MORE than half a century after the withdrawal of the paramount colonial powers from the region, nation-building in South Asia is still marred by outbursts of violence. It is particularly ironic if one considers the enduring commitment of the people in each and every state to democracy and the rule of law.

This commitment was the source of much hope that problems of religious diversity, ethnic differentiation and economic inequality would find a peaceful resolution in progressive reforms devised and monitored by representative institutions. As the region enters the sixth decade of freedom, there is a lengthening shadow of militancy and strife that is beginning to produce new doctrines of dominance.

India seems to be a particularly fertile ground for hegemonic doctrines. A vocal section of its strategic community is training itself to pretend that India does not share many of the regional stresses and strains because of its successful democracy. It prefers to look at the neighbouring states and finds failure all around, a failure warranting a proactive Indian interventionism.

India, it argues, is a rising power with the prerogative and the responsibility to create a new regional order. Side-stepping considerable incidence of bloody communal violence, explosive caste-based tensions and protracted ideology-driven insurgencies affecting the Indian population, equal to the entire populations of neighbouring nations, the exponents of India’s neo-imperial burden berate their own government for not taking charge of the region as the rest of the world expects it to do.

This dissociation from the regional dilemmas of poverty, backwardness and alienation can push India away from a cooperative approach to issues and towards assertion of its political, economic and military power. The history of the last five decades shows that the assumption of such a role by India only aggravates matters. If India aspires to moral leadership, its strategic community will have to go back to the drawing board and think afresh. India would have to be perceived as a source of hope and empathy and not of coercion.

Sri Lanka is the country that springs first to mind. It is difficult to claim that left to itself, the Sri Lankan society would have resolved its ethnic problems peacefully and democratically but there is little doubt that interference from the Indian territory, whether or not master-minded by the Union government in New Delhi, greatly polarised the major communities of the island. India was in a position to moderate the contest but it suppressed good-neighbourly altruism and opted for exploiting the opportunity presented by internal strife in the island to establish a hegemonic relationship. Determined resistance to this bid, which brought Sri Lankan leadership to Islamabad for assistance, added yet another dimension to the situation.

Sri Lanka’s new president, Mahinda Rajapakse was in Islamabad in March this year in the midst of evidence piling by the day that the Tamil Tigers were bent upon destroying the ceasefire. Islamabad was cautious but as supportive of the island’s integrity and independence as ever. When I last wrote about the gathering storm over Sri Lanka, it was just before November 27, the LTTE’s heroes’ day, on which the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was to respond to the new president’s offer to negotiate his ideas about a unitary state with the separatists.

The negative response was built up to a first climax in a murderous attack on the Sri Lankan army chief and which, in turn was followed by governmental air strikes on LTTE strong holds. The rebels are reportedly making fresh recruitment for what may turn out to be another protracted period of violence.

All eyes in South Asia are focused on India. It has now an important stake in Sri Lankan peace. The Sri Lanka-India oil company, which is largely Indian-owned, owns the China Bay tank farm of Trincomalee, and there will probably be a Trincomalee spur of the pipeline from Chennai-Madurai to Colombo. India agreed in December 2005 to construct the important Palely airstrip on the Jaffna peninsula.

Such considerations seem to warrant unqualified Indian support to the Sri Lankan government. But the media in the two countries reflects unease at the pace with which India is moving forward particularly on a defence cooperation agreement with Sri Lanka. Some Indian commentators linked Rajapakse’s March visit to Pakistan to this unease. The developing crisis in Sri Lanka is a litmus test of whether or not India has come round to viewing problems in individual states of South Asia as inter-related issues, which are at once the residue of post-independence nation building and, indeed, of conflictual inter-state relations of the last half a century.

Nepal is emerging from a classical subcontinental mass movement which has already brought to an end King Gyanendra’s stint as an absolute ruler. Apparently, the armed forces which were the pillar of his strength wisely decided that further confrontation with a thoroughly aroused populace would lead to bloodshed and discredit the army. There are examples of such a turnaround in the army’s attitude towards a determined popular upsurge in Pakistan’s own history. The peoples’ movement, however, was a complex phenomenon. It could be seen as a revolt and also, paradoxically, as the best tactic to weaken a blood-stained Maoist revolutionary insurgency that has already claimed 13,000 lives.

Indian analysts who have made much of Nepal as a failed state would have a more helpful approach to the Himalayan kingdom if they were to recognise that large swathes of Indian states in Nepal’s neighbourhood suffer from similar endemic problems and produce identical militant action. The region stands to gain if it provides the new democratic government, which will probably have to steer the country through the stresses of a new constituent assembly in a sharply divided society, with whatever assistance it needs.

Bangladesh prime minister, Khaleda Zia, made a high-profile visit to India in the third week of March against the backdrop of considerable domestic and international concern that a new factor — religious militancy — was entering the political space. This space is already the battleground between the two mainstream parties that define their mutual antagonism in different interpretations of nationalism, attitude to Islam, economic policy and policy towards India. Even in the best of days this political rivalry has had sharp edges.

An inherent tendency of over-statement in political discourse has in recent months been aggravated by differences on how to cope with religiously inspired resistance to governance by either of the two parties. Fractious politics can hamper an otherwise impressive economic recovery especially at a time when the successful sectors of the economy need to make important adjustments to cope with a new global trade regime and attendant competition.

In Pakistan, a prolonged period of military domination of national politics is beginning to adversely affect its own balance sheet. Historically, military interventions are best remembered when they clean up the alleged mess — the proverbial Augean stables of corrupt politicians — stabilise the economy with a touch of authoritarianism and then seamlessly give way to popularly elected governments. Frequently enough, the men on horseback retain considerable influence in areas of their primary concern after retreating into the shadowy woods. A good recent example is that of Turkey. But in Pakistan, military rulers have always found it difficult to nuance and finesse their direct control. By now the Pakistani military establishments has opened far too many fronts and a law of diminishing returns has already set in.

Pakistan’s intellectual class seems to be considerably exercised by the high place assigned to Pakistan (ninth to be precise) by the journal Foreign Policy in its so-called ‘The Failed State Index’. A failing state is defined by it as “one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force.” It is a reasonable definition but cannot justifiably lead to this year’s dark conclusion about Pakistan. But it is a conclusion that should concentrate the Pakistani mind particularly on two aspects of the state the country is in.

Without doubt, one of them is what the international media have taken to describing as Musharraf’s tribal wars or his ‘other war’ in Balochistan. It is time to reappraise them critically while there is still time. From time to time, President Musharraf educates foreign journalists by reminding them that similar problems elsewhere (as for instance in Sri Lanka) cannot be resolved by force alone. But back in Pakistan, he is curiously hamstrung in developing creative political solutions.

A somewhat similar disability attaches to government policies aiming at balancing economic growth with social justice. The speculative elements in the national economy expand by the day and the poverty alleviation programmes get denuded of substance at a similar pace. A huge reservoir of disadvantaged citizens inexorably draws Pakistan closer to the abyss that some other South Asian societies have already looked at. The Indian comments on Balochistan were a reminder that India does not miss real or imagined symptoms of state failure in any part of the region. Failing states are targets of opportunity.

In the best case scenario, South Asian states should steer clear of zero sum games and recognise the smouldering fires all over their vast territorial stretch for what they are: signs and symbols of decay and decline spread over hundreds of years that have not been adequately countered in the last six decades. A spirit of fellow-feeling will help extinguish these fires. Harnessing them for self-serving conflagrations here and there will in the long run hurt us all.

The writer is a former foreign secretary Email; tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

EVERY DAY, world leaders think of new ways to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas. But the people who suffer most are children like my daughter, Lina.

Lina was less than one year old when she caught a virus that gave her a high fever and caused diarrhea and vomiting. We live in a small West Bank village in the occupied territories. In the winter of 2003, when Lina got sick, Qira was under curfew, and we couldn’t reach a doctor. We tried to take her to the hospital in the nearby city of Nablus. But Nablus was also under curfew. The Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint on the outskirts of Nablus refused to let us in.

Eventually, on a rainy, cold day, my wife, Amina, carried Lina three miles on mountainous roads into Nablus to reach a doctor. One year later, we learned that the infection had caused renal failure and that Lina would eventually need a kidney transplant to survive.

For 16 months, Lina underwent dialysis every four hours. She spent many days in hospitals because of the kidney failure’s side effects, including hypertension and hernia. Her limbs became as thin as toothpicks.

Tests showed that neither her mother nor I was a compatible kidney donor for Lina. In the spring of 2005, a South African friend named Anna offered to donate a kidney to save Lina’s life. I had met Anna in 2003 during a peaceful protest campaign against the wall Israel is building in the West Bank

Anna was a compatible donor. We raised $40,000 for the surgery. Hadassah Hospital in West Jerusalem agreed to perform the operation at a discount.

But the next obstacle was obtaining a visa for Anna, who was blacklisted from entering Israel because of her activities — all completely nonviolent — protesting the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Anna fought for a visa - and only received one after the Israeli hospital administrator called the Israeli Interior minister.

For the transplant, the hospital helped me and my wife get permits to enter Israel for a full month - an exceptional feat. We considered ourselves lucky. But is anyone really lucky who needs special permission to be with one’s child at a hospital? Imagine that, if you needed to be at your child’s hospital bedside, you had to wait in line at a military base for hours or even days to plead for an entry permit. Despite the difficulties, the transplant was successfully performed in October 2005 in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, this was not the end of Lina’s difficulties. After Hamas won the elections in Palestine, the Israeli government tightened restrictions on Palestinians entering Israel. For a while it looked as if we would not get permission to enter for further treatments, but with difficulty we finally got approval to go to Lina’s appointment scheduled for next week. We fear we will not get future permits.

Additionally, the US and Europe have decided not to continue aid to the Palestinian government, which offered Palestinians free healthcare. As the Palestinian Authority grows poorer and poorer, our benefits will almost certainly disappear, and Lina may not be able to get her very expensive medications. Her life might be in serious danger.

Israel claims it needs to restrict Palestinian movement in response to the new Hamas-led government. But the reality is that Israel first established its system of permits and closures in 1991, and we have been living under these difficult conditions ever since.

My wife, daughter and I are active in a nonviolent movement that includes many Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners. Although we received our permits this time, others who need them have not. Denying permits to innocent men, women and children does not make Israelis safer. It destroys the hopes of Palestinians.—Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service

The writer is coordinator of the Palestinian Elections Commission for the Salfit region. He lives in the West Bank village of Qira.

IT is strange how a recent pronouncement, an off-the-cuff remark or a momentous event, makes one think of one’s teacher.

One is referring to the pronouncement of Their Lordships about the wasteful practice of serving meals at weddings and the reason for the subsequent ban; President Musharraf’s off-the-cuff remark about there being a tremendous dip in his popularity — but his country still needed him; and the prime minister’s outrageous display of extravagance — marked by the addition of another eight ministers to the 61 incumbents, making this the largest cabinet in the history of the nation. If Pakistani politicians keep it up, they might make it to the Guinness Book of Records. All this brings me to my teacher and what he had to say.

Professor Michael Oakeshott who taught political philosophy at the LSE in the mid-50s, invariably started his term lecture with the Greeks. This is understandable, because this small island in the Aegean Sea produced, over a period of two hundred years, some of the sharpest brains in world history. To start with, there was Pythagoras who was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with him.

And then there was Heraclitus, who propounded the doctrine of perpetual change and perpetual flux — Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, Oakeshott’s forays into the enquiring mind didn’t start with the philosophies of any these great thinkers. He started his inaugural lecture with just one word — ‘Fusis,’ which he described as a ‘middle way’, a sort of compromise between extremes, which he believed was one of the reasons why the Greeks achieved such enviable success in whatever they did.

At the risk of sounding a little trite and of suddenly flitting from the sublime to the ridiculous, it did remind one at the time of the Erasmic shaving stick advertisement produced by Unilever. The product carried the headline ‘Not too little, not too much, just right.’ The average British male must have taken the message literally, for Great Britain, in spite of being badly mauled in the Second World War, has still managed to cling on to its coveted prefix. There must be something about sticking to the middle path, the straight and narrow, and for avoiding any kind of excess. It creates a wonderful sense of balance.

Unfortunately, Professor Oakeshott never made it to Pakistan and never got a chance to lecture at Government College in Lahore, and to acquaint the future leaders of the country with the secret of the early Greeks and how to avoid wild oscillations towards extremes. But even if the good professor had made it to the garden city, it is doubtful if he could have done much good. The die had been cast. Ghulam Mohammed, the quintessential bureaucrat, had already put Pakistan on the firm road to political self-destruction, and every schoolboy knows what happened after that.

What is it about the collective Pakistani psyche that makes normally sensible men want to behave like mediaeval emperors? What is it about the collective consciousness that inhibits normally sensible men from being able to distinguish between right and wrong, between what is necessary and what is not, between enlightened leadership and the slings of outrageous fortune?

A lot had been written on the infamous 620 foot high KPT fountain built in the middle of the sea at a cost of 225 million rupees, which, on subsequent enquiry, proved to be inoperative. Though the monument had a certain visual attraction, it evoked a flood of letters in the national press, and the tirade continued for at least a fortnight. An irate writer wanted to know why there are no rules on how the taxpayers money is utilised.

He also wanted to know why this money had not been spent instead on modernising outdated equipment, improving poor cargo handling systems and archaic procedures, cleaning the berths of debris, and making handling charges competitive with Mumbai and Colombo. Perhaps one should stop at this point before somebody gets the bright idea of taking a delegation to Hamburg, Rotterdam, Marseilles and Istanbul to see how the more advanced nations manage to come out on top. That is the Pakistani way. Learn from the others, no matter what the cost.

After hauling over the coals the two top functionaries who head the pecking order in the politburo for their globe trotting tours, a columnist in a section of the press also wanted to know why the chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau found it necessary to make 65, or was it 75, trips during the last five years. This is something of a record for a poor country like ours. He did the nation a favour by working out the expense. If an average trip cost the taxpayer 15,000 dollars, which might be cutting it a bit thin, especially if one has acquired the habit of staying at five-star hotels, he would have cost the exchequer 975,000 dollars.

But then he is in good company. After all, travel does broaden one’s horizons, even if it means taking 40 people on a one-day trip to New York to see how the United Nations works, and doling out 500 dollars per freeloader to shop at Bloomingdales. One wonders if the president is going to put his foot down and stop this wasteful expenditure, now that he is no longer preoccupied with the dissensions in the ruling party.

As a tail piece here’s a poem of mine which was published in Dawn on September 20, 1996 which I have decided to inflict on the reader. It is entitled ‘Where Else?’ and corroborates to an extent that line in a recent editorial of Dawn about the more things change, the more they stay the same. Readers can judge for themselves if anything has really changed and if the piece carries a contemporary flavour.

In this great Islamic Republic called the land of the Pure,
There’s still all kinds of hardships that the young and the old endure.
There’s also the fact that people of all shapes and sizes ken.
That in Pakistan the sword is always mightier than the pen.
Where else do ministers help feudals recapture escaping peasants?
Where else does a head of state spend millions shooting pheasants?
Where else are one-legged prisoners shackled without a passing thought?
Where else does an airline handle crates for a house that wasn’t bought?
Where else can tons of Basmati disappear into thin air?
Where else can stolen ID cards get hocked at a village fair?
Where else can a three-day president order a tax-free Merc?
Where else do rural cops treat rapes as a special perk?
Where else do urban ruffians wield hand grenades and axes?
Where else is a parliament made of folks who don’t pay taxes?
Where else do tycoons still shop around though billions in the red?
Where else are bonded haris far better off if they were dead?
Where else do builders encroach on roads and swallow leafy parks?
Where else do crafty agencies use both terrorists and knarks?
Where else do parties have torture cells and their Kala Panis?
Which other Third World land clings to its rajas and its ranis?
It’s things like these that have made the country’s journalists despair.
But still they write and waste their missiles on the desert air...