IT is in the fitness of things that Pakistan, still only an observer like India, Iran and Mongolia, has participated in the fifth summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at the level of the head of state. The symbolism of this act cannot be missed. The fifth summit coincides with stirrings in Pakistan that it needs to broaden the base of its international relations. A relatively quiet, work-oriented and undemonstrative organisation like SCO provides a good opportunity to explore the possibilities of achieving a better balance in the foreign policy of the nation.

The SCO’s unobtrusive consolidation perhaps reflects the Chinese way of doing things; its modest manners point to an Asian culture. As noted increasingly, this fast evolving grouping of four Central Asian states, Russia and China is a formidable Euro-Asian massif, and together with the present observers, it is a forum of consultations for nearly half the global population. As things stand today, its ambiance is different from the European Union and many other regional groupings. The SCO’s secretary-general, Zhang Deguang, noted this difference when, in an article published to herald the fifth summit, he described the SCO as a bold experiment in a region situated at the juncture of Europe and Asia characterised by a huge diversity of cultures and a low level of market economy.

It is probably a measure of the SCO’s potential that since I wrote last about it (Dawn Nov. 21, 2005) there has been a noticeable increase in negative, and even alarmist, comments about it in the West, a distinct change from the days when it was welcomed and encouraged to fight Muslim militants. It has more recently been portrayed as an oriental Nato, a club of dictators and an ominous Chinese intrusion into Russia’s natural sphere of influence, the “near abroad”. US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld has specifically talked of Iran as a terrorist state which is aspiring to join an organisation which in his perception was created primarily to fight terrorism.

Since neither Russia nor China would want to cast the SCO in a quasi-antagonistic role in this formative phase of the organisation, the pre-summit statements have tried to dispel these fears. The SCO’s secretary-general has said that it is a cooperation and security organisation that would never become a military grouping because its charter envisages no such status. President Hu Jintao has emphasised the spirit of Shanghai which according to him embodies mutual trust, equality, and respect for diversity and a desire for common development. The SCO, the Chinese keep reiterating is not exclusive and targets no country. President Vladimir Putin has stressed more or less the same points.

It needs to be noted that the fifth summit was preceded by a gathering of parliamentary leaders from the member-states. They took care not to sound like Nato rivals and defined the purpose of their conference as a collective resolve to push through legislation for a collective security system in Central Asia, fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, and implement large-scale trade and economic cooperation programmes.

Declaratory statements by leaders of regional groupings almost always tend to project normative objectives such as those summarised above. But they do not preclude an evolutionary process that another power bloc may come to regard as an obstacle to its agenda. In the West, the SCO is seen as mapping out an area where the rivalry for energy resources gets weighted in favour of SCO member-states. From time to time, one notices a certain unease even in Moscow about the growing Chinese access to these assets but this feeling is on a miniscule scale compared to much greater Russian apprehensions about the West, backed by its huge capital and superior technology, establishing a disproportionate and exclusionary grip on them.

Russia and China have pursued a shared objective of promoting a multipolar world. But essentially their diplomacy in this context is designed to avoid confrontationist postures and each state has simultaneously tried to maximise its relations bilaterally with the United States. China, in particular, has been able to build a very large trade turn-over. But both Moscow and Beijing are also concerned about the aggressive content of the US policies of the Bush era. The push to the east in Europe is now knocking at Ukraine’s door. Putin has always warned that it would strain relations with the West more than anything else.

Putin’s Russia is not prepared to abandon its dream of regaining big power status and settle to be an energy appendage of Europe dominated by the EU and Nato. China has probably to be more fearful of potentially threatening developments in the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and, more pointedly, in the Pacific. No wonder then that the SCO in successive annual summits has slowly but steadily added a strategic dimension to its avowed emphasis on economic cooperation. It would not be lost on Washington that without this grouping, Uzbekistan would not have demanded the termination of the military base facilities given to the United States for the invasion of Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan would not have asked for a hundred per cent increase in the “rental” for the US base on its soil.

Nato has expanded its membership and also its indirect influence through partnership for peace; it is now deployed far away from its original operational theatre in Afghanistan. Western watchers of the SCO, therefore, look intently on any extension of the SCO beyond the present six as a possible counter-balancing development. The documents signed at the end of the fifth summit a few days ago, including a joint declaration and a joint communique, reveal a cautious approach to the strategic issue. On the one hand, there is emphasis on the principle that SCO is an open organisation and is likely to expand. When it comes to economic cooperation, the SCO statesmen welcome interaction even beyond the members and the observers. On the other, even as observers like Pakistan and Iran make an almost urgent case for full membership, admission of new members is careful and deliberate.

Apart from the need to avoid a polarised political situation with a near-global military alliance, Nato, there are internal reasons for a gradualist approach. Only one country, India, from amongst the members and observers was represented at the level of a minister, notably the minister for petroleum, at the fifth summit. Moscow would know the reason why and remain sensitive to it. Is it, as some observers point out, that India is content to play the junior partner of the United States in the global imperium?

Moscow supported Pakistan’s observer status but its endorsement of Pakistan’s full membership would demand vigorous Pakistani diplomacy in Moscow. Washington’s strong reaction to Iran’s presence even as an observer also makes for a gradualist approach. The meeting between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan provided a joint condemnation of powers that subject the region to their domineering policy. By its very existence and its charter, the SCO weakens this hegemonic tendency of the United States; it is, nevertheless, very much in its interest to avoid being construed as a Warsaw Pact of the Orient.

The joint declaration and the joint communique issued on the conclusion of the summit are in one important respect a forceful reiteration of the universal principles of inter-state relations that have temporarily been eclipsed by the objectives with which American interventionism is justified. Unilateralism, regime change, pre-emption by force and externally directed democratisation of entire regions are implicitly questioned by the cardinal principles defining the Shanghai spirit. The SCO rejects “double standards”. It respects diversity of civilisations and models of development.

In a swipe at the exaggerated emphasis on neo-liberal economics, the SCO seeks cooperation amongst states where the degree of economic denationalisation varies significantly. “Differences in cultural traditions, political and social systems, values and model of development formed in the course of history,” states the joint declaration, “should not be taken as pretexts to interfere in other countries internal affairs.”

The Shanghai spirit, in essence, hearkens to the spirit of Bandung and, by implication, finds the end-of-history ideology driven American crusade to reconfigure world politics into a preconceived political and neo-liberal mould a major cause of global instability.

Pakistan would have known that this summit would not throw open its doors to new aspirants for membership. And yet President Musharraf wisely stated the intention and rationale for Pakistan’s desire to become a full member. The infrastructure required for Pakistan becoming the trade and energy corridor has at least three uncertain aspects. One, what already exists and can be easily upgraded is by no means insignificant but it is subject to Indian intentions on the one hand and the situation in Afghanistan, the most natural land bridge, on the other. Two, what was mentioned by President Musharraf is futuristic and its feasibility needs to be evaluated in terms of technology and capital. Valuable studies already exist on communication networks that steer clear of the troubled areas of Afghanistan. But a great deal more work needs to be done on possible air and surface communications. Third, Iran and Pakistan will have to demonstrate that their good intentions, exemplified by projects such as the gas pipeline, are workable in spite of known constraints.

There are signs of Pakistan’s enhanced appreciation of regional linkages. If Saarc represents one attribute of our peculiar geography and Asean its eastward extension, the SCO and the ECO to the west and the north very much underscore its other characteristics.

President Musharraf’s two main addresses in China, one bilateral and the other multilateral, contain promise of a policy review. The nation will watch how far this promise is reflected in actual policies of his regime.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

I once had to review a biography of that upstanding Palestinian academic and peace proponent Hanan Ashrawi, but admitted at the start of my article that it was almost impossible to write because the book was so unmitigatedly awful. Now I have forced myself to see The Da Vinci Code, I have reached a new literary crevasse, the near-inability to speak of this film, based — as we all know — on the novel by the exotically named Dan Brown.

God, it’s awful!

The film steals shamelessly from the work of others. The face masks and the ghostly siege of Jerusalem — complete with ballistas, although the Muslim armies have been replaced by Crusaders — are cribs from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. Some of the music sounds unnervingly close to the score from Scott’s Gladiator.

And as the actress Nelofer Pazira has pointed out, the flagellating murderer is almost identical — in character and physical likeness - to the figure of Death, played by Bengt Ekerot in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Remember the famous chess game between Ekerot and Max von Sydow’s Crusader knight?

But it all raises an ancient question. How come this pap is so popular while great art and literature and music — and movies — are rarely if ever box office? How come the books and the films and the music which we are supposed to admire don’t receive the world’s admiration — or at least millions of dollars — while chick-lit and Paris Hilton and, yes, The Da Vinci Code pack them in from Singapore to Denver? Are we really just tools of the marketing boys who push this stuff like preachers or like the Wild West quack doctors who promised eternal youth in a bottle?

Let’s start, though, on the side of the bad guys. The Independent once ran a review of James Cameron’s Titanic under the headline: “I’ve seen Titanic — and it stinks.” Now I liked Titanic, just as I admired Scott’s snottily reviewed Kingdom of Heaven, and I still remember its best line, when the gorgeous Rose (Kate Winslet) asks Andrews, the ship’s Irish designer, if the vessel will sink: “Mr Andrews, I saw the iceberg — and I see it in your eyes.” And when the Titanic goes down, along with Andrews — the real-life brother, as it happens, of one of Northern Ireland’s Protestant prime ministers — by heaven, you felt as if you were going to the bottom of the Atlantic with it.

And I remember with great fondness the long nights in Ireland when I was completing my PhD thesis (subject: Irish neutrality in the Second World War) at the window of a cottage immediately opposite another terraced home in which that most prolific of Irish writers, Maeve Binchy, was finishing her beautiful novel Light a Penny Candle. Like so much of Maeve’s output, Candle was regarded as unworthy of serious critical attention, even though several scenes in the novel — the terrible moment, for example, when an Irish couple realise (while the reader does not) that their daughter has stolen the Christmas present she is giving them — are Dickensian in their pathos. Yet Maeve is not placed alongside literary prize-winners like her much less-read but near-neighbour novelist John Banville. Conversely, John Banville — the man who asked me to review the Ashrawi biography for The Irish Times — is not going to rake in the kind of profits that Maeve makes.

What, then, makes art popular? When I went to school, Charles Dickens was frowned upon as a fusty old Victorian who churned out pot-boilers for weekly newspapers (all true), even if his characters — Pip, Scrooge, Oliver Twist and the rest — were immensely popular with children.

By the time I reached college, however, the very same Dickens appeared in every modern literature course — Dr David Craig, formerly of Lancaster University, please note — as a pseudo-leftist laying open the scandals of the Industrial Revolution (Hard Times and Bleak House).

Equally, when I was at school, I developed a passion for largely ignored composers, boring my parents to genuine tears with scratched but booming records of Bruckner and Shostakovich. Now they are flavour of the month all year round and the Leningrad is almost as overplayed as the masterpieces which Your Hundred Best Tunes turned into cliches: Beethoven’s Fifth, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Sibelius’ Finlandia, Chopin’s preludes, Handel’s Water Music, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and the other “pops” which have me reaching for the “off” button as surely as if they were Carly Simon.

Clearly, there are no set rules for all this. Verdi was as popular in his time as he is among opera-goers today. The Godfather crossed the line between popularity and art quite effortlessly. So has Hitchcock. Casablanca was as popular in 1941 as it is now, albeit for different reasons. David Lean’s Dr Zhivago was immensely popular in the cinema; my Dad loved it, but oddly regarded the original Pasternak novel — infinitely more moving and tragic — as the success of “those damned publicists”.

But my dilemma remains. I love the poetry of Seamus Heaney, but regard Bomber, an account of an RAF fire raid on Nazi Germany, as one of the best novels of war — even though it was written by the distinctly un-prized and overread author Len Deighton. John Le Carre’s spy Smiley has clearly moved between art and mass appreciation (though not with me). Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai made the same leap of imaginative and popular faith, though at the cost of relegating Pierre Boulle’s original novel — with its much more painful ending, because the attack on the bridge is a failure — to an intellectual retreat.

Is it talent or genius that decides art’s place in history? Or is it history itself? Must authors and directors and composers match their work to the age they live in? Must we wait for a “War on Terror” symphony, a “9/11 Suite”, an “Iraqi Requiem” to match Shostakovich or Barber or Britten? As for The Da Vinci Code, heaven preserve Sophie, the French police cryptologist who turns out to be Jesus Christ’s only direct blood relative left on earth. She ends the movie with a stigmata on her neck of the kind that the Holy Father was once trying to inflict — unwillingly, of course — on RAF crews over Nazi Germany. — (C) The Independent

IN CASE readers are worried that this column is going to commence with another quotation from William Butler Yeats’ perceptive poem “The Second Coming” they can rest assured that it will be the last time and that this great Irish bard will then be laid to rest. It isn’t that a select few in Karachi and Lahore don’t read him any more. It’s just that the people who should be reading him and taking heed about things falling apart and the centre not being able to hold have completely lost touch with the masses.

They have much more important things to think about, like harnessing the energies and resources of the nation in ensuring The Second Coming of the man who continues to guide the destiny of the people of Pakistan, and in the process are perfectly willing to traduce a part of the national fabric.

The Article in the Constitution on which the attention of the King’s party is riveted is, of course 44(2) which reads... “Subject to the Constitution a person holding office as President shall be eligible for re-election to that office, but no person shall hold that office for more than two consecutive terms.” As every sixth form student knows there is a difference between “shall be eligible” and “has to be reinstated.” But then, the gang of four that is spearheading the campaign of re-electing a president who was never elected in the first place (as the columnist Ayaz Amir so charmingly put it) is not really interested in establishing democracy in this country. It is behaving more like the outdoor relief department of the military.

Who is to remind these self-appointed guardians of the nation’s conscience that the people are still “turning and turning in the widening gyre” and that “the falcon has not been hearing the falconer” for close to seven years? Anyway, enough of Yeats; it’s time for a reality check.

A good starting point is the image foreigners still have of Pakistan, as a repressive state where women have no privileges or constitutional rights. This has been endorsed in no small measure by the continuing sordid saga of Mukhtaran Mai. The episode started with darkly threatening overtures that precluded her determination to take on her tormentors and ended with her fight for justice. What is truly astonishing is the fact that while she has been hailed as a campaigner for the rights of oppressed women in international forums, has become a celebrity in the United States and a recipient of awards for exceptional courage, the Pakistani media is still awaiting the final disposal of her case in her own country.

The decision of their lordships in the Supreme Court which reversed the verdict of the Multan bench of the Lahore High Court was widely hailed in the local press. It inspired editorials in a number of local newspapers and certainly elevated the reputation of the judiciary in a cynical public. But until the perpetrators of this heinous crime are seen to be punished and the case is closed in the real sense of the word, the international media will continue to view this episode as a reflection of partisan male chauvinist policy and an exercise of centralised power deflecting the wheels of justice.

Mukhtaran Mai’s case would have probably been treated like most other rape cases in this country, some of which end up in the wastepaper basket in the local police lockup — had it not been for the fact that four international television news channels with a combined viewership of over a billion, had decided to make it the flavour of the month. A rape being carried out by four ruffians on the instructions of a group of wicked, licentious old men was just too good to miss.

Other victims have not received quite the same media attention. Newspapers in the Punjab highlighted a number of incidents in which the victims received no satisfaction whatsoever from the judicial process. Like what happened on May 28, 2004, when a clutch of lusty Multan policemen were involved in the rape of two singers. They were acquitted, in spite of the testimony of witnesses and medical reports which were produced. As recently as May 26, 2006, policemen covered up and exonerated two of their colleagues involved in raping two women in their custody. One could go on endlessly, but what’s the point? Nothing is going to change unless the country is ruled by a leader who believes there is no point in having the rule of law if there is nobody to implement it.

While the nation is wondering what new sensational disclosures are about to be made by the opposition important functionaries keep making statements intended to pacify a growing restless public. A week ago the governor of Sindh stated, on a note of triumph, that the crime situation in the province was under control. One never really knows what is meant by the expression “under control” and if the government has some sort of yardstick by which it measures progress.

On Saturday when this writer took his old car to a garage after it had displayed signs of increasing weariness, asthmatic attacks and discomfort in the joints, he came across two insurance surveyors with vehicles of similar vintage. They were comparing notes on the law and order situation. During the course of the conversation this writer learned that each had been robbed of two mobile phones. Their tone suggested, however, that being robbed of this plastic electronic toy was the most natural thing in the world and anybody who hadn’t had the experience was really missing out on something. One of them was carrying a copy of Dawn’s metropolitan section which pointed out that on Friday the gangs had lifted 59 mobile phones. So much for the governor’s law and order situation.

Then there is the prime minister who keeps coming up with statements intended to convey to a sceptical public that in spite of what Senator Raza Rabbani and Aitzaz Ahsan have been saying, the government has finally turned the corner. Ten days ago he came up with the startling disclosure that the poverty level in Pakistan had dropped by 10 per cent over last year’s figure. How on earth did he work that one out? Even Alan Greenspan would have probably given up after glancing at population growth figures, the way national assets are being sold off to accommodate wasteful expenditure, the and galloping inflation, and how the military is spending way over its budget.

Economists know that there is a perfectly sensible way of finding out the state of the black economy by working out M2 (money in circulation) as a proportion of GNP (the gross national product). But we are not concerned here with the black economy. We are concerned with the direction in which the country is heading and the repeated attempts that are being made to stifle the democratic process.

Every country enjoys the right to misgovern itself. But the decision should be that of the people. One hopes that Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Maulana Fazlur Rehman will read this column. They are the ones who will eventually decide whether the King’s party will be allowed to go through with their charade and which way the vote will finally swing in October 2007.