| 15 March 2004 | Monday | 23 Muharram 1425 |
Waziristan on fire, again
Why a needless controversy?
World's most popular drug
The choice of Senator John Kerry as the Democratic challenger to President Bush comes at a time when the war on Iraq, justified as a part of the war on terror, looks increasingly like a liability. The first ads, used by President Bush at the start of his campaign for re-election, have drawn criticism that his capitalizing on his role as a war president is in bad taste.
The very fact that the Bush administration is anxious to hand over power in Iraq by July 1, 2004 to the Iraqis is proof that the policy of military pre-emption creates more problems than it solves.
When President Bush defied UN opposition in February 2003 to launch a war he had been planning for over a year, the expectation of the neo-cons was that Saddam's brutal rule since the 1970s would make the coalition forces look like liberators.
However, one year after the invasion, the US and allied forces find security in strictly guarded camps, while Iraqi police and security personnel face increasing casualties, as they are targeted by Iraqi nationalists for collaborating with the occupation forces.
Even the Shias, the main beneficiaries of the US intervention, demand an early end to occupation, along with elections in which they expect to rise to power on the basis of their demographic plurality.
The interim constitution, which was cobbled together by the US appointed governing council after the deadline of February 28 had passed, provides the barest framework for arrangements preceding the transfer of power.
There had been a strong pressure for Islam being designated as the basis of the future constitution, after years of Saddam Hussein's insistence on a secular foundation.
The US was totally opposed but finally compromised by allowing the naming of Islam as one of the sources of public law. Rights of women became another contentious issue, but the final document provided that 25 per cent of seats would be reserved for women.
The interim constitution was ready by March 1 for communication to the leaders of major groups, of which the Shias, constituting 60 per cent of the total population, were the most important.
However, the most sacred day of the calendar for them, the 10th 0f Muharram, when nearly a million of them were marching in Karbala, witnessed explosions that resulted in nearly 200 deaths, while other explosions in Baghdad, directed against Shia mourners, also took a heavy toll. The main responsibility for this major breach of security was placed on the coalition forces that exercise final authority.
As Iraq does not have a tradition of sectarian strife, this bloodletting has raised suspicions as to who could be behind these incidents. The main beneficiary is seen to be the occupation force, whose task is made easier when the population becomes preoccupied with sectarian conflict.
Could a US intelligence agency be involved? Unless the culprits are apprehended, opponents of the occupation are likely to blame the coalition.
The signing of the interim constitution was held up in the beginning at the last minute when senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, had objected to the special provisions made for the Kurds.
Now an accepted text of the agreement has been signed. The delay underlines the delicacy of the task of handing over power by end June, and brings out the dilemma the occupation forces face.
President Bush still insists on the need to delay full transfer of power to the end of 2005. Opinion in the US is shifting towards ending the involvement of the US forces that continue to suffer casualties. In an election year, the manner of US presence, and the role of the UN are likely to become controversial.
Indeed, the way matters have proceeded after the military victory was claimed in Iraq, many in the US have developed serious doubts whether the Bush doctrine of pre-emption is the best way for a superpower to exercise influence.
Condoleeza Rice, national security adviser to President Bush, stated in August 2003 that the way to go for transforming the Middle East was through economic means that had achieved results after the Second World War.
Bush endorsed the idea in more than one statement, the latest being the one he made on February 24, 2004. But the problem is that in Iraq, too much blood has been shed for the US to have credibility as a benefactor.
The US itself has yet to reap the economic benefits expected from occupying the country containing the second highest reserves of oil and gas in the world.
It looks to many US analysts, in retrospect, that Iraq was not the best choice for exercising pre-emption. Though an unsavoury character personally, Saddam had served the US faithfully, notably by launching the long war against the Islamic regime in Iran in the 1980s.
He had been deliberately allowed to survive by the elder Bush in 1991, as a bulwark against Iran. He had a secular outlook, and did not allow terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda to flourish in Iraq.
Islam has emerged as a major force since his ouster, and the terrorists have found fertile ground for their campaign against the US. The economic benefits Bush anticipated have yet to materialize as the oilfields and pipelines are being constantly attacked by Iraqi nationalists.
Since November 2003, when the decision to transfer authority to the Iraqis was taken to save American lives, the Bush administration has called on the UN to take over a major role in both peacekeeping and reconstruction in Iraq.
Kofi Annan sent a team headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, who had represented him in Afghanistan, to assess chances of direct elections, and assess other aspects of possible UN role.
His major recommendation was that elections were not possible before the end of January 2005. He is to make additional recommendations by the end of April on the various aspects of a UN role, but after the experience of last year, when the UN compound in Baghdad was destroyed, the Secretary-General is understandably concerned over the safety of the UN personnel.
One recalls the problem faced in Afghanistan in 1989.The US insisted on a Soviet withdrawal, without concern for establishing an authority to succeed to power. Eventually, the lack of an agreed successor resulted in civil war, and in greater destruction than took place during the Soviet occupation.
The UN, if empowered by a Security Council resolution to maintain peace, and handle reconstruction, after July 1, will have serious challenges. Would the coalition forces maintain law and order, or would a multinational peacekeeping force be established?
At one time, the US was trying to get other countries, including Pakistan, India and others to send forces but all these countries insisted that they would provide peacekeepers only under UN auspices. When Turkey had agreed to send a force late in 2003, the Iraqi governing council opposed its entry.
The US has to decide whether to demonstrate "staying power" in what is claimed to be war against terror (the Bush approach so far), or to change its stance, and rely on the UN.
All this points to uncertainty, and confronts the US and, to a lesser extent, its coalition partners, with difficult decisions. A central role for the UN may be the best choice, which means that the doctrine of pre-emption, which even Senator Kerry owns, may have to be diluted, if not abandoned. In the meantime, the world may witness more instability and violence in Iraq whose territorial integrity is at stake.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Waziristan on fire, again
In the late 1930s, Waziristan was on fire. The Faqir of Ipi was up in arms and was challenging the presence of British troops in the hills. To combat this threat, the British were forced to flood Waziristan with military reinforcements.
Once again, there is a dry wind blowing throughout Waziristan and the parched grasses wait for the spark. Once the match is lit, the blaze will spread like wild fire throughout the tribal area.
Talking about Waziristan, where Osama is supposed to be hiding these days, a Wazir told a missionary doctor at Bannu: "When God created the world there were a lot of stones and rocks and other lumber left over which were all dumped down on this frontier".
Today the killing or capturing alive of Osama bin Laden has become a top priority for President Bush. For him a great deal is at stake - strategically, symbolically and politically. American presidential politics is also at play.
Bush's fate may well be decided on the mountains of Waziristan. Osama, the central focus of the current American and Pakistani military operations in and around Waziristan, is not the first holy warrior to confront a western imperialist power in the mountains of Waziristan.
The Faqir of Ipi led a similar revolt against the British in Waziristan in 1936. He was an outstanding personality. There was a messianic dimension to his character. Both Ipi and Osama are part of a long tradition of resistance to colonialism by Muslim religious leaders.
In Waziristan, Mullah Powindah had been a constant thorn in the side of the British Indian regime from its inception in 1894 until his death in 1913. Elsewhere in the Frontier Region there had been a number of holy men of note. In the 1897 revolt, leaders like Ada Mullah among the Mohmands and Mastan Mullah in Swat and Malakand had helped to mobilize the tribesman against the British.
Saiyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly acquired great renown for his opposition to the Sikhs. And now Osama. He seems to have acquired a halo not unlike that which once surrounded Ipi, Mullah Powindah and Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi. The most remarkable thing to note is what a powerful impact a bold, courageous, incorruptible, charismatic and respected religious leader can have on the tribesmen in Waziristan.
In the early years after Waziristan's annexation, the British maintained only a skeleton administration in the agencies. All this changed in 1919 when they decided to build regular garrisons in Waziristan.
Consequently, troops movements became routine which caused resentment among the tribes. Then came the fateful decision to send troops into the Khaisora valley in November 1936 which transformed Ipi's agitation into a full scale uprising almost overnight and set Waziristan on fire which lasted until after 1947.
The British failed to capture Ipi and the campaign had to be called off. The judgment displayed by the British and the poor intelligence on which they based their decisions were chiefly to blame for the disasters that followed.
This was the last major rebellion in Waziristan which stemmed from an abrupt change of policy. The Wazirs' unrivalled fighting record, their ability to intervene in Afghan affairs and to involve Afghans in their own affairs, were factors ignored by the British that made Waziristan different from other Frontier areas.
This disastrous attempt to "pacify" Waziristan was the last of several major incursions into tribal territory during the hundred years of Britain's presence in north-west India.
On each occasion the tribes and the mountains won a strategic victory, despite local tactical reverses, and the bulk of the Indian troops were forced to withdraw into the plains of the Indus valley.
The British soon learned that you can annex land but not people. However, despite a lot of distracting background sabre rattling, the British pursued peaceful pacification of the tribal territory: everywhere except in Waziristan.
When the British left, Pakistan had reason to be glad that it had inherited a secure North-West Frontier. In September 1947, Mr. Jinnah took a bold decision to reverse the "pacification" policy, withdrew regular troops from Waziristan and entered into new agreements with the tribes. Cunningham, the new governor of the NWFP, appointed by Mr. Jinnah was a Frontier expert.
His disillusion with the "pacification" policy was complete. "I think that we must now face a complete change of policy. Razmak has been occupied by regular troops for nearly 25 years. Wana for a few years less. The occupation of Waziristan has been a failure.
It has not achieved peace or any appreciable economic development. It ties up an unreasonably large number of troops, and for the last 10 years there have been frequent major and minor offences against the troops". The change in policy produced dramatic results and paid rich dividends.
All this has now changed. Mr. Jinnah's Waziristan policy which had stood the test of time has been reversed. Our troops are back in Waziristan in aid of American troops looking for Osama! The political agent of South Waziristan recently said that he had requested a sharp increase in the number of Pakistani troops in the area. "We are waiting for more troops to come".
Are we at war with our own tribes? Have they risen in revolt against their own government? Are the Wazir and Mahsud tribes up in arms against Pakistan? If not, why this troop concentration?
A week ago, the commander of the US led troops in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Borno, let the cat out of the bag when he said that the US and Pakistani forces were working together like a "hammer and anvil" to trap Osama and Qaeda forces along the border". "I am fully confident", President Musharraf said recently, "that we will combat them". As a result, 13 innocent tribesmen were gunned down when our own troops opened fire on a passenger vehicle in Wana.
According to press reports, the elders of Ahmadzai Wazirs have been detained by the authorities for failing to reach an agreement among themselves to choose a commander for action against Al Qaeda!
The result is a totally unnecessary and avoidable state of armed confrontation between Pakistan army and the tribesmen. Those who know the Frontier are deeply concerned. President Musharraf is playing with fire. By reversing Mr. Jinnah's Waziristan policy, at the behest of Americans, he has alienated powerful tribes in Waziristan and unsettled our western border which had remained peaceful for 57 years since the birth of Pakistan.
Why a needless controversy?
This has been an interesting fortnight. On the home front an incredulous public has heard a proposal for a US-style federation. And across the border, a politician with a reputation for airing strong anti-Pakistan sentiments has proposed, for the second time, a confederation with Pakistan.
The two issues are distinct and based on different considerations. What is, however, interesting, is the timing. The world is in turmoil. No country is safe. Former compradors of US imperialism, the Taliban and the Iraqis are in total disarray. The former are being hounded by their erstwhile allies, like infected pariahs, and the latter, barring the odd show of defiance, stand mournfully, a picture of somnolent and dejected resignation.
The European Union, formed as a counter balance to the financial hegemony of the United States after the destruction of the Soviet Union, can't agree on a leader. The Japanese, sworn to pacifism, have been bullied into sending troops to Mesopotamia. One doesn't even want to talk about what is happening in Zimbabwe and the former Belgian Congo. And I have just learned that a bomb blast in Madrid has killed many people.
Against this background of uncertainty, Mr Lal Krishna Advani, the deputy prime minister of India, has mooted the idea of a confederation with Pakistan, and in the process managed to kill two birds with one stone.
He has explained that the rallying cry of his party men for Akhand Bharat (a united India), does not mean the status quo ante to 1947, when the territorial boundaries of the new states had not yet been established. What he is advocating is that the three states which formed the subcontinent, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, should jointly introduce a two-tier government.
The upper tier, which is the easy part, would handle subjects like defence, foreign affairs, currency, communication and any other subject which is mutually acceptable to the three countries.
And at the lower tier the three national governments would continue to look after agriculture, health, education, the promotion of culture and inter-provincial issues with their built-in irritants like the control of water, taxation and how to tackle ethnic and religious discontent.
There's nothing quite like a revolutionary proposal to jog the memory. As I sat on my lawn engrossed in the famous cases of that suave British barrister, Sir Patrick Hastings, feeling the strange air of time past stirring in the friction of foliage, I suddenly thought of another suave personality of the same vintage, who also had a keen legal mind - Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru., one time head of the Congress Party. How the people who surrounded him trowelled on his charm. And how they were taken in by his glib talk.
It was Pandit Nehru who discovered a solution to the problem of the Muslim minority. What better way to permanently weaken the Muslims than by dispersing them? And so with one stroke of the pen, he fashioned his own Diaspora and divided them into three separate demographic units.
It was also Pandit Nehru who rejected a similar confederation proposal which was offered by the British, and that too at a time when Mr Mohammed Ali Jinnah had accepted it to keep India united.
Just why Mr Advani has renewed his offer, particularly at this time, when India had rejected the Akhand Bharat scheme long before the hoisting of the tricolour, is a question to which there is no ready answer.
The authors of the confederation plan had, of course, widened the spectrum to include Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar and the Maldives. It was an ambitious plan, and utopian, to say the least.
And though the smaller countries would have probably fallen into line, it is the two major protagonists who would have to do a lot of soul searching before they could bury a past full of acrimony and suspicion and erase a collective memory of furiously fought battles on land, at sea and in the air, between two groups of legionnaires trained by the same imperial power.
Though the concept of a larger confederation is looming in the background, the main thrust of Mr Advani's plea, in which he has been joined by Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, the famous socialist, is that India and Pakistan should take the plunge, so that others could follow. It is widely believed that the inspiration for a South Asian confederation in India came from the formation of the European Union, which, in spite of numerous hiccups, has finally taken shape.
The argument goes something like this. If a clutch of countries no larger in size than Madhya Pradesh, in a continent which has witnessed two fierce, devastating world wars, a clash of political ideologies, religious inquisitions, persecution and perpetual internecine strife, can eventually unite to form a union, why can't two Asian countries which have a common cultural background and language, and whose scale of conflict, by comparison, pales into insignificance.?
It is a cogent argument, and one that must be taken seriously. But I believe the source of this sudden renewal of interest lies elsewhere, and that Mr Advani is only endorsing what he sees and hears about him..
There is a genuine desire among the people in India and Pakistan, both young and old, for everlasting peace and greater understanding between the former antagonists. There is a desire for greater cultural exchanges and visits.
And this is in spite of the occasional sabre rattling by the men in battle fatigues, who obviously have a tunnel vision, and periodic claims on both sides of the border, that the latest ballistic missile, 'that has just been tested' can penetrate deeper and deeper into enemy territory and strike any target with impunity.
What is significant is that this desire for normalizing relations has grown independently of the various peace and goodwill delegations that have crossed the border carrying olive branches, and independently of the efforts of the cricket bodies whose verbal sparring has provided an interesting prelude to the games and heightened the spirit of competition. .
Confederation between the two countries, if it does come about, will take a considerably long time. But what is significant is that a start has been made The Indian media has recognized President Musharraf's efforts at easing the tension.
And has commented on the adroit shifting of perspective, the attacks on the terrorist network and the fact that the situation on the Line of Control is considerably more relaxed than it was a year ago. One can only hope that the process of normalization continues unabated.
World's most popular drug
Refined sugar is the world's most popular and widely used drug. Webster's Dictionary defines a drug as a 'chemical substance used to alter the state of body or mind.' We don't usually think of sugar and other favourite stimulants like coffee or tea as drugs, but they all have marked effects on the human body.
The UN's World Health Organization has launched an international campaign to cut consumption of refined sugar, which it says is the principal culprit in the current epidemic of obesity and its associated diseases, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders.
Americans, who comprise only 5 per cent of world population, account for a whopping 33 per cent of total global sugar consumption, over 10 million tons annually.
According to the WHO, over 60 per cent Americans are overweight; 31 per cent of them - 38.8 million people - are obese. Obesity rates in children have risen to 50 per cent in recent years.
Americans have become sugar junkies and, sad to say, a nation of fatties, the world's most overweight people. Europeans laugh at obese American tourists as they waddle down the street.
It's hard to find any processed food products these days without some form of added sugars: sucrose, dextrose, fructose, corn syrup, maltodextrin. A can of soda can easily contain eight teaspoons of refined sugar.
France and Australia have been forced to produce sweeter wines to cater to the sugar-craving US market. Carbohydrates, the basic material for all the breads, potatoes, cakes, and snack foods that are so popular in the US, are quickly converted by the body into simple sugar, and then stored as fat.
Incredibly, the Bush administration is strongly opposing the WHO's campaign to limit sugar intake to 10 per cent of total caloric consumption. George Bush seems to think lots of sugar is just dandy.
The critics of Bush see this as yet another example of the radical, far-right ideology of his administration, which seems never to have seen a tree it did not want to cut down, an animal it did not want to shoot, or a park it did not want to pave.
But there's much more here than just Cro-Magnon anti-environmentalism. The brilliant Republican strategist Kevin Phillips wrote in the 'American Conservative' that his party has gone from being a small-government conservative movement to a collection of special interests feeding off and backing ever bigger government. Sugar is a prime example.
Even though Bush's home state of Texas has some of the highest obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rates in the US, the president and his men insist heavy sugar consumption does not cause disease.
The US secretary of health actually claims, in the face of a mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, that it's fine to get 25 per cent of one's calories from refined sugar!
The real reason for the Bush administration's preposterous position is that the powerful US sugar industry is one of its biggest financial backers, and a major power in the key electoral state of Florida. The sugar industry is also a huge contributor to Congressmen and Senators of both parties.
The result: the federal government subsidizes the US sugar producers to the tune of US $1.4 billion annually. Import restrictions protect them from foreign competition and keep domestic sugar prices 3-4 times higher than world prices. Sugar remains the nation's most heavily subsidized crop at almost $500 per acre per annum.
So American consumers pay inflated prices for sugar while tiny West Indian sugar-producing islands, that depend entirely on the crop, are shut out of the US market. Worse, sugar cultivation has very damaging environmental effects. In Florida, 500,000 acres of the Everglades wetlands, one of America's natural treasures, have been destroyed to make room for growing sugar.
Joining the sugar industry in opposing the WHO campaign are the US's biggest food and drink producers, led by the mighty Coca-Cola company, and sugar exporting nations.
Instead of setting a positive example for the rest of the world by nudging Americans to lower their sugar consumption, the Bush administration seems to see UN efforts as some sort of nefarious foreign plot.
The UN found that 60 per cent of disease world wide is now caused by cardiovascular ailments, which are directly linked to over-consumption of sugar. - Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004