Bush and Iraq elections

THE much-awaited Iraqi elections are over. The Iraqi administration and the Americans can take satisfaction from the fact that there was a large turnout in the Sunni majority provinces and that the insurgents lived up to the expectations created by their statements and did not launch any disruptive attacks.

The first unofficial results that have become public suggest that the Shia coalition, belying expert assessments, may have won an outright majority. In Baghdad, for instance, the initial results showed the coalition of Shias, United Iraq Alliance, was leading with 58 per cent of the vote, followed by a Sunni-led coalition (including the Iraqi Consensus Front and the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue) with 19 per cent, while former prime minister Ayad Allawi’s party got 14 per cent.

Baghdad province is the country’s largest voting district. Overall, the initial results, which included almost complete results from 10 out of 18 provinces, showed a large turnout for the Shia coalition. The results did not, however, include (at the time of writing) the results from the three Sunni majority provinces.

The Iraqi election rules talk of “red” complaints against electoral irregularities as being those that could lead to the loss of a seat by the offending party. In the elections held in January 2005, there were only five such complaints but on this occasion their number runs well into double digits. The Iraqi electoral commission has not disclosed the exact number of complaints but one Allawi aide told the press that his party, the Iraqi National List, had filed 60 such complaints. They alleged that at several polling stations policemen, National Guard troops, or men from the major crimes unit were chanting in favour of the Shia religious list known as 555.

At another place they alleged that the Iraqi security asked voters if they were going to vote for the Shia coalition and refused to give them ballot papers unless they said “yes”. At other places there were allegations that armed men had forced their way into polling booths and intimidated poll officials into giving them ballot papers even though their ink-dyed fingers showed that they had already voted.

In the north, too, there were allegations that the Kurdish party (the Kurdistan Alliance which brings together the parties of Barzani and Talabani) had engaged in ballot stuffing. Hamid Mousa, the Iraq communist party’s general secretary, which is allied with Mr Allawi, asserted: “The violations on Thursday were much bigger than in January. Government forces, like the police and army, didn’t interfere so openly then.”

There were few international observers to monitor the elections. Only three EU legislators, Senator Biden, a ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, and a few observers from the National Democratic Institute were present. For the most part the 70,000 observers accredited by the Iraqi Election Commission to monitor the 6,200 polling stations were Iraqis or observers from neighbouring countries. So far no reports have appeared about their view of the complaints that have been filed.

The complaints, registered so far, are of a nature that we in Pakistan are quite familiar with and ordinarily one would think that they would make little difference to the eventual outcome. This may well prove to be the case in Iraq also, but it does appear that the smaller parties have legitimate grievances and that foreign and domestic monitors agree that they will need detailed scrutiny, particularly since the number of complaints is so much higher than in the last election.

Opponents of the present government have said, “The election commission is weak. Some members are unwilling to issue judgments against major parties. Others are biased in favour of a particular party.” It remains to be seen whether these fears will be borne out. Iraqi election laws provide that the official results will be declared only after the complaints have been investigated and so the expectation is that final results will not be made available for another two weeks.

There is no doubt that the election has been a successful exercise and that for the first time all ethnic groups have participated in it fully. While this should be a matter of satisfaction, it would, however, be naive to suggest that this will lead to peace in Iraq. President Bush making his fifth speech in defence of his Iraq policy on Sunday acknowledged as much. “This election will not mean the end of violence,” he said. “But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East.”

There has been since the elections a resumption of violence in Iraq but so far the number of insurgent attacks has remained small. This may well be because the insurgents are waiting for the results from the Sunni majority areas and for some indication of what sort of bargaining power the Sunnis will have in the new parliament. Currently the expectation is that the Sunnis should get all the 50 odd seats in the three Sunni majority provinces of Salahuddin, Anbar and Nineveh. My own feeling is that the Sunnis should also do well, in the event of a fair vote in such cities as Mosul and Kirkuk.

If the Sunnis get some 55-60 seats in the 275-member house and act as a united front, they will probably have the bargaining power to seek and secure an amendment to the constitution which will ensure an equitable distribution of the oil revenues of the country and rationalize the de-Baathification provisions which as currently framed virtually rules out the employment of Sunnis in government.

Whether the Sunnis will seek more (a revision of provisions permitting the creation of autonomous regions) seems doubtful even though many of them fear that these autonomous regions would erode the Arab character of Iraq and lead eventually to the country’s breakup. The main question for the Sunnis will be getting a fair share of the oil revenues from the wells that are located almost entirely either in the Kurdish north or in the proposed Shia autonomous region in the south.

The Americans are well aware of this. President Bush pointed out in his press conference on Monday that the new parliament would have an opportunity to amend the constitution and promised that the Americans would monitor and remain involved with this process. But in a clear signal of sensitivity to Shia concerns he clarified that “involvement doesn’t mean telling a sovereign government what to do. Involvement means giving advice as to how to move forward so a country becomes more unified.” Yet the truth of the matter, as the Americans know well, is that the Shias will remain inflexible unless they bring real pressure on the latter to bear.

The apparent overwhelming victory of the United Iraq Alliance and the extremely poor performance of the two secular groups, namely Allawi’s Iraqi National List and Chalabi”s Iraqi National Congress, point to yet another interesting and perhaps ominous facet. The United Iraq Alliance is the current ruling party and there is considerable dissatisfaction with its performance not only among the Sunnis but also among the Shias who have seen no improvement in their lives in the last year. If the party has retained or increased its share of the vote despite its poor performance it can only reflect (a) the sharpening of the sectarian divide; (b) the degree to which the Shias are prepared to follow unquestioningly the dictates of Ayatollah Sistani who after some hesitation had endorsed the Shia Alliance.

The Iraqi constitution already provides that Islam shall be the source for all lawmaking in Iraq. It would seem almost inevitable that the victory of a clergy-endorsed party that may attribute its victory to such an endorsement will move further down this path. If the behaviour of the militias controlled by the Alliance is any indication this will probably mean a considerable curtailment of the rights granted to women in the largely secular Saddam regime and an enforcement of Islamic law of the Iran variety where President Ahmedinejad has just banned the playing of western music on Iranian radio and television. It will also mean a further victimization of the Sunnis at whose hands the Shias had suffered during the Saddam regime.

Whether it will also mean a closer alliance with Iran remains open to question. Many of the leaders of the SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) which is the largest single party in the Alliance spent many years of exile in Iran and developed ties there. Ayatollah Sistani himself is of Iranian origin. The Iraqi Shia, however, has in the past been more inclined to think of himself as an Arab and Iraqi clergymen have always felt that, the Islamic revolution in Iran notwithstanding, their howza and seminaries in Najaf and Karbala are the true repository of Shia learning and can best provide guidance not only to Iraqi Shias but to Shias around the world.

The successful elections should have given a boost to the intense campaign launched by President Bush to explain his Iraq policy and to bolster his sagging approval rating, but it appears that this has not happened. A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll conducted over the weekend found his approval rating had not risen beyond 41 per cent, and more than half, or 56 per cent, disapprove of how the president is handling his job. A majority, or 52 per cent, say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, and 61 per cent say they disapprove of how he is handling Iraq specifically. Fifty-five per cent said they view the war in Iraq as separate from the war on terror and more than 59 per cent called for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the end of next year.

As if this were not bad enough Bush is now faced also with the question of whether he acted unlawfully in authorizing the National Security Agency to monitor, without judicial permission, calls made by Americans to foreign countries.

He insists that he acted on the basis of powers vested in him by the constitution and the law but there are few convincing answers to be found to the question of why he did not use the judiciary which apparently approved all but five of the 19,000 wiretapping requests it had received since 1979 and why if such unapproved wiretapping was essential he had not sought an amendment of the law.

The American Congress appears to be up in arms about various facets of the Bush strategy for fighting terrorism. It has passed a law in the face of initial administration opposition banning the use of torture in the interrogation of terror suspects and is currently engaged in a filibuster to prevent the renewal of certain elements of the Patriot Act, the omnibus law that infringed individual liberties but provided what Bush believed were essential tools for pursuing the war on terror.

The Bush administration probably has the vote to get a renewal of the Patriot Act but the very fact that it has become so contentious an issue is an indication that his political standing has eroded and his ability to ride out the criticism of his policies has come into question. Come November when midterm elections are due it may well happen that the Republican congressmen fighting for re-election will start distancing themselves from the president’s policy and perhaps endorsing the view that there should a quick withdrawal from Iraq.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Of unholy marriages

THE wedding season has again started and people are anxious to marry off their daughters and find rich brides for their sons before the onset of summer. Nobody is bothered by the restriction on wedding feasts, for there are ways to break it. I am not going to talk about VIP weddings today but discuss those marriages that become known through the press because of one oddity or another.

These reports about marriages, new and not so new, were culled by me in the recent past from Urdu newspapers which normally place a premium on this kind of news. They bring into focus the diversity of human behaviour and prove the adage that it takes all sorts to make this world, as also to portray the sanctity that men accord to the institution of marriage.

I start from Chakwal. In a village there, an 80 year old got himself married to a girl of eighteen. This was said to be his third, her first. Obviously he had no qualms about his own age or that of the bride, because the wedding is said to have taken place amidst much fanfare, at least on his part. The “baba” is reported to be happy and alive and kicking, and there is no immediate fear of his kicking the bucket.

In Khipro, Sindh, a local wadera forcibly married the widow of his hari. When asked why he had to use force, he had a ready answer. His point was that the deceased had failed to pay his debt during his lifetime. Therefore, all that he left behind, including his wife, was his by right. One marvels at the man’s sense of accounting. At least he had the decency to go through a nikah, otherwise, as a wadera he could have done anything. I wonder in which category the Revenue Department would place the widow.

Secretly we all want to act like monarchs of yester-year, doing whatever our hearts and our whims dictate. One of the favourite lobbies of eastern kings was to marry every now and then. Perhaps, the Iranian who was arrested by the Tehran police some time ago was also imbued by this secret wish. What he did was to marry 56 times over the last 30 years, and was on the point of getting his 57th bride when he was prevented from doing so. He was no Bluebeard though, and was not accused of having done away with any of the 56 ladies who got caught in his matrimonial net. He just had a jolly good time on their money.

This particular news report left many questions unanswered. For example, what was the actual crime for which the man was arrested? Did he flaunt more than four wives at a time? Did he enter into nikah with an already married woman? or what? I was also curious to know the views of some of his old wives on this matter but was disappointed. No press reporter took the initiative in this regard.

Back again to Chakwal. (There seems to be something about the place that foments bizarre weddings). In village Bole, a man called Roshan Ali adopted a novel mode of transport for his baraat which had to take him for wedding to village Dandiwala. He arranged for several donkeys, all washed and draped with red cloth. For himself he chose a white animal. The marriage party, led by a shehnai-player, rode on these donkeys to Dandiwala. People came out on the rooftops to watch the spectacle.

For the return journey the bride’s father hired a donkey cart in which the couple rode back. Well, who says our rural people lack a sense of enterprise? This young man had been rightly named Roshan by his parents. He should be in show business.

And now for a story from Faisalabad. I quote: “In Mansoorabad here two brothers exchanged their wives. The elder had relations with the younger man’s wife which continued after marriage. The family tried to talk him out of his infatuation. But when their efforts failed, they decided that the two should swap their wives. The elder brother’s wife was against this arrangement. For two months she lived unwillingly as the younger one’s spouse, but then she rebelled and ran away to her parents. She also reported the matter to the police who have registered a case against the two brothers and some members of this unique family.”

I must say the Faisalabad police are spoilsport. Either they all lead unhappy married lives or they are envious of people who have the capacity to enjoy life unconventionally. Apparently the Tehran police are no better, otherwise why should they have stepped in to stop the 57th wedding of that person? The fact that when the police are personally involved, nothing can stop them from doing what they want to do.

Let me tell you a true story. The mother of an old friend of mine used to tell us about her maternal aunt’s husband, a thanedar in the Punjab police in the thirties. It was his habit to contact a fresh marriage at every new posting. As his official reputation was not good he was subjected to frequent transfers, and thus frequent weddings. During this process he got married 17 times.

My friend’s mother did not know whether uncle Thanedar observed the religious injunction of not keeping more than four wives at a time. But she did know that when he died, apparently in harness or, as the British say, with his boots on, it was soon after his 18th marriage. The immediate result was that her poor aunt, who had the good or bad fortune of being the first in the long line of brides, was besieged by a large number of lawsuits for sharing the property of the deceased.

All our daily talk of the sanctity of marriage comes to nought when we look at what some people do with this sacred institution. This was just a speck on the tip of the iceberg. The hundreds of thousands of cases that never get into the newspapers, of cruelty and harsh behaviour towards wives, are a sad commentary on our so-called civilized existence and our much vaunted respect for women in an Islamic society.

The death of science

IT IS a pity that science which is the antidote to irrational thinking and obscurantist behaviour is being slowly strangled to death in Pakistan, that is if we presume that it had a modestly glorious existence in the past in this country.

One cannot brush aside the giants this country has produced in the years bygone — the names of Nobel laureate Prof Abdus Salam and our genius of chemistry Prof Salimuzzaman Siddiqui come to mind immediately. As the grip of religion tightens on society, science is receding further and further in the backwaters.

A number of recent events confirm this sorry phenomenon to any objective observer. A fortnight ago, the inter-provincial conference of education ministers took a very important decision that was hardly noted by many people. The education ministers observed that the facilities for laboratories in schools in the rural areas were “largely insufficient” so the weightage given to practical examinations had been reduced.

Hence the ratio of marks for theory paper and practicals in the science subjects has been revised from 75 per cent-25 per cent to 85 per cent-15 per cent. Now anyone with a minimal knowledge of science knows that practical demonstrations and exercises teach a young mind more physics, chemistry and biology than pages and pages of theoretical texts.

If the labs are in a bad shape, should not the honourable ministers have decided to work to improve them? It is criminal to deny science education to children just because they live in the rural areas where the government has failed to equip schools with good laboratories.

Another instance of the negligence of science was demonstrated recently when a colleague who had been assigned the task of checking up on the performance of the PIA planetarium in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Karachi, informed me that the shows had been discontinued ages ago and a land dispute between the Expo Centre and the planetarium had put paid to all hopes that the planetarium would flourish again.

Another shocking news item was carried by this newspaper of Dec 13. Datelined Lahore, it stated that the federal education ministry had decided to “unburden” the minds of children at present studying in classes I to III by dropping science from their course of studies. So our children are to be denied the thrill of learning about the wonders of science from an early age.

It is not at all clear how a child’s mind is burdened by watching water boiling and steam being formed, or the germination of the seed which everyone of my generation had learnt about as a child as we eagerly jumped out of bed every morning to go and see how the bean and the newly emerging shoot were doing.

The final blow came when I watched Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, valiantly fight a losing battle with three religious scholars on a television channel trying to prove that natural phenomena have scientific rather than divine causes. I knew it was a losing battle however convincing Dr Hoodbhoy sounded because a few days earlier I had listened to him give his keynote address at a school conference pleading the case of science. As he had lucidly explained the natural phenomena that cause an earthquake, I had been forced to listen concurrently to a running commentary from a teacher sitting next to me who kept contradicting him softly for my benefit. Her final statement that left me baffled was that it was God who created the mysteries of science and to Him they should be left. Man should not be interfering with them.

One hopes that some intelligent policymaker in Islamabad who enjoyed studying science in school will understand the utility of teaching science to our children. Science forms the foundation of technology and if society has to progress it will have to teach science to its students so that they are equipped to create technology for the benefit of industry, agriculture and much more. While this is important in itself, the most important aspect of science is that its study involves a spirit of enquiry and its strength depends on the questioning of every traditionally held belief. By studying science, whole generations learn to think logically and rationally.

Dr Viqar Zaman, a professor of microbiology, writes in his book, Life Sciences for the Non-Scientist, “We must not think that science has only provided material benefits to mankind. Science has been a powerful ally in the struggle against racism, social injustice and religious bigotry. It has drawn people away from superstition, quackery witchcraft, black magic, demons and devils.”

This would also explain why science has always clashed with traditional thinking. Remember Socrates who was forced to drink hemlock. He was punished for saying that wisdom consists of knowing how little we know and the world can be best served by truth and virtue. Then there was Galileo who challenged the commonly held belief of the day that the sun goes round the earth. For that he was pronounced guilty of heresy. He had to retract his theory. But that didnt change the truth.

Are our policymakers afraid of teaching science to our students because they fear that it will encourage the youngsters to ask questions in their quest for the truth? We hope not. Intellectual freedom should be allowed to flourish for thus alone can man question the veracity of matters. The need is therefore not so much to teach science in a manner that students will understand the natural phenomenon. It is the need to train the thinking process of students that is important, and science alone can do it.

To create a science-friendly society in Pakistan it is important that science is made accessible and easily understandable. While the subject should be introduced as early as possible in school, science should be made interesting. As a start, the planetarium should be revived immediately. It is also important that a small science museum be inaugurated at the premises of the planetarium to get the Karachiites interested in science.

That is the need of the hour. And let every person who has a scientist within him take the “Scientist’s Oath” (quoted in Dr Viqar Zaman’s book) that says, “I vow to strive to apply my professional skills only to projects which, after conscientious examinations, I believe to contribute to the goal of coexistence of all human beings in peace, human dignity and self-fulfilment.

“I believe that this goal requires the provision of an adequate supply of the necessities of life (good food, air, water and housing, access to natural and man-made beauty) education and the opportunities to enable each person to work out for himself his life objectives and to develop creativeness and skill in the use of hands as well as head.

“I vow to struggle through my work to minimize danger. Noise strain or invasion of privacy of the individual, pollution of earth, air or water, destruction of natural beauty, mineral resources and wildlife.”

‘Decency’ standards

BUCKLING to pressure from Washington, America’s leading cable TV companies agreed last week to limit the amount of crude, suggestive and violent programming beamed into their customers’ homes.

Although their decision puts an end, at least for the time being, to the talk of government censorship, their approach fails to give consumers real control over their TVs. By creating a so-called family tier of channels, cable operators are taking a problematic half step.

Lawmakers, regulators and conservative Christian groups have complained loudly that cable programming is rife with sex and profanity. Last month, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin told a Senate committee that if cable operators did not give subscribers more ways to avoid objectionable channels, lawmakers should impose the same decency standards on pay TV that they’ve placed on broadcast networks. In response, the nation’s two largest cable operators, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and four others said they would soon offer subscribers a new tier of channels suitable for family viewing.

The move cut the legs out from under the drive to impose decency standards on pay TV, and that’s a good thing. Putting government censors onto networks such as FX and Comedy Central, which people can’t watch unless they pay for cable service, flies in the face of the 1st Amendment. But cable operators aren’t really empowering customers to control what comes into their homes. If they want to do that, they would offer individual networks on an a la carte basis, not just inflexible bundles of channels. Unfortunately for viewers, cable and satellite operators have little incentive to go the a la carte route.

—Los Angeles Times