| 17 May 2004 | Monday | 26 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Return of the last emperor
The great mall of China
Iraq war's defining image
The exposure of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners has shocked the world and left the US position in Iraq in tatters. The process of erosion had, however, begun much earlier, beginning with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the rising tide of military casualties, and Spain's exit from the so-called "coalition of the willing".
Parallels to Vietnam are being drawn. While the resistance forces in Iraq can in no way be compared to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front in terms of ideological discipline or military organization, the refusal of the bulk of the US-trained Iraqi security forces to fight their own people is eminently laudable and is reflective of the integrity and commitment of the Iraqi people to fight for their freedom from foreign occupation.
The Iraqi people have forced the US to turn to Saddam Hussein's generals for help in Fallujah. It should not be surprising if it has to turn to Saddam Hussein himself to bail them out of the Iraqi quagmire. It would be fitting, indeed, if US lawlessness finds its nemesis in the land of Hammurabi, the world's first lawgiver.
The humiliation, torture and even rape and murder of Iraqi prisoners - exposed by enlightened and conscientious elements in the US army and media - are neither exceptional nor the first and not the worst.
The treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan has been no different. Reportedly, up to 3,000 surrendering prisoners were forced into sealed goods containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison.
During the four-day journey, the prisoners gasped for air and clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds to quench their thirst. Most of the inmates were dead on arrival. Survivors were shot. They lie buried in a mass grave. Reports confirm the presence of US personnel during the operation.
The instances reflect the cruelty of the US military-industrial complex and are symbolic of the manner in which it has treated and continues to treat the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
There has ensued an intense debate in the US over Iraq. That this is an election year provides added weight to these deliberations. Unfortunately, however, political discussions in the US tend to be rather superficial and also almost entirely US-centric.
There appears to be a signal inability of the American public to fathom the complexities of societies around the world or to care about the sufferings and miseries of other peoples caused by the actions of their governments.
It is content to remain oblivious of what its government, its army or its intelligence agencies are doing in the rest of the world - until US casualties begin to occur. This interest too is sustained only as long as the crisis - defined largely in terms of US losses - lasts.
Take, for instance, the repeated assertions of the US president that terrorists, criminals and thugs are attacking the US because they are opposed to the freedom enjoyed by the American people.
The insinuation is that there are people thousands of miles from US shores who make it their priority - over and above their own problems - to interfere with the freedom of the American people.
Such an inane view from the leader of the sole superpower is incomprehensible. What is more incomprehensible and unfortunate, however, is that the American public at large has accepted this line.
The post-September 11, million-dollar question asked in the US was "why do they hate us?", but such is the measure of self-righteousness of the establishment intelligentsia that few efforts have been made for critical analyses of its own policies and actions in the world.
Of course, there are exceptional voices of reason and conscience, but they are voices in the wilderness and have failed to have an impact on mainstream public opinion or government policy.
The US-centricity of public opinion spans all political spectrums. Take, for instance again, the statement by Senator John Kerry, the Democratic contender for the presidency, asking if the death of hundreds of Americans in Iraq was "worth it".
There is no questioning if the death of thousands of Iraqis was worth it. Earlier, Secretary of State Madeline Albright in the Clinton administration had responded with an unhesitant yes when asked if the death of thousands of children in Iraq as a result of the decade-long sanctions regime was worth it.
On the contrary, US officials are outraged by the actions of Iraqi resistance. The brutal murder and mutilation of four American civilians in Fallujah was, indeed, shocking.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, rightly called it a despicable act. However, he needs to be reminded that when the US launched its attack on Iraq - and earlier on Afghanistan - and put on display what it proudly called its "shock and awe" offensive, thousands of men, women and children died and their bodies were burnt and mutilated likewise.
Then too, arms and limbs were scattered all over the area. In essence, therefore, there is little difference between the actions of the US army and that of the Iraqi resistance.
US insensitivity to human death and destruction across the world is legendary. Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chile are historic testimonials to mass deaths perpetrated by the US and its collaborators.
In fact, if a dozen odd men directly responsible for mass killings in the last 75 years are to be identified, US leaders a la Harry Truman, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld would stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Adolf Hitler, Tojo Hideki, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, Ariel Sharon and Saddam Hussein.
The US neo-conservative militarist complex has not been kind to the American people either. It has little respect for human life and bases its decision on the cold calculus of cost-benefit analysis.
Till recently, it has considered the average loss of one soldier a day in Iraq a low-cost operation for the sake of the objectives of global hegemony. Of the many haunting images of death and destruction in Iraq, one is of a wounded 19-year old American soldier on a wheelchair, minus a leg, an arm and his eyesight.
The number of young American men and women who had promising lives ahead of them, but who will not date or dance or play baseball or swim again, because they are dead or maimed, is a sordid gift the American people did not deserve.
One of the greatest qualities of the American people is the value they place on truth. Lying is considered more "sinful" than having committed other misdemeanours or transgressions.
For such a people to now have a president and a government that is prone to compulsive lying is indeed tragic. It is now firmly established that the Bush administration lied blatantly about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The presentation that the US secretary of state, General Colin Powell, made before the UN Security Council on Iraq's WMDs was transparently spurious and he has now admitted it to be so.
Civilized norms would require that he resign, but that is too much to expect from the current administration. Even President Bush has admitted to the absence of WMDs, but has attempted to brush the issue under the carpet in the innocent garb of "intelligence failure" This may perhaps be acceptable to the American public, but will certainly not deceive the rest of the world.
The lawlessness of the US regime in the international arena now stands fully exposed. The detention without charge or trial under inhuman conditions of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo and the denial of basic rights and facilities required under the Geneva Conventions is a violation of all principles of justice.
The US ridiculed the UN when it did not receive a mandate for war in Iraq and unleashed its armoury despite the absence of international sanction. It has routinely trampled upon the laws of other sovereign states, including Pakistan, and refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Under the circumstances, American protestations sound hollow. US officials have described Moqtada-as-Sadr's rebellion as a "power grab" - as an attempt to "take over the country by force", and of having "no respect for the rule of law".
This would be laughable if it was not so tragic. For a country to have disregarded international law and occupied another country by force to make such accusations is indeed ironic.
Not surprisingly, US integrity and credibility is now severely dented. Where once it occupied the moral high ground, it has now fallen to the moral nadir. Thus, when US leaders speak of their efforts to bring freedom to the people of Iraq, it is rightly read by the world at large as the US corporations' quest for the freedom to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.
It is perhaps pertinent to try and understand as to why the US political system does not exhibit the enlightened respect for humanitarian principles and international law that is the hallmark of its northern neighbour, Canada, of European countries like Germany, Norway and Sweden, or of the people of Spain, Italy and the UK.
The answer, perhaps, lies in the socio-economic composition of US society. The unfortunate fact is that there have emerged two USAs: one of the people and the other of the corporations.
The inequality between the two is manifested by the fact that the top one per cent of the population own as much national wealth as the bottom 96 per cent, there are individuals who own more wealth individually than one-third the US population combined, and the bottom 40 per cent of households own merely 0.2 per cent of the nation's wealth.
The two Americas have arrived at a modus vivendi, where domestic policy is primarily the domain of the people and foreign and defence policy is primarily the realm of Corporate America.
The latter is governed, not by the lofty principles of the American constitution, but by raw greed. The US has variously dubbed other countries as the "Evil Empire" or the "Axis of Evil". It is indeed tragic that Corporate America has now turned a great country into a "Hub of Evil".
Return of the last emperor
One evening a couple of weeks ago, this writer was privileged to watch a Hard Talk programme on the BBC, which was really interesting. Tim Sebastian was his usual self, provocative, probing and determined to get at what passes for the truth in the international media. At the other end of the table sat Syed Shahabuddin, a representative of the Muslims of India, firm, resolute and unbending.
The interview was not particularly memorable, except for two issues which emerged from the discussion. The first was when Shahabuddin was asked point blank which of the two major parties he would be supporting.
He replied without hesitation and with considerable vehemence, that he was rooting for the Congress. The memory of what happened in Gujarat is apparently still freshly etched in the minds of the Muslims of India and Pakistan.
The other issue, which was of significance, was his reply to the question why the Indian Muslims had not gotten together and formed their own political party to challenge the hegemony of the Hindu majority.
The answer was not altogether unexpected. Shahabuddin said that their leader, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, had pointed out that one political party had divided the Muslims of India, and they did not want to make the same mistake for a second time.
While I was still digesting the significance of what I had seen and heard, I was suddenly reminded of a book written in Urdu by Brigadier Abdur Rahman Siddiqui, titled "Taqseem-i-Hind Aur Bahadur Shah Zafar ki Wapsi."
This translates into English as "the division of India and the return of Bahadur Shah Zafar". I picked it up somewhat gingerly, not knowing quite what to expect. The title was certainly a little incongruous.
What on earth did a Mughal ruler, and that too one who had to suffer the indignity of seeing his kingdom fall into the hands of the British, have to do with the partition of India? However, after glancing at the foreword and some of the comments enshrined on the dust cover, I realized it was a bit of pure serendipity.
What adds to the mystique is the fact that the volume has been written by a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army who usually communicates his thoughts in the English press.
But then, as the learned scholar Dr Manzoor Ahmad pointed out in his very readable and constructive review published by this newspaper recently, the brigadier is a cultured Delhi man, quite capable of writing prose in the style in vogue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The narrative, spread over 240 pages, revolves around the personality of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, who has been exhumed and resurrected for the pleasure of the reader, and becomes a commentator on a variety of themes including the events that have taken place 50 years after the partition of the subcontinent.
The reader is presented with a distraught Mughal emperor who has to not only suffer the indignity of seeing his empire fall into the hands of an alien power, but who regularly contemplates his own existence with a certain gloom.
He has a seance with Nizamuddin Auliya, and presents the saint with a catalogue of complaints which include the murder of his sons by the English and his banishment to Rangoon.
The saint, after accusing the emperor of gross incompetence, makes the startling discovery that India is going to be divided, and appears unduly upset at the fact that the Muslim leaders who were in the forefront of the struggle for Pakistan failed to comprehend the consequences of their success. What was being divided was not just a piece of land, but the entire Muslim community of India - lock, stock and barrel.
Nizamuddin Auliya then bestows on the hapless emperor the unenviable task of acting as a custodian of the spiritual heritage which belongs to all Indians. The reader is then taken on a journey through the horrific massacres which succeeded Partition, followed by 50 years of Pakistan.
The saga finally ends with Bahadur Shah Zafar making a speech in the privy council chamber of the Red Fort, while a galaxy of politicians, saints and soothsayers hang onto his every word.
Some of the nuggets which this reader managed to extract from the text are: Indian culture is a substantive reality which cannot be mutilated in essence, though it may embrace new forms as it grows. Religious differences should be kept within the bounds of each religion. To whom do all the saints, sadhus and bhagats belong? They have been respected by both Muslims and Hindus.
The commonality of a spiritual heritage should bind the people together instead of separating them. Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and Azad, who were present in the assembly addressed by the emperor, are made to admit that mistakes had been made, and that it was unfortunate that they were held responsible for the great divide. But the only course now open is for the people to grow and live peacefully.
The treatment is not original. It has been used to great effect in Spanish literature, and also surfaces in some of the works of the Austrian novelist and playwright Arthur Schnizzler. But what distinguishes this book from others in the genre is the facility with which the author uses language.
The great mall of China
When an economy with 1.3 billion people doubles in size every 10 years, it is likely sooner or later to have an impact on the rest of us. Last week, British home-owners and motorists began to feel what making room for China will mean, following rises in both mortgage rates and petrol prices.
Within a decade it promises to be the world's second economy after the United States, pulling more than 300 million Chinese out of abject poverty. It is an achievement that no other country has ever matched - and a profound challenge for the rest of the world.
Its exports, for example, have doubled in less than five years. The 'miracle' Japanese economy of the 1970s managed the same feat in seven years; Germany took ten years in the 1960s; it took Britain 12 years after 1838 culminating in the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace - the proudest moment in our industrial history - to do the same.
That is happening in China now. The Pearl River Delta just beyond Hong Kong can justly claim the mantle of being the new workshop of the world - a stunning maze of industrial plants that combines cheap labour, high skills and frontier technology in an unbeatable combination. But Shanghai and Beijing are no slouches either. This is the country, for example, where Volkswagen now sells more cars than it does in Germany.
China's boom literally needs fuelling, and this year it has become the world's second largest importer of oil after the US. Nor does its appetite stop there. It buys massive amounts of copper, cement and iron.
If you want to understand why commodity prices have jumped 60 per cent over the past two years, and why the oil price is now hovering at just over $40 a barrel, think China.
The good news is that higher commodity prices mean the world economy is strengthening, propelled by recovery in the US and the continuing growth in China; the bad news is that the impact on inflation is unavoidable, explicitly cited by the Bank of England for its decision to hike interest rates by a quarter of 1 per cent last week. The high price for a litre of unleaded petrol - now around 80p - with more increases certain, is part of the same picture.
Oil has doubled in price since December 2001. It may in real terms still be well below its all-time high, reached in 1979, but oil price hikes of this type have in the past always been associated with economic slowdowns and rising prices.
Warwick University's Professor Andrew Oswald has established that there is a close relationship between swings in the oil price, growth and unemployment; put simply, a low oil price stimulates and a high oil price depresses, working alternatively as a kind of generalised tax cut or tax increase because oil expenditure is unavoidable.
He tells me that he believes we are already in the danger zone; and if the price stays above $40 a slowdown in growth and pick up in unemployment, most acute in the US but impacting across the west, is inevitable.
In other words last week the world economy crossed an important line: the good side of a rising oil price - that it spells economic growth - began to be offset by the ominous height it was reaching.
It may of course fall back, but its hard to imagine it will fall very far; China's demand will see to that. On the other hand, what is spooking the oil world is obvious.
If a panicked US withdraws from a disintegrating Iraq over the next six months with mounting attacks by suicide bombers on oil installations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, then oil supply, rather than rising to check higher oil prices, could actually fall.
Then the oil price could go higher still - and interest rates in Britain, expected in any case to rise still further, would clearly top 5 per cent. In which case the debate about whether the British housing market is going to slow down gently or come back to earth with a thump would move decisively in favour of the pessimists.
House prices have doubled in five years and it is only cheap money and low mortgage service costs that justify the massive departure from their long term relationship with average earnings.
A return to the old relationship implies a fall in house prices of around a quarter, a risk which, while obvious, has until now seemed small while money remains cheap. Suddenly events in the Middle East combined with the China boom raise the probability that the British housing market could become very sticky indeed.
And China's growth, and its appetite for oil, are not going to disappear. For as Joshua Ramo, former foreign editor of Time and author of an intriguing pamphlet, 'The Beijing Consensus', published by the Foreign Policy Centre next week, argues, too many interpreters of China try to understand it in western terms.
China is not an economic bubble like the dot.com boom or parts of the British housing market that is about to be pricked, so relieving the pressure on world oil prices.
Its economic growth will doubtless quicken and slow in pace - and after the hectic growth of the past few years some easing may be inevitable - but the direction is clear.
This is a continent that is being opened up and developed rather as the US was in the 19th century; its momentum is just as inexorable - but its development, while breathtakingly friendly to capitalism, is very distinctive and Chinese.
It is a new economic model combining capitalist dynamism but guided by a state constantly aware of the need to raise living standards and the quality of life for literally hundreds of millions of people - or it will suffer a crisis of legitimacy.
Wen Jia-bao, the Chinese prime minister who visits London on Monday, does not talk about economic growth but about co-ordinated economic development. The scale of the infrastructure investment - whether oil pipelines, dock installations, motorways and airports - makes your head spin, but it is all part of an overall purpose; to drive Chinese economic development.
If fundamentalism of the left has been discarded, so, Ramo argues, has fundamentalism of the right - the so-called Washington consensus. The developing world is now looking to China as an exemplar of a new 'Beijing consensus', deploying capitalism not as an end in its own right - but as a means to an end.
It is because privatisation works that you do it; it is because financial deregulation does not that you have to proceed with caution. Above all invest in education. China, in short, is a world event - a continent on the move with a distinct approach to capitalism.
Its achievement is already remarkable, and its impact on a hitherto sluggish world economy entirely welcome. But the Chinese did not reckon on Messrs Bush and Blair and what now looks like the worst post-Second World War foreign policy error.
Torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners captured the headlines last week, but another and associated drama was playing itself out in the world's oil markets. Iraq has to be internationalised and normalised fast - and oil prices must be managed downwards. The stakes get higher by the week. China could step in; but will it?
-Dawn/Observer Service.
Iraq war's defining image
The defining image of the Vietnam war was the naked little girl running down the road crying, her clothes burned off by napalm. The defining image of the Iraq war will probably be Private Lynndie England in a corridor in Abu Ghraib prison, holding a leash attached to a naked Iraqi man lying on the floor.
It is the picture that best conveys the contempt that ordinary American soldiers (and the government that sent them) feel for Arabs. Maybe I'm wrong. US Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld told the Senate armed services committee last week that "the worst is yet to come.
There are a lot more pictures and many investigations underway.... I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.... It's not a pretty picture." But the symbolism of this one will be hard to beat.
Iraqis "must understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know," said President Bush, and he was right. Americans do not generally do this to other Americans.
But it did happen in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and things very like it have probably happened in American prisons in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, too. Private England and her friends may have been enjoying it too much, but the systematic humiliation of prisoners is probably policy.
'R2I' is short for 'resistance to interrogation.' It's a course that most military people whose jobs put them at risk of being captured - pilots, special forces, etc. - have to take.
They are exposed to the full battery of techniques that enemy interrogators might use against them (keeping them naked, sexual humiliation, anything that will 'prolong the shock of capture' and weaken their will), but only in small and manageable doses. It's a kind of immunisation against 'torture lite' interrogation techniques.
But US and British interrogators also know these techniques, and so do the thousands of ex-special forces people who now work in Iraq. (One result of Rumsfeld's obsession with keeping US troop numbers down in Iraq, in order to prove that the US can invade countries like Iraq without incurring a big political cost at home, is the 20,000 'contractors' doing paramilitary jobs in the country.)
Do they employ these techniques in Iraq and elsewhere? Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in Switzerland: "We are dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system." The ICRC has been warning the US of mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq for over a year.
Amnesty International concurs. "Our extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident.... (We have) received frequent reports of torture or other ill-treatment by coalition forces during the past year.
Detainees have reported being routinely subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest or detention...Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."
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