More of war hysteria

MONDAY’s speech by President George Bush seems to take his war rhetoric to a new pitch. Designed to garner more support from his people, the speech revealed a mind-set that is obsessed with Iraq and, more particularly, its president, Saddam Hussein. Clearly, Mr Bush is working overtime to build a war psychosis as a prelude to an invasion of Iraq. This at a time when opposition to a new war is growing within his own country, with the American people demanding more attention for the economy. There was, of course, no dearth of adjectives Mr Bush used against President Saddam Hussein, calling him a “murderous tyrant” whose “nuclear holy warriors” would unleash a war on the US. What surprises neutral observers is the continued hammering of the war theme in President Bush’s speeches despite Iraq’s decision to let the arms inspectors back in. Last week, Iraq and the UN reached complete agreement in which Baghdad agreed to give “immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access” to all sites, including the eight presidential palaces. If the Bush administration’s aim is to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, it should welcome the Iraq-UN agreement. Instead, by ignoring Iraq’s carte blanche to the inspectors, Mr Bush is giving an impression as if he feels disappointed that Saddam Hussein should have denied him the opportunity to have a go at Iraq.

The permanent members of the Security Council are yet to hammer out an agreed draft on Iraq, but the Bush administration has already sabotaged the inspectors’ early return by manipulating their departure plan. In fact, when Chief Inspector Hans Blix announced that the team would wait for a new UN resolution before going to Iraq, one knew what had caused the change in the earlier stance. Even then, Iraq’s ambassador to the UN said his country would not reject any new resolution but consider it when it was available. He correctly said that Baghdad wanted to “finish” this problem and see sanctions lifted.

If President Bush wants a strong resolution from the UN, he is most likely to get it. He will also have the kind of authorization he seeks from Congress. But the least he can do is to wait for the Iraqi reaction to a new UN resolution before pouncing on that hapless country. Evidently, Washington is more interested in making a terrible example of Iraq than in preventing it from developing weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, it is regime change that Washington is after and not inspection or even Iraq’s disarmament.

An attack on Iraq will be a grave mistake that will open the floodgates of chaos and anarchy in the region. The main beneficiary of a collapse of Iraq will be religious militants. They hate pro-US regimes in the Arab world more than they hate America. More important, moderate opinion in the Arab and Muslim world will then be swept aside by the extremists, thereby strengthening those very forces which preach and practise violence as a mode of political action. Common sense demands that America move away from the warpath. Iraq has already agreed to inspections; let the US, too, agree to this — something it has been demanding for long. By accepting fresh inspections without any preconditions, Iraq has closed the door on war; let America, reciprocate. Let the inspectors go back and do their job, and let the sanctions — which have killed more than half a million Iraqi children — be lifted.

China’s sane advice

CHINA’S uncluttered view of international issues has again been underlined in a statement by its vice-minister of foreign affairs. In an interview with an Indian newspaper, Mr Wang Yi put the Kashmir question in perspective when he condemned the killing of innocent people which he said fell “squarely within the scope of terrorism”. However, he went on to point out that the problem in Kashmir could not be reduced simply to one of terrorism or counter-terrorism. It was a “leftover from history, from the aftermath of British colonialism” and involved “very complicated territorial and religious issues”. This could be interpreted as a repudiation of the Indian position that there would be no Kashmir issue if Pakistan stopped “cross-border terrorism”. Successive Indian governments, by refusing to accept the fact of the alienation of Kashmiris from New Delhi, have created a dangerous situation for themselves as well as for the region. They have abjured a political approach and, instead, resorted to repression, which has taken a toll of countless innocent lives and forced an entire generation of Kashmiri youth to take up arms.

Lately, the United States has begun to take an interest in the issue and its officials have said that Kashmir is now “on the international agenda”. However, the emphasis remains heavily on the more militant aspects of the Kashmiri people’s movement without any serious effort at trying to persuade India to respect the wishes of the Kashmiris. They have just made these wishes known again by staying away in large numbers from the polls in the state. One can only hope that the signal will be correctly read by the Indian government and it will open immediate talks with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference as a prelude to a tripartite dialogue on Kashmir that includes Pakistan. China can exert its tremendous influence in the international community by urging the big powers to look, as its minister has said, beyond the confines of terrorism and counter-terrorism — to the fundamental causes that have turned Kashmir into a flashpoint of tension and conflict in the subcontinent.

Why disenfranchise them?

IN complete defiance of the writ of the state, a jirga in the tribal belt of Darra Adam Khel has banned women from casting votes. The jirga has imposed a fine of Rs 500,000 on one contestant for his alleged call to women urging them to come out and vote, and threatened to impose a fine of Rs 50,000 on the head of a household whose women are found voting on the election day. This follows a similar ruling by another tribal jirga in Khyber Agency, where women voters were earlier debarred from casting ballot. Clearly, the two jirgas have acted in violation of the election rules that, for the second time, have extended adult franchise to the tribal areas. As it is, for lack of further integration of FATA into the country’s systems, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have no share in the 60 reserved National Assembly seats for women. And now women in these areas face the threat of being completely disenfranchised if the jirga rulings are allowed to stand.

The FATA stands out as an anomaly in a system of governance that allows two separate laws to exist side by side. The system goes back to the colonial times and has long outlived any rationale it might have had at one time. It makes a mockery of democracy, rule of law and good governance that must characterize the working of a democratic polity. The Election Commission should consider postponing elections in the constituencies where tribal jirgas are acting as a law unto themselves in defiance of the writ of the state, until such time that the jirgas in question can be persuaded to see reason and allow women in these areas to exercise their right to vote.