Fatima Jinnah: quest for democracy

DURING the 1950s and the 1960s the one figure that had carved for itself an enduring place in our national history was Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, the Quaid’s sister. What she stood and worked for, and what she accomplished, constitute a part of our national heritage.

It beckons us to the pristine principles that had impelled the demand for Pakistan, inspired the strivings and sacrifices in its quest, and enabled the beleaguered nation to establish it, despite heavy odds. Indeed, the values that Fatima Jinnah exemplified in her lifetime are still relevant to us.

They are relevant because in those decades, she stood as the symbol as well as the foremost advocate of the cherished principles which the Quaid had stood and fought and died for. And by them she, in turn, had herself stood with courage and determination till her rather tragic end, whatever the circumstances, whatever the costs and whatever the consequences.

Perhaps none was able to so succinctly sum up this ennobling aspect of her life as did Malik Jilani in his tribute on her demise. In his words, “she had her hour of loneliness, her hour of despair and her long hour of distress and yet her courage never failed her. Her voice never faltered. Her spirit was never overtaken by weariness. She had the strength of those who lived for great principles, silent endurance of those whom the world needs.”

Her steadfast adherence to principles, her courage of conviction, her strength of character, her indomitable spirit and her incredible powers of endurance — these qualities, though they must should have been latent in her for a long while, came to public notice only after Jinna’s death when she assumed a more active role in the country’s affairs.

Till then, she was content to live in the shadow of her illustrious brother, unassuming, somewhat cloistered except when she accompanied him, and working behind the scene, nursing and tending him when he was sick, looking after his comforts, and sustaining him during his onerous struggle for Pakistan. Not surprisingly, this role earned for her public acclamation from Jinnah himself. “Miss Fatima Jinnah is a constant source of help and encouragement to me. In the days when I was expecting to be taken as a prisoner by the British government, it was my sister who encouraged me, and said hopeful things when a revolution was staring me in the face. My sister was like a bright ray of light and hope whenever I came home and met her”, Jinnah, who otherwise seldom gave public expression to his private feelings, told the guests at the first official dinner, hosted by Ghulam Husain Hidayatullah, premier and governor-designate of Sindh, at the Karachi Club, on August 9, 1947.

Initially, Fatima Jinnah’s public role was confined to a few appearances at various functions, mostly related to education, health, women’s upliftment, Girls’ Guides (of which she was the founder), women’s community work and industrial homes, other social welfare activities, and students’ welfare and messages on important occasions. On September 11, 1951, her broadcast was tampered with by the radio authorities, with the microphones going silent for a few minutes when she was a little critical of the drift and indecision that had characterized the then government policies. At that time, Liaquat Ali Khan was the prime minister and Khwaja Nazimuddin the governor-general.

She was obviously chagrined, and so was the nation. Her riposte was characteristic of her: she decided never again to use the government-controlled medium. Henceforth, her views were generally expressed through her press statements and messages on six important occasions during the year: two Eids, Independence Day and Pakistan Day and the Quaid’s birth and death anniversaries. The nation looked forward to her statements and messages. Clearly, they were often critical of the power that be. Her minatory role which often brought her into clash with the powers that be, was widely appreciated.

Donning the role of a warner and guide was by no means an easy task. But for this critical role she was eminently suited and she played it out with courage and conviction. This was made possible for her by her strength of mind and character and her steadfast attachment to the lofty principles she had imbibed from her distinguished brother. If the people listened and responded to her, it was not primarily because she was the Quaid’s sister, but because, amidst the wreckage of ideals all around, she alone represented certain ideals and values which they cherished themselves and which hundreds of thousands of them had staked their lives for in the years gone by.

Equally important, in moments of despair, her voice rose, above the din of noise official rhetoric and rosy pledges, to lift the drooping spirit of the general populace. While striking terror in the seats of unholy power, it instilled courage in the hearts of the frustrated masses, confirming them in their democratic quest and enkindling hope about the ultimate triumph of their democratic destiny. It was thus that Fatima Jinnah came to represent the hopes and aspirations of the people.

Her minatory role and political activism finally climaxed in her entry into active politics when she accepted the Combined Opposition Parties’ nomination on September 16, 1964, in the ensuing presidential elections. For now, she had decided to take on Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, despite his being a formidable candidate and an entrenched president under his own system. Though seemingly unexpected, this decision was in consonance with her previous role and her mettle.

As she had promised while accepting the nomination, Fatima Jinnah spared nothing. She was on the campaign trail for three long months. She was in processions for hours on end. She subjected herself to the exacting rigours of addressing mammoth meetings in cities and towns, wayside gatherings on her whistle stop tours, and milling crowds at railway stations during her long train journeys, in both East and West Pakistan. She travelled endlessly. The Green Arrow, East Pakistan’s fastest express train, which carried her from Dhaka to Chittagong, took more than 28 hours to cover 196 miles of the journey, normally covered in just about seven hours.

And all the time Miss Jinnah was up, responding to the demonstrations of support from the surging crowds at stations, big and small. Indeed, the inexhaustible energy, stamina and determination she displayed during the hectic election campaign surprised almost everyone, friend and foe alike. All through the campaign, her message was loud and clear: she was struggling to restore to the people their right to choose their rulers directly and in free and fair elections.

Thus, she stood apart as a towering figure, feeling the pulse of the people, articulating their hopes and aspirations, and reflecting their sense of disconsolation that had disfigured Pakistan’s political landscape during the 1960s.

Equally important was the fact that but for her candidature that first presidential elections in Pakistan would not have assumed the significance they did, nor the campaign conducted on a national level. Indeed, it is to Miss Jinnah’s eternal credit that she never let the campaign degenerate into a cacophonic raving of parochial, provincial and petty issues as it usually happens in multi-racial, multi-lingual, politically fragmented and economically disparate societies, and as it did in the 1970 fateful general elections. Indeed, her candidature had helped forge an integrated East-West opposition plank, despite the simmering secessionist tendencies in East Pakistan. Thus, as against President Ayub’s repeated claim, Miss Jinnah’s candidature had helped the cause of national integration rather than disintegration.

Fatima Jinnah “lost” the ‘managed’ election, of course. But it is also a measure of her popularity that despite the serious disabilities and built-in handicaps under which she conducted her campaign and fought the elections under her opponent’s system, she could still muster up 28,691 (36.4 per cent) votes of the Basic Democrats, and carry three out of sixteen divisions — Karachi, Dhaka and Chittagong — and that against a well-entrenched president and in a system geared to the vested interests of the incumbent.

Thus, even in her “defeat” she brought home a basic lesion to the powers that be. She demonstrated that the country wanted to engage in critical debate and discussion rather than subscribe to the cult of docile conformism, that without such a dialogue and the requisite climate for various ideas to compete for people’s allegiance, democracy would be utterly meaningless. Indeed during the 1960s she alone helped keep the torch of democracy aflame; she alone helped sustain the nation’s quest for democracy.

In a historical perspective, the presidential elections represented the middle-point in Ayub’s much-trumpeted “development decade”; the beginning of the end. For the first time and on a national plane, the elections exposed the absurdity of the premises of the system, and its shortcomings, as well as the tall claims of its architect. Once this occurred, Ayub, despite his electoral “victory”, could not legitimize his own constitution, nor his regime. The moral ground having been prepared and the nation’s conscience aroused, it was only a matter of time before the regime and its high priest were swept aside.

The values that Miss Fatima Jinnah exemplified in her life time are still relevant to us. While they provide a source of inspiration to us in our present predicament, her life provides a role model for us.

The writer was founder-director of Quaid-i-Azam Academy, and is a well known author.

Political stability & economy

SUSTAINED economic progress is not possible in Pakistan with its diverse challenges without political stability based on consent of the people and the backing of major political parties.

Political instability breeds economic uncertainty, and thwarts a sense of direction where difficult choices have to be made. And the billions of dollars we are borrowing from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, etc., for various major reforms, like the CBR reforms, judicial and police reforms, bureaucratic reforms etc will do go down the drain, while adding to our debt burden, which is already heavy. Ultimately the decaying system can come to a standstill and then collapse, more like the Dominoes. We had already a foretaste of that in 1971 when following the acute civil-military discord we lost East Pakistan.

All these institutions we are trying to reform at a heavy cost are inter-dependent. Success of one depends on the efficacy of another as in the Domino theory. And failure of one may lead to the collapse of others. That is what we saw last week at the Sialkot jail when three of the ten judges, who went visiting the jail, were killed along with five prisoners. Hasty official action resulted in so many deaths.

All that has made the Congressional Research service in the US come up with a Long Term Economic Outlook for Pakistan and pronounce that as “bleak” in view of the varied uncertainties — political, diplomatic, economic and Human Development. It begins with Pakistan’s poor national savings rate of 15 to 20 per cent, while 2.4 per cent more persons are entering the job market every year and finding too few jobs.

It talks of the external debt of 53 per cent GDP while the long term economic prospects are clouded by the conflict with India in the short run. And while it talks of the remarkable improvements in its external indicators and the resistance of the textile industry, it refers to its declining economic growth, linked in part “to the turbulent domestic and regional political environment.” President Bush may appreciate the strong support of President Musharraf in his campaign against terror but the Congressional research service has a non-political and non-personal approach to the problems of Pakistan.

Of course, our external indicators are very comfortable and are getting better. The foreign exchange reserves will be 11 billion dollars by the end of the month, while the home remittances have risen to 4.5 billion dollars. The current account shows a balance of payments surplus of 4.5 billion, while our balance of trade is steadily improving. And the Karachi Exchange index is doing exceedingly well and sets up one record after another every week.

But the domestic economic situation is far from satisfactory. In fact, the critical Human Development Index on a global scale has gone down to 144 from 138, showing how little we are spending on education, public health and environmental protection.

For want of investment the jobs are fewer and young men are committing suicide while others are taking to crimes. A large number of women are victims of unemployed husbands or fathers. And the grossly understated crimes figures for the first six months of this year in the city have gone up by 6.5 per cent against the figures for the same period last year. The average of the crimes committed comes to only 10.5 per day, which is a low figure which means the people do not report the crimes.

Finance minister Shaukat Aziz says the textile magnates have invested over a billion dollars in the renovation and expansion of their industry and yet not enough number of jobs have been created, while 4 billion new job seekers are entering the job market annually. Clearly, more jobs are needed in their rural and urban areas but since domestic investment is small, foreign investment is not large enough. And the reasons are political, economic, social, etc.

The foreign minister has done well to hold a four-day seminar on “The Global Economic Challenges — The role of the foreign office” to which senior ambassadors have been invited along with Pakistani businessmen. The ambassadors had plenty to tell the government to improve the state of affairs at home and to correct policies. They can mirror the feelings in the countries they represent in respect of developments in Pakistan and make the government wiser and less cocksure of itself.

At the seminar foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar and others spoke at length on India-Pakistan relations. India figured conspicuously in the discussions, Mr Khokhar said that India had a billion consumers, but also had a very restrictive import regime which reduced the quantum of imports into India. Mr Munir Akram, who represents Pakistan in the UN, said trading with India on a normal scale will become inevitable when the WTO regulations become fully operational.

The central issue is whether trade with India should be approached on a political basis or on an economic basis and in the global context in this age of globalization? The relations with India, as with other countries, have to be based on reciprocity and Pakistani businessmen will not buy or sell anything from India, or to India, unless that is profitable for them. India too knows that very well. So reciprocity should become the touchstone of our economic relations with India instead of political pre-determinism.

The fact is as President Musharraf himself had earlier said, there is no getting away from India. It is a large and difficult neighbour. in our relations with India it has to be approached that way. And dealt with heftily, while it remains a very tough bargainer.

Our ambassadors and diplomats, particularly in major countries, are to become economic envoys, and very active ones at that. The developed countries had assigned such a role to the ambassadors ten to twenty years ago.

But our ambassadors had a large political role to play, particularly in respect fo promoting the cause of Kashmir and counter-acting Indian efforts in that regard. But now their focus will shift towards an economic role, like attracting investment, foreign assistance, acquiring new technological know-how for the country etc. To enable them do that well large funds will have to be placed at their disposal and they should be made to spend the funds for that purpose and well.

When they raise the issue of foreign investment they will be asked a number of political questions as well, including why the government has not been able to settle down nine months after the general elections. They will be asked about the emergence of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal as a result of the unity of orthodox elements and its spreading tentacles because of popular support in some less developed areas.

Pakistan was expected to play a large role in Afghanistan’s reconstruction programme. But that role looks to be in decline. Now it is India and Iran which are in the forefront and playing a big role in the reconstruction. Pakistan has lost, to begin with, a 25 million dollar contract for road-building there. Our relations with Iran become strained on occasions, particularly when there are attacks on Shias and many get killed, as in Quetta recently. There is real economic rivalry between Pakistan and Iran in Afghanistan, with India siding with Iran.

And while we seek greater economic cooperation with Central Asian states in the name of Islam, the Central Asians are wary of the new unity of the fundamentalist elements in Pakistan and their growing activism, as wanting Shariat system in the Frontier province and Balochistan.

We may claim law and order is good in Pakistan or as good as in any other country. But in recent weeks alone, the killing of 46 persons at an Imambargah in Quetta made headlines around the world, and that was the lead-story of Financial times, the investors newspaper.

The killing of three judges and five prisoners in Sialkot last week also made world headlines, highlighting how unpredictable is violence in Pakistan and the rank of the person who could be its victims. The Sui gas main pipelines carrying gas upcountry continue to be attacked from time to time in spite of the presence of over 6,000 Rangers and other members of the law enforcing agencies to protect them. Last Sunday two rockets were fired. Such attacks have been continuing over a period of time and hardly any one gets punished. How safe Gwadar Port will be after it gets completed next year and how protected will be the goods passing from there to Central Asia or coming there from Central Asia, remains a question because of the uncertainty in the region.

In this context some people argue there is nothing wrong with Pakistan. It is no better and no worse than many a successful country. What is wrong is the way it is being presented, marketed or sold abroad. Some professional public relations experts and marketeers assert that what Pakistan needs is smart marketing, throwing light on its strong points, particularly its new external economic achievements and sideline its weaknesses or failings.

Smart marketing can pay dividend for a short time, not always. In this globalized world Pakistan is subject to global exposure. Quite often when an adverse development takes place in the country Pakistanis and foreign investors here ring back to know what is happening. They come to know of the happening first before the Pakistanis do.

For a hundred dollars or less one can get all the information about Pakistan or any other country. In such a context, the product has to be good and its virtues have to be enduring.

We are instead making too many negative headlines, and a half of them come from unexpected quarters. We have hence to put our house in order, beginning with the political system, before blaming the world for misunderstanding us or India for misrepresenting us abroad.

The $30 million hit

THE United States government will almost certainly pay out $30 million to the person who fingered Saddam Hussein’s two sons for death. Is it getting its money’s worth?

Paul Bremer, the US diplomat who effectively rules Iraq, declared that the American action satisfied “the real desires of the Iraqi people to be rid once and for all of Saddam, his sons and his odious regime.” Dozens of coalition briefers and spinners hammered home the message that Uday and Qusay’s deaths will dishearten the ‘regime remnants’ whom they blame for the growing guerilla resistance to the American occupation.

The number of American soldiers killed by Iraqi guerillas since President George W. Bush announced the end of ‘major combat operations’ on 1 May is now over a third of the total killed in the war itself. It would exceed that total before the end of this year even at the current loss rate, but in fact the rate is going up steadily: US forces rarely report attacks unless American soldiers are actually killed or injured, but there are now over a dozen incidents a day.

It would be nice for the occupiers if just killing off Saddam’s bloodline — and eventually the monster himself — would end the resistance, but it is deeply unlikely. Nobody really liked Saddam Hussein, not even his fellow Baathists. Like Stalin and the Russian Communists, Saddam seized control of a party that contained many genuine idealists, killed quite a lot of them, and turned the Baath Party into a mere instrument of his own personal power. But there are still plenty of Arab nationalists left in Iraq, and quite a few religious zealots too. None of them likes being occupied by Americans.

Consider the American soldier who died in an attack on a US convoy passing through Khan Dari only hours after the deaths of Saddam’s sons in Mosul. The bomb that killed him was buried in the median divider of the highway running through Khan Dari and detonated by remote control. The highway is lined by shops and soft-drink stands and overlooked by hundreds of people day and night. Many presumably saw the guerillas dig up the median, bury the bomb and retire to wait for an American convoy, but nobody betrayed them. Reporters who arrived at the scene after the explosion said most of the onlookers were pleased by the soldier’s death.

Khan Dari is within the ‘Sunni triangle’ north and west from Baghdad that benefited greatly under Baathist rule. It was the birthplace of the first Iraqi rebel to kill a British officer in 1920 in an earlier uprising against a foreign occupation, and it is only five miles (8 km.) from Fallujah, where US troops killed 16 demonstrators in the early days of the occupation. It is not, in other words, a typical Iraqi town. But it is not nearly as untypical as the coalition’s leaders hope and claim, and it is highly improbable that Uday and Qusay’s deaths, or even Saddam’s own, would damp down the resistance.

Indeed, proving that the old regime is gone for good by killing Saddam and his family might even stiffen the resistance, as it would simplify the choices of many people in Iraq who hate the occupation but fear Saddam’s return. Besides, it is doubtful whether the secular nationalists of the Baath still dominate the resistance even now: there are indications that many of the current guerilla attacks are coming from formerly repressed Sunni Islamist groups that have been freed to act by Saddam’s fall.

It is a great irony that these are precisely the groups in Iraq that would be most likely to make common cause with America’s great enemy, al-Qaeda, but they are not the greatest threat to the US position in Iraq. The current guerilla war is a bearable burden; what would turn it into a nightmare for the United States is a decision by some major element of Iraq’s Shia majority to begin open resistance to the occupation forces as well.

Given the successful precedent of the Shia-led revolution against the Shah in Iran, there is a good chance that Shia resistance in Iraq would be mainly non-violent. It could nevertheless be very effective, provoking coalition soldiers into using force against unarmed civilians and closing the roads that carry supplies from the Gulf ports to the occupation troops in central and northern Iraq. Killing Saddam wouldn’t do a single thing to shrink this possibility.

The only thing that will shrink it is handing Iraq over to its Shia majority, but the Bush administration is loth to do that for two reasons. One is the strong sympathy that exists between the Shias of Iraq and of Iran, which Washington perceives as its greatest enemy in the region. The other is the near-certainty that handing power to the Shia would ignite a kind of civil war between the Sunni Arabs of the centre and the Shia Arabs of the south. On the other hand, a Sunni-Shia conflict would at least divert the efforts of the Sunni guerillas who are currently plaguing the occupation forces. Divide and rule is still a good imperial principle.

There was no real American plan on the way into this mess, and there still isn’t one now. But there had better be one pretty soon, or Mr Bush’s cheap ‘victory’ is going to look pretty Pyrrhic. —Copyright

Little respect for the dead

THERE are some — especially in the White House — who see last week’s gun battle at Mosul as a sign that things in ‘post-war’ Iraq are finally turning America’s way. Uday and Qusay Hussein, two of the aces in the famous pack of cards, have been killed. Their death is another big nail in the coffin of the Saddam regime, a further ray of hope for a peaceful and prosperous Iraq. Look beyond the White House spin, however, and serious questions arise about the killings and their likely impact.

On July 22 the house in which Uday and Qusay Hussein were hiding was surrounded and attacked by around 200 US troops. The ensuing gun battle left the brothers, along with Qusay’s 14-year old son Mustapha and a guard, dead. The bodies were subsequently confirmed to be those of Uday and Qusay. It was also revealed that the brothers’ whereabouts had been ‘sold’ to the Americans by their host, in return for the $15 million reward on each head.

These are the bare facts about the death of Saddam’s hated sons. There is absolutely nothing to mourn in their passing away. Uday was a sadistic psychopath: Qusay a less flamboyant but equally ‘productive’ killing machine. Between them they were responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths. They deserved to die.

But did the Iraqi people deserve the manner in which they were killed? From the Americans’ account of the gun battle in Mosul, it appears that a minimal (virtually non-existent) effort was made to persuade the brothers to surrender. Given that the four individuals — surrounded by the US troops — could really have inflicted harm only on themselves, would it not have been better to besiege the house and secure their capture? ‘Better’ here refers not so much to the information they could have yielded, as to justice and democracy.

A public trial of Uday and Qusay, conducted in Iraq by the Iraqis, would have allowed the Iraqi people to bear witness against the brothers. It would have exposed the many brutalities of the Saddam era. It would have proved beyond doubt that the brothers no longer ran Iraq. Most of all, a trial ending in guilty verdicts and executions would have shown justice being done.

Justice is a rare commodity in post-Saddam Iraq. How many of the former regime’s leading figures have been captured, convicted and punished for their part in its brutality? One could argue that it is too early for such reckoning. But how much effort is being made to investigate and chronicle the human rights abuses committed under Saddam? Mass graves are being discovered across the country, only to be trampled underfoot by desperate relatives looking for their loved ones. Vital evidence that could be used in trials is destroyed or removed.

The occupying powers do nothing to prevent this destruction. The US (and Britain) have shirked their responsibility to deliver justice in the same way as they shirk providing security and humanitarian relief. Opting to kill the Hussein brothers instead of putting them on trial was part of this evasion — very convenient for America, but a denial of justice for the Iraqi people.

Having rendered a trial and execution impossible, Washington then proceeded to convince the Iraqi people that it had indeed killed Saddam’s sons. First came the verbal statements. Then the promise that photographs would be shown. Then the actual bloody images of Uday and Qusay after their encounter with the Americans (note, though, no pictures of 14-year old Mustapha). Then, finally, Uday and Qusay skilfully reconstructed by American morticians to look more like they did in Saddam’s heyday. This reconstruction entailed (among other things) shaving the men’s beards, repairing a huge gash in Uday’s face, opening his leg to reveal a metal plate from an old wound and applying liberal amounts of make-up — with the climax of a photo shoot before the world’s media.

There is something deeply repugnant about the way the US has treated the bodies of Uday and Qusay. The norms of ‘civilised’ warfare dictate that the enemy’s dead be handled with respect and returned to their companions for burial. This is a universal rule, applicable to all enemy dead no matter how horrific their actions when alive. Washington has violated this rule. Its treatment of the corpses of Uday and Qusay harks back to a medieval era when enemy heads were stuck on poles and left at city gates for all to see.

The Bush administration repeatedly fails to grasp that, in this day and age, ‘means’ matter as much (if not more) than ‘ends’. By ditching civilised norms whenever they get in its way, Washington demeans itself. It loses the moral high ground (what little it has left) and thereby renders any ‘victory’ it is able to secure a hollow one.

Watching the world’s sole superpower stoop to such depths was never going to be a pleasant sight. What makes it infinitely worse is the hypocrisy that accompanies it. It is barely a couple of months since the White House was bitterly attacking Al-Jazeera for showing the bodies of dead US soldiers. That footage (far less graphic than that of the Husseins) was condemned as a violation of civilised behaviour, an affront to the dead and their families. Before that, the US government condemned Iraq for showing American POWs on Iraqi TV.

Public display that was so wrong when the subjects were American suddenly becomes OK when the subjects are ‘monstrous’ Iraqis. [Indeed, one of the arguments put forward to justify showing the Hussein corpses was that eastern/Arab audiences are more tolerant of such images than western ones.] Washington might be comfortable with this blatant double standard, but the rest of the world — especially the Muslim world — has serious problems with it.

The American justification is that it was necessary to convince the Iraqis that Saddam Hussein’s sons really are dead and thereby remove fears that he could return to power. According to Washington, which holds elements of the old regime responsible for the growing number of attacks on its forces, proof of the Husseins’ death will cause those attacks to die down and thus save American lives.

Seldom can there have been a justification more divorced from reality. Even if one overlooks the question of why Iraqis might not trust America [could it be because of the many broken promises they have already witnessed?] the notion that Saddam Hussein or his sons’ death will remove Iraqi opposition to the US presence is totally misguided.

Saddam Hussein (whatever his audio releases say) is too busy saving his skin to organize a resistance movement. Even if he could, who would support him? The vast majority of Iraqis are glad to be rid of their brutal dictator. What they are not glad about — and what they are protesting against — is American occupation of their land and the failure to address their very pressing problems. It is angry elements within an overall disaffected Iraqi population who are killing American soldiers — not an organized movement. Proving the death of Saddam or his sons will not eradicate that anger, and thus will not save American lives.

This is already apparent. Since the Mosul assault a handful of Americans have been killed, on an average, everyday. The US death toll has thus risen since the brothers’ death and public display — not abated. And it is only a matter of time before another negative consequence appears: Iraqis parading American dead through the streets or Arab newspapers printing graphic images of their bodies. Washington will have only itself to thank when this happens.

The question of trust needs further elaboration. There are many people (not just in the Muslim world) who do not trust the word of the American government. Just look at the way the Jessica Lynch ‘rescue’ was conjured up to understand why. Diehard sceptics who do not believe Washington’s verbal statement that the Hussein brothers have been killed will also disbelieve its photos. In short, the US has abandoned yet another sacrosanct principle — respect for the enemy’s war dead — for nothing.

Dissent on detention

UNTIL the war on terrorism began and the military brought to American shores a man named Yaser Esam Hamdi, Americans had no cause to worry about their government locking them up without charge. It was thought that sort of thing doesn’t happen here; people can’t be held without access to lawyers, and those arrested have access to the courts.

But Hamdi, the government claimed, was not like other Americans; he was an “enemy combatant.” Allegedly captured with a Taliban unit in Afghanistan, he was brought to a Navy brig in Virginia — where he has been held incommunicado ever since — after military interrogators learned that the Louisiana-born Saudi was probably an American citizen.

Since his arrival, Hamdi has not been charged and has not seen a lawyer or his family. Earlier this year a federal appeals court panel in Richmond declared all of this legal. The panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that the military owes the courts no more justification for the indefinite detention of an American than a two-page affidavit by a Pentagon official. The president can, with a sweep of the pen, designate individuals as beyond the protection of the Bill of Rights.

Last week, the full 4th Circuit Court, by an 8 to 4 vote, declined to reconsider the panel’s ruling. This is no particular surprise; few were expecting it to do so. What was surprising was the vigour of the dissents, which came from an ideologically eclectic group of the court’s judges, unified less by their sense of how the case should be resolved than by a laudable insistence on acknowledging the true stakes for liberty that it presents.

Hamdi likely is the enemy fighter the government alleges him to be. And we do not claim — as some civil libertarians do — that the government may never hold an American citizen as an enemy combatant. But the question is whether the courts have any meaningful role in overseeing such designations and what, if any, right the accused has to object to a designation. The panel held that Hamdi has no right to respond to the government’s claims, because it is “undisputed that he was captured in a zone of active combat operations abroad.” Because of Hamdi’s purported concession of that fact, the court simply signed off on the detention.

Yet the use of the word “undisputed” is sleight of hand — as Judges Michael Luttig and Diana Gribbon Motz both pointed out in separate dissents. Luttig wrote that “those circumstances are neither conceded in fact nor susceptible to concession in law, because Hamdi has not been permitted to speak for himself or even through counsel.” And Motz warned additionally that under the panel’s ruling, “any of the ‘embedded’ American journalists covering the war in Iraq or any member of a humanitarian organization working in Afghanistan could be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with a crime or provided access to counsel if the Executive designated that person an ‘enemy combatant.”’—The Washington Post