IT is common knowledge that centres like Washington and New York have developed institutions for research on social and international affairs. These centres tend to pronounce often authoritative judgments on the way developing countries of either the Muslim or the Asian world pursue certain social and international policies.

Karachi in several ways has the potential of becoming an academic research centre in the Muslim and Asian world. It is surrounded by a huge urban population of almost 12 million with a number of big economic corporations and also universities. Research centres in Pakistan have also developed in the cities like Lahore and Islamabad, but they have not yet attracted much international attention.

It should not be too difficult for a group of interested people to explore ways and means as to how Karachi can emerge as an impressive research centre. From time to time, the city has witnessed political maelstroms in the surrounding areas, but it seems that policy pronouncements come largely from western perspectives and interests from centres like New York and Washington. Is it not possible for Karachi to develop research and policy positions concerning events that emerge in the Middle East and South-east Asia with perspectives and ideas drawn from intellectuals and political leaders living in the region?

Take for example, Iraq, which appears so prominently in American policies and strategies. But, a paper like The New York Times or foreign policy journals tend to make authoritative statements or policy proposals mostly from western perspectives. Why can’t Karachi develop its own research capabilities to study the impact of western policies on Arabs and Muslims who live in areas which are so much closer to this city? Would not the global policies of the United States look different when examined in an intellectual centre like Karachi?

Studies undertaken from the perspectives of Muslim or Third World countries will view times of oppression. On the other hand, the moderate school of thought, led by the senior Shia clerics, has been of the opinion that the Shias should not undertake any militant action until the Shia saviour reappears as the Mahdi. How is it that we have not seen any systematic discussion in Pakistan of these controversies among the Shia factions in Iraq?

The establishment of a new intellectual and research centre in Karachi is likely to generate awareness of new political needs and systems. Perhaps a more absorbing problem that the Muslims and Arabs face in the Middle Eastern and South Asian world is the continuing and even increasing conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. A research centre in Karachi will certainly create new political perspectives quite different from the power interests of the Americans regarding this problem.

A new research centre first of all may create perhaps a more determined and vocal support for the Palestinians. This is not enough. What is needed is discussion and analysis of how American interests tend to favour and support Israeli strategic and analysis of how American interests tend to favour and support Israeli strategic positions and policies.

Regarding Israel’s recent bombing of Syria, there was an outcry against this Israeli action in the Arab and Muslim world. In contrast, President Bush’s immediate response was that the Israeli government “must not feel constrained in defending itself.” A clear implication of this American response was that the Unites States would not condemn Mr Sharon’s decision to launch an air strike inside Syria.

As opposed to this kind of thinking even some American experts thought that the White House was unwilling to force Israel to take politically costly and necessary steps like halting construction of a barrier around what it considers its own territory. All impartial experts would be in favour of ending Israel’s policy of constructing new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The United States is considering legislation, which would threaten Syria with economic and diplomatic sanctions if it does not abandon its alleged support of Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups. The new legislation also requires Syria to stop any development of medium- and long-range missiles as well as chemical and biological weapons.

American global policies regarding Iraq or Afghanistan form a different point of view. Many Americans and even Europeans may think that the conflicts that have emerged in the Middle East are almost exclusively the result of actions or movements generated by the terrorists who oppose the West. Very little is said about why the so-called terrorists oppose the West.

It has been pointed out that after Shah of Iran was reinstalled through CIA efforts in 1953, President Eisenhower in a National Security Council meeting was puzzled as to why the Americans could not “get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us.”

The New York Times of August 26, 2003 has encapsulated the struggle that is taking place in Iraq between the moderate Shia faction opposed by the younger, more militant faction determined to move Iraq in the direction of an Islamic state. It seems the violent conflict between the two Shia groups in Iraq was triggered by the murder in April of a prominent, young cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, inside Najaf’s most holy shrine.

It is well known that the Shia community constitutes 60 per cent of Iraq’s population of about 25 million. It is significant that it is America’s occupation of Iraq and its policies, which explain why the conflict between the two Shia groups erupted in such a bitter and intense fashion. The moderate and conservative senior ayatollahs, led by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, seem to be convinced that the United States will eventually create a democratic state in Iraq in which the Shia will exercise the majority influence through sheer numbers.

Opposing the senior ayatollahs and the American-led occupation of Iraq are those militant groups who support Moktada al-Sadr. These groups are convinced that the Shias should support the formation of an Islamic state modelled on clerical rule in Iran.

This opposition between the two Shia groups, the moderates and the militants, goes back to two historical traditions of Shia politician and social thought. The militant faction subscribes to the view that the Shias must rally behind a jihad. How can such a one-sided American approach produce a lasting peace for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? A new research centre in Karachi would have to add its weight for creating a much more impartial American position concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

A more important objective for a new research centre in Karachi is the commitment to creating possibilities for the growth of a welfare state in Pakistan and other Muslim states the area. The American and other western approaches to a welfare state has been largely through the concept of a trickle-down from the top based on strengthening the privates sector.

The western model of a welfare state, which largely centres round the concept of the social utility of greed and which promotes the private sector as the most important engine of social and economic development, will have to be altered through the influence of a new research centre. The new research centre will have to argue convincingly that a welfare state, which favours the needs of a developing country has to be much more in favour of economic development that moves from the bottom up, rather than trickling down from the top.

The writer is professor emeritus of political studies in Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

THE world is changing at an amazingly fast pace. No less amazing is how Pakistan refuses to change. This is as true in the timeframe of a generation as for shorter periods. Change, of course, connotes improvement in the economic and social standards of the people.

The outstanding examples of contrast to this often quoted are of South Korea and Malaysia which in the middle of the last century stood at the same level of development as Pakistan did. Today they are much richer and more progressive. The comparison with these two and some other countries of the East was considered not to be wholly valid because their work culture, skills and resources were believed to be inherently superior. Pakistan’s next generation may be seeking a similar alibi when Sri Lanka and India forge ahead. China, as we know, is inexorably set on that course already.

The purpose here is to look in a different direction and quickly compare Pakistan with Egypt as in this comparison the arguments advanced for lagging behind the Tigers of the East cannot be invoked. The factors common to Pakistan and Egypt being the religion of Islam (with its extremist fringe), authoritarian governments (even when elected) and long confrontation with a hostile but better armed neighbour in a troubled region.

At the start of the decade of the nineties, Egypt’s per capita income was 620 dollars, Pakistan’s was 420 dollars. At the end of the decade it had risen to 1,530 dollars in Egypt while in Pakistan it hovered around the same old figure of 420. Going by the purchasing power parity which is a better measure of the prosperity of a people, the income of an Egyptian today is about 4,000 dollars while that of a Pakistani is half of that. An average Egyptian now earns twice as much as a Pakistani.

Lack of democracy could not be a reason for Egypt to gallop ahead, for Pakistan had more of it during the decade and, perhaps, all along. The reasons for the axiomatically indolent and obese Egyptians performing better than the martial and austere Pakistanis thus are to be found elsewhere than in the representative character of their respective systems of government.

The real difference between the two countries lay in their dealings with their enemies abroad and extremists at home. Egypt resolutely subdued its religious fanatics and suppressed the violent among them ruthlessly. When the Egyptian generals and politicians found they could not defeat Israel either in the battle-field or in diplomacy (because of the American support to the Jewish state), they made peace with it.

Pakistan chose to act to the contrary on both counts. Its successive governments pandered to the extremists, appeased or bribed them. As a result, they grew in numbers and strength. The jihad in Afghanistan and then in Kashmir brought them arms and money and yet covered them with an aura of holy warriors or martyrs. They are now embedded in the country’s politics and parliament replacing the hereditary and more moderate politicians. The government woos them for support for its survival while they heap insults on the generals and judges alike. At the murderous fringe they physically eliminate each other.

When Egypt discovered to its humiliating cost that it could not wrest the usurped Arab land from Israel, it recognized Israel but without giving up the Palestinian cause. Wars could not win the Palestinians a homeland. Negotiations and diplomacy, with Egypt and other Arab states behind it, might. The same should be true of Pakistan-Kashmir-India tangle of bloodshed which is as old as Arab-Israeli conflict.

By taming or suppressing religious fanatics and making peace with Israel, the Egyptians have eradicated violence from their own society. The streets of Cairo are now safe at all times of the day or night even for unescorted, unveiled women. Can that ever be said of Karachi?

Untutored and unbiased shopkeepers and taxi drivers of Cairo when questioned say that the majority of the people there pray and fast. Men and women alike go to mosques without making noise or without pretence. It is difficult to make that claim for Karachi or for the country.

Peace with Israel and clamping down on extremists thus has made the streets and mosques of Egypt safe and busy. Violence against the minority Shias and hard-working Coptic Christians is unheard of. In Pakistan, peace, tolerance and prosperity have all fallen victim to bigotry and jingoism. Authoritarianism may have deprived the Egyptians of freedom of choice and expression but it has earned them peace and safety without discrimination on grounds of faith or race. Pakistan, on the other hand, remains a loser on both counts.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad (who in his departing moments has emerged as the hero of the Muslim world), while deploring that the Jews rule the world by proxy (of America), advised the OIC to negotiate with Israel and not send the suicide bombers to it. In his 22-year rule Mahathir was everything from charismatic to controversial, modernizing to authoritarian but he never gave a quarter to the extremists even in his shaky moments. In bringing Malaysia to its present level of prosperity and communal harmony, he harnessed the entrepreneurial energy of its 30 per cent Chinese and physical labour of its 10 per cent population of Indian origin to the advantage of the majority Malays and the country as a whole.

In resolving its many internal problems and dispute with India, Pakistan has some lessons to learn from Malaysia and Egypt sitting at the opposite ends of the Islamic spectrum (incidentally, both these countries, though Muslim, are closer to India in sentiments and in more mundane matters like trade). The lessons are chiefly two: first, to have no truck with the extremists and permit all communities to give their best to the country as part of one nation as the Chinese in Malaysia and Copts in Egypt do; and, second, the Kashmir dispute could be resolved only by creating an atmosphere of goodwill with India and mustering world support for it and not by armed or nuclear might, nor by suicidal incursions of zealots.

It should cause both anxiety and shame to the makers and exponents of our Kashmir policy that in the current efforts at normalization, the world press is giving all the credit to India for its “peace initiative” and acclaims Vajpayee as a statesman while Musharraf gloats over his harangue at the OIC which will do nothing as it hasn’t in the past and foreign minister Kasuri is ever set to repeat the theme of “core issue.” Pakistan’s standpoint on Kashmir finds little mention there.

To India, the core is no more than the “illegal occupation of a portion of the state” by Pakistan. Quite obviously, Pakistan’s national strategy and the rhetoric of its leaders both need rethinking. Pursuing the present course will only lengthen and harden the stalemate. The time is on the Indian side. Divisions and despair appear to be undermining the freedom fight within Kashmir while the people of Pakistan and the world at large get weary.

At his trial for an anarchist bomb outrage, the Texas IRS employee Albert Parsons declared: “Dynamite makes all men equal, and therefore makes them free.” As it turned out, dynamite did nothing of the kind. But its successors may come closer to fulfilling the anarchist’s dream.

Nuclear weapons have a unique capacity for destruction and biological weapons may soon be capable of killing people in great numbers. Neither will make men free — rather the reverse — but they may make men equal. For the first time since the Middle Ages, individuals or groups will possess destructive power that puts them on equal terms with the state.

The same process that has brought the technology of destruction has also brought the emancipation of thought and of lives. And the process of modernisation that brings these things itself provides tension and conflict; 19th-century nationalism, the cultural revolution, fascism and communism and Islamic extremism are all responses to modernisation.

Al Qaeda is both a reaction to modernism and a product of it: not just because it uses the internet or dreams of acquiring nuclear weapons, but because the belief itself that one can save the holy places from the infidel and overthrow governments by one’s own actions is a part of the modern consciousness.

Put these two trends together — access for individuals to powerful weapons and the liberation of the individual from loyalty to church, state or tradition — and we have the possibility that the state’s monopoly on force may be under threat.

This will not (I hope) come within our lifetime, but eventually the logic of technology and society will assert itself. We must ask ourselves what we should do.

The most successful foreign policy strategy in living memory went under the name of containment. The essence of George Kennan’s original concept was that you should defend yourself and wait for political change. Kennan, an American diplomat who served in Moscow for three decades, saw the cold war essentially as a political struggle — and he was right.

It was a choice between two political systems, and in the end the choice was made through political rather than military means. The military battles of the cold war, all outside Europe, were not a great success for either side. Vietnam, the Horn of Africa, Korea, Nicaragua and Afghanistan were all left in a miserable condition. So we waited, according to Kennan’s prescription (though 10 years longer than his guess).

“I would rather wait 30 years for the defeat of the Kremlin to be brought about by the exasperatingly slow devices of diplomacy than to see us submit to the test of arms a difference so little susceptible to any clear and happy settlement by those means.”

Waiting for change was an appropriate strategy for the conflict between communism and capitalism, because each side believed that the other’s system was doomed to collapse. It was relatively easy to believe political competition between two systems that were distant relatives - communism is as much a child of the enlightenment as liberal capitalism. It is less easy to understand today’s enemies and be confident they will come to see the world as we do; and much less easy to know how we might defend ourselves against nuclear-armed enemies, especially if they are terrorists, not states.

It is no use waiting while terrorists prepare an attack. And if governments wait while unstable or aggressive states acquire WMD, they may find that their options for dealing with the arsenals or their owners have disappeared. The only way we shall feel secure is in a world of well-run countries governed by law at home and obeying international rules abroad.

The risks from small groups of fanatics will not go away, but we will have more chance of managing them. We could live with countries not obeying the rules when that meant no more than a small war or a small outrage, but not when they concern the fundamentals of security. The domestic governance of foreign countries has now become a matter of our own security.

The world we are accustomed to - where every state minds its own business and others have no right to interfere - began to disappear with air travel, the internet, global television. With weapons of mass destruction it is gone forever. Multipolar deterrence in the Middle East would not be stable (the subcontinent is already a worry on its own). And the more such weapons proliferate, the greater the risk that terrorists will acquire them. Our only defence against such a world is the spread of civilisation.

Thus we should all be in favour of regime change. The only question is how to achieve it. Military intervention costs lives and money, and regimes imposed from the outside rarely last. The US’s 19-year occupation of Haiti left little in the way of working constitutional structures. The regimes imposed by the Soviet Union at the end of the second world war disappeared when the Soviet armies went home. There are exceptions; Hashemite rule in Jordan survived the departure of British forces (though it did not do so in Iraq). But these are not many. If regime change by force is to be made secure, it will end by becoming empire.

One of the features about the 20th century was the disappearance of empire. Norway became independent in 1905; the first world war destroyed the Ottoman and Habsburg empires; America dismantled its empire in the interwar years; the second world war led to the dissolution of the British and French empires; and with the end of the cold war the Soviet empire also joined the bonfire of history.

The end of empire left many problems. Imperial powers bequeathed the nation-state system to their colonies, but it has not worked well in either Africa or the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, we understood that failed states, like WMD, could represent a mortal danger. If states cannot govern themselves, it is not safe to allow them to become a haven for terrorists or criminals. Here, also, empire seems to be the obvious choice. The difficulty is that empire does not work today. A century of emancipation, of national liberation movements and self-determination cannot be reversed. Empire has become illegitimate. But if containment does not work and empire is unacceptable, what is the alternative?

On Europe’s borders, a massive effort has been made to prevent Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia from becoming failed states. If this works it will not be because a solution has been imposed by force, but because the Bosnians and others want to be part of a greater European structure.

The EU can in some respects be likened to an empire; it is a structure that sets standards of internal governance but in return offers its members a share in the decision-making, a place in the commonwealth. Across central Europe, countries have rewritten constitutions and changed laws to conform to European standards. This is a kind of regime change, but it is chosen, legitimate. This represents the spread of civilisation and good governance in lasting form.

This is not to say that the only way to deal with terrorism is to extend the EU into the Middle East. Can we imagine a regional structure in the Middle East with security guarantees from the US or Nato, and assistance and market access in the EU, traded against guarantees of good governance? There are a thousand objections: suspicion of the West in general and the US in particular is such that no one in the region would take the idea seriously. But what else might stop the conflict in Palestine for good? Would anyone have the vision to try?

It is not dynamite, nor even the fall of tyrants, that makes men free, but “good laws and good armies” (to quote Machiavelli). Foreign governments can impose neither, though they can assist in both, but only at a price. That price is high in time, risk, money and commitment. But it may be the price of our own security.

— Dawn/Guardian Service