An insider blows the whistle

A MOST revealing indictment of America’s foreign policy has come from an insider. Mr Lawrence Wilkerson, one of Mr Colin Powell’s aides when the latter was secretary of state in the first Bush term, said Mr Dick Cheney and Mr Donald Rumsfeld had between them hijacked America’s foreign policy and created an utter mess for their country in Iraq, North Korea and Iran. The two had formed what Mr Wilkerson called an “Oval Office cabal” that “courted disaster” in the area of foreign policy. Most astonishingly, he believed that President George Bush was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”. Some of the information Mr Wilkerson disclosed in a speech at the New America Foundation in Washington is now public knowledge. The cabal consisted of neo-conservatives well-entrenched in the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. They included men like Mr Douglas Feith, Mr I. Lewis Libby, Mr Richard Perle, and Mr Karl Rove and others. These men enjoyed top positions in the Bush scheme of things and had an agenda of their own. As the two revealing books by Bob Woodward — Bush at War and Plan of Attack — show, attacking Iraq to redraw the map of the Middle East became the neocons’ principal aim as a Republican president entered the White House.

While the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre was the work of Osama bin Laden, and Afghanistan was attacked, the neocons felt sorry that Iraq was in no way involved with 9/11. Baathist Iraq never had much love for religious fundamentalism, and Mr Saddam Hussein foiled Bin Laden’s attempts to use Iraq as a base for anti-US operations. Whatever the Iraqi leader was, he was by no means anti-American. Indeed, he became America’s protégé when he attacked Iran. He invaded Kuwait because he wanted a longer coastline and more oil. These were, however, minor crimes, for in the eyes of the neocons his real fault was that — like the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad — he was Israel’s implacable enemy and must, therefore, pay the price. The bogey they discovered was Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.

That the UN commission headed by Mr Hans Blix found no “smoking gun” and Baghdad accepted the UN resolution calling for intrusive and exhaustive inspections did not matter with the neocons, for they wanted an attack on Iraq anyway, because a dismembered Iraq and the consequent process of a fragmentation of the Middle East served Israel’s interests. As Mr Wilkerson revealed, the Bush administration made decisions “in secret”. This meant that the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal took crucial steps in violation of the decisions made at larger cabinet meetings attended by all those who mattered. It is now known that Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Powell were hardly on speaking terms, and Mr Powell had been turned into a lame-duck secretary of state because the neocons enjoyed the president’s trust and confidence. Mr Cheney represented what Mr Wilkerson calls “the military industrial complex” and therefore the decisions taken reflected connections with the multinationals and the cabal. The number of American dead in Iraq is now reaching 2,000, and one does not know how many more Americans will pay the price because the cabal is still there.

Setting up tent schools

THE federal government’s decision on Friday to set up tent schools in the earthquake-hit areas is a sound one and should be implemented as early as possible. According to Unicef, education is one of the best tools to help children overcome trauma. After having experienced enormous physical and emotional suffering, going to school will give children a sense of normality and reduce the loss in education they are otherwise likely to suffer. It took Unicef and the Indian government nearly five months to re-open schools in Gujarat after the devastating earthquake there in 2001, so there is much to learn from that experience. The ministry of education has said that it wants to expedite the process and is working with Unicef, NGOs and local governments in preparing a strategy that will help it determine where these schools should be located. This is crucial because the government has come under criticism for uncoordinated plans for distributing relief goods and cannot afford to botch efforts at rehabilitating school children. The NWFP education department says that nearly 2,000 schools have been destroyed and many of the remaining school buildings are unsafe structures so that while tent schools can be a stop-gap arrangement, the long-term strategy must focus on building new — and quake-proof — schools.

The plan so far seems fairly feasible: the federal government will bear all expenditure for setting up the tent schools and also provide the necessary tools like books and stationery while provincial governments will make teachers available. However, even a seemingly simple strategy runs the risk of failure if it is not implemented in an effective manner. One religious party has already set up a tent school in Muzaffarabad but its curriculum is different from the officially prescribed one. So the government has to play a major role in setting up makeshift education centres in the quake-ravaged areas. In this it should enlist the support of volunteers, whose enthusiasm has been remarkable. Many will be happy to render their services as teachers for traumatized children, whose lives need to be put back on track.

Pilferage of relief goods

THE report that some employees of the Edhi Centre in Gujranwala were arrested for selling relief items meant for the quake victims in northern Pakistan is shocking, and the Edhi authorities did the right thing by sacking the errant workers. All along, the Edhi Foundation has perhaps been the only organization of its kind in the country to have won the trust and admiration of the people for its selfless services. It issues receipts for all cash donations, and, even if there have been occasional rumours of irregularities, by and large, the organization’s reputation remains untainted by any hint of scandal. One hopes that the Gujranwala incident will not impair the donors’ trust in the foundation, especially at a time of great national tragedy, and that the actions of a few dishonest employees will not obstruct the flow of cash and relief material for the quake victims.

The incident should also serve as a wake-up call for other organizations collecting relief material. While in the aftermath of the earthquake, the general feeling has been one of compassion that has motivated people from all walks of life and in all parts of the country to donate generously, there have been instances where people have been caught appropriating or selling relief goods. Large and well-known organizations should especially guard against such possibilities since it is to them that most donors hand over goods and money meant for the affected people. They should evolve some way of keeping a check on their employees’ actions and ensuring that monetary and material donations are fully taken care of at every stage. Moreover, donors would be well advised to check out the credentials of the organizations collecting and disbursing relief items, so that they have no cause for complaint afterwards.

New perspective on partition

“FEW individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammed Ali Jinnah did all three —- Jinnah virtually conjured that country into statehood by the force of his indomitable will” — Stanley Wolpert.

This is conventional wisdom and has been found satisfactory by all the concerned parties. The Muslims supported the creation of this new country as the fulfilment of Allama Iqbal’s vision of a homeland for the Muslims of India which had been made a reality under the steadfast political leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The Muslims declared victory. Congress and the Hindus — there was not much difference between the two — symbolically beat their breasts and loudly mourned the partition of India. The British said, “rather unfortunate”, but what could they do? It was an Indian decision.

This gave victory to the Muslims: opportunity for professed regret and anger amongst the Congress and the Hindus and smug satisfaction to the British. To them it mattered little that hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had been killed in the process as long as the British could leave India without as much as a cut finger. Mr Jinnah was apotheosized in Pakistan and became the Great Leader — Quaid-i-Azam. In India he was demonized as the heartless communalist who had mutilated the sacred body of Bharat Mata. The liberal West thought much the same and sealed their approval of the Congress/Hindu view by conferring sainthood on Mahatma Gandhi.

However, nothing remains preserved in amber. Things continue to happen. The first was the publication between 1970-83 of the British documents relating to the transfer of power. These were edited before release by Prof Mansergh. How much seriously embarrassing material was edited out will always remain open to question but most probably enough truth came out. The most critical was Vol. XII which contained revelations about the part which Mountbatten played during the last months of his viceroyalty.

Prof Ziegler’s biography of Mountbatten was published in 1985 with the full cooperation of the family. It was a whitewash as far as his role in India was concerned. The new edition is correctly called “The Official Biography”. Dr. Ayesha Jalal’s doctoral thesis at Trinity College was also published in book form in 1985 as “The Sole Spokesman” and concluded that “It was the Congress that insisted on partition. It was Jinnah who was against it”.

This was followed up in 1988 by the unexpurgated edition of Maulana Azad’s “India wins freedom”. The Maulana claims, no doubt correctly, that he came up with a formula for keeping India united which was very similar to the Cabinet Mission Plan. When partition became inevitable his attempts at reversal fell on deaf ears in the Congress leadership.

Being a close friend of Mr. Nehru, he pinned the blame on Sardar Patel. He said “I found Patel was so much in favour of partition that he was hardly prepared even to listen to any other point of view .....I was surprised and pained when Patel said that whether we liked it or not there were two nations in India” (pp 200-1 ‘India wins freedom’). The most trenchant denunciation of Gandhi and the Congress leadership was by Hormusji Maneckji Servai in his book “Pakistan — legend and reality” published in 1989.

The material available on this subject has been substantially enhanced by Prof Stanley Wolpert’s biography of Nehru. His biography of Jinnah was published in 1984 while that of Nehru came out in 1996, a full 12 years later. When discussing the Cabinet Mission Plan he records Gandhi’s attempts to find a solution to Jinnah’s problem when they met in 1944 (pp 269 - 70 ‘Jinnah by Wolpert’).

This was the first time that the issue of Pakistan was raised in a discussion between Jinnah and Gandhi and was based on C. Rajagopalachari’s (CR) formula which proposed a plebiscite for the Muslim majority areas’ contiguous districts in the north-west and north-east of India to “decide the issue of separation from Hindustan. After the meeting Gandhi informed CR of Jinnah’s contempt for the formula.

Jinnah rejected the proposal and insisted that the fundamental principles of the Lahore resolution be accepted, whatever that meant. Gandhi, by his endorsement of CR’s proposal, had inadvertently trumped Jinnah’s ace and he was forced to hide behind legalism and retort “ ....I find that the solution of division of India as Pakistan and Hindustan is only on your lips ... and suddenly you put forward a new suggestion: let it be a partition as between two brothers if a division there must be”.

The fact is Jinnah’s concept of Pakistan was never clearly defined. It was a question of getting security for the Muslims in an independent India with a perpetual Hindu majority.

In the wake of the creation of the Indian National Army (INA) and the very vocal support for it by the Congress leadership, there was serious concern about the Indian army turning against the British. Although they were already discussing independence for India, this development made things a little more urgent.

To forestall such an event, the Labour Government sent the Cabinet Mission to discuss independence. It came out to India in March 1946. After several rounds of discussion in trying to reach a solution the Mission, in May 1946, put forward two proposals: Plan A grouping of provinces in a three-tier arrangement, and Plan B which was rather like CR’s formula of 1944. On June 6, 1946, the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan A of the three-tier scheme.

Although Gandhi supported the Cabinet Mission Plan, his leadership was no longer effective. Nevertheless, after much bickering with the Cabinet Mission, on June 25th 1946, the Congress Working Committee finally resolved to ‘accept’ the Mission’s Plan of May 1946. In December 1945 Sir Stafford Cripps informed Attlee and Pethick Lawrence that “we might have to contemplate a division of India into Hindustan and Pakistan”. Cripps wrote to Nehru in early 1946 asking “what action should I lay down ..... after the election if I happen to be Viceroy?”

Amongst other things, Nehru responded “ ... if a definite area expresses itself clearly in favour of separatism .... no compulsion will be exercised to force it to remain in the Federation or Union. But it cannot take other areas with it against their will, and there must be a clear decision by plebiscite of all the adult voters of that area . ... Jinnah refused both the plebiscite and the demarcation of the area according to the wishes of the inhabitants. It is clear that he was not after Pakistan but something entirely different.” (pp 357 Wolpert’s biography of Nehru).

On July 10, 1946, two days after he was elected Congress President, Nehru spoke to the press and in effect threw the Cabinet Mission Plan out of the window. He made the partition inevitable. He was sure of Mountbatten’s support, and probably reasonably certain that he would be the next viceroy of India.

One wonders what the talks between the Muslim and Hindu leaders with Wavell and the Cabinet Mission were all about when the basic decision had already been formed around CR’s formula of 1944. At that time Nehru had angrily rejected it. As Ayesha Jalal puts it “Jinnah’s reasoning depended on two assumptions. The first was that if the League and the Congress could not agree, the British were ready to make an award and then stay on to enforce it. The second was that the Congress would never willingly accept the outright partition of India which the full-blown claims for a sovereign and separate Pakistan entailed. So it was safe to demand division and Pakistan since there was no risk of Congress allowing either to be conceded . . ... .. Both these assumptions proved to be seriously misguided.” (pp 188 ‘The Sole Spokesman’ by Ayesha Jalal).

Without fully realizing it, Jinnah was up against insuperable odds with Mountbatten pretending to be impartial while completely supporting Nehru who had apparently already made up his mind on the subject. When the time came to announce partition “Mountbatten was recorded as saying he wanted a most careful preamble to be written, that his view had all along been completely impartial, that it was only when it became apparent that the retention of any form of united India would start civil war that he had regretfully been obliged to give up this ideal” (Ziegler - pp 374). Mountbatten’s protestation reminds one of Queen Gertrude’s remark in Hamlet when seeing the play within the play “The lady doth protest too much methinks”.

Mountbatten had two important objectives. The first was to resolve the Hindu-Muslim issue in accordance with Nehru’s wishes, and secondly to get all the British out of India safely. He achieved both. For the Congress high command it was a perfectly sensible decision. Jinnah’s moth-eaten Pakistan as described by Mountbatten was thoroughly suited to Congress’ ambitions. For them it resolved the Hindu-Muslim problem. The Muslims left in India were not likely to cause much trouble — and they haven’t.

To make matters worse Nehru’s obsession with Kashmir and his success in snatching the major portion ensured enmity between the two countries for the foreseeable future. It is not that Nehru was not a great man, but his greatness was confined to what he narrowly thought to be in the best interests of India and for his role in its history. Jinnah, who had been the champion of Hindu-Muslim unity, was humiliated by Gandhi and driven out of Congress but he always remained secular and was for a secular Pakistan.

To sum up, it is pointless to think of what might have been. This, as Prof. Wolpert has said, is one of the “ifs” of history. God alone knows what may or may not have happened if a different course had been adopted.