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| October 14, 2005 | Friday | Ramzan 9, 1426 |
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NSC irrelevance
Ban on heavy vehicles
Who is winning the war on terror?
WAEL Abdul Latif, a Shia member of the Iraq constitutional committee, fears that he may have participated in the disintegration of his country. Under the draft constitution he had approved, he told the New York Times, “Kurdish independence is just a matter of time.”
SIX days after Saturday’s devastating earthquake hit northern Pakistan and threw the country in a state of shock, the survivors are still in desperate straits. After initial delays — mainly due to the breakdown of communication, the absence of a disaster management mechanism, lack of coordination, inadequacy of logistic infrastructure and inclement weather — mercifully relief and rescue operations have started moving. Now that the roads in that region have been opened, a Federal Relief Commission and its provincial counterparts have been set up and the armed forces have been deployed in crucial areas, one hopes that relief operations will follow a more efficient pattern. At the same time, it is important that people in the inaccessible and remote regions, who live in small settlements, are not forgotten and given up for lost. Efforts must be stepped up to reach out to them and provide relief. One also expects better coordination among the agencies so that the distress of the affected people is alleviated. Of course, food, clothing, shelter and medical aid are the immediate needs of the survivors. With donations pouring in and people volunteering their time and services, the challenge is that of organization and management which the relief commission must provide to channel the aid to the affected regions.
The time of rehabilitation will come later, for which an Earthquake Rehabilitation Authority has been set up. But before that is the intermediate stage of addressing the health needs of the people in the affected areas. Nearly 50,000 are injured and in need of medical help. Besides, all the survivors are at risk if immediate preventive health measures are not taken. With many corpses — their number is still unknown — buried in the debris and the civic infrastructure having collapsed, one can imagine the state of sanitation in these areas. If this problem is not attended to immediately, epidemics will be inevitable. Preventive measures such as inoculation, ORS and anti-diarrhoeal drugs should be provided for. All these are life-saving measures, for it would be unfortunate if those who have survived the earthquake should die of preventable diseases. It is time the relief commission focused on this aspect of the relief operation. Immediately after the earthquake, teams of doctors and paramedics offered their services and many of them left for the affected areas. From initial reports it appeared that the health professionals’ services were under-utilized as the physical infrastructure had collapsed and efforts had not been coordinated. Now mobile hospital units have arrived —many of them sent by foreign countries — and the wounded are being transported to the hospitals in nearby towns. A semblance of organization also seems to be coming up. One hopes that the health needs of the affected people will receive special attention and not be neglected as is the tendency of the administration at the national level. Here it may be added that in times of crisis as the present one, it is not just the physical health of the people that needs attention. Many survivors may have been affected by acute stress disorders which, if left untreated, can be debilitating. Children are the worst affected since events are beyond their comprehension and they can be affected for life. The Pakistan Association of Mental Health has done well by offering its services for training volunteers to counsel the affected people. Teachers should also be taken in the loop to reach the children.
THE Frontier Chief Minister, Mr Akram Khan Durrani, attended the National Security Council meeting held in Islamabad on Wednesday. Mr Durrani belongs to the JUI Fazlur Rahman group which, along with the other components of the MMA, had so far boycotted NSC meetings because the opposition objects to the very existence of the council. The meeting was devoted to earthquake relief, and Mr Durrani says that this justified his attendance, for which permission had been given by his party chief who, according to him, had consulted the MMA leadership. Since the Frontier has suffered heavily, Mr Durrani believes that whatever steps are necessary to alleviate the suffering of the people should be taken, rising above political considerations. On that count, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who is a member of the council by virtue of his position as leader of the opposition, should also have gone to the meeting, reserving the right not to take part in future meetings. His party has in any case given the appearance of being less rigid on the NSC issue than the Jamaat-i-Islami, with Qazi Hussain Ahmad making a strong statement against participation only a day earlier. Whether this rift will tell in other ways on the unity of the MMA will become clearer once the nation comes out of the earthquake shock.
But the question why the NSC remains. Its meeting on Wednesday took no earth-shaking decisions that could not have been taken by a cabinet creaking under the weight of 60 odd ministers. A decision to set up a Federal Relief Commission was taken at a meeting on Monday which was neither a cabinet meeting nor an NSC meeting and which was presided over by the president. In the one-man or one institution (the military) system we have, both the cabinet and the NSC seem irrelevant. If it is meant to ensure the military’s continued overseeing of national affairs, that has been the one constant for at least the past 50 years and seems unlikely to change in the near future. Giving it constitutional sanction flies in the face of all democratic norms. It should be scrapped whenever a truly representative and civilian government comes to power. The size of the cabinet should also be reviewed: we have just seen that having more ministers does not necessarily make the government act more efficiently.
NOW that Karachi has a new nazim, it is hoped that some of the more pressing issues that the city faces will get the attention that they deserve. One such matter is the increasingly chaotic and hazardous traffic in the city. The new nazim must try and reduce bottlenecks and the number of traffic jams in the city. In this regard, the previous nazim had imposed a ban on heavy vehicles within the city limits during certain hours of the days. There are pressing reasons for this, including the fact that heavy vehicles are loaded improperly and for the most part are driven rashly. Thus they cause a disproportionately high number of accidents. What is more, because of their size they also clog roads during peak traffic hours. Regrettably, such bans were never enforced, not even on dumper trucks that have in recent months caused many fatalities, including three university students in one single incident some weeks ago. The blame for this lack of enforcement primarily falls on the traffic police since most of them are often busy harassing motorcyclists or motorists on trivial matters or because proprietors of heavy vehicles were allowed to openly flout the ban after they paid a bribe.
Enforcing the ban on heavy vehicles during the rush hour would have to be part of any plan to bring some order and sanity to Karachi’s traffic. Cities all over the world, even the most industrialized ones, have similar prohibitions and there should be no practical impediment in the way of it being implemented in the case of Karachi.
His comments remind me once again of Hamid Zuberi, the chain-smoking former Iraqi diplomat. Zuberi was very upset when he learned after Operation Desert Storm that the United States had declared the Kurdish provinces a “no-fly zone.” He knew that in the early 1970s, Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani used his peshmerga guerillas to ferry arms between Israel and Iran, then ruled by the American protege Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.
“What are the Americans and Israelis going to do with the Kurds now?” he asked me in January 1992 at the lobby of Baghdad’s Sagman Hotel. I said I didn’t know and asked how the destabilization of Iraq might help the Israelis or Americans.
“How much did it help the Brits and French,” he responded, puffing his Sumer cigarette, “to destabilize this region” after the First World War. “And how long were they around?”
I remembered Zuberi when I learned during a 1995 trip that the Israelis were training peshmerga fighters while American and British war planes kept northern Iraq out of bounds for Iraqi government troops.
I recalled the multilingual Iraqi intellectual again two days after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Paul Wolfowitz, then American deputy defence secretary, went on television to declare: “We shall end the states that sponsor terrorism!” I knew that Wolfowitz and other American neoconservatives had been planning to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Saddam had become the most inveterate Arab foe of Israel and was suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.
My first reaction to Wolfowitz’s statement was that the neocons, who ran the Bush administration’s foreign and defence policy establishments, would now use the 9/11 tragedy to get rid of the Iraqi ruler. But when I reflected further on the words “end the states,” Zuberi’s foreboding began to crystallize in my mind.
Today it’s become clearer, especially after the Iraqi constitutional committee released the draft constitution. The constitution, scheduled to be put through a referendum Oct 15, doesn’t quite mark the “end” of the Iraqi state but has come close to doing so. The document concedes a fully autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) with a Kurdish National Assembly. Baghdad’s jurisdiction over the Kurdish region would be confined to defence, foreign affairs, currency and a couple of less important subjects.
The Shia and Sunni Arab members of the constitutional committee had no choice but to accept the de facto independence of the Kurdish provinces. During the 12 “no-fly zone” years the Kurdish leadership had built up the peshmerga into a 60,000-strong well-trained guerilla force, and America won’t talk about disarming it. By the time the constitution-making began, the end to the Iraqi state was already at an advanced stage.
In deference to the Turks, the Kurdish leadership in Iraq wouldn’t yet utter the word “independence.” Turkey fears that an independent Iraqi “Kurdistan” would stoke Kurdish separatism in its southeast. Its worries have heightened since the resumption of terrorist attacks by guerillas loyal to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Meanwhile, more than 3,000 PKK fighters are prowling in the Iraqi Kurdish territory.
Israel swears to the Turks that it has nothing to do with the Kurdistan business but pushes the project quietly through American bureaucrats. Turkey has, after all, been the only Muslim country with which the Jewish state has a burgeoning defence and trade relationship. But Ankara finds itself in a tricky situation. Any military action to forestall the Iraqi Kurds’ march towards full independence would jeopardize its entry talks with the European Union, which begin next month and will perhaps drag on for years.
Why have Israel and the mostly Jewish American neocons been so intent on an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq? First, the breakup of Iraq would eliminate a military threat to Israel. Secondly, Israel expects the Kurdish entity to be a genuine Muslim ally. Israel’s ties with Egypt and Jordan are confined to unpopular pro-American autocracies and widely resented by the public. The Israelis expect their relationship with the Iraqi Kurdish entity to resemble their ties with the Turks — spanning both the government and society. Furthermore, they hope to use Kurdistan as a springboard for any military action they may take against Iran or neighbouring Arab states.
Meanwhile, America’s looming debacle in Iraq has whetted its own interest in a Kurdish mini-state. The Americans had planned to build 14 “enduring bases” in Iraq — mostly in the middle and southern parts. The redoubtable Sunni insurgency and widespread Shia antipathy for the presence of foreign troops have practically scuttled that plan. It remains to be seen whether the United States sets up bases in the Kurdish territory. If not, an Israeli foothold there would be the next best thing for Washington.
The emergence of the Kurdish mini-state has been about the only Israeli and American dividend of the Iraq war. Yet the risks to which the war has exposed America and Israel are far-reaching. First, Turkey has been Israel’s most important Muslim ally and one of America’s key partners in Nato. It is highly unlikely that Ankara’s alliance with America and Israel will survive the emergence of an independent Kurdistan with their support. For Israel, in particular, the price of alienating Ankara will be huge. Turkish-Israeli and Turkish-American relations may be the only factors that will keep Iraqi Kurds from singing a national anthem, as long as they don’t.
Secondly, the Iraq war has awarded Iran a historic strategic bonanza. Using the Kurdish logic of regional autonomy, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a pro-Iranian Iraqi political party now part of the Baghdad government, is calling for a nine-state autonomous Shia region in southern Iraq. Abdel Aziz Hakim, the SCIRI leader, commands the 10,000-15,000-strong Al Badr Brigade militia trained in Iran. He demands that his Shia entity have its own government, legislature, security forces and courts.
Sunni Arabs ruled most of what is now Iraq since the Ottomans occupied southern Mesopotamia in 1534, and they are the worst losers and victims of the war. They’re struggling to bar a second split in Iraq and will try to have the draft constitution rejected in the referendum. While their success isn’t assured, they suddenly have a strange ally in their effort: the United States. The US concern has been articulated by a Washington Post editorial. “A Shiite ministate,” warns the editorial, “could easily fall under the influence of Iran.” America should “protect its vital interests by insisting that Mr Hakim and other leaders abandon or drastically scale back any plans for a Shiite-dominated region.”
Washington’s “vital interests” consist promoting Israel’s security and political goals and ensuring a cheap oil supply. Iran is America’s and Israel’s arch enemy in the Middle East because its suspected ambition to acquire nuclear weapons threatens Israel’s security. And a pro-Iranian statelet in Iraq strengthens the Islamic Republic’s regional profile. In fact, Saddam Hussein was no military threat to Israel, but he was Iran’s formidable enemy. By removing him from power and becoming drained militarily and economically in the process, America has played into Iran’s hands.
With Iraq pulverized, Iran is now the dominant Middle Eastern Muslim power east of the Suez. Some Iranian intellectuals I met in Washington are talking about outreach to Shia groups, not only in Iraq, but in Lebanon, eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as well. In a military confrontation with Tehran, America or Israel could hit a regionwide hornet’s nest.
Finally, aside from the ascendancy of Iran, the war’s most dramatic consequence for US-Israeli interests has been the explosion of militancy in a section of Sunnis. I have been studying the phenomenon and have checked my notes with other scholars investigating it. The goal of this transnational movement of Islamists and jihadists is to roll back what they call “neocolonialism,” i.e. foreign troops, bases and “client regimes” in Muslim countries.
A friend in Amman, Jordan, recently had several conversations with Saudi jihadis organizing anti-American insurgency in Iraq. He told me on the phone that they argue that while no Muslim state had ever won a military confrontation with Israel or the US, they had. Examples: the US troop pullout from Lebanon after the 1983 suicide attack; expulsion of the Israeli troops from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah; dismantling of American military bases in Saudi Arabia in the wake of 9/11; desertion of the Iraq-war coalition by four US allies because of the insurgency; and rollback of Israeli settlements in Gaza and northern West Bank in the face of the Palestinian intifada.
Iraq will be, one of them told my friend, their next “victory over the Crusaders.” Hamid Zuberi alluded to the fact that the Arabs took a couple of decades to send the British and French colonialists back home. America’s agony in Iraq and the beginning of the Israeli retreat from Palestinian lands make you wonder how much longer it may take them to make America and Israel see the light.