| 04 August 2004 | Wednesday | 17 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
Afghan women's new role
Scientific investigation
Is there hope for Darfur?
Sitting in San Francisco after the end of the Democratic Convention in Boston and having perused the results of at least two polls designed to assess the "bounce" the Kerry campaign had achieved from the presidential candidate's bravura performance at the convention, one had wished to focus exclusively on the message that Kerry had sought to convey to the American people and the prospects of his success in the November elections.
Sunday, however, brought the news of a new "Orange Alert" declared by the Secretary Homeland Security on the basis of multi-sourced information that Al Qaeda cells were planning an attack on financial centres in New York and Washington.
How far this will change the dynamics of the two campaigns is not yet clear. What is clear is that the "war against terror" will be the central theme and both candidates will have to present ideas on how they intend to make Americans feel safer in a world where they perceive themselves as the targets of "Islamic terrorism".
Regarding the apparent results of the convention, the most remarkable thing, perhaps, was the strong sense of unity and discipline within the Democratic party. For someone who has watched the American political scene for many years, this was perhaps the first convention in recent memory where such unity of purpose and such absence of dissent were in evidence.
The carefully orchestrated convention proceedings permitted the organizers to vet every speech and to ensure that there was no departure from the central strategy: "Attack Bush and his policies but do so without sounding negative or even defensive".
The apprehension that past Democratic presidents would be less than supportive or would put forward agendas of their own proved unfounded. It was speculated, for example, that former President Clinton would want Kerry to lose so that the way would be clear for Hillary Clinton to be the Democrat nominee for president in 2008.
Clinton's speech was perhaps the most memorable event of the convention and yielded the pithy phrase that may perhaps become the theme of Kerry's campaign on security and foreign policy issues: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. They go hand in hand and John Kerry has both."
There appears to be widespread agreement that Kerry's 46 minute oration starting with his evocation of his honourable military service - "I am John Kerry and I am reporting for duty" - was far more eloquent and far more effective than anyone had expected him to be.
Taken along with the endearing portrait of a loving and caring father as painted by his daughters, Kerry emerged as a personality that the American masses could empathize with.
His penchant for subtle nuance, for carefully measured positions was seemingly abandoned. From being a colourless wooden politician, he came close to becoming a man of charisma.
Many thought that this was a one-time effort. It may well turn out to be so. His speech gave no clear indication of how his policy on Iraq would differ from that of Bush beyond stressing the obvious departure from Bush's unilateralism.
He had nary a word to say about Afghanistan. Critics maintained, with a certain amount of justification, that his speech reflected his inability to spell out clear and unambiguous policies.
But, this in the context of an American election campaign can be dismissed as a minor quibble. He appeared presidential and produced the right sound bites without stooping to what would be seen in the American political lexicon as mean, small-minded negativism.
If Kerry failed to define his policies, he did manage a devastating criticism of the Bush administration while ensuring that Bush was mentioned by name only 12 times during the course of the four-day convention.
Kerry himself promised for instance, "I will restore trust and credibility to the White House... I will be a commander-in-chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice-president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws.
I will have a secretary of defence who will listen to the best advice of the military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States."
Each of these statements was not only for the audience of Democrats but also for the masses at large, a damning indictment of Bush policies and their implementation.
He even turned his perceived weakness of seeing complexities where none existed into a selling point. He suggested that ignoring complexities leads to falsifications. He asserted that, "Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so.
Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming, 'mission accomplished' certainly doesn't make it so." And therefore, "As president, I will ask the hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system, so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics.
The show of unity in the party's ranks at the Democratic convention reflected, perhaps, a change in the American election scene. Internal differences within the party, and they are numerous, were all set aside because of the almost visceral loathing, if not hatred, for Bush.
For the first time in history, the Democrats were able, through the Internet and other sources, to collect at least in the last two months more money than the Republicans.
The determination on display seemed to augur well for the prospects that the Democrats, traditionally less disciplined and less inclined to vote, would improve - what had always been a Republican strong point - the ability to turn out to vote.
Virtually every commentator in the American media is of the opinion that there is a strong, perhaps even dangerous, polarization in the country far exceeding any divisions in the past, even during the Vietnam War.
It has been estimated that even at this early stage in the election campaign more than 90 per cent of the electorate has already made up its mind regarding the candidates, and that the entire struggle will be for the 10 per cent or so currently seen as undecided.
It would, perhaps, have been unrealistic, under these circumstances, to expect the "bounce" - the increase in popularity ratings that follows nation-wide exposure after a nominating convention.
As it is, there was virtually none. A Newsweek poll, conducted immediately after the convention gave Kerry a 49 per cent to 42 per cent advantage over Bush - reflecting a four per cent gain on the polls held in early July.
The same poll, however, gave Bush a 48 per cent to 43 per cent advantage over Kerry when it came to handling the terror threat even while showing that Bush's approval rating continued to slip, with just 45 per cent approving the job he is doing, and 49 per cent disapproving, and 58 per cent showing dissatisfaction with the direction in which the US is heading.
Another poll conducted by CNN showed that among likely voters, Bush led Kerry by 50 per cent to 46 per cent, compared to a pre-convention poll where Kerry led 47 per cent to 46 per cent. Registered voters favoured Kerry over Bush 50 per cent to 47 per cent, a slight change from his 49 per cent to 45 per cent lead in a similar poll two weeks.
There is a consensus among the commentators that security and terrorism will weigh heavily with the electorate. And Bush is still seen as more capable than Kerry to lead the campaign against terrorism although support for him is eroding.
However, despite all the reports showing that the Iraq misadventure has exacerbated the terrorist threat and given a new impetus to the recruitment drive by the Al Qaeda and other organizations, it is Bush rather than Kerry who enjoys the support of the electorate on this issue.
Kerry, therefore, had no choice but to emphasize his military service and his understanding of security issues. One commentator pointed out that for the first time there were more generals and admirals on the podium at the convention than there were union leaders or other activists.
This much having been done, Kerry did not take the opportunity to enunciate the policy he would follow to extricate the Americans from the Iraqi quagmire and to repair the damage that has been done to America's relations with the Muslim world.
In fact, he took what could be regarded as a fortuitous swipe at American dependence on Saudi oil. This, of course, may have been done to remind the Americans of the strong connections that allegedly existed between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, and the benefits that had flowed to the Bush family and their friends. But, in effect, it suggested a lack of sensitivity towards an important American ally in the Arab world and perhaps a pandering to the Jewish vote.
The latest security alert - prompted apparently by information provided by a Pakistani member of the Al Qaeda arrested in Pakistan on July 13 - would ensure that security remains the principal issue in this election campaign.
Conspiracy theorists are already at work suggesting that Bush has triggered the alert to improve his election prospects. One Democratic leader - Howard Dean - has suggested as much but for the most part the Democrats, too, are prepared to accept that the facts on which Kerry has apparently been briefed justify the president's action.
What impact is this likely to have? All the reporting based on briefing provided by administration officials takes special note of the fact that the planning for attacks on the financial institutions started even before 9/11.
This, cynics will say, is designed to ensure that nobody attributes this latest threat to the Iraq misadventure for which President Bush alone would be held responsible.
But there is also a more serious view. Experts here seem convinced - and the latest intelligence would appear to confirm it - that Al Qaeda's strategy calls for a terrorist strike in America to match the terrorist attack in Spain with comparably disruptive results.
Even if this does not happen, and one fervently hopes it will not, there is going to be considerable dislocation as the security measures create new anxieties and new problems for the general public.
Will the American public then start to think that it is Bush who has made the world an unsafe place for Americans? So far, the polls indicate the Americans believe that the Iraq war has made Americans less safe. At the same time, they trust Bush to handle the war against terrorism better than Kerry.
Possibly because of this the Democrats are not prepared to make Iraq a major issue or to talk of policies they will follow to repair the damage done to US-Muslim relations.
On Iraq, Kerry has not gone beyond stating that he would follow policies that would allow him to pull back a substantial part of the American forces from Iraq, and that these policies would include listening more closely to the views of allies. He has said nothing on Afghanistan and on the Palestine question he has been a whole-hearted supporter of the Israeli position.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.
Afghan women's new role
The process of change in Afghanistan is so subtle and the violence so pervasive that not many seem to have noticed the fact that the Afghan women are slowly emerging from the oblivion and coming into their own. According to one report nearly 40 per cent of the voters who have registered themselves for the October presidential elections are women.
That is an impressive figure given the fact that until recently women were not even allowed out of their homes, because of the obscurantist policies of the Taliban who were ruling the roost in Kabul until the end of 2001.
What has brought about this change? Many would of course say it is the 'liberation' of Afghanistan by the United States in the post-9/11 period and the political and social 'reconstruction' taking place under President Hamid Karzai.
Others might point to the consciousness-raising mission of the women's groups such as the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) which seek the emancipation of their compatriots.
All of this must undoubtedly have contributed to the change but the most important factor is the preponderance of women in the country which has been at war since 1979. The Afghans were first fighting the Soviet troops and then they were fighting amongst themselves, which they are still doing but with fewer casualties.
The brutal onslaught of American forces on the pretext of rooting out the Al Qaeda and their supporters, the Taliban, in October-December 2001 also wrought havoc on this strife-torn country, killing many able-bodied men in the process.
The violence and insecurity in Afghanistan is a continuing phenomenon today, thanks to the factionalization of the country and the presence of the American troops.
The victims of this violence are mostly men. As a result it is said that nearly 80 per cent of the households in some areas of the country are headed by women because the men are either dead or disabled or dysfunctional. The women are stepping out taking up a new role.
This has been possible for them because of the change in outlook brought about by the RAWA and the liberalization of the social milieu that does not prevent women from going outside their homes.
In other societies too, change has come imperceptibly on account of the developments in another sector. In Pakistan in the seventies the process of change was observed when the "Dubai chalo" syndrome caught on and a number of men from the rural areas moved out to the Middle East in search of greener pastures.
There they made fabulous money and remitted their earnings to their families who had to stay back home because they were not welcome in the host country and they themselves did not wish to be uprooted.
The influx of money helped them improve their living standards. But significantly, many families were headed by women who made day-to-day decisions in the absence of their male members. This they would never have been allowed to do otherwise.
They also acquired literacy at their own initiative because they wanted to communicate directly with their husbands and wished to manage their financial matters themselves rather than depend on other male members , whom they probably didn't trust.
Sociologists believe that the factors which influence people's behaviour, lifestyle and attitudes are demographic (especially urbanization and migration), ethnolinguistic fractionalization and education.
But these processes span a period of several of years, maybe even decades, before they produce any visible changes in society. But changes come faster when there is massive destruction and sudden upheaval and the people are forced to adjust to the new circumstances.
Researchers Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon talking to women whose lives were disrupted by the partition and the massive transfer of populations in 1947 found that some of them had transformed their lives by managing to build prosperity on the foundations of their distress.
Similarly a number of families who fled from Bangladesh in 1971 overcame their trauma and turned their misfortunes to their advantage. Dr Akhter Hameed Khan, the award-winning social thinker and the founder of the Comilla Project in East Pakistan and the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, was of the view that the migrant families were, by and large, dynamic and willing to take the initiative to turn around a negative situation in their favour.
One may well ask, is it imperative to destroy the old structures to bring about a change in social values and attitudes? It would be preferable if violence were not the precondition for change.
For, any revolution not only causes a lot of destruction, violence and loss of life, it also invites a counter-revolution before the system settles down. Yet change is the essence of life and development. If society has to progress it must renew itself to keep abreast with the changing environment.
Change can also be brought about through education and it is this that every society should work for. But it needs to be emphasized that the direction of change and its velocity is determined by the contents of education. Literacy is, after all, an intellectual tool, a term generally attributed to Vygotsky.
According to him, a child has elementary mental functions such as memory, attention and the capacity to make associations based on contiguity. These basic functions help a person make sense of his environment. The intellectual tools given to a child through education facilitate acquisition of knowledge and the full understanding of what he is taught.
Regrettably Pakistan has failed on both count, - in providing the intellectual tool to all its citizens and in giving them education which should provide them with food for thought.
In 57 years we have succeeded in raising our literacy rate from 17 per cent to 54 per cent (according to the Economic Survey 2003-04). With the population having grown at a faster rate, the number of illiterates (people above 15 years) in the country has gone up from 17 million to 44 million in 1998.
At the same time the contents of our education system - that is what the children are taught - have actually regressed. The curricula in many subjects have not been changed for 30 years in some universities.
At times even factual developments are not taken note of, let aside shifts in perspectives and concepts. For at least nine years after the demise of the Soviet Union the International Relations syllabus for B.A. in the University of Karachi expected the students to study the policies of the USSR as though it was still in existence.
The recent debate on the revision of the curricula seems to have produced no effect at all. If anything, it has restored the status quo ante. While the government has assured the religious lobbies that no textbook will be changed in the general education system, the madressahs have got away without registering with the government or having their syllabi revised. In fact, the ordinance requiring them to register has been quietly withdrawn - at least in the NWFP where the MMA rules.
In the existing situation it is futile to hope for any social transformation in Pakistan. A violent change is too awesome to think about. Besides it may not turn out to be what we were aspiring for. Afghanistan which has seen the worst has another story to tell. Its literacy rate has gone up from 32 per cent in 1999 to 36 per cent today.
More importantly, the net school enrolment for girls has tripled from five per cent to 15 per cent in the same period. Boys' enrolment has fallen from 53 per cent to 42 per cent.
Are the boys out of schools because they have been made disabled by the millions of landmines that still dot the country? Or, are they from among the 8,000 child soldiers who fight for the unscrupulous warlords?
Scientific investigation
Tv viewers of old standing might recall a farcical programme in Punjabi telecast many years ago with a take-off on the police as one of its items.
Two archaeologists, studying a stucco head excavated from the Taxila area, are at their wits' end because they are not able to determine its provenance. A typical fat thanedar, a friend of theirs, walks in, and on listening to the problem takes the head away.
Returning after 15 minutes, he places the head on the table and announces in a stentorian voice, "Made in 2590 BC." His friends are astounded. 'By God! How did you find out, and so exact?" The thanedar says deprecatingly, "Simple, We gave him a few strokes with a well-oiled shoe. He couldn't take more than five and blurted out his date of birth."
It was a really funny joke and made the viewers laugh, though they knew that the reality on which it was based was no laughing matter. In actual life the procedure, one of the favourite investigative methods of the Pakistani police, can be heartbreaking.
It is widely used in metropolitan cities like Lahore and Karachi, and in small towns like Baddo Malhi and Tando Allahyar for extracting confessions from suspects. No matter if most of such confessions are retracted when the accused is produced before a magistrate.
I have named the four places because the standard of police investigation and the tricks employed by the force to solve crimes are the same everywhere. Neither are Karachi and Lahore more modern or sophisticated in this regard nor are Baddo Malhi and Tando Allahyar more backward than the rest of the country because of their petty urban status.
The police are the same everywhere, and the so-called educated but ill-mannered and corrupt thanedar rules the roost all over the place. Not even the hope of an improvement is in sight.
Therefore I was not a little amused when I read in a news story from a provincial capital that the inspector-general of police had directed his senior officers "to adopt state-of-the-art technology for investigations to avoid loopholes and to ensure quick and cheap justice to the people."
He said this during a visit to the police forensic science laboratory. I have omitted the name of the province because so far as the police are concerned, what applies to one province applies equally to the other three.
They say the policemen of the Frontier Province are the best in Pakistan; more sympathetic, less barbarous, more dutiful and more responsive to the needs and sentiments of the people.
Maybe it's the general atmosphere in the area because the society there is much more democratic than in the rest of Pakistan, and less feudal in its outlook. In its politics too the Frontier is closer to democracy than any region in Pakistan can get. But even in the NWFP, if the IGP were to advise his officers to take recourse to science for investigation purposes, he would be acting rather naively.
I have visited the very fine forensic science laboratory of the Punjab police in Lahore. I don't know about Quetta, but there is a well-equipped laboratory in Karachi, though one has never heard of its contribution to the solution of the horrendous crime problem in that benighted city.
In Lahore most of the laboratory's work related to seeing if a bullet had really been fired from the gun used in the murder. As for fingerprints and other aids, the criminals in Punjab at least are not worried about leaving fingerprints, nor does the police look for any, except in very rare cases.
The commission of crime in Pakistan, whether it is housebreaking, dacoity, murder or rape, is so rough and tumble in manner that hardly any clues are left for scientific investigation.
As a waggish friend observed with whom I was discussing the matter, first of all criminals should be taught to be more scientific in doing their job so that it can be subjected to the expertise of the detectives trained by Scotland Yard and men of a forensic science laboratory.
Jokes apart, our people too, those who have been unlucky enough to be visited by criminals, have no sense of orderly behaviour after the crime. If any clues have been inadvertently left by robbers and murderers, they are often obliterated by over-enthusiastic amateur detectives in the family.
And then these people are quick to blame the police for not being able to apprehend the culprits in 24 hours, as idiotically ordered by chief ministers and governors, and sometimes even by a publicity-seeking prime minister. So what can scientific investigative methods do even if they are known to the thanedar and his men?
Scotland Yard trains and employs detectives who are expert in getting to the bottom of crimes of all kinds. It is not composed of police officers in the ordinary sense of the expression.
Its men don't do patrol duty and look after the protocol of the VIPs. It is more a repository of the vast record of suspected criminals - even spies and commercial crooks and those making illegal money through high finance.
It is only when the police fail to solve a case or are baffled by its mind-boggling aspects or its ramifications, it calls on Scotland Yard for help. We have no such organization in Pakistan.
There is something called the CIA and the Crime Branch in every province, but their staff is from the police force and transferable to any district for ordinary police duty. I don't think we have whole-time criminologists.
So when the police are called to the scene of a crime in Pakistan it has nothing to go by except what it is told by the victims or its own informers, most of whom are part-time criminals.
Its list of suspects primarily consists of persons whom the family points out on the basis of enmity. In the case of household robberies and domestic murders it is always the servants who are first held.
They are given a good beating, and it is only after the police are convinced that they couldn't have done the dirty deed, they are let off. Some die from the treatment.
Thus, except in rare instances, the outstanding characteristics of the investigation are false or cooked evidence, the anxiety to pin the crime on someone at any cost, coupled with the constant worry of the police officer concerned as to how much money he can make from the case. In such an atmosphere, and given these down-to-earth and artificial realities, where is the scope for scientific investigation?
Is there hope for Darfur?
How many deaths, as the old song asks, will it take till they know that too many people have died? According to western governments, aid agencies and other ostensibly independent organizations such as Amnesty International, the toll thus far in Sudan's Darfur region is between 30,000 and 50,000.
In addition, more than a million people are believed to have been displaced, with many of them - mostly children and women - languishing in refugee camps across the border in Chad.
There has been talk of military intervention, not least by Britain. However, in its resolution on the issue late last week, the United Nations Security Council made no such threat.
It even edited the word "sanctions" out of the text, upon the insistence of Russia, China and Pakistan, replacing it with the less specific "measures". Under the resolution, the government in Khartoum is now expected to disarm the Janjaweed militia within 30 days.... or else.
What that "else" may be has not been spelt out, to the consternation of some of the aid agencies, which are said to be concerned that the dilution of the resolution makes its implementation less likely, but to the apparent relief of the objectors. In the event, Russia supported the US-drafted text, but China and Pakistan abstained.
Beijing's stance is readily explicable: the China National Petroleum Company is in charge of the oil concession in southern Darfur, and the nation also happens to be the biggest foreign investor in Sudan.
Islamabad's complaint was that the final text lacked the "delicate balance" required by a complex situation. On the face of it, this could be construed as a cop-out: Pakistan did not wish to risk annoying the friendly government of a fellow Muslim state, despite being aware of its involvement in atrocities.
If that is the case, it clearly isn't a particularly honourable - or defensible - stance to adopt. Any government unwilling to protect a segment of the population under its jurisdiction, or complicit in choreographed killings, deserves more than censure and sanctions. An administration incapable of providing security to citizens forfeits its right to govern.
It's worth bearing in mind, however, that among the governments that have been making the biggest noise about Darfur are the same folks who plied us ad infinitum with incontrovertible evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The US Congress has labelled the Sudanese strife as genocide, while Britain's prime minister Tony Blair has, somewhat ominously, spoken of "a moral responsibility to deal with this.... by any means that we can".
As Sanders Research Associates analyst John Laughland noted in The Guardian on Monday, "Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he has fought.... The bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, the 74-day bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the intervention in Sierra Leone in the spring of 2000, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, and the Iraq war last March were all justified with the bright certainties which shone from the prime minister's eyes."
And when no WMD were found, we were told bad intelligence was to blame, not the noble warriors who had relied on it. Despite being exposed as serial offenders against the truth, their moral certainties remained undimmed and undented. They are, on the face of it, not the sort of salesmen from whom one would buy a second-hand war.
It doesn't necessarily follow, however, that they are lying in this particular case. Why would they wish to spread rumours about Sudan? Well, for one there's the need for an issue big enough to distract attention from the mess in Iraq - and, for that matter, Afghanistan, which too bears little resemblance to a success story.
Then there is the opportunity, invaluable in propaganda terms, to portray Arabs as the agents of repression and mayhem in Darfur. And don't forget the aforementioned oil.
On top of that, Sudan was home to Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996. True, the government of General Omar Hassan Al Bashir kicked him out under US pressure - and neither the Americans nor the Saudis were keen to take custody of him, so he was allowed to fly to Afghanistan.
But in the eyes of Washington's more rigid neoconservatives, Khartoum may deserve a taste of shock and awe for having hosted him in the first place. Actually, it got a whiff back in 1998, when an American missile strike destroyed Al Shifa, a pharmaceuticals factory on the outskirts of the capital.
The US said it was a plant for manufacturing chemical or biological weapons. It wasn't. Just bad intelligence, presumably. And Bill Clinton never apologized. Of course, none of this means there isn't a vast catastrophe unfolding in Darfur.
Outbursts of large-scale tribal bloodletting are by no means unknown in Africa. Earlier this year, the 10th anniversary was marked of the massacres perpetrated by Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda.
An estimated 800,000 people were killed. The rest of the world watched in horror, but did nothing. A decade on, the bloodstains remain - but they exist alongside remarkable successes in reconciliation.
Ten years before the Rwandan nightmare, sub-Saharan Africa was ravaged by a monumental drought. Ethiopia and Somalia grabbed most international attention at the time, but Darfur was affected too.
Sudan, which happens to be the continent's largest country, has been particularly unfortunate in terms of afflictions widely associated with (albeit by no means exclusive to) Africa: mal-administration and instability. It has been wracked by civil war more or less consistently since independence in 1956, and military rule has been the norm.
The eruption of troubles in Darfur last year coincided with the conclusion of a peace treaty between Khartoum and the largely Christian and animist Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), following a 21-year conflict that is believed to have claimed two million lives.
It is possible that the Darfurian revolt, spearheaded by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), was based on the perceived success of the SPLA in wringing concessions through violence.
The SLA and JEM's chief plaint was that their region has been neglected by Khartoum. The government responded militarily, and refugees have reported air attacks as well as ground assaults by Bashir's forces against tribes associated with the rebellion.
Of even greater concern, however, have been the atrocities blamed on the Janjaweed "Arab" militia, ranging from the mass murder of non-combatant villagers to a systematic policy of rape.
The dreadful phrase "ethnic cleansing" has been employed to describe these actions, and if a recent report by Amnesty International - which offers gruesome details of rape, often gang rape, not least against minors, as well as a range of other serious human rights abuses - is anything to go by, then genocide is not a misnomer in the context of Darfur. And it is said that the Janjaweed are being armed and encouraged by Khartoum.
These charges could - and perhaps should - have been viewed with scepticism had they emanated exclusively from the White House and Whitehall. But Amnesty, the Red Cross and Medecins sans Frontieres are considerably more credible sources of information.
Yes, they can err, they can falter, they can be misled - but they do not knowingly spread lies. And their reports from Darfur are mostly based on first-hand experience.
That does not automatically make it a black and white issue. As the author and Sudan specialist Alex de Waal puts it: "Characterizing the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality.
Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim - just like Darfur's non-Arabs." The racial elements in the conflict appear to be little more than convenient confections: like most other instances of strife, it is essentially a contest over limited resources.
This is borne out by reports that the Janjaweed have taken over settlements whose inhabitants have fled or been killed. So there may well have been some justification for Pakistan's complaint about an insufficiently nuanced Security Council resolution.
Khartoum also disapproves of the resolution but says it will try to fulfil its demands. The African Union is already involved in monitoring a cease-fire between the government and the Darfur rebels.
If Bashir is willing to disarm and push back the Janjaweed, Darfur should require no more than huge quantities of humanitarian aid - preferably delivered by independent agencies than European or American troops.
If the killings don't stop within days, intervention - hopefully with Khartoum's acquiescence - would be advisable. The African Union should be able to put together a sufficiently large force for the purpose. If not, the UN could step in.
But not as a proxy for another Anglo-American neocolonial adventure. US troops would be hopelessly out of depth amid the complexities of Sudan, and would probably exacerbate the problem. And Europeans have done too much damage in Africa to qualify as saviours.
In conclusion, an intriguing irony. Were American forces to be deployed in Darfur, they would logically look upon the SLA and JEM as allies. The JEM enjoys the blessings of Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan Al Turabi. And Turabi was a friend of Osama bin Laden. That could conceivably put the US on broadly the same side as the Al Qaeda chief. Not for the first time, though.
Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.