Pakistan comes full circle

WHO says history does not repeat itself? In 1979, both Pakistan and its leaders were treated with indifference bordering on contempt by most of the civilized world. Pakistan’s fault was to have trespassed once again on what were now regarded as universally accepted norms of behaviour. The men in uniform, who then ruled Pakistan, had not only dismissed an elected government but also deposed a man who had a good reputation outside the country.

The world looked at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the dismissed prime minister, as a modern — albeit, sometimes, a misguided — man. When the military sent him to the gallows in April 1979, the world was horrified. It was seen as an exceptionally barbaric act. The military’s claim that Bhutto had been sentenced by a civilian court after a long and open trial did not persuade the West that justice had been fully done. In the eyes of most of the world, Pakistan was a pariah state, its leaders despised by a majority of world leadership.

And then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the fall of 1979. The West — in particular, the United States — panicked and offers of assistance began to arrive at the door of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military president, accused not too long ago for murdering an elected prime minister. General Zia labelled the initial help for assistance from the administration of President Jimmy Carter as “peanuts.” He held out for much more and was granted that by President Ronald Reagan. Both Pakistan and the men who ruled the country were back in favour. They were now part of a “crusade” against international communism. Why did America change its stance towards Pakistan in such a dramatic way?

Washington was concerned for two reasons. It was fearful that the entry of the Soviet troops into Afghanistan represented the realization of the recurrent nightmare of the western world. As many had feared, Moscow now seemed to be striking towards the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. The only way to reach these waters was through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many in the West believed that if the Soviets succeeded in this adventure, the strategic balance between the forces of European communism and the free world would be seriously altered. Moscow would gain a foothold in an area of great importance to the West. It will be within easy striking distance of the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. There was a consensus that the Soviet advance had to be reversed. Pakistan’s support was vital for the success of that effort.

The second concern was derived from the United States’ Vietnam experience. It did not have the stomach to get engaged in another ground conflict with an enemy that it did not fully understand. The people of Afghanistan had humbled invaders before and, possibly, with some external assistance, they could do it once again. While Washington was not prepared to be directly involved, it was prepared to fight a proxy war. Pakistan would be the main partner. It will train the Afghan fighters, supply them with modern weapons, provide them logistical and diplomatic support. In return, Pakistan not only regained entry into the world that had shunned it for several years. It also received an impressive amount of military and economic help.

For some time — at least from the perspective of Washington — Pakistan’s effort in Afghanistan was a spectacular success. The Soviets were not only forced to leave Afghanistan. Their defeat contributed also to the collapse of European communism, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the United States as the only superpower in the world. But historians have begun to see that there was a cost associated with this success. This price was paid by the United States on September 11 when 19 suicide operators from several countries and associated in some way or the other with the Afghan conflict destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and seriously damaged the Pentagon in Washington. This destruction resulted in the death of thousands of innocent civilians from the United States and scores of other countries.

While the United States waited for twenty years before it paid the price for its earlier engagement in Afghanistan, the cost to Pakistan became evident much earlier. When the troops from the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Pakistan had little positive — but a great deal of negative — fallout to show for the billions of dollars worth of assistance it had received over a decade. It is true that the economy expanded at a respectable rate during this period, returning to the rate of growth registered during the golden years of Pakistan’s development — the early 1960s.

But once the flow of foreign capital ceased, it became apparent that the growth rate of the 1980s, fuelled as it was by large flows of external assistance, was not sustainable. The country could have undertaken serious structural reforms to make economic growth self-sustaining, to improve the quality of its human resource through education and training, to improve the efficiency of the economy, to build a strong export sector.

None of this was done. But the access to billions of dollars of largely unaccountable capital — since a good proportion of it came from intelligence agencies — encouraged corruption on a vast scale. It also encouraged a cavalier attitude towards the management of public sector resources. All the institutions that had been developed in the 1960s to help guide public funds into the most productive sectors of the economy were now ignored. Instead, money was spent recklessly on poorly designed projects and programmes. Largely as a result of this attitude, there was a great misuse of the resources the country received from abroad. Great fortunes were made and some of the families whose wealth is directly related to the war in Afghanistan went on to corrupt Pakistani politics.

The other negative consequence, of course, was the nurturing of Islamic fundamentalism in the country. The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan introduced two words into the political vocabulary of the West — mujahideen and taliban. Pakistan’s partners in the Afghan conflict had relied on the religious fervour of those who were prepared to fight the forces of occupation. These were the Mujahideen of the war, prepared to battle against heavy odds and prepared to lay down their lives. The sons of the Mujahideen produced the Taliban, students trained in schools established all along Pakistan’s 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan. The Taliban were the orphans of the Afghan war. Hardened by the war and toughened by exceptional religious zeal, they went on to conquer most of Afghanistan.

Once the conflict with the Soviet Union was over, the impressive fervour that won the Mujahideen the war in Afghanistan was mobilized in an effort to turn Afghanistan and Pakistan into fundamentalist states. The effort succeeded in Afghanistan largely because of the collapse of the state and all the institutions of economic and political governance in that country. It made some advance in Pakistan but did not succeed since the Pakistani state and the institutions of governance, albeit steadily and greatly weakened, did not totally collapse.

Pakistan has now come full circle. A military government shunned by the West for two years has gained entry into the corridors of power in Washington. Sanctions against the country, imposed in 1998 after it tested several nuclear devices following similar tests by India, have been removed. Multilateral and bilateral assistance is on its way. Japan — once the largest bilateral donor to Pakistan and most concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons — is willing to help the country once again. Why is Pakistan being rewarded so handsomely? As an editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it recently: “Pakistan is the pivotal regional player in US plans to hunt down Osama bin Laden.”

Pakistan’s motive for jumping on the bandwagon that began to roll soon after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington was prompted not only by its grim economic situation and the need to break through the wall that had been built around it after the military intervention of October 1999. That Pakistan is now prepared to fight the “global war against terrorism” is also the result of the lesson many of its people have learnt from the 1979-1989 conflict in Afghanistan. They understand that an unhappy populace becomes an easy target for the recruitment of disgruntled people into all kinds of unsavoury causes. They have also learnt that the dynamics unleashed by the previous war in Afghanistan has unleashed the kind of Islamic fundamentalism that is basically alien to the majority of the country’s people.

The important question is whether the West has also drawn these lessons. Will the war about to begin in and around Afghanistan produce the same results for Pakistan and other Muslim nations in its neighbourhood as did the war of the eighties?

Will all this happen again? Will this part of the history also repeat itself? Will the effort being currently mounted under the leadership of the United States once again leave an institutional graveyard in some of the countries that will be on the front line — in particular Pakistan? Will some of the states that will get involved in this struggle be so weakened that they will fall easily to the forces of resistance this effort will inevitably produce?

When the government headed by General Zia-ul-Haq agreed to cooperate with the United States in its campaign against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, the two countries fought the war against a well-identified enemy — European communism. This time around the enemy has to be identified and, consequently, the task is much more difficult. Targeting Osama bin Laden gives the enemy a face and an identity. But the West will soon discover that the real enemy is a sense of hopelessness that prevails in many parts of the Islamic world.

The Washington Post’s profile of Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian suicide pilot who took over the flight from Boston and rammed it into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre, is very revealing. “The September 11 attacks have laid bare the existence of a cadre of young men like Atta, ready to plot their own deaths years in advance to serve a cause. Nobody knows how many there are but they come from many places — Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, the Arab Diaspora community... Identifying them and understanding their motivation and psychological development will be key to the task in the war...” What does this imply for Pakistan? Pakistan certainly does not wish to produce Mohammed Attas. It must follow a model of engagement very different from the one it pursued during the first war in Afghanistan.

The dilemma all around

THAT Black Tuesday’s happenings constituted a unique and particularly dismal chapter in the history of terror nobody will deny. But that there is a peculiar gap between what actually transpired and Black Tuesday as it was gradually and cumulatively set up, largely by CNN, is also equally true.

This is not to suggest that CNN in any way misreported the terror attacks on the twin towers of the WTC and the Pentagon — only that, in presentation, it very subtly transmuted them with a view to serving what seem in retrospect to have been rather insidious ends.

Presentation, entailing projection, dramatization or just common-or-garden hype, is, of course, even under more normal circumstances, of the essence as far as the media, electronic or otherwise, anywhere in the world are concerned. However, in the case specially of CNN’s presentation of Black Tuesday, something else — more disquieting and of concern to us all — something which betrayed not just a particular mindset but a strange sort of coincidence of interest with America’s state apparat would seem to have been at play from the very outset.

Take the legend at the bottom of live footage of the events of September 11 as they took place. This read: ‘America Under Attack.’ More than simple sensationalism, here was a classic instance of a kind of tactical grandiloquence on the part of CNN, conveying just about all that the American state apparat also surely sought to convey. In CNN’s ingeniously open-ended construction, what the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington would appear to have constituted was, mutatis mutandis, a putative ‘invasion’ of the United States. (There were viewers who actually imagined, when first switching on their TV sets, that an assault by ETs or even Godzilla was in progress).

It was not long after that hype turned into solemn declaration. President Bush was moved to set his own formal seal on CNN’s informal interpretation of them by officially dubbing the suicide attacks an ‘act of war’. American rhetoric had assumed an altogether more forbidding dimension. The most horrifying episode of its kind in the history of the United States since Pearl Harbour had, along with the fire and smoke and the screams of sirens, been appropriated by the state for its own cynical ends. As in the case of the Oklahoma bombing of 1995, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, the stock-in-trade of US hegemonism, were supposedly at stake. The only difference was that the then president, Bill Clinton, had been, both electorally and on the strength of his record in office (along with his two other definite pluses, charisma and a mind), more credible than the present incumbent and also, consequently, less bound by any desperate need for popular ratification or compulsions of state.

The corrective sorties over Iraq and the messy strike against Afghanistan aside, Clinton was, in other words, far less susceptible to making a vital bid for war. But, of course, this would make perfect political and historical sense, from the Machiavellian angle which is also the angle of realpolitik, in the present instance.

A veritable godsend for him, Black Tuesday provided Mr Bush with more than sufficient grounds for a war of reprisal or indeed a holy war or ‘crusade’, the signals of which were so sensitively picked up by Saddam Hussein. For never before in recent history (except in the case of the all too congruously drawn analogy of Pearl Harbour) has the United States so clearly and unequivocally occupied the moral high ground. Thousands of American citizens were liquidated in broad daylight in America’s sanctum sanctorum: its financial and military heartland.

That the American administration could only stand helplessly by, constrained, at best, to engage in albeit limited damage control, merely seems to have compounded the universal sense of moral outrage. The question of injured vanity, of a devastating loss of face for America, appears to have arisen only after the event, being implicitly articulated in the resonant if hubristic presidential pledge to wage the “first war of the 21st century”, a pronouncement jingoistically echoed in CNN’s third legend of this series: ‘America’s New War.’

Now, given that there is a pattern here, of a sort of historic inevitability, it would seem to have been in the same scheme of things that, within moments of the terror attacks against America, the ‘enemy’ (whose identity remains, to this day, an enigma) was understood, courtesy America’s giant propaganda machine, as being the infamous Osama. A scapegoat having so easily been found, without the fuss of a prior investigation and in the absence, even, of a verifiable ‘signature’ to the style of the terrorism in question (suicide is evidently neither the Taliban’s nor Osama’s forte nor indeed even conditionally, sanctioned by Islam), the decks simply needed to be cleared.

The Security Council was duly alerted. At an emergency session, its members gravely passed a resolution that was both comprehensive and stern, which meant that it was also, from the point of view of Pakistan, fairly dangerously loaded. The resolution explicitly called for military action against the “perpetrators, organizers and sponsors” of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and envisaged that “those responsible for harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable.” Let it be said here that the Security Council merely acted as it felt morally obliged to, conscionably performing its duty in aid of America and outright condemnation of international terrorism, direct or otherwise.

This crucial diplomatic procedure over, America’s war rhetoric against the Taliban and, by implication, Pakistan, began in earnest. At the same time, the American administration launched a separate offensive by exerting the most intense diplomatic pressure, a blend of persuasion and coercion (consisting of a somewhat difficult ‘wishlist’), on the country it saw as presumptive godfather to the regime in Afghanistan where Osama was reported to be in hiding. (It is relevant that President Bush has, since, described Osama’s terrorist outfit, Al Qaeda, as being, to terrorism “what the Mafia is to crime”).

Though the official line on this seems clear, it is possible that Pakistan has still not entirely or, at least, finally decided what it is to do. Whatever the case, it is apparent that, partly owing to its own lack of prudence and foresight but also because, at some level, raison d’etat elsewhere has to be satisfied, it is today left with a miserable minimum of options. If, regardless of quantum or specifics, it accedes to America’s rather awkward demands, it runs the risk not merely of having to cope with hostility among its northern population but of walking straight into a possible civil war.

On the other hand, if it fails to cooperate with the United States, the risk it runs would be incalculable. One wonders whether there is a via media whereby, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Pakistan can, in spite of the promise of economy balloons and a birthday party extended by America, some EU countries and Japan, preserve some measure of its self-esteem. As has been suggested in certain quarters, a strategic deferral of the business of decision making might be in order. Temporizing has been known to yield solutions.

But perhaps Pakistan should be addressing some rather more ironic questions. Is the scapegoat of the present scenario really Osama? Or, then, (benighted as it is in any case, being economically destitute and humbled by endless war) is it the ragtag student militia currently in precarious administrative control of Afghanistan and playing host to him?

Selective terrorism: ALL OVER THE PLACE

THE war against terror has moved from the moral arena to political one. Terrorism per se is not the enemy but only those terrorist acts that are directed against the USA and its allies and who still refer to themselves as the Free World.

It is an irony of sorts that Russia too sees itself as a part of the Free World, while maintaining a tight, diplomatic silence over its invasion of Afghanistan and which was the root cause of the present Afghan misery. Once the world had got over the shock and outrage of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, each country looked to its own national self-interests, how they could be best safeguarded or advanced.

There is nothing wrong with this but we need to be spared the self-righteousness. What made President Pervez Musharraf’s television speech to the nation so refreshing was its blunt honesty: Pakistan comes first. Not for him the sophistry and jugglery of words, the circumlocution. He put it on the line: Pakistan comes first.

Where does that leave global terrorism? Exactly where it was if we insist on seeing it exclusively as Middle East related. There is the IRA, the Tamil Tigers, the Basque, there are terrorist groups operating in many parts of the world with their own agendas, their own list of grievances and they have nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. Will the world be made safe from them?

As I wrote in a previous column, there will have to be a single yardstick and we cannot be selective. We will have to move away from the mindset of the bad son-of-a-bitch (Allende) and the good son-of-a-bitch (Pinochet) There will have be even-handedness. It is being said that the world changed forever after September 11, the assumption being that it changed for the worse. But it can be changed for the better if the causes of bitterness which lead people to acts of desperate violence were to be addressed, if not removed.

Nearest home is the unresolved dispute over Kashmir and the entire region will remain unstable and a flash-point until it can be settled. The Indians have arrogantly rebuffed all suggestions of third-party mediation and hundreds of thousands of their troops are engaged in holding down territory that they adamantly insist is an integral part of India. If it was, why is it militarily occupied? Why does the Indian army patrol the streets of Srinagar and not Mumbai or Chennai? The Israelis see themselves as victims of terrorism thus standing terrorism on its head. They have never let the world forget the Holocaust but forgotten that it was Hitler’s Germany that sent the Jews to the gas-chambers and not the Palestinians but it was the Palestinian’s homeland that was given to them by way of atonement?

The original terrorists in the Middle East were those who became Israel’s leaders. The British had put a price on their head. There was the Hagganah and the more militant Irgun which blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem and scores of lives were lost. The King David hotel housed the British Palestine Command.

One of the leaders of Irgun was Menacham Begin and the had gone into hiding. Begin would become a prime minister of Israel. So too would Yitzhak Rabin who headed the Hagganah. Such are the antecedents of Israel and it has the impertinence to pose as an injured party. Examine the map of Israel when it came into being and examine the lands it now occupies. Hitler too occupied the land of Germany’s neighbours on the principle of lebensraum, elbow-room for its people.

The Jews may have suffered terribly at the hands of Nazi Germany but they also learnt much from it. When Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary in an article for an Iranian newspaper stated the obvious that “one of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, exploded with rage and cancelled his meeting with Jack Straw.

This was the rage of the guilty. To fight global terrorism, the United States, in particular, will have to revise its strategic interests and withdraw the open, general licence that has been given to Israel to do very much what it pleases in the Middle East.

So far, the main focus has been in trying to find the perpetrators of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. From the way people of Arab origin in particular and Muslims in general are being targeted, not only in the United States but in other European countries as well, it would appear that it has been settled who the guilty party is. One would presume that conclusive proof is available. And there are no doubts.

If that be the case, one hopes that this proof will be made public. One hopes too that there has been no pre-judgment. Justice must not only be done but seen to be done. One was horrified to hear Bill Clinton disclose that he had ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden. As the President of the United States, he had sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws of his country. Assassinations are expressly forbidden and had he carried it out, he would have been guilty of a criminal act as much as the military commander in Vietnam who had to destroy a town in order to save it.

President George Bush Jr. has left no doubt that he is playing hardball. Given the appalling nature of the attacks on the World trade Centre and the Pentagon, he may be right to do so. But he must act prudently and weigh the costs. We need to wage war against global terrorism so that we can have a more decent and compassionate world, where humanity is not degraded. that must remain the goal and this goal must not be compromised. It should be a goal that is not negotiable.

China’s WTO deal

HISTORY was made in mid-September. After 15 long and often frustrating years of negotiating, a working party at the World Trade Organization has approved bids by China and Taiwan to join 142 other governments as members of the WTO.

Ministers at the WTO’s fourth ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, will endorse these recommendations in November, clearing the way for China to join its trading partners in steering this organization.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of these developments. taken together they constitute a defining moment for the WTO and for the international economic, political and security arrangements that will influence our world in this century and beyond. After the horrific events of Sept 11 in New York and Washington, such cooperation is more important than ever before.

Senior Minister Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore has said that China’s decision to push for WTO membership represents Beijing’s greatest policy shift since the 1948 revolution brought the Communists to power. I agree. In joining an organization based on binding rules, mutually agreed by consensus and enforceable through the dispute settlement system, China’s leaders are locking in economic reforms that have been unilaterally put into place over more than 20 years.

Moreover, in embracing WTO rules and our member governments’ stated objective of trade liberalization, Beijing has accepted that openness not only to goods and services, but also to people and ideas, is the best way to ensure a prosperous future for its citizens. Exposure to competition will ensure that Chinese enterprises become more efficient and productive. This greater competition will lead to dislocation and hardship for some.

The writer is director-general of the World Trade Organization.

Who did it and why, and what lies ahead?

THE suspected hijackers, who attacked America on September 11, were all Arab. Considering the very high level of coordination that characterized their operation, it is clear also that they were all subject to the guidance and discipline of a single organization.

Groups that have been waging a struggle against Israel in Lebanon and Palestine are not thought to possess the requisite funding or competence. They do have men and women willing to act as “suicide bombers,” but they do not have the capability of mounting large scale operations.

American investigating agencies are inclined to think that Mr Osama bin Laden is their man. He has plenty of money, not much else to do, and he is believed to have the needed organizational ability.

About a dozen of the hijackers are said to have had links with Saudi Arabia, and several of them with two of its poorest and most backward provinces. It is not clear to what extent they were Islamic “fundamentalists,” but it stands to reason that they were firm believers in the version of Islam that had been handed down to them, held America responsible for the iniquity and injustice visited upon Muslims in their own lands and elsewhere, believed that their intended act of wounding America would be pleasing to God, and that He would reward them with a place in heaven.

It has been suggested that they belonged to an organization called “al-Qaeda,” which is said to consist of numerous groups spread over many countries. It is widely known that Osama bin Laden is the head of al-Qaeda. In any case, both he and his host, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, deny his involvement in the attack. Governments and media people are waiting to see the hard evidence the American agencies claim to have against him.

Why the attack? It is probable that the organization involved regards the United States, a la the late Ayatollah Khomeini, as the “Great Satan,” an implacable enemy of Islam and “true” Muslims, who must be destroyed. There can be no compromise and peace between good and evil. If that indeed is the case, the United States and its friends have no option other than that of doing what they can to destroy their professed enemy, assuming that they can find him.

One of the explanations of terrorism used to be that it is a way for a weak and oppressed group to call world attention to the harsh condition of living imposed upon it by an iniquitous and unjust, physically overwhelming, domestic or alien power. When a terrorist group acted with this objective in mind, it took responsibility for whatever it had done. For otherwise how could it win world attention and sympathy? But curiously enough no organization is claiming responsibility for the attack on America. Does it mean that the organization behind the attack is not looking for world attention and sympathy? Perhaps, it is not. What was then its motivation?

Anger, hate, a desire for revenge against the United States? In trying to reach the “causes” behind the attack, several commentators in this and other newspapers have said to America: “you had it coming: you had asked for it.” They point to the cruel and ruthless Israeli repression of Palestinians. They seem to imply that the United States guides or directs Israeli policy; or that while it is capable of controlling Israeli behaviour, it leaves Israel alone because it is callously indifferent toward the plight of Palestinians.

These suggestions are exaggerative. It is true that Israel needs American military, economic, financial, and diplomatic assistance. One would then expect that the United States had sufficient leverage to compel the government of Israel to honour the relevant UN resolutions, and the accords it has previously signed, in reaching a settlement with the Palestinians. One might add that the United States has not used its leverage to its full capacity.

But these admonitions should be placed in juxtaposition with the fact that — notwithstanding the distinction between the Ashkenazi (European) and Sephardim (Oriental) and the differences between the orthodox and liberal Jews — Israel is internally coherent and competent enough, and it commands enough support within America, to be able to resist the American government’s dictation. The same holds for India’s ability to withstand any American pressure that might be brought to bear on its policy with regard to Kashmir. Yet, I see signs that “causes” of terrorism are receiving some attention in the United States, and it is possible that American officials will increase their efforts to restrain Israel’s inclination to expansionism and violence.

It is said, by way of an accusation, that American weapons are used to kill Palestinians. Remember that we have used American weapons not only to fight India but to kill our own people in East Pakistan, Balochistan, and Sindh. America sells, and in some cases gives away, weapons but it cannot control the use to which they are put. America, it is said, does not make justice rule in the world. This criticism should not be levelled lightly or hastily if one is to consider the sheer immensity of the task involved.

Consider, first, that the contest between justice and injustice has gone on since the time of Abel and Cain. Second, my definition of justice may not be the same as that of the next man even within the same society and culture. Third, even if we could all agree as to the main ingredients of justice, we would find that gross injustice pervaded much of the world in all spheres of life. We would find also that the governments of Pakistan, India, Russia, China, Egypt and any number of other countries were doing little to make justice prevail within their own respective borders, not to speak of the world at large? Even as a superpower America’s capabilities are not infinite.

Beyond indulging their passions (anger, hate), what have the terrorists gained for Islam or the Muslim world? Nothing that I can see. In fact their deed will likely bring more grief to Muslims. It is not unlikely that, in the name of fighting terrorism, the Indians will kill Kashmiris with greater impunity than before. Insofar as the terrorists are perceived as having acted in the name of Islam, not only Muslim nations generally but Muslim populations in Britain, Europe, and North America have been put at risk and on the defensive. During the last few days there have been over 200 cases of violence, or threat of violence, against Muslim individuals and establishments in the United States. One hopes that this is a first reaction, resulting from extreme anguish, and that it will subside with time.

The damage the terrorists have done to America in terms of loss of life and property is substantial, but they have not significantly reduced, much less broken, American power. More worrisome is another kind of damage they may have caused. In the inevitable quest for greater security, the American political system may be forced to curtail the citizen’s liberty. Invasions of privacy, searches and seizures, surveillance and oversight may become frequent. If as a result of what the terrorists have done, American society and polity become more nationalistic and authoritarian, less liberal and less tolerant of diversity of life styles and opinion, would that be any kind of a gain for the Muslim world? In my view, it would be a great tragedy if it came to pass.

Let me now say a word about what I think lies ahead. In his recent address to a joint session of Congress, President Bush declared his administration’s resolve to find and punish those behind the attack on America, wage a war against all kinds of terrorists wherever they may be, and act against governments that support or harbour terrorists. Initial indications seemed to be that not only Osama bin Laden but the Taliban regime in Afghanistan would be targeted for punitive American measures.

Some American observers counseled that punitive action should also be taken against the current regimes in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Overthrowing or otherwise punishing all governments that have aided terrorists in the past is surely a monumental enterprise beyond the capacities of the United States. Moreover, it is an enterprise that the world community will not support.

Happily, the first American reactions are giving way to more cautious and cooler deliberation. The likelihood does remain, however, that the United States will mount some kind of a campaign against Osama and the Taliban.

But even here American officials appear to be receptive to Pakistan’s advice against recruiting and equipping the “northern alliance” to fight the Taliban. A wholesale American invasion of Afghanistan is not likely. Efforts to capture Osama bin Laden, locate and disestablish terrorist training centers, and break the Taliban’s supremacy in the country will probably be made. We have to wait and see what the other specifics of America’s response to the terrorist attack of September 11 will be.

It is probable also that the United States will try to persuade the government of Pakistan to disband, or otherwise disable, the “Jehadi” organizations operating from its territory. This is something that many of our own opinion makers have, of late, been recommending for preserving our national and territorial integrity. Needless to say, it means closing one of the sources of support to the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir. .