A victory of sorts

IF one were not opposed to the nuclear device on a point of principle as I am, one would have applauded India for having forced its way out of its 34-year-old nuclear isolation.

It has become a nuclear power, an official member of the exclusive club, from being a nuclear pariah.

In other words, New Delhi can get nuclear technology, reactors and fuel from anywhere in the world. The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has not only lifted the ban but has also allowed India to retain nuclear weapons without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty — a right granted only to the five-member club consisting of the US, the UK, Russia, France and China.

Yet it has been a victory of sorts. But for Washington’s full support all the way, New Delhi could not have obtained the waiver to test. Unfortunately, India’s enunciations were not trusted but Uncle Sam’s word was. This makes it even more clear that America holds the key. In fact, Washington is the founder of the NSG.

However, the manner in which India went about getting the waiver made one feel small. The foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, went on issuing one clarification after another and Indian top officials talking to the NSG members till the early hours for three days at Vienna kept assuring them that India’s old declaration of “no first use” amounted to the guarantee required.

New Delhi did not have to do all this. It amounted to cringing before even a country like New Zealand, China’s pawn. India should have stood its ground and told the NSG that its unblemished record of non-proliferation was there for all to see. India’s izzat (respect) was hawked when the draft was revised and re-revised half a dozen times to accommodate a petty member’s petty objection. On the other hand, the big ones did not want a hick to sit at the same table.

The waiver was re-worded to say: “In the event that one or more Participating Governments (PGs) consider that circumstances have arisen which require consultations, (PGs) will meet, and then act….” to see whether the NSG guidelines had been followed. This change was made at the urging of the club members who did not want to acknowledge India as a partner of the NSG.

It is not yet known what the quid pro quo for US support is. India’s statement after getting the waiver was that it would wait until the US Congress ratified the Indo-US nuclear deal so that Washington was there in the field when the orders for the reactors were placed. It is strange that New Delhi should emphasise the immediate production of nuclear energy and, at the same time, Mukherjee should be assuring US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that India would wait until the US Congress cleared the deal. Suppose there is a delay, what happens to the reported offer by Russia to supply four reactors with 1000 KW capacity each even tomorrow?

In fact, America has made its position clear in a letter leaked by Howard L. Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The deal would not mean the transfer of any sensitive technology to India or uninterrupted fuel supply — a contradiction of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurances to parliament which could encourage the NSG countries. The letter also says that the “US government will not assist India in the design, construction or operation of sensitive nuclear technologies”. By insisting that the letter contains “nothing new”, New Delhi has implied that it concurs with the damaging US interpretations.

Australia’s post-waiver statement that it will not supply fuel to India indicates that America has many arrows in its quiver. If it is annoyed in any way with India and not necessarily over the nuclear deal, all facilities would come to an end. In fact, Washington’s eyes are fixed on a strategic alliance with New Delhi. America’s ambassador to India David Mulford said even before the approval of the waiver that India and the US had already come close to each other in many strategic fields. Defence Minister A.K. Anthony’s visit to America, timed after the waiver, is more than a visit. This is ominous because it tells upon India’s non-alignment and the faith of many nations in New Delhi’s independent policy.

China’s second thoughts were a surprise because it had assured Manmohan Singh during his visit to Beijing that it had no objection to India getting the waiver. It was President Bush who rang up the Chinese president to withdraw the objection. America is not doing all this for selling reactors because after the NSG clearance India can purchase from any country which is cheaper. The reactors offered by Russia or France may prove to be better than the 10-year-old reactors which American businessmen have in their basement.

True, America wants to use India to counter China. But if Beijing continues to play a double game as it did at Vienna, New Delhi, by dint of circumstances, would be pushed to America’s side. What does the refrain of ‘Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai’ mean when Beijing strikes against New Delhi whenever an opportunity arises?

It was natural for Beijing to encourage Islamabad to have a parallel treaty like the Indo-US deal. Therefore, President Asif Ali Zardari’s planned visit to China to negotiate a nuclear deal does not come as a surprise. What one wishes is that New Delhi and Islamabad should be talking to each other on such and other problems because the two are natural allies.

The negotiations at Vienna should make India clear that China can never be a friend, much less an ally. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru warned the country through a letter he wrote to the chief ministers after China’s attack on India in 1962. “We do not desire to dominate any country, and we are content to live peacefully with other countries provided they do not interfere with us or commit aggression. China, on the other hand, clearly did not like the idea of such peaceful existence and wants to have a dominating position in Asia. We do not want communism to come here and yet the essential conflict is more political and geographical than that of communism, although communism is an important factor in the background.”

The BJP’s criticism that the Manmohan Singh government has a secret understanding not to hold the test at any time is not convincing. As former President Abdul Kalam said India will not honour any commitment when it comes to the national interest. Presuming there is some understanding, I cannot imagine any government honouring any commitment if testing is required for the country’s security. Not to be the first user, a welcome unilateral statement, was made by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee after exploding the device. New Delhi should stick to it in letter and spirit.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi

What will happen next?

CERTAIN analysts are now happily predicting the onset of a successful transition in the country’s politics. It is argued that Pakistan has now safely started its journey towards democracy, peace and development and so the counter-argument that a sustainable change in the country requires transformation does not stand anymore.

Such views make it imperative to evaluate what has changed in Pakistan and what one should expect in the future. In order to do so, let’s see the changes that have taken place.

It is clear from the recently held presidential elections that the Pakistan People’s Party is back in power the way it was during the 1970s. In 1970-71, the PPP, which was then a new party, had emerged as a political force to reckon with under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It had a clear majority in the two provinces of Sindh and Punjab and managed to form coalition governments with the National Awami Party in the Frontier and Balochistan provinces.

A similar situation seems to prevail now, especially in light of the presidential elections in which it obtained a two-third majority. Currently, it has a coalition government in all the four provinces. The only difference is that it does not have a majority in Punjab.

Another similarity pertains to civil-military relations. The armed forces conceded power to the civilian government of the 1970s after it was cornered as a result of an external crisis. This time the military has conceded space to the PPP after it suffered from a crisis of credibility internally and the external threat of the global war on terror.

When the PPP took power during the 1970s after 11 years of military and hybrid military rule, people were hopeful about the return of democracy. However, the popularly elected government then ruined its political credibility by taking authoritarian actions such as sacking the NAP chief minister in Balochistan, strengthening patronage politics and beefing up the military’s power. Resultantly, the army pushed its way into politics and took control of the state at the first available opportunity.

It is hoped that the present political dispensation has learnt its lessons and will not try to play the same tricks such as destabilising the opposition in Punjab. As long as the PPP and PML-N allow each other to rule peacefully, the government is likely to continue in power. What they ought to understand is that with the prime minister and the president hailing from the same political party, the option of sacking the government through the controversial Article 58-2 (b) is not possible which, in turn, means that the next time the military intervenes it would be through activating its intelligence agencies and direct action.

The use of the above-mentioned constitutional article was possible only during the 1990s when the three presidents were considered neutral by the establishment — or could be neutralised as they were not the main stakeholders. Asif Ali Zardari, on the other hand, is both the ‘owner’ and the CEO of the PPP. He is the president as well. This means that the army would have to force him and his party out through direct intervention.

Lest we get too depressed by such a doomsday scenario, let’s note that Pakistan’s current politics represents a process of continuity in which the interests of both external and various domestic forces seem to have converged at least for the time being. This is what those highlighting a successful transition are arguing.

Despite the removal of the former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, most of his policies have continued — such as the war on terror, the privatisation of state assets (this is what the new government claimed it would do in the coming days), increase in the price of utilities at the behest of multilateral aid donors, non-restoration of the judiciary to its pre-Nov 3 position, and improving relations with external powers and regional actors.

In fact, this government will be in a better position to pursue policies because it has greater public support and political legitimacy than the previous regime. Therefore, the government can pursue the war against terror more efficiently and vigorously which would mean that the cooperation and friendly links with Pakistan’s prime patron, the US, will also continue and we might have a chance to see Washington supporting a civilian regime rather than a military dispensation. Many believe that this is bound to bring greater stability to the country.

However, continuity itself is not a guarantee of structural change in the political system that those arguing for a transition appear to ignore completely. The power structure and the shape, interests and behaviour of the ruling elite will remain the same.

At least three features of the political system will remain unchanged. First, the system of patronage politics will be the same. In fact, patronage politics will both strengthen and deepen as the cost of living increases and opportunities remain static due to structural problems such as less socio-economic and human resource development. Although Islamabad claims to have increased the literacy rate, the fact is that functional literacy, which allows citizens to become skilled workers, remains low. The job market depends on the public sector and an individual’s alignment with those in power. Under the circumstances, every party will provide advantages to its own supporters and not to others.

Second, a part of patronage politics is the shape of the ruling elite which will remain the same. It will continue to include the landed-feudal, big business, industrialists, the military, the clergy and the militants via the intelligence agencies. The common interest of these stakeholders is to remain in power for which they pursue different means. Another common denominator is the exploitation of ordinary people, a pattern that will remain unchanged. Although Islamabad proposes to fight the terrorists, there are many who will continue to survive as they might be put to use at some later stage.

Third, civil-military relations are not likely to change. Currently, the military is not eager to create problems for the civilian dispensation and vice versa. But this also means that the political government will not take the opportunity to build and strengthen institutional mechanisms to improve the balance in its favour (the new president has talked about reducing the budget of the presidency with no mention of the defence budget).

There is no plan to harness and check the economic and political power of the armed forces. Recently, the army announced its plan to sell what it considers its own land to build the new GHQ. One wonders if the PPP regime will challenge the army’s decision to unilaterally sell state land.

Given the aforementioned pattern one is reminded of a joke about a boy whose passion for slingshots became a nuisance for his family and neighbours. The father put him through extensive therapy only to find that the boy could not get rid of his obsession. One wonders if history is even remotely therapeutic for our ruling elite.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst. ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

Suicide bombing demystified

SUICIDE bombing, mapped out by the non-state actor, a renegade faction, secessionists or even nation-states, is sometimes written off as futile and incomprehensible.

Debunking the oft-stated myth of the irrationality of suicide bombing, University of Chicago’s political scientist Robert Pape has argued suicide bombing contains a strategic logic wherein the perpetrators inflict sustained, brutal costs upon the state so as to compel the state to re-consider its policy.

In his insightful work, Dying to Win, Pape shows — based on a universal database of attacks from 1980-2003 — suicide bombings are motivated more by limited geo-strategic objectives than exclusively religious ones. Religious doctrine is mangled to sanctify the purely political objectives of the planners and to promise salvation for their pawn.

It is a given that when states begin to negotiate with terrorists — giving them the legitimacy and acknowledgment they crave — to prevent further panic and disaster from the seeming randomness of suicide attacks, it emboldens these non-state actors inevitably at the cost of the state.

The present pattern of suicide bombings in Pakistan suggests a coordinated, coherent policy galvanising choppy forces to achieve certain, as is conveyed in Pape’s narrative, strategic objectives. The overarching one is to enable the periodic regrouping of Taliban remnants on the run from Nato forces in Afghanistan or under attack from them in our medieval badlands. An accommodating western border and misguided neocon policies having hardened tribal pride, honour and sub-nationalism have forced, as a rule, the locals to rally behind their renegade Pakhtun kin and their foreign financiers.

From the earlier stage of official denial during the first few years of Pervez Musharraf’s government, sporadic suicide missions have driven home the point that the threat to Pakistan’s federation, law-enforcement agencies and citizens is alive and kicking — and to this day, despite the enthronement of democratic forces. Pape, in fact, contends that democracies are particularly vulnerable to suicide attacks as evidenced in the UK, Turkey, Israel, India and Sri Lanka. In Pakistan’s case, however, the pattern, thus far, demonstrates an even record of vulnerability across the Feb 18 threshold between military and civilian governments.

No political party can be as unambiguous to the swords crossed over our frontier towns, critical infrastructure projects and our metropolises as the PPP. With its vote bank representing a third of the electorate; PPP has the electoral strength, grit in its mission as we saw in its successful operation in Karachi in 1995, and the legacy of an outstandingly courageous leader, Benazir Bhutto, to mount a concerted and ferocious operation against the patrons and planners of suicide missions.

After all, the attacks of Oct 18 and Dec 27 were attempts to pre-empt Bhutto and her party from challenging the proliferating potency of foreign fighters on our soil and their local sympathisers. Her unequivocal, passionate pleas to counter and contain the Talibanisation of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the growth of extremism in the Frontier, whether in Washington or Peshawar, won her rebuke from the rightwing media and parochial politicians who failed to understand the strategic logic of terrorism. They chose instead to accept the false religiosity claimed in the cloak of horrors and the inhumanity of suicide bombings.

In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, like Bhutto, fell victim to terrorism. Dhannu, a female suicide bomber, detonated herself at his election rally to avenge the Indian leader’s support to Sri Lanka against the Tamil Tigers. Triumphalism pervaded the Tamil terrorist network as their articulate nemesis along with his resolve to return Indian Peacekeeping Forces to Sri Lanka were dispatched. The clarity of zero tolerance on terrorism, their coherence of this purpose and their courage cost both Gandhi and Bhutto their lives.

While Sri Lanka flushes out its insurgents, our country is increasingly at the mercy of ours. The first prominent suicide attack post-9/11 occurred outside a Karachi hotel killing 14 foreign and local persons on May 14, 2002. The second one followed on June 16 outside the US consulate in Karachi killing 12. Both incidents employed cars filled with explosives.Attempts on Pervez Musharraf’s life in 2003 and again in 2004 ratcheted the stakes of state actors, exposing them to the ostensible vagaries of suicide missions. Shaukat Aziz, Aftab Sherpao (at an Eid prayer congregation in a mosque no less), Bhutto and the PPP, and the country’s law-enforcement symbols have been the most conspicuous, high-value targets. And the latest is the warning attack on Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani’s motorcade on an Islamabad artery. There is a menacing continuity in these attacks.

The inescapable fact is that the ‘war’ is on our soil. Its origins might be somewhere else — the netherworld, perhaps — but its effects have taken a very heavy and real toll on our people. Our federal emblems — the Pakistani flag, anthem, security check posts, infrastructure, parliamentary writ and resources — are being repudiated and ravaged.

Patriotic leaders, parties, soldiers, students and ordinary citizens cannot wish this away or do nothing while the extremists challenge our constitution, civilisation and way of life. It is instructive to heed Pape’s advice to decipher the logic of suicide terrorist campaigns. The likelihood of rescuing our country from the benighted clutches of, yes, ‘rational’ suicide terrorists will increase the sooner we do so. The present piecemeal approach to the twin menaces of terrorism and extremism will backfire, as Pape warns, “incremental compromises … provide time for spoilers — the terrorists — to commit more violence” as happened to the “Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords, leading to the Second Intifada”.

The Ramazan lull in military operations in the Frontier carries the foreboding of inevitable resurgence. Counter-terrorism experience demands that the operations continue, Ramazan or no Ramazan. The terrorists cannot be allowed to regroup. Alongside tighter border controls — and we must fence the western border — as well as, ultimately, setting up planned reconstruction opportunity zones in the troubled areas will go a long way in systemically expunging the Taliban’s influence.

razi.razi@gmail.com

Selective compensation

LIBYA was the diplomatic crossroads of the planet recently, with Condoleezza Rice making the first visit by a US secretary of state in 55 years (to discuss a murky deal involving payments to American victims of terrorist attacks allegedly sponsored by Libya), radical Bolivian President Evo Morales showing up (to beg for money or cheap oil), and Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arriving to promise Libya $5bn in compensation for the brutalities of Italian colonial rule. But the US Congress wasn’t impressed.

On Sept 8, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee postponed hearings on the confirmation of Gene Cretz as the first US ambassador to Libya since 1972. What bothered the senators was Libya’s delay in paying a promised $1.8bn in compensation to the families of 180 Americans who died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie in 1988, and of the American soldiers who were targeted in a 1986 attack on the West Berlin nightclub La Belle (one killed, scores injured).

Western intelligence services blamed both those attacks on Libya’s leader, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, and US aircraft bombed Libya after the 1986 attack, killing some 30 Libyans including Qadhafi’s adopted daughter. Yet the evidence for Libyan involvement is distinctly shaky, and Libya never officially admitted responsibility. Instead, it finally signed a ‘humanitarian’ deal that gives the American families $1.8bn, but also included an unstated amount for the Libyan victims of the American air attacks.

The United States worries about the security of its oil supplies and Libya produces oil, so Washington has been seeking a way to end its quarrel with Colonel Qadhafi for a long time — Qadhafi too, because the UN sanctions imposed at Washington’s request were hurting his regime. But since neither government ever apologises, it took a while.

The final compensation deal was signed last month. Condoleezza Rice was in Libya partly to show that Qadhafi was no longer in the doghouse — and partly to ask where the money was. That is bothering the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, too, but they shouldn’t worry. Libyan banks take more than a month to transfer even thousands of dollars abroad, let alone billions.

The history behind Silvio Berlusconi’s deal with Qadhafi is much clearer, and so are the motives behind it. Italy conquered Libya, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1911, and ruled it until 1943. Tens of thousands of Libyans who resisted were killed, many more had their land confiscated and given to Italian settlers, and the country was run for Italy’s benefit, not that of its own people. Italy owes — but why is it paying now, half a century later?

The answer is partly oil — a quarter of Italy’s oil and a third of its gas come from Libya — but also illegal immigrants. Italy is the destination for a growing stream of economic migrants from Africa who use Libya as a jumping-off place for their trip across the Mediterranean, and Berlusconi needs Qadhafi’s cooperation to stem the flow. So Libya gets $5bn of Italian money to compensate for all the wrongs of the colonial era (and Italy’s compensation will come later, in apparently unrelated deals).

“It is my duty ... to express to you in the name of the Italian people our regret and apologies for the deep wounds that we have caused you,” Berlusconi said in Benghazi, bowing symbolically before the son of the hero of the Libyan resistance, Omar Mukhtar. It’s a generous apology, too: $200m a year on infrastructure projects for 25 years, and if Berlusconi’s cronies in the Italian construction business get the contracts, what’s the harm in that? But we will probably not see him making a similar apology in Mogadishu or Addis Ababa any time soon.

Libya got off lightly. Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, Italy’s other African colonies, suffered far more from its rule, and are owed far more in compensation. But they have no oil, they are not close to Italy, and they are not going to get it.

If you calculate the amount owed by other former colonial powers at the same per capita rate as Italy did for Libya — around $1,000 per head of the ex-colony’s current population — then France owes Algeria $30bn, the United States owes the Philippines $75bn and Great Britain owes India $1.1 trillion. But the victims’ heirs shouldn’t spend their money until they actually have it in their hands, and they shouldn’t hold their breaths while waiting.

— Copyright Gwynne Dyer