‘If elected…’

THINGS have not become as clear as one would have wished after the counsel for President Pervez Musharraf pledged to the Supreme Court on Tuesday that his client would give up his army uniform “if elected president”. The substantive paragraph of the letter given to the apex court by Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada needs to be reproduced. It said, “If elected for a second term as president, General Pervez Musharraf shall relinquish charge of office of chief of army staff soon after election and before taking oath of office as president.” What happens if he is not elected? Will Gen Musharraf, in that case, continue to remain the army chief and breathe down the necks of the president and the prime minister? The letter also does not clear up another major issue: will the president seek re-election by the existing assemblies or by those that will come into being as a result of the parliamentary elections due later this year? The letter to the Supreme Court assumes that there is no bar on a government employee from seeking a political office within two years of retirement.

This is an issue on which the apex court has yet to give a ruling.

One wishes President Musharraf had shown a bit more confidence in himself. Notwithstanding his current rating, the earlier part of his rule saw some positive developments that included a consistently high rate of economic growth and the partial success of the normalisation process with India; and — barring some unsavoury incidents — he has allowed the press to operate freely. Also, let us accept, the opposition is hopelessly divided, and its leaders — some of them with a long history of mutual recriminations — are working at cross purposes. Under the circumstances, it would have been in the fitness of things if he had decided to fight re-election as head of state after discarding his uniform rather than doing so “if elected for a second term”.

It is time the president made it clear that he would seek re-election from the new assemblies. It looks absurd that the assemblies which themselves have a life of five years should give Gen Musharraf a decade. A transparent presidential election will set the pattern for the parliamentary elections, but it is a matter of concern that we still have no trace of an interim set-up. A greater task in the aftermath of the election will be to restore the balance between the powers of the head of state and the prime minister. The LFO reincarnated some of the worst features of Ziaul Haq’s constitutional scheme, like Article 58-2(b), which authorises the president to sack an elected government, even if the prime minister enjoys parliament’s confidence, and to dissolve the National Assembly. Besides, the president heads the National Security Council, thus making the elected civilian leadership subordinate to the military.

The time for manipulating the Constitution and for weird legal contrivances is gone. The people of Pakistan want unadulterated democracy — democracy as is understood the world over.

Talk of war once again

WHILE there is no doubt that Iran’s assertive posture vis-à-vis its right to develop nuclear energy for civilian use has heightened tensions with the US and other western countries, the latter, too, have not shown the diplomatic skills needed to defuse the situation. The latest volley of threatening words came from the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who, emphasising the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, said on Sunday: “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, too, has made it clear that “all options are on the table”. Predictably, perhaps emboldened by the stance of those countries that oppose war and of the IAEA that sees it as the last resort, Iran has taken these threats with a pinch of salt, as it has been doing all along. Indeed, there is reason for it to display such casualness. Despite their support for the imposition of UN sanctions on Tehran, countries like Russia and China, with profitable economic and energy ties with Iran, are reluctant to toe the American and French line. Many other countries are also opposed to another cycle of violence in the region. Unfortunately for Iran, the US has shown itself to be capable of bypassing global opinion and launching pre-emptive strikes as it did in Iraq and elsewhere.

A similar penchant has been displayed by Israel, which destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in the 1980s and could now be called upon by Washington to do the same to Iran’s atomic facilities. As we have often said in these columns, Iran, as a member of the NPT, is technically within its rights to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes. But given the deep suspicions harboured by the West and the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran’s nuclear programme, Tehran would be doing itself a favour by using its diplomatic skills to convince its detractors that it does not plan to develop atomic weapons. Instead, in what can only be seen as an attempt to provoke the US, it has taken to giving out periodic progress reports on the upgradation of its nuclear facilities. America’s naval build-up in the Gulf is a reaction to such a display of brazenness and, of course, to the perceived threat that Iran poses to Israel. Keeping in mind the violence in the Middle East, Tehran would do well to show more moderation in speech and attitude, and fully cooperate with IAEA inspectors.

Reducing Internet costs

DESPITE advancements in the telecom sector, for which Pakistan even received an international award in 2006, people are still paying a lot for Internet access compared to neighbouring countries. This was ascertained at the first broadband congress held in Sri Lanka this month where it was discovered that Pakistanis pay around $2,660 a year for broadband compared to $242 in Sri Lanka, $223 in India and just $112 in the Maldives. This needs to be addressed if progress is to be made. While the government has done well to promote information technology, it has not firmly pursued policies to ensure that access to the Internet is easy or affordable. Policies seem to have favoured Internet Service Providers more than the consumers. Many ISPs have been criticised for taking on too many users because of which the download speed is slow, therefore frustrating. The introduction of broadband technology as well as wireless Internet access removes these constraints but is way out of reach financially for millions of users.

There are some things the government can do to change this. It needs to see what progress has been made on the broadband policy adopted in Jan 2005. It can also ensure that public schools and colleges have high speed access to the Internet as most students cannot access it otherwise at home. Perhaps it can study India’s model which has ambitious plans of meeting the target of 100 million broadband users by 2015. However, no real progress can be made without addressing the price issue. One speaker at the conference said that the way to do so is to encourage large telecom operators to allow other firms to access their telephone exchanges (local loops). This sharing of wires will allow other companies to come up and offer a range of services which promote a level playing field.

There may be worse to come

A TELEVISION ad being aired in parts of the United States shows an American soldier who was injured in an explosion near Fallujah, losing both his legs. He is trying to explain why his country’s occupation army cannot afford to leave Iraq.

“They attacked us,” he says, as the screen shifts to an image of the smoking World Trade Centre towers in New York on Sept 11, 2001. “And they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq.”

Six years after the terrorist attacks against the US, efforts continue to insinuate a link between them and the decision to invade Iraq, even though this constitutes one of the weakest links in the neoconservative narrative that purports to explain how two unrelated instances of aggression fall under the same “war on terror” umbrella.

Although a majority of Americans were initially fooled by non-too-subtle government propaganda into assuming that Saddam Hussein had played some role in the 9/11 atrocity, credulity eventually gave way to scepticism.

In Washington last week, the fairly cautious presidential hopeful Barack Obama considered it prudent to wonder aloud whether the timing of General David Petraeus’s congressional testimony was intended to perpetuate the “notion that, somehow, the original decision to go into Iraq was directly related to the attacks on 9/11.”

The aforementioned TV commercial, according to The Washington Post, is part of a $15m media blitz paid for by Freedom’s Watch, a group of Bush allies co-founded by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Efforts to imply a linkage have made a comeback over the past year or so, after a period during which they were underplayed, with the now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s outfit helping to advance the case by renaming itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The irony, of course, is that the likes of al-Zarqawi gained a toehold in Iraq only amid the mayhem and chaos unleashed by the invasion. However, the impression of a link was reinforced — at least in the eyes of those who want to believe it — by Osama bin Laden’s videotaped message to Americans earlier this month, which enabled George W. Bush to interpret it as “a reminder that Iraq is a part of this war against extremists. If Al Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it is because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out and to develop a safe haven.”

In fact, Al Qaeda’s primary objective in Iraq was achieved the day the US invaded that unfortunate country. US intelligence estimates suggest that the proportion of “foreign fighters” in the country has always been fairly low, and opinion polls have consistently indicated that the vast majority of Iraqis are equally keen on being rid of Al Qaeda and the American occupation forces.

The Sunni-dominated Anbar province has lately been cited as a surge-inspired success story by Bush and Petraeus, but a survey conducted late last month for ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK suggests that 72 per cent of Anbar residents have absolutely no confidence in US forces and 76 per cent (up from 49 per cent last March) wish them to leave forthwith.

Small wonder, then, that the influential local sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was blown up 10 days after being photographed with Bush.

Meanwhile, a survey by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies warns that Al Qaeda is now stronger and more influential than it was in 2001, and is capable as ever of mounting spectacular attacks.

It’s extremely unlikely, however, that the US will — at least for the duration of the Bush administration — draw from such analyses the obvious conclusion that the “war on terror”, as waged, has proved dangerously counterproductive.

Amid reports, based on a household survey, that the death toll in Iraq is now well over the one million mark, there are increasing indications that an attack on Iran remains near the top of the agenda, with Dick Cheney once more taking a leading role in pounding the drums of war.

It seems superfluous to point out that the lessons of earlier American foreign policy catastrophes, such as the Vietnam war, are woefully being neglected when there is evidence that even the cost of ongoing blunders fails to facilitate a reality check. The debate in the US over the surge in Iraq tends to overlook the bigger picture: the scourge of occupation.

For better or worse, the US cannot hope to replicate that in Iran: it lacks the necessary military resources. The only alternative is aerial bombardment. That alone, whether it’s targeted or indiscriminate, will render the situation in that part of the world incalculably worse, not least from the American point of view.

Only one course of action that could prove even more dangerous, and that would be to allow Israel the satisfaction of avenging with its firepower Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s periodic anti-Semitic outbursts. But even if the US acts alone, or in concert with the odd western acolyte or two, the consequences in terms of increased Islamic militancy would easily eclipse what has been achieved via Iraq.

In view of which it is somewhat surprising that bin Laden, in his latest video harangue, made no overt effort to draw attention towards Iran. Apart from that, his speech was littered with references intended to convey the impression that he keeps abreast of international affairs, from climate change to mortgage woes in the US.

His critique, in passing, of capitalism and globalisation was particularly hollow, given that he has no alternatives to propose apart from a grotesque absurdity: the conversion en masse of Americans to Islam. US analysts suspect that at least a portion of bin Laden’s lecture was written or inspired by Adam Gadahn, an American convert who reputedly serves as Al Qaeda’s media adviser.

Converts from another country, meanwhile, were said to be behind a foiled plan in Germany to attack US military personnel — who are still stationed there two decades after the Cold War ended. It is fortuitous, of course, that the incendiary plot was nipped in the bud. The particularly alarming part of the story is that the plotters are believed to have received training in Waziristan.

The evidently increasing threat to European countries from “home-grown” terrorists undoubtedly provides cause for concern: it’s not unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Palestinian situation, but a crucial ingredient appears to be an insidious interpretation of Islam that may not be widely shared among Muslims, but tends to be accepted as a legitimate variant of the faith.

A bigger danger, meanwhile, is incubating closer to home. Of late, news from Pakistan consistently conveys the impression that while a facile tussle for power waxes and wanes in Islamabad, the nation’s fate is being sealed not all that far away, in the rugged terrain that bin Laden probably calls home.

From all of the foregoing, it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that almost everyone — including, arguably, the Bush administration — is considerably worse off as a consequence of 9/11 and, even more specifically, the manner of the American response. There are, however, two notable exceptions: the Islamic militants who worship violence, and the (mainly American) war profiteers who bow to the same deity.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.
mahir.worldview@gmail.com

Bush passes the buck

The Boston Globe

IN his speech to the nation Thursday night, President Bush said America’s engagement in Iraq will extend “beyond my presidency.” Whatever the value of his candour, Bush was warning Republicans and Democrats alike that the calamities he has wrought in Iraq will have to be overcome by his successor.

In the national interest, presidential candidates of both parties should ask Bush not to slough off his responsibility for cutting US losses in Iraq.

… Difficult as it may be for Bush to acknowledge these strategic mistakes, recognising the results of past actions is the first step towards policy changes that might limit or undo the damage already done to Iraq, the surrounding region and US interests. Such realism demands recognition of at least two unpleasant facts.

The first is that neither the Shi’ite religious factions who run the central government nor the Sunni tribal leaders who have been taking US arms and money to fight Al Qaeda have any desire to seek reconciliation on the basis of American-style compromises.

The second unpalatable reality is that the Shi’ite-dominated government that US forces are defending has been allied not only with Iran but also with the virulently anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr.— (Sept 15)

Ceasefire needs outside help

Chicago Sun-Times

SWINGING his veto sword last month, Gov. Blagojevich slashed $6.25m from an anti-violence project called CeaseFire. Lawmakers face an uphill battle to override those cuts. And that means other sources — public and private — will have to pick up the slack if the highly lauded programme is to continue.

The governor’s cuts weren’t based on the merits of CeaseFire, which has been praised by community leaders, Mayor Daley and even the governor’s own administration.

Instead, he cut CeaseFire and most every other project sponsored by Democrats in the House who weren’t toeing his line in the overall debate on the state budget.

Twenty-five representatives each asked for $250,000 to pay for CeaseFire in their communities, and all of them were rejected.

CeaseFire sends workers — often former gang members — into neighbourhoods across the city in an effort to curb violent behaviour. The group boasts success in helping to reduce the number of shootings in areas where it works.

CeaseFire already gets up to $2.5 million annually from foundations such as the Chicago Community Trust, the MacArthur Foundation, the Polk Bros. Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. — (Sept 17)