Why tyrants must stand trial

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague is in trouble, a worrying augury when Saddam Hussein awaits further days in court.

The problem is not Milosevic's failing health. His trial has dragged on for two years and the prosecution has only now completed its case. He has been presented with 400,000 pages of evidence. One observer noted that if the former Serbian leader read three pages a minute, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take him more than six months to ingest the evidence. This would floor a well man. Even if counsel is foisted on Milosevic, his lawyer will have to digest the mass of material.

Then there are the witnesses Milosevic intends to call: Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Milosevic doubtless wants to accuse the western leaders of war crimes by sanctioning the bombing of Belgrade. He will point to international bullies, such as China, who have escaped their attention, and claim the tribunal represents 'victor's justice'. The potential embarrassment is unlimited.

This should come as no surprise. The trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961-2 is widely regarded as a crucial step along the path that leads to Milosevic and Saddam facing justice today. The prosecution of the man who organised the annihilation of Europe's Jews is celebrated for advancing the application of international law covering crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The Eichmann trial is also credited with raising public awareness of the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews. It is seen as a classic 'historic trial'.

But scrutiny of the Eichmann trial, and the Nuremberg tribunal of 1945-46 on which it drew precedent, helps to explain why the Milosevic trial has run into trouble. It should also serve as a warning, rather than an inspiration, to those now contemplating the trial of Saddam Hussein.

As head of the 'Jewish Office' of the Gestapo between 1941 and 1944, Eichmann oversaw the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps. He escaped to Argentina and remained undetected until 1957. In May 1960, the Israeli secret service kidnapped Eichmann in violation of Argentine sovereignty.

It is a myth that David Ben Gurion, Israel's prime minister, wanted a trial to tell the world of the genocide of the Jews. But when the abduction was denounced at the UN, and prominent Jews demanded Eichmann appear before an international tribunal, Ben Gurion saw how a trial could demonstrate the rationale for Jewish statehood. Eichmann would be tried in Jerusalem precisely to show that the Jews now determined their own fate - and that of any enemy who fell into their hands.

Initially, preparation of the Eichmann case was handled by the Israeli police. They sought documents and witnesses that linked him directly to the genocide. This resulted in a case confined to geographical areas where there was a paper trail incriminating Eichmann.

But when the newly-appointed attorney general of Israel, Gideon Hausner, took over the prosecution he revamped the case. He wanted the trial to recall the genocidal campaign against Europe's Jews. Hausner, under intense political pressure, doubled the number of witnesses to provide this scope and give the hearings an emotional edge. Ben Gurion intervened to ensure that his role in unsuccessful and controversial rescue negotiations with the Nazis was never mentioned. Foreign minister Golda Meir wanted comparisons made with the fate of black Africans under colonialism.

Teddy Kollek, the director of Ben Gurion's office, set out to produce the media trial of the century, converting a theatre into a courtroom and arranging for proceedings to be televised. Facilities were provided for 450 journalists.

The trial opened in a blaze of publicity but within days the press had gone. In terms of its immediate impact the Eichmann trial, like Nuremberg, was a flop. Those despairing of the minimal coverage of the Milosevic trial should have heeded these examples.

Historic trials are by their nature long and dull. They are self-defeating because the media cannot sustain interest in them. The journalist Rebecca West described Nuremberg as 'boredom on a huge, historic scale'. Telford Taylor, a prosecutor at Nuremberg who later covered Eichmann's trial, complained that journalists had not come to Jerusalem 'to be bored to tears by long lectures and legal argument'.

They can also be counterproductive, thanks to the antics of the defendants. At Nuremberg, Rudolf Hess, once deputy fuhrer, seemed a harmless lunatic. Goring, by contrast, tore into his accuser, Justice Jackson. Eichmann looked so inoffensive that Simon Wiesenthal suggested he be dressed in SS uniform to remind people of what he once was. The sight of Saddam in chains has aroused conflicting emotions, even among Iraqis glad of their freedom.

Some legal theorists argue that trials can have a cathartic effect, offering comfort to victims and helping a society move on from tyranny and atrocity. But this is not how it always seems.

Legal procedure means that the narrative is chopped and disjointed. At Nuremberg, information about the destruction of the European Jews got lost among other evidence. The survivors who testified against Eichmann were coached as to what they could say.

Trials can backfire. The first tactic of the defence is always to impugn the court's legitimacy. At Nuremberg, Goring pointed out that Russia, represented on the bench, had invaded Poland in 1939 and waged war against Finland in 1940. Dr Robert Servatius, who defended Nazis at Nuremberg prior to acting for Eichmann, was quick to denounce 'victors' justice'. Milosevic intends to call the French, British and American leaders, almost certainly in the hope of questioning them over their alleged war crimes.

The Nuremberg tribunal, the Eichmann trial, and the prosecution of Milosevic demonstrate the same flaws. They were political and shaped by compromise. After initial publicity, media interest was ground down. Testimony given by survivors was hardly reported and the invisibility of the proceedings deprived the victims of satisfaction that justice was being seen to be done.

But the alternative, such as the kangaroo court that condemned Nicolae Ceausescu, is worse. These prolonged show trials may be imperfect but they can reinforce democratic values by reasserting human rights and the rule of law over tyranny. They may not deliver instant understanding or reconciliation, but in the long run they establish a historical record that serves the future as testimony and admonition.-Dawn/Observer Service

The writer is a research professor of history at Royal Holloway, London University.

Emerging power patterns

President Musharraf has set up the National Security Council to keep a check on the government. Now his chief political associate, Chaudhry Shujaat, plans to put the government under the surveillance of the party. The government thus would be answerable more to the NSC and to the party than to the parliament.

Down the line in the provinces and in the districts, under Shujaat's scheme, the ministers, nazims and civil servants will be supervised by the party cadres. The provincial assemblies and district councils have no NSCs to contend with but there will be the control of the party on them. If Shujaat had his way, the control will be more extensive and intrusive.

While explaining his ideas to Dawn (last Tuesday) on the supremacy of the party over the government and the division of work between the two, the only party he had in mind, it seems, was his own Muslim League. One wonders whether he would have been so emphatic about it all were he to realize that the parties in the coalitions at the centre and in Sindh and Balochistan and the MMA alliance in NWFP could hardly be denied the same role that he envisages for his own party, nor could the parties in the opposition be ignored.

It is hard to imagine that the nazims belonging to the Muslim League-N and Benazir's PPP, or even MQM, would let Shujaat's Muslim Leaguers select and implement the development schemes in their districts. If the chiefs or caucuses of all parties were to assert their control over the departments of the government it would, undoubtedly, create chaos. Enough of chaos is already there caused by Musharraf's devolution plan. Shujaat's political intervention will aggravate it.

Though Shujaat is currently the prime minister his views on governance are conditioned more by his political office which he hopes to keep for long even after he ceases to be the prime minister. His commitment to the party is greater than to the government as is evident from his Dawn interview in his ire on Zafarullah Jamali's "manoeuvre" to become secretary-general of the Muslim League which would have reduced him as its chairman to a mere figurehead. (For analogy, interestingly, Shujaat recalls President Fazal Elahi skipping over the recent and more pathetic figure of Rafiq Tarar).

It was Jamali's challenge to the party's chairman and not to the country's president which, it now appears, cost him his job.The thrust of Chaudhry Shujaat's scheme is on the party chief taking care of the "local welfare projects" while the prime minister attends to problems of national governance and economy. This barely disguises his desire to control, through the party hierarchy, the jobs and other patronage that flow from development spending.

The party will thus build up a cadre of steadfast workers who, in turn, would muster votes and street power to sustain the government. All politics, it is universally acknowledged, is mostly local and about jobs. In Pakistan it is most pronounced.

While Chaudhry Shujaat wishes to place the party and its chief above the government and its head, he also proposes to enact a law which would make the holder of an elective public office, including the president, eligible to hold alongside a party post as well.

An explanation for the contradiction between what Shujaat says and the law he proposes to enact is to be found in his reply to a question on the possibility of President Musharraf taking over the leadership of the party after he gives up the army command. His reply was not in the affirmative, but not a denial either: "It would not be something which could not happen".

The country thus seems to be heading towards an arrangement, if Musharraf and Shujaat could direct the course of the events, in which the president of the country would also be the leader of the dominant or the majority party, as the case may be. The party through the president and not through the parliament thus would control the district governments and the local councils.

That seems to have been the idea behind the devolution plan and then the president standing by the district nazims in their jurisdictional tussle with the ministers, members of the assemblies and civil servants who, Musharraf believes, should concern themselves with the making of laws and policies and leave the nazims to manage the local affairs and development funds. In that light the selection of Shaukat Aziz as prime minister can be seen. Mr Aziz has no political past nor, hopefully, future ambitions. He is required to be a good administrator and economic manager having no crave for political power.

Musharraf's favourite concepts of "checks and balances" and "power at the grassroots" thus would find a full expression in politics as well as in governance. His plans and effort may be a negation of parliamentary democracy but then he has always maintained that for stability and progress the country has to devise a system of its own. A reciprocating Shujaat agrees that the army should become an open (instead of hidden) partner in political power but the civilian government must not interfere in military matters.

While the ruling combine of the Muslim League and the army pursues its own perceived wisdom and goal, the people and leaders alike need to pay heed to some voices of sanity and common sense raised every now and then. Wali Khan's ANP, a secular party which has been cornered in its home ground by sectarian forces as a fallout of Afghan jihad, has demanded the return of Benazir Bhutto and Sharifs (Altaf Husain may be added for good measure) to the country; fresh and free elections; and autonomy for the provinces if the deepening political crisis is not to result in an East Pakistan like situation.

Dr Javed Iqbal who is making a mark now as a thinker (which he couldn't as a judge) has said what most others dread to say: The scholars of Islam lend support to authoritarian rule (as that of Ayub, Zia and Musharraf) whenever it suits their personal or political ends but deny to others the right even of academic dissent from their religio-political creed and its heavy-handed enforcement in areas where they hold sway.

The essential common point in what Asfandyar Wali and Javed Iqbal have to say is that no system howsoever original or indigenous can work if the popular base of the government is narrow and doubtful, prejudices prevail over reason and oppressive elements of the state and religion deny to the weak.

A suggestion that is sensible and practical has come from Chaudhry Shujaat himself in the midst of his hyperbole on reforming laws, madressahs, academic syllabi and the rest. He wants the people to be held accountable while they are in power and not afterwards. At the same time he wants the false accusers to be instantly tried and punished.

The implementation of this proposal can start straightaway with the accountability of the former prime minister Zafarullah Jamali. He claims to have returned to his village after 19 months in Islamabad without a stain on his character. However, day after he was removed from office an Urdu newspaper published a charge-sheet against him on its front page. If Jamali's claim is vindicated through a judicial process, the publisher should be punished for false accusation. Why the paper did not publish the charge-sheet when Jamali was in power is an ever-haunting question of conscience.

Not CIA's fault

Having presided over the two worst intelligence disasters since Pearl Harbour - 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq - the Bush administration and its apologists are now whining, 'OK, we were wrong about Iraq's weapons and supposed threat, but so was everybody else. Besides, it was all CIA's fault.'

No way. The Iraq weapons fiasco was absolutely not caused by an 'intelligence failure,' as the White House and the recent Senate whitewash claimed.

US national security and CIA were corrupted and blinded at the top by extremist ideology, cowardice, and careerism.

Nor was everyone wrong about Iraq. Scores of Mideast professionals, this writer included, insisted from Day 1 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to the US, and had no link to Al Qaeda. We were ignored, or dismissed as traitors or cranks.

Here's what really happened. In 2002, vice president Dick Cheney thundered that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons. A month later, secretary of state Colin Powell proclaimed 'no doubt he (Saddam) has chemical weapons.' Shortly after, President George Bush assured the UN that Iraq had biological weapons.

US national security adviser Condoleeza Rice warned a 'mushroom cloud' threatened America. Britain's glib prime minister, Tony Blair, made similar ludicrous claims - and is now offering the same 'we were all wrong' excuses.

Many veteran CIA officers dismissed alarmist claims about Iraq as politically-motivated propaganda. The US state department, US air force, and French intelligence challenged claims the Iraq had threatening offensive weapons systems. Many senior Pentagon military officers opposed invading Iraq.

But the word went out: If you value your job and pension, do not, repeat, do not contradict the boss.

The president is hell-bent on invading Iraq. Make it so.

Cheney repeatedly visited CIA, intimidating staff and demanding evidence be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda.

Oblivious to all facts, Cheney keeps warning Iraq still threatens the US. He is increasingly out of touch with reality and may need professional help.

CIA director George Tenet, a careerist bureaucrat, not an intelligence professional, undermined his agency's ethics by eagerly pandering to all of Bush and Cheney's prejudices - over his subordinate's protests. Hand-licking took precedence over professionalism. Those with dissenting views were ignored, shunted aside, or fired.

This column has long reported smouldering anger among veteran CIA officers over Bush's deeply flawed policies towards Iraq and the Muslim World. In late 2001, I was shocked and horrified to hear a distinguished member of CIA's founding families actually claim a 'fifth column' had taken control of Iraq policy and was driving the US to war.

But even the too compliant CIA failed to satisfy Bush and Cheney's growing demands for more damning 'evidence,' so Cheney and defence secretary Don Rumsfeld created two independent intelligence units, office for special plans, and 'Team B,' packing them with far-right neo-conservative lobbyists for Israel from the Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle faction. Their mission: find the smoking guns to justify immediate war against Iraq.

These two intelligence units became the main conduits for disinformation about Iraq, confirming every rumour or lie the White House and media wanted to believe, no matter how absurd.

Iraq-exile Ahmad Chalabi, created, financed, and managed by Pentagon neocons, was the main lie-producer. Chalabi was being groomed by the neocons and their allies in Israel's Likud Party to become the next ruler of Iraq. His tales were trumpeted by the White House and media. Israeli and British intelligence provided more faked material to whip up war fever.

This was not an intelligence failure. This was strategic deception, a combination the Soviets KGB called 'disinformatzia' and 'maskirovka.'

The disinformation campaign was made possible by an ideologically and religiously extreme president; a vice president lusting for war and oil; neocon ideologues inspired by General Ariel Sharon; and a cowardly Congress that violated its most basic responsibility to the nation. And a national security establishment that lacked the courage to tell the superiors or Americans the truth. In recent years, we have seen the same fate befall ISI as it has been progressively politicized and filled with yes-men.

Purging CIA is not the answer. If anyone should be purged, it is the politicians and neocons in the Pentagon and media, who wilfully misled the US into a catastrophic war that has so far cost the lives of over 880 Americans, 13,000 Iraqi civilians, US $200 billion, and ruined the good name of the United States around the world.

They and Britain's Tony Blair must not be allowed to escape full blame and retribution by hiding behind the sophistry that everyone - and thus no one- was responsible.-Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004

Protecting farmers' interests

The need to provide some kind of insurance cover to protect the incomes and outputs of farmers from the vagaries of the weather, natural calamities (like pest attacks) and price fluctuations, despite modernization and technological improvements, has often been raised but without being subjected to any serious debate.

Across the border in India, crop insurance, essentially covering yields/output (and not crop income directly) delivered by rural finance institutions, is being used to provide protection to farmers. The instrument of crop insurance is linked to crop loans and its cost is partly financed through government subsidies (especially to cover small and marginal farmers).

It is, however, intriguing that despite the high claims to premium ratio (more than 400 per cent) only 10 per cent of the cropped area in India is covered, whereas the above mentioned high ratio should have attracted more farmers to the scheme.

It is time to give this issue a serious thought, especially now that the Bank of Punjab is planning to introduce agriculture crop insurance. To this end, this article makes recommendations on how best to introduce such an instrument by highlighting the major factors that will have to be taken into consideration for its development.

The foremost problem is that risk in agriculture is largely systemic in nature and cannot be reduced through "pooling of risk," a critical condition for making any activity insurable. Consequently, in agriculture, the assessment of the risk, and thereby the level of the insurance premium, is likely to require coverage on an area basis (for a crop like wheat or cotton or a combination of major crops), as opposed to an individual farmer basis, since the estimates would have to be based on an average risk and loss aspects of this specific area as a whole.

Farmers of a specific/identified homogeneous geographical area will all have to be viewed as identical in terms of the degree of risk and loss and hence will be required to pay the same premium and also be entitled to a claim of the same value (on a per care basis). Such an approach would not only be an administratively more convenient approach, but would also help minimize manipulation and the incentive to be reckless. Moreover, it would also be mandatory on all farmers in the area to participate in the scheme.

Tying a crop loan to its insurance would strengthen the scheme and also reduce the risk for the financial institution (thereby, lowering the interest rate on the loan). To minimize administration costs the premium could be deducted at source from the disbursement of the loan.

However, for the area-based approach to get off the ground would require adequate historical data over a number of years on crop yields of, and of rainfall and pest attacks, in such a defined "area".

Insuring the income of the farmer from a particular crop will require that he be covered for the difference between guaranteed income (to be determined by multiplying the lowest acceptable yield per acre with the crop support price announced by the government) and the actual income (which would be a function of the actual yield and the prevailing market price).

To minimize the incentive to manipulate income, "actual" market price will have to be accepted as being within a range of say 90 per cent and 125 per cent of the support price. However, the amount to be paid to a claimant need not be based on an estimation of the loss and could be predetermined.

The element of risk would have to be shared between the insurance company and the government, with the latter's contribution being in the form of a subsidy. Luckily any crop insurance subsidies of this nature that may be required to operationalize the scheme in the initial period are not likely to run foul of WTO regulations.

Over time the quality of the crop insurance scheme will improve because of better crop estimation techniques resulting from the use of new technologies, improved forecasting and superior methods of prediction about weather conditions.

Denying the right to return

"In accordance with current regulations, no type of attire with degrading or obscene comments may be worn on or brought to Diego Garcia. This includes pictures, phrases or slogans depicting drug paraphernalia, anti-war slogans...." It's not clear from the website whether the British customs officials who check American troops arriving on the Indian Ocean island regard T-shirts with anti-war slogans as just degrading or downright obscene, but they definitely don't want them on the island. They don't want the inhabitants back, either.

Britain's capacity for mean and underhanded behaviour towards its former colonial subjects has never been in doubt, but last week saw an especially ugly example. Four years ago, the High Court in London ruled that the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands, removed from their homeland between 1967 and 1973 to make way for a huge US air base, had been evicted illegally. It looked like an old injustice was finally on the way to being rectified - but that depended on the British government obeying its own courts. Fat chance.

Last month, the British government changed the law to overrule the High Court decision and deny the Chagotians the right to go home after over three decades of exile. It would cost too much, explained the Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell, and besides several thousand Chagotians returning to the islands would endanger their delicate ecology. (Whereas the Stealth and B-52 bombers on Diego Garcia and the 1,500 American military personnel and 2,000 mostly Filipino civilians who maintain them are as environmentally sound as the 15,000-foot runways they fly from.)

The story didn't end there, because the government of Mauritius, which has a legal claim to the Chagos Islands that even Britain acknowledges, announced that it might take the British government to the International Court of Justice to get justice for the exiled islanders. Since a colonial-era British law prevents Commonwealth members from suing the British government, this would require Mauritius to leave the Commonwealth, which it certainly did not wish to do. But, said Prime Minister Paul Berenger, it would do it if necessary: "We will do it broken-heartedly, but we will do it."

Nothing daunted, the British Foreign Office changed the rules again. On 7 July, Mr Rammell announced that "these changes...prevent any Commonwealth country from circumventing the present limitations by withdrawing from the Commonwealth and then instituting proceedings against the United Kingdom in respect of an existing dispute." No wonder the French used to call Britain 'perfidious Albion.' They are probably using somewhat stronger language in Mauritius this week.

It would be too simplistic to think that British Foreign Office simply betrays and cheats the poor and the powerless without a second thought. It does do that, of course - ask all the people in British colonies who suddenly discovered that being born British subjects no longer gave them the right to live in Britain - but it also has a well developed instinct for toadying to the powerful. It took both reflexes acting in concert to deliver the people of the Chagos archipelago into exile.

The US government asked Britain to lease the Chagos archipelago to it for an airbase in the early 1960s, at the height of the cold war but it didn't want the inconvenience of the 1,500 inhabitants, so could they please be removed? London, ever eager to please Washington, agreed to the deal in return for a price cut on the Polaris missiles it was buying from the US. It then separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, which was due to gain its independence soon, and set them up as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Then it got rid of the Chagotians. Some were tricked into leaving for medical treatment or on other false pretenses and then forbidden to return; the last hold-outs were evicted by force and simply dumped on the docks of Mauritius.

Years later Britain grudgingly gave them a paltry amount of cash as compensation: the equivalent in today's money of about $15,000 per person for the loss of their homes and a lifetime of exile. Most never really settled in elsewhere, and live in poverty today.

The breakthrough came four years ago, when the High Court in London ruled that they had a right of return. Initially, the British Foreign Office accepted the ruling, and announced a study of the feasibility of resettling the exiles not on Diego Garcia, among the bombers and the nuclear weapons, but on some of the other islands.

As recently as February, Bill Rammell told parliament he was talking to the US authorities about chartering a ship to take Chagotians back on a visit - and then, presumably, the US government said no. So the British government saluted, did a smart about-face, and said no too, changing the law twice in two months to make it stick.

When Paul Berenger flew to London last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw could not even find the time to see him. Don McKinnon, secretary-general of the Commonwealth, did see him, and was clearly incensed.-Copyright