US polls and Pakistan

It seems that a wave of anti-Americanism is sweeping across Pakistan. The leftist lobby here was always anti-US but, in the last few years, the rightist religious parties led by the fire-breathing Mullahs have surpassed the leftists in virulent anti-Americanism. Moreover, since the US attack on Iraq, some moderate circles in Pakistan have also joined in such criticism.

In the immediate context, many Pakistanis are now rooting for the defeat of President George Bush in the US presidential elections next month and his replacement by Senator John Kerry.

Judging the matter from the point of view of Pakistan's national interests, we need to consider as to what would be the likely consequences for Pakistan of Kerry's victory in the presidential elections.

He is on record as having expressed deep misgivings about Pakistan's nuclear programme and has implied that official circles in Pakistan were involved in the nuclear proliferation activities of Dr. A.Q. Khan over the last few years.

He has indicated that, if elected, he would apply pressure on Pakistan to roll back its nuclear programme. Against this background, Kerry has also advocated a regional leadership role for India.

Moreover, Kerry regards the Al Qaeda as the biggest threat to US national interests and has accused Pakistan of harbouring Al-Qaeda and Taliban elements. If elected president, he would presumably increase pressure on Pakistan to "do more" to crush these elements.

The foregoing would suggest that Kerry as president might tighten the screw on Pakistan, leading to serious strains in US-Pakistan relationship. Aid could be curtailed, and even worse could follow.

India would be emboldened and its relations with the US would gain - at Pakistan's expense. The US might even accept the Indian argument to dub Kashmiri militants as terrorists.

In fact, over the years, there has been a pattern that the Democrats in the US have shown a preference for India over Pakistan, whereas the Republican Party has been relatively more favourable towards Pakistan.

The Democrats have also been more keen on promoting democracy. It might be recalled that President Clinton was even unwilling to be photographed with General Musharraf when he paid his reluctant, five-hour visit to Pakistan in 2000. Clinton had spent five days in India on the same tour.

On the other hand, President Pervez Musharraf has established a close rapport with President Bush. This has been a prime reason for Pakistan emerging as a key player on the world stage, more so since 9/11.

Pakistan has as a result reaped strong diplomatic and financial dividends. The A.Q. Khan episode could have had highly injurious consequences for Pakistan but for the special relationship existing between Bush and Musharraf.

No doubt, there is a certain continuity in foreign policy of the US and other countries, dictated by national interests. Pakistan is a nuclear state and has a geo strategic importance that would have to be recognized by Kerry or any other American president.

Pakistan is also viewed as a key moderate Muslim country at a time when Islamic extremism is becoming the bugbear of the West. But in the light of the public positions taken by Bush and Kerry respectively, it is likely that the replacement of Bush by Kerry would cause a setback to Pakistan's relations with the US.

On the issue of US support for Israel, which is probably the most important reason for the rising anti-Americanism in Pakistan and the Islamic world, it is clear that President Kerry would not dilute the strong American backing for the Zionist state. Indeed, the Democrats in the US have always been a step ahead of the Republicans in blind support for Israel.

Kerry had also supported the US attack on Iraq in 2003. Though as the presidential candidate, he has been critical of Bush, but he has given no indication of an immediate American pullout from that country.

His main focus has been on stepping up the "global war against terrorism" and the Al Qaeda. This could result in more drastic policies in Afghanistan and elsewhere that could further antagonize Muslim opinion.

On the broader question of anti-Americanism, there is a need to take a realistic rather than an emotional view of the situation. What in fact are the Muslim grievances against the US? The main complaint is American support for Israel.

This is really the outcome of the hold of the Zionist lobby in the US, and even in Europe. The US has maintained a strongly pro-Israel policy despite the latter's unashamed aggressive policies against the Palestinians in defiance UN Resolutions and in utter disregard of Arab, Islamic and world opinion on the subject.

At the same time, to blame the US for everything that Israel does is also erroneous. It must be remembered that whatever concessions Israel has made to the Arabs over the years were largely the result of American pressure or persuasion.

Israel was forced to vacate Arab territories after the 1956 War; the Sinai was returned to Egypt in the 1970's; and the PLO regained control of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990s, all because of US pressures on Israel.

Under the so-called roadmap, on peace, even if it is now sidelined, President Bush has committed the US, for the first time, to the concept of an independent Palestinian state.

Logic suggests that, at some stage, the US would have to adopt a more even-handed policy on the Palestinian issue, so that its national interests in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world are not further damaged.

In any event, the Islamic world must realize that neither Europe nor anyone else has been able do anything concrete to restrain Israel. The US alone seems to be in a position to influence the Zionist state.

The traditional criticism of the leftist lobby against the US was that it was an imperialist power, which was opposed to progressive causes, including democratic rights of peoples in various parts of the world. In some instances, this criticism was partially valid.

But the leftist lobby was altogether blind to the policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet regime was as bad a dictatorship as any seen in the world. Millions were killed during the Stalinist purges and even greater numbers, including Muslims of Crimea and Caucasus, forcibly expelled from their homelands.

The "command and control" system continued until Gorbachev ended it in the late 1980s, which soon thereafter led to the collapse of this system based on oppression and torture.

The Soviet Union also had an iron grip on several states in East Europe, apart from Mongolia, all of which had been really turned into puppets. This was the worst kind of imperialism. In opposing this cruel system, which is now in the dustbin of history, the US and its allies were morally right.

It is also worth recalling that, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, six Muslim states have regained independence. Moreover, in the last decade, two Muslim peoples (Bosnia and Kosovo) were liberated as a result of direct US military and political pressure on Serbia, former Yugoslavia. The Muslim world itself was a mere spectator as the Serbs subjected Muslims in these areas to "ethnic cleansing."

In the more recent past, Islamic opinion has been angered by what is seen by some as the targeting of Muslim countries one by one. Let us examine three specific cases.

Firstly, the US-led military action against Iraq in 1990. This was undertaken when Kuwait, a Muslim and Arab state, was attacked and occupied by Saddam Hussein. In expelling Iraq from Kuwait, the US had overwhelming world support, including that by nearly all Muslim states. Egypt, Syria and Pakistan even sent troops to join the war against Iraq.

Secondly, the US military action against the Taliban regime in 2001, which was undertaken shortly after the Al Qaeda suicide bombers hit New York and Washington on 9/11, was supported by nearly all countries in the world, including Russia, China and most Muslim governments.

The Taliban regime was opposed by most states, including their Muslim neighbours such as Iran. The obscurantist version of Islam practised by the Taliban - shutting down of women's schools, and banning of all kinds of entertainment - in fact greatly damaged the image of Islam all over the world.

The third case is the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent fighting in Iraq against the US military occupation. Here, the US was guilty of acting without UN sanction.

Moreover, it failed to substantiate its claim that the Saddam regime was in actual possession of WMDs or was supporting the Al Qaeda. World opinion has been rightly critical of the US on this score.

However, the fact was that Saddam was a tyrant who had been guilty of the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over a period of 35 years of Baathist rule in Iraq. Mass graves have since been discovered in which thousands of Iraqis were buried.

Saddam singled out the majority Shias as well as the Kurdish minority for the worst treatment. He launched invasions of Iran and Kuwait in which nearly a million Muslims perished.

Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran as well as the Kurds. He was in possession of the WMDs at one stage even if none were found after the US invasion in 2003.

The removal of the Saddam regime was as justifiable as the removal of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia by Vietnam following its invasion in 1970s. Incidentally, the brother of President Khatami of Iran had greeted the fall of Saddam as the "best news" for Iran.

Finally, how about the validity of some specific Pakistani grievances against the US? No doubt, Pakistani opinion was embittered when the US did not support Pakistan during the two wars with India in 1965 and 1971.

However, any objective reading of the US obligations under the two military pacts (Cento and Seato) would show that the US help to Pakistan could only come in the event of Communist aggression against Pakistan. It was inconceivable that US soldiers would join Pakistan in fighting against India. Any illusions in Pakistan on this score were unfounded.

In fact, the US military aid to Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s was given to fight Communist invasion. Instead, Pakistan used these weapons against India. Similar was the case of the US weapons given to India after the Sino-Indian war of 1962: India instead used them against Pakistan.

It could be said that both India and Pakistan took the US for a ride in securing massive military aid, ostensibly to fight Communism, whereas they really intended to use this weaponry against each other.

The historical record also shows that after Pakistan's defeat in the 1971 war, it was US pressure that deterred India from attacking West Pakistan. In the more recent past, it was the US that dissuaded India from launching a military adventure against Pakistan in 1999 and in 2002.

It is also a fact that the US has been the largest source of economic and military aid to Pakistan in the last fifty years. There was no doubt a quid pro quo from Pakistan, which supported the US during the cold war. But this did not stop Pakistan from befriending Communist China even though the US regarded it as an enemy until 1971. Pakistan also went to war with India in 1965 and 1971 in disregard of US opinion. During the early 1980s, the US and Pakistan came close together because of their opposition to the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan.

But this did not stop Pakistan from going ahead with the acquisition of nuclear capability despite US opposition. This indicates that even when Pakistan had become a military ally of the US, it had defied US wishes on key issues and continued to follow, by and large, an independent foreign policy. Similarly, despite Pakistan's close cooperation with the US after 9/11, it has refused to send troops to Iraq.

The historical record shows that there are no permanent friends or enemies in international relations. When we get close to the US, this is in pursuit of our national interests. That is also the basis of US friendship with Pakistan. Our strategic doctrine has been based on the premise of a mortal threat from India to our security.

It has been our endeavour not to allow a situation to develop in which the US would make a common front with India against Pakistan. However, unbridled anti-Americanism in Pakistan, which has already led to the growth of extremism and even support for the Al Qaeda type terrorism, has the potential of pushing the US towards India, thereby jeopardizing our national security.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Ignoring national heroes

We in the subcontinent revere religious leaders but tend to forget national heroes. Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah have stood the test of time because both are respected as father of their nation. However, the Bangladesh founder, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, has been denigrated by the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party for political reasons.

The successors have not done too well. Jawaharlal Nehru in India is receding into the background because of ever-new appraisal of his contribution. Liaquat Ali Khan in Pakistan never had that type of sheen. He went into oblivion long ago. Tajud Din in Bangladesh was killed in jail during the lifetime of the Sheikh.

Those who came after them were leaders of political parties. They did not make the grade. Some stole the show but only for a short period. Lal Bahadur Shastri and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, moulded in different cast, still retain their popularity.

One was modest and unassuming, the other flamboyant and swaggering. There is nothing common between the two except that they have left behind something for people to recall.

The Congress had ignored Shastri for years. The party displayed in pandals and posters the photos of only Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Shastri's picture, if at all exhibited, was on some distant pole. Someone prodded the Congress to celebrate his 100th birth anniversary. He too, like Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2.

The cultural ministry woke up five days before his centenary and constituted a national committee to chalk out the programme. The best the government does on these occasions is to issue advertisements.

Shastri's photo appeared in papers as an advertisement. The ministry also held a function but in a hurry failed to invite even members of the national committee. It was probably a ritual.

I want to keep my comment reserved till Shastri's next birthday. I have known the committees formed in the name of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Dr Rajendra Prasad and forgotten before the next birth anniversary.

Shastri, let me remind the Congress men and others, was the toughest prime minister India ever had. At Tashkent, there came a point when the then Soviet Union Prime Minister Kosygin asked him not to insist on Pakistan President Ayub Khan to renounce force for the solution of problems with India.

Shastri's reply was: "You will have to talk to another prime minister." Ultimately, Ayub wrote in his own hand that Pakistan would not resort to arms. This document is in the archives of our external affairs ministry.

I saw former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee attending Shastri's function but not that of Mahatma Gandhi at the Gandhi Smriti. He was there last year when he was the prime minister.

Why not this time as former prime minister? Mahatma Gandhi is father of the nation. The Congress may try to over-own him but he belongs to all, whatever one's status, caste or creed.

The RSS has included his name in its prayers but does not display his photo at its headquarters in Nagpur. However, my biggest shock was over the absence of Sonia Gandhi at the Gandhi Smriti.

The Congress presidents seldom missed the function. This time, except for the prime minister, home minister and one or two other ministers, none from the pantheon of the Congress leaders was present.

Not long ago, even the president and vice-president of India attended the function. I do not know what protocol considerations came in the way. Or, they kept themselves on their own choosing? However, the vice-president was present at the birth centenary celebrations of one RSS pracharak, Saheb Apte. Was it because K.S. Sudharshan, the RSS chief, was in the chair?

But what is really disconcerting is the language which politicians in the subcontinent have begun to use against their opponent. Some years ago none would even think of hitting below the belt. Today they start with it. Personal abuses have become part of political jargon. Even when pointed out, the abuser seldom offers apologies.

Former BJP minister Yashwant Sinha says that he is not sorry for having compared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Sikhandi (eunuch), a character from the Mahabharat.

Sinha was India's finance as well as foreign minister. He does not have to be told that there is something called decorum in public life. The prime minister is an institution. He is the country's face.

To whatever party he belongs, the prime minister represents the nation. One can be his opponent, a critic or a dissenter. But nobody has any right to malign the institution and try to pull it down. By abusing Manmohan Singh, Sinha has only lowered himself in the eyes of the public.

My disappointment is over the silence of both Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, the two top leaders of the BJP, who often talk of values. I thought they would tick off Sinha in one way or the other to make amends. Their attitude speaks volumes about their preference when it comes to the BJP.

They had exposed themselves over the carnage in Gujarat by siding with chief minister Narendra Modi. Still I hoped against hope that Sinha would be taken to task. Is power so crucial to Vajpayee and Advani that they do not mind even their senior party members denigrating the prime minister? What message are they giving to the youth or what type of heritage are they trying to leave behind? I have seen the standard of politics falling over the years.

But I know of no example where a person having occupied a high position runs amuck the way Sinha has done. The BJP brought him to the Rajya Sabha after his dismal defeat in the Lok Sabha election. They probably wanted someone to articulate the party's point of view. What kind of case would he build when he does not know which word to use and when?

There is yet another person who is giving a bad name to the BJP. What Uma Bharati has done brings no laurels to the party. She has politicized even the national flag which transcends parochialism and party considerations.

Once again Advani exposes his sense of discretion when he compares Jayaprakash Narayan's movement with that of the Tiranga yatra by Uma Bharati. Not long ago, he used to compare his Babri masjid yatra with Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi Salt march. After he was chastized for that, he is more "modest"than before.

I returned from Bangalore a few days ago where I saw the damage Uma Bharati has done to the homogeneous society of Karnataka. Several areas are now considered "sensitive" and people living there do not know what will happen to them in the days to come.

"Communalism is beginning to creep in the south," says Janaki Jain, a renowned economist living in Bangalore, as her husband L.K. Jain, a Gandhian, who was once a member of the Planning Commission, nods in assent.

I do not know why the BJP does not understand that Hindutva will destroy the very fabric of our society. In a secular polity, it has no place. The party should have learnt the lesson after its defeat in the Lok Sabha polls. But then its problem is that it has no other programme to offer. The campaign during the Maharashtra assembly election showed that.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

South Korea's nuclear secrets

Still red-faced over its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush Administration is now facing another huge nuclear embarrassment. The UN nuclear inspectors just caught close US ally South Korean enriching small amounts of plutonium and uranium to weapons grade.

This revelation comes when the Bush Administration's pro-Israeli neo-conservative hawks are clamouring for war against Iran over its unproven nuclear weapons programme. These are same hawks who raised a hue and cry over Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

South Korea's six-year old programme was far ahead of Iran's. Seoul used various deceptions to conceal it from UN inspectors. North Korea, to nobody's surprise, has been crowing over this embarrassing revelation, claiming its nuclear programme has been justified.

This is the second time South Korea has been found secretly working on nuclear weapons. In the early 1970s, under the rule of strongman Park Chung Hee, CIA discovered a covert South Korean weapons programme. Washington forced Gen. Park to shut it down.

This writer has reported for a decade that South Korea had continued a covert nuclear programme. Japan, according to my Asian intelligence sources, also developed a covert programme capable of producing nuclear weapons in under three months.

North Korea has 2-9 nuclear warheads and missiles to deliver them over all Japan and as far as Hawaii and the US. This writer believes Taiwan has an advanced clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

Heightening tensions, a recent mammoth explosion in the far north of North Korea that reportedly produced a giant mushroom cloud with a 4-km diameter. The explosion coincided with the 56th anniversary of the founding of Stalinist North Korea and recent reports of heightened activities around that nation's nuclear installations.

Could it have been a gigantic happy birthday bang for Beloved Leader, Kim Jong-il? North Korea claimed the explosion was part of dam construction. There are persistent rumours North Korea soon plans a nuclear test.

The US and South Korea, however, were quick to deny the explosion was a nuclear test, suggesting an accident in a missile base or munitions depot. But nerves in North Asia were clearly rattled, most of all in Japan, whose long-discussed anti-missile system is still only in the planning stage.

The mysterious mushroom cloud comes soon after worrying intelligence reports North Korea is deploying two new ballistic missiles: a road-mobile missile with a 2,500-4,000 km range, and a ship or submarine-mounted version with a 2,500 range. Both are based on the by now retired Soviet R-27 (SS-N-6) submarine launched missile that carries a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead.

North Korea is reportedly working on ships and, possibly, a submarine design to bring the nuclear-armed R-27 missile within range of the continental US and all US bases in Asia. North Korea's 1-3 Taepo-dong ICBMs can already reach North America, according to CIA.

The fact that South Korea enriched uranium four times higher than Iran and clearly violated the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was dismissed by Washington, which accepted Seoul's unconvincing claim the extractions were only harmless laboratory tests by rogue scientists.

George Bush's born-again cold warriors clearly have two standards for nuclear states. If they're US allies, like Israel, India, Japan, Pakistan, and South Korea, exposure of nuclear programmes incurs only a few tut-tuts.

If the culprit is in Washington's black book, like Iraq or Iran, any accusations of nuclear delinquency are enough, as we have seen, to bring invasion or threats of war.

This would also apply to North Korea, except the tough northerners already have nuclear weapons that could be fired at South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Guam and Hawaii, where some 100,000 US military personnel are based.

Exposure of Seoul's nuclear ambitions undermines Washington's efforts to mobilize Japan, South Korea, China and Russia to compel North Korea to end its nuclear development, and it reinforces the 'Beloved Leader's' determination to keep making nuclear weapons.

This raises a fundamental question. Why shouldn't South Korea have the right to nuclear weapons. Its neighbours - North Korea, China, and Russia - are nuclear powers. After all, nuclear weapons, as North Korea has shown, are the best guarantee against attack by superpowers.

If Washington winks at Israel's large nuclear arsenal, which was created with stolen US technology and material, what right does it have to deny such weapons to South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan? Or to chastise Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets to fellow Muslim nations? - Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004

New democracies

Vote for "the prettiest candidate," said Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri as the election campaign got underway, and the voters took her at her word. On 20 September, they voted overwhelmingly for her former chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is no beauty - but then, neither is she, and at least he sings very nicely.

None of his campaign rallies was complete without a rendition of "Rainbow in Your Eyes" by the former four-star general and his wife, Kristiani Herrawati. The voters loved it.

Mr Yudhoyono is actually quite a serious man who was seen by his army colleagues as efficient and incorruptible, but even his closest adviser, Muhammad Lutfi, admitted: "This election is not about policy. This is a popularity contest so we sell (him) like a brand image." It's enough to give you doubts about the future of Indonesia's new democracy.

It's not just Indonesia. There has been an avalanche of new democracies in the past twenty years, and there are doubts about the quality of democracy in a lot of them.

At the same time, many people in these countries have become nostalgic for the sheer stability of the old regimes: in a poll conducted by the Asia Foundation last December, 53 per cent of Indonesians agreed with the statement: "We need a strong leader like Suharto (the former dictator, overthrown in 1998)...even if it reduces rights and freedoms."

East Germans who miss the threadbare economic security they had in their part of the old divided Germany; Filipinos who elected an ignorant and corrupt former movie star as president because he played heroic roles in movies; South Africans who blame the huge crime rate on their post-apartheid freedoms: the new democracies of the world are full of people who are not too sure that it was all such a good idea. Was it?

The United Nations Development Programme has calculated that eighty-one countries moved towards democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, and that by 2002 one hundred and forty of the world's almost two hundred independent nations had held multi-party elections.

The old-fashioned tyrannies are a dwindling minority, and this year will see more free elections than ever before: 110 of them, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

Six hundred and fifty million Indian voters; 450 million in the European Union; 166 million in the United States; 153 million in Indonesia; 109 million in Russia; and hundreds of millions more in countries ranging from Australia and Canada to Taiwan and Ghana: at least a third of the adult members of the human race will be asked to vote in an election this year, and most of them will actually do so.

The only really big countries where elections either don't happen at all or have no discernible impact on who runs the place are China and Pakistan. Only thirty years ago, the only real democracies in Asia were India, Sri Lanka and Japan, and there were only about a dozen in Europe.

The last genuine democracies in Latin America were foundering under a new wave of military coups, and the Middle East and Africa were practically democracy-free. It has been an astonishingly rapid transformation - which may explain why people seem so ungrateful for their liberation.

Most of the world's democracies are new, and many are still suffering from the economic upheavals that accompanied the process of democratisation. The voters are inexperienced, so demagoguery works better than in the older democracies (not that it doesn't often work in those countries, too).

There is also the disillusionment that comes when people realize that changing the political system does not solve all the problems. It just changes our way of dealing with them, hopefully for the better, but it's bound to take some time for the benefits to become apparent.

When a society opts for democracy, it is betting that the collective wisdom of the majority is superior to the judgement of any single powerful individual or group. That is almost certainly true in the long run, but it can be quite wrong in the short run. On the other hand, the kind of individuals who rise to power in tyrannies are even more prone to catastrophic errors of judgement.

Take Indonesia. The thirty-year Suharto dictatorship, covering most of the country's post-independence history, delivered economic growth but siphoned off most of the profits for the benefit of a narrow elite of the dictator's cronies and collaborators.

The three presidents who have governed the country in the six years since Suharto's overthrow, chosen by a parliament where interest groups that were powerful under the old regime still had much influence, were disastrous in different ways, but all were incapable of addressing Indonesia's problems effectively. -Copyright