| November 12, 2003 | Wednesday | Ramazan 16, 1424 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Bug bungling
A ray of hope
THERE is nothing much to celebrate except that the National Assembly has managed to do at least one thing — it has completed 130 days of mandatory sittings required in a year. Coming into being after three years of military rule, the 342-member house had aroused great hopes last year. Expectations were that law-making through presidential ordinances would come to an end and the legislature would do what parliaments are supposed to do — make laws designed to address issues of public concern. Regrettably, it is on this score that the present assembly has very little to show for its year-long existence. Many times the house could not meet because of lack of quorum. At one stage it appeared doubtful whether the assembly would be able to complete the mandatory 130 days of sittings. That the NA has managed to do that and the speaker threw an Iftar-dinner party to mark this “achievement” goes only to show that the house celebrated a non-event. Yet, in spite of completing the required number of sessions, the NA did very little legislative business; besides the budget, it passed only one bill.
The speaker’s dinner was boycotted by the opposition. Which should not surprise anyone, because this is the kind of unfriendly if not hostile relationship that the government and the opposition have. Between them, the two have immobilized parliament and done little that could make Pakistan move forward. The government has shown extraordinary hubris on the issue of the Legal Framework Order and has insisted all along that it has already become part of the Constitution. This scuttles the very basis of a meaningful dialogue between the two sides. True that those now sitting on the opposition benches contested the election under the LFO, but that cannot be held against them and construed as implying the opposition’s acceptance of the LFO in toto. By taking part in the election, the politicians hoped to advance the political process and not to get stuck with it. Instead, it is the government’s lack of flexibility on some of the most controversial clauses that has turned the LFO into an albatross around the nation’s neck in the form of a quasi-civilian system crafted by the generals.
Monday’s developments in no way serve to advance the political process. While the opposition continues to threaten that it will launch an agitation, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali wondered what it was going to be about. Told by newsmen that it was about the LFO, he said the opposition was “welcome” to do it. Normally, one would expect the leader of the house to invite the opposition to resume dialogue with a view to finding a solution to the year-long political crisis. Instead, the “welcome” bit will only prompt the opposition to harden its posture and go ahead with the threatened agitation. Seen against the background of the arrest of Mr Javed Hashmi, president of the Alliance of for the Restoration of Democracy, the prime minister’s statement raises serious doubts about the government’s intentions. Is the government at all serious about carrying the opposition along and making a success of the transitional process that began with last’s year election? Or does it want to go it alone and perpetuate the present system in which the military has come to acquire a political role through manipulation of the Constitution?
LET’S face it. Any country would do its utmost to bug foreign embassies on its soil. The trouble is in getting caught in the act, as MI5 was when it tried to wire the Pakistan high commission in London. And to think that it chose the most obvious way to do it — sending its bug men disguised as construction workers during the high commission’s refurbishment. This is the oldest trick in the bugging business. In the ‘80s, when the Pakistan high commissioner’s residence in New Delhi was to be renovated, Islamabad sent out its own crew to do the job. Why this elementary precaution was ignored by our people this time is not known. The story first appeared in The Sunday Times, which described the operation, conducted last year, as one of MI5’s most sensitive missions, snooping on the mission of a friendly country and close ally in the “war on terror”. The paper recalled former intelligence officer Peter Wright’s revelation in his book ‘Spycatcher’ about British agents planting a bug inside the cipher room of the Egyptian embassy in London during the Suez crisis. In the case of the Pakistan HC too, the object was the same — to tamper with the cipher machine and copy down secret codes from the machine.
The sense of outrage felt by Pakistan is natural. It doesn’t make you feel very good if your friends are found to be spying on you and rifling through your documents. There is an implied lack of trust here that is disturbing. It is even more annoying that the British government should act as if nothing extraordinary has happened. The foreign office says London has so far taken the stand that it does not publicly comment on intelligence matters, but at least an official response to Pakistan’s protest should have been forthcoming by now. Islamabad must forcefully make the point that it should not be taken for granted. Secondly, The Sunday Times story appeared to indicate that there was a lamentable lack of security within the high commission that made MI5’s task easier. This should be looked into, and Pakistan should hold its own inquiry into what has been going on at the mission (a team of investigators is reportedly due to go to London). It might also help if our embassy in Washington was also checked for possible eavesdropping by American intelligence agencies.
THE decision by the US Supreme Court to admit for hearing the case of 16 detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba is a moral victory for rights groups. The prisoners in question belong to Australia, Britain and Kuwait, and are among an estimated 660 detainees from 42 countries, who were captured after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan two years ago and have since been held incommunicado without trial. They have been repeatedly refused safeguards against unwarranted detention by lower US courts, which have ruled that American courts have no jurisdiction over prisons not located on US soil. Rights groups, however, have rallied to the support of these prisoners, saying that they are being held illegally and in subhuman conditions by their American captors. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, thus, comes as a major victory for the prisoners’ families and lawyers, who so far have been denied access to these prisoners.
The Camp X-Ray prison at Guantanamo Bay has become notorious for the excesses that are reportedly being committed against the detainees by the US military. A handful of people who have been released from that prison have told Red Cross officials of the torture tactics being applied by the Americans to extract confessions of guilt. The Pentagon has refused to treat them as prisoners of war, insisting that they are “illegal combatants” who fall outside the purview of rights granted by the Geneva Conventions on PoWs. A brainchild of the neo-cons currently pulling the strings behind the Bush administration, the Guantanamo Bay prison is a sad commentary on America’s disdain for international human rights laws and conventions that guarantee legal safeguards for prisoners. It also exposes the sheer hypocrisy of President Bush’s recent pontification that he wishes to see democracy and human rights respected in the Muslim world.