THE entrance doors of Marlborough House in London need remodelling. That gracious mansion was for many years the official residence of the Princes of Wales and later two Queen Dowagers.

Its heavy wooden doors once swung open to admit royalty; today, they open and close for the staff of the Commonwealth Headquarters Secretariat and for visiting members from its 53 member states.

Now that Pakistan has been readmitted for the third time into the Commonwealth of Nations, is it time to replace those doors, and in their place install something that is more reflective of the Commonwealth’s membership policy — revolving doors, perhaps?

The Commonwealth rose initially like a modern phoenix out of the ashes of the British Empire. Founded in 1949, it included all those ex-British colonies that achieved independence but nevertheless found it difficult to sever their umbilical relationship with the mother country — Great Britain. Even after many countries became republics, they chose to continue recognising the titular presence of the British Crown, personified by Queen Elizabeth II.

By 1961, cracks began to appear. South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth, after pressure had been applied from newer African member states with ethnic populations the South African government had segregated in its own country, under the reprehensible doctrine of Apartheid.Ten years later, in 1971, the Commonwealth adopted the Singapore Declaration of Commonwealth Principles, a gossamer ‘set of ideals and agreed values’. Following the India-Pakistan war over East Pakistan that year, our Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, resentful at the speed with which India and other countries such as the UK hastened to recognise the new state of Bangladesh, withdrew from the Commonwealth. He felt he had grounds. Member states had violated their own principles, for Article 13 of the Singapore Declaration read unequivocally that: “In rejecting coercion as an instrument of policy, they recognise that the security of each member state from external aggression is a matter of concern to all members.” While all members in the Commonwealth thought themselves to be equal, some were obviously more equal than others.

Pakistan remained outside for 17 years, until 1989 when an election propelled Benazir Bhutto into her first prime ministership and Pakistan became eligible for re-entry. It had been a member for hardly a decade when in 1999, following the ouster of Nawaz Sharif by General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan was again shown the door and suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth.

This state of limbo continued until May 2004, when following the Musharraf-sponsored elections, Pakistan was again readmitted. In November 2007, Pakistan was suspended yet again in the wake of the imposition of emergency by President Musharraf. (Would it be ungracious to cavil that when in 1975 Mrs Indira Gandhi invoked an emergency in India that was to last 19 months, not a tremor was felt in Marlborough House?)

The grounds given for our suspension by the Commonwealth Ministers’ Advisory Group (CMAG) make interesting reading. The CMAG demanded “an immediate repeal of the emergency provisions, restoration of the Constitution, and the independence of the judiciary”. It called upon President Musharraf to stand down as chief of army staff. It demanded an immediate release of political party leaders and activists, removal of curbs on the media, and the speediest creation of conditions for the holding of free and fair elections.

These demands were aimed at President Musharraf. He took appropriate measures and on May 12, 2008, the CMAG met at Marlborough House and decided that as “the Government of Pakistan has taken positive steps to fulfil its obligations in accordance with Commonwealth fundamental values and principles”, Pakistan stood restored to the Councils of the Commonwealth.

Would it be churlish, now that we are back inside Marlborough House, to ask the CMAG how it thought that suspension of a country was justified when each of the violations of its principles was caused by one man, not 160 million of its citizens? Many of them would argue (especially the lawyer community) that in fact they themselves are the victims, not the violators.

How, some would question, does the removal of his uniform by Musharraf per se qualify us as a country to be readmitted to Commonwealth membership? Does the CMAG think a country arrests its own political leaders? Does it apply curbs on its own press? And why should its citizens deny themselves a right the Commonwealth holds so dear — “their inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which they live”. (The text is from Article 6 of the Singapore Declaration, in case the CMAG has forgotten.)

Now that our membership has been restored, should we be in a state of euphoria? Or should we stop for a moment and ask ourselves whether membership of the Commonwealth club is worth these metronomic humiliations?

The Commonwealth today has 53 member states, with over two billion citizens. That represents almost 30 per cent of the world’s population. There is obvious comfort in such camaraderie. But do we have anything in common with Mozambique — the first country that was not a former British colony to join the Commonwealth? Or with Francophone Cameroon? The Queen speaks French. We do not. Or are we desperately afraid of being left out in the cold again?

Perhaps, some mandarins in our Foreign Office will apply their minds to assessing the costs and benefits of such a revolving-door relationship. Meanwhile, their 253 counterparts in Marlborough House might like to re-read the speech made by the previous Commonwealth secretary General Don McKinnon at Kampala,Uganda, on Nov 25, 2007, days after Pakistan’s last suspension. He spoke of the Commonwealth as “an organisation that works on behalf of those who need it most”. Being a New Zealander, he quoted a Maori proverb: “What is the most important thing in the world? The people! The people! The people!”

Before showing 160 million of us the door the next time, the CMAG might care to remember that Maori chant.

fsaijazuddin2@gmail.com

HOW does one describe a city always in a state of flux, with its citizens constantly seen engaged in feverish activity? The word ‘discombobulated’ seems to sum it up. The markets down by the river are as busy as ever, with women being the chief purchasers, whether in smart suits — skirts to the ankles — and face uncovered or in the traditional burka. They toss second hand-clothes from one pile to the next.

After a gap of four years, Kabul is still familiar to me, yet different. When I first visited this city in 1992, it was virtually traffic-free, except for the odd beat-up Russian truck or yellow taxi. Bicycles, pushcarts and horse- and donkey-drawn carts were the norm. Now the traffic is like it is in Peshawar.

Some of the long, wide avenues are less busy, due to the fear of the people using them, or so I was told, especially at night. On a wide avenue, that has little traffic, a vehicle is more vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet or to kidnappers. Afghan children have been kidnapped, either to be returned unharmed, after the payment of a huge sum of money, or sent back as body parts in a sack. Apparently, a number of wealthy families have moved to Dubai.

Everywhere there are police and army road blocks. Foreign companies and NGOs exist behind high makeshift walls, barbed wire and concrete tank busters. The roads are pockmarked with potholes, cracks and great stony troughs. How can it be, that seven years on, after 9/11 and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan, and billions of dollars in aid, the road network is as bad as the unmended roads of Swat and Dir?

There is no proper scheme for sanitation. The city water system is erratic and provided mostly through hand pumps that were given by NGOs back in the 1990s. People who own houses rely on wells. Electricity is likewise erratic and unpredictable. The voltage is low and the cabling old and out of date. The rich and NGOs now use battery-run generators to ensure a stable supply of power.

One could hear a taxi driver mutter that the people did not like the Americans. “They would like the Russians to come back. At least they built schools and roads, and things were so much cheaper,” he said.

The director of an NGO remarked that the country was going downhill and that the Americans should be careful, as they would have a disaster on their hands. He was going to suspend a project which had been started in Nuristan.

All over Kabul, construction is going on but in the private sector and not as a result of any development as such. A consultant theorised that this may be the case so that it is seen that the money is sent out to the provinces. Billions of dollars have been committed and released, but no ministry has spent its budget. Corruption is rampant and there are not enough qualified people to implement the programmes. The lack of education, awareness and exposure to the outside world and decades of underdevelopment are, perhaps, as much to blame as 30 years of war. At least there are more health clinics and schools now in the rural areas.

According to one NGO worker, the only development is in capacity-building and advisors, but it seems to exist more in quantity than quality. It is said that the ministry of education has 70 advisors.

There is a new road from the airport (that now looks like a functional airport instead of a metal scrap yard) and I was told that a bridge was going to be built over the river. But the city as a whole has a dishevelled appearance, although many streets and boulevards are clean and lined with trees. New trees have been planted on many streets by the ministry of agriculture and by private citizens (Peshawar, please take note!).

Some areas, like those down by the river, are strewn with garbage. The shops lining the streets on either side of the river are as dilapidated as they were 14 years ago.

One can see beggars everywhere. Children, women in burkas and amputees flit between the vehicles. On one street, I saw a row of women sitting on the road, forming a line down in the middle. And yet there are mobile antennae everywhere. There are four mobile companies in the city. Computer shops are everywhere. Glass-covered plazas and wedding halls are all over the city, along with shops displaying wedding gowns. Even the bakeries are filled with wedding cakes. I had a hard job trying to find the traditional slab cake that I love. My search was only satisfied in Flower Street.

The feature that struck me most was the dichotomy of Kabul. In a city where returning refugees live in tents in waste grounds or on the rooftops of bombed-out buildings, where there is vast unemployment and where so many do not have life’s basic facilities, not even enough to eat, there are those with money, who can indulge in fancy weddings.

While young NGO workers can have the experience of a lifetime (just like Prince Harry in Afghanistan sent to kill the Taliban) and older hands can experience the good life, albeit with the threat of constant danger.

I AM not sure what was the worse part of this week. Living in Lebanon? Or reading the outrageous words of George Bush? Several times, I have asked myself this question: have words lost their meaning?

So let’s start with lunch at the Cocteau restaurant in Beirut. Yes, it’s named after Jean Cocteau, and it is one of the chicest places in town.

Magnificent flowers on the table, impeccable service, wonderful food. Yes, there was shooting at Sodeco — 20 yards away — the day before; yes, we were already worried about the virtual collapse of the Lebanese government, the humiliation of Sunni Muslims (and the Saudis) in the face of what we must acknowledge as a Hezbollah victory (don’t expect George Bush to understand this) and the danger of more street shooting.

But I brought up the tiny matter of the little massacre in northern Lebanon in which 10 or 12 militiamen were captured and then murdered before being handed over to the Lebanese army. Their bodies were — I fear this is correct — mutilated after death.

“They deserved it,” the elegant woman on my left said. I was appalled, overwhelmed, disgusted, deeply saddened. How could she say such a thing? But this is Lebanon and a huge number of people — 62 by my count — have been killed in the past few days and all the monsters buried in the mass graves of the civil war have been dug up.

When Abed drove me up to the north of the country three days ago, bullets were spitting off the walls of Tripoli and one of the customs officials at the Syrian border asked me to stay with him and his friends because they were frightened. I did. They are OK.

But being from the wrong religion is suddenly crucial again. Who your driver is, what is the religion of your landlord, is suddenly a matter of immense importance.

The roads were open again on Tuesday; the hooded gunmen had disappeared; the government had abandoned its confrontation with Hezbollah — the suspension of the Shia Muslim security chief at the airport and the abandonment of the government’s demand to dismantle Hezbollah’s secret telecommunication system was a final seal of its failure.

That George Bush declared in Jerusalem that “Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognise the emptiness of the terrorists’ vision and the injustice of their cause”.

Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al Qaeda is not being defeated. Hezbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas’s war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters — I need no apology to quote Churchill’s description of 1948 Palestine yet again — and this foolish, stupid, vicious man is lying to the world yet again.

He holds a “closed door” meeting with Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara — a man stupendously unfit to run any Middle East “peace”, which is presumably why the meeting had to be “closed door” — but tells the world of the blessings of Israeli democracy. As if the Palestinians benefit from a democracy which is continuing to take from them the land which they have owned for generations.

Do we really have to accept this? Bush tells us that “we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights resolutions against the freest democracy in the Middle East than any other nation in the world”.

The truth is that it is a source of shame that the United States continues to give unfettered permission to Israel to steal Palestinian land — which is why it should be a source of shame (to Washington) that the UN passes human rights resolutions against America’s only real ally in the region.

And what is Washington doing in the country where I live? It has sent one of its top generals to see the Lebanese army commander, signalling — a growing Fisk suspicion, this — that it has abandoned its support for the Lebanese government. The Americans promise more equipment for the Lebanese army.

Yes, always more equipment, more guns, more bullets to the Middle Eastern armies though — I have to say yet again (and I repeat that I do not like armies) — the Lebanese army saved us all this week. Its commander-in-chief, General Michel Sleiman, will become the next president and the Americans will support him and feel safe, as they always do, with a general in charge. “Chehabism”, as the Lebanese would say, has returned.

But I am not so sure. Sleiman gets on well with Damascus. He is not going to lead his soldiers into a pro-American war against Hezbollah. And the Lebanese are not going to join Bush’s insane “jihad” against the “world terror”.

— © The Independent