| 26 March 2004 | Friday | 04 Safar 1425 |
Implications of new ally status
The undiplomatic ambassador
How was man created or how did he come into existence? The Quranic version is explained in Sura Al-Mumineen (The believers): "We first created man from an essence of clay; then placed him, a living sperm in a safe enclosure (the womb). The sperm We made a clot of blood and the clot a lump of flesh. This We fashioned into bones, then clothed the bones with flesh. Then We breathed life into it. Such is God your Lord, the Creator of all things."
Again in the same sura, the different stages of man are described. "It was He Who created you from dust, then from a little germ, and then from a clot of blood.
He brings you infants into the world; You reach manhood, then decline into old age (though some of you die young), so that you may complete your appointed term and grow in wisdom." It is He Who ordains life and death. If He decrees a thing, He need only; say: 'Be', and it is."
The parts and organs of the body and its functions are not described and detailed in the Quran. But it is a fact that our body is made up of millions of tiny living cells. It's a complicated mechanism. It is God's most astonishing creation. It is a universe unto itself. Each part or organ of the body is unique.
The heart constantly pumps blood in our body so that each cell gets the food and oxygen it needs. The body cannot stay alive if the heart stops working. Similarly liver is like a chemical processing factory which secretes a digestive fluid called bile and removes toxic (poison) and waste from the blood.
Kidneys are really a pair of highly efficient filters. As blood passes through kidneys, waste products are removed and together with excess fluids, are excreted as urine. The function of pancreas is to control the body's blood sugar level and it also helps digest food in the small intestine.
All medical books mention that the most important organ in the body is the brain. The experts on the subject say: "The brain or the nerve centre could be called as capital of the body with all the other organs contributing in some way to it.
For example, the function of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body but in a special sense the heart's primary function is to provide the brain with the blood-carrying oxygen and food materials which the brain cells need in order to live and work."
Similarly the function of the lungs is to derive oxygen from the air and remove carbon dioxide from the body. But again in a special sense, the lungs' first job is to provide oxygen to the brain, carried there by blood, so that the cells may perform their functions.
At the same time, the lungs get rid of the carbon-dioxide which the brain cells (along with other body cells) have discarded. The eyes, the ears, and the other sense organs are designed specifically to help the brain 'know' what is going on both in the body and outside the body.
There is nothing single in the universe. God created everything in pairs and implanted in them a magnetic attraction for each other in order to provide for the perpetuation of the various species. As Quran puts "Men, have fear of your Lord who created you from a single soul. From that soul, He created its mate and through them he bestowed the earth with countless men and women." (Sura Nisa)
At another place, Quran traces history: "Mankind was once a single nation. O Mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other, not that you despise each other."
Why have human beings been created? The purpose of creation was as Quran puts "And We created man and jinn to worship Us." "Men serve your Lord Who created you so that you may guard against evil and continue to worship him till your death." "And We shall try as to which of you is the best in conduct" as man has been endowed with the power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil.
Thus a human being possesses the capacity bestowed by God to choose - the ability to make decisions regarding the course of his own life. He may choose to act wisely and use his physical powers and his mental abilities in profitable ways or he may choose to live selfishly for personal pleasure and to disregard moral law and even the health of his own body. Therefore, man is a free agent and every person is responsible for the outcome of his own life.
Implications of new ally status
The US intervention first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq has been seen by a section of the western intelligentsia as an expression of the American elite's ambition to be so dominant in world affairs as to be compared to what once used to be the mighty British empire.
According to a media report, when Niall Ferguson, the Oxford historian, reputed to be a proponent of 'American empire', came to Washington after Baghdad's occupation by the US-led force, he was "the toast of the town" for the neo-conservatives who exercised excessive influence over President Bush's administration and policy.
Ferguson was reported to be holding the belief that Africa's poverty is a consequence of independence and that Washington, as the world's dominant power, should do "something to install workable structures of good government" just as the British had presumably done about a hundred years ago.
It was in an imperialist tone that the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, during his recent tour of Afghanistan, spoke of the war-ravaged country's future. While announcing a doubling of the aid for Afghanistan he promised a 'long haul' and assured his hosts that "we will be here."
However, the American favours are not an unmixed blessing for the Afghans, a section of whom have never reconciled to the US occupation of their country. The Karzai government installed in Kabul by the Americans continues to be engaged in a seemingly never ending strife with its opponents.
The situation has lately worsened with the occupation force having intensified its hunt for the remnants of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The conflict is of direct concern to Pakistan. Reports suggest that the US helicopter gunships have been intruding into the Pakistan's air space, targeting random groups of people.
The Americans' imperialist style was also evident during Mr Colin Powell's daylong visit to Pakistan. Before he departed he announced a major non-NATO ally status for Pakistan, something that has reportedly disappointed New Delhi.
What the status actually means is not quite clear. Is it a mere rhetoric like the high-sounding titles of 'His Exalted Highness' or 'Farzand-i-Dilpazir Daulat-i-Inglisia' that used to be conferred by the British imperial power on their favoured rulers of India's princely states in the days of the Raj?
Or does it significantly upgrade the US-Pakistan military ties? Or do the fears expressed in India that the US decision would jeopardize the US-India relations which for the first time are favourable to the Americans have any tangible basis? Mr Colin Powell apparently kept the Indian leaders in the dark about Washington's decision during his talks in New Delhi before he came to Islamabad.
The report from its New Delhi correspondent carried by a Gulf daily maintains that Washington's move is "very disappointing" as far as the Indian leaders are concerned.
It also creates unnecessary suspicions vis-a-vis Pakistan and the US in the minds of the New Delhi leadership at a time when Pakistan and India are seriously engaged in a peace process.
The report also suggests that there is something devious about the whole matter as Mr Colin Powell had not taken the Indian officials into confidence even though he had already offered the role of 'regional policeman' to India under the Proliferation Security Initiative?
Indian officials are of the view that Pakistan could probably now get a much bigger military aid package from the US, something that might upset the regional military balance.
Cryptically, a New Delhi report contends that "such is the significance of this development to the (India-Pakistan) peace initiatives that politically it is getting difficult for Prime Minister Vajpayee to justify the reasons."
However, on January 30 last, the US ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns had already indicated that both India and Pakistan had been chosen as NATO partners "though not full members of the alliance."
Therefore, it is not surprising that Mr Dixit, a former Indian foreign secretary and now a high-level foreign policy aide in the Congress party setup has been quoted as saying that the US decision was known to New Delhi all along and it should not have come as a surprise to the BJP-led government.
If this is how it is, the thoughtless statement by the US Secretary of State about his country's foreign policy initiative has put a friendly country (i.e. India) in an awkward situation vis-a-vis its own people.
It is not surprising that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has in a statement castigated the Indian leadership, maintaining that the Vajpayee government has reduced India's foreign policy to that of a supplicant of the US.
The main opposition party of India, the Congress, has also stated that the granting of a major non-NATO status to Pakistan by the US is of great concern to India for military as well as political considerations.
Key Indian officials have been quoted as saying that the non-NATO major ally status puts Pakistan in "an exclusive club of nations" such as Israel, Egypt, Australia, Japan and Thailand that are given "preferential US treatment in military cooperation."
What has Pakistan done to deserve the favourable treatment is not clear and nothing about that has been stated by Washington. On the contrary, not very long ago in an update of the official report compiled by an independent task force on US foreign policy concerning South Asia while maintaining that US-Pakistan cooperation has "dramatically improved" since 9/11 also argues that US and Pakistani policies "only partially coincide" in pursuing the war on terrorism.
The report specifically mentions Islamabad's dissatisfaction with the status quo in Kashmir, resulting in high tensions in its relations with India, and Pakistan's reported "nuclear commerce" with North Korea as matters of special concern to the US foreign policy establishment.
Another American assessment made by the International Crisis Group (ICG) also makes unfavourable references to Pakistan. It critisizes President Gen Pervez Musharraf for his "agreement with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) on the Seventeenth Amendment which gives cover to the Legal Framework Ordinance has virtually formalized the military's alliance with the mullahs." The report contends that as a consequence "Musharraf has become even more dependent upon the mullahs for the regime's survival."
It can be conjectured that with the grant of the special non-NATO major ally status to Pakistan there would come increased US economic and political aid to this country.
However, the 'neo-imperialists' in Washington must remember that during the long, close strategic relationship with the US, Pakistan frequently felt that it was not being fairly and justly treated.
Washington's decision to extend a substantial amount of arms and equipment to India during the Sino-Indian war of 1962 was seen in Pakistan as a blatant breach of trust.
As many South Asian experts put it, the cold war alliance between Pakistan and the US in the end left only a negative legacy from Pakistan's perspective. Even at the best of times, it was really an unstable and uncertain relationship.
The undiplomatic ambassador
"The intense repression here combined with the inequality of wealth and absence of reform will create the Islamic fundamentalism that the regime is trying to quash," said the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, so of course they recalled him to London.
Ally Number One, the United States of America, is making Uzbekistan a major logistical base for its military operations in Central Asia, and would be grateful if Britain's ambassador stopped bad-mouthing America's new ally in the crusade for democracy, Uzbekistani dictator Islam Karimov.
It looked like curtains for Murray: trumped-up allegations of drunkenness and womanising, our American friends deeply distressed at his comments about Karimov, best find him something else to do out of the limelight until all this blows over. But then something surprising happened.
It's not clear quite what it was - either Murray's professional colleagues at the British Foreign Office quietly rebelled against the plan to sacrifice one of their own at the altar of the 'special relationship' with the United States, or Prime Minister Tony Blair's government decided that this was a genuflection too far - but suddenly, last month, Craig Murray was back in Tashkent. What's more, his mouth has not been sealed shut.
Murray was hardly back in the country when Fatima Mukhadirova, the mother of a young Uzbek man who had been tortured and murdered by the authorities for his alleged links with Islamic extremism, was herself sentenced to six years in a maximum security prison for publicising information about her son's torture (or attempting to "overthrow the constitutional order," as the court put it). Murray could not contain himself: "It is another example of a gross breach of human rights in Uzbekistan," he said.
There is absolutely no evidence that Mrs Mukhadirova's son, Muzafar Avazov, was anything but a devout Muslim with no political links: in Islam Karimov's brutal and arbitrary dictatorship, just being seen in a mosque can draw suspicion to you.
Avazov was arrested, tortured and killed in the notorious Jaslik jail, as thousands of others have been in Uzbekistan on equally flimsy charges. The only different thing about the case is that when his mother got his body back, she took pictures of it and publicised them. When Murray saw them in 2002, he protested loudly.
When Avazov's mother was sent to jail last week for making the horrors public, he protested again, telling the BBC World Service that the six-year sentence was "simply appalling".
Later he told the 'Guardian' newspaper: "She took photographs of her son's corpse which she gave to the British embassy. The Foreign Office sent them to the University of Glasgow pathology department.
Their forensic report said the body had clearly been immersed (in boiling water) because of the tide marks around the upper torso." His teeth had also been smashed and his fingernails pulled out, but the Uzbek prison authorities continue to insist that he died because inmates spilled hot tea on him.
An everyday story of Central Asian folk, ending with the sentencing of a 63-year-old woman to six years at hard labour. ("The chances of her surviving ... are very limited," Murray commented.) This sort of stuff goes on all the time in most of America's new allies in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and the US government steadfastly looks the other way because now the rulers of the 'Stans' have become valuable allies in the 'war against terror', whatever that means these days. Indeed, US foreign aid to Uzbekistan, most of which goes straight to Karimov, tripled last year.
Islam Karimov, like most of the other Central Asian 'presidents', is simply the former Communist Party chief of the local republic in a new costume. He ruthlessly persecuted Muslims when he ran Uzbekistan for the Communists, and since Islam is the likeliest rallying point for an opposition movement that could challenge his power, he still persecutes the religion ruthlessly today.
The only new wrinkle is that he can now paint his domestic opponents, and devout Muslims in general, as 'extremists' and 'terrorists', and get a cynical or ignorant American ally to ignore the horrors that he visits on them.
Cynicism is a likelier explanation than ignorance, because when Murray started pointing out how horrible the Karimov regime was, Washington's response was to try to silence him. His response last year was to talk even louder, and this year he's doing it again.
"We take the view that because of the lack of reform in the country it is not really possible to put in place a major aid programme which will benefit the people of Uzbekistan," he said a week ago. "Obviously, we would prefer it if other major states took the same view." Like the United States, for example.
Craig Murray is absolutely right that backing people like Karimov will only generate support for Islamic extremism in the long run, but that is not his point.
He's actually saying that backing people like Karimov is simply wrong, because they are wicked dictators who abuse their own people (like that chap down in Iraq, you know, Saddam something or other....) And he could just be a sign that the Bush administration's major foreign ally in its incursions into the Muslim world is starting to have second thoughts about the people it has chosen for allies.
But probably that is too much to read into this single case. At any rate, it is refreshing to see a diplomat who does not believe that he was hired to lie for his country. -Copyright