TALKING about rulers who seek to grab other countries and aspire to dominate the world by force of arms, Mussolini said just before his death: “they all become mad, they lose their equilibrium in the clouds, quivering ambitions and obsessions — and it is actually that mad passion which brought them to where they are”.

Today America, once the leader of the Free World and champion of the Rights of Man, is led by a president who, in the words of Mandela, “has no foresight, who cannot think properly, who is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust”.

The attack on the two Islamic states, Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which was responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, turned the war in the eyes of millions of Muslims into a clash between the United States and the Islamic world. It was at this moment that the United States which had hitherto been seen as a benevolent power, lost its political innocence in the Muslim world.

“Liberated” Iraq like “liberated” Afghanistan is slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss. All the pillars of state have collapsed resulting in lawlessness and total anarchy. Saddam is gone only to be replaced by Paul Bremer, the American overlord and viceroy, who rules as a despot and runs Iraq like an American colony deploying the methods of the British in India in the 19th century. He deals with the Iraqis as ruthlessly as the British dealt with the Dervishes at Omdurman in 1898. “We are going to fight them and impose our will on them”, Bremer declared in “liberated” Baghdad. “And we will capture or ... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country”, Bremer declared. Neither General Dyer at Amritsar nor General Westmoreland in Vietnam could have put it any clearer.

Americans have set in motion violent internecine religious and political battles in Iraq. Whether clerics should confine their activities to religious affairs or also seek a role in politics has been a matter of fierce debate among Shias for well over a century.

The old tensions within Shia Islam between two conflicting tendencies — quietism and activism — erupted in Iraq in March last in the power vacuum created by war and the collapse of the Baathist regime. The most senior religious leader, Ali Sistani, an advocate of quietism, refused to let himself and ‘marjaiyya’ be dragged into the political turmoil and found himself the target of death threats. On the other hand, the young Muqtada Al-Sadr of Najaf and Muhammad Al-Fartusi in Baghdad, issued fiery statements, inspired by the religious leader Kazim Al-Husseini Al-Hairi of Qum, calling for resistance to the American invaders and the establishment of an Islamic government in Iraq. This fierce struggle within Shia religious circles took an ominous turn on April 10 with the murder of Abdul-Majeed Al-Khoei, son of Abdal-Qasim, who had been brought to Najaf by American forces in the hope that he would collaborate and exert his influence in the city.

Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who in the past advocated an Islamic government, did a U-turn and adopted a pro-American pragmatic course when he returned to Najaf after 23 years in exile in Iran.

He was emerging as one of the most powerful of the Shia clerics collaborating with the Americans when he was killed along with 129 others in a car bomb attack outside a mosque in the holy city of Najaf on August 29. Iraqi Shias blame United States for inadequate security and failure to protect the Shia leader.

In a real sense, America now sits where Britain did in 1920. The military, political and moral dilemmas confronting Washington today differ in degree but not in kind from those that confronted Britain at the end of World War I. The capture of Baghdad on March 11, 1917 and the success of the army of Tigris raised the question of what was to be done with Mesopotamia (Greek name for Iraq).

To mark the capture of Baghdad, a proclamation was issued inviting the Arab leaders — though it was unclear who they were — to participate in the government in collaboration with British authorities.

It spoke in high-flown phrases of liberation and freedom, of past glory and future greatness under the leadership of King Hussein — a Sunni Muslim, although most of the inhabitants are Shia, and differences between Sunnis and Shias are profound and more than a thousand years old.

A Mesopotamian administration committee under the chairmanship of Lord Curzon was set up to determine what form of government should be installed in Iraq. “Before any truly Arab facade can be applied to edifice”, General Maude, Military Head of Allied Forces in Mesopotamia, warned, “it seems essential that foundation of law and order should be well and truly laid”. It was evident that either London was not aware of, or had given no thought to the population mix of the Mesopotamian provinces.

The antipathy between the minority of the Muslims who were Sunnis and the majority who were Shias, the rivalries of tribes and clans, the historic and geographic divisions of the country, made it difficult to reconcile rival interests and achieve a unified government that was at the same time representative, effective and widely supported.

The British nerves were on edge as vague rumours, constant unrest, fear of sudden attacks and repeated killings took their toll. The desert was alive with Arab raiding parties. One day the tribes suddenly rose in full revolt. A Holy war was proclaimed against Britain in the Shia Holy city of Kerbala. Arab guerrillas swept down on British outposts and massacred their defendants.

In a leading article on August 7, 1920, the Times demanded to know, “how much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want.” “What we are up against is anarchy plus fanaticism”, said Wilson, the administrator appointed by the British to rule Mesopotamia.

It is amazing how, a century later, history is repeating itself in Iraq. The ouster of Saddam has not made the world or Iraq a better place. America, the occupying power, has aroused bitter anti-American sentiments and has set in motion a violent internecine war. It is becoming increasingly obvious that America cannot handle the situation in Iraq without substantial outside help.

Paul Bremer said a few days ago, that several billion dollars would be needed to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure at a time when the federal budget deficit is at a record high. There is also mounting public concern about the number of US soldiers who are being killed and injured everyday. The misbegotten war has entered its guerrilla phase.

The bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and the killing of Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakim show that America took a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one. Instead of democracy blossoming in the desert, bloodshed and terror continue — the payoff of a policy spun from fantasies and lies. Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. It is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation.

The United States cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. How long is it going to take for America to recognize that the war it so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much more time, how much more money and how many more wasted lives is it going to take?

One thing is clear. Peace and stability will never resume as long as aggression continues and American soldiers remain on the Iraqi soil.

America should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition headed by the United Nations and get out. It has dug itself into a deep, deep hole. The least it can do in its own national interest is to follow the first rule of holes and stop digging. I am reminded in this context of one of “Rumsfeld’s rules”, the Pentagon Chief’s guide for wise public policy, “It is easy to get into something than to get out of it”.

No one believes that the Bush administration is in Iraq to democratize the country. “Democracy”, Churchill once said, “is no harlot to be picked up by a man with a Tommy gun”. There has been no democracy in Iraq since the days of Hammurabi (18th century BC). How can Bush impose it on the people of Iraq from above?

From the beginning of time, Iraq has offered humanity some of its richest civilizations. It is the land of Mesopotamia and of the Code of Hammurabi, the oldest human law. To the people of Iraq, it is baffling and somewhat ironic that their country — whose people had been renowned as the best readers in the Arab world and which produces the best intellects — should be subjected to foreign invasion in order to be civilized and modernized after having been reduced to a sub-human level by the cruel and unfair sanctions imposed on their country. Iraq has not only oil but also civilization, a rich history and a proud people who will never accept foreign occupation.

IS there a connection between us and the Indian Muslims? This is a provocative question, and yet it has received little attention. It has haunted me, and this may be as good a time as any to confront it. There are numerous affinities of religion, language, and culture between them and us, affinities that are greater than those between us and any other Muslim people. This is well understood.

The question to be addressed here is whether these affinities place upon us any special obligation towards the Indian Muslims: do we owe them anything above and beyond fellowship and good wishes? There are just as many, if not more, commonalities between the Syrians and the Iraqis but neither of them feels obligated to the other. My case in this article is going to be that, yes, we do owe the Indian Muslims something beyond goodwill, for the bonding between them and us contains a very uncommon element.

The men and women of my generation, and the one older, owe a very special debt to the corresponding generations of Indian Muslims. We would not have got a country of our own, namely Pakistan, without the exertions and sacrifices they made for our cause. Mr Jinnah’s claim, and that of the All India Muslim League, that they alone — to the exclusion of other Muslim political parties and the Congress — were entitled to speak for the Indian Muslims could not have been sustained without the support of the Muslims living in the Hindu-majority provinces.

By the time the central and provincial assembly elections rolled along in the fall of 1945 and the spring of 1946, AIML had clearly emerged as the party that stood for the division of India and the creation of Pakistan. A vote for its nominees was then to be seen as a vote for Pakistan. And they won the vast majority of assembly seats reserved for Muslims all over India (except the largely Muslim NWFP) in these elections. This victory, made possible by the “Indian” Muslims, forced the British and the Congress to bend to Mr Jinnah’s will.

Did the Muslims living in the Hindu-majority provinces vote for Pakistan because they intended to migrate to this new country? No, not really. A few, who ranked high in the AIML, may have envisioned positions of authority and power for themselves in the new state. But the generality of them had no such expectation. The partition plan was predicated on the assumption that non-Muslims in Pakistan and the Muslims in post-independence India would continue to live in their respective places. Had the Muslims in the eastern part of Punjab, for instance, known that they would be forced out of their homes, plundered, raped, and possibly killed as a result of the partition, they would likely have opposed the idea of Pakistan.

Mr Jinnah did not cover up this matter with ambiguity. In two of his speeches at Aligarh Muslim University he declared that Pakistan would be the home of those who lived in the Muslim- majority areas, and that the Muslims in the Hindu-majority provinces would remain in India. But wouldn’t the latter, he asked, give their brethren in the former areas a helping hand in their quest for independence? They themselves could not get away from the Hindu majority’s dominance, but wouldn’t they help those who could escape it?

And this is precisely what they did. They gave a helping hand, and it soon transpired that they had done so at a frightful cost to themselves. Their stance had infuriated the Hindus who, with the help from the Sikhs, slaughtered several hundred thousand of them, and drove out millions of others from their homes. Those who escaped expulsion or death were subjected to intense persecution. Their loyalty to India was dubbed as suspect, and they were projected as a pro-Pakistan “fifth column.”

More than fifty-five years after independence, they remain a humiliated and severely disadvantaged community. The fact that the current president of India is a Muslim, or that a few Muslims are ministers in the central and state governments, is neither here nor there. The much more important fact is that they are grossly under-represented in the public services, commerce, and industry, and that one will hardly find a Muslim in the higher institutes of medicine, engineering, and technology. Indian moviemakers often place Muslims in the roles of crooks, gangsters, smugglers, pimps, and prostitutes.

Pakistanis who were adults and older at the time of independence doubtless owed a huge debt to their contemporaries among Indian Muslims. We acknowledged this debt to a point inasmuch as we kept our doors open to the Muslims fleeing India for a good ten years after the main onrush of refugees during 1947-48 had been admitted. But it should be noted that these later arrivals formed only a small fraction of India’s Muslim population. This is evident from the fact that the Muslim population of India today is about as large as that of Pakistan.

One may choose to argue that the givers and receivers of help, referred to above, are dead and gone, and so are the claims and obligations arising from their actions, and that therefore the Muslims born and raised in Pakistan owe the Indian Muslims nothing. Plausible though this reasoning may be, it is not worthy or even sound. Assertions such as that the earth belongs to the living, and that the dead have no rights, are only partially true. Past, present, and future are actually a continuum, the past ruling the present in countless ways.

Even the law in most societies recognizes the rights of the dead: wills made, and terms of trusts and endowments created by persons, are binding upon the named beneficiaries after the testator’s death. But note that in the present context we are not considering obligations that are enforceable in courts of law. We are instead talking of a sense of moral responsibility that may inform a people’s conscience or psyche. There is then considerable merit in the argument that those who make public policy in Pakistan should entertain a sense of obligation to the Indian Muslims and allow it to bear upon their attitudes towards India.

In determining how best this obligation may be met, let us first ask if Indian perceptions of Pakistan’s stances have an impact upon its treatment of its Muslim citizens. It may be said that the great majority of the Hindus in India always were, and continue to be, intolerant of Muslims, and that they would have treated the latter as shabbily as they do now even if the struggle for Pakistan had never been waged and India never partitioned. One can probably come up with hard evidence to support or refute this interpretation. I do not have such evidence at hand, but my impression is that the predominantly antagonistic character of Indo-Pakistan relations has made the lot of Muslims in India worse than it might otherwise have been. It has encouraged Hindu militants to project Indian Muslims as treacherous foreign agents ready and willing to subvert the good order and security of the country they call their own.

This takes us to the dispute over the future status of Kashmir. There is no need to recapitulate what others and I have already said about ways of resolving that issue. I should, however, like to endorse a suggestion that Mr Kuldip Nayar has recently made during a conversation with Mr M.P. Bhandara (Dawn, August 10), to wit, that it would be wiser to take the factor of religion out of our discussions of the subject. I don’t know how exactly he would do it, but one way of proceeding may be to say that the Kashmiri people resent India’s forcible occupation and control of their land, and that we oppose the status quo in Kashmir because it is in effect unwanted colonial rule.

In other words, we should quit saying that Kashmir cannot remain a part of India because it is, for the most part, Muslim. For that argument lends itself to the retort that if we believe Kashmir cannot be Indian because it is Muslim, and that it should therefore be free to join Pakistan, we should be willing to take in the nearly 145 million Muslims who live in India. This we obviously cannot do. It may then be more functional to base our case primarily on our general opposition to colonialism. This approach represents a major change in our traditional position, and it will probably require a good deal of thinking and debate before it can be adopted. In the meantime a few smaller, and easier, steps may be taken. For instance, government spokesmen and the media in both countries should stop referring to each other as “the enemy” or as “our nuclear rival.” They should also tone down their declarations of resolve and ability to defeat and destroy the other side if it launches aggressive war. We, on our part, may want to discard the useless routine of asking the world powers to preserve a “balance of power” in our region. In sum we should reshape our overall posture to incorporate the current campaign for cultivating friendlier relations between our two countries. Needless to say, the Indians should do the same.

Staying with the smaller scale, I should like to recommend another move. Reference was made above to the virtual exclusion of Muslim young men and women from the places of higher learning in medicine, hard sciences, and technology in India. We may consider instituting scholarships and fellowship for Indian Muslims at each of our universities, professional schools, and institutes of technology. This may be done through some appropriate kind of an exchange programme. In order to avoid embarrassment to either side, the programme may formally be made open to disadvantaged minority persons in all of the Saarc countries. But the recruiters at our end should remain aware that its main beneficiaries are to be Indian Muslims. This would go some distance in acknowledging our debt of gratitude to them.

e-mail: ssyed@cox.net

General Pervez Musharraf has given a package (of money and schemes) to Karachi. So did every government before him. Their packages remained dud. So, perhaps, will be Musharraf’s.

The first principle of good governance and sound economy is not to implement a scheme unless it is in the approved plan and no expenditure should be incurred if it is not budgeted. Pakistan was set on the sliding road to maladministration and stagnation when development schemes (like the motorway and yellow cabs) were pulled out of the prime ministerial hat and “block” provisions in the budget were made to finance the Haj trips of his cronies and servants.

Such packages, the president’s or prime minister’s discretionary grants, allocation of funds to the ministers and parliamentarians to spend as they like are a manifestation of the breakdown of financial discipline and absence of development planning in the government on the one hand, and iniquitous distribution of resources between the federation and the provinces on the other, It also shows that the resources of some backward areas are inadequate even for their basic local needs, and even more inadequate for the centres of economic activity like Karachi for a larger and modern infrastructure to cope with the needs of the whole country.

Karachi has more than its share of all these iniquities. The effect of it is made worse by an administrative machinery which is large and lethargic but burdened with multifarious responsibilities without powers to raise the matching funds. In the city nazim vest the functions which were previously performed by the commissioner, district magistrate, director-general KDA, municipal commissioner and all the regional heads of departments put together.

But he has little of their authority and none of their experience. The present incumbent is a septuagenarian (the next one can be an octogenarian for age is no bar to an elective office) and despite his ideas and exertions cannot meet the demands on his time and ingenuity.

To boot it all, the election and devolution strategies of the regime have divided every local government against itself and pitched them all against a provincial government which is hostile and at the same time made them dependent allies of a federal government which is distant and preoccupied with politics.

The Karachi city government is headed by a former regional chief of Jamaat-i-Islami. Its arch, and secular, rival and a bigger force in Karachi, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), dominates the provincial government but has no presence in the city government. The governor, finance, home and local government ministers of the province all belong to the MQM.

A tug of war thus is built into the system that Gen. Musharraf has invented. The tussle is countrywide but it is understandably more intense in Karachi because the city’s ethnic, racial arid urban-rural divisions are sharper and the political stakes are higher. The centre gloats over the fight for crumbs falling from the federal high table.

Gen Musharraf often reprimands the ministers and legislators and reminds them to restrict themselves to the making of laws and policies and leave the administration and development to the nazims. His verdict may be pontifical but it is not practical. Politics is about power and patronage even in advanced societies. It is mare so in backward countries like Pakistan where dependence of the citizens on the government is greater. The elected officials would administer the laws (and dispense favours to their constituents) rather than enact them. Most legislation in Pakistan, in any case, is either unnecessary or made through presidential orders.

President Musharraf should look at his own example. Under the Constitution of his own making his only executive function is to appoint chiefs of the armed forces, superior court judges and some other high officials, yet he is all over the place except at the golf course where he promised he would be after transferring power to the civil authority. That urge compellingly travels down the line.

Even the Karachi Nazim, Niamatullah Khan, grumbles that though he is made responsible for law and order he is not permitted to transfer even an SHO (incharge of a police station). Like every other citizen the nazim too knows where lies the real power. The chief minister also knows it. That is why bypassing a police hierarchy of five, the chief minister himself appoints and transfers SHOs.

The packages whether constitutional or financial are deceptive and intended to divert attention from a pressing need or a disaster till the public outcry subsides. If money is available in the national kitty it should come as a matter of right to the provinces, districts or cities and not as a largesse from the president or the prime minister. The packages whether of the president or of Karachi nazim add up to 55 billion rupees. It is a fantasy.

More important than promising packages is to create conditions conducive to the provincial government and city government working together in harmony. The functions and powers should be so distributed between them which satisfies both and for which they possess the expertise and funds to handle.

To the city government, besides the traditional municipal services, should be entrusted primary education, preventive hygiene and road transport. All other functions given to them under the local government law should either revert to the provincial government or be privatized.

It is absurd for the nazim to plan for the circular, magnetic and mono rails when the city and the Sindh governments together have not been able in four years even to facilitate the introduction of urban bus service by the private sector. {About 50 or so buses seen plying in the city were allowed to be imported without duty by the federal government in which the provincial or city government had no hand, nor is it likely to be permitted again}. Punjab, meanwhile, has bus services running in all of its major cities.

It is even more absurd to plan a new city along the yet-non-existent Northern bypass or to set aside funds for a women’s university when every street of the city has potholes, sewers perennially overflow and one-half of the garbage is never lifted, it just lies there or flies around. The best contribution the nazim can make to the peace and order of the city therefore is to assuage the anguish of the people by improving the water supply, sanitation and transport and not by building city halls or model mosques or demanding control over the SHOs.

Gen Musharraf’s devolution plaza lays down a uniform structure and role for the local government. Whether it is a conurbation of Karachi’s size or a rural district with one-twentieth of the city’s population but 24 times its area the law treats them alike. The institutions and functions must be adapted to the needs and problems of each district and province. This argument was invoked, albeit, wholly unjustifiably, to preserve the cantonment boards. Keeping them out of the ambit of the local government scheme is manifestly selfish and perpetuates an anachronism.

One feature of the devolution plan which, hits all but Karachi the hardest is the wholesale transfer of powers and subjects from the province to the city while all the money stays with federal government. Neither the province nor the city can function till the money arrives from Islamabad. Sindh government on its own collects roughly not more than one-third of the money it needs to keep going; the city government even less. The rest for both has to come from Islamabad. Where is the room for a “package” in this arrangement?

The centre has parted neither with power nor with financial control. The province has lost both. The centre-district relationship tends to bypass the province. Quite naturally the districts cherish the centre but loath the province for he who pays the piper calls the tune. So long as the nazims feel like the pampered children of the federation and view the province as a bully on the block, the dual system will not work.

Most to suffer by this continuous triangular government contest and the clash of political forces are the people of Karachi. The federal government should act to restore the autonomy (whatever little they had) of the provinces and the city government should set its priorities right before the simmering anger in the chambers bursts into violence on the streets.