With Washington’s connivance

ISRAEL’S ground offensive had not begun while these lines were being written, but a pattern of what began 12 days ago is becoming clearer. The UN has not yet called for a ceasefire because the US, which supports Israel, wants the war to go on regardless of civilian deaths which increase by the hour. A ceasefire will completely upset Israel’s apple cart, and its sinister aim will remain unrealised. There are two motives behind the Israeli air blitz that began on July 12: to destroy Hezbollah and to punish the state and the people of Lebanon for sheltering it. In spite of the air attacks, the death of 350 people — mostly civilians — and the flight of half a million people from their homes, Israel’s strategic objective behind the air war has so far remained unaccomplished.

There is no let-up in Hezbollah’s rocket fire, and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah remains as defiant as ever. He would not release the two captured Israeli soldiers even if “the whole universe comes against us”. If the missile and tank fire had accomplished its purpose, which was to destroy Hezbollah’s fighting capability, a casualty-conscious Israel would not think of launching a ground offensive. Tel Aviv has already called up 3,000 reservists, and as an Israeli defence ministry spokesman said, a ground attack was “indispensable”. He admitted the failure of the air strikes by saying that the air force could not destroy the bunkers and the “fortified network” which Hezbollah had put in place. According to western defence experts, because of the Vietcong-style bunkers and tunnels made by Hezbollah, the resistance group has suffered hardly a few dozen casualties from the more than 3,000 Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.

Now US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is finally leaving for her much-delayed visit to the Middle East and has made it clear that she does not believe a ceasefire is needed. That a ceasefire will avoid civilian casualties and help launch an international aid effort for mitigating the Lebanese people’s suffering does not occur to her. Instead, Ms Rice told a press conference on Friday in Washington that a ceasefire would produce a “false promise” and would enable Hezbollah to re-emerge as a force. She is in no hurry, for her plans include visits to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and later a visit to Rome where a peace conference is scheduled for Wednesday. All this does not conflict with a ceasefire resolution which the US could have had passed at the UN. The reason for a further delay in a UN ceasefire resolution is obvious: this will give Israel more time to launch a ground offensive and make short work of Hezbollah. In the meantime, as the US media has reported, Washington is rushing the supply of laser-guided bombs and missiles to Israel.

Is there a government more apathetic to bloodshed than that of Israel? It has caused all this suffering to the Lebanese people simply because it wants two Israeli prisoners of war to be freed. Could it not secure their release by means of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah? Sheikh Nasrallah has indicated that he is ready for such a deal. Why cannot Israel and America end the Lebanese people’s distress and agree to a prisoner exchange — unless they believe that the PoW issue has come in handy for them to have a go at Hezbollah and Lebanon?

A questionable land deal

NEWS that the Punjab government is planning to procure some 1,200 acres of prime agricultural land under the provincial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has raised serious reservations regarding the property’s intended use. For one thing, the land in question appears destined for private, rather than state, ownership, a proposition that marks a conspicuous departure from past practice. While the prospect of foreign investment and job creation may conceivably meet the legal requirement that such acquisition can only be made in the ‘public interest’, it is questionable whether farmland that is among the most fertile in the country is a suitable location for an automobile assembly plant. Cars and trucks can easily be produced in less fecund environs, especially in a country with vast barren areas and where agricultural output is on the decline as it is. Secondly, the land owners are apparently being paid a pittance in disregard of the current market price. Thirdly, it is unclear who actually is buying the property. The Daimler-Chrysler factory apparently requires no more than 600 acres for the assembly of Mercedes vehicles. Some 685 acres are said to be earmarked for a golf course, a five-star hotel and a race course, with provisions for future expansion. Surely, this is stretching the definition of ‘public interest’ too far. Equally significant is the fact that the future owners of these luxury projects remain unidentified.

The key issue here is a seeming lack of transparency. Coming as it does in the wake of the abortive sale of Pakistan Steel Mills, objections to which also centred round a questionable land deal, the plans for the proposed automobile assembly plant should have been open to public scrutiny. Given the size of the project, and the fact that private companies will be the primary beneficiaries of this possibly unique application of provincial law, it would have been advisable to arrive at a decision through the normal political process. The centre is said to be pushing the project but the Board of Investment claims that the relevant file is not in its possession, creating further doubts about the fairness and institutional nature of the deal. If there is nothing to hide, there should be no need for secrecy.

Harassment of journalists

ON the face of it, Pakistan has what President Bush described in the days preceding his March visit to the country a “lively and generally free press”. Indeed, when compared to the battering it received under the last military ruler, Gen Ziaul Haq, it can safely be said that the press under Gen Musharraf’s government has to deal with far fewer restrictions than previously. But a recent NGO report that has recorded 48 cases of attacks on, and harassment of, journalists from January to June this year gives a somewhat different picture. According to the report, two journalists were murdered and 25 detained or kidnapped in the last six months. It also points out that violence against media property is on the rise as evidenced by attacks on press clubs in three cities. While the print media has been the main target of attacks, different pressure groups — that range from intelligence agencies to land mafia and religious bigots — are increasingly employing intimidatory tactics against the electronic media too.

That the press should know its limits and refrain from indulging in yellow journalism and other professional irregularities cannot be disputed. But freedom of expression remains a constitutional right, and there should be no reason to obstruct or intimidate a journalist unless he or she deviates from all norms of factual reporting. Then, too, it should be the responsibility of the media agency that has employed the individual to take him or her to task. Unfortunately, in our culture of growing intolerance, it is not just errant journalists who get into trouble. Media people are generally obstructed from doing their job of gathering and disseminating information by state and non-state parties who would be affected by their disclosures. Instead of harassing the press, the government would do well to protect journalists, who often report or investigate under hazardous conditions, from the excesses of parties with vested interests.

The two presidents in adversity

POLES apart in many ways, George W. Bush and Pervez Musharraf have at least one thing in common: they are presidents in adversity. Both are under attack at home and abroad and their policies are being denounced by their opponents.

Bush is hopelessly bogged down in Iraq with 127,000 troops and in Afghanistan with 23,000 troops. Musharraf has sent 90,000 troops to quell armed resistance in the tribal areas of the NWFP and thousands more in the natural gas producing regions of Balochistan.

Each president came to power after a bitter contest: General Musharraf through a coup on October 12, 1999, after he had been relieved in absentia from the post of chief of army staff, Mr Bush in January 2001 after a cliff-hanger of a presidential election.

From such inauspicious beginnings were the two leaders carried forward by the tide of 9/11. On that fateful day, Bush had conveyed to Musharraf, “Either you are with us or against us.” Pakistan’s president responded that his country would support the United States in the war against terror, which was about to be unleashed against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A common refrain in Pakistan’s drawing rooms and the news media is that Musharraf ought to have obtained better terms in return — more generous economic and military assistance, and a more active American role in efforts to resolve the Kashmir dispute with India. Pakistan’s reluctance to heed earlier American warnings about the Taliban and Osama bin Laden definitely put Musharraf in a spot, leaving little room for manoeuvre or for prevarication.

The two presidents’ current problems owe a lot to their responses to 9/11. The American onslaught against the Taliban and the Northern Alliance’s atrocities aroused the Pakhtuns on the issue of atrocities in Afghanistan. Before long, the “shock and awe” wore off and proud Afghan tribesmen resumed their age-tested tactics of hit-and-run, and an undetermined number sought help and shelter from their fellow tribesmen in Pakistan.

The US military and economic assistance has strengthened Pakistan and boosted Musharraf. But Bush’s unrelenting pressure “to do more” to fight the terrorists has forced the president to launch unpopular military operations against suspected militants. The consequence of this campaign has been to bolster the Taliban in Pakistan and neutralise the pro-government tribal maliks. Al Qaeda has retaliated by making at least two attempts to assassinate President Musharraf.

After 9/11, no armed struggle by Muslims has been regarded as legitimate by the western powers, be it in Chechnya, Palestine or Kashmir. India has not hesitated to take advantage of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Its cool response to Musharraf’s peace initiative to resolve the Kashmir dispute has provided an additional talking point to the president’s critics in Pakistan.

Outside the United States it is widely accepted that the terrorist menace the United States and its allies face gets its oxygen from the prolonged Israeli occupation of Arab territories after the 1967 war. Yet successive American and Israeli governments have failed to resolve this root problem.

The US authorities will have to show a better understanding of the ground realities in the Islamic world. They need constant reminding that the tragedy of 9/11 was essentially a part of the Middle East problem, more specifically the Palestine question; the role of Afghanistan or Pakistan is incidental and fortuitous.

While agreeing to President Bush’s roadmap to peace in 2003, Israel has been expanding Jewish settlements and erecting walls and fences on Palestinian territory to divide it into sealed enclaves. Managing the levers of power expertly in Washington to ensure that the Jewish state is not pressured into returning Arab lands may provide Israel an illusion of security. Yet this very success carries within it the seeds of recurring destruction and turmoil.

Moderate educated Muslims are strongly opposed to terrorist violence and the West expects them to persuade their co-religionists to use peaceful means to attain their political objectives. But rational arguments have limited impact on desperate people for whom the perceived wrong is overpowering, and measures to right it feeble.

Instead of addressing the unresolved Middle East question, the basic cause of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush has seized upon the peripheral issue of ‘promoting democracy’. Democracy is surely important but it has nothing to do with 9/11. If anything, the victory of the Hamas in the Gaza election shows that democratic elections will not necessarily bring to office a pro-western government.

The events of 9/11 triggered another series of mistakes by Bush, starting with his State of the Union address of 2002, in which he declared that Iraq, Iran and North Korea constituted an axis of evil. The address was a prelude to the invasion of Iraq in early 2003. This debacle had claimed the lives of 200,000 Iraqis and 2,500 American soldiers by early June 2006, most of them after the fall of Baghdad. In addition, Iraq is being ripped apart by Shia-Sunni sectarian violence.

Having encountered robust armed resistance in Iraq, many Americans policymakers, including those in the military, now wisely deem it impractical to attack Iran, a stronger, more resolute adversary. In East Asia, North Korea’s recent missile tests indicate that it is on the way to acquiring intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

It is not the purpose of this article to analyse the entire spectrum of key issues relating to the US economy, foreign policy, the environment and civil rights that have contributed to the decline of Bush’s popularity rating to a low of 35 per cent end-June 2006. Suffice it to say that Iraq remains the biggest immediate problem for him, with only 33 per cent of the American voters approving his Iraq policy.

Criticism of President Musharraf has also become more vocal in Pakistan and the United States. Remarkably, elements of the same liberal constituency in the United States gunning for Bush have been blasting Musharraf. An excess of certitude and an erroneous belief that an effective communicator has to explain everything may be responsible for some setbacks. In 1972, even a maestro like Bhutto was reduced to distraction after allowing free play to indiscreet, supposedly witty remarks about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in a late-evening interview with Oriana Fallaci. Bhutto sent emissaries after her to beg the journalist to expunge his spiteful remarks in the interest of peace in South Asia.

The real problem for the two leaders is one of principle. For Bush, it is his acquiescence in the violation of the principle of national self-determination in the Middle East, especially Palestine, and the related principle of non-admissibility of the acquisition of territory through military conquest. One can only hope that from the wreck of his second term President Bush might be able to forge a national consensus to break the logjam of the stalemated Middle East situation. If that were to happen, progress on the Iraq front would also be possible.

For President Musharraf, the operative principle must be democracy, based on free and fair elections and a constitution respected by all. This is a tall order after all the abuses that Pakistan’s political system has endured since 1972, but many observers believe that without a genuine government by constitution Pakistan will face increasing disaffection, instability and ungovernability.

Seven years of President Musharraf’s benevolent despotism and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s technocratic skills have no doubt brought greater economic stability, a respectable six per cent growth rate, and a build-up of foreign exchange reserves. But religious extremism, law and order problems, joblessness, inflation, corruption and bureaucratic inertia make a brew deadly enough to overwhelm any regime.

President Musharraf reckons that he needs another term to tackle the many unfinished tasks, including progress on Jammu and Kashmir leading to a genuine Pakistan-India peace. He would also like to start work on the big dams on which the future well-being of Pakistan depends so much. Many who are nostalgic about the Ayub era may wish Musharraf success in these endeavours.

The president’s immediate dilemma, apart from the uniform issue, is whether he should play it “safe” by submitting to a vote by the outgoing parliament, where he commands an easy majority. The president has to decide whether he would be able to put up with condemnations from home and abroad for obtaining a defective mandate from a lame-duck institution whose term is about to expire.

With the benefit of hindsight, it may still be possible to avoid Ayub Khan’s error in underestimating the importance of democracy. The late president’s lifetime field marshal’s uniform and the flawed election victory over Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah could not save him when he lost the ineffable “mandate from heaven”. Imponderables apart, prudence dictates that fair play and the spirit of government by constitution could provide legitimacy and long-term stability.

To sum up, the two presidents in adversity need to take a hard look at the lessons of history. President Bush must surely understand by now that the Arab people will never accept the occupation of their territory through conquest. Israel is there to stay but basically it has to be a pre-1967 Israel, not an Israel that annexes large tracts of West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights.

President Musharraf, too, understands that in the 21st century no leader in Pakistan will be able to carry on without legitimacy based on popular support.

The writer is a former ambassador.