Proliferation in perspective

The strong reaction caused in Pakistan to the news that Dr Qadeer and some other of our nuclear scientists were under investigation on suspicion of exporting nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea for personal gains was natural.

After all Pakistan's nuclear programme unlike those of India and Israel was not for hegemonic purposes but to protect its territorial integrity and national independence against a powerful enemy.

The "peaceful nuclear explosion" conducted by India in 1974 had happened too soon after its military intervention in East Pakistan and was seen by the Pakistanis as a message either to submit to its domination or face the consequences.

It was, therefore, not surprising that the entire Pakistani nation stood solidly behind Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's declaration that we would have the bomb even if it meant eating grass.

Consequently, when Dr Qadeer succeeded in making the bomb in 1984, he became a hero for Pakistanis. Giving Pakistan nuclear capability in the teeth of international opposition led by the US was no less than a miracle and in doing so he had provided to the nation a sense of security and national pride that it had lost in 1971. This made him a figure larger than life. The people and the government put him on a high pedestal next only to the Quaid-i-Azam.

It was in this backdrop that the media broke the news that Dr Qadeer and some of our nuclear scientists and engineers were being interrogated on suspicion of having supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and even North Korea. Pakistanis' first reaction was to reject it as false and US instigated with the ulterior motive to dismantle our nuclear programme, an old US objective.

Dr Kissinger had warned Mr. Bhutto that the US would make a horrible example of Pakistan if it tried to acquire the nuclear weapons. Subsequently, when Pakistan acquired the nuclear capability, the US Congress passed Pakistan specific Symington and Pressler laws for immediate application of sanctions in case Pakistan made the bomb.

During the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan the US looked the other way and refrained from applying these laws, but President Bush senior did so as soon as the Soviet troops had left Afghanistan. Once again, as in 1965, the Pakistanis thought that the US was a selfish and unreliable ally.

Not only that, the US had also created a general impression among the Muslims all over the world that besides its perennial anti-Palestinian attitude and lack of sympathy for other issues of concern to the Muslims such as Kashmir, it did not want any Islamic country to acquire nuclear capability, the so-called "Islamic Bomb".

On the other hand, it had helped Israel in making the bomb and supported Israel's blatant attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which was then given highly adulatory coverage by the US media.

Most Muslims saw these as another evidence of US double standard and hostility towards Islam itself. The US attack on Iraq on "sexed up" WMD charges transformed their belief into conviction that the US agenda was to subjugate the Muslim world, appropriate its natural resources and perpetuate the Israeli hegemony in the region.

The revelation about Dr Qadeer, therefore, created strong suspicion among the Pakistanis that it was a US engineered plot to finish the Pakistani bomb. President Musharraf's political opponents, particularly the supporters of the Taliban, for political reasons or out of respect for Dr Qadeer, spread the feeling that he had succumbed to American pressure.

The nation itself could not believe that Dr Qadeer had proliferated without the knowledge and approval of the generals who seem to have been in full control over KRL. Their natural conclusion was that President Musharraf was trying to protect his fellow generals.

Public support for Dr Qadeer was so strong that even when he admitted his guilt on the TV, Pakistanis thought that he had done so under duress or as an act of supreme sacrifice to save the country.

It never occurred to them that Dr Qadeer was human and could have used the same secret network he had established for Pakistan to supply the technology to others for personal gains. And even if Pakistan was involved, they should have kept quite out of respect for Dr Qadeer rather than place the country in a difficult situation.

It also did not occur to them that Dr Qadeer was a greater hero to the armed forces of Pakistan than ordinary Pakistanis because he had given to them a capability that had neutralized the Indian military superiority over them.

Therefore, President Musharraf could not have touched Dr Qadeer without the risk of a mutiny if there was not enough proof against him.

Nevertheless, a strong belief persists both at home and abroad that he could not have proliferated without the knowledge, if not the approval, of the generals. The allegations made against an ex-army chief in this respect by former US officials and a former member of Mr. Nawaz Sharif's kitchen cabinet has only strengthened the suspicion against them despite the denial by the COAS concerned.

Under the circumstances it would have been better for the country and the army if President Musharraf had constituted an independent rather than an in-house enquiry, albeit in camera, led by a senior judge to remove all doubts about the involvement of armed forces personnel and to fix the responsibility for such a major security lapse.

It is still not too late to do that to clear the clouds of suspicion hanging over the generals and the president himself that he was protecting them. All democratic countries follow this course in matters of grave national concern as manifested by the Hutton enquiry in the death of Dr Kelly in the UK and the congressional enquiry now instituted by President Bush on the failure of the US intelligence in regard to the presence of the WMDs in Iraq.

Internationally serious questions are being raised about our ability to check proliferation. The American media thinks that the saga of Dr Qadeer is nothing but an attempt to cover up and proves "Washington's worst nightmare of nuclear weapons passing to the rogue states" through Pakistan.

Many well-informed Pakistani columnists believe that it would be naive on our part to think that by putting all the blame on Dr Qadeer we could escape the day of reckoning.

We had handed over a "loaded revolver to Washington which can be used against us at any time of their choosing". We could now be declared an international pariah and might soon have to face the choice of either opening our nuclear facilities to intrusive inspection or face Iraq-like sanctions.

Although the US has been most vocal on the issue of proliferation the fact is that all other major powers, including China, share this concern. As stated by the French Foreign Minister during his recent visit to Islamabad, France and its partners want Pakistan to strengthen its nuclear export control, observe greater transparency of nuclear activities in close cooperation with the IAEA and participate in global non-proliferation within the framework of the UNSC resolution now being prepared.

All this indicates that Pakistan will have to create a watertight system of control over its nuclear facility or face the collective wrath of the international community. However the present lapse resulting from Dr Qadeer's actions does not pose an unmanageable threat, as some analyst seem to think.

Firstly, the government has taken the right decision to question Dr Qadeer and others and admit that they had indulged in unauthorized proliferation. The Americans and the IAEA had too much proof obtained from Libya, Iran and other sources against them for a credible denial by us.

Secondly, it did the right thing in actively cooperating with the effort to dismantle the network within and outside Pakistan and assure the world that it had established a foolproof system of control.

Thirdly, individuals and enterprises mostly in the West were also involved and knew fully well what they were doing. However, governments of these countries are not being held responsible for their misdeeds.

Fourthly, since President Bush and Secretary Colin Powell have not accused Pakistan of proliferating officially and issued the requisite certification for the proposed grant of $700 million to Pakistan by Congress they cannot use the present episode to bring a charge later.

Nevertheless, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Americans if it suits their interest in future may demand the dismantling of Pakistan's nuclear capability, but they will have to use the doctrine of pre-emption and unilateral action rather than the present case of proliferation.

In that event our only protection will lie in the deterrence that Dr Qadeer has provided to the country. That is why Pakistanis regard him as a hero. Only if he had not done what he did, he would have not become a fallen hero, which is our deepest regret.

The writer is a former Ambassador.

E-mail: manalam@hotmail.com.

Another day for women

As the country gears up to observe yet another International Women's Day today, it is important for the government to reflect on the promises it has made towards women equality and empowerment in the previous years.

Last year on this day the president in his message called for showing the political will to enhance women's status in society and integrate them into the mainstream of national development. Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in his message said that a struggle for gender equality should be part of our deeds. These statements were not followed up by any clearly laid out policies, plans and actions in the months ahead.

In fact, instead of moving a step forward on the controversial Hudood Ordinances, the president expressed his desire for yet another review to bring the law in line with Islamic injunctions.

The country's leadership has been going in circles on the issue for over 20 years and has yet to gather enough courage to do away with such discriminatory laws from the statute books.

In the NWFP the government is too busy finding ways of making women invisible in every sphere of life - even from the lifeless bill boards and shop windows. One of the few senior women in the NWFP bureaucracy was recently removed from her position and transferred to a place where she would not be heard or seen.

The NWFP government can hardly fill the 2 per cent quota allocated for women in public sector employment, yet the few women who are seen working in the provincial bureaucracy will be pushed out or pushed behind the tall grey steel cupboards found in most government offices.

The MMA government is dragging its feet on appointing a female minister and advisers in the province which clearly indicates the low priority accorded to women's participation in the mainstream decision making. To top it all, the MMA women MPAs are not encouraged or allowed to raise any issues, leave alone women's issues on the floor of the Assembly.

The MMA government has proven in the past one year or so that it is least concerned with improving social services for the masses or route out rampant corruption in the province. According to a recent study the percentage of people living below poverty line in the province is 41 per cent and none of the 24 districts in the NWFP has achieved the national targets for health, education, mother and child mortality and malnutrition and sanitation, safe drinking water, etc.

The proposed Hasba Bill is an ingenious attempt to accommodate the Mullahs in important positions to pass irreversible judgments on people in the name of Islam. The bill is retrogressive and ill intentioned by its very nature.

The MMA is not alone in its lack of concern for women's issues, when it suits it the very progressive parties that make tall claims about women's rights and empowerment are more than willing to join hands with the religious extremists to bar women for filing nominations or casting their votes.

It is therefore not surprising that on the eve of this years Women's day, five political parties have once again joined hands in upper and lower Dir districts to prevent women from contesting the local government by-election. The parties include PPP (Sherpao), PPP (Parliamentarians), PML(N), ANP and JI.

The government is euphoric about bringing women to the national and provincial assemblies but it doesn't require much intelligence to see how they have been made ineffective by adopting the back-door process of proportionate representation for filling the reserved seats.

The women who have recently entered the corridors of power through the back-door are too unsure of their positions within the party to take up issues that would help improve the women's lot in the country. They have been gagged by their party and reduced to nominated members rather than elected members with their accountability limited to their party leadership.

It is unfortunate to see the speed with which the government has taken up the hunt for the terrorists and how the whole state machinery is geared to storming the tribal areas to eliminate the mythical Al Qaeda on the directions of the US.

However, 50 years of existence the government has never shown such alacrity to deal with the sub-human conditions the women live under tribal customs and practices in these areas. In the settled areas the situation is not significantly different. Kohistan district in the NWFP and similar districts in the NWFP and other provinces have less then two per cent literacy rate for women.

To this day there exist ghost schools. The poor people are deliberately kept poor so that the so called leadership can have a field day at their expense. These are just a few examples of the total absence of commitment to improving the plight of the people in general and women in particular.

On this day, therefore, it is important for the government to critically analyze its own performance in the past year vis-a-vis women's equality and empowerment rather than making rhetorical statements and promises.

Fifty-seven years is long enough in the life of a nation to ensure access to basic social services and security for the people. It is not enough to keep making promises of a better future to the people when their present is being destroyed by the corrupt leadership. The leaders must also make a commitment to do away with unnecessary protocol, pomp and show until they have ensured the basic social services and security to the people.

Getting Osama before polls

President George W. Bush's re-election campaign opened this month on the wild mountainous frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan where, according to Pentagon leaks, a cornered Osama bin Laden is about to be captured by US special forces.

We have heard such claims before. But this time, large numbers of US troops hunting America's arch enemy have been ordered by the White House to 'get' Osama at all costs - well before next November elections. They may indeed by closing in.

President Pervez Musharraf is playing the key role in hunting Osama. He has put his powerful armed forces and intelligence services at the disposal of the US in spite of intense public opposition.

Musharraf is also allowing US forces pursuing Osama to covertly operate inside Pakistan. Politically isolated and increasingly unpopular due to the policies many Pakistanis see as anti-Islamic, the general has been forced to increasingly depend on US support to maintain his grip on power and finance his government.

Gen Musharraf's recent major diplomatic concessions to India over the bitter Kashmir dispute were surprisingly one-sided, leaving many Pakistanis shocked and angered.

These concessions were clearly a sign of the general's political weakness and the growing US influence over his government. India was quick to take advantage of Islamabad's weakness and the Khan nuclear scandal by pressing the Kashmir issue to its advantage and putting Pakistan on the strategic defensive.

Last year, Osama bin Laden predicted his own death in combat in 2004. He is probably right. But will the removal of Saddam Hussein and then Osama make America safe, as Bush claims?

No, according to CIA Director George Tenet, who says that the threat will remain high, 'with or without Al Qaeda.' Tenet, for once, is right. Al Qaeda, an organization that never exceeded 300 men, and now has only about 100, was never the vast threat claimed by the White House and US media. At least a score of other anti-American groups are active from Morocco to Indonesia, the North African Salafist groups being the most dangerous.

The Bush administration has enflamed the entire Muslim World by its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, antagonistic rhetoric, and total identification with Israel's repression of the Palestinians.

Bush's anti-Islamic policies, designed to play to domestic special interests, have generated a host of new enemies abroad - a perpetual motion conflict machine run by a president who derives popularity and strength from wars and crises. No wonder anti-American foes are popping up faster than they can be counted.

We are still not even sure Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, as Bush claims. If the Bush administration was so totally wrong about Iraq's secret weapons and links to Al Qaeda, why is its information any more reliable about the shadowy Osama?

After promising in 2002 to release the proof of Al Qaeda's guilt for 9/11, the Administration never did. The main legal evidence cited so far by the US against Al Qaeda comes from a former fugitive member who embezzled its funds. Interestingly, much of the phony 'evidence' about Iraq came from another convicted embezzler, Ahmad Chalabi.

German courts recently determined the 9/11 plot was hatched in Hamburg, not Afghanistan, and could find no direct link to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders applauded 9/11 - after the fact - but may not have been actively involved in planning or finance.

Most of what the White House called 'terrorist training camps' in Afghanistan were actually bases for groups fighting to liberate communist-ruled Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan; Chinese-ruled Eastern Turkestan; Indian-ruled Kashmir; and the southern Philippines.

Their members (some now prisoners in Guantanamo) had nothing to do with 9/11. As for the 'terrorist' Taliban, the US supplied it with millions in aid until four months before 9/11 and has maintained discreet links ever since.

The White House should show the world proof of its claims about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Doing so would convince millions of people who regard him as a hero that he was indeed a cold-blooded murderer.

Capturing Saddam did not arrest Bush's falling polls. But eliminating Osama, and proclaiming victory in the fake 'war on terrorism,' will certainly keep Bush in office - that and his US $120 million war chest that will blitz middle America with images of a heroic Bush defending his nation against a host of real and imagined threats.

But this strategy has a dangerous flip-side. If before November elections Al Qaeda finally manages to stage a devastating attack on the US mainland, as its number two, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, threatens, Bush will face popular outrage and be torn to pieces by the Democratic Party.

Luckily for the US, what's left of Al Qaeda has so far produced more hot air than explosions. Hopefully, the alleged dangers from Al Qaeda will be no more substantial than Iraq's infamous but non-existent 'drones of death,' which, Bush comically warned, were about to fly off Iraqi vessels and shower America with pestilence.

Osama bin Laden vows before his death to punish America for Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. Unfortunately, he has always been a man of his word. So optimism is not yet in order. -Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004

The other uniform and its image

President Musharraf is never at a loss for words. Whenever he addresses the nation on television, switching from Urdu to English and back again, rather like the shuttle in the loom, he has a captive audience. But of late, his repertoire has become somewhat stilted.

The nation is becoming a little tired of constantly being reminded that the armed forces are thoroughly capable of defending the country against military aggression. And how well the nation is doing on the foreign exchange front.

Unfortunately, President Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz and the other knights of the round table appear not to have heard of the law of diminishing utility. Constant repetition can slowly transform sub-cultural arcana into the stuff of modern fable.

A short while ago President Musharraf held court in Istanbul where the Turks are experiencing their own mid-life crisis. But why he had to crack that hoary old chestnut, the desperate need for reforms in Islamic countries, especially after 9/11, and that too in a secular, modern forward-thinking country - is inexplicable.

While the Turks don't exactly have an enviable human rights record, and are being regularly chastised by Amnesty International for the way they treat their male prisoners, their treatment of women in their own country is considerably better than the treatment of women in Pakistan.

There can be little doubt that if a poll was ever conducted to determine the most unpopular official in Pakistan, the policeman would probably win by a street.

Whether he is dressed in white, gray or khaki, he comes across as a boor, a bully and an unpleasant individual who is out to get you, instead of a people-friendly Samaritan who feels he hasn't earned his daily bread unless he has helped a child or an old lady cross the street.

There are lots of reasons for this. The police force, unlike the other unpopular department of government, excise and taxation, which is involved in revenue generation, deals with society as a whole.

And it is its law enforcement duties that draw the ire and wrath of the public, whether the cop is engaged in the often lucrative practice of interviewing errant motorists who suffer temporary bouts of colour blindness at traffic lights and discover to their astonishment that they have left their driver's licence and registration papers at home, evicting tenants who have illegally occupied somebody else's premises, or chasing dacoits in Chicago-style shootouts in which they often lose their lives.

It is generally believed that the unfortunate image that it has developed, can be traced to the time when the police was given the status of a para-military force with its own pecking order of commanders, and became a law unto itself.

It is also widely believed that it was the political governments in Pakistan which circulated the fiction that as the police was the enforcement arm of the government in power, its basic duty was to protect the motley crew that sat on the treasury benches.

This is only partially true. The genesis of the noble policeman, resplendent in bemedalled corpulence, sporting a waxed, handle-bar moustache fashioned on the hirsute image of the British sergeant-major who fought in the battle of the Somme, can be traced to the British who ruled India with an iron hand.

They were the ones who created the Khan Bahadurs and Sardar Bahadurs as a reward for their gallantry in crushing the enemies of the Raj, who happened to be Indian nationalists. When Partition took place, the titles survived and so did the titular heads. But they belonged to an altogether different breed.

Nobody really knows what happened to the scores of suggestions and recommendations made by experts who nodded sagely in the various committees and commissions that were set up in the past to reform the police.

Some of them must have reminisced about the old days when the cops took their orders from the deputy commissioner or the magistrate, and pointed out that in India things have still not changed. When mob violence threatens rebellion, it is the district magistrate who summons the police or the military commander in the cantonment to quell the riot.

The police reforms have been introduced, and a number of experts have once again put their heads together in muttered colloquy, and written learned editorials and epistles.

But I wonder how many of them have tried to look at the problem from the point of view of the poor soul who, without shelter from the broiling sun, has to wave his arms for six hours at a stretch, or the constable who gets thrashed by a clutch of naval personnel, when his only crime was that he was administering the law.

They should ask themselves what steps have been taken to elevate the status of the policemen and women? Has there been any raise in their emoluments? Are they compensated for performing duties which involve danger? Have efforts been made to improve their living conditions and diet, and to provide proper education to their children? Have efforts been made to stop influential politicians from transferring police personnel on personal whims?