| 06 October 2004 | Wednesday | 19 Shaban 1425 |
Next steps in Sudan
Hawks and doves
Universal education
Ballot boxes in the battlefield
As in previous election campaigns, this year's closely fought presidential election in the United States will, it seems, be heavily influenced by the presidential debate. In the past, one or the other candidate has approached these debates with trepidation and has sought to restrict its freedom.
This year it was President Bush who believed, rightly, that he was at a disadvantage and insisted, therefore, in the course of hard negotiations, on limiting the number of debates (three between the presidential nominees and one between the vice-presidential candidates) and on securing a format in which there could be no direct debate between the two contenders and in which Bush's lack of fluency would not be apparent.
The Bush campaign managers also spent a lot of time and effort portraying Bush as the under-dog, as the candidate to be judged by his deeds and not by his mangled English or his relatively low speaking skills.
For the most part this did not work. Pre debate polls showed that 44 per cent of the voters expected Bush to win as against 32 per cent who thought Kerry had a better chance of doing so.
If Bush had problems with fluency, Kerry's supporters were equally fearful that Kerry would not remain focused and would indulge his penchant for qualifying to death every statement that he made.
They were apprehensive that the alarm system set up under the rigid rules of the debate would remind Kerry repeatedly that he was exceeding his time limit. There was another problem.
The spike in Bush's favourable rating in the polls, which touched 11 per cent after the Republican Convention at the end of August, had settled by mid-September at about a clear 6 per cent lead.
For Kerry the debate was crucial if his flagging campaign was to be kept alive. If there was hope in the Kerry camp it was engendered only by the belief that a study of the Democratic candidate's record of fighting elections for public office showed that he was at his fighting best when he was behind, and this was certainly the case on the eve of the debate.
The debate in Miami was focused, as agreed upon by the two sides, on foreign policy. There were pointed and serious arguments about Iraq, the threats from Iran and North Korea, US alliances, and the meaning of the war on terrorism.
After some initial efforts to portray the results as otherwise, even the most die-hard Republicans were prepared to concede that Kerry was the clear winner of the debate, while the Democrats started celebrating within minutes of the end of the debate and with a swiftness that can only happen in America had prepared a new ad campaign showing a grimacing and unpleasant looking Bush, squirming under the eyes of the camera during the debate as Kerry dispassionately and succinctly made the case that Bush had been guilty of colossal misjudgments in Iraq.
Typical perhaps of the Republican reaction was the remark made by a conservative Republican in his newsletter, "I reluctantly agree with overnight polls that suggest that, by a plurality, voters believe that Senator John Kerry won his debate with President Bush Thursday night. Both candidates did well. But Senator Kerry got away with murder and that is why it is frustrating."
At the same time Bush's senior advisers argued that the debate would not be enough to overcome what they described as voter concerns about Kerry, stirred by six months of Republican attacks.
In one sense, these advisers are right. Even though one poll suggested that Kerry had, by the end of the week, managed to establish a slight lead over Bush when the same poll, two weeks earlier had given Bush a six-point lead, most other polls showed Bush still leading, albeit by a smaller margin.
By the time this article appears the vice Presidential debate in Cleveland scheduled for Tuesday evening will have concluded. Typically, in US elections the vice-president debate has rarely had an effect on the final outcome but this time it may be different.
Cheney is perceived as the "eminence grise" of this administration, the man more responsible, perhaps, than the president himself for the false allegations about the Iraqi possession of WMD, for the pressure on the intelligence agencies to tailor their assessments to support this assertion, and above all, for the decision to go it alone, ignoring the UN Security Council's reservations.
He, more than any other administration figure, has been tainted by the assertion that big business, chiefly Halliburton, a company from which Cheney continues to draw benefits, has been the principal beneficiary of the contracts bonanza in Iraq.
He has a mastery of facts and on this account could and probably would run rings around his less experienced and less knowledgeable opponent. But he has for the most part, a dour expression and, as he himself acknowledges from time to time, no charisma. If he is defeated in the debate, it will have an impact.
On the other hand his opponent, Senator John Edwards, is remarkably photogenic and has built his career, making a fortune in the process, on fighting populist court cases against big business.
His success has flowed largely from his skills as a trial lawyer who has swayed juries and obtained large settlements for his clients. He is inexperienced in politics but his skills, of oratory as much as his personal appeal, make him a favourite in my view to win the debate even though he may not have the same high base of knowledge as Cheney.
The next two presidential debates - in St. Louis on Friday and in Arizona on October 13 - would focus mainly on domestic issues, and here Kerry can be expected to do much better.
There are concerns about the economy and Kerry has been hammering away at the theme that the American economy has lost a million jobs under Bush, that the Bush administration favoured the interests of the powerful over the interests of the people.
One can anticipate that in states like Ohio, where more than 237,000 jobs have been lost and unemployment is rising Kerry will keep repeating the assertion that Bush is out of touch with middle class America and will keep reiterating the question, "does he (Bush) really see and know what is going on in the lives of middle-class Americans - people struggling to get into the middle class, people who are fighting for survival?"
The Bush camp says that it is prepared to debate domestic issues and is confident that it can survive the test but the fact is that this is Bush's weakness. The economy has not picked up as much as anticipated and even in the areas where it has done well, it has benefited the entrepreneur and not the worker.
Impressive and un-contradicted studies have shown that 70 per cent or more of the remarkable increases in productivity have gone into higher corporate profits rather than to the worker.
The lower taxes on the very rich - those earning more than $200,000 a year - have swelled the deficit and not brought the expected trickle-down effect. Kerry's proposal to restore these taxes to the original higher level while leaving the lower taxes on the middle class unchanged and using the money to reduce the deficit and to finance programmes for the poor has great appeal.
On the other hand, however, the economy is no longer the issue of greatest importance to the American electorate having been replaced by concerns about the ongoing war in Iraq and terrorism.
It is possible that the rules of the debate notwithstanding, Bush will attempt to return to the theme of terrorism and to his greater trustworthiness in fighting this menace and making "America safer".
By and large, it is my anticipation that by the time the debates end, Kerry will have moved ahead but not by the sort of margin that would ensure his election. In the end, this closely contested election may turn on the success attending the drive launched by both parties to register new voters and by the voter turnout on Election Day itself.
Voter registration is at all time high this year. The close election of 2000 has apparently convinced people that their vote really does count and that registering is worthwhile.
Do the Democrats have an edge? It is difficult to say but it does appear that the minorities, the Black Americans and the Hispanics, traditional bastions of democratic support, are registering in larger numbers than in the past.
On voter turnout, conventional wisdom has it that the registered Republican is more committed and therefore more likely to cast his vote. This year, however, in a deeply divided electorate the Democrats are more fired up and have had more money available to finance their voter turnout drive.
The turnout this year will be higher than it has been in decades, but for the Democrats it is essential that their voter have an incentive other than a visceral hatred for Bush and his policies.
This Kerry's performance in the debates may provide if he can at least match the one in the first debate. The chances of this happening are good. Kerry has always felt that his winning ground is domestic issues and he will probably bring more passion to his presentations on this subject.
Kerry's victory, if it comes will be welcome around the world. There are few countries in which either the leadership or the people would welcome a second Bush term. This is particularly true in the Muslim world. But will it make a difference? The Bush administration has jarred sensitivities around the world, more by the substance of its policies than by its style. Secretary Powell has worked hard to minimize the latter but it has still been a factor.
With the Kerry administration, a new emphasis on alliance building, and therefore, a less abrasive go-it-alone style can be expected. However, there may not be any remarkable change in substance.
Kerry has spoken of a withdrawal from Iraq after engaging other nations more fully in the pacification and reconstruction of Iraq. We have heard nothing, however, that suggests a renunciation of interest in maintaining bases in Iraq or controlling Iraq's oil.
Kerry has spoken of hosting a summit in the Middle East of Muslim countries to enlist their cooperation in the fight against terrorism. He clearly will support President Musharraf's "enlightened moderation" and will, as part of the battle against terrorism, provide funding for education and social services in the Muslim countries.
But it is not at all certain that he will be prepared to bite the bullet on the Israel-Palestine question. With an eye on the elections, the Bush administration has had no policy on this other than unstinting support for the Israeli position.
Will Kerry and his foreign policy advisers accept that the political damage done to the Democratic party's standing with the domestic Jewish voter is an acceptable price for removing the canker that provides the main impetus for extremism and terrorism in the Arab world? Currently, it does not seem likely but there is a possibility that this may change.
Next steps in Sudan
Remembering its shameful inaction in Rwanda a decade ago, the international community has warned of genocide in Darfur and threatened sanctions against Sudan. Unfortunately, these symbolic steps will not stop the violence in Sudan, and in fact they may exacerbate it.
International condemnation of Sudan is emboldening Darfur's anti-government rebels to reject compromise and escalate their attacks. Confronted by a persistent rebel offensive, Khartoum refuses to rein in its army and allied militia, which are conducting their counterinsurgency by perpetrating genocide.
Even if the United Nations could overcome opposition from Russia and China, sanctions would not compel Khartoum to halt genocidal tactics against the rebels, because its army lacks the means to fight them conventionally. Nor is there international will yet to intervene to stop the violence.
The United States is preoccupied in Iraq, and the African Union lacks the logistics and the nerve to invade a sovereign state. The only way to stop the genocide is for the rebels to accept a cease-fire. But the rebels refuse to halt hostilities, even to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians on whose behalf they supposedly are fighting, because they are convinced that the international community is on their side.
They coldly calculate that the longer they fight and provoke government retaliation against their civilians, the more likely international intervention on their behalf will be.
This phenomenon has been noted even by one of Khartoum's staunchest critics, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Samantha Power, who recently described "a rebel movement emboldened by the belief that the United States is on its side".
Darfur is not unique. The international community has repeatedly exacerbated ethnic conflict through what I call the "moral hazard of humanitarian intervention." By threatening to intervene against states that use excessive force, we increase the prospects of rebellion and armed secession - and thereby encourage them.
In Bosnia 10 years ago, the head of U.N. peacekeepers complained that the Muslim-led government, which had armed and seceded from Yugoslavia, was breaking cease-fires because if it "attacked and lost, the resulting images of war and suffering guaranteed support in the West for the 'victim state.' "
His predecessor likewise observed that the Muslims were "committed to coercing the international community into intervening militarily." This coercion eventually succeeded, but only after three years of war and 150,000 deaths.
A few years later the scenario played out in Kosovo. Rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) attacked Serbian targets, provoking retaliation against Albanian civilians that succeeded in attracting NATO intervention.
A senior rebel later admitted to me: "We knew our attacks would not have any military value. Our goal was not to destroy the Serb military force [but to make it] become more vicious. . . . We thought it was essential to get international support to win the war."
Another KLA leader confessed to the BBC: "We knew full well that any armed action we undertook would trigger a ruthless retaliation by Serbs against our people. . . . We knew we were endangering civilian lives, too, a great number of lives."
In Sudan's peace talks, the government has accepted two African Union peace proposals that the rebels have rejected. Khartoum said the union could substantially expand the size of its small peacekeeping force in the country so long as it was dedicated to maintaining a cease-fire by cantoning the rebels.
The government also accepted a humanitarian protocol to facilitate aid to the civilians it is accused of targeting for genocide. But the rebels rejected both these peace proposals, apparently because the compromises would mitigate humanitarian suffering and thereby reduce the likelihood of decisive international intervention. In a remarkably cold calculation, the rebels continue to sacrifice the lives of their own civilians to gain political leverage.
None of this excuses the barbarity of the government. Khartoum has armed the Arab militia troops, given them a green light for wanton violence against black rivals in rebel-held areas, and launched air strikes - a campaign that Secretary of State Colin Powell has rightly labelled genocide. The authors of this violence should be apprehended and punished in due course. But the immediate priority is to stop the killing. If the international community pressures only the government side, while giving the rebels a pass, the war will continue, as will the genocide.
American diplomats should insist the rebels accept the African Union proposal to halt fire and be protected in specified areas by its peacekeepers. If the rebels stopped fighting, Khartoum would lose its excuse not to rein in the militias.
If genocide nonetheless continued, even Sudan's defenders in the U.N. Security Council might accept the argument that the time had come for decisive intervention. -Dawn/Washington Post Service
Hawks and doves
They say that public men and women, particularly those managing affairs of state, are roughly divided into two types: hawks and doves. Unlike the hawks, the doves don't go boasting about themselves, because somehow it is considered infra dig to be known as a dove.
Not so long ago the expressions were widely used, but then after the end of the cold war, nobody was keen to be known as either. Now however, the policies of President Bush have revived the two terms and the hawks there are having a whale of a time.
Those who claim to know the vagaries of Pakistan's power politics, say that it was the hawks in the camps of PM Nawaz Sharif and the COAS who did not let accommodation and mutual trust take the place of suspicion, animosity and confrontation between the two. Hence the resulting situation. Since I can't ask either of them to confirm or deny, we'll let it go at that.
Last week I read in a Gulf newspaper that, in one of the cities there, a hunting hawk flew away with a cheque for a thousand dollars. While it was clearly stated in the report that the hawk was a bird, it was not clarified whether the bird was a hawk in the political sense also.
This happened when an Arab sheikh was in the act of buying the hawk and wrote out a cheque for the amount asked for it. Before the two items could change hands - the hawk going to the sheikh and the cheque going to he birdman - the hawk adopted the "unilateral declaration of independence" and caught the cheque in its talons and fled from the scene.
Not being a bird-fancier I am unable to say what prompted the hawk to decamp with the cheque. Maybe it was a Pakistani politician in disguise and had a grouse that it was not paid its due price in the course of horse trading.
Or maybe, like most Pakistanis in the Gulf, it was a collector of foreign exchange and thought it fit to add the cheque to its collection. In that case it may surface one of these days in Islamabad, using the cheque to pay the biana for an overpriced corner plot.
There are hawks galore in the political world. Our late Prime Minister ZAB was considered a hawk by a superpower claiming to be interested in our welfare. For our sake it wanted him to become an obliging dove.
One of ZAB's military countrymen thought that a dead hawk was as good as a harmless dove, and acted accordingly. Had this dead hawk been clever enough to fly away with a cheque in dollars, he might not be dead today.
Hawks strut about, preening their feathers and wearing an intimidating look. They are not confined to politics alone. They are seen in business and industry, in law and education, among labour and women, and (nowadays) even as jihadi maulvis. We have hawks in our senior bureaucracy too where, if they are not able to wangle an extension, they overnight get converted into doves on retirement from service.
The vital difference between hawks and doves is not so much a question of looks and a permanent aggressive attitude as, respectively, of using their reputation to advantage or being handicapped by it. A dove must reason to get its point of view accepted.
The hawk has merely to show its eyes and bluster to get its own way. For example, it is very difficult for Mr Abdus Sattar Edhi to make people agree with him, while Qazi Husain Ahmed has no such problem.
The hawks in the armed forces are a class by themselves. By rights every soldier must be a hawk, otherwise what should he be doing in uniform? But most of the senior members of the defence forces in Pakistan now argue like doves, as was witnessed in the recent military regime and its present remnants.
Strangely enough, once they doff their uniform some of them become super hawks, and like General Hamid Gul, want the army to attack India and invade the United States. Not literally of course, but you know what I mean.
Sometimes a hawkish stance comes from the most unlikely quarter. For instance, some 20 years ago, we had almost written off Siachen as a place where "not a blade of grass grows."
We were then ruled by a military regime which brooked no nonsense - from its unarmed opposition in the country. But it was left to a democratic administration (of a so-called nonentity from Sindhri) to put up a determined resistance to Indian incursion in Siachen. I am no hawk myself, but as a citizen I feel safer with a government that is not overawed by an excessively militant neighbour.
Businessmen in Pakistan have made a pretty packet by exporting hawks to the Gulf. The sheikhs there are very fond of them - of the hawks I mean, not the businessmen. But have you noticed that no doves are every exported? In fact I am told that not a single dove has left the shores of this blessed land to earn foreign exchange anywhere in the world. They are singularly house-bound and have no desire to see the world and make money out of the opportunities it offers for making a quick buck.
On the other hand, the unceasing emigration of hawks is sure to have an adverse effect on the military personality of Pakistan and the much-vaunted martial image of its people. Once it becomes known that there are no hawks left in the country we might become easy prey to the predatory hawks across the border. An attractive target.
Come to think of it, what is the point made by being known as either a hawk or a dove? Rational and enlightened nations are expected to resolve their differences with others in a spirit of mutual goodwill and conciliation.
The same goes for dissension within the country and among individuals. As far as I am concerned we may all be doves where it is seriously intended to resolve national or international disputes.
It is far better to employ the methods based on universally recognized principles of decent behaviour, developed over centuries upon centuries of human development, than to strut about militarily, dressed in armour, and advertising yourself as a pincer-beaked hawk that is more ready to bite than to talk. Therefore, give me a dove any time, if a choice must be made between the two birds. At least the dove will not fly away with my cheque.
Universal education
Last week Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Nita Lowey, her fellow New York Democrat, unveiled a bill that would make universal education in the poor world a US government objective.
Yesterday James Wolfensohn, the World Bank's president, spoke extensively about this goal in his speech at the bank's annual meeting. Both the bill and the speech are pushing the right way, since schooling offers an escape from poverty and since the dearth of schools financed by western aid creates a vacuum to be filled by hate-preaching madrassahs.
But these calls for universal education, like most grand development targets, need to be treated with caution. If people believe that development advocates are promising to get all children into school by some certain date, they may turn against aid when these targets prove unattainable.
Why is universal education unattainable in the next decade or so? The advocates of foreign assistance tend to stress the lack of aid resources. "Three point six billion dollars in additional aid flows is needed each year, for the next seven to eight years, to ensure that all children complete primary school," Wolfensohn said yesterday.
"That comes to $1,200 per class of 40 children to pay for the teacher, books and classroom." But the truth about education is more complex. To get children into school, you need to address not just the supply of schools but also the demand for them.
What drives this demand? You need a healthy economy that rewards education financially: If there's a war, or if the economy is too dysfunctional to create jobs, parents won't see much benefit in pressing their children to attend school.
The circumstances of households influence demand as well. Poor parents may be unable to forgo child labour. Uneducated parents may have difficulty inculcating the curiosity and habits of learning that children need in order to absorb education.
Extra foreign assistance can probably increase the number of teachers and school rooms - though there are plenty of countries where even this has proved tough. But foreign assistance can change these demand factors only slowly and gradually.
What's more, demand seems to matter more than the supply of schooling. Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development has reviewed a pile of economic literature on this question, and he finds that the odds of a child attending school depend more on parental income and education levels than on the proximity of a school or whether it is free.
One study - conducted, ironically, at the World Bank - considers the effect of halving the distance to school for children in 21 countries. In rural Chad, that huge investment in school infrastructure would boost enrolment by less than 5 percent. In the other 20 countries, the effect would be even smaller.
So more aid for education, while desirable, cannot bring about 100 percent enrolment in the next seven or eight years, as Wolfensohn implied; nor can it achieve that by 2015, the target laid down by the Millennium Development Goals, which were embraced by all the world at a U.N. summit in 2000.
Rather, universal education will arrive gradually, along with economic growth and the slow accumulation of a stock of educated adults - and there's surprisingly little that policymakers can do to accelerate this progress.
The experience of the past half-century, as analyzed by Clemens, shows that countries pursuing a wide variety of education policies have progressed toward universal education at roughly the same rate - a finding consistent with the point that demand for education matters more than supply does.
None of this means that aid is useless, nor that policy is unimportant. To start out on the road toward higher school enrolment, countries need to get their policies right - and they can be encouraged to do so by enlightened aid donors.
A large pile of economic literature - as large, roughly, as the pile on education that Clemens reviews - finds that aid boosts growth in countries that are decently governed; and faster growth means higher family incomes, which in turn boost school enrolment.
But aid, however constructive, cannot achieve utopian targets like universal education except in the very long term. And targets that wind up not being met tend to fuel the cynicism of aid critics. -Dawn/Washington Post Service
Ballot boxes in the battlefield
Although one can never be too sure about the ever-optimistic US Secretary of Defence, even Donald Rumsfeld is unlikely to claim that next Saturday's presidential election will miraculously usher in an era of peaceful, representative rule in Afghanistan. But will it at least signify a new beginning for a nation that has, by every measure and from any point of view, suffered too much for far too long?
All that can be predicted with any degree of certainty is that the Bush administration will seek to portray the electoral process, whatever its nature, as a great leap forward.
It is desperate for a success story it can boast about ahead of November 2, and Iraq just doesn't fit the bill. The anarchy and mayhem that have put paid to visions of some sort of Texas on the Euphrates are also responsible for the renewed interest in Kabul.
Unfortunately, the available evidence suggests that Afghanistan doesn't quite fit the bill either. Outside Kabul, the security situation is considerably more daunting than it was under the Taliban.
To concede this is not to praise that odious bunch of fanatics or to condone the coercive means they employed to maintain law and order. But let us also not forget that fundamentalism wasn't restricted to Mullah Omar's acolytes, and some of the worst practices associated with the Taliban continue, in one form or another, to flourish under their successors.
One of the much ballyhooed side effects of the invasion was the liberation of Afghan women. Writing in the New Internationalist earlier this year, a member of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) noted that outside Kabul and a few other cities, schooling for girls and jobs for women remain a dream.
"Women cannot take a taxi or walk unless accompanied by a close male relative," she wrote. "If seen with men who are not close relatives, women can be arrested by the 'special police' and forced to undergo a hospital examination to see if they have recently had intercourse. Because of this continued oppression, every month a large number of girls commit suicide - many more than under the Taliban."
Referring to areas under the control of the Northern Alliance, she quoted an NGO worker as telling Amnesty International: "During the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh, she would have been flogged; now she's raped."
Perhaps the most serious implicit indictment of the situation in Afghanistan came in July, when Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) decided to withdraw from the country. In the 33 years since the organization was founded, such an action was unprecedented. What's more, MSF had been operating in Afghanistan for 24 years: during the Soviet occupation and the civil war that followed, as well as under the Taliban.
It felt obliged to pull out after five of its workers were killed, not only because of the deaths but because it felt the Americans were deliberately blurring the boundaries between occupation forces and aid organizations.
Furthermore, although it acknowledged the danger posed by the Taliban, MSF had cause to believe that forces allied to a local warlord were responsible for the five deaths, yet the authorities refused to pursue the probable perpetrators.
Other aid agencies have raised similar concerns, and at one point even the United Nations came close to wrapping up its operations. President Hamid Karzai himself has admitted that warlords - the collective strength of whose private militias substantially exceeds the strength of the nascent US-trained Afghan National Army - pose a far bigger threat than the remnants of the Taliban.
Yet the occupation is based on deals with petty despots who run their fiefdoms pretty much as they please - which helps to explain why poppy cultivation has grown exponentially since the Taliban killjoys were chased away.
The US evidently believes that this is the best way of isolating and tracking down bands of Taliban and Al Qaeda cadres, who have evidently had the opportunity to regroup because American forces could not be deployed in sufficient numbers, since Iraq was considered a more important prize.
However, paucity of troops isn't by any means the only problem. The tendency to shoot first and ask questions later poses a bigger quandary. Late last month, for instance, a medical patrol in a remote village heard gunshots and mortar fire.
The troops rushed to a nearby valley and saw two figures scurrying away in the distance. A shot in the air and a verbal warning produced no results, so the soldiers opened fire. The guns barked and the bullets found their marks. the "enemies" fell in their tracks.
They turned out to be a pair of brothers. The older one had been shot in the leg. He was 12. His 10-year-old sibling wasn't so lucky. He took a bullet in the head. The US army described it as a "tragic accident".
The bereaved father wasn't convinced. "A mistake is shooting one person," he said. "Not two ... If they are shooting our children, how can we be their friends?"
A good question. If it hasn't been put to Karzai during the election campaign, that's partly because he hasn't been campaigning much. Nor have any of his 17 rivals. Karzai strictly limited his excursions after an assassination attempt two years ago.
He doesn't go anywhere without a posse of US-funded "private security consultants", but remains an endangered species. And it isn't easy to see how a dubious mandate at the weekend will improve his level of protection.
Dubious mandate? Well, the BBC reported a couple of weeks ago that 300 elders of the Terezay tribe in Khost had publicly announced that the houses of any members of the tribe who didn't vote for Karzai would be burned down. And, even more troublingly, a presidential spokesman refused to condemn the threat.
Now, it may be unfair to extrapolate from this incident the notion that most of Afghanistan's 10 million or so registered voters will be casting their ballots under coercion.
But intimidation has many dimensions in a predominantly feudal milieu. There is certainly cause for concern over intimidation by the Taliban, which is bound to affect turnout in southern Afghanistan. But the even bigger danger is that lords of the fiefs all over the country will dictate how their serfs vote. And in a nation with a high rate of illiteracy, where popular representation is a novel concept, that may come to be seen as the norm.
Let's hope it doesn't turn out that way. But a success story? Not yet. Not by a long stretch. The same, unfortunately, could be said of Pakistan, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Intriguingly, though, the latest threat to Pakistan comes Obama, not Osama.
No, they aren't related. Barack Obama is not, on the face of it, a terrorist. He certainly has no interest in harming the US. Yet he is not averse to the US doing unto others what he wouldn't under any circumstances have others do to America.
Next month, Obama will become only the third African-American since Reconstruction to win a seat in the US Senate, representing Illinois; his victory in the electoral race is taken for granted, given that he enjoys a lead of nearly 50 per cent over his ultra-conservative Republican rival.
Obama sprang to national attention when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention in July. It was an eloquent speech, couched in catch-alls that enabled progressives as well as conservatives to claim him as their own, and it led to speculation that his star would shine all the way to the White House.
That may be premature hype, but it lends a certain edge to the circumstances in which Obama leapt into the international (or at least sub continental) limelight. In an interview with the editors of the Chicago Tribune late last month, he said that if Iran's nuclear programme could not be tackled through UN-imposed sanctions, "surgical" air strikes by the US could prove to be the only remaining option. And Pakistan could expect the same, were General Musharraf to be replaced by an Islamist regime.
Now, the last thing Pakistan needs is fundamentalists at the helm - and, like any other country, it would be better off without its nuclear arsenal. Nor is Iran's apparent pursuit of nuclear weaponry justified.
At the same time, the logic behind nuclear apartheid is racist. The US not only sits on enormous stockpiles, its leaders have publicly debated the pros and cons of developing nuclear devices small enough to use in a war "theatre". And there's a streak of fundamentalism running through key figures in the Bush administration.
An anti-nuclear stance, whether global or regional, can be justified only if it's non-discriminatory. In the Middle Eastern context, it cannot exclude Israel. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Obama's outrageous outburst is the implication that Bush's doctrine of selective pre-emption has seeped through the American political consciousness and become all pervasive.
A few days before he went on the record with his comments, Obama attended a meeting with members of the South Asian community where, in praising the candidate, Dr Naveed Musharraf - the president's brother - cited Martin Luther King's dream and John F. Kennedy's idealism.
Obama himself cites King and Mahatma Gandhi as his major influences, alongside Abraham Lincoln. One can only wonder whether he has ever paused to think what the high priests of non-violence would make of his predilection for pre-emption.
E-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net.