While Musharraf was at Camp David playing the loyal sepoy in the American Raj, India’s prime minister, Atal Vajpayee, was concluding an historic strategic agreement with rival, China. India finally agreed to fully recognize Chinese rule over Tibet in exchange for China’s acceptance of India’s rule over the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, which Delhi annexed in 1975. No mention, however, was made of Aksai Chin, the northernmost portion of divided Kashmir annexed by China.

The Indo-Chinese pact will help reduce tensions between the world’s two most populous nations — both nuclear powers — over their poorly demarcated Himalayan border, which sparked a war between them in 1962. But it will not allay Beijing’s fears the US is using India to threaten China, and secretly encouraging Israel to help India build its nuclear forces. Nor lessen the worrying nuclear arms race between the two Asian superpowers. Still, it was a major advance and an act of effective statesmanship by the old rivals.

Those who call for Tibet’s freedom will be dismayed. Without Indian support and bases, no armed Tibetan independence movement can operate. Last week’s agreement marks the end of any faint hope that Tibet might retain its national identity and avoid being totally absorbed, as have China’s other minorities, by a flood of Han Chinese immigration.

Tibet is now destined to become a theme park for foreign tourists and its former Buddhist leadership a curio from the past. I say this with a heavy heart, since His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, gave me guidance and helped inspired my book, War at the Top of the World, which deals, in part, with Tibet and the Indian-Chinese strategic rivalry. Tibet’s last chance for independence is now gone. I understand China’s historic claims to Tibet, but my heart aches for the people of Tibet and their gentle, gracious leader.

Before leaving the US, President Musharraf rightly warned Americans that terrorist attacks were largely due to smouldering political grievances around the world, and that ‘state terror’ against Muslim peoples was being ignored or abetted by America. — an obvious reference to Palestine, Chechnya, and Kashmir. Unfortunately, Bush was too busy trying to organize an international campaign against Hamas and Israel’s other Palestinian opponents to heed Musharraf’s sensible warning. This administration has obviously learned nothing since 9/11 and still refuses to accept the painful truth that misguided US foreign policies led to that attack. Or that the hamhanded, narrow-minded Bush is personally provoking anti-Americanism around the globe.

Musharraf’s pleas to Bush to help resolve the Kashmir dispute, the world’s most dangerous crisis, were ignored. ‘Take your money, go home, arrest more militants, and don’t cause trouble’, was Washington’s send-off message to the general. ‘Bring me the head of bin Laden and you’ll get up to (read the fine print on the offer) $25 million.’—Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2003

In the aftermath of Gujarat

IT was bad enough that India’s Gujarat state government did nothing to stop last year’s riots in which Hindus killed more than 1,000 Muslims. It was worse that state rulers refused to let federal police investigate or to move the trials of those accused in the killings to a state where justice might be done.

The result of the first trial stemming from the riots was as predictable as it was despicable: Twenty-one people accused of arson in a bakery fire that burned alive 11 Muslims and three Hindus were acquitted after prosecution witnesses changed their testimony.

Religious confrontations have plagued India for centuries, although the nation prides itself on being a secular state. More than 80 percent of India’s billion people are Hindu; about 12 percent are Muslim. In February 2002, Muslims in Gujarat set fire to a train carrying Hindus back from Ayodhya, a disputed religious site. Hindus retaliated by massacring Muslims. Police were late to show up and when they finally arrived did little to protect Muslims.

Nor was Narendra Modi, the state’s chief minister, any help. He later campaigned for reelection as a promoter of “Hindu-ness” and protector of Hindus against neighbouring Pakistan.

The main characteristic of the bakery arson trial was changed testimony. The organization Human Rights Watch said Hindus warned Muslim witnesses that they would be allowed to return to their homes only if they recanted. The judge who delivered the acquittals last week said the police work had been shoddy. Also, prosecutors made little effort to get witnesses to stick to their original identifications and narratives, and they failed to emphasize why witnesses backed down. India’s coalition government should move the remaining trials and protect witnesses.

The coalition’s biggest faction is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which counts Modi as a member and benefits from support from Hindu fundamentalists. Eleven years ago, Hindus tore down a mosque in Ayodhya, which they say is the birthplace of the god Ram. That touched off riots across the country. Activists are still trying to win permission to build a Hindu temple on the site.

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said last month in an interview at The Times that the Gujarat riots were an “aberration” and “indefensible”. He is a mainstay of the BJP and a favourite of Hindu fundamentalists. Advani should take the lead in pushing for fair trials for those accused of causing last year’s riots.

He also should keep the Ayodhya controversy from inflaming India again, by telling BJP members to forget building a temple or by insisting that if a temple is built, Muslims be given a new mosque nearby. The BJP also must not use the riots and Ayodhya as lures for Hindu votes when elections are held. — The Los Angeles Times

Israel: need for consensus

IN considering the question of a possible recognition of the state of Israel, one is struck by the extent of divisiveness in Pakistani politics and the absence of an institutional mechanism for evolving a national consensus on foreign policy and security issues.

While dissent and differences are an integral part of politics, any observer of the national scene would note with regret that many Pakistani political parties often pursue foreign policy positions of their own in complete disregard of official policy on regional and external issues and act independent of the Foreign Office.

Nothing demonstrated this bizarre phenomenon more tellingly than the Afghan policies which some parties pursued in defiance of Islamabad during the post-Zia period (1988-1999). While the government’s own handling of the Afghan crisis right from the Soviet invasion in 1979 to September 11, 2001, has hopped from blunder to blunder, the situation was compounded by Islamabad’s inability to rein in certain religious parties whose militias crossed the Durand Line both ways at will and demolished the political and legal sanctity of the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Today, there are sharp differences between the government and the opposition on the latter’s perceived pro-American policies. The religious parties are not only opposed to Pakistan’s close cooperation with America in its war on terror; they seem determined to reverse it for “ideological” reasons.

All states are guided by national interests in this world of realpolitik. The communist ideology and the myth of the communist movement’s monolithic unity could not make the USSR and China pursue a common foreign policy. In Pakistan, it would be a pity if anyone chooses to consider the question of Israel’s recognition in ideological terms.

This is not to deny the existence of a national consensus on certain aspects of Pakistan’s foreign policy — the need for a strong defence, including nuclear deterrence, friendship with China, and full and unstinted support to all Muslim causes, especially Palestine. This springs from the South Asian Muslims’ deep and abiding commitment to pan-Islamism. As Ameer Meenai put it so beautifully:

“Khanjar chalay kisay pay, taraptay hain ham Ameer; saaray jahan ka dard hamaray jigar main hay.”

One recalls here the aid which the Muslims of the subcontinent gave to Turkey during the Tripolitan war; the volunteers who fought alongside Ataturk’s men in Turkey’s war of independence; and the Khilafat Movement led by the Ali Brothers. While it is easy to make light of these movements now and point out their futility, one should know that the Muslims of the subcontinent took these movements and the feelings behind them seriously; that they rendered untold sacrifices in material and physical terms for these causes, and that there would have been no Pakistan if the Muslims of South Asia had not had the feeling that they were not an isolated minority but part of a larger world community with imperial traditions. In the post-independence period, the pain and anguish to which the poet referred were in plenty among the people of Pakistan with regard to such Muslim traumas as Algeria and Bosnia.

On the question of Palestine, there is perhaps no non-Arab Muslim country whose support to the Palestinian cause has been so categorical as that of Pakistan. For all practical purposes, Pakistanis consider Deir Yassin and Sabra-Chatilla to be their own tragedies.

It should be noted here that the South Asian Muslims’ pan-Islamic commitment and feelings are deeply rooted in history and by no stretch of the imagination a gift from the ulema. These feelings existed independent of the Deoband school in the undivided India; they existed when the religious parties were an insignificant factor in Pakistani politics in the fifties and sixties, and they exist now when the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal is a major actor on the national political stage.

Pan-Islamism is in the blood of South Asian Muslims because that is how they have viewed the history of Hindu-Muslim conflict in pre-partition India and that is how they would like to see Pakistan project its foreign policy — a vain hope perhaps in this world of American unilateralism. What is amazing, however, is that the Pakistani people’s pan-Islamic zeal has remained unimpaired, even though their sense of solidarity and identity with other Muslim, especially Arab, peoples has not always been reciprocated.

In the case of Israel, the Pakistani nation seems not to have noted that two Arab countries (Egypt and Jordan) have full diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv (in addition to the recognition which most Central Asian and non-Arab African states have accorded Israel).

The other day, the foreign office spokesman said that a Pakistani recognition of Israel had to come sooner or later, that Pakistan would remain in touch with other Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, on this question and that Islamabad would not recognize Israel until Tel Aviv had withdrawn from the occupied territories and an independent Palestinian state had emerged.

The big question is: will such a recognition be of any value in terms of advancing Pakistan’s national interests? Such a recognition will merely be a formality, Pakistan being just one of the many countries whose ambassadors will queue up to present their credentials to the Israeli head of state. Recognition then would mean bowing to a reality.

The real issue is whether it is in Islamabad’s interest to recognize Israel at this stage. Further will a recognition advance Pakistan’s national interests substantially if Islamabad does so now, particularly because Israel knows what position Pakistan, the Muslim world’s only nuclear power, occupies in the Islamic world? For a better understanding see the Israeli foreign minister’s recent statement in this regard.

Pakistan is in utter mess politically and economically. In such a scenario, recognition coming from a military-dominated government will be a disaster. The government does not have its feet on the ground, and there is no party, individual or institution that is non-controversial and commands the people’s respect. The present partly-military, partly-civilian set-up is least qualified to make a decision whose consequences can be very disruptive and far-reaching.

What is needed is a consensus, and it cannot emerge from an exercise in PR — like the kind of meetings which the president and the prime minister routinely have with opposition leaders and “editors and senior journalists” with plenty of smiles and handshakes thrown in for TV’s benefit. Such large assemblages serve no purpose (We know, for instance, that similar PR exercises were undertaken after 9/11 to develop a consensus on America’s war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But consensus was the one thing that eluded the nation as the ulema-led agitation and violence rocked the country.)

The need of the hour is behind-the-scenes consultations between the government on the one hand and, at best, half a dozen party heads on the other to examine the issue, consider the merits and demerits of recognition of Israel at this stage and adopt a unanimous position.

The recognition issue is at best an option to consider and a powder keg to worry about. At the same time, the ulema need to show to the people of Pakistan that they are capable of cool-headed and objective thinking and that agitation is not the only trade they are good at. More important, they should be seen to have renounced their reservations about the “Pakistan first” approach President Musharraf claims his government has followed since 9/11.

Mobile madness

Cellular telephone companies in the US have done their best to delay a 1996 congressional order that they let customers in the nation’s 100 largest markets keep their cell phone numbers if they switch providers.

One-third of cell phone customers say they would jump ship immediately if not for the hassle of getting a new phone number, so the companies have employed every lawyerly trick to delay complying with successive Federal Communications Commission orders to enforce portability. Now, finally, the dam has cracked if not broken.

Verizon Wireless last week announced it would start to make portable numbers available in November, but Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless and other competitors continue to pound away at the same tired excuses — the technology is too costly and consumers really don’t want portability. Consumers don’t want portability? Sure, just as the Colonial revolutionaries didn’t want to get rid of King George III. At least Verizon’s decision is backing other companies into an uncomfortable corner.

Verizon, which controls almost 25 percent of the national market, will reap an advertising bonanza as it trumpets its compliance with the FCC’s latest deadline, Nov. 24. It won’t hurt that Verizon already has the highest customer satisfaction ratings and is thus likely to lose fewer customers than other providers. Industry experts are divided on whether the laggards will voluntarily follow Verizon, but if regulators hold fast to the Nov. 24 deadline they’ll have no choice.— The Washington Post