The terror continues

THE militants have struck again. The two bomb blasts in Rawalpindi on Tuesday have killed 25 people and wounded nearly 60. This loss of innocent lives is to be strongly condemned. In this ongoing war between the government and the militants innocent people are falling victims and this cannot be condoned. Now the failure of the government’s anti-terror policy is no more in doubt. This failure reveals itself, first, in the ability of the militants to carry out with impunity bomb blasts wherever and whenever they wish. That one of the blasts took place in the cantonment area, supposedly a highly protected zone, does not reflect too well on the government’s defence capability in a war of this kind. Secondly, the army is under attack in the tribal areas where security personnel are being seized by tribesmen. The 300 soldiers kidnapped in South Waziristan on Sunday had not been released at the time of writing. The surge in violence that began in the aftermath of the crackdown on the Lal Masjid is not abating. It is now being asked if the government has a credible and result-oriented strategy. Islamabad has deployed nearly 100,000 troops in Fata both to check the two-way movement across the Durand Line and to wipe out foreign and local militants. Yet, this deployment has not brought peace in the tribal areas or in the “settled districts” or even beyond. More unfortunately, our allies do not consider this enough and want Pakistan to “do more”, thereby meaning that Islamabad should unleash further terror. It seems strange that it never occurred to the authorities in Islamabad that once they undermined the social and economic structures in this region, it would destabilise the entire area. In such circumstances resort to force will not produce results. A political strategy is the need of the hour. This will have to go beyond holding talks with the South Waziristan militants as was done a year ago.

The fact is that a military-backed government does not have the credentials to work and execute a political strategy. It only knows how to use the gun. By identifying itself with the United States, the Musharraf regime has further become for the militants the proverbial red rag to a bull. At no other time in its history has Pakistan been in greater need of a broad-based representative civilian government which could be expected to tackle the problem of violence in which the country is mired today. If the government does not move towards the establishment of a broad-based civilian government our army will remain bogged down in an unwinnable guerilla war which will demoralise our troops, if they are already not so. A government elected in a fair and free electoral exercise will alone be in a position to develop a national consensus on addressing the challenge of militancy and restoring peace in Fata, and curbing religious extremism in the country.

Economy in the driving seat?

HAVING given a boost to the national economy that has more than doubled the GDP over the past eight years, Pakistan’s policymakers are now keen to ensure that the current momentum of economic growth does not slow down because of political turmoil. Addressing a seminar last week, the prime minister’s advisor on finance, Dr Salman Shah, voiced this sentiment when he observed that economics should be in the driving seat instead of politics. While it is economics that has dominated President Pervez Musharraf’s national agenda, politics has emerged as the driving force since the judicial crisis erupted on the national scene in March this year. Subsequent political developments have undermined the concept of “economy first” as practised by military or quasi-military regimes in this country to depoliticise society.

Technocrats look at the world through what social scientists in the West describe as an “economic prism”. They believe that sustained and high economic growth can reduce poverty and usher in democracy. Until strong democratic institutions emerge, they pin their hopes on powerful individuals to provide stability and ensure economic progress. But which of the two — economics or politics — will be in the driving seat at different times is determined by the dynamics of the political economy. While technocrats can dominate politics for a while, this situation cannot continue indefinitely. Thus President Ayub’s “development decade” could not save the state structure he had instituted. Today, the economic ‘success’ of the last eight years — thanks to deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation — have not paved the way for a stable democracy. The economy is being driven by the market forces that have somewhat lowered the political risk. With no single leader dominating the political landscape, pluralism runs deep. This can lead to the maturing of constitutional democracy in which power is widely dispersed and shared. But can the economy flourish in such conditions?

Fortunately, there is consensus among the major political parties on economic reforms, though they may differ on the details. But this consensus needs the endorsement of the electorate. Economic policies that result in social exclusion and political polarisation are not sustainable. Without constitutional democracy, an independent judiciary and a sovereign parliament, there can be no stability without which economic development suffers. Political reforms have been late in coming and until the current constitutional-political crisis is resolved a congenial environment will not be created for putting the economy back in the driving seat.

The ordinance at last

AT A time when despondency had overtaken all those who had been pressing for a law to curb organ sales in the country for 15 long years, the government’s sudden decision to promulgate the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance, 2007, is being seen as nothing short of a miracle. We may never know what exactly prompted the government to take the step, especially after it referred the draft to parliament in August on the last day of its session — a move that was criticised as yet another delaying tactic. But perhaps it was the combination of Supreme Court pressure, intense lobbying by doctors and civil society members and the need to win some modicum of public respect before the upcoming polls that did the trick. Whatever the motive, it is among the few sensible moves that this government can be credited with. It is understood that no further changes were made to the ordinance, which is to come into effect immediately. Moreover, there is also the welcome news that a parliamentary standing committee has approved the bill, making its enactment into a more binding and permanent law possible during the next National Assembly session.

But the battle against those who are engaged in kidney sales is only half-won, and at least two difficult stages remain to make the victory complete. One is the implementation of the ordinance itself which prescribes fairly tough penalties for wrongdoers and stipulates the constitution of a monitoring authority to oversee organ transplants, enforce the rules and carry out inspections of recognised medical centres. Considering the scope of the organ mafia’s criminal acts — which include forcible extraction of kidneys from abducted victims — it is essential that such an authority is immediately formed to take up its duties. There is also the question of sensitising the public to the need for such a law and to promote deceased organ donation. That is the only way in which the demand for renal and other organ transplants can be met, leaving illegal operators, including unethical doctors, with no choice but to wind up their nefarious business.

Secularism and Islam

RECENT political developments in Turkey have prompted an outpouring of comment to the effect that the re-election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), commonly described as Islamist, and the success of its presidential candidate, Abdullah Gul, proves that Islam and democracy are not mutually incompatible.

That may be a point worth making, although chances are that those who have hitherto been convinced otherwise — be they Muslim obscurantists, Arab potentates or inveterate Islamophobes — will remain unconvinced by the Turkish example.

A substantial proportion of Muslims, however, have never had any serious doubts on this score. On the other hand, far too many Muslims harbour the illusion that Islam and secularism cannot coexist. It is in this context that Turkey appears to offer a more valuable lesson.

Most Turks — including, apparently, many of those who vote for the AKP — are proud of their country’s secular tradition. Earlier this year, when Gul’s presidential candidacy was initially proposed by the AKP, large numbers of them were led to believe that this tradition was somehow under threat. Their suspicions were not entirely unfounded. For instance, a dozen years ago Gul had talked about wishing “to end secularism” — although, not long afterwards, he had also spoken of wanting to see the “Islamic headscarf and the miniskirt walking hand in hand.”

However, it wasn’t so much his utterances that his opponents picked on: they appeared to be piqued by the fact that his wife, Hayrunisa, sports such a headscarf. As do millions of other Turkish women. And, of course, there are large numbers who don’t. Anyhow, back in May there were massive anti-Gul demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul.

In Turkey, the president is elected by parliament, and an opposition boycott led the Constitutional Court to annul Gul’s election, because it deemed the assembly inquorate.

The decision was handed down after the military made it clear where it stood via a message posted on its website. With only a little bit of exaggeration, it has been described as the world’s first internet coup.

The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded wisely to the provocation: it opted for early elections, and was returned to power with 47 per cent of the vote — 13 per cent more than it had won in 2002. Thereafter, Gul’s ascent to the presidency was only a matter of time, unless the army decided to intervene directly and thwart the democratic process, as it has done four times in the past half century.

The last time it did so was in 1997, when it forced the resignation of Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the Welfare Party, a progenitor of the AKP. Gul was a member of Erbakan’s cabinet, while Erdogan served as the mayor of Istanbul. The Constitutional Court subsequently banned the Welfare Party and disqualified Erbakan from public life. He then formed the Virtue Party, which was outlawed in 2001 after emerging as the main opposition party in the 1999 elections.

The point to be made here is that the so-called Islamists (not all of them are willing to accept this descriptor) did not stray from the democratic path. It is also worth noting that the popularity of the AKP and its predecessors isn’t all that closely related to matters of faith: it stems in large part from the fact that their members, when ensconced in positions of power at any level, have demonstrated reasonably good administrative skills without succumbing to the corruption that has characterised representatives of various other Turkish parties.

The AKP’s handling of the economy hasn’t elicited much criticism. Its power base consists to a considerable extent of Turks who have moved en masse in recent years from villages to cities, and who are viewed with disdain by sections of the urban elite. There are, hence, elements of a class struggle in what sometimes tends to be portrayed exclusively as a tussle between backwardness and modernity.

Last year, the country’s only Nobel laureate, the writer Orhan Pamuk, joined the ranks of Turkish intellectuals who have been prosecuted for “denigrating Turkishness”. Under Article 301 of the nation’s penal code, it is a crime to “insult” Turkey, its national character, or its government. The fact that such an article exists, and the state has few qualms about using it, points to a lack of maturity and confidence.

As in the case of Pamuk, it is most commonly used against anyone who brings up the awkward matter of massacres of Armenians as the Ottoman empire unravelled during the First World War. More than a million Armenians are believed to have perished during what is often referred to as a genocide.

Turkey is by no means the only country that seeks to cover up unpalatable aspects of its history, but it is among the few where those who question the official version of the past can end up dead. That’s what happened last January to the gentle, sensible and conciliatory Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. “The bullets aimed at Hrant Dink were shot into all of us,” declared Erdogan, and the 100,000 Turks who joined Dink’s funeral procession chanted “We are all Armenian.” Yet in July’s elections, the Nationalist Action Party, descended from the semi-fascist Grey Wolves, obtained 14 per cent of the popular vote.

It could be argued that the empowerment of alleged Islamists hasn’t seriously messed up Turkey’s political tradition precisely because the army and much of the civilian establishment serve as guarantors of the secular creed.

Chances are this sort of argument would go down well with the likes of Pervez Musharraf (even though in Pakistan’s case the army is better known for bolstering, rather than resisting, the forces of confessional fundamentalism). But its merits are unprovable: as long as the Turkish military clings to its role as arbiter-in-chief, the consequences of its withdrawal from the political scene can only be speculated upon.

In some spheres, these consequences would clearly be positive. Many of the dark forces that operate in Turkey boast military connections. The AKP’s stance on the Kurdish question — inhibited to some extent by the murderous zeal of the ultra-nationalists — is altogether more reasonable than that of the generals.

There is, one suspects, an important distinction to be made between reasonably devout Muslims capable of operating in a secular context and the purveyors of obscurantism. It is not inconceivable that a mature Turkey — a Turkey in which headscarves are neither obligatory nor illegal, and therefore no longer an issue — could establish the benchmark for its neighbours.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com

Button justice not for our courts

JUSTICE Tom Chambers of the Washington Supreme Court made a good argument in an opinion issued last week. We regret … that Chambers was alone in it.

The case was an appeal by Brian Keith Lord, who has twice been found guilty of the 1986 murder of teenager Tracy Parker.

Lord had his first trial thrown out because of a poor defence. At the second trial, in 2003, the state introduced DNA evidence and convicted him again. Lord appealed, complaining that some evidence from a dog had been omitted and that the family of the victim had been wearing her image on buttons. Our concern here is the buttons.

For the first three days of a 31-day trial, friends and family of the murdered girl sat in the courtroom wearing 2 ½-inch buttons with an image of her face.

On the fourth day the judge told them to take the buttons off. The high court’s task was to decide whether such buttons tended to prejudice the jury, and whether these particular ones had prejudiced it enough to spoil Lord’s second trial…

We are in a business that daily considers the messages we send, and this ruling makes us uneasy. We understand why the family would want to wear such buttons. We agree that buttons on spectators for three days out of 31 is not enough to order a third trial of a man nailed by DNA evidence. Chambers also agrees…

“A trial is not a sporting event where fans wave signs, logos, and photographs declaring their allegiance for one team or another,” Chambers wrote… Smart judges will read Chambers’ dissent, and not wait until the fourth day. — (Sept 3)

White House, dark secrets?

MAYBE the most surprising thing about the Bush administration’s refusal to release internal White House documents on the deletion of millions of e-mails from government computer files is that such a response surprises us at all.

Congress wants the e-mails as part of a probe into the administration’s ham-fisted and politically charged firings of nine federal prosecutors late last year. Suddenly (and suspiciously), White House officials reported the e-mails — as many as five million from March 2003 to October 2005 — are missing.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit group, wants to know what happened. The group filed a lawsuit in May requesting records from the White House Office of Administration… It made its request under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The Office of Administration has a well-established tradition of responding to such requests for records (it fielded 65 of them last year and has its own FOIA office). What’s more, the White House’s own website says the office “is responsible for responding to requesters who are seeking (Office of Administration) records under the FOIA.”

This time, though, the Justice Department, which has served as the White House’s pit bull for expanding executive privilege, is arguing that the office isn’t subject to the FOIA. True, the office did comply with the law in the past, the lawyers argued, but it can’t be required to do so in the future…

Executive privilege serves a legitimate role in the constitutional balance of powers and in matters of national security. But it’s being cheapened by this White House, which seems to use it as cover for dodging accountability and pushing government deeper into the shadows. — (Aug 31)