WITH the passing away of Abdul Wali Khan, Pakistan has lost one of its senior most politicians, if not the senior most, who played a significant part in the struggles of his people for more than six decades.

Born in the year of the Soviet revolution, when the aspirations of the colonized people all over the world began to soar to new heights, Wali Khan had from early life a challenging task carved out for him. Although the house of his father, Bacha Khan, was establishing new traditions among the Utmanzais in several areas, including pursuit of excellence in education and the arts and community welfare through social work, for Wali Khan politics became the first and the last love. Apart from the hazards of fighting for independence in a crown colony, his task was made difficult by his inheritance. On the one hand he was inspired by his father’s ideals of non-violence, humility and selfless service and on the other hand he was exposed to his uncle’s long journey along the path of nationalist, democratic politics and which ended in pragmatism. While he drew upon both elements of his family’s legacy, time and circumstance demanded a search for new approaches to the community’s goals and he earned distinction by realizing this.

Wali Khan had many years of experience as a Khudai Khidmatgar when Pakistan came into being and the Pukhtoon struggle for what they always considered their rights entered a new and more difficult phase. Wali Khan willingly accepted the sacrifices that this struggle demanded and continued fighting to his last for the rights of his people in a democratic, federal Pakistan. His struggle against One Unit and the autocratic rule of Ayub Khan marked the most glorious phase of his long political career. During the East Bengal crisis, he was in that magnificent minority that stood up against the madness of the military operation against their fellow Pakistani citizens. The contribution made by the opposition under his leadership during the framing of the 1973 Constitution, particularly to the adoption of the parliamentary system and some relief to the federating units, has never been fully recognized but was considerable nonetheless.

But if perseverance in Bacha Khan’s tradition of public service demanded great sacrifices Wali Khan’s brush with pragmatism presented him with serious perils. History is yet to pronounce its verdict as to what might have happened if Wali Khan had used his influence to save the Bhutto-Bizenjo accord of 1972 or avoided putting his trust in Ziaul Haq’s words in 1977 or whether the brief ANP-PPP accord of 1988-89 could be given a longer life. However, even the harshest of Wali Khan’s critics must bear in mind the Herculean nature of the mission of anyone who is called upon to keep the banner of democracy flying in a society afflicted with love for praetorian rule. Perhaps nobody will deny Wali Khan’s substantial contribution to the country’s political culture, of which his decision to quit active politics after losing the election in 1990 was only one of the many illustrations.

That he had to struggle all his life for causes the state of Pakistan was created to defend was not Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s tragedy alone; the victims of this tragedy to a larger extent were, and are, the people of Pakistan. There will be time to put Wali Khan’s work in a proper perspective and also to assess what might be referred to as his errors of judgment and the present moment warrants only a salute to a consistent and valiant campaigner for the rights of the people to democracy and equity.

WASHINGTON: President Bush said that he didn’t seek congressional approval for a warrantless domestic eavesdropping programme for one simple reason: he didn’t need it. “We believe there’s a constitutional power granted to presidents as well as, this case, a statutory power,” Bush said. “And I’m intending to use that power.”

It is one of several explanations on the topic from Bush and his aides, who have provided at least two separate rationales for why they did not ask for statutory authority for the programme. Attorney-General Alberto R. Gonzales said the administration had considered seeking legislation but determined it would be impossible to get, adding later in the same news conference that authorities did not want to expose the programme’s existence. White House spokesman Scott McClellan has echoed the latter point, saying the administration feared that details of the classified programme would be exposed publicly.

The subject is one of several elements in the NSA spying debate that have been clouded by apparent contradictions and mixed messages from the government since the programme was revealed last month. The confusion has cleared up little in recent days, as the White House has embarked on a multi-pronged campaign to defend the legality of the controversial programme.

Gonzales and other officials, for example, have repeatedly said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which governs secret surveillance in the United States, is too cumbersome to be applied to the NSA eavesdropping programme. Yet the Justice Department raised concerns about a 2002 bill to loosen FISA requirements.

Before the programme’s existence was revealed, several administration officials also emphasized in testimony and public statements that the NSA was prohibited from engaging in domestic surveillance — even as the agency was clearly doing so under the authority of Bush’s secret order that established the programme.

Many Democratic lawmakers and legal experts have seized on these and other issues in recent days to argue that the Bush administration has been misleading in its explanations of the NSA programme.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Democrat-Massachusetts) said that the ‘after-the-fact spin we’re hearing now is worthless’. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Democrat-Nevada) issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the administration for claiming that Congress had been fully briefed on the NSA programme and for opposing the 2002 measure to loosen FISA standards.

The latter issue attracted particular criticism on Thursday, as lawmakers and national security experts opposed to the programme cast doubts on the administration’s current legal rationale.

An amendment to FISA proposed by Senator Mike DeWine (Republican-Ohio) would have lowered the standard to be met for authorizing surveillance of non-US citizens, from ‘probable cause’ to ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the target was an agent of a terrorist group. The Justice Department did not offer support for DeWine’s amendment because of ‘significant legal and practical issues’, according to department statements.

Confusion over the issue deepened further on Thursday after officials discovered two versions of a Justice statement on the legislation. One, which was posted on the Federation of American Scientists website and quoted in media reports, noted possible constitutional concerns. The other, held by the Senate intelligence committee, did not include that issue. Officials could not explain the disparity.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said this week that the previous opinion did not conflict with current legal justifications for the NSA spying because ‘probable cause’ required under FISA is ‘essentially the same’ as the standard used in the NSA programme: ‘a reasonable basis to believe’ that a target is linked to Al Qaeda or an affiliate.

But Timothy H. Edgar, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, also said the NSA programme clearly operates under a lower legal standard allowed only in limited circumstances, such as when police to frisk suspicious people on the street.

“That’s never been considered acceptable for searching someone or listening to their telephone,” Edgar said.

Bush and his top aides have repeatedly stressed that ‘Congress’ had been briefed on the programme over the past four years, but have often neglected to mention that the briefings were limited to the ‘Gang of Eight’: the speaker and minority leader of the House; the majority and minority leaders of the Senate; and the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the two intelligence committees. And they were barred from taking notes or discussing what they heard with other lawmakers or their staffs.

Senator John D. ‘Jay’ Rockefeller IV, who as vice chairman of the Senate intelligence panel was briefed in 2003, took the unusual step of sending Vice President Cheney a classified letter voicing his concerns about the programme and the lack of oversight on how it was being carried out. Several other prominent Democrats have also questioned the programme’s legality since it was made public, including Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jane Harman, ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee.

Yet Dan Bartlett, counsellor to Bush and White House communications director, said on Monday that the lawmakers who had been briefed ‘believed we are doing the right thing’ and that Democratic leaders ‘briefed on these programmes would be screaming from the mountaintops’ if they thought the programme was illegally eavesdropping on Americans. Some critics, including a group of relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks, have also focused on previous statements by General Michael V. Hayden — the deputy intelligence director who formerly headed the NSA — that now appear to be, at best, incomplete.

For example, Hayden and other NSA staff members told the House-Senate inquiry into the attacks that ‘they do not want to be perceived as focusing NSA capabilities against US persons in the United States’, said the panel’s report. “The Director and his staff were unanimous that lessons NSA learned as a result of Congressional investigations during the 1970’s should not be forgotten.”

Hayden suggested similar limitations in an appearance before the House intelligence committee in October 2002, telling Porter J. Goss, then the committee chairman, that the NSA ‘would have no authorities’ to pursue Osama Bin Laden if he entered the United States. The NSA programme was at least a year old by that time, and Goss — now the CIA director — was one of the few members of Congress briefed on it. Experts also say Hayden was wrong to suggest that Osama would enjoy the same legal protections as US citizens or residents. —Dawn/The Washington Post News Service