UNITED NATIONS: The United States is facing the bleak prospect of getting a new UN-mandated multinational peacekeeping force for Iraq — minus troops to support its soldiers occupying that country.

With France announcing it will not veto Washington’s proposed UN resolution for the force, the administration of President George W. Bush is trying to muster troops it desperately needs to stabilise a war-devastated Iraq that appears headed towards political and military chaos.

“But what good is the resolution,” asks an Asian diplomat, “if the United States fails to get what it wants — troops and funds for the reconstruction of Iraq.”

The proposed resolution, which is expected to go before the Security Council in early October, seeks not only troops from US friends and allies around the world but also billions of dollars in western aid for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The United States is expected to receive the nine votes it needs to see the resolution pass in the 15-member Security Council, with no vetoes from any of the remaining four permanent members: France, Britain, China and Russia.

US President George W. Bush has been meeting with several heads of state — including French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee — who are in New York for the annual General Assembly sessions.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is doing his rounds too, meeting visiting foreign ministers, including those from Nicaragua, Turkey, South Korea and Nepal.

The proposed UN-mandated force of 30,000-40,000 soldiers is expected to relieve pressure on the besieged 140,000-strong US military force in Iraq, whose troops are dying from guerrilla- style attacks at an average of about one per day.

Immediately after his meeting with Bush on Wednesday, Musharraf told reporters that he needs to see the “final shape” of the US resolution before he decides to respond to Washington’s request for 10,000-12,000 Pakistani troops.

“We have international obligations and we have domestic constraints,” he said. “President Bush absolutely understands this.”

“The domestic environment in Pakistan is totally opposed to sending troops to Iraq,” added Musharraf.

President Musharraf said that his decision on sending troops will depend primarily on two factors: whether the resolution will also call on Muslim nations to send troops to Iraq, and whether the Iraq people want a multinational force.

“We cannot be seen as being an extension of the military occupation of Iraq,” Musharraf added.

The Bush administration has already pledged about three billion dollars in new economic and military aid to Pakistan over the next five years. But the disbursement of funds is dependent on how Pakistan cooperates with the United States in its global ‘war on terrorism’.

The provision of troops to the proposed UN force might be an added condition, observers speculate.

Last week, Edward Kennedy, a senior US senator, raised a political storm in Washington when he accused the Bush administration of failing to account for nearly one-half of the 3.9 billion dollars Washington is apparently spending on the military in Iraq every month.

“My belief is that this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops,” he said.

The “imminent threat” to the United States from Iraq, Kennedy added, was “made up in Texas (Bush’s home state), announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.”

The Bush administration, which is also negotiating for about 10,000-20,000 troops from Turkey, announced last week that it plans to provide a 8.5-billion-dollar loan to Ankara.

According to the London ‘Financial Times’, the United States “insisted that it was not trying to buy Turkish soldiers to help out in Iraq”.

A new opinion poll in Turkey has found strong domestic opposition to troop deployment to Iraq. Just before the US attack on Iraq last March, the Turkish parliament rejected both a US request for troops and a hefty 15-billion-dollar US aid package offered to Ankara.

“It certainly would be nothing new for the United States to use bribes to get its way at the United Nations,” Phyllis Bennis of the Institute of Policy Studies, told IPS.

“There is a long and sordid history of such things, including the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis, when the United States bribed China (with post-Tienanmen Square diplomatic rehabilitation and resumption of long-term development aid) to avert a potential veto of Washington’s go-to-war vote” in the Security Council, she added.

“The poor countries on the Security Council at that time — Zaire, Colombia, Ethiopia — were bribed with cheap oil guaranteed by the exiled Kuwaiti royals, and new military aid packages from the United States,” according to Bennis.

“What is new would be spending billions of dollars for votes on a resolution which probably won’t actually result in getting international troops or money to back the United States in Iraq, anyway,” she added.

Both Germany and France have ruled out any troops for the proposed new force. Instead, they are insisting on the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty and a greater political role for the United Nations in Iraq.

India has said its military is pre-occupied with “cross-border terrorism” on the Pakistan border and is no position to provide the 18,000 troops requested by the United States.

Naseer Aruri, chancellor and professor emeritus at the University

of Massachusetts, told IPS that even if the United States gets the nine needed votes in the Security Council, “that would not necessarily guarantee that the Bush administration will succeed in legitimizing and internationalizing its occupation of Iraq, and continuing to impose its will on the international community”.

He said that many factors could render Bush’s “victory” superfluous, including continuing terror attacks on UN facilities, which seem to send a message that the United Nations is viewed as a puppet and an enforcer for Washington.

Another factor is the new reality emerging from the debate of Bush’s foreign policy inside the United States. And it is coming from unlikely sources — the foreign policy establishment, mainstream media, congressional circles, such as Kennedy’s description of US policy as ‘fraud’, Aruri added.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: A Palaeolithic cave (23,000BC) and a Buddhist cultural mound, probably of the same period, found near Jori Rajgaon Village on Margalla Hills, 22km north-west of the federal Capital, are in danger owing to commercial interests and the apathy of the department concerned.

The discovery, made only recently, entails the archaeological survey conducted by the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations of the Quaid-i-Azam University which is headed by noted anthropologist and archaeologist Prof Emeritus Ahmad Hasan Dani.

The survey was conducted by a team of young archaeologists, headed by A.R. Azad Kakepoto, who told Dawn on Monday that evidences suggested that the cave belonged to the Kushan period, known for promotion of Buddhism after the Mauryans dynasty.

The team has been working on the Asian civilizations since 1967. The Institute gives degree of PhD and research facilities and academic assistance to young researchers, who are interested to work on civilizational matters on through the Indusians Research Cell (IRC).

The study was conducted on the cave’s surface and its excavation might give details of earlier Palaeolithic era, Mr Azad said. The main feature of the study was the findings of tools and implements similar to the late Soan Valley, which had topological affinities with the pre-Handaxe tradition of the Olduvi Gorge of Africa.

Local people call the cave “Sheranwali Ghar” (house of lions), which was once two-kilometre-long, but had now been reduced in diameter and also blocked by debris because of blasts by a cement factory.

Mr Kakepota feared that the cave might be closed and fully damaged by the factory, which would be a big cultural loss.

According to Mr Kakepota, he entered the cave from the eastern side which was 15 feet down. There were three caverns facing the entrance of the cave which had depth to northern, eastern and southern sides. The surface was important because of stone samples of upper palaeolithic era. Deep down might give details of earlier periods, he added.

MOUND: A cultural mound has also been found on top of the hill on eastern side of the cave and the people of the area call it “Mari” (a high place).

Remains of two chambers (rooms) have been found by the same archaeological team which also found a ditch and a copper coin relating to the period of second Kushan king Vima Kadphesis (AD 85).

The coin is round in shape and inscribed with the impression of the king making an offering on an altar. The other side shows Lord Shiva standing with a trident in one hand. The coin has Khroshti inscription on it.

The chambers have three walls and are six-foot-wide and 10 feet in length and are made of stone blocks. The ditch, also made of stone, is round in shape and is three feet deep. Such ditches were made to keep statues of deities.

Pieces of pottery found on the mound and around the cave have geometrical and patterns and drawings, according to Mr Kakepota.

FOR the last one week, Shaista Almani and her husband, Balkh Sher Mahar, have been looking for a safe place to avoid the wrath of their communities. Their only fault: they loved each other and after all efforts to get married in the traditional manner, they married according to Islamic injunctions.

The scene is Pano Aqil, a National Highway town in Sindh. News of the marriage between Shaista and Balkh fell heavily on both families. The Almanis began immediately collecting their private armies. The Mahar families have fled town. Sensing the growing tension between the two tribes, notables and self-styled sardars began moving swiftly, especially the Sindh chief minister, who happens to be a Mahar and has a large number of his community in the vicinity.

At present, the Almanis have allowed time till Sept 29 for the return of Shaista, now staying at a safe place in Karachi, as is her husband. Pano Aqil has become a hub of activities, where one party wants the return of the girl while the other is preparing for ‘paland’, revenge — a tradition deeply rooted in the tribalism of Sindh and other parts of Pakistan. If things are not settled peacefully, a long feud may ensue, taking the lives of innocent people whose only fault is to be either a Mahar or an Almani.

The people of the country are not unfamiliar with incidents where a simple love affair has flared up into a bloody feud lasting years, even generations. The Shaikh-Soomra, Mahar-Jatoi, and the Jagirani-Issani feuds can be mentioned in this context. A number of couples who married of their own choice have been kidnapped from outside courts, Darul Amans and in some cases even killed years later. This all happens owing to tribal customs and blind belief in the superiority of one race or tribe over another.

Every time an incident like this takes place, debates ensue, human rights activists appear and legal interpretations are made but without any positive outcome. Overwhelmed by tribalism, we know that illiteracy and feudalism are the nurseries that breed such attitudes. We also know that a large number of feudals and self-imposed chieftains retain their position and power.

They control people’s livelihood, and individuals are not even allowed to lead their personal lives according to their simple wishes. Whoever defies the feudal system faces the anger of these warlords. Hundreds of lives have been sacrificed at the altar of honour killings and yet we have failed to stop the practice.

Shaista and Balkh Sher were not illiterate. They knew what they wanted. They wanted to follow family customs, but the marriage proposal was rejected. They opted to secure legal relief, which the country’s fragile law and insecure social system do not offer. Let the keepers of our law ensure that the two are allowed to live a secure life and the incident is not permitted to flare up into a prolonged tribal war.

ISLAMABAD: The recent unification of five Muslim League factions is yet another attempt to knit into one single whole this party which has seen many ups and downs since it was formed in the early 20th century.

At the time of independence it was the only political party of any substance on the scene. But since then it has undergone a number of splits and on a number of occasions has also been made to unite, only to break up into even more numerous factions when the man who did the cobbling disappeared from the scene.

Before discussing the fate that has befallen the organization that created Pakistan, a reference to the Unionist Party might be pertinent. Set up in 1919 by the landlords of Punjab, most of whom had received huge agricultural lands as a ‘payment’ for their services in the World War I from the British colonialists, the party emerged on the province’s scene as a “secular” organization which was meant to counter the “communal approach” of the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League.

The Unionist Party inflicted a crushing defeat on the League in the 1937 elections; the League got only two Punjab Legislative council seats and one of its legislators later defected to the Unionist fold.

The party jumped onto the Muslim League bandwagon only when its leaders saw that Pakistan had become inevitable. The elections of 1946 presented a wholly different picture as the Muslim League turned the tables on the Unionists.

When after independence, the Quaid-i-Azam publicly expressed his view that the objectives of the All-India Muslim League had been achieved and he thought of establishing a new political party, the second rung leadership of the party felt immensely disturbed. They sent Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman to Mr Jinnah to dissuade him from disbanding the party. Consequently, the first session of the AIML in Pakistan, held in Karachi in November 1947, decided to bifurcate the League into separate India and Pakistan parties. Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was elected as convener of the Pakistan Muslim League.

At a meeting of the party on December 14 and 15 in Karachi, the decision to separate party and government offices was taken. A party convention was held in February 1948 which elected Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman as the PML’s chief organizer. Khaliquzzaman was eventually chosen the PML’s first president by the party’s general council which met in April 1948.

The new party president was not a strong personality, and League matters were usually decided by Mr Liaquat Ali Khan. Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman’s election gave birth to infighting in the provinces — the Mamdot-Daultana conflict in Punjab, the Khan Qayyum-Pir Manki Sharif dispute in the NWFP and the Khuhro-Pir Elahi Bukhsh tug-of-war in Sindh.

The Qayyum-Pir Manki tussle led to the latter setting up the Awami Muslim League in the NWFP which became the first opposition party of the country as early as 1949. The tug-of-war in Punjab culminated in Mian Mumtaz Daultana being elected as the provincial party president. Immediately, he stepped up his efforts against chief minister Iftikhar Mamdot who ultimately had to leave and he formed his own faction, the Jinnah Muslim League in October 1950. This party later merged with Pir Manki Sharif’s organization to bring into being the Jinnah Awami Muslim League.

When Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman yielded to protests against his leadership of the party, prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was elected PML president in 1950 and became the first man to hold party and government offices at the same time though the party’s general council had decided against it in December 1947.

In 1956, when the first constitution was adopted, Sardar Abdur Rab Nishter was elected president of the party against the wishes of President Iskandar Mirza and then prime minister Chaudhry Mohammad Ali who were backing Dr Khan Sahib as West Pakistan chief minister while Nishtar wanted a League man for the office. But a big majority of the League leaders, including Nawab Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani and Mumtaz Daultana, supported Iskander Mirza.

Meanwhile, Dr Khan Sahib formed the One Unit Party, and 72 League leaders and members of the West Pakistan assembly joined him. When the situation started to damage the PML, Nishtar called a general council meeting in Lahore on April 2, 1956. Iskandar Mirza rushed to Lahore two days before the meeting and was able to attract a majority of League leaders to overnight set up the Republican Party.

The Muslim League elected Sardar Bahadur Khan as its leader in the West Pakistan assembly but was defeated by the Republican Party. The PML parliamentary party in the assembly was reduced to a listless organization. Khan Abdul Qayyum was the PML president when Ayub Khan imposed martial law in 1958.

Ayub Khan created a division by hijacking the PML in 1962 to form his Convention League which enjoyed the support of an overwhelming majority of Leaguers. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Malik Mohammad Qasim were the Convention League’s secretary-general at different times.

The Council Muslim League, which came into being in opposition to the Convention League, was led by Khawaja Nazimuddin who remained its president till his death in 1964. In the 1965 presidential election, when Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah contested against Ayub Khan, Mumtaz Daultana became the Council League’s president.

Meanwhile, Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, who had developed differences with the leadership, formed his own faction — the Qayyum League — which contested the 1970 election for the first time. Later, this group remained an appendage of the PPP government.

In 1972, the Council and Convention Leagues merged to form a united party. But this organization, headed by Hasan A. Sheikh with Malik Mohammad Qasim as secretary-general, could not be effectively launched because of opposition from Sardar Shaukat Hayat and Mumtaz Daultana. At this point in time, Khawaja Khairuddin took over the party, tough it remained inactive.

Pir Pagaro emerged on the political scene for the first time in 1973 when he was asked to take over the presidentship of a united Muslim League. But since political power was at that time with the PPP, this party remained largely inactive and all the League stalwarts joined hands with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

In 1983, when the League had to decide whether or not to join the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) to take part in the agitation against Zia-ul-Haq, the party again saw a split. Khawja Khairuddin favoured the MRD and thus defected to join the democratic struggle with Malik Mohammad Qasim as his general secretary.

When Gen Zia-ul-Haq formed the Pakistan Muslim League on December 31, 1985, with Mohammad Khan Junejo as president and Iqbal Ahmad Khan as secretary-general after non-party elections, a large majority of legislators joined the party. At the same time, an ‘independent’ group, headed by Syed Fakhar Imam, also appeared as the “official opposition party”. Junejo’s PML more or less consisted of Pagaro League members. Most of these were the same whose fathers and grandfathers were Unionists and who wanted to keep their political influence intact regardless of political and ideological considerations.

When General Zia dismissed the National Assembly along with the Junejo government in May 1988, the first provincial president to rise in revolt was Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, the Punjab chief minister. Thus, two Muslim Leagues had emerged from Zia’s PML — one group was headed by Junejo and the other by Fida Mohammad Khan which supported Gen Zia-ul-Haq. Nawaz Sharif instantly joined the Fida League and was appointed its general secretary.

The two groups merged in the later half of 1988 to form one party to fight the general elections. Nawaz Sharif remained within this PML till 1990 when this party entered into an electoral alliance with the Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI). When the IJI won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, Chaudhry Hamid Nasir Chatha was a member of Sharif’s cabinet. Soon after Nawaz Sharif created his own faction (PML-N) and Mr Chatha sliced out the PML Junejo faction in protest. This faction was also sometimes called the Chatha group.

When the Punjab Assembly was dissolved during the first Sharif government, Mian Manzoor Ahmad Wattoo was the speaker and the late Ghulam Haider Wyne chief minister. The dissolution led to differences between the two, and Mr Wattoo parted ways with the Sharifs and formed his own Jinnah faction of the Muslim League when the People’s Party dismissed his government in the Punjab. Before that he ruled the province with 18 members against a big PPP majority.

Zia-ul-Haq’s son, Ijazul Haq, who had nursed ambitions of becoming chief of Musharraf’s king’s party (which was later named as PML-Q) broke away when Mian Azhar was given the job and formed his own Zia faction of the PML.