| 14 April 2004 | Wednesday | 23 Safar 1425 |
Profiting from the Iraq war
The habit of sifarish
It would be fair to say that the recent Berlin Conference, called to seek pledges from the participating countries for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, was a success, even though the amounts pledged fell short of the Afghan government's needs. President Hamid Karzai had sought $27.5 billion over a seven-year period but was able to obtain $8.2 billion over a period of three years.
It is perhaps for the first time that American officials - ambassador Khalilzad and General Barno - have publicly endorsed President Karzai's policy of inviting moderate Taliban elements to be reintegrated into Afghan society without fear of retribution.
This policy has been opposed by the Northern Alliance which believes that there is no such thing as moderate Taliban elements. Conscious of the organization's sensitivities, General Barno stated, "If the Afghan government could agree on an initiative on this, this would be a worthy initiative."
It appears these two developments are the only good news emerging from Afghanistan at this particular time and that the possibility of further good news in the immediate future looks bleak.
The tussle for power among rival warlords and resistance to the extension of central rule to the provinces or areas controlled by them is apparently growing rather than declining.
On March 21, Herat witnessed a bloody clash between the forces of the Karzai-appointed military commander Zahir Nayebzada and those loyal to Governor Ismail Khan after the latter's son, Mirwais Sadiq, the civil aviation minister in Karzai's cabinet, was killed in an encounter with the former's troops.
Various stories have been bruited about regarding this encounter, with some claiming that Sadiq was killed when he tried to relieve Nayebzada of his command following a failed assassination attempt on his father.
Whatever the cause of the encounter, it has resulted in Nayebzada and his troops fleeing the province. Executions and arrests have followed. Nayebzada claims that the 50 injured soldiers he left behind have since been killed by Ismail's forces who are also seeking out and executing all those known to be or suspected of being from Nayebzada's home province of Baghdis.
The 1,000 to 1,500 strong contingent of government troops sent to Herat is keeping a low profile, and is clearly unable to prevent Ismail Khan from wreaking vengeance on persons hailing from Baghdis.
Ismail Khan, who has always styled himself as the emir of Herat, has nominated a commander to replace Nayebzada. The central government has not endorsed the nomination but has not itself nominated a successor to Nayebzada.
In these circumstances it is unlikely that Ismail Khan will acquiesce in the planned disarmament of his militia, an event that was scheduled for next month. It is clear also that while Ismail Khan rules with a heavy hand he has a much stronger base of support in Herat than Karzai.
In the north, Dostum's forces moved to occupy the province of Faryab when the governor of the province pledged loyalty to the central government. Subsequent developments including clashes last Sunday on the outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif between Dostum's forces and those of Atta Mohammad, his old Tajik rival and protege of Defence Minister Marshal Fahim, brought to the surface the real cause of tension - Fahim's attempts to reduce Dostum's influence in the north and to establish Tajik dominance in an Uzbek area.
Afghan army forces were apparently allowed to move in and occupy the capital of Faryab without any resistance from Dostum's forces. However, the Karzai-appointed governor fled and is apparently seeking asylum in Turkmenistan. Dostum, nominally Karzai's chief representative in the north has, in an interview, advised Karzai to dismiss both Defence Minister Fahim and Interior Minister Jalali if he wishes to continue in office himself.
In these charged circumstances, Dostum will be no more ready than Ismail Khan to permit the disarming of his militia. Again, Karzai cannot rival the hold that Dostum has on his Uzbek followers, despite his cruel and despotic ways.
The Afghan National Army remains a fledgling force clearly unfit to meet the challenge posed by the warlords. The expansion of the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) appears to have attracted only verbal support at the latest Nato meeting as it did at the Berlin conference.
Speaking after the conclusion of the visit to Afghanistan by the ambassadors of the members of the Security Council, Germany's UN ambassador Gunter Plueger proposed that international troops in Afghanistan be expanded beyond Kabul and that "ISAF islands" of security be created in the unstable provinces. The UN Security Council approved the proposal last October.
The Germans then proceeded to set up a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) and deputed some 350 soldiers for the task. Rumour has it that the German parliament approved the proposal only after it received the assurance that German soldiers would be sent to Kunduz, one of the few cities in Afghanistan considered safe, and would not, therefore, be "in harm's way".
There is talk now of creating additional PRTs but so far there has been no indication that any European country is prepared to commit fresh troops for this purpose.
Elections have been postponed to September and it is now planned that these will be for both the presidency and parliament. Additional money to the tune of $68 million, which would cover half the cost, has been pledged for the elections. Another $94 million has been pledged for the registration of voters but since the process started earlier this year, the UN office has been able to register only 1.7 out of 10.5 million eligible voters.
It seems unlikely that all the voters will be registered by September and it seems even more unlikely that the security situation will improve sufficiently to allow voting to take place in areas controlled by warlords or in the turbulent south and southeast of the country. The process of DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration) is proceeding at a snail's pace and continuing clashes involving warlords indicate that it will slow down even further.
Unfortunately, it is opium production that is proving to be the one "bright spot" of the Afghan economy. In a report highly critical of the British-led effort to curb opium production in Afghanistan, a senior narcotics official at the State Department said that there was very real danger that the area under poppy cultivation in 2003 could double in size in 2004.
This means that if 3,600 tons of opium were produced in 2003, the figure would reach an astronomical 7,000 tons or more - far higher than anything that Afghanistan has produced in its most lawless days.
Considering the high price opium continues to command, it is likely that its production might account for not half but 75 per cent of Afghanistan's gross national product in the near future.
The US commander in Afghanistan, General Barno, said that during counter-terrorism operations, US troops also encountered drug-related activities. Other reports suggest that the Taliban and Hikmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami derive much of their funding from the drug trade. Most of the warlords too, derive a major chunk of their revenues from narcotics.
Under these circumstances, it appears that opium will continue to provide the wherewithal for terrorist activities and for the resistance of warlords averse to the centre's authority.
If Afghanistan continues to remain a troubled country, it will have repercussions for other countries. President Bush, already under fire for the mess in Iraq, desperately needs a foreign policy success, or more pertinently, an anti-terrorism achievement to offset charges that his obsession with Iraq led to diverting attention and resources away from the campaign against terrorism, giving the latter a fillip.
President Bush has sent an additional 2,000 troops to Afghanistan to intensify the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. However, his commanders on the ground are no longer saying that Osama bin Laden would be captured before the year was out.
The much-touted joint operation with Pakistani troops acting as the "hammer" on one side of the border and the American and Afghan troops acting as the "anvil" on the other has not yielded the expected results.
There is a possibility that a civil war situation may be created if Karzai, with American backing, goes ahead with his efforts to disarm the warlords. If he does not and the warlords and their militias continue to flourish, Bush will be criticized for an unsuccessful policy aimed at winning the warlords' cooperation to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban, while ignoring the impact of this on Karzai's efforts to assert central authority in the provinces. None of this bodes well for the US president's re-election prospects.
For Pakistan, the cost will be equally high. Increased opium production will mean a jump in drug consumption in Pakistan thus increasing the miseries of an already frustrated and discontented generation of young adults. Further, it will delay prospects of trade with the Central Asian states and, thus, of the full utilization of the port that Pakistan is constructing at Gwadar.
Afghanistan's problems are largely the result of erroneous policies pursued in the past and at present. Now it is up to the Pakistani leadership to recognize that self-interest requires it to make whatever contribution it can to help settle matters.
An initiative has been taken in one area by offering amnesty to moderate Taliban elements. Pakistan should not hesitate in asking such Taliban on its soil to return to their homes. It should also not hesitate in taking action against the more radical Taliban who refuse to return to their homeland.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Profiting from the Iraq war
As the insurgency in Iraq escalates and the chaos in that devastated country intensifies, analysts and social scientists are attempting to explain the new phenomenon. The most commonly cited reasons for the mess the Bush administration finds itself in Iraq a year after the invasion is the "arrogance and ignorance" of the leadership in Washington.
It is widely believed that Mr George W. Bush and his advisers failed to calculate that they would stir a hornet's nest when they launched their ruthless war on Iraq ostensibly to eliminate the non-existent weapons of mass destruction and deliver the Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Hence, according to them, the fierce resistance in Iraq is something that should have been anticipated.
If Mr Bush and his coterie of advisers failed to foresee the Iraqi insurgency, it is attributed by some political pundits to the administration's lust for oil. Matters have been complicated by this month's uprising which comes against the backdrop of the on-going electoral campaign in the United States through which President Bush is seeking re-election.
Had things gone according to plans, the president would have wound up the war as soon as possible and pulled out the American forces from Iraq - even as early as June 30, the deadline for the transfer of power in Baghdad to a provisional government.
With the graph of the American military fatalities in Iraq continuing to fall - until the current uprising changed the trend - Mr Bush had hoped to use this as an electioneering trump card to show that he was winning the war against terrorism.
But all this has changed. Of course, the American government is still trying to project the invasion as having been a good thing for the Iraqi people. According to them, it is just a few miscreants and diehard Baathists who are creating trouble. If you don't pay attention to the world media and just read the website of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body overseen by America's pro-consul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, a rosy picture emerges of post-invasion Iraq.
Therefore, if independent observers think otherwise, it is Mr Bush's bad luck. Another point of view - more interesting though not quite plausible - has been put forward to explain the present developments.
According to Mark LeVine, an assistant professor of history at a California university, the chaos in Iraq suits the American administration since it allows the occupying power a free hand to run the country as it likes and thus it can extract the maximum advantage from the occupation.
In fact, some academics, such as Nancy Ries, a professor at Colgate University, even describes it as "sponsored chaos". In other words, the war and occupation were planned to create this chaos which serves the vested interests.
This sounds very much like the conspiracy theory we are so familiar with in Pakistan. It would seem strange that the credibility of the American establishment has sunk so low that intellectuals in American universities attribute selfish motives to it as is quite normally the case in Pakistan.
Whether the chaos is sponsored or not, there is no doubt that some parties are drawing maximum advantage out of the present crisis. This may sound quite paradoxical but the fact is that the war in Iraq and the post-war crisis have drawn the attention of the media and the public away from what is happening inside Iraq. The focus is on the fighting, violence and casualties.
It is commonly known that the global corporations which have their patrons in the American government have benefited immensely from this situation. The modus operandi has been two-fold.
First, in the name of reconstruction and rebuilding 26 contracts worth $18.6 billion have been awarded to major companies from the US - at times without any competitive bidding. One of the major beneficiaries has been Halliburton, the oil services company, which has secured contracts for nearly $2billion, many of which were not even contested. (Incidentally, this company was headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney until he stepped down to contest elections in 2000). Bechtel, a construction firm, is another company to get a big chunk of the spoils - $1 billion of contracts.
The second method has been to go in for privatization in a big way and sell government-owned companies to allow many multinational corporations to step in. The Iraqi people have, of course, had no say in this matter. In fact, the occupation of Iraq has facilitated this thrust towards privatization and corporatization by foreign firms.
Iraq is now being described as the epicentre of the globalization phenomenon. Military force was used to establish American control over Iraq on flimsy pretexts - the WMD, which were to be eliminated, did not exist at all.
Now it is the military-industrial complex which is driving American policy in Iraq. What is this military-industrial complex? President Eisenhower defined it as a coalition of the military and the industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government.
Eisenhower, being an ex-army man himself, would have known more about this lobby. He had warned Americans against the "acquisition of unwarranted influence" by this complex.
But it seems that President Eisenhower's advice has been pushed aside. What is happening today amounts to a privatization of the war in Iraq. According to a report in the Guardian of London, of the US army's budget of $87 million earmarked for Iraq, nearly $30 million will go to private contractors whose number has grown.
For every 10 servicemen/women there is a private contractor serving in Iraq. It might be recalled that the four security guards who were killed in Fallujah, sparking off the current round of fighting, were not American servicemen. They were working for Black water USA, a private company.
According to The Economist of London, there are nearly 15,000 such civilian security guards in Iraq. The Guardian also speaks of 10,000 contractors being present there.
This privatization and outsourcing of the defence mechanism will have profound implications for the way wars are conducted. Thus there have been calls from various sections in the US - the latest being Senator Robert Byrd, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee - demanding an exit strategy for American servicemen and women in Iraq.
The senator profusely quoted from Alfred Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" to emphasize that "someone had blunder'd" to push the American servicemen into the valley of death.
But the moot question is whether President Bush now has the power to take this decision? True, politically he would not want to appear to be abandoning his mission which is still not accomplished. But more than that, will the military-industrial complex, which has now emerged as a major player in the globalization-privatization process, allow America to pull out of Iraq?
Today, the arms lobby is exerting more influence on American policymakers than ever before. Thus, three major weapon manufacturers procure contracts worth 30 billion dollars from the Pentagon. Many of their former executives and consultants are now working for the government.
The arms industry also backs many of the think tanks which are determining American foreign and defence policy. With the substantial presence of the private sector in America's defence system, will it allow an early pull-back from Iraq?
The habit of sifarish
Some traits and practices that are part of our national psyche are looked down upon by the advanced peoples of the West, and, under the influence of their education and society ethics, we too have learned to deride them. The habit of sifarish, recommendation, is one of them.
We are now taught that recommendation is unethical because it conflicts with the concept of merit which is the supreme yardstick for judging a person's worth. But, as the MNA said to the minister who had objected that his nephew was a third divisioner and did not qualify for the job, "Sir, had he been qualified, do you think I would have come to you?" In all spheres of our national life - in government, in society, in familial relations - sifarish is supposed to take the place of merit and we are content with it. Nobody actually considers it wrong, even though they may personally be the epitome of the highest moral values.
Things have come to such a pass that we require an introduction (which is another form of recommendation) when we are going to a person of authority or expertise in any branch of public life. We do not feel sufficiently fortified without it.
If I am going to a federal secretary with a cast-iron case and want him to deal with it on the basis of pure justice, I much first obtain an introduction to him. There may be some justification in that because the system is so rotten.
But when I intend to consult a medical specialist, and he is going to charge me his full fee without a concession of any kind, why should I feel obliged to request a friend or relation of his to put in a word for me?
Among the poor and the unprivileged, a visiting card of the person recommending their case is expected to serve the purpose of "Open Sesame." The other day, such a man, retrenched from the government transport service, came to me from Lahore for help in getting a job in the private enterprise that has replaced it. He wanted my card.
He would not believe me when I told him I had never kept visiting cards. I offered to give him a letter instead which I thought should be more effective. He didn't say so, but I think he went away feeling that I had given him short measure. A visiting card is somehow like a magic token.
Before the fifty or so full-blown trees in the quadrangle before the Lahore Assembly Hall (once containing Queen Victoria's statue) were cut down because a bright deputy commissioner thought they harboured agitators, they were a shelter for the old cooks and bearers of departed British officers looking for jobs. Each of them carried a portfolio of "chits" from a past employer, and these were their most treasured possessions.
The statue had been removed to the museum, but they continued to feel the queen's benevolent presence, and hoped, with her blessings, to find new employers as lax and accommodating in matters of accounts as the bygone members of the ruling fraternity.
So whenever someone needed a servant of that breed, malka da but (as it was still known after half a century) was the place to go to. They made you read the chits extolling their qualities and habits and stood by proudly as you did so. I don't think any one of them would be alive now. In fact the word "bearer" has gone out of use.
The biggest collection of letters of commendation (and thereby recommendation) that I have ever seen was with a palmist-astrologer who, in the fifties, got into the habit of haunting our office in Lahore and having tea with us.
You may not believe it but Bashir Ahmed Najumi had genuine letters from the Governor General down to numerous elected representatives of the people, and including in between all governors and chief ministers of provinces and any other government personality you can think of.
Their words gave the impression that they had reached high office because of wise and timely decisions taken after Mr Najumi's correct reading of their future.
Despite loud talk about merit as the sole criterion to judge the worth of candidates for state service, the process of sifarish goes on in the government and in our society.
For example what is wrong with military service? Apparently nothing, and because of Kargil army men have become heroes after a long time. Then why should Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ADC want to become part of the DMG? Maybe the explanation lies in the fact that he married the PM's daughter.
Also, why should a federal minister's army officer son be admitted into the civil service? Shall we take it that the absorption was done purely on merit? Who was the judge who decided that the two captains would make better deputy commissioners than majors?
But I was talking of letters of recommendation. Actually such letters are now becoming obsolete. People in high places are chary of writing them, while the ego of those they are addressed to makes them look around and ask, "So Chaudhry Sahib couldn't come himself? All right, son, you can go.
I'll do what I can for you." The contents of the letter are then promptly forgotten. Now it is a telephone or a personal visit that is supposed to give results. But with the under-privileged a letter of recommendation, or better still, a visiting card is still very much in demand.
But what about those who still inscribe such letters? Should they remain realistic or give way to hyperbole in praise of the man they are recommending, or simply parade their knowledge of English? (Letters of recommendation are always in English).
I want you to enjoy one that I was shown by a society tailor some time ago who wanted me to draft a certificate to be signed by a person in high authority. It was dated 1991 and ran as follows, with no word or spelling changed by me:
"It gives me immense pleasure to commend the tailoring of Mr X. He has the mastery of his trait and does his work with diligence, devotion and to the full satisfaction of his highly-placed patrons.
His vision and imagination, combined with fortitude and perseverance, results in tailoring of the highest standard comparable with anywhere in the world. His personal attributes of cordiality, warmth and trust have endeared him to his patrons. I wish him continued recognition with greatest successes in future."
It was signed by the (now deceased) vice-chancellor of a university. Had the gentleman been alive I would have loved to ask him how fortitude and perseverance and vision and imagination were reflected in the sherwani and shalwar-qameez suits that Mr X had stitched for him!