Will Saddam be smart enough?

MORE than 200 arms inspectors have landed in Baghdad for a search, stretching from the desert to the secret palaces of President Saddam Hussein, to determine whether Iraq is developing an arsenal of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. After blocking the entry of arms inspectors for the past four years, Iraq’s willingness to give the UN inspectors free access, from November 27, to more than 700 sites that will not be announced in advance, is seen as Baghdad’s last chance to avoid a US-led invasion.

The unanimously adopted Security Council resolution 1441, that has sent the weapon inspectors back to Iraq with a short time-table, specific instructions and a sweeping mandate, has bought unity at the cost of clarity. Its wording has allowed the Security Council members to read what they choose into the resolution. France and some other countries that voted for the resolution believe that it obliges the United States and Britain to return to the Council for approval for military action. The Americans insist, in the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell, that they will not be “handcuffed” by the Council.

The resolution requires the Security Council to “consider” further action should Iraq not comply. France and others believe that the word “consider’ means the Security Council must specifically authorize military action after another debate. According to the U.S., “consider” means little more than holding a meeting before it decides to unleash its bombers and missiles. “One way or the other, Iraq will be disarmed”, says US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte. The “one way or the other” depends, of course, on how Saddam Hussein plays his hand. It also depends on how the Bush administration resolves its internal debate over the real objective of its policy towards Iraq — “defanging Saddam” or “regime change”.

What would Mr. Saddam Hussein do if he were smart enough to thwart US war aims? Not knowing how much Washington knows about his weapons programmes, he may reveal everything and conceal nothing. According to some of Mr. Saddam Hussein’s western detractors, he may give an Orwellian touch by announcing that he has been shocked to discover that there are, indeed, objectionable weapons being produced in Iraq and that this has been the work of some renegade generals who have been done away with for their sins. (generals have been fairly expendable in that country) By coming clean on his weapons programme by December 8, Saddam Hussein can easily foil the aims of US war hawks who are after his head but who will then lack a straightforward justification for military action. Also, he will remain the supreme leader of Iraq. Sanctions will have to be lifted, the sufferings of his people will be relieved and the country’s oil production will be restored.

Even if some inspection regime remains in place, it may not be possible for it to pursue future inspections aggressively. Moreover, weapons-making know-how would stay in the heads of Iraqi scientists and engineers and, with billions of dollars of oil money at his disposal, Saddam Hussein will have the nuclear option ready at hand to adopt if at any stage he finds his country’s security gravely threatened by Israel or any other hostile force.

Most western analysts, however, believe that at some stage Saddam Hussein is likely to give Washington the pretext it seeks to make war. According to media reports, American military commanders are uneasy because they apprehend that the next war will be very different from the 1991 Gulf war.

It is widely believed that this time around Saddam Hussein will not repeat the mistake he made eleven years ago providing an opportunity for virtual target practice by the US and its allies — by massing his forces in the open desert. With no effective air force or navy and with desert armour deployment a form of suicide, the indications are that, in case of war this time, Saddam Hussein will concede the indefensible and resort to urban warfare. This is a prospect that makes US military planners quite nervous.

The US defence planners hope that an anti-Saddam coup in the early stages of the war will spare them the grim prospect of fighting in the cities. But they cannot count on it and that is the reason that US ground forces are now taking crash courses in urban warfare.

The reason why the Iraqi ruler is likely to opt for urban warfare is that it will level the playing field somewhat for him. Cruise missiles, F-117s and smart bombs are not of much use in urban combat. Buildings can hide defenders from airborne surveillance and attack. Soldiers and militia with short-range weapons, useless in desert warfare, can be quite effective in urban combat. Defenders can use roadblocks in cities to drive attacking forces into ambushes and minefields. The prospect of US ground forces getting enmeshed in close-quarter urban fighting, where air power will be ineffective, is perhaps Pentagon’s biggest worry.

Of course, the Americans can use bombers and long-range missiles to pound Iraq’s major cities into rubble with minimal US causalities. But that world involve horrendous civilian death toll, even with the so-called “precision bombing”. How can massive civilian casualties be avoided when military targets are located in hospitals, mosques and residential houses?

A large-scale urban destruction in Iraq, leading to frightful civilian death toll, is certain to further alienate the Islamic and generally the rest of the world from the United States. The most recent example of the heavy cost of urban warfare for the invader was provided by the Russian attack on the Chechen capital of Grozni in 1995. It also underscored the cost that urban fighters could inflict on conventional attackers. The 131st “Maikop” brigade, the first to penetrate the city, lost nearly 800 out of 1,000 men, 20 out of 26 tanks and 102 out of 120 armoured vehicles.

The Americans, too, have tasted some of the trauma and confusion that fighting in cities can entail. In their abortive attempt to tame a Somali warlord in Mogadishu in October 1993, more than half of their elite soldiers who took part in the operation, were injured, eighteen Americans were killed as were more than 1,000 Somalis, many of them civilians. The net outcome: the United States hastily called it a day, pulled out of Somalia, leaving it at the mercy of the warlords.

As many as 261,000 people, most of them civilians, could be killed if the United States goes to war against Iraq, according to a coalition of humanitarian groups in North America. Deaths from indirect and longer-term adverse health effects of a military engagement in Iraq and beyond could total an additional 200,000.

Dr. Eric Hoskins, an epidemiologist who has worked in Iraq off and on since the 1991 Gulf war, says that physical health effects of any new war in Iraq will include disability, infectious diseases, stillbirths, underweight newborns, diseases of malnutrition and possibly more cancers afflicting the people of Iraq on a frightful scale. The destruction of roads, railways, homes, hospitals, factories and sewage plants will create conditions in which the environment is degraded and disease flourishes. Shortages of water, food and energy will lead to epidemic diseases that may result in more deaths than those caused by a possible military invasion. “War always kills many more civilians than soldiers”, says Dr. Hoskins.

The financial cost of a conflict will be horrendous. There will be total economic collapse in Iraq. The United States is likely to spend $ 50 billion to 200 billion on war and from five to 20 billion dollars annually on continued occupation. It is estimated that spending $100 billion on a possible war is the equivalent cost of addressing the health needs of the worlds’ poorest people for four years.

Installing a successor government and rebuilding Iraq’s shattered infrastructure — promised by George Bush — could also be far more expensive than the actual conflict. Also, winning a war may be easier — as it was in Afghanistan — than securing the peace on lasting basis

Where are our libraries?

THE time is not far off when many children in Pakistan may never have heard of or seen a library. This institution of learning is in real danger of becoming extinct. With politics generating the sound and fury that it does in this country, it is not surprising that non-political and seemingly mundane issues, such as the paucity of libraries, never receive the spotlight that they deserve.

But these issues are central to our very existence in the long-term. Thus the importance attached to libraries is inextricably linked to the priority given to education and the intellectual development of the people. Will our newly elected parliamentarians recognize this connection? Successive governments have failed to realize that our survival in this era of globalization depends on how we educate our children. Which means determining not just their level of knowledge but also their capacity to analyze independently and form opinions of their own. This in the long run shapes their social attitudes and behaviour as well as political thinking. One wonders if our leaders want the people to remain ill-informed in order to manipulate their votes.

It is reassuring to know that there are still some people around who feel concerned about libraries. This concern was expressed recently through unconventional channels. First, a letter from a gentleman called Ibn Hasan Khan Azeemi, the founder of the Farheen Educational Society in Orangi Town — a relatively obscure group — has proved to be thought-provoking.

The letter writer pointed out that in Pakistan we observe one ‘day’ or another all the year round — from children’s day, and women’s day to senior citizens’ day, so much so that Karachi Zoo even went to the extent of celebrating an elephant’s day. But never in the history of this country has a library day been observed. In his own humble way Mr Azeemi celebrates February 21 as library day in his effort to promote a library culture.

In his letter, he specially lamented the fact that Orangi Town, which has a higher rate of literacy — 85 per cent — than the rest of the country (48 per cent), does not have a single public library. This was confirmed by the editor of the Pakistan Library Bulletin in his editorial in the latest issue in which he points out that of Karachi’s 18 Towns, seven do not have a public library. Orangi Town is one of them.

Editor Sabzwari also laments the absence of a library network in the city. Way back in 1992, Mayor Farooq Sattar had earmarked a plot of land in Gulshan-i-Iqbal for a city library, he tells us. The building plans had also been approved. But the library has yet to see the light of day. Mercifully, the plot has not been swallowed up so far by developers for a commercial high-rise.

The little significance attached to libraries in our society is truly agonizing. Dr Anis Khurshid, whose name is practically synonymous with that of library science in Pakistan and whose untiring efforts to promote the cause of libraries are unparalleled, gives us to understand that in the last survey he had conducted in 1989, the total number of libraries in the country was a little over 6,000, which included over 4,300 Union Council libraries — actually box libraries — with a collection of 1,100,000 books.

That was 13 years ago. Given the state of our local bodies, one cannot be sure how many of these libraries have survived. Moreover, what these figures do not bring out clearly is that all these libraries are run on an ad hoc basis and that most of the 200,000 schools in the public sector have no libraries at all. In other words, we are educating our children in ‘bookless’ institutions.

Now compare this with India which is said to have 60,000 libraries, with the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Foundation having assisted more than half that number and library legislation being in force in 11 states. Small wonder then that we should have much reason to feel ashamed of.

The Federal Bureau of Statistics in Pakistan discreetly decides not to release any data on libraries. Interestingly, the Bureau’s Yearbook 2002 even lists the number of visitors to the major zoos in the country and the number of their inmates.

Obviously those figures are more impressive than what the Bureau would have collected had it tried to determine the number of visitors to public libraries and the number of books in their stock.

This lack of interest in books and the absence of a library culture manifest themselves in many ways in the country. In terms of economic productivity, our low literacy rate (which is closely linked with the absence of libraries) means that manpower cannot be sufficiently trained to handle modern technology and acquire the know-how needed to maximize production in every sphere of economic activity. This apathy towards books also explains the decadent aspects of our socio-cultural tradition and the generally regressive mental make-up of our people.

Just as our skewed education policy is dividing society between haves and have-nots of knowledge, the missing libraries are pushing the disadvantaged classes deeper and deeper into the abyss of deprivation and poverty by denying them access to reading material, knowledge and information. The rich have their computers and the Internet to surf the Web and dig out the information which they are looking for. They also have their elitist libraries where they can consult reference books. They can use their credit cards to order books from amazon.com. But where do the poor go for their information needs after they have managed to acquire some reading and writing skills? Or if they just want to read for pleasure — not a sin after all — from where do they get a book?

The tragedy of it all struck me when some students in a government school I visited to conduct a survey on the reading habits of children told me that they wanted to read story books but their parents could not afford to buy them books for leisure reading. Since the school had no library — the education department considers it a waste — there was no way they could lay their hands on reading material. This sort of strangulation of the natural curiosity of a child is a terrible blow our stereotyped education system is inflicting on society.

The fact is that there is no substitute for a library. It is this institution that we need to focus on to foster a culture of learning. If the 45,000 libraries the People’s Party government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had promised in its education policy of 1972 had actually materialized, what a different place Pakistan would have been today! Such libraries — even the box ones for the villages — would have had to be stocked with books giving a much needed boost to the publishing industry. A healthier and competitive publishing sector compared to what it is today would have promoted learning, research and scholarship. One can only make conjectures because those libraries remained a pipe-dream.

At least the first People’s Party government thought it important to talk about libraries. Today the government does not even do that. Its budget on these institutions is pathetic. The Sindh government spends 0.2 per cent of its measly education budget on its libraries and archives. The Punjab’s allocation is even less, at 0.1 per cent. It is doubtful if the local bodies would be spending even that much.

What we need is a library movement in the country. Dr Anis Khurshid had at one time drafted a model library law that was designed to create a system to ensure the availability and continuity of public libraries and enable them to play the role of mobilizing and motivating the people, while serving as centres for education, information, recreation, leisure-time activities and reference/research. The law was to have two central provisions. One, it would create a central authority to administer the library system. Two, it would facilitate the financing of the library network by making it mandatory for local authorities to allocate at least two per cent of their budget for public libraries.

This law was never considered to be important enough to be enacted. Today we have been left to lament the state of our libraries.

One only hopes that the day will not be far off when the importance of libraries and education sinks into the minds of our newly elected lawmakers.

What the Americans miss: OF MICE AND MEN

I HAVE never been to the United States, so when a friend, a sociologist, told me (among other funny things about the place) that there are no pirs in America, I could only sympathise with the people of that country in their misfortune. Suffering from so many handicaps of modern life they could at least have enjoyed this great psychological comfort.

Here, in Pakistan, many important people in every profession make no important move unless they have consulted their pir, even though he may be all but illiterate. Pirs are much less expensive than psychiatrists. I don’t know about President Pervez Musharraf, but his two predecessors (as chief executive) used to go to Mansehra where a baba hit them (lightly) with a stick, the number of hits indicating his pleasure or otherwise. Of course they didn’t go together, but took turns, just as they took turns to rule the country. Imagine President George Bush without a pir to tell him whether to invade Iraq or not!

But if pirs as a class are not to be found in the United States, this does not mean that no American can be a pir, or that you can’t have an American pir at all. That would be a slur on the enterprising spirit of Americans. Not long ago I read about an American pir, but to meet him you’ll have to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, where he held court. He must still be there if he hasn’t been deported or something. His name was given as Jonathan Hansen.

Our pirs are adept at foreseeing the future. In this respect there is hardly any difference between them and astrologers. Let the astrologer wear a beard (dyed, preferably with henna), place a piece of yellow check cloth on his left shoulder, recite a few verses, howsoever inappropriate, and, in a thunderous voice consign to the fires of Hell all those who deny the need of a spiritual intermediary between you and God, and you have a pir.

According to an AFP report, missionary Hansen did the same thing last year. He told Caroline Mwicigi, a housewife of Nairobi, that the end of the world was near, in fact only a few months away. So she handed him over 18,000 dollars “to save mankind” in the little time that was left. The missionary had assured her that though time was short, he and his Calvary Charismatic Church would do their best to bring non-believers on to the righteous path before doomsday.

Come the First of January, 2002. The day dawned as usual, and the sun set as usual after its allotted journey across the sky. Caroline waited in vain for the world to end along with the day, but, as we all know, nothing of the sort happened. She gave a few more days for Jonathan Hansen’s prediction to come true, as she thought there might be a difference of calculation between him and the Almighty.

A week more passed. When her relations, neighbours and friends began to laugh at her, she decided she had had enough of the Calvary Charismatic Church and its Nostradamus. So she went pronto to Mr Jonathan Hansen and asked for her money back. The AFP says Hansen laughed at her naive demand and said that missionaries are not supposed to return donations, that anyway no money-back guarantee was art of the deal, and if the world did not end on New Year’s Day only God could tell what had happened to upset the programme. He was sorry, but he couldn’t give back her 18,000 dollars. They had gone to save lost souls.

After this rebuff, Caroline Mwicigi tried many other methods to get her savings back but failed. Then, after a few months, she went to court with her plea against Missionary Hansen, seeking an injunction to prevent him from withdrawing this amount from the Nairobi bank where his church had its account. I am sorry there was no report after this, and I was deprived of the delight that some reports in foreign papers provide to their readers.

I must say this was nothing but lack of faith on the part of Ms Mwicigi. That comes of not having pirs around to get you into the habit of giving money in exchange for spiritual sustenance. On that score Kenya seems to be as backward as the United States, though I’m told it still has voodoo and medicine men for its people.

We, the Muslims of Pakistan (and of India too) are accustomed to the erratic ways of our pirs and never question the sincerity of their pronouncements. We give them due credit, along with monetary gifts, for those of their predictions that come true. As for the others, we don’t quibble or start complaining and go to court.

When I was a callow youth and didn’t want to study, I had ambitions of becoming a pir. The idea came from a bosom pal whose father was from a traditional pir family and was highly respected. All the year round the mureeds came with gifts, usually in cash and sometimes in the form of wheat and ghee. But during one month in the winter, Pir Sahib made a personal tour of the distant places where his followers were concentrated, to collect the yearly nazrana.

My friend, as heir apparent, always went with his father, and once took me along to keep him company. We had a jolly good time being made much of by everybody. It was presumed that, like the son, I too was Chhote Shah Sahib. That was the nearest I ever got to becoming a pir on my own. At the same time, any thoughts that I harboured of adopting piri as a vocation vanished with a stricter application of parental discipline and threats of being turned out of home.

What I am trying to make out is that our people do not lack faith like that Mwicigi woman who may still be hankering after her 18,000 dollars. They appreciate the fact, that being God’s representative on earth (so far as the mureeds are concerned) the pir is entitled to unpredictable behaviour.

By the grace of God, from the head of state to the man in the street, everyone in Pakistan subscribes, through intellectual-cum-spiritual allegiance, to one pir or another. Even Pakistan itself has another country as its pir — the United States of America. We may have spurned the pir’s advice not to explode a nuclear bomb, but we have made up for it now by refusing the clergy (our pir’s bugbear) to share the government.

The blame game

NOW that the election is over the losers are playing the blame game.

“I got the Election Day wrong. I thought people were going to vote on Thanksgiving Day.”

“Everyone went to Macy’s for its Election Day Sale instead of to the polls.”

“I shouldn’t have used my campaign money to build a new house in a better neighbourhood.”

“I ran on a ‘Jobs are not important’ platform and it backfired.”

“Even my wife voted for my opponent.”

“I was blamed for losing the Air Force base, the Navy shipyard, and an Army golf course in my district.”

“I swerved to the left when I should have gone to the right.”

“If you think I’m going to fight another day, you’re crazy.”

“I ran a dirty campaign, but my opponent ran a dirtier one.”

“My staff was miserable and incompetent. I wouldn’t hire them again if I were running for dog catcher.”

“I made a mistake when I asked Sen. Torricelli to campaign for me in my district.”

“I should have known something was wrong when all the pundits predicted I would win.”

“The mike was on when I told an aide I didn’t care if I got the Hispanic vote or not.”

“They had a fund-raising dinner to celebrate my birthday and nobody came.”

“I came out for cuts in Medicare and new taxes on baby food.”

“I shouldn’t have lost. I started with a lead of 30 per cent in the polls. From then on it was all downhill. The voters found out I didn’t stand for anything. I thought they would go for it.”

“We live in a free country and the people have spoken — damnit.”

“I hated to kiss babies while campaigning. They slobber all over you.”

“Ringing doorbells for votes was not my cup of tea. You never know when the homeowner has a dog.” “My theme song, ‘Let Me Tax You,’ didn’t work as well as I thought it would.”

“What really hurt me is when I took money from Enron, WorldCom, Imclone and Arthur Andersen. After they all went belly up, taking the money didn’t bother me but the checks bounced.”

“I would rather lose an election than win one because now I don’t have to keep all my campaign promises.”

“I refuse to play the blame game. I’m saving it for my book.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Tomorrow is another day: WORLD VIEW

THE new prime minister of Pakistan has betrayed an intriguing penchant for attempted profundity. After achieving, by a whisker, any politician’s ultimate ambition in the National Assembly last Thursday, he declared, with reference to the prospect of a meaningful transfer of power, that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.

The implicit comparison between the construction of ancient Rome and the establishment of democracy in Pakistan may not be entirely inappropriate, although it could probably be argued that the Romans faced an easier task.

A few days earlier, speaking about the likelihood of obtaining a “comfortable majority” in parliament, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had offered an altogether curiouser metaphor: “Was the Magna Carta signed in one day? It wasn’t.”

King John, one of the least popular monarchs in British history, may not have been a willing signatory to the charter drawn up in 1215 by rebellious English barons with the intention of drawing a line between royal prerogative and tyranny, and he may not have intended to abide by the restrictions it placed on the arbitrary abuse of power, but it is hard to see how it could possibly have taken him longer than a day to affix his signature to the document.

One could, however, look for relevance in the contents of the Magna Carta: “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseized, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed; nor will we proceed against him or prosecute him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

“We will sell to no one, we will deny or defer to no one, right and justice.”

A case could probably be made for drawing up a similar charter outlining the armed forces’ duties and obligations vis-a-vis the people of Pakistan, which must include the stricture: “Thou shalt butt out of politics”.

Yet even if this could be achieved, chances are that some general would sooner or later pop up to decree that the stricture applies to civilians rather than soldiers.

Besides, it is highly unlikely that such thoughts were crossing Jamali’s mind when he introduced the Magna Carta into the national political discourse. Could he have been thinking, instead, of the Legal Framework Order which appears likely to dog his administration for as long as it endures?

The proverb about Rome, incidentally, was misattributed in at least one report to Cervantes. The author of Don Quixote might actually have been able to offer something considerably more pertinent and somewhat less cliched, such as: “There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say — the haves and the have-nots.”

There is a risk, however, that had the prime minister chosen to cite this particular quotation, it may have been taken amiss by his rivals. After all, the have-nots in parliament tend to be a whole lot more cut-up about power deprivation than their counterparts in society at large are about impecuniosity.

Although effusive in their congratulations to the winner, the prime ministerial candidates of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians also issued barely veiled warnings, and there can be little doubt that Jamali’s one-vote majority in an incomplete house does not augur too well in terms of stability. He would not have been able to cross the line without the support of the 10 PPPP dissidents, and his prospects in the obligatory vote of confidence that must be obtained within two months are already a source of heated speculation.

The onerous burden that the nation’s first prime minister from Balochistan has taken on appears likely to involve a rather tricky balancing act. He will be obliged not only to keep an effectively hung parliament in good humour, but also to avoid incurring the displeasure of the military high command.

Jamali’s curriculum vitae suggests that he is reasonably well qualified to walk the tightrope. After all, he seems to have had no qualms about serving all manner of men, from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (whose administration, for perfectly valid reasons, was never particularly popular in Balochistan) to the three Mohammeds — Zia-ul-Haq, Junejo and Nawaz Sharif. Such flexibility is not uncommon in a political milieu still dominated by feudal interests, where little value is attached to principles. It is important to remember, though, that while rigidity may not be an outstanding virtue, invertebrates inspire the respect neither of those they serve nor of those they betray.

Given the circumstances of his elevation, it is but natural that, of all his prime ministerial predecessors, Jamali should be compared to Mohammed Khan Junejo. There are significant differences, of course. Apart from everything else, Jamali is by no means the nonentity that Junejo was when he was plucked from obscurity by a previous military ruler following the partyless elections of 1985, which had yielded an unprecedentedly pliant parliament. There is nonetheless an important lesson to be drawn from the Junejo experience.

If Jamali is no Junejo, it is equally the case that Pervez Musharraf is no Zia. Yet there are obvious parallels between the two dictators’ efforts to rewrite the Constitution and their servile relationship with Washington. Both generals also sought to project themselves as blunt, plain-speaking soldiers. In Zia’s case, only the incorrigibly gullible were taken in — to the rest of us it was fairly obvious from the outset that his rule was founded upon a series of blatant deceits and transgressions of common decency. For all his avowed piety, he also appeared to have no qualms whatsoever about peddling crass untruths.

Musharraf, on the other hand, was able to pose as the aggrieved party in his melodramatic tussle with Nawaz Sharif. And, although there can be little question that the prime minister had the constitutional right to replace him as army chief, large numbers of people were pleased to see the back of the unpleasant Sharif administration. Although the general’s promise of instituting “true” democracy within three years ought never to have been taken at face value, he did initially manage to cultivate the impression that deception would not be one of the main weapons in his political arsenal.

That image has since been shattered, as Musharraf’s Napoleonic delusions have multiplied. His version of “true” democracy has turned out to be a mongrel order in which the khaki party is bound to hold the edge. A hung parliament fits in neatly with this scenario, since it is unlikely to yield a prime minister strong enough to challenge the status quo. It is therefore not inconceivable that the PML-Q’s failure to grab an absolute majority of seats in last month’s elections reflects a deliberate strategy rather than the limited success of official efforts to promote the king’s party. After all, Musharraf must be well aware that he cannot count on the personal loyalty of politicians who are veterans of virtually every king’s party that has stalked the corridors of power.

The interim between the elections and the first National Assembly session was devoted largely to good old horse-trading. Although alliances based on compromises are not uncommon in all manner of democracies, there is reason to suspect that most bargaining revolved around the division of spoils rather than ideological adjustments. And Musharraf did his bit to facilitate the process by holding back the Constitution’s anti-defection clause, thereby enabling the PPPP’s so-called forward bloc to claim a disproportionate share of cabinet seats in return for its crucial support for Jamali.

But perhaps the least acceptable aspect of Musharraf’s manipulations is his claim to the presidency on the basis of a spurious referendum. He has had himself sworn in twice on account of the same less-than-fair vote, yet he remains unresponsive to suggestions that it might not be a bad idea to ease his burden by relinquishing the post of army chief. Combined with his determination not to put himself up for election in a manner compatible with constitutional injunctions, his reluctance to let go of his military command offers incontrovertible proof that he recognizes that his real constituency is still the armed forces rather than the people of Pakistan.

In the event, it was somewhat disingenuous of Jamali to pledge that he would not tinker with the existing foreign and economic policies, given that there has been no regime change as such. What has happened is that the clique in control has acquired a civilian, nominally representative appendage as a concession to domestic as well as international concerns about the absence of democracy.

The European Union’s scepticism on this count has provoked a rash reprimand from Islamabad, but Brussels is not half as relevant as Washington in the wider scheme of things, and the US has, not surprisingly, offered a semi-enthusiastic endorsement for the amended dispensation. The State Department must have been relieved to discover that the portly Jamali’s cultured hirsuteness is representative of his status as a tribal chieftain rather than a concession to militant Islam. And it must be said that if the US is relieved that an MMA-PPPP combine with Fazlur Rehman at the helm did not prove feasible, the same holds true for the majority of Pakistanis. Such a motley combine would not have survived in the long run, yet it would have done little good — and, possibly, considerable harm — even in the short term.

Not since July 1977 has Pakistan experienced a balance of power that favours the civilian set-up. Jamali will have to do far better than Junejo — and, for that matter, than Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto — if he wants to redress this anomaly. His chances cannot be rated too highly. It will depend to a large extent on whether he wants to figure in the honour-roll of democracy or as a historical footnote. If he chooses the former option, he may, for starters, have to learn to say “no” to higher authority in at least one of the eight languages he is reputedly fluent in.

Rome may not have been built in a day, but at least it was built.

And never mind the Magna Carta.

E-mail: mahirali@journalist.com