Blair’s new role

A LONG and eventful decade when Tony Blair was prime minister of United Kingdom and when he led the Labour Party to three memorable electoral triumphs has finally come to end. Amongst the changes that his successor, Gordon Brown, has already made is that of foreign secretary. Even as the great debate about Blair’s legacy continues, the focus will now shift to the new directions indicated by Gordon Brown.

For the people of the United Kingdom it has been a smooth and well-orchestrated transition. But the immediate career move of the outgoing prime minister, ordained almost entirely by President Bush, has not been received with the same equanimity in the region to which it pertains: Israel alone seems to have welcomed Tony Blair as the new special envoy of the Quartet to the Middle East.

At the basic level, the high profile appointment is a reward for Blair’s tenacious loyalty to President Bush in the face of massive disapproval at home and abroad of the wars that they waged together to destroy “radical Islam” and to reconfigure the Greater Middle East.

A report in the New York Times suggested that President Bush wanted Blair to work on behalf of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia to help the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, build the institutions and apparatus necessary for a viable state now that the Palestinian political landscape has changed.

The report identified Russia as the only grumbler about the appointment. The prestigious German weekly, Der Spiegel has, however, disclosed that the German foreign office had not been informed of plans to nominate Blair for the post even though the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeir, currently represents the EU in the Quartet. It has also noted that politicians both in Berlin and Brussels fear that, given his role in Iraq, Blair would be unacceptable as a go-between to many Arabs.

Some of the comment in the UK has been much harsher. Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent that on hearing of the proposed appointment he remained overwhelmed “that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women, and children on his hands is really contemplating being ‘our’ Middle East envoy.”

For Robert Fisk, Blair is ‘totally discredited in the region — a politician who has signally failed in everything he has ever tried to do in the Middle East’. Reflecting an Arab perspective, Soumaya Ghannoush wrote in The Guardian that in the Middle East, Blair’s name is associated with catastrophe, with the inferno he has helped create in Iraq. For that is, Ghannoush reminded the readers, “exactly what Iraq is today, whatever Blair may think, shrouded in a cocoon of hubris as he is. But he has no idea of how deeply loathed he is in the region to which he wishes to be dispatched as peace envoy.”

Tony Blair is a hugely talented politician. Like Clinton, he can still occupy the commanding heights of many other projects he could choose for his next ‘act’ on the world stage – the best-informed Blair watchers consider his role in national and international affairs as that of a consummate actor. He reportedly asked for Bush’s support for the Middle East assignment. It would be interesting to know why.

In theoretical terms, it may reflect determination to continue the battle against radical Islam by other means, or conversely a desire to redeem himself by finally doing some good. Unfortunately, not many people are willing to subscribe to the second conjecture. Blair’s regrettable role in delaying a ceasefire in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 has left behind a very cynical view of his approach to the region.

Be that as it may, Blair has been hurt badly by political Islam and cannot forget it. He had the making of a great prime minister and a memorable leader of New Labour. But he left office with a flawed legacy largely because of the decisions he took about two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Analysts recall that in the build-up to the invasion of Afghanistan, he travelled more than 40,000 miles for 54 meetings with other world leaders.

What exactly were the mainsprings of his passion for these two invasions? A popular, essentially secular, version attributes it to his fascination with an imperial reordering of the world. A year ago, Simon Jenkins surmised that the hidden premise of Blair’s position is that British and American troops must by definition be a blessing to any nation they occupy.

It is the same mindset that makes Condoleezza Rice maintain, notwithstanding more than half a million Iraqi deaths since 2003 and hundreds of thousands pushed into exile, that Iraq today is better off than under Saddam Hussein. In an alternative version of the dynamic that has driven Blair, there is a religious and ideological factor beyond “the imperialist illusion”; Tony Blair shares with President Bush the compulsion to rewrite Islam.

As British public opinion turned against him over these wars, Blair was increasingly vexed by thoughts of his legacy; this anxiety manifested itself in an endless critique of Islam. He returned to it in a number of highly publicised speeches and articles, not as a man of the Left but as an exponent and defender of “global values” threatened by Muslim extremists.

He spoke of these values with subliminal messages of their Christian origin. As speeches rolled on, Tony Blair became more of a Manichean; all shades of grey faded away.

There was the spirited analysis of radical Islam for a partisan audience in the United States and then a quasi-philosophical treatise on Islam in Copenhagen on the eve of the St. Petersburg G8 summit. Blair contributed an essay entitled “A Battle for Global Values” to Foreign Affairs and has shown a continuing preoccupation with the Muslim world in two of his more recent public discourses.

In the Foreign Affairs article, Blair argued that the war on terrorism was not just about security or military tactics but was a battle of global values. He discarded the entire background of Israeli occupation, of bruised causes, of oppression, of brutal denial of the Muslims’ right to resist foreign invasions.

Consider the following from this article: “More than 100,000 died in Algeria. In Chechnya and Kashmir, political causes that could have been resolved became brutally incapable of resolution under the pressure of terrorism.”

Is it conceivable that Mr Blair knows nothing about how terrorism entered the equation in these troubled cases, how and why numerous initiatives for pacific settlement were scuttled?

The reference to Algeria was particularly audacious. A free and fair election had enabled an Islamic party to win the first round and the great democracies on both sides of the Atlantic made sure that the final round was aborted. The result was a blood bath. Did Blair not participate enthusiastically in the effort to bring down Hamas after its landslide victory?

As to Chechnya, the British government is particularly well-informed about the genesis of that ghastly conflict. In Kashmir, what exactly were the peace moves that the militants allegedly destroyed in 1989?

In the Economist essay, Blair glossed over all the murder and mayhem of the invasion and claimed credit for removing a Middle Eastern dictatorship. The truth according to him is that “the conflict in Iraq has mutated into something directly fuelled by the same elements that confront us everywhere”.

In plain English, it means that resisting a victorious though illegal invasion was an impermissible mutation as it denied the victors the fruit of their success.

No wonder Robert Fisk dwells on Blair’s total inability to express any regret over bad decisions. No wonder that Blair has so little resonance with Muslims and that, during his valedictory diplomatic journey to the Middle East, his effort to mobilise Arabs against Iran and blame Hamas for obstructing a two-state solution of the Palestinian issue made hardly any impact. In fact, he was often described as the most pro-Israel British prime minister in recent history.

On June 12, Tony Blair indulged in the ultimate rationalisation for the failure of his imperial and religious wars: he accused the British media, especially The Independent, of attitudes that “sap the country’s confidence and self-belief” and undermine “its assessment of itself, its institutions.” In his final year, he kept hinting darkly that there was something wrong with Islam itself. Drumming up an indefinable threat from another religion, he is visibly unhappy that the British people did not march to that beat in the 19th century fashion.

The neo-conservative project for the 21st century is constructed on an imperial theme. Nothing is more sobering than to look at a map of military bases in the Eurasian landmass and along the littoral of the Gulf overshadowing sources of energy and strategic power. But a helpful subtext may also be the religious journeys of Bush and Blair.

Tony Blair’s discovery of religion at Oxford, his more recent interest in Roman Catholicism and his lifelong struggle to move away from Labour’s left to a centrist position — somewhat akin to the Christian democrats of continental Europe — may well have placed a burden upon him about Islam that he was simply not able to articulate except in the language of power and coercion.

He becomes an envoy to the Middle East at a time when there is a clear option between an honourable and comprehensive settlement and the coming wars of great intensity. When he last visited the region, the veteran journalist Patrick Seale posed the question if the British prime minister was a peacemaker or warmonger. Sad as it may be, the Arab-Islamic world would keenly watch which of the two categories would fit his new role.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Gagging the media is unwise

FOR a society to exist, certain communication system is a must. Even the primitive tribes had evolved several methods to this end which have been left behind by a changing world and replaced by the mass media that has become an increasingly important means of communication. The advent of modern technology has given a further impetus to it.

It is hardly necessary to over-emphasise the importance of a free media in a democratic country as it has become an effective instrument for strengthening the norms of democracy and creating a deliberative atmosphere to enable the people, who are the arbiters of their destiny, to make informed choices on important national issues. One cannot ignore the fact that media is in the vanguard of providing the relevant information to them that facilitates the decision-making process relating to their individual and collective lives.

In Pakistan one often hears or reads criticism against the media for its alleged irresponsible conduct. It is accused of projecting certain events in a manner that brings the government and its policies into disrepute and, therefore, the people at the helm justified the recent imposition of certain restrictions on the media. Regrettably, this is a much-derided argument that completely overlooks the fact that media is a mirror and its coverage of events only depicts what is actually happening in the country. The media should not, therefore, be accused of exaggeration if it does not toe the official line.

The exponents of restrictions on the media also ignore the fact that a large proportion of people in Pakistan are politically conscious and, therefore, they should not worry if the media sometimes presents confusing views on important national issues which, needless to say, is part of a democratic system. It is indeed unfortunate that the government considered it necessary to tighten screws on the media in order to force it to fall in line.

Being the fourth institution outside the government, the media also keeps a check on misuse of power by the three pillars of the state, namely, the legislative, the judiciary and the executive and, therefore, in a democratic polity an independent and strong media, unfettered by restrictions, is necessary to ensure good governance. It should therefore, be allowed to pursue its functions without fear or favour. As a matter of fact, it should not only be provided sufficient space but also protection for its lawful performance, even if, at times, it appears to be highly critical of the government.

However, at the same time, it has to be emphasised that while performing their functions, the media persons should not be swayed by personal likes or dislikes or any other subjective consideration white covering or commenting on events. They must perform their functions objectively and honestly. It is the right of the people to know the truth and the media persons must make earnest efforts to meet their expectations. One must, however, appreciate the fact that the media persons are often too near the events they cover to make a balanced judgment, especially when they see some appalling acts of barbarism or suppression being carried out during the performance of their professional duties.

There was no plausible excuse for imposing unreasonable restrictions on the media in the wake of the current judicial crisis, which has completely reversed the policy of freedom of expression that was being pursued by President General Pervez Musharraf. To say the least, it is a clear manifestation of the lack of comprehension on the part of those functionaries who have done it at a time when the country is already in a state of political turmoil. The ill-advised arm-twisting tactics adopted by them have unnecessarily created tension between the government and the media that could lead to undesirable consequences that may impinge on the national interests.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers”. The provisions of this Declaration are considered to have the weight of international law because they are so widely accepted and used as a yardstick for measuring the conduct of states.

Many countries, including Pakistan, have included the provisions of the Universal Declaration in their basic laws. It is, however, regrettable that the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has recently expressed his concern over the curbing of the freedom of the media in certain countries, including Pakistan.

The ongoing government-media crisis is a serious development that has created a serious situation. Prudence demands that before the present standoff between the government and the media becomes any worse, an unconditional and result-oriented dialogue be initiated between the two sides to resolve the matter in the right spirit. Both sides must redefine their relationship in a fair and objective spirit. Failure to do so will make things worse for both and for the country.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Is it pre-poll rigging?

THE efficiency of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is once again being questioned after the publication of provisional computerised draft electoral lists (DELs). Opposition parties have been protesting against the exclusion of over 20 million potential voters and countless errors in DELs.

A transparent electoral process is the main ingredient of a true democratic system and the registration of voters in an honest manner is the first step to holding free and fair polls. However, the present regime’s democratic credentials in this regard have remained questionable from the beginning.

The local bodies’ elections under the newly-introduced devolution plan in 2001, the presidential referendum, polls in 2002 and the local bodies’ elections in 2005 were all rigged. There is valid reason, therefore, for scepticism over the fairness of the forthcoming polls, especially because the exclusion of millions of eligible voters has reinforced fears about their transparency.

In the 2005 local bodies’ elections, Chief Minister Arbab Rahim mobilised the entire state apparatus to make or break candidates. Despite resistance by opposition parties, he bifurcated Hyderabad, Dadu, Jacobabad, Mirpurkhas and Larkana districts and distributed the newly created districts among feudals and his favourites to ensure the success of candidates backed by the ruling coalition as the district governments’ nazims.

The electoral process of by-elections in some constituencies was marred as the chief minister himself led rallies in support of his candidates and used state machinery at will.

While the ECP kept on about an election code conduct, its enforcement was nowhere to be seen in these polls. For instance, numerous complaints by the PPP to the ECP fell on deaf ears. Elections were held amidst armed clashes, rigging and the snatching of ballot boxes by supporters of the ruling party’s candidates.

Complaints regarding last-minute changes at polling stations and the non-provision of material to the polling staff were aplenty. Thus there is some validity to the views of political parties that the integrity of the ECP has not been above board.

Regarding the new DELs, one billion rupees were spent on the preparation of computerised lists, prepared under a USAID-funded project and supervised by the International Foundation of Election System in collaboration with the ECP. But their publication was delayed. These were to be finalised by May 30 after their display for review in January. Final lists will now be on display at the beginning of the last quarter of 2007.

The government has set up 45,403 display centres, with 11,047 in Sindh where teachers have to facilitate eligible voters, thus making their accessibility difficult.

Those who are 18 years or above on January 1, 2007, and have computerised NICs or old ones can be enrolled as voters. A number of forms are available at the centres for registration, complaints and correction. For revisions, voters, after filling out the appropriate form(s), have to appear before a judicial magistrate or civil judge. The magistrate will then record his findings regarding the claim of voter within 10 days after July 3 — the last date for review of the rolls. The forms will then be forwarded to the ECP for further action. All this is a time-consuming exercise.

According to the data of DELs released by the ECP, there are 52,102,428 registered voters — 20 million less than those who had voted in 2002. Apparently, 4.8 million names have been dropped in Sindh alone.

The ECP attributes exclusions to the fact that only those voters, who possessed CNICs were enrolled as it helped eliminate bogus voters. It says that the enrolment of those who had registration of votes in more than one area had been deleted. The fact that voters did not possess computerised NICs doesn’t disqualify them from being registered as voters. They should have been allowed an opportunity to prove their identity to get their names inserted in the electoral lists.There could be other reasons as well, and reports indicate that enumerators didn’t reach each and every household to obtain particulars or they didn’t collect the forms from voters.

The display centres have been wearing a deserted look in the absence of proper publicity. The staff there has been restrained from providing lists to political parties’ representatives to get these copied, but it is favouring those with influence. There are complaints that the staff of the display centres goes missing after 2pm although they have to be present until 5pm. Only men are deputed in the centres and in view of some cultural constraints in rural areas women do not feel free to visit these.

There are several errors pertaining to changes in area, wrong particulars etc in the DELs, etc. As far as Sindh is concerned, there have been complaints that wrong details have been entered regarding people’s surnames as the rolls have been prepared by those who are not familiar with those living in Sindh and their areas.

The PPP had obtained the highest number of polled votes in 2002 i.e. 7.8 million. But as per the current lists, a large number of eligible PPP voters have not been enrolled. PPP parliamentarians describe it as an attempt to cut their electoral strength in areas which are historically PPP strongholds.

For instance, in Larkana, in the home constituency of Benazir Bhutto, 95,000 voters have not been registered. According to PPP MNA Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, 15,000 potential voters have not been enrolled in his constituency. In Jacobabad (NA 208 — the constituency of Mir Ejaz Jakhrani), 64,000 voters have not been registered. Another parliamentarian says the names of 8,000 voters registered last time in the winning polling stations of the PPP were deleted. In Khairpur district, 892,800 were registered for the 2002 polls — the display list now shows 557,841. All this indicates pre-poll rigging.

Potential women voters in rural areas are hindered by illiteracy and poor access to Nadra offices. Moreover, the male members of their families don’t encourage them to obtain CNICs.

The opposition parties would be well advised to go through draft rolls as quickly as possible. They should mobilise their cadre. They must pool their resources, individually or collectively, to collect the particulars of voters and compare them with draft rolls at display centres. They should help their voters in following the laid down procedure for inclusion of new entries or objections.

They could set up camps, guide their electorate, accompany voters to the courts of concerned magistrates without wasting time to see that they are enrolled properly.

As for the ECP, it should ensure that the registration and correction process is smooth, inclusive and without hitches or errors, otherwise the next elections would hold no credibility.

The writer is a PPP-P member of the Sindh Assembly
bhuttomahreen@yahoo.com

Middle East after Iraq

ISRAELI historian Benny Morris is famous in his country for reopening the forgotten history of the expulsion of the Palestinians during the 1948 "war of independence" and deconstructing the Israeli myth that they freely chose to abandon their homes. By five years ago, however, he had lost faith in a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and was openly saying that everybody would have been better off in the long run if one side or the other had won a decisive victory in 1948.

If Israel had conquered all of Palestine and expelled all the Palestinians in 1948, Morris wrote, “today’s Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place, with a Jewish state between Jordan and the Mediterranean and a Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan. Alternatively, Arab success in the 1948 war, with the Jews driven into the sea, would have obtained the same, historically calming result. Perhaps it was the very indecisiveness of the geographical and demographic outcome of 1948 that underlies the persisting tragedy of Palestine.”

Well, of course, but most outcomes are indecisive. Like many knowledgeable people in the Middle East, Morris’s mood was strikingly pessimistic even before the US invasion of Iraq, but five years later the mood is darker still. Beyond forecasts of civil war in Iraq, however, there has been little effort to discern what the Middle East will actually look like after the US troops go home.

There is already a civil war in Iraq, and it might even get worse for a time after American troops leave, but these things always sputter out in the end. There will still be an Iraqi state, plus or minus Kurdistan, and regardless of whether or not the central government in Baghdad exercises real control over the Sunni-majority areas between Baghdad, Mosul and the Syrian border.

With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, post-occupation Iraq will have close ties with Iran, but there will be no Iranian troops there. Nobody in Tehran is crazy enough to volunteer Iranian troops for counter-insurgency duty in Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, and Iran lacks the military capability for adventures in the further reaches of the Arab world even if it had the desire.

The Sunni Arab parts of Iraq have been turned into a training ground for Islamist extremists from all parts of the Arab world by the American invasion. Once the American troops are gone, however, the action will soon move elsewhere, for the US defeat in Iraq has dramatically raised the prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world and beyond.

That is where the price of America’s Middle Eastern adventure will be paid: not in Iraq itself, but in the Arab states that still have secular and/or pro-Western regimes. The main (and generally outlawed) political opposition in all these countries – Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and half a dozen others – has been Islamist revolutionaries for many years already, and now some of them are going to win.

It’s not possible to predict which Arab states will fall under Islamist control, and they certainly aren’t all going to: the pipe-dream of a world-spanning Islamic empire remains precisely that. But it will be astonishing if one or more of the existing Arab regimes does not fall to an Islamist revolution in the next few years.

For the citizens of the country or countries in question, that could be quite a big problem, since it would probably mean not democracy and prosperity but just more decades of poverty and a different kind of tyranny. For people living outside the Middle East, however, it would probably make little difference

Islamist-ruled states are not the same as bands of freelance fanatics. If they have oil to export, then they will go on exporting it, because no major oil producer can now do without the income that those exports provide; they need it to feed their people. And they would have little incentive to sponsor terrorist attacks outside the region, for they would have fixed addresses, and interests to protect.

For Israel, however, the situation has changed fundamentally. For the first twenty years of its existence, Israel was a state under siege. For the past forty years, since the conquests of 1967, it has had the luxury of debating with itself how much of those conquered lands it should return to the Arabs in return for a permanent peace settlement. (The answer was always “all of them,” but that was not an answer many Israelis would hear.)

Now the window is closing. Before long, some of the Arab states that Israel needs to make peace with are likely to fall to Islamist regimes that have an ideological commitment to its destruction. (Hamas’s capture of the Gaza Strip is a foretaste of what is to come.) Israelis trying to evade hard choices have long complained that they had “nobody to negotiate with.” It is about to become true.— Copyright