BEFORE getting into the nitty-gritty of the Balochistan problem, it is necessary to understand it in the context of the perception that the antagonists have of each other as evident from their statements and actions. While the government in Islamabad considers the Baloch leadership as unfriendly, defiant, rigid, narrow-minded, backward looking, ungrateful and unpatriotic; the Baloch leaders regard the federal government as arrogant, unsympathetic, partisan, exploitative and indifferent.

A manifestation of this has been that rarely have the genuine leaders of Balochistan been given a free hand to administer their province and the leaders have not accepted, without reservation, the writ and rule of Islamabad or acknowledged the good work done in the field of development and uplift of the province. This attitude has created an atmosphere of perpetual mistrust and conflict.

Like any other isolated and economically underdeveloped people blessed with enormous natural resources, the people of Balochistan entertain deep suspicion of “outsiders” who they think are out to exploit their resources depriving them of their livelihood. This may be an exaggerated view but it is so ingrained in their psyche that to mitigate this feeling require a Herculean effort based on understanding, tact and mutual trust. Unfortunately the Pakistani bureaucracy, which came into intimate contact with the people of Balochistan after the formation of the One Unit, were not equipped with these tools, with the result that, instead of understanding and smooth relationship, there was misunderstanding and hostility.

One of the early military actions, after the creation of Pakistan, was taken in Balochistan to compel the Khan of Kalat to accede to Pakistan. The next conflict erupted after the amalgamation of the different regions of Pakistan into one unit in 1955, followed by other actions in 1965 and 1966. The major challenge to the authority of the government came in 1973 when the Peoples’ Party government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the duly elected government of Ataullah Mengal on the spurious charges of smuggling of foreign arms through the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad and imprisoned the entire nationalist leadership. The Baloch “insurgents” confronted the Pakistan army in sporadic and pitched battles. This lasted for almost four years and ended with the promulgation of Martial Law in 1977, when General Ziaul Huq freed all the nationalist leaders from Hyderabad jail.

Besides repeated military operations and persistent incarceration of Baloch leaders, the other factors which alienated the people of Balochistan were the formation of One Unit in 1955 and Ayub Khan’s martial law in 1958. One Unit was the male-fide imposition of the central government authority by dismantling the political and administrative machinery of the provinces. One Unit, because of its cumbersome bureaucratic structure and the remoteness of its system of governance, created such bad blood that any marginal benefits, which could have accrued as a result of pooling of the financial and administrative resources of the provinces and the federation, resulted in exacerbating the existing mistrust and apathy.

Smaller provinces felt and perhaps rightly that they had been deprived of whatever meagre autonomy they had. It is a fact that the One Unit had made the already miserable life of the people of smaller provinces only more so. Imagine the plight of a man from Kharan or Mekran in Balochistan or from Dir or Kohistan in the Frontier Province going to Lahore to peruse his land case with the Board of Revenue there. The commissioners and the deputy commissioners had become mere post offices. Another factor, which alienated the people of the smaller provinces, was the swarming of the divisional and district headquarters with officers from outside — mainly from the superior services who had very little knowledge of local customs and traditions as most of them had never served in political agencies. They hardly knew the local languages.

Here I am reminded of an encounter which I witnessed personally. President Ayub had come to Quetta to see and review development work undertaken by the government in Balochistan. He was presiding over a meeting of the heads of various departments at the Quetta residency. During the meeting at some point he started admonishing the officers for not doing enough. One outspoken officer from the Frontier Province asked Ayub’s permission to speak.

Permission granted, he said, ‘Sir you may be right in critisizing us for inefficiency but you should also know the reasons. The officers that are posted in Balochistan are either those whom the government wants to unduly favour by giving them out-of-turn promotion or those who are out of favour and need to be punished. Now, Sir, the officers belonging to the first category after securing their promotion start manoeuvring to get posted elsewhere. The officers of the other category spend a disgruntled life and are only interested in getting their salary. Sir, tell me how much productive work can you expect from such a lot.’

To this, Ayub’s reply was a cryptic grunt, “I hope it is not so”. What the officer told the president may not be entirely correct but it is an apt comment on the government’s attitude to smaller provinces, particularly Balochistan. Ayub Khan’s eleven years rule compounded the alienation of the smaller provinces as they rightly thought that because of its background and peculiar mind- set, army will have no sympathy for their difficulties and predicaments. Moreover Balochistan had practically no representation in the armed forces and had no expectation of any sympathetic treatment. The fears of Balochs proved correct as they were subjected to all sorts of oppression. No doubt, there was some developmental activity but as far as the people’s participation in having a say in their affairs, it was just not there.

The military’s attitude has always been that they know the best what is good for an area and its people and what they do has to be accepted without any questioning. The Balochs were not prepared for this, with the result that all their top leadership remained imprisoned for long periods. The Bugti chief, Akbar Khan, was deposed and given death sentence on a trumped-up murder charge. But the most bizarre incident was the hanging of eleven Baloch nationalists after the government had given them amnesty.

As a reaction to the humiliating arrest of the Khan Of Kalat, some Baloch nationalist, headed by the octogenarian Nauroz Khan Zehri, took to the hills and started harassing the para-military forces. This continued with varying intensity for more than a year when the government, at the intercession of some friendly elements, persuaded the so-called rebels to come down from the hills on the explicit promise that they would be pardoned.

However after their surrender they were arrested and subsequently hanged. Sardar Nauroz Khan, because of his old age, was given life imprisonment. This was unprecedented in the history of the tribal area as a promise once given was always honoured at all cost. This betrayal by the government is even today quoted as an example of it’s untrustworthiness.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s civilian rule, which followed Ayub’s military regime, proved worse for the Baloch, yearning for self-rule as Bhutto proved to be an ardent exponent of a centralized set- up. He was also a very intolerant person and did not brook any personal or political opposition. Thus when in the 1970 elections his Peoples’ Party did not win a single seat in Balochistan and he had to reluctantly accede to the formation of an NAP-JUI coalition government.

But from the outset he was creating hurdles in its way. First he appointed Sardar Ghous Bakhsh Raisani, a political opponent of Chief Minister Sardar Ataullah Mengal as the governor of the province and then created the drama of the recovery of Russian arms from the Iraqi embassy in Islamabad alleged to have been destined for Balochistan. He used this as an excuse for dismissing the Mengal ministry.

Thus the dream of the people of Balochistan for limited self — rule were shattered in a mere ten months’ time. This infuriated the Baloch people who considered this action of the federal government as wholly unjustified and started an insurgency in eastern Balochistan which subsequently spread to other parts of the province.

It was estimated that about nine thousand persons were killed on both sides. All Baloch leaders were arrested and put in Hyderabad jail where a conspiracy trial was started. This continued for almost four years and ended with the ouster of the Bhutto government and promulgation of martial law in 1977.

The next two decades remained uneventful in the sense that both sides avoided confrontation. General Ziaul Haq released all the Baloch leaders and terminated the special tribunal which was trying them in Hyderabad jail. If the government avoided any repressive action in Balochistan, Baloch leaders too had become more chastened because of long incarceration, although they conceded nothing to the military government.

During the Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif regimes there was almost normality. The presidents and the prime ministers of the time were happy to visit the province once or twice in a year and left the local affairs to the elected governments (some of them left a tail of corruption and nepotism behind them).

The tragedy of Balochistan is that the affairs of the province are taken seriously only when there is an armed conflict or insurgency there. This is what has happened recently too. The government started giving attention to Balochistan when gas pipelines were repeatedly blown up and many areas of the country were plunged into darkness and industrial activity disrupted, resulting in huge economic losses.

This prompted the government to announce an impressive package for the province, particularly its readiness to seriously consider the autonomy and royalty questions, ensuring employment for the local people and giving the local officers their due quota in the federal institutions. If implemented expeditiously and without any reservations, it can go a long way in meeting the genuine grievances of the people of Balochistan. In fact, it can be a trailblazer for the other provinces as well.

The story of Balochistan is a saga of avoidable confrontation, neglect, wrong priorities, blunders, dithering, missed opportunities, halfway measures taken at the wrong time, suspected loyalties and mutual mistrust. The people of Balochistan are a proud people who do not like to be patronized but want to be treated with dignity and respect, being equal partners in the running of the country.

The federal government has to understand that there can be no lasting peace in the province till such time that the genuine aspirations of the people are met. Obsession with excessive centralization has not worked. Similarly, the leadership of Balochistan has to realize that their province is an integral part of Pakistan and their demands for autonomy have to be within these parameters. Their province is situated in a sensitive region bordering with volatile Afghanistan and nosey Iran and involves special security considerations.

Their attitude of hostility and rigidity has not served any purpose. It would be wise if they join hands with the democratic forces in the country and ensure a truly civilian rule and use democratic means to achieve their goals.

The writer is a former ambassador.

THE knives are out for Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, if corridor whispers and drawing room plotting are anything to go by. The honourable men that seek his exit are drawn not from the ranks of the opposition, which is yet to launch a focused attack on his person, but from within the treasury.

We are witnessing, it seems, a backlash from the old school polity, which resents the authority delegated to Mr Aziz, whom it views as a vulnerable lateral entrant. Certainly, there is a growing sense that they no longer feel compelled to tread lightly in the pursuit of another change from within and they are attacking what they perceive to be his Achilles’ heel — his professional credentials — by highlighting his administration’s supposed failure to rope in galloping inflation and prevent the collapse of the stock market pyramid.

The irony, of course, is that they have adopted tactics that would have played well for the opposition, had this been a functioning parliamentary democracy. But that, obviously, is not the case. It is the president that must be convinced of Mr Aziz’s fallibility, not the disenfranchised electorate at large. The old school is gambling that the seeds of doubt they are seeking to plant in General Musharraf’s ear would inevitably sprout.

By adopting that strategy, however, it has exposed itself to the inevitable question: could they do a better job than Mr Aziz? Evidently, they have failed to grasp the pivotal nature of the job under General Musharraf: the prime minister must facilitate the realization of the grander presidential vision for Pakistan, as spelt out in October 1999.

That challenge is nothing less than transforming the very character of Pakistani society, turning a nation dependent on the public sector for employment and subsidies into a society of dynamic capitalist-consumers that votes with its wallet. Tangible wealth is, after all, far more alluring than the pseudo-ideologies of manipulative politicians seeking the path of least resistance to the power they consider their divine birthright.

While that synopsis of the situation is, admittedly, a gross simplification, there can be no understating of the broader political ramifications of the president’s objectives. Potentially, it could spark a quantum shift in the balance of civilian political power that would permanently dispatch the old school to the back benches.

Of course, it is one thing to matter-of-factly narrate the terms of reference for a desirable political evolution and quite another to predict the eventual outcome when the stakes are so high. But were the prime minister’s rivals to take a dispassionate view, they would (if they have not already) realize that Mr Aziz has already stolen the political initiative. His success need not be sought in the State Bank of Pakistan’s most recent report which, to the layman, is statistical gibberish; rather, they ought to pay attention to what is in plain view for all to see.

To the political economist, anecdotal evidence of a booming economy is everywhere. We may mutter obscenities and long for the days of 80km/h motoring while navigating through urban gridlock, but we must also recognize that the plague of new passenger vehicles are the flagships of upward economic mobility accorded by government policy. As little as six years ago, ownership of a brand-new luxury sedan car was an unattainable dream for all but the privileged five per cent at the top of the food chain. So, for that matter, was ownership of a fully-furnished modern home - at least until one’s white collar had frayed with age. For a rapidly rising number of Pakistanis - even if they represent a proportionately small part of the whole - that is, happily, no longer the case.

Who are those people? They come in different packages, but for convenience’s sake, call them Shaukat’s millionaires. Most familiar to Dawn readers would be Mr and Mrs Joe Professional, typically aged 30-45 years, already earning the rupee equivalent of $1,000 per month, with two or three demanding offspring in attendance at Mrs Kasuri’s educational franchises. The Professionals are an important element of Mr Aziz’s growth strategy, for many reasons. By dint of their sophisticated tastes, they invariably lead consumer trends in a never-ending quest to improve their quality of life and, by dint of their position at the second rung of the economic ladder, were the first to embrace growth-oriented economic policy.

However, they are hardly a new phenomenon and, due to their small number do not constitute an economic miracle. Rather, it is those that seek to ape the sophisticated consumerism of the wealthy and professional classes who are kick-starting the trickle-down effect. Most advanced along the road to consumerism are retail traders and overseas Pakistanis — les nouveau riches — whose quest for higher social status manifests itself in the ostentatious display of their newfound wealth.

Between the wealthy, professionals and nouveau riches, the amount of liquidity to hit the market in the past three years has been stupefying. It has been most visible in the real estate development and home construction sector of the economy, which has turned rupee millionaires into the dollar equivalent and redundant professionals into profit centres. But they are not the only ones to have grown fat from the feeding frenzy. A new, upwardly mobile class of consumers is fast emerging: the dealer-builder. This class has by far the most varied profile - villagers displaced by urban expansion, skilled labourers and contractors, downsized civil servants, freshly graduated MBAs, etc. The fact that there are so many of them, and they are ascending from several rungs down the economic ladder, makes them especially significant for Shaukat Aziz. Those people are potentially General Musharraf’s biggest new vote bank, come the 2007 general elections, because of the tangible benefit they have derived.

In political terms, they threaten change because of their concentration in major urban centres of Punjab, which in the last election voted sweepingly for Nawaz Sharif. If they swing to Musharraf in three years’ time, the 1999 military intervention would stand vindicated and the ruling party would be firmly established as the party of government, thereby providing the necessary vehicle for a presidential career out of uniform. For Shaukat Aziz, it would mean another term as head of a liberal coalition government, and firmly set him up as Musharraf’s heir apparent.

All of which spells doom for the ambitions of the old school, whose members must, by now, have realized how badly they under-estimated Mr Aziz. The creditable exception is Benazir Bhutto, the only mainstream leader with a thorough grasp of macro-economics. Having read the writing on the wall, she is claiming to be better placed to meet the aspirations of the economic have-nots, rather than challenging the government’s economic growth track-record.

Perhaps she understands Mr Aziz for what he is: someone who knows how important it is to keep the client happy. By basing his economic growth strategy on real estate, he was on to a winner. It is a language that the establishment understands well, being the original class of dealer-builders. All Mr Aziz needed to do was to point out that, with a population of 150 million-plus, there was incalculable latent demand for residential land and home ownership. What was needed was to supply the impetus.

In practice, that required gentlemen’s agreements with private real estate developers and the introduction of a consumer-friendly banking system. The rest has simply followed a fundamental formula of development economics: for every dollar invested in infrastructure, 3-4 dollars of peripheral activity is generated.

However, the prime minister has not quite scaled Mount Sinai. He may have mobilized internal resources and brought in high-profile developers from the Gulf to push construction into the 21st century, but he remains susceptible to the fatal flaw of any real estate market. To keep the ball rolling, investors must continue to perceive that further growth in prices is inevitable. As such, one big scandal could cause a market crash.

Having lost half of their collective shirt in the stock market correction, Shaukat’s millionaires are understandably nervous and are already exiting the real estate market in droves. Sentiment has not been helped, either, by the spectacle of uniformed soldiers raiding the homes of officials and property dealers suspected of complicity in a multiple-billion rupee scam affecting the Defence Housing Authority Lahore — the icon to which all developers aspire.

That, in turn, has rejuvenated paranoia about the unprecedented-in-scale Bahria Town projects currently under development in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Add to that the perception that the market is being manipulated by forces beyond civilian control, and the fragility of the growth economy becomes oh so apparent. Indeed, it could well prove that Mr Aziz’s fate is tied to the property market. No wonder he complains about not being able to find a good plumber.

The writer is a consulting political economist for the international shipping industry.

THE high command of the PPP which had started making plans for the 2007 national elections was naturally thrown off balance when the oracle of Islamabad, Minister of Information Sheikh Rashid, pronounced with a note of finality that President Pervez Musharraf would continue as numero uno even after 2007.

This is being interpreted by the opposition as an attempt to extend his term in perpetuity. Actually, the news didn’t really surprise any of the opposition politicians. Asif Zardari and Fazlur Rehman had, for some time, been expecting something of the sort. Zardari nevertheless went through the motions of uttering the customary protests, asked the rhetorical question: “is this democracy?” and aloud wondered if enlightened moderation in effect meant that it had been decided that the top slot in the country would henceforth be occupied by a non-civilian.

When asked the inevitable question: what would the president have to do to be acceptable to the opposition, the answer was sharp and quick. He would have to take off his uniform, hold elections and let the decision about who should or shouldn’t be president be decided by parliament. That was one of the primary duties of this august body.

The other important politician who was suitably miffed was Raja Zafrul Haq who heads the Nawaz Sharif faction of the Muslim League. His stock is still quite high as he is one of the few League politicians who didn’t desert his leader in 2002, when Chaudhry Shujaat and his associates blew the whistle and were busy assembling a ragbag platoon of turncoats which eventually became the largest political regiment in the country.

Raja Zafrul Haq probed a little deeper into the collective psyche of the sycophant mind and found a familiar tumour. In his opinion Sheikh Rashid’s statement reflected the fear of a man who had come into power through unconstitutional means. For such people, the ability to hang on to power was their only sanctuary and had to be prolonged one way or another.

Opposition parliamentarians deeply resented the fact that the president had chaired a meeting of the king’s party, and used his office to resolve differences between Chaudhry Shujaat and Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Jamali and Humayun Akhtar. This partisan behaviour, in their opinion, was a clear violation of democratic, parliamentary and constitutional norms.

What President Musharraf was trying to do, according to his detractors, was what his predecessors Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq had done. Both dictators found enough willing supporters in the bureaucracy, military and business class to prolong their reign, and there doesn’t appear any shortage of this commodity to enable the incumbent president to establish some sort of record of his own.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, one heard the totally unexpected refutation. The president denied that he would seek another term of office when the present term expires at the end of 2007. If this is indeed the case, it is high time that Sheikh Rashid, who has obviously caught a bad bout of the Condi’ flu, curbed some of his obsequious exuberance and got his facts right.

Some of Pervez Musharraf’s detractors are, of course, not convinced, and believe that the initial statement was issued as a feeler to test Benazir Bhutto’s and Nawaz Sharif’s reaction. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the president has stated quite categorically, that Sheikh Rashid’s pronouncement was entirely his own personal point of view and that he had nothing to do with it.

The matter doesn’t really end there. There is still the unresolved issue of whether President Musharraf will give up his uniform at the end of 2007, and if he does, whether he will contest for the presidency as a civilian. These are issues that even Sheikh Rashid might find difficult to answer.

The MMA is getting the major portion of the blame for acquiescing and finally giving their collective nod which allowed the smooth passage of the 17th Amendment to the much amended Constitution. But as Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the amir of the Jamaat-i-Islami had pointed out in a full-page article in this newspaper, the thumbs-up signal, given cautiously and somewhat grudgingly, was conditional on the president making a certain gesture and a certain commitment..

The main thrust of the article was that the president had reneged on his agreement to take off his uniform by Dec 31, 2004, and italicized the point that the promise was made publicly on nation-wide television. Qazi Hussain Ahmed was merely stating something which was true. These days he is in Coventry so far as the top army brass is concerned, along with some of his supporters.

Sheikh Rashid’s recent quip about the government’s willingness to speak to all political leaders — except Nawaz Sharif and Qazi Hussain Ahmed — was in extremely bad taste. But one has come to expect this sort of behaviour from the parvenu.

Lest the nation forgets, it was during Nawaz Sharif’s two brief bites at the national cherry that the eight-lane highway between Lahore and Islamabad was laid out and the international airports at Karachi and Lahore were constructed. He at least left behind some monuments to be remembered by.

In contrast, what has the present government actually achieved? Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz keeps trumpeting the tremendous strides Pakistan is making in the field of commerce and industry, and last week regaled the nation with the news that the country had achieved a growth rate of 8.3 per cent.

But what is the point of reproducing such glowing statistics when financial achievements are not matched by corresponding improvements in the rural hinterland ? People in Mirpur Mathelo and most parts of Sindh do not have clean drinking water and justice keeps eluding poor Mukhtar Mai.

And what about the so-called achievements in the field of lawmaking? The one significant bill on honour killing, which would have struck at the very roots of the tribal and feudal system, and which had been put together after painstaking effort by PPP MNA Sherry Rehman and her colleagues, was deliberately pecked at, disgorged and mutilated by an essentially retrogressive group of hawks in the assembly. What eventually emerged was a trussed-up carcass with all the main organs missing.

Even the economic growth that the prime minister keeps talking about has been seriously questioned by a group of experts who held a seminar in Islamabad on April 18. The discussion organized by the Centre for Democratic Development, Human Rights Commission for Pakistan, termed Pakistan’s economic development as a mere illusion, and pointed out that amid the high claims of the government, poverty still held its grip at the grassroots level. The consensus was that there could be no real progress in the industrial sector unless it was accompanied by the much needed land reforms.

The view from the bridge, however, has changed during the last three years. The last time President Musharraf succeeded in stretching his dictatorial rule by a little sabre rattling, he plunged the nation into a deep constitutional crisis from which it has not yet fully recovered.

What opposition politicians still fear is that in spite of what the president has said, some time during the middle of 2006 the constitutional experts in the king’s party will pull another rabbit out of the hat, and find a way of extending his rule. But this time it might not be quite easy.

Currently, it looks as if the government will complete its term. Except for Nawaz’s League and the PPP, nobody else seems to care sufficiently enough to make a difference. The MMA knows well that they could never repeat their electoral success in a future election because they probably won’t have the protection they received in 2000.

They are feeling increasingly queasy every time some columnist makes a plea for fresh polls, as a possible way out of the political quagmire. And it must have crossed the minds of a number of the Muslim League turncoats that when Nawaz Sharif returns to this country, he would have a few scores to settle.

If a Yahya Khan type of fair and free election was held in 2007 without interference from the ISI and the civil bureaucracy, with the exiled leaders in full regalia urging their jaded battalions to fight on, the PPP and the Nawaz Sharif faction of the Muslim League would emerge as the two largest parties. The MMA has 16 months to work out a strategy with one of them. They will never get another chance.

THE first reaction I saw to Newsweek’s retraction of that now-famous item came from out of the blogosphere — someone attributing the mistake to the magazine’s “antiwar reporting.” The headline — just in case you missed the point — was “Newsweek’s Antiwar Crusade Kills,” and though the piece marshalled many facts, it came to the wrong conclusion.

Newsweek, I am here to tell you, simply made a mistake. Well, actually two. The first was the item itself, which was apparently incorrect and also not appreciated for its cultural punch. No one seemed to understand that when you allege that the Quran had been flushed down a toilet, it might trigger riots in the Muslim world. And then the magazine failed to issue a full-throated retraction and grovel in the manner expected from any institution that gets something wrong, especially the media.

The rules for this sort of thing, as Dan Rather can attest, require total abasement, an approximation of what Henry II did after the murder of Thomas Becket (1170). Only a shortage of monks — 80 of them flogged the king — makes this an impractical precedent.

By Tuesday the critical blogs had been joined by the Wall Street Journal. It opined that the error stemmed from the press’s — and Newsweek’s — basic “mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam.” Here the Journal has a point, but it makes it sound as if that mistrust is totally unearned. The lies of Vietnam — beginning with the murky cause for the war, the Gulf of Tonkin incident — were legion and well documented. Had reporters not taken a lesson from all this — had we not learned something from the revelations of the Pentagon Papers and the later confessions of Robert McNamara — then we would truly be unqualified to practise our profession. Scepticism is to journalists what faith is to the clergy.

I confess I have detected no overall antiwar slant in Newsweek, and I offer the fact — not that it will matter much to its critics — that the magazine is owned by The Washington Post Co., and the editorial page of its namesake newspaper has supported the war. Whatever the case, I concede that I sometimes detect a whiff of anti-military cynicism in the press. But that’s almost instantly justified by something like the official report this month that the army covered up the true cause of Pat Tillman’s death. He was not, as we were originally told, killed by the enemy in Afghanistan. He was the victim of US fire.

Who knew this? Well, from the report itself, it seems just about everyone in the chain of command, including the theatre commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid. Yet he and others allowed the army to announce a fictitious account of Tillman’s death that exaggerated his role and lied about how he was killed. You can understand why.

Tillman was — he really was — a hero, a remarkable role model. He had walked away from a huge contract to play pro football and, along with his brother, enlisted in the army. No doubt, it was hard to admit that his life had been taken accidentally, maybe negligently. Still, it was the truth, and the truth is what we expect from our government.

I will spare you any harangue about the mistakes and lies that got us into Iraq in the first place. Suffice it to say that for the White House and the Pentagon to come down on Newsweek for making a mistake is the height of hypocrisy.

Where, just for starters, is the retraction from Dick Cheney, who said that Iraq had “reconstituted” its nuclear weapons programme? Where are the right-wing bloggers insisting he do so? And where, when it comes to such a touching sensitivity to the feelings of the Muslim world, was the conservative objection to the mad screeds of Ann Coulter, who wrote right after the September 11 attacks, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”? The National Review subsequently dropped her and virtually pronounced her unbalanced — but she has been adopted by right-wingers everywhere.

We learn that no institution is infallible — not the church, not government, not sports, not schools, not business and not, of course, the media. Newsweek made a mistake. It must find out why and how it happened, but if it continues to do hard, edgy reporting, it will uncover major news and, in time, make the occasional, inevitable mistake. Otherwise Newsweek will not be doing its job — and that would be the biggest mistake of all. —Dawn/Washington Post Service