No ceasefire in sight

SO Ms Condoleezza Rice is not interested in a ceasefire in Lebanon; what the US Secretary of State wants is that Israeli wishes be honoured before the slaughter of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of Beirut could stop. After talks in Beirut with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Ms Rice praised the Lebanese people for “their courage and steadfastness” but made it clear that her country was in no hurry for a ceasefire. If there is to be a cessation of hostilities, it must be on Israeli terms. The two conditions which must be met before hostilities could end, she says, are: Hezbollah must return the two Israeli prisoners it is holding, and the resistance group must move its force 20 kilometres away from the border. The first one is not very complicated. Hezbollah has offered to release the two Israeli captives in exchange for some of the thousands of Palestinians and other Arab prisoners Israel is holding. The death of so many innocent men, women and children could have been avoided and can still be avoided if America makes Israel see reason and agree to a prisoner swap. The other condition would have Hezbollah fighters move 20 kilometres away from the border. While it is unlikely that Hezbollah will agree to dismantle its bunkers and underground fortifications, this too can be discussed across the table as guns fall silent. It is not necessary that this should be a precondition for a ceasefire.

The future prospects for Lebanon look grim, because one very unpleasant fact has emerged for Israel: in spite of all their firepower, the Israelis have failed to crush Hezbollah. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s fighters continue to fire rockets into Israel, making the abject failure of Israel’s strategic aim clear. What the Israelis thought would be over in a few days has now dragged on for a fortnight, and Hezbollah fighters are still holding their ground. In fact, some Israeli analysts have declared that Israel is fighting a phantom enemy and that it is difficult to crush Hezbollah because of the way they are fighting back and are prepared to die for their cause.

Will the war spread? While welcoming Ms Rice in Al Quds, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not “hesitate to take severe measures” against Hezbollah. What more severe measures is he talking about? Israel has used up much of its firepower to destroy Hezbollah, making America rush more precision-guided missiles to Israel. The “severe measures” could only be a full-scale ground offensive. If that were to happen, then there is no doubt that the war will escalate. Damascus is only 20 kilometres from the Lebanese border, and Syria will be forced to send troops into the Bekaa valley to guard approaches to its capital. Given the military disparity between Syria and the US-armed Israel, it is obvious who the victor will be. But the long-term geopolitical repercussions for both Israel and the US will then be devastating. At a time when America is keen on winning ‘Muslim hearts and minds’, it should realise this one unpalatable truth: in pursuing its weird vision of a ‘Greater Israel’ — which involves the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and the genocide of the Palestinian people, besides slaughters of innocent civilians, now in Sabra-Chatilla and now in Lebanon — Israel has made America a co-partner in its crimes.

Curbing sectarianism

THE proof will be in the implementation. On face value, there is no arguing with the prime minister’s recent directive that provincial authorities must adopt a proactive approach to the fight against sectarian hatred and violence. The decision to actively involve the provinces is laudable, for the problem has to be tackled at the grassroots level. The PM is also right in pointing out that a two-pronged strategy — preventive as well as curative — is required to control both the manifestation and root causes of sectarian conflict, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Pakistanis since the 1980s. The toll in 2005 alone was over 200 dead and 400 wounded. Earlier this month, Shia cleric Allama Hasan Turabi was assassinated in Karachi while nearly 40 Ashura-day mourners were killed in a bomb blast and related violence in Hangu in February 2006. The sectarian scourge, in its current form, is clearly deep-rooted and cannot be eliminated easily. It has its origins in the jihadist militancy fostered by Gen Ziaul Haq and subsequently fanned by misguided adventurers and religious bigots. The situation as it now stands is that an entire generation has been poisoned by the preachers of hate.

Taking the latter to task is only one step among many, though practicality demands that it should be the first. It is not impossible to strictly enforce the ban on the misuse of loudspeakers in mosques and at religious gatherings. The production of hate material is more difficult to check in the electronic age, but a start must be made by monitoring the means of dissemination. The country’s seminaries are bastions of intolerance and moves to regulate these institutions must be accelerated, without exception and irrespective of the political fallout. It should also be recognised that government by itself cannot change mindsets: civil society too must play its part. In a country where religious voices are heard more readily than those of the intelligentsia, it is important that enlightened ulema who eschew sectarianism take an active role in the fight against this menace. The government, meanwhile, has to ensure that the law is enforced. Policing aside, the root causes identified by the prime minister — economic deprivation and lack of education — can be ignored only at our peril.

Tourism: getting priorities right

THE tourism marketing strategy that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz approved the other day only succeeds in proving how far removed our official planners are from reality. Some points of the approved strategies include “cultivating brand ambassadors” and getting foreign celebrities to endorse the country as a tourist destination. While these ideas may sound good, they are likely to fail miserably when — and if — they are put into effect. This is because the government has consistently failed to realise that unless it first addresses the law and order situation in the country, no one will be willing to travel to Pakistan, least of all celebrities. This isn’t the only harsh reality the government has often chosen to ignore. It can’t seem to grasp just how poor the conditions are in the very tourist destinations it plans to promote. In 2005, for instance, there was a drop in tourism in Kalam — a popular destination — because of the interminable delays in the construction of access roads connecting it to Swat valley. If it isn’t the terrible conditions of roads and infrastructure in the Northern Areas, it is the dismal state of hotels that would put off any visitor, let alone one who is coming from Europe for a relaxing vacation. The government also needs to recognise that foreigners want to experience all things local and not visit malls or dine at fancy eateries.

Despite the tsunami and war in Sri Lanka or the troubles in Nepal, tourism in these countries has not suffered as devastating a blow as it has in Pakistan. It is time the government took a more realistic approach to reviving tourism. Much of it has to do with improving its image but instead of spending millions on consultants and half-baked strategies, it must invest in improving the deteriorating infrastructure that keeps even local tourists away.

Any vacancies for an ex-socialist?

BACK in 1982, a young British lawyer who had recently lost his deposit in contesting a by-election on behalf of the Labour Party, sat down and wrote a 22-page letter to his party leader, hoary left-winger Michael Foot. He claimed to have been deeply moved and profoundly enlightened after reading Foot’s book Debts of Honour, a compendium of biographical essays on British radicals.

“It has shown me,” wrote the lawyer, “how narrow is our source of modern political inspiration. Look at (Margaret) Thatcher and (Norman) Tebbit and how they almost take pride in the rigid populism of their political thought. There is a new and profoundly unpleasant Tory abroad — the Tory party is now increasingly given over to the worst of petty bourgeois sentiments — the thought that there is something clever in cynicism; realistic in selfishness; and the granting of legitimacy to the barbaric idea of the survival of the fittest.”

The young man confesses that he “came to socialism through Marxism (to be more specific, through (Isaac) Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky)”. He feels Marxism “is fine if you make it your political servant but terrible if it becomes your political master.” He says he “found it illuminating in so many ways; in particular my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered.”

He then goes on to say that he agrees with Tony Benn’s view of the Labour Party’s rightwing as politically bankrupt. “Socialism,” he argues, “ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted with a pragmatic period in power.”

The lawyer urges Foot to publicly announce that “the party needs radical, socialist policies”, not least because “the job of reconstruction, particularly against a background that includes new technology and a USA in the grip of the same economic madness that Mrs Thatcher visits upon us, is mammoth”.

A dozen or so years later, the same man, a little less young and ensconced in the position that Foot once held, was endorsing Thatcher’s “emphasis on enterprise” and saying things like: “Britain needs more successful people who can become rich by success through the money they earn.” By then, his Marx-inspired “irreversible” view of the relationship between people and society had already been reversed.

According to Robert Taylor, who came across the 22-page epistle while researching a history of the Labour Party, “It is his personal tragedy, as well as the tragedy of the Labour Party, that the ambitious idealist was transformed into an authoritarian and hubristic machine that destroyed the ethical values of a Labour movement he once claimed to hold so dear.”

Maybe so, but an alternative interpretation suggests that Tony Blair — for it is he of whom we speak — was determined from the outset to destroy the party he had infiltrated. As the British writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft notes, “As soon as he became leader he began an assault that was designed not so much as an electioneering strategy ... as a ritual humiliation of his own party.” Ten years ago, he “quoted someone who knew Blair well” as saying: “You have to remember that the great passion in Tony’s life is his hatred of the Labour Party.”

If that is indeed the case, the obsequious letter to Foot may well have been intended as an attempt to secure Blair a safe seat at the next election, after his humiliation in the Beaconsfield constituency. The ploy worked: he was elected to parliament from Sedgefield in 1983 in a general election that was considered a triumph for Thatcher. (Even so, it is worth noting that a larger proportion of eligible voters cast their ballots in Labour’s favour in 1983 than in 2005.)

What’s more, in retrospect it appears that Thatcher’s greatest triumph in 1983 was the result in Sedgefield: as the Iron Lady implicitly acknowledged many years later, it gave her a worthier heir than anyone the Conservative Party threw up.

One of the many notable characteristics of Thatcher’s 11-year reign was her uncomfortably close relationship with the president of the United States for the eight years that the White House was occupied by a third-rate ex-actor whose intellectual capacity can be judged by the fact that he wasn’t always able to distinguish real life from his Hollywood career. As a visceral anti-communist, he was an ideological soulmate of the British prime minister. However, despite the preponderance of American power in both economic and military terms — whereas Britain’s attempts to punch above its weight on the international stage tended to stir pathos rather than awe — Ronnie never dared to be condescending towards Maggie. (If anything, it was the other way around: “Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears,” Thatcher is quoted as having said of Reagan in 1988.)

The intimacy between Blair and George W. Bush is of a different nature. The former’s unquestioning subservience to the latter was initially spun by Blair’s supporters as a strategy aimed at gaining leverage: it was the price to be paid for gaining access to Bush’s ears. The prime minister, in other words, would play Jeeves to George W.’s Bertie Wooster.

One is compelled to conclude that such a relationship never evolved. If Tony ever proffered any sensible advice, Bush clearly paid little attention. Their informal encounter at the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg earlier this month, inadvertently broadcast to the world thanks to alive microphone, confirmed that Bush does indeed look upon the British prime minister as a loyal servant, but not a particularly bright one.

It is hard to imagine even a postmodern Wooster hailing his indispensable manservant with anything more discourteous than a “what ho”, but the “Yo Blair” bit wasn’t by a long stretch the most humiliating part of the conversation. “One of my favourite excruciating moments,” writes The Observer’s pro-Blair columnist Andrew Rawnsley, “is when Bush thanks Blair for sending him a Burberry sweater as a birthday gift. The American president sends up the British prime minister by mocking: ‘I know you picked it out yourself’.”

There was worse to come, “the moment that makes Mr Blair look like the poodle of popular caricature. Worse, he comes over as a poodle who can’t even beg his master to toss him a dog biscuit ... When Tony Blair offers himself as a Middle East peace envoy, he is casually rebuffed by the American president between bites on a bread roll. Told by Bush that ‘Condi (Condoleezza Rice) is going’, the normally fluent Blair is reduced to inarticulate jabbering.

“It was awful,” continues Rawnsley, “for Tony Blair to be caught asking for permission to go to the Middle East. It was dire to hear George Bush saying he wouldn’t let the prime minister of the United Kingdom go out — not even on a pointless trip.”

What’s more, Blair wasn’t even allowed to pave the way for Condi’s mission. And he felt obliged to follow the utterly immoral British example in refusing to call for a ceasefire, let alone offer even muted criticism of Israel’s all-out aggression in response to a border skirmish.

With the possible exception of Australia’s John Howard — a relative nonentity on the international stage — no prime minister anywhere in the world has been as doggedly loyal to the Bush administration as Tony Blair. This slavering obedience has earned him the contempt not only of the majority of Britons, but even that of George Bush. When asked, at the beginning of their one-sided courtship, what they had in common, Bush responded that they both used Colgate toothpaste. Earlier this year, with Blair’s Downing Street tenure looking increasingly shaky, the US president was asked what he would miss most about his pal from across the pond. “I’ll miss those red ties, is what I’ll miss,” responded Bush drolly.

If Bush had been any smarter, the reference to red ties might have been construed as a jibe directed at Blair’s political antecedents in a party that used to conclude its annual conferences by collectively intoning ‘The Red Flag’. But he probably just meant what he said — which is more than one can expect from Blair, possibly except when he’s talking to his favourite media magnate. Blair’s path to Downing Street was paved via a detour to Australia at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, who has since moved his base to the US. His News Corporation’s annual shindig will take place this weekend at Pebble Beach, California. The guest speakers include Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich and — yes, you guessed it — Tony Blair.

His performance at Pebble Beach may matter more to Blair than his ritual appearance at the Labour Party conference in September, by when he is expected to have sorted out with Gordon Brown the small matter of the latter’s succession to the top job. A former Downing Street spin doctor disclosed recently that “no big decision could ever be made inside No.10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men — Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch”. It has also emerged that Blair and Murdoch have regularly been meeting about thrice a year, occasionally in secret.

The Pebble Beach invitation could be Rupert’s way of thanking Tony for toeing the Murdoch line on Europe and the Iraq war. It has been rumoured that he may have a job in mind for the effectively lame-duck prime minister. Should the wily old tycoon make Blair an offer he can’t refuse, thereby hastening his departure from public life, for once the British public will have something to thank Rupert Murdoch for.

Email: mahirali1@gmail.com