Invasion of Gaza

IT is shocking that the Bush administration should have supported Israel’s current invasion of the Gaza strip, for what Israel has done since invading the territory on Wednesday is more than military action. It has kidnapped seven ministers and 20 legislators of the Palestinian Authority and is punishing Gaza’s 1.3 million people by destroying their water and power supply systems. It has also threatened to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mashal, whom its spies tried to assassinate in Amman in 1997. The American reaction to the Israeli invasion is one of indirect encouragement to Israel when the White House spokesman said that Tel Aviv had the “right to defend itself against acts of terror”. In asking Israel to ensure that innocent lives were not lost and to “avoid unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure”, he appealed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to help resolve the crisis which, he said, was caused by “the hostage-taking and the attacks by Hamas”. This is factually incorrect.

The current flare-up began with the killing of Palestinian picnickers at a Gaza beach earlier this month. Hamas, then, broke the 16-month old truce which it had unilaterally proclaimed and retaliated by firing rockets into Israel. On Sunday Palestinian commandoes, coming out of a tunnel they had dug, attacked Israeli military targets, killed two soldiers and took one prisoner. Therefore, to say that the flare-up followed Sunday’s arrest of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian commandoes is factually incorrect.

While the UN and the European Union have called upon both sides to exercise restraint and echoed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s plea for giving diplomacy a chance, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa has asked Washington to play an honest broker’s role and give top priority to the Arab-Israeli conflict. To expect the US to be an “honest broker” on the Palestinian unrealistic. If America were truly neutral and played a mediatory role expected of it, things in the Middle East today would be vastly different, and Israel would not be in the occupation of the West Bank and Al Quds. Instead, abjuring its role if a mediator, Washington has stuck to the unabashedly pro-Israel line it has pursued for decades — a policy that has turned Israel into a regional bully because of the massive doses of American economic and military aid, and unqualified diplomatic support. The support to Israel on the Gaza invasion is more unfortunate because it comes at a time when there are indications that Hamas is in the process of revising its attitude towards Israel. So far, Tel Aviv has refused to talk to the Hamas government because it says Hamas has not recognized its right to exist. However, there was a positive development earlier this week when, following talks between various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, an 18-point national reconciliation statement called for the establishment of a Palestinian state on territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Till then Hamas had stood for the liberation of Palestine. However, by endorsing the national reconciliation document the Hamas leadership has implicitly accepted Israel’s right to exist. America thus is in a position to revive the peace process by persuading Israel to negotiate with Hamas. However, the kind of pro-Israeli statement it has made over the Gaza invasion is unlikely to help the cause of Palestine-Israeli peace.

Lahore budget

THAT the running of the city government and the management of its finances remain a highly polarised affair was evident once again at the town hall on Wednesday. Amidst pandemonium and threats of police action against the protesting opposition members, the city district government hurriedly passed the budget for 2006-07. Opposition councilors staged a walkout against the highhanded behaviour of the city nazim’s bodyguards who allegedly prevented some of them from entering the town hall. Later, at a press conference the nazim said that he was not bound to consider the opposition’s “petty” budget proposals, nor was he obliged to invite them to his meetings — two points about which the opposition protested, alleging that civic affairs was being managed with an iron fist. The budget, having a total outlay of Rs21.58 billion, was approved by only the treasury members present.

Last year’s budgetary allocations amounted to a total of Rs17.74 billion, with a development outlay of Rs5.9 billion. The latter has been raised to Rs7.85 billion for the current year. Showing a surplus of over Rs110 million, the budget offers precious little in terms of new development schemes, with the non-development expenditure amounting to Rs10.31 billion. Education gets a miserly amount of Rs710 million, and health, a smaller sum of Rs231.7 million. Given the growing metropolis’s massive problems in the public transport sector, the paltry sum of Rs116.2 million will also be a drop in the ocean. The emphasis seems to be on the show-case variety of development, with the city government posed to construct a 47-storey building to house the offices of the Water and Sanitation Agency, whereas the dilapidated water and sanitation services will receive no more than Rs1.72 billion. Housing, another pressing need, gets nothing significant either; no new, affordable, schemes are on the cards. Besides, no viable means have been found to utilise Rs652 million now accumulated in the Citizens Community Boards funds. The community-based development initiative has largely remained a non-starter because of bureaucratic wrangling. However, the Rs1.2 billion and Rs140 million allocated for road works and waste management, respectively, are well deserved.

Tackling the ‘parallel judiciary’

In this tragic scenario, the Supreme Court ruling on jirgas and vani/swara marriages would help introduce uniformity of law across the country, and help prevent operation of primitive customs and traditions. Besides relevant legislation at the national and provincial levels, urgent remedial measures are required on other fronts as well. Perceived weaknesses in the judicial system, especially at the lower tiers, will have to be addressed if the less privileged members of society are to develop faith in the system. Traditional exigencies aside, lack of access to justice is a key reason why villagers turn to panchayats and jirgas for justice. Our ulema also need to take a broader view of Islamic norms and principles and take a clear stand against vani and swara. At the same time, political parties believing in modernity should set an example by playing a more purposive role in spreading enlightenment, especially about the inhumanity associated with vani, swara and similar other customs.

Friday feature: God’s gift for mankind

ACCORDING to the Holy Quran, righteous persons’ supplication to God is: “Our Lord! give us in the world that which is good and (also) in the Hereafter that which is good and save us from the torment of Fire” (2:201).

What is good in the Hereafter is apparent — safety from Hell. In other words, abode in Heaven, the place of eternal pleasure, the greatest bliss being the facility of having a glimpse of the Creator.

What is good in the world is open to speculation health, wealth, happy family, prosperous business, accelerated promotions in profession and so on. In sum, all those pleasures and pastimes which the religious laws permit.

But according to Prophet Moses, as mentioned in the Quran, the greatest favour of God on his people (the Israelites) was that “He placed among them Prophets and made them Kings” (5:20). From this, one can deduce that the greatest good in the world is one’s right choice of religion coupled with citizenship of a politically independent, self governing state. And this greatest good is a favour from “Allah, the Sovereign, who gives sovereignty to whom He wills and withdraws sovereignty from whom He wills” (3:26).

But, although Allah is sole Arbiter He has given enough indication of the criterion for awarding sovereignty to people on earth. The Quran says: “We (the Almighty) have already written in the Psalms (of David) that the righteous will inherit the earth” (21:105).

To understand the implication of the above Ayat, one has to recall the history of Islam’s evolution from a simple article of faith — ‘There is no worshipful being except Allah’ — to a comprehensive Law (Shariah), governing the thoughts and actions of the ‘believers’, prescribing the rule of prayer and piety, regulating the affairs of individuals and society with the ultimate aim of establishing a Divinely-guided government that enforces what is good and permissible and forbids what is bad and abominable in the light of ‘revealed’ knowledge.

The fact is that Islam became a state the very day it became a full-fledged religion. Its mosque was the place of worship and it housed as well the consultative and administrative organs of the state. This belies the false notion propagated by its detractors that when the Holy Prophet realised that his preachings had attracted the whole-hearted support of well-heeled converts, he thought of setting up a state.

Had that been the case, he would have set up a state of his choice, headed by himself, right in the early phase of his Apostleship, when the non-believing Chieftains of Quresh had offered him the crown of Makkah only if he stopped railing against their icons and idols which they had installed in the Kaaba for worship. Such an offer stipulating the Prophet’s personal sovereignty was spurned by him because his mission was to establish sovereignty of Allah the Almighty, not only in his native city but on as large a part of the wide world as possible in his life-time and later.

Islam did not recognize, from the very outset, the dual sovereignty of God in Heaven and Caesar on earth. Its slogan was that “He it is Who in heaven is Allah and in the earth Allah” (43:84). Its immediate aim was to banish the deities from temples and mighty secular potentates from their palaces and to see that it is only Allah Who is sovereign in heaven and in earth.

It was never the intention to set up imperial courts presided over by dynastic kings on the lines of contemporary Sassanid and Byzantine empires. On the contrary, the objective was to bring about a social and political revolution and implement the God-given programme of moral and ethical reformation on a global scale, applying force, if unavoidable. Such a situation was clearly visualised and the small band of Muslims in the Prophet’s time were made aware of it by the Almighty through an early era revelation addressed to them: ‘Allah knows that there are ailing folks among you, while others go about in search of God’s bounty (i.e. means of livelihood) and yet others who are engaged in fighting for the cause of Allah” (73:20).

And, as predicted in the above verse of the Quran, it is a historical fact that, to overcome the opposition from well-armed and well-entrenched potentates and their people, who saw their doom and destruction in the revolutionary message of Islam, the ‘believers’ had to take up arms for the sacred cause, which was nothing else than establishing Allah’s sovereignty by dislodging the human demi-gods from their thrones.

Giving sovereignty to the masses meant creating mass awareness of the dictum that all are equal before the law. This is the most important and lasting contribution of Islam to political thought as this dictum is valid for all times to come; and, anyone acting against it, has to be opposed by the vast majority of public opinion at all times and climes.

No one should suffer from the misgiving that this equality already prevailed in the tribal society of the Prophet’s homeland and it was not Islam’s innovation. This is a false notion having no factual basis. In fact, the same kind of feudal order as in adjacent Yemen and Iraq prevailed in ‘settled’ areas of Arabia, leaving out those tribal belts where bedouins and nomadic tribes had their own social systems.

There were in Arabia of the Prophet’s time three states — Lakhmi, Humairi and Ghassani — each a mini-‘empire’. Even in the tribal belts where elders and chieftains were elected by the tribesmen, the former enjoyed special rights and privileges like greater share in the spoils of the tribal feuds, and owning exclusive pastures where the common folk could not take their cattle for grazing.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) outlawed all such discriminatory rights and privileges of the tribal chiefs and restored the sovereignty of the common folk.

Close Guantanamo?

THE MILITARY detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has become the focus of global protests against US human rights violations during the war on terrorism.

Images of the hooded, jumpsuited prisoners who were brought there in 2002 still pervade the world’s media; so do lurid accounts by former inmates alleging abusive treatment, and reports of recent suicides and hunger strikes. Calls to close the facility and release or try its 460 foreign detainees are steadily mounting — they come now from close allies such as Britain and Germany, from the United Nations Committee Against Torture, and from every major human rights group.

Reluctantly, we have to agree: Guantanamo will have to be shuttered. But before coming to that, it’s worth pointing out that the international campaign against the camp is more than a little perverse.

The illogic begins with the fact that Guantanamo now is, by far, the most comfortable and legally accountable detention facility maintained by the United States for foreign prisoners. Conditions there were crude in 2002, but since then one state-of-the art detention facility, modelled on a prison in Indiana, has been built, and a second is under construction.

Guantanamo’s detainees have recreation facilities and good medical care; their continued detention is reviewed once a year by military boards, and prisoners are assigned advocates to help argue their cases. Pending a decision by the Supreme Court, they are also able to appeal their detentions to US federal courts, and many have US civilian lawyers.

In contrast, some 500 detainees held by the United States at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan live in far harsher conditions and have fewer rights. They do not have their own advocates, and none has been able to appeal to US courts. No American lawyers are available to broadcast any complaints they have about poor treatment; in fact, alarmingly little is known about what goes on inside the prison’s walls.

And Bagram’s inmates are better off than the prisoners — believed to number in the dozens — held in secret CIA facilities. They have effectively disappeared, like the victims of a Third World dictatorship; they have never been registered with the International Red Cross, provided with a legal review of their cases or allowed to communicate with the outside world. From leaks to the media, we know that some have been tortured with techniques such as “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning.

So the United States’ treatment of its foreign detainees would improve enormously if all the prisoners it holds were transferred to Guantanamo. But — and here is another fact ignored in the global anti-American din — the Bush administration is already engaged in a concerted effort to close the prison or at least reduce its population to a minimum. No new prisoners have been brought there since September 2004, and scores have been transferred to their native countries.

A quarter of the remaining population will be returned to Afghanistan once a new prison there is constructed and guards are trained, within the next year; a substantial number may be charged with crimes once the Supreme Court rules on the military’s proposed system of justice. The remaining prisoners — mostly from Yemen and Saudi Arabia — haven’t gone home mainly because US officials worry they will be abused or released without adequate monitoring.

Some of those who demand that Guantanamo be closed insist that all its detainees either be tried or quickly freed. This is wrongheaded and, for some Europeans, hypocritical. In fighting their own wars against terrorists, Britain and other countries have relied on preventive detention to hold dangerous militants who cannot immediately be charged.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has publicly acknowledged that existing legal categories for detention don’t necessarily address the problem of stateless extremists who may be planning major attacks but haven’t yet committed a specific crime. That doesn’t mean that the current system of detention in Guantanamo is acceptable. But, as we argued in a previous editorial, the United States needs a way to hold some suspects without charge for a limited period under procedures regulated by law and US courts.

Once that regime is established, it will be possible to hold detainees from the war on terrorism in many US prisons. In our view, Guantanamo should not be one of them, because it has become a symbol of abuses with which the United States needs to make a clean break. But the most urgent concerns of those pressing the Bush administration ought to be the closure of the CIA’s secret facilities and the conversion of Bagram into an Afghan-only facility operated by the Afghan government.

Foreign prisoners held by the United States, wherever they may be, should receive Red Cross visits; their detention should be governed by law, with the right of review and appeal to independent judges.

—The Washington Post