Seeking external help

ZAFAR Iqbal Jhagra, secretary general of PML-N, and an associate, Mohammad Mehdi, recently met American, British, Italian, and German diplomats to “brief” them on their stand concerning the ongoing judicial crisis and the prospect of a fair election in the country. They emphasised that they were concerned with the larger issue of the judiciary’s independence, not with the career of a particular judge. They also conveyed to these gentlemen their belief that fair elections in Pakistan would be impossible if General Musharraf remained at the helm.

Leaders of other political parties have periodically invited foreign ambassadors to report their positions on various issues of domestic and foreign policy and their grievances against the present regime. During her frequent visits to Washington, Ms Benazir Bhutto calls on officials in the State Department and the White House, who may be willing to receive her, to solicit their support for her political career in Pakistan.

These politicians are evidently inviting foreign governments to intervene in Pakistan’s domestic politics on their behalf, help them overthrow the present government or at least thwart its designs against them. I imagine they assume, as do many others, that the matter of who governs this country is settled not here but in Washington. A more advanced version of this belief has it that nothing of any consequence happens in Pakistan without an affirmative signal from America. This belief is based on the assumption that the government of Pakistan is too feeble to resist American, or even British and European, advice.

I have always maintained that Pakistan’s helplessness in the face of external pressure is overstated, and that there is no need for its government to be all that subservient to the outsider. If it had the will to say no, it could say no, and no disaster would result. That will is lacking primarily because it does not have an adequate support base among its own people.

Nor does it realise that if it did reject external advice, because that advice went against its national interest, its defiance would generate public support. If such assertion of national independence and honour invited suspension of foreign aid, it might well be time the government and the people of Pakistan learned to live within their own means.

It is an elementary rule of politics that pressure will be directed where the targeted party is willing to take it. The proposition that nothing will work in Pakistan without American approval becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more our government and commentators announce it, the more the Americans are encouraged to think that we await their advice and the more they feel free to give it.

Let us now look at the other side of this coin. The external powers may begin to see that the government of Pakistan cannot deliver all it promises because the undertakings in question require public support, which it does not have. What is then to be done? They might consider approaching the people directly.

This is what the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress has recently recommended. It says the United States should shift its focus from the government to the people of Pakistan. Two thirds of its aid to Pakistan should be devoted to economic development. Congressional Democrats feel that more of the aid should be allocated for projects that benefit the people and are made visible to them.

Washington is on the whole well disposed towards the present government in Pakistan. How does a government reach the people of another country? It would be difficult if they did not approve of its objectives, which is currently the case with America’s standing in Pakistan. Its enlistment of the government of Pakistan in the war on terror, and its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, have little public support The elite in Pakistan are generally disenchanted with America’s overall posture in world politics.

If the United States is to improve its image in Pakistan, and thus reinforce its government’s ability to do more in supporting American policy goals, it may do well to begin with selected organs of civil society. This might be supplemented by directing economic aid to high visibility projects such as education in both urban and rural areas at primary, secondary and higher levels. Mass support for American positions in Iraq and Afghanistan is not likely to materialise, but efforts to befriend certain segments of civil society may be successful.

When one government is hostile towards another, its operations to cultivate the latter’s people may be viewed with suspicion.

The Soviet Union disapproved of several non-communist political systems and its relations with them were strained. It sought to subvert their governments, and its friends and agents in these countries worked to the same end. The American CIA and numerous other secret agencies act likewise in countries of whose governments they disapprove. Pakistan’s ISI and India’s RAW used to do all they could to foment disaffection and revolts in each other’s territory. It is safe to assume that they continue to do so even if the scale of their operations may have reduced a bit as a result of the “peace process” in which the two governments are professedly engaged.

Another type of interaction between Pakistan and India has been going on for the last several years, which appears to be benign but may be potentially disruptive. It is called “track two” diplomacy and of late it has been accompanied by direct people-to-people cordiality and mending of fences.

On each side there is a group of retired diplomats, generals, professors, and other eminent persons who meet periodically and discuss different approaches to the outstanding issues between their two countries. It may be assumed that the leading persons in each group keep their government posted on any new or innovative ideas that their discussions with the other side may have generated.

These exchanges have not so far opened the way for the resolution of any of the major India-Pakistan disputes. But it may be that they have an improving effect on the general environment in which interaction between the two governments takes place.

There are also other groups of peacemakers who meet from time to time and reduce the two peoples’ mutual estrangement. One such group called WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management, and Peace), led in Delhi by Dr Meenakshi Gopinath (principal of the Lady Shri Ram College for Women and an old friend of mine) and in Lahore by Dr Mira Phailbus (principal of the Kinnaird College for Women) was to meet in Lahore in the middle of February but couldn’t because the Indian delegation did not get the necessary visas.

Even though the “composite dialogue” for the resolution of disputes between the governments of India and Pakistan is getting nowhere, non-governmental groups in both countries are holding on to the peace process. Delegations consisting of a variety of persons (parliamentarians, opposition politicians, lawyers, judges, journalists, poets and artists, teachers and students, even children) have exchanged visits.

Pakistanis visiting India have been well received, and Indians visiting Pakistan have found Pakistani hospitality and affection to be overwhelming. Not only were they wined and dined lavishly, there were cases in which taxi drivers did not charge them fares and shopkeepers gave them merchandise free. That was in keeping with our traditional inclination to go overboard. But no harm done, except the risk of deep disappointment if official negotiations remain unproductive and are finally abandoned and the old alienation returns.

Another aspect of these contacts deserves to be considered. Far too many of the Indians, particularly the Punjabis and those from UP, remind us that they and we speak the same language, laugh at the same jokes, enjoy the same music, have many of the same values and customs, and that before independence we had lived together in the same villages and towns in reasonable peace and amity for several centuries.All of this is substantially correct. (It is the same way to a very considerable extent between America and Canada, France and Belgium, Germany and Austria, and 20 Latin American countries, and yet they are separate, independent states.)

Then these Indian visitors go on to say that they and we are all the same people, and the fact that we are Muslims has little or no bearing on the fact of our sameness. Most of them are cautious enough to stop there, but even so they leave the implication, and others say explicitly, that India’s partition in 1947 was a bad idea and express the hope that in time we will all become one again effectively if not formally.

This kind of talk might normally be set aside as a well meaning expression of goodwill. But considering the long-standing hostility between the two countries, these expressions may not necessarily be well-intended. They could work mischief, especially because they are addressed to a people whose own sense of nationhood as Pakistanis is fragile.

How amazing that 60 years after their establishment as an independent state many of their opinion makers are still asking why their country was created in the first place, whether it was created to demonstrate the feasibility of an Islamic state, or for something else, and if the latter, what that might have been.

The Indian visitors address their advocacies to a people that is plagued by a crisis of identity. They know they are Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis and Pashtuns, and they are proud of that fact. But the ruling politicians, with the possible exception of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during the first couple of years of his rule, have never emphasised that there is something to be called Pakistani nationhood to which they all belong and of which they may be proud. What a pity and what a shame.

The writer is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics for the spring semester.

Email: anwarhs@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Case for smaller Supreme Court

THERE can be no better evidence of the failure of statecraft in Pakistan than the current situation where both the army chief and the Chief Justice occupy the political centre-stage (they should, in fact, be the farthest from it) and theologians try to replace the institutions of state.

In the prevailing disorder, the legislators, administrators and the judges have never looked more helpless or irrelevant. It lies in the power of the president, on the advice of the prime minister, to make a reference against the Chief Justice. But the judiciary, and indeed those in the legal profession as a whole, felt humiliated by the treatment meted out to him, even before the Supreme Judicial Council took cognisance of it. Now the lawyers, whether pleading before the Council or protesting on the streets, have compounded that humiliation by calling into question the impartiality of the judges sitting on the Council.

Since the composition of the Council is defined in the Constitution itself, some kind of doctrine of necessity may have to be invented again to reconstitute it before the counsel for the Chief Justice, Aitzaz Ahsan, feels assured that its members will be objective and none among them would have a vested interest in upholding the reference.

The central point is that the reference having already been made, all issues relating to it should now be decided through a judicial process notwithstanding the suspicions it has aroused. Of course, the president can withdraw the reference and it can be argued why he should not if that is the only way to restore the dignity of the judiciary and to put an end to the public unrest.

After all the government has been retreating before the clerics all the time — as borne out by the current Hafsa madressah episode — to win their goodwill. But a rejoinder to that observation could be that the judges are not mullahs. In any case, the Chief Justice should not be seen working with charges of misconduct shadowing him, even if the allegations are false and have been conjured up to get him out of the way.

A most disgusting aspect of this saga is that although the reference by the government is against one judge, the protest of the legal community tends to undermine the authority and integrity of the Supreme Court as an institution. That would be a national shame and tragedy.

The Supreme Court has, indeed, been accused of bias and succumbing to pressure in the past (recall in particular the doctrine of necessity, Bhutto’s death sentence and parallel benches giving conflicting rulings in Nawaz Sharif’s government) but the character and conduct of its judges was never so openly and viciously debated as is being done now.

The controversies that have dogged the highest court of the land in the last 53 years and the painful dilemma in which the judges find themselves today calls for curtailing both the size and role of the court to save it from frequent exposures to public issues which tend to bring it in conflict with the executive arm of the government.

The Supreme Court currently has 19 judges. In addition, there are two ad hoc judges (Islamic scholars) on the Shariah appellate bench. Besides its central seat at Islamabad, it meets frequently in the four provincial capitals. Though much larger in population and area, India’s Supreme Court has a similar number of judges and it meets only in New Delhi. Following the Indian example (as also of most other countries), Pakistan’s Supreme Court should have five or, at the most, seven judges and it should meet only in Islamabad.

In dealing with constitutional issues and other important cases in which the government has a stake, the Supreme Court should always meet in full strength to avoid charges of bias or discrimination in constituting the benches. It should entertain petitions and appeals only against the death sentence or where the interpretation of the Constitution is involved. The high courts can take care of the rest of the litigation and of judicial activism as well.

Yet another justification for a smaller Supreme Court with fewer functions is to be found in the fact that the legal profession of the country is unable to throw up 19 judges whose intellect, knowledge of law and integrity would match the exacting standards set for that level at all times.

In any case, the lawyers at the top of the profession are not in enough numbers to join the high court benches in the expectation of moving up to the Supreme Court one day and also to become chief justice. That may never happen for most of them as certainly it would not for the present lot of judges most of whom would retire before Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry does. Their vested interest in his removal, incidentally, is the main ground being agitated by his counsel Aitzaz Ahsan.

The other stream of talent — the civil service — which provided to the superior judiciary men of the calibre of Cornelius, Shahabuddin and M.R. Kiyani (to name just three out of a score) has all but dried up. Perhaps some of our judges and lawyers should go to India to ascertain how the supreme court there, with fewer judges and that too sitting only in Delhi, is able to cope with the work and contend with the politicians better than our larger, more mobile Supreme Court seems to be doing.

The missing e-mails

THE story of the missing White House e-mails is at that strange moment in the arc of a Washington uproar where it's not clear whether it will turn out to be scandal or sideshow. There was legitimate reason for the White House to seek to comply with Hatch Act strictures and separate political from official business.

But it's clear -- indeed, the White House has acknowledged -- that officials there received sloppy guidance about when to use their official White House e-mail accounts and when to use other accounts supplied by the Republican National Committee. Having gotten sloppy guidance, the relatively small number of officials with these dual accounts – 22 at present, and about 50 over the course of the administration – behaved even more sloppily; they used their political accounts to transact what might have been official business and therefore should have been preserved under the Presidential Records Act. Now, some -- perhaps years' worth -- of these political e-mails appear to be missing. As White House spokeswoman Dana Perino put it Thursday, "Well, I will admit it; we screwed up and we're trying to fix it."

What's not clear, and what needs to be determined, is whether this episode reflects more than sloppiness -- whether it indicates a deliberate effort on the part of some White House staffers to conduct government business offline in a way that would protect them from the prying eyes of Congress now or historians later. A particular mystery is what happened to the e-mails of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. The RNC did take unusual precautions to preserve Mr. Rove's e-mails, but the evidence so far suggests that that was out of an abundance of caution because of legal matters involving Mr. Rove, not because Mr. Rove was suspected of malicious deletion.

All this is certainly a legitimate subject for congressional inquiry. As the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick J. Leahy and Arlen Specter, respectively, wrote to the White House on Thursday, it would be helpful for all involved "to jointly agree upon a fair and objective process for investigating this matter," try to reconstruct the missing e-mails, and "restore public confidence in the White House's desire to comply with the Presidential Records Act."

But it's not particularly helpful, as Mr. Leahy did in a speech on the Senate floor, to invoke "the infamous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes" or to accuse the administration of deliberately causing the e-mails to disappear. If White House aides were trying to conduct government business off the official record, why would they have sent e-mails from their gwb43.com accounts to Justice Department officials at the Justice officials' government addresses?

At the same time, we can understand the frustration of Mr. Leahy and his colleagues. The good news Thursday was that White House counsel Fred F. Fielding finally responded to letters from Mr. Leahy and others about lawmakers' request for access to White House e-mails and officials; the bad news was that Mr. Fielding simply reiterated his previous, inadequate offer, including interviews that would not even be transcribed. Caught in a mess largely of its own making, the White House needs to do better.

— The Washington Post

America’s hypocrisy

WITH a misguided decision upholding bail for Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has done more than free a frail old man facing unremarkable immigration charges. It has exposed Washington to legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the war on terror.

By allowing Posada to go free before his May 11 trial, the court has released a known flight risk who previously escaped from a Venezuelan prison, a man who has boasted of helping set off deadly bombs in Havana hotels 10 years ago and the alleged mastermind of a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. Posada's employees confessed to the attack, and declassified FBI and CIA documents have shown that he attended planning sessions.

In other words, Posada is the Zacarias Moussaoui of Havana and Caracas. Moussaoui is serving a life sentence without parole in a federal prison in Colorado for conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks; Posada is free to live in Miami. Posada, a 79-year-old Bay of Pigs veteran who served time in Panama for plotting to kill Fidel Castro, has never been charged with crimes of terrorism in US courts. Instead, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement nabbed him for lying to immigration authorities after he sneaked in the country in March 2005 and held a news conference announcing his triumphant return.

— Los Angeles Times