| 10 December 2004 | Friday | 27 Shawwal 1425 |
Conditionalities in peace talks
Too stark for Saarc?
Subtle signs of change
Eventhose Islamists who are campaigning for political power to establish a Shariat-compliant civil administration and financial system lay all the emphasis on dogmas and observance of religious rites which are already followed with amazing uniformity by Muslims throughout the world. This not withstanding minor differences in modalities and irrespective of where and under what form of government they live.
This over-emphasis on the observance of religious rites, which promises a berth in paradise, has made them completely neglectful of their duties as responsible and honest citizens of the state and unmindful of their rights as human beings. Consequently, most of them are being ruled by dictators, hereditary monarchs and a corrupt bureaucracy.
It may appear paradoxical but is, unfortunately, a fact that the people who pray five times a day, fast for a month and go for Umra and Haj at least once happen to be the citizens of such states (barring notable exceptions) where, according to prestigious international agencies, corruption is rampant and social development indices are touching rock bottom.
It is for the religion political leaders to ponder why this baffling contradiction in terms stares them in the face and what corrective approach is indicated.
This is a typical case of missing the wood for the trees. The sheer frequency with which the Quran exhorts the believers to 'establish Salaat (worship in all its forms) and pay Zakat (poor-due)' was led to the false assumption that this is the be-all and end-all of faith.
The fact, however, is that this repetitive exhortation covers, symbolically, the requirements of both worlds - present and the hereafter - Zakat to alleviate poverty and mitigate economic hardship and salaat for reward in the next world. But this should not obscure other ideas and axioms which are present in Islam from the very beginning but have remained out of our theologians' focus in spite of the fact that these have been "one by one" and generally, accepted by the West.
"These are the duty of free thought and free inquiry, the duty of religious tolerance, the idea that conduct and not creed or class distinction should be the test of a man's worth in law and social intercourse, women's right to full equality with men before the law, her rights to property, the licence to divorce and remarry, the duty of personal cleanliness, the prohibition of strong drinks..."
These quotations are from the British Muslim scholar, Marmaduke Pickthall's "Madras Lectures". These well-known ingredients of the Shariat have been adopted in stages, by the modern civilized societies without acknowledging the debt to Islam.
What is lamentable is that our learned clerics have not treated this subject with the importance it deserves, as it would have acquainted the laymen and students of religious seminaries with the valuable contribution their religion has made to reclaim the West from its barbarism of the Middle Ages and as an example for other non-Muslim societies in respect of social and legal rights of their male and female citizens.
To the ulema such axiomatic principles enunciated originally by Islam, which have now been accepted and adopted universally, are purely secular in character and are outside the purview of religion.
This is the main reason why they do not highlight them as Islam's contribution to reform other societies that had no inkling of gender equality in the sense that women have the same rights and duties as men, and that there being "no compulsion in the matter of religious belief" (according to Quranic pronouncement) lacked religious tolerance. Thus they waged the infamous crusades, erratically, dragging on for three centuries to finish off a rival religion.
In short, our ulema compartmentalize the secular and the sacred separately, the way the Christian church did in its heyday and viewed with disdain the Islamic axioms and ideas mentioned by Pickt hall and called them irreligious and outside the domain of religion. The matter, according to them, concerned itself only with dogmas and doctrines of Christian faith and tenets governing prayers and worship.
Our ulema also overlook the fact that, much before the French Revolution, Islam laid the foundation of a socialist system enunciated by 'revealed' guidance which not only stressed economic justice but also piety and God-consciousness.
Allama Iqbal, contrasting Islam with Marxist Communism - "equality of stomachs", as he calls it in Javed Nama - says that the latter is "lacking in the illuminating flash of divine revelation".
Therefore, one can call the Islamic system, which lasted in its pristine purity for about 60 years during the lifetime of the earliest four caliphs, as a happy blend of social and economic morality.
Political theorists of post-Renaissance Europe like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Hobbes, standing on the opposite extreme end, ignored entirely the spiritual aspirations and sensibilities of mankind, just at our present - day 'ulema' overlook the economic and other mundane aspects, considering them irrelevant to their mission.
The banishment of communism from Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet system, proves that a system which has no moral or religious basis and seeks to provide only a square meal a day to all citizens and health care and education to those who need it is bound to collapse like a house of cards once an economic crisis develops in the land.
Another lesson that one can draw from the disintegration of the Soviet Union after 70 years of its enforced initially by means of repressive organs (like the dreaded KGB) and exemplary punishments, can work satisfactorily only as long as there is economic satisfaction in the country.
It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the polemics of whether Shariat can be adopted as the law of the land. It is difficult to convince the majority of right-thinking persons that Shariat, as interpreted by our ecclesiastical class today, which is not different from how it was interpreted by our venerable jurists eight centuries ago, can look after the requirements of the complex fabric of a political-cum-financial-cum-administrative infrastructure in the present age where globalization is the buzz-word and no state, however strong militarily and economically, can carve for itself a completely independent path.
A path based on ideas and traditions of the remote past is not likely to satisfy the global concerns of human rights. For instance, in respect of harsh punishments like the death penalty which are now being outlawed.
It is inconceivable that the world community will not feel outraged if corporal punishments like flogging, amputation of human limbs and stoning to death, according to Hudood laws, are awarded by the judiciary and implemented by the executive arm of the government.
Similarly, restricting all overseas trade and commerce to riba-free transactions may not be feasible unless the intention is to stand alone on the world stage, come what may. This introduces the subject of ijtehad, or re-interpretation on the basis of Qiyas, or analogy, so as to make the divinely-revealed injunctions applicable in the situation prevailing today on the planet as a whole.
It is an encouraging aspect of our history that, during the last 13 centuries from the Khilafat originating in Madinah till its abolition on the dismemberment of the Ottoman caliphate in the first quarter of the 20th century, Muslim thinkers and administrators displayed an amazing genius in adaptation and transformation of the Byzantine, Sassanid and post-Renaissance European principles and art of government and their application in running and managing the Khilafat successfully.
Conditionalities in peace talks
There can be no argument with the fact that there can be no meaningful peace between India and Pakistan without a satisfactory resolution of the Kashmir dispute. It also goes without saying that there is as much stake in the successful conclusion of the composite dialogue, begun earlier this year, for the Kashmiri people as for the people of Pakistan and India.
What happens to Kashmir will inevitably be reflected in relations between India and Pakistan. However, even though India appears to be somewhat reluctant to describe Kashmir as the core issue this in effect is what it is in relation to the dialogue.
Of course, nobody at the outset declared Kashmir to be the main issue or that there could be no understanding between India and Pakistan on any of the several aspects of their bilateral relationship without the assent of the Kashmir people.
It would be fair to say that the participation of the representatives of the Kashmiri people was not visualized as a prerequisite of the dialogue. Yet, this appears to be the situation on the ground after about 10 months talks between the interlocutors of the two countries.
India is clearly not prepared to accord Kashmir the priority that Pakistan believes it deserves. Addressing a gathering of the Pakistani community in London the other day, President Pervez Musharraf stated emphatically that "Kashmir is the key issue and we have to move forward."
Pakistan's insistence that without Kashmir there can be no worthwhile progress in the composite dialogue - even though it has not said so in so many words - virtually gives the Kashmiris a veto over the talks.
Pakistan has also made it clear that progress since the talks on Kashmir has to be "in tandem" with any discussion of the confidence-building measures (CBMs). It could imply that a measure of understanding on any of the other contentious issues would not mean very much without an understanding on Kashmir.
While the liberation of Kashmir has been one of Pakistan's policy objectives, the larger issue of India-Pakistan relations has hardly ever so categorically been made conditional upon the resolution of Kashmir.
If progress in India-Pakistan relations is made conditional upon the will of the Kashmir people, the composite dialogue could come up against some formidable, even un surmountable, hurdles.
Apart from India's psyche - the belief that Kashmir is an integral part of Indian territory - the militancy which has now become an integral part of the struggle in Kashmir could manifest itself in other aspects of the two countries' bilateral relationship.
It is frequently said that the rise of militancy in the Kashmir people's struggle for self-determination has been a factor in the manifestation of militant Hindu communalism in India generally.
It is also generally known that the increasing frequency of the anti-Muslim riots and the criminal indifference showed by the state machinery in meeting its responsibility to save the lives of the Muslims have strengthened the perception that the Kashmiris would not be safe if they continue to be treated as a part of Indian society.
However, a major problem with giving the Kashmiris a veto over the composite dialogue is the absence of a single coherent Kashmir freedom fighters group which can claim to speak on behalf of the state as a whole. There are scores of freedom fighters' parties in Kashmir who all claim to be equally representative of the will of the Kashmiri people.
Some of them are more militant than the others. Some are reputed to be overtly pro-Pakistan and are looked upon with suspicion by the Indian authorities. Others are regarded as enjoying the patronage of the Indian intelligence services.
According to a political analyst, the most fundamental division between the Kashmir militant groups is ideological: those who favour independence and those who favour accession to Pakistan.
At times, relations between opposing Kashmiri groups have deteriorated to the extent that they fight more among themselves than against the (Indian) security forces based in the state.
On May 21, 1990, the top Kashmiri leader, Mirwaiz Farooq, held in esteem practically by all sections of the Kashmir people, was shot dead in his home and the killing was widely perceived by a section of Kashmiris as the action of some militants opposed to his contact with the New Delhi government.
It is not easy to determine as to which Kashmiri party would have the credentials to be represented in the composite dialogue. Practically all of them have the reputation of being the proteges of the intelligence services of either India or of Pakistan.
There is hardly any party which does not bear the odious reputation. India has traditionally recognized the National Conference headed by Omar Abdullah, a grandson of its founder Shaikh Abdullah, as most representative of the Kashmiri people. Pakistan does not trust the National Conference as Shaikh Abdullah was a close associate of Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru. Mr Jinnah never trusted him.
There is a baffling multiplicity of parties claiming to be the genuine freedom fighters in Kashmir. Even the number of parties which have grouped themselves in the All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) and traditionally trusted by Pakistan is estimated anywhere between 12 and 20. One Kashmiri writer said that it comprised as many as 34 parties. Moreover, the parties in the APHC are in no sense homogeneous.
The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was apparently founded in Pakistan but is now well represented inside the state. A large group of Kashmiri freedom fighters is the Hizbul Mujahideen, which maintains that the struggle for the liberation is in fact a jihad.
It is openly supported by the Jamaat-i-Islami, not universally popular in Pakistan. Then, there is the Harkat-ul-Ansar, said to consist largely of Afghan who were active in Afghanistan and came into Kashmir after the Afghan war ended. There are a dozen others, many of them strongly supported by militant orthodox elements.
There are members of the old surviving Plebiscite Front and the Dukhtaran-i-Millat to complicate matters there are often strong differences among the leaders of the same political party, leading to further factions and divisions. It would therefore not be easy for Pakistan and India to agree as to who from amongst them should be included in the dialogue.
Militancy in Kashmir has been on the rise and in proportion to the extent of human rights violations inflicted upon the Kashmiri people by the Indian security forces occupying the state. Not all the governments installed by New Delhi in the state rose through transparent means and this too, has led to severe bitterness among the Kashmiri people.
A brutal administrator installed by New Delhi in Srinagar was the retired civil servant Malhotra Jagmohan, who, surprisingly, was given two tenures. he was particularly harsh in his methods of governance and was the one who ordered firing upon the mourners in the funeral procession of Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq. Some 24 persons were killed. His tenure saw much rise in militancy in the state.
Jihadi foreign nationals also managed to infiltrate into the state in large numbers at the end of Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Russia. They have significantly added to the strength of the militants and could be difficult to handle by Pakistan if given the responsibility of being associated with the composite dialogue.
India does not appear to look upon with favour at all the idea of associating any Kashmiris with the dialogue. However, it would be unfortunate if the composite dialogue were to be stalled on this count.
Perhaps, the high-level emissaries of India and Pakistan who are said to be engaged in behind-the-scenes talks would be able to suggest some means of saving the dialogue from being stalled. Perhaps, the international powers such as the US would also lend their support to the dialogue.
Too stark for Saarc?
The United Nations launched its Year of Micro credit on November 18. Several stock exchanges, including Karachi, Colombo, Bombay and the Nasdaq, helped ring in a year of focused initiatives to broaden financial services access for the poor.
But shortly after the luminaries departed and the bourses returned to frantic wealth accumulation, the micro finance sector continued the hard slog of ensuring that low income entrepreneurs are recognized as legitimate clients of financial services, and are offered access to a wider range of financial products.
Micro finance alone will not do it. It is by no means the silver bullet nor a panacea for poverty alleviation. It is but one intervention which will contribute towards the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
No developing nation has yet achieved all eight goals. South Asia's scorecard remains woefully inadequate. Its challenge is enormous, not only in democratizing financial services, but in providing access to education, healthcare, information and justice to a majority of the region's citizens.
The largest concentration of poverty, those living below $2 a day, is to be found in South Asia. Out of 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty, 515 million live in South Asia. It is home to 40 per cent of the developing world's absolute poor.
South Asia sadly is home to 45 per cent of the developing world's adult illiterate women and home to 49 per cent of the developing world's malnourished children. Pakistan is home to about a quarter of the world's illiterate children.
The size of the informal sector in India alone is close to 400 million micro-entrepreneurs. Add Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to this mix and what we get is a "monster market".
Over 90 per cent of South Asia's labour force is in the informal sector - the largest segment being micro and small enterprises employing between one to five people. Yet this is also the most financially squeezed and socio-economically locked out segment of the population.
Our region is home to three of the world's most intractable and bloody conflicts. The conflict in Kashmir, the Maoist rebellion in Nepal and the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka have together killed over 120,000 men, women and children. More keep dying every day and the monetary cost of these conflicts is staggering.
As if that is not daunting enough, South Asia is also the region where two of the world's only seven (declared) nuclear states are hostile neighbours.With these abysmal failures staring each South Asian leader starkly in the face, they will once again convene during the Saarc summit in Dhaka in January 2005.
The current head of Saarc, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, has said that the number one agenda item for SAARC this time will be "the war on terror." We need not dwell on his reasons, he too has his ground realities and much has already been posited about Pakistan's post 9/11 jockeying in the world's new order.
However, one can hope that Prime Minister Aziz, when referring to the war on terror, was also declaring the war on terror unleashed by poverty, inhumanity and unrelenting injustice.
For what could be more terrorizing than not having enough money to feed your family? Or watching your child die of a treatable disease because you didn't have money to save him other? Terror is watching a bulldozer tear away at the fragile walls of your shanty dwelling, or being at the mercy of a state war machine extracting collective punishment on a community; be it in western Nepal or in north and eastern Sri Lanka.
Mr. Aziz's statement during his November visit to Nepal was worrying. His foremost offer to the government of Nepal was "to crush the Maoist insurgency" by supplying weapons and training to the Nepalese army in Pakistani training camps. The Maoist insurgency in Nepal is fuelled by egregious socio-economic inequities, especially in the rural dirt poor western region.
A similar offer to crush the Tamil rebellion was not extended to Sri Lanka, although a credit of $20 million was offered for the purchase of arms from Pakistan. The prime minister's visit to Sri Lanka was also preceded by that of two Pakistani naval destroyers. A far more leveraged use of $20 million might have been an economic incentive to coax the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE toward a lasting and just peace.
It will be a real shame if the prime minister of Pakistan runs around South Asia primarily peddling weapons and training camps to other governments. He should not squander an opportunity for Pakistan to engage as a leader in South Asia, one which leverages its economic and political capital for the well-being of this region's populace.
The writer is a micro finance specialist based in New York.
Subtle signs of change
It is too small and random an event to be described as a turning point, but too significant in context to be ignored: When Saudi security forces shot it out with a small terrorist gang in Jeddah on Monday to protect the lives of U.S. diplomats, they made an important statement about the course of change in the Middle East.
In differing ways, that same point about change was made elsewhere this week - by the inauguration in Kabul of an elected Afghan president, by the preparations in Rabat, Morocco, for a high-level conference on democratic aspirations in Islamic societies, and in Washington by the White House appointments list.
In this interlude between George W. Bush's re-election and his second inauguration, the appointments list is a better guide to the next term's priorities than any speech or policy paper. It has been filled in recent days with key leaders from the Middle East and Central Asia, not from Europe or the Orient.
At the top of the list were President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Ghazi Yawar, the interim president of Iraq. To listen to their accounts, American help has begun to turn the tide against Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist networks of the region, and opened the way to vital elections in Iraq in January.
You have every right to be sceptical about their accounts. Their fates are on the line. It is not in their interest to express doubts or dangers to scribes. My own scepticism about Musharraf's promises to the Bush administration has been stated often and directly.
But when you hand a Pakistani general a club with which to belabour India's leadership and he declines to swing it, you know some things have changed. He turned away my question about India's intentions by noting that New Delhi is working with Pakistan toward peace and "is looking in a more westerly direction" in foreign policy.
Musharraf also candidly acknowledged that Pakistan has recently complained to Iran about nuclear weapons blueprints passed to Tehran by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and his associates. At least in terms of improving his credibility, Musharraf seems to be not only surviving in a difficult job but actually growing into it.
That does not mean the United States can for a moment relax the pressure on Musharraf to keep his army focused on fighting Al Qaeda and its extremist Pakistani allies and to make sure that U.S. aid is spent honestly and wisely, including - despite the objections of fundamentalists at home - funding education for girls and women.
The United States must pursue that dual approach of stressing security and supporting social modernization throughout the region. The past unquestioning friendship for dictators and intolerant autocrats failed to protect U.S. interests over the long run.
Abandoning the fight against Saddam Hussein's loyalists in Iraq or the Taliban remnants in Afghanistan and Pakistan now would produce even more immediate disasters.
Change is also surfacing in Saudi Arabia, which had also been the target of a mix of U.S. strictures on security and velvety pressure on other matters, such as Saudi membership in the World Trade Organization and showing greater religious, gender and political reform in the kingdom.
At least nine people died in the firefight in the US consulate compound in Jeddah. But the Saudi forces' repulse of the terrorist attack without US fatalities may represent a step forward in the commitment and capabilities of the local security units. In the past, local forces have not shown much willingness to fight terrorists to protect foreigners.
Such progress is necessary, but not sufficient. The shocks still reverberating through the region from Al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq have produced an extraordinary fluidity: The nature of Arab nationalism and the structure of regional security are up for grabs. The United States can be neither absent from the struggle nor overbearing in channelling change that is now both irresistible and unpredictable.
The United States will not prevail over global terrorism that originates in the Middle East unless moderate Muslim political, religious and civic leaders take command in that struggle.
Morocco steps up to the challenge this weekend by hosting an international forum in which Arab civil rights organizations and entrepreneurs will press their governments to modernize.
Positive change dances to a two-step rhythm in the global tinderbox. President Bush must now show that he can master the tempo he has called for the most important endeavour of his presidency. -Dawn/Washington Post Service.