| 16 June 2004 | Wednesday | 27 Rabi-us-Saani 1425 |
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Severe setback to tourism
Enlightened moderation
Towards regime change in Britain?
It was perhaps a supreme irony for Karachiites, reeling as they were from the shock of the riots that followed the assassination of Maulana Shamzai and the retaliatory attack on a Shia mosque, to see every English-language newspaper in the country carry President Musharraf's article on "Enlightened Moderation" that had appeared in the Washington Post a day earlier.
It would be a brave man indeed who would seek to argue that the Karachi tragedies supported the president's thesis in his article that "It is not Islam as a religion that has created militancy and extremism but rather political disputes (implicitly with the West and occasioned by the injustice perpetrated by the West) that have led to antagonism among the Muslim masses".
For any impartial observer the assassination of Shamzai and the bombing of the Ali Raza mosque were a horrifying, but not unexpected, part of the continuing fratricidal conflict between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. This divide has little if anything to do with the political injustices that the West has visited upon the Muslim world.
This conflict is not limited to any one part of the Muslim world but certainly nowhere else has it acquired the same vicious dimension that it has in Pakistan. It has acquired this dimension not because there is natural antagonism between the Pakistani Shia and the Pakistani Sunni.
In fact, the history of South Asia shows that, despite their sporadic efforts, intolerant leaders on both sides of the sectarian divide could not, in the past, do more than spark the occasional incident around the 10th of Muharram.
The governments of the day kept a sharp eye on divisive activities and stamped them out with the sort of firmness that is so sadly lacking today. South Asia was in that sense a model of tolerance with Sunnis participating happily in Shia festivities and vice versa.
The sectarian intolerance, we are experiencing today, came to Pakistan initially after the 1979 revolution in Iran inspired an "export of the revolution" drive. This gathered steam, however, when a Baathist-led and Sunni-dominated Iraq forced a war upon Shia Iran.
Then, in an effort to garner support among the Pakistani populace, both parties to the conflict poured large sums of money and indoctrinated the mullahs in Pakistan. That Pakistani clerics allowed themselves to be so used can be attributed more to greed than to religious zeal.
They deserve to be condemned for allowing the transformation of Pakistan's soil into the secondary and only slightly less bloody battlefield for the war that waged for almost a decade between two Muslim countries.
What cannot be forgiven, however, is the failure of the Pakistan government of the day - a military regime - to fight this menace, and the fact that this very government saw in the accentuation of the sectarian divide a means of perpetuating its rule.
What also cannot be forgiven is the manner in which the status of Pakistan as a "front-line" state in the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was used not only to perpetuate the regime, and give a fresh impetus to the Islamization drive within Pakistan but also to further exacerbate the sectarian divide.
It is intolerable that there is a naive assumption that such a sectarian divide would leave the institutes of Pakistan unaffected and the extent to which this has led to the further politicization of the armed forces.
The president may believe, as his article says, "Political injustice to a nation or a people, when combined with stark poverty and illiteracy, makes for an explosive mix.
It produces an acute sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. A nation suffering from these lethal ills is easily available for the propagation of militancy and the perpetration of extremist, terrorist acts.
It is cannon fodder in a war of terrorism." He must know, however, that this is not the primary and potentially fatal cancer afflicting Pakistan's body politic and that is what the rest of the world would also perceive.
Those of us who monitor the news about Pakistan in the western press noted wryly that the same edition of The Washington Post that carried the President's plea for enlightened moderation on its op-ed page also carried a long story on its news pages about the bombing of the Ali Raza mosque.
This juxtaposition carried to even the most fair-minded of American readers the message that the problems of the Islamic world were largely the creation of the divisions within Islam rather than the division between Islam and the rest of the world.
If the concept of enlightened moderation is to have a chance of success it must be preceded by the drastic action that is needed to eliminate those who perpetuate divisions within Islam and use these divisions as the rallying cry for recruitment to the ranks of the terrorists and use this as a tool for undermining economic development. This is a battle that Pakistan has to fight by itself.
This battle must be fought with the clear realization that international developments will not help matters. There is little hope that a just solution will be found for the Palestine issue in the near future. There is even less hope that the Chechens will win their bid for independence or even worthwhile autonomy within the Russian republic.
The turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue and there will be reports of a large number of Muslims in these countries being killed by coalition forces or by the local security forces trained and equipped by the coalition forces.
There will be reports of incidents of discrimination against Muslims in the western world. There will be reports of people dying at the hands of dictatorial regimes in Central Asia.
In today's world of instant media coverage all this will be flashed on TV screens in Pakistan and will serve to inflame public opinion in the wrong direction.
The public can, however, be dissuaded from allowing this resentment to flow into destructive channels. This would happen if it can be convinced that the leadership is genuinely putting Pakistan first and that it must not be distracted from the task of putting Pakistan's internal house in order.
But if the public is to be so convinced then there must be a severing of the umbilical cord that seems to bind the ruling regime to obscurantist forces in the country.
It can only happen if the role of the madrassahs in fostering, at the very least, sectarian hatred is recognized and the promised reforms of these religious seminaries are pursued in right earnest. This can only happen if more political room is created for the secular parties and if the ban on fund-raising by jihadi parties is rigidly enforced.
The test of the leadership's resolve could well be Karachi which is Pakistan's jugular vein. On the maintenance of law and order in Karachi depend the foreign trade and a substantial part of Pakistan's industrial production.
But what is the situation in Karachi? It has a city government that is at odds with the provincial government and is ideologically committed to enlarging the role of the unregulated madrassahs that profilerate in greater numbers than in any other city of Pakistan.
It has a provincial government members of which have, to say the least, a chequered political past and a record of extortion and fascist attitudes. Karachi is the city where the MMA can call for and secure the observance of a complete strike to protest against the assassination of Maulana Shamzai.
In the NWFP where the MMA is in power the call for a strike was ignored despite the fact that Maulana Shamzai hailed from and was said to have his strongest supporters in that province.
Karachi complied with the MMA demand not out of love for Shamzai but because Karachiites knew from past experience that the administration could not protect them from the shock troops of the MMA just as previously it was unable to protect them from the depredations of the militant wings of the MQM.
The latest terrorist incident - the well-planned attack on the convoy of the Karachi corp commander - has put Karachi still further on edge. This has apparently also galvanized the administration into taking action to apprehend the perpetrators.
There has been welcome news that among those arrested is the man who financed the sectarian attack on a Shia mosque in Quetta, the nephew of the Al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and eight Central Asians who confessed to being part of the attack on the corps commander.
There is, however, scepticism. How did this come about in so short a time when the perpetrators of earlier sectarian and terrorist attacks have gone unapprehended?
One can suggest two answers. First there is the cynical view that the arrests have been made to assuage the deep concern felt by the public and that eventually it will emerge that those arrested had nothing to do with the incident.
The second, even more ominous, suggestion is that the administration or at least some official agencies knew of the presence of these terrorists but took no action because the persons in question had sympathizers within the agencies or because they were the proteges of powerful political forces.
Such protection could not, however, be maintained once the corps commander had been attacked. One can hope that neither of these cynical surmises is correct, that the administration is finally getting its act together.
One can also hope that there is now recognition in ruling circles that, whether or not there is a connection between the events in South Waziristan and the incidents in Karachi, there is now a direct conflict of interest between the forces the regime has been patronizing and the interests of Pakistan.
If Pakistan is to survive and prosper there must be peace and stability in Karachi. The president had, it was said, promised, in the wake of the recent incidents, to take drastic action. No one believes that the political palliative of a cosmetic change of chief ministers represents drastic action. More is needed.
The existence of parliament and provincial assemblies notwithstanding we have in reality a military regime. If not it would be strange for the Karachi corps commander to call a meeting of all officials concerned to review development plans in Karachi and to issue instructions on what needed to be done (The meeting, held on the day of the attack on his convoy was publicized presumably to emphasize that he was carrying on with business as usual).
Let the military regime then do what it is best equipped to do. Bring peace and order by persuasion if possible and by force of arms if necessary. To do so it must abandon the politics of patronage that it has played with such remarkable lack of success and with such grave consequences for Pakistan's well being.
Severe setback to tourism
The disturbances and curfew imposition in Gilgit and its surrounding areas couldn't have come at a worse time especially as far as tourism is concerned. After 9/11 and its bloody aftermath in Afghanistan and then in Pakistan, the number of foreign tourists to the Northern Areas has virtually come down to less than a trickle.
However, things were looking up and a few days prior to the beginning of the unrest, newspapers carried several reports saying that mountaineering and trekking expeditions had arrived in Islamabad and were on their way to Gilgit and/or Skardu.
May/June also marks the beginning of the trekking season, so it would be safe to say that the rest of this season is probably not going to see too many foreigners wandering or trekking in our Northern Areas.
The reasons for the return of the foreign trekkers probably have more to do with time rather than any deliberate policy action by the government to lure them. It has been close to three years since the events of September 11, and it would only have been a matter of time that at least some of those who had postponed their plans then would now begin to return to places like Gilgit.
As for the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (whose one hotel in Hunza, according to some newspaper reports, was also attacked and damaged by the rioters recently), it has called 2004 the year of the mountains and plans are said to be afoot to host a festival of sorts in the Northern Areas, marking the golden jubilee of the first ascent of Mount Godwin Austen, better known as K-2.
One wonders what will now happen to that festival or to the annual Shandur Polo festival held every year in July on what is possibly the world's highest polo ground (at around 4,000 metres above the sea level).
At the same time, the government has claimed that tourist arrivals in Pakistan in recent years have registered a healthy growth, increasing the number to above half a million in 2003.
However, it should also be mentioned, that the majority of these are not the kind of tourists who go to a country only for sightseeing. The vast majority are Pakistanis who live overseas and who come to Pakistan periodically to visit their families and friends.
Since the government itself does not give separate figures for both categories, it is hard to say just how many genuine tourists actually have been coming to Pakistan every year.
However, anecdotal evidence would suggest that since 9/11 the numbers have sharply gone down. In fact, even the number of domestic tourists to, say, places like Swat is reported to be lower, especially since the MMA government has been in power in the NWFP.
Whether or not the policies of that government are such that they create a hostile atmosphere even for domestic tourists is not under discussion here but rather that the perception that was created was not all that conducive for domestic tourists making a trip to Chitral or Swat.
Besides, the country's Northern Areas, in large part because of their proximity to Kashmir, have had their fair share of jihadi activities in recent years. Take the case of the now-banned Jaish-i-Mohammad (renamed the Tehrikul Furqan) which is said to run its training camp in Balakot in Mansehra district.
Balakot is mentioned in most guidebooks as the starting point for the lush green and very scenic Kaghan valley. The same goes for much of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, which has some of the best mountain and alpine scenery in the country but which many foreigners do not or cannot visit because of various restrictions imposed by the government.
So, if the government wants to get the foreign tourists to come to Pakistan - and this is something that can possibly happen in the medium-term - it will have to do something about the very negative image that our country has in the West.
Part of it is justified because we do have all kinds of extremist elements in various parts of the country - Karachi, the largest city, has just seen its bloodiest month in years.
Religious forces are in power in two of the provinces and are the main opposition at the centre. Anti-US sentiment also does not help because white-skinned tourists walking about in, say, conservative Swat can easily become targets of bigots.
It has to be said that it's not as if the conservatism found in some parts of the Northern Areas has suddenly emerged out of nowhere - it has been around for quite some time, but the success of the MMA in the last election and the increasing tendency to try to thrust one narrow interpretation of religion down everybody's throat is leading to disastrous consequences for the country's image both at home, among the more progressive-minded, and abroad.
The rather unfortunate aspect of all of this is that the government seems to have no clue really as to how to deal with the situation and what to do about the country's negative image abroad.
The question is not one of brushing up the image as it exists now but of improving the security situation in the country and of reining in obscurantist forces holding the rest of the nation virtually to ransom.
As for the PTDC, given its total lack of initiative other than to hold needless seminars every now and then and to issue press statements claiming that such and such things will be done to promote tourism, it needs to be restructured and reoriented.
The projection of Pakistan as a tourist destination should be decentralized and partly given over to the private sector with the ministry of tourism in a regulatory role. Private companies have been doing a lot to promote the country although their focus regrettably remains too much on the overseas (and probably more affluent) market.
The following is what an effort from a couple of determined people can do. Wajahat Malik is an accomplished travel journalist and has done some very good shows for two TV channels.
In fact, earlier this year he won an award for his work and in his acceptance speech he said that his journeys into Northern Pakistan happened despite Pakistani officialdom which at every step tried to create hurdles for him and his crew.
Recently, the National Geographic channel broadcast an adventure documentary interestingly titled "Surfing the Northern Frontier" featuring Wajahat and his cousin Nisar. They travelled to several hitherto virgin lakes, nestled high in the mountains of the north where they windsurfed in the crystal blue frigid waters of these lakes.
Among the areas the two went to were the Deosai Plateau and the Ishkoman Valley northwest of Gilgit, where Nisar windsurfed on a lake 3,800 metres above sea level. The footage was absolutely fantastic and mind-boggling and would make an avid traveller want to visit these lakes.
It's a pity, though, that the cousins, who also shot the documentary, were funded by a foreign company for this venture. The tourism ministry needs to benefit from people like these, and perhaps like the travel writer Salman Rashid, who have travelled all over Pakistan, who know a lot and who have some experience in making films that can be aired for foreign as well as domestic audiences.
PTV needs to air this documentary too, especially since it often is in the habit of showing National Geographic films, albeit two decades old. "Surfing the Northern Frontier" will have done probably more for Pakistan's image, at least as a potential tourist destination, in Europe and America than the output of all tourism ministry statements, claims, conferences, moots and festivals put together in the past decade.
It would be a good thing if the government stepped in and helped finance such ventures instead of having to rely on foreign firms.
Enlightened moderation
I have been writing this column since 1989. I do not know if my columns are read regularly by a section of readers or just seen casually when a subscriber has nothing better to do.
Even so, in these 15 years, even sporadic readers must surely have formed a fair idea of what I am about, what are my views about life, what I think of Pakistan and its various geographical and racial components and its minorities, and about its politics and politicians. If I were to describe myself as an advocate of enlightened moderation, I don't believe I would be making a false claim.
And that is where the trouble starts with this particular piece. During the last few weeks the expression "enlightened moderation" has almost become the copyright of President Pervez Musharraf, ever since he used it to knock some sense into the OIC during the summit in Malaysia, and later in the OIC seminar in Islamabad.
Since he has many admirers in this country, a number of them have been writing in both Urdu and English newspapers echoing his sentiments genuinely and sincerely. There have also been some who wrote just to please him (if he has the time to read them, which I'm sure he hasn't) and the first impulse of my readers will be to bracket me with that group. What am I supposed to say to that? Doesn't matter?
Recently I have begun wondering how our ideological hero, Allama Iqbal, and political hero, the Quaid-i-Azam, would have reacted to organisations like Al Qaeda which try to force their own concept of jihad down the throats of Muslims all over the world.
I had started thinking that Al Qaeda was confined to remote places like Wana, but after the recent murderous attack on an army convoy in Karachi we have been shaken out of our complacency.
Over the decades the Pakistan army had lost its admirers, but one is glad to see that every school of thought in the country has taken the ambush to be aimed directly at the very foundations of Pakistan.
Needless to say, both Iqbal and Jinnah were highly enlightened personalities and both counselled moderation - the former in religious matters and the latter in politics.
From the depths of his soul the Allama wanted the Muslims of the world to use Islam and its principles (including the concept of jihad) to inculcate in themselves the spirit of early Islam and become momins, i.e. prototypes of the intellectual and spiritual superman; while M.A. Jinnah never advocated deviation from the path of peace and constitutionality for the attainment of a separate homeland.
Of course the world is not what it was in the '30s and '40s, but it can be asserted with certainty that neither of them visualized their co-religionists as rifle-toting morons indiscriminately killing anyone who didn't agree with them. That way the general is in distinguished company.
It was a happy thought, these two words epitomising the ideal for the modern Muslim beset by West's bias against him and accused by American intellectuals like Huntington and Fukuyama of everything dirty under the sun.
It may not fit in with the picture of a good Muslim in the minds of the ultra-religious, and while there is nothing in it to stop him from jihad to improve himself, it does not conform to the image of sword-wielding historical figures like Mahmood Ghaznavi and Salahuddin Ayubi who disturb the dreams of ordinary Muslims bent on conquering the world.
Enlightened moderation is realistic though prosaic, but if it were to be practised by jihadi Muslims it would leave them without a job. My heart goes out to the Palestinians resisting Israel's state terrorism with the only weapon at their disposal - suicide attacks.
What great and unprecedented sacrifices they are making for their homeland! Absolutely fantastic! I also sympathise with the Iraqis in their travails under the conquering heel of the superpower and admire them for doing likewise. But that is all.
Try as I might I am unable to find justification for other acts of terrorism in other parts of the world including Pakistan. They are nothing but the result of criminal indoctrination of simple youthful minds by the jihadis. What ignorance can be greater than theirs, to be tempted by the picture of a paradise drawn by twisted minds who have never seen it.
I do not want to talk here of the problems of world Muslims who wish to adhere sincerely to their faith and yet keep in step with the rest of the world so that they are not left behind.
They are taught that there is no conflict between Islam and science, which is true. Yet it is also a fact that there has been no Muslim religious leader/scholar in the subcontinent during the last 100 years who had read science or had a good word to say for it, except Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
So the Muslim mind continues to be assailed by contradictory thoughts and earns for itself the sobriquet of backward. Add to this the assault launched against Islam and Muslims by fundamentalist non-Muslims, even People of the Book like Christians of the West, which makes them feel hounded and ends in their persecution and being ostracized.
Maybe the nostrum of enlightened moderation is the way to save our lives, for Muslim lives are certainly more precious than nebulous ideas and shibboleths. I don't want to sound escapist, but I believe the most urgent need for Muslims at the moment is to protect themselves from madmen and to adopt a philosophy of life that is reasonable, ethical and timely.
We lose nothing by adopting enlightened moderation as a creed. We are making no concessions or compromises in our faith. The creed is at once Islamic and rational, dictated both by Islam and the intellectual commonsense of the West. I, for one, refuse to take the murderous jihadi as my model for dealing with the highly developed West.
His acts make one wonder what he really understands by progress. Apart from all those who, like me, believe in enlightened moderation and all that it stands for, I am sure all liberals in Pakistan will be ready to yield place to General Pervez Musharraf in this regard.
They all wish that his advocacy of the expression may bring about a sea change in the attitude of Muslims to the mind-boggling demands of the crazy modern world in which a simple soul sincere to his or her faith is labelled as a terrorist.
Towards regime change in Britain?
In the wider scheme of things, it is somehow appropriate that Tony Blair was attending a funeral - that of Ronald Reagan - when the results came in from last Thursday's local council elections in England and Wales.
Unlike the rabidly rightwing former US president, New Labour isn't dead. It isn't even in a coma. But it has suffered a body blow. Much like Reagan did when a would-be assassin's bullet struck him inches from the heart way back in 1981.
Reagan recovered, and his popularity spiralled towards the stratosphere. Unfortunately for Blair, New Labour cannot rely on a similar reaction. Yet it isn't impossible to envisage him whispering to Cherie: "Honey, I forgot to duck."
Having been forewarned of what lay ahead, when reports of the electoral devastation began coming in, Britain's ruling party was ready with an explanation: Iraq. Whereas "don't mention the war" had been its mantra during the campaign, post-election Iraq has become an all-encompassing excuse.
The implication therein is that last week's lambasting was a mid-term aberration. By the time an election is called next year, Iraq may seem like less of a liability. After all, things there couldn't get all that much worse, so the expectation is that they will get better. Or at least they will seem better.
There will, for example, be no more incriminating photographs emerging from Abu Ghraib or any other prison. Not because further systematic torture is out of the question, but because the Pentagon has banned digital cameras from all such facilities.
As a consequence, the argument goes, public anger towards the government for leading Britain into war on false pretences will dissipate. After all, many of those who passionately opposed the aggression against Iraq are traditional Labour voters.
They wanted to register their anger, which they have now done; when the time comes, they will not wish to vote out the government. There is an element of truth in such analyses, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it is the whole truth.
Even if a general election were to be held tomorrow, it is unlikely that Labour would poll less votes than both of its main rivals, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as it did last week. And protest votes are indeed common at mid-term elections.
However, as some members of Blair's cabinet have hinted, Labour can ill afford the luxury of taking its "natural" supporters for granted. Although such voters might consider it anathema to plump for the Tories under any circumstances, they may well be less averse to the idea of casting a ballot in favour of the Liberal Democrats or the Greens. If enough of them do so, Britain could, a year or so from now, end up with a Conservative government by default.
Fear of such an eventuality has led to calls from Labour MPs that the government must start paying some attention to vox populi. But that could prove hard to do if the voter backlash was indeed all about Iraq. Because heeding public sentiment in this context would involve acknowledging that the war was, at best, a grievous error and dissociating Britain from the "coalition of the willing".
That would cut to the quick George W. Bush and his neoconservative cabal - and sharply reduce its chances of legitimately winning a term in office in November. Which is one reason why Blair won't revise his ill-advised commitment to the Iraqi misadventure.
All the available evidence suggests that he's more loyal to Bush than to the Labour Party. A limp mea culpa about the missing weapons of mass destruction, blaming the untruths he bandied about with the passion of a preacher on bad intelligence, won't get him very far.
That's why Blair and his colleagues are expected to concentrate on domestic issues in their public statements this week. If that's partly a reaction to last Thursday's chastisement at the hustings, it's also open to interpretation as a tacit acknowledgement that Iraq wasn't the only factor that angry voters had on their mind.
Efforts to increase product differentiation - that is, to create the impression that Labour is less regressive than its rivals on social and economic issues - can henceforth be expected to gather momentum.
Even that won't be a simple task, given that Blair's government inherited substantial parts of its doctrine and methodology from its Conservative predecessors, and Margaret Thatcher tends to see him as a worthier heir than John Major.
At the helm of the Tories, Major was followed by two minors, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, but in Michael Howard they at last have a leader who can get away with posing as an alternative prime minister.
However, despite intriguing anomalies - such as Conservative support for free higher education in the face of Labour's imposition of student loans that must be repaid after graduation - it is hard to imagine the Tories seriously aspiring to gain the progressive vote.
On Iraq, they have been inclined to needle the prime minister in parliament, but beyond such political posturing they have few problems with the war or the alliance with Bush. The fault lines in Conservative ranks relate not to Iraq but to Europe, and the seepage of rightwing votes to the Euro-sceptic UK Independence Party will prompt a further bout of soul-searching.
In elections to the European Parliament, the swing away from the Tories was considerably larger than the swing against Labour, contrary to the continental trend whereby opposition parties generally bested their ruling rivals.
Spain was a notable exception, presumably partly because the incumbency of the Socialists is a recent phenomenon. But in all likelihood the electorate would have been far less indulgent had the new government not lived up to its promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
More generally, what should provide cause for concern to the architects of a more integrated Europe is indications of widespread apathy towards Brussels. Although turnout in the European elections was generally low, at an average of about 26 per cent it was abysmal in nations that made their much ballyhooed entry into the European Union (EU) on May 1.
With European leaders - for the most part, representatives of parties that fared poorly last week - putting their signatures to the EU constitution in Brussels tomorrow, it is far from clear that they have fully grasped the implications of the growing Euro-scepticism in their nations.
Sixty years after the Normandy landings - marked earlier this month with pomp, ceremony and, for the first time, German participation - many Europeans appreciate the guarantee of peace and various other advantages that have flowed from deeper engagement between nations, but are wary of the prospect of a super-state.
This is certainly true of Britain, where Blair has been coerced - not least by the Murdoch press - into committing himself to a referendum on the EU constitution. It is at the moment far from clear that such a poll can be won. Nor is it obvious how, in the face of a loss, Britain would be able to retain its membership of the union.
If Blair is relying on his powers of persuasion, that would suggest he probably does not realize the extent to which he has discredited himself over Iraq. There is an outside chance, however, that he may see the light in the wake of the local elections, which - extremely unusually - turned, to some extent, into a foreign policy referendum.
The swing to the Tories in southern England may have had little to do with Iraq, but Liberal Democrat gains in the north appear to have been based to a considerable extent on the party's voluble opposition to the war.
Party leader Charles Kennedy has hailed the local election results as signalling a return to three-party politics. Should that indeed turn out to be the case, New Labour may find itself obliged to share power after the next general election.
In London, Ken Livingstone, who became mayor four years ago as an independent after effectively being expelled by Labour for being too leftwing, has retained his post despite - rather than because of - being readmitted into the Labour fold.
Crucially, Livingstone has been among the most prominent critics of the invasion of Iraq. He nonetheless believes that the party ought to retain Blair at its helm. That would be a serious mistake. Not because Blair is an electoral liability - which, despite everything, is a moot question.
But because he is a moral liability. Quite a few of Blair's critics claim that for all his flaws, Blair is totally sincere. That is to say, he attached himself to Bush's posterior not out of a sense of obligation, but because he really believed that bombing Iraq into submission was the best means of liberating it from Saddam Hussein's yoke.
That is hard to accept. Because, as the film-maker Michael Moore puts it, Blair, unlike his special friend across the Atlantic, is not an idiot. And to fall hook, line and sinker for the neocon agenda, one has to be either a fool or a fanatic.
The available evidence - not least the zeal, the glimmer of blind faith in his eyes whenever he addresses the subject of Iraq - suggests the latter. And fanatics, as everyone knows, are more dangerous than fools. They stop at nothing when they are on the warpath.
That's why Tony Blair must go. For the good of the Labour Party. For the good of Britain. For the good of the world. He has been prime minister for seven years, which is a record for a Labour PM. That's enough. More than enough. If the Labour Party feels it can't do without him, then it must suffer the consequences.
Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.