US perspective on Lebanon

AS the tenuous ceasefire in Lebanon holds, there is constant evaluation going on in the US about the brutal war in Lebanon that was allowed to go on for five weeks to enable Israel to achieve its strategic goals. Fairly extensive coverage has been given in the US media to the protests by sections of the Israeli parliament and press over the conduct of the war, and there have been demands for the resignation of the Ehud Olmert government.

This clearly reflects the feeling within Israel that despite claims of victory, the war did not end successfully (owing to Hezbollah’s determined resistance) and that the myth of Israeli invincibility has been shattered. As the war had been fought by Israel with US weapons and diplomatic support, the outcome has further damaged the Bush doctrine and strengthened anti-war sentiments.

Though the alleged London bomb plot targeting transatlantic flights was played up to boost concerns over security, it has been noted that Hezbollah’s showing has helped the morale of its main backers, Iran and Syria, whose leaders speak with a new confidence.

This has happened at a time when the US war on terror, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, had not been going too well with rising US casualties and a deteriorating law and order situation. The civilian death toll in Iraq during July exceeded 3,500, the highest figure since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Though the Republicans gain when security remains the dominant factor, there is increasing concern that the US remains a hostage to fear.

With the November 2006 mid-term elections approaching, the likely effect of the war in Lebanon on their results has also come under discussion. President Bush felt obliged to issue a public statement that Hezbollah had suffered a defeat and that its presence close to the Israeli border would be eliminated following the stationing of Lebanese and UN troops there. However, protests within Israel over the conduct of the war negated this claim, while evidence has accumulated of excessive use of force and of resort to the use of cluster bombs by Israel which has been violating the ceasefire persistently. This is in contrast to the role of Hezbollah which is already turning to reconstruction of the tens of thousands of civilian homes destroyed by Israel.

The US media noted that the Israeli regime was on the defensive while Hezbollah was proclaiming victory. Indeed, euphoria was visible not only in Syria and Iran, even the emir of Qatar, a close US ally, did not hide his jubilation about the Arab victory over Israel during his visit to Beirut. The central theme in the US since the Lebanese ceasefire has been that the real culprit behind Hezbollah’s defiance is Iran which supplied the organisation with advanced equipment including the missiles used to fire rockets into Israel. It also provided funds to Hezbollah to rebuild civilian homes in the largely Shia areas of south Lebanon.

The US president began to lay emphasis on Iran responding positively to the call by the Security Council to end its programme of uranium enrichment by the end of August, failing which the US would wish to proceed with the enforcement of sanctions.

As Iran launched a five-week long military exercise, shortly after the Lebanese ceasefire to display its readiness to stand up to military pressure, the administration began to highlight the need for concerted international action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That would pose a direct threat to Israel’s security as well as to world peace.

The response from Tehran, given on August 22, basically offered the holding of detailed talks on the subject, without abandoning Iran’s right to carry out uranium enrichment as under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. President Bush was quick to describe the response as “unsatisfactory” and to call for moving to the next step, namely to impose economic sanctions. Israeli hawks were shown on the US media, calling for pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear installations.

Though President Bush has not abandoned his doctrine of pre-emption, he is conscious of the constraints in an election year, particularly as the US electorate will not favour additional military ventures, unless unavoidable. He has to take into account the reluctance of China and Russia to impose sanctions, as well as the rising domestic opposition to continued large-scale military involvement overseas. Even potential Republican presidential hopefuls like Senator John McCain are distancing themselves from the Bush foreign policy. Signs that US military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan may be prolonged are producing a reaction in favour of greater reliance on diplomacy and the role of the UN.

By the time Bush completes his term in 2008, it appears likely that though the war on terror will not go away, there will be greater emphasis on dealing with the causes of terrorism rather than relying exclusively on military force to combat it.

A section of the intelligentsia takes note of the fact that the war in Lebanon was directly relevant to the Palestinian issue, and that President Bush had proposed a two-state solution in 2002, which had received the support of the UN, the EU and Russia. However, he is unlikely to bring up the roadmap issue in an election year when the power of the Jewish lobby would virtually rule out any initiative that would not be welcomed by Israel.

Other movements — particularly in Palestine and Kashmir — dedicated to the cause of national liberation will take heart from Hezbollah that has frustrated Israeli war designs. Since 9/11, they have had to contend with state terrorism perpetrated by Israel and India that have dubbed freedom fighters as “terrorists”, even though the United Nations has always maintained a distinction between the two terms. For the present, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was ready to withdraw from significant areas of the West Bank, is no longer in a position to do so. The US, while maintaining a subdued interest, cannot put any pressure on Israel.

Any moves to revatilise the Middle East peace process can only be made after the US elections. A stronger UN presence in south Lebanon may become a factor in these. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s term will end in December, and it is doubtful that he can accomplish much on the basic issues concerning Palestine, Lebanon, or Iran’s nuclear programme.

The new secretary-general, who will be from Asia, will face a challenge, but may be helped by a growing sentiment in the US in favour of diplomacy. Will President Bush move with the times to face the real issues — poverty, disease and better management of the world’s changing environment and shrinking resources — in the final years of his presidency? That remains to be seen. But the outcome of the recent conflict in Lebanon may discourage reliance on military power and place more emphasis on the role of fundamental rights and principles as enshrined in the UN Charter to achieve a just and peaceful world order.

The writer is a former ambassador.

The descent into tribalism

MODERN governments, when they try to justify their existence in historical terms, are apt to propose a rough-and-ready anthropology for human development. First came the tribe — savage in instinct, ritualistic in religion and run on the basis of a grunting solidarity; humanity’s first exercise in collectivism.

The nation, which takes its place, is for more refined, literate peoples and can call upon scholars and scribes, chroniclers and preachers, who propose common goals for the nation.

Organised states, with their bureaucracies, sanitation services and taxation policies, like to think that they exist on a higher plane than either the tribe or the nation. Ethics loom large and morality’s plans acquire a finer focus. Modern governments are meant to promote the fulfilment of individuals, their happiness and ease of life. Savages have become citizens and can look beyond the narrow ambitions of the tribe.

Nations continue to exist within the modern democratic state. But elections in such societies are won on the basis of economic plans which persuade individuals that their futures will be healthier and more interesting under one dispensation than another. In that calculus, being a better patriot hardly makes an appearance and the politician draped in the flag is an object of suspicion.

A summer of Middle Eastern battles is a reminder of how precarious this genealogy is and how the ancient loyalties still subsist. Hezbollah and Hamas are tribes which have flourished because of the breakdown of state authority in Lebanon and the failure of the Palestinian Authority to exercise any kind of state order. Hands outstretched in collective salute, the members of these tribes are reminiscent of western Europe’s last tribal moment, the fascism of the 1930s. In both cases there is the use of religion to promote a tribal solidarity.

Israel itself is no less tribal an affair than its opponents. The secular state and socialist values have long since disappeared from its history. It was always a quixotic idea that the nationalist theory of Zionism could be successfully transplanted from the European political tradition of the 19th century to the Middle East of the 20th century. Israel has simply degenerated into its context.

Within Europe the tribe has become one of the key features of the 21st century. The continent’s last great east-to-west movement of the displaced was in the wreckage of the post-1945 world. That Vvlkerwanderung has returned in the wreckage of the Warsaw Pact. Russia’s revival as a great power has been a renaissance, first, in Slavic consciousness. The Russia built by Peter the Great looked to the western tradition of state-building, but the country now run by Vladimir Putin looks both to its Slavic roots and to its own embodiment as the home of the tribe and people of Rus.

Even the world’s last superstate shows features of tribal activity at work in the age of Bush. America’s politicised form of evangelicalism is uninterested in the ideals of common democratic purpose. Its religion is that of the tribe at work and at worship — promoting its own solidarity. Having retreated within its own cultic view of the world, it then imposes its views on others — as in the case of the presidential ban on stem-cell research.

Middle Eastern tribalism, just like the African variety, is the direct result of colonial interference which frustrated the indigenous development of state-building. Ruled from above — often through regimes lacking popular legitimacy — peoples retreat naturally to the tribe, which offers solidarity and hope.

Tribalism in Europe has more to do with the failure of the governmental project in the late 20th century. France has failed to absorb its Muslim minority, who are drawn to ever more tribal loyalties. British tribalism has taken its cue from the degeneration of welfarist aspiration into a bureaucratic exercise. Here the moral case for taxation in terms of human progress seems so implausible that it is rarely presented, and “wars on waste” come and go, achieving little.

Flirtation with English tribalism represents an attempt at breathing new life into ancient conflicts in a world of devolved government - as with the Tory proposal to ban Welsh and Scottish MPs from voting on legislation with an exclusively English application. This is an old game of division and separation. Genetic research has shown how, within 15 generations of their fifth- to seventh-century arrival, the genes of the Anglo-Saxons had multiplied so successfully that they accounted for more than half the male DNA in the population of England.

Most probably through enforced segregation and a ban on intermarriage, the invading tribes had isolated the native British tribes in order to create a new, Germanicised country. Early mediaeval history has become the best guide to our age of the decay of states and the degeneration of nations into tribal attitudinising. —Dawn/Guardian Service

Incoherent narratives

WHEN Sophocles presented Oedipus Rex at the festival of Dionysus in 430 BCE, he changed the plot in a way that would have shocked his Athenian audience. In earlier versions, after Oedipus discovered that he had unwittingly killed his father and committed incest with his mother, he continued to reign as king of Thebes.

In Sophocles’s play, he gouged out his eyes and became an outcast and perpetual exile. Despite his reputation for vision (oidos), Oedipus had been blind to basic realities of his identity. All his life, he had tried to act rightly and find the truth, but it eluded him and, through no fault of his, he had brought pestilence upon his city. At the start of the disastrous Peloponnesian war, Sophocles was trying to make Athens aware that humans can never hope to understand the full significance of their actions; there is usually an aspect of the situation that — sometimes fatally — escapes our grasp.

In our increasingly polarised world, we desperately need this kind of insight. We are deluged with competing narratives, recited antiphonally but never in tandem. Osama bin Laden tells a story about the iniquities of the West, ignoring its good qualities; President Bush exalts western freedom, without admitting that western progress has often been at others’ expense. In Israel and Palestine, people have quite different perceptions of the historical events that have led to the present, tragic impasse. In the recent Lebanon war, reporters told divergent stories from the two countries. Imprisoned in its own pain, neither side could consider the other’s point of view.

Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures; we crave narratives that have a beginning and an end - something that we rarely encounter in everyday life. Stories give coherence to the confusion of our experience. In pre-modern society, we called our most serious stories “myths”. Because of the rational bias of our modernity, the word “myth” today is regarded as something that is not true. However, originally myth was not concerned with actual occurrence but with an event’s deeper meaning. Myth has been well described as an early form of psychology; instead of representing external reality, it laid bare our inner world. It was not attempting to be factual and objective, but to outline a course of action that would help us to deal with our problematic lives.

When we tell stories about our political or cultural dilemmas today, we present them as comprehensive: anything that contests “our” narrative must be false. But because we want to present “our” side in the best light, they are usually selective and self-serving, leaving out inconvenient aspects of the full picture. The tales of our pundits, politicians and terrorists are mythical rather than factual, expressive of a state of mind.

These partial narratives represent an ideal rather than complex reality. But Sophocles’s Oedipus story reminds us that there was never a single version of a myth. As we listen to the antithetical mythologies that tear our world apart, we need to be receptive to the counter-narrative that opposes our point of view and expresses the “other” perspective.

Religious people often give the impression that only one story is true. But the scriptures frequently present very different versions of the same event. The Bible, for example, at the beginning of Genesis, places two mutually exclusive creation stories side by side. In the course of at least half a millennium, historians, poets, reformers, priests and lawyers continually recast the story of the Exodus — the core narrative of the Hebrew scriptures — to make it speak to the conditions of their time. When the editors compiled the biblical text, they did not privilege any one account, but put them all together. The result was a contradictory document that eluded simplistic interpretation. Because the Bible was the word of God, its message was infinite and could not be confined to a neat human system.

Scripture has no time for tidy, streamlined versions of history. The Hebrew prophets insisted that the people of Israel must criticise their own behaviour before blaming enemies for their tribulations; they undermined Israel’s national mythology, pointing out that other nations also enjoyed God’s favour and had their own stories. As far as we can tell from the gospels, Jesus did something similar when he subverted the myths of the conventionally pious.

Again, the editors of the New Testament refused to give a clearcut account of Jesus’s life and death; there are four gospels, each with a very different understanding of who Jesus was and what his life meant. Constantly the scriptures insist that we listen to different voices, implying that truth always lies in the whole, complicated picture. —Dawn/Guardian Service

Paying a tribute to Castro

EVERY once in a while a writer gets the urge to fly off the handle and have a crack at his critics, especially when he believes they have been unfair and unnecessarily provocative. As a rule a columnist tries to steer clear of controversy, and avoids the letters-to-the-editor section when a comment involves something that he has written. He prefers to watch from a safe distance as supporters and detractors enter the arena on the editorial page.

The tide invariably comes in with an angry flourish, seeps into all sorts of nooks and crannies, floats about a bit and eventually retreats back into the ocean. But there are times when the froth clings to the shingles as happened when this writer commented on Castro: the end of an icon. That’s why he felt a counter attack was indicated.

The title of my column in a sense, expressed the tone and temper of the article. The piece was meant as a tribute to a great leader who outlasted nine US presidents — and is the last of the great charismatic world shakers of the 20th century — a formidable catalogue of political figures that include Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Mao, Gandhi, Ho-chi-Minh, Kenyatta and Mandela.

Homage was paid in a number of passages. Two are being reproduced here to illustrate a point. “He became an icon of international socialism. He is an inspiration to the anti-imperialist movements in the Third World, and the fact that he continues to cock a snook at the great superpower to the north and manages to get away with it, has also made him a cult hero with left wing groups in the developed world.”

A later passage mentions his reputation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when his popularity surged like the burst of an oil rig. “Unlike most heads of state that prefer to remain cocooned in heavily guarded fortresses during times of conflict, Castro behaved like Rommel in the North Africa campaign, riding with his soldiers, drinking tepid water from chipped mugs and personally calling the shots in the dusty desert plain.”

The purpose of the article was to focus on the leader and the impact he had on left wing movements around the world. However, this column apparently caused “deep sorrow” to members of the Cuban embassy in Islamabad, who published a sharp rebuke, because the writer had expressed the view that the people of the island were impoverished and the educational standards were abysmally low.

However, there wasn’t a word, not even a single word, on the general tone and pitch of the article, which this writer believes was a huge tribute to one of the most remarkable political leaders of the twentieth century. Were the two paragraphs quoted above and some of the others, derogatory or disrespectful to the regime in any way? Did they sound like the writer was making a disparaging comment, or that he had any malicious intent?

The dispatch from the embassy was bad enough. The missiles from the writers, which were triggered off by the rebuke, and continued to stir the embers, further complicated the issue, because they hung on tenaciously to the title which preceded the letter from the embassy. Most of the writers kept mentioning the 25,000 doctors that Cuba sent to Pakistan and accused me of having ignored or sidelined their immense contribution.

This is hitting below the belt. This writer wholeheartedly agrees that the gift of the doctors was a profound humanitarian gesture that no Pakistani can ever forget, and a debt that cannot easily be repaid. The Cuban doctors were outstanding, dedicated and worked selflessly round the clock. However, this writer did not touch on the subject of the medical practitioners, as he was not commenting on individual feats of generosity or valour, but on general policy matters.

Except for the letter by M. Saeed who wrote from Islamabad, and who commented on the general tempo and content of the essay, one certainly got the impression the other correspondence was written by people who had not read the original article. Unfortunately, M.Saeed spoiled it by apologising on behalf of the Pakistani nation for the comments on the education system.

One writer said that the piece left “a bad taste” in his mouth. Another abhorred the fact that “some columnists were in the habit of ignoring the truth and reproducing only western propaganda.”

If this lady thinks my comments on Cuba are biased and “reflect western propaganda” she should read what Isabel Hilton had to say in her article entitled: ‘Cubans await post-Castro era with apprehension’ published in the August 13 issue of this newspaper. Here is an interesting passage from the article.

“The signs of Cuba’s long economic decline are everywhere, the picturesque 1950s Chevvies rusting on Havana’s streets, the crumbling magnificence of Cuba’s colonial cities, the teenage prostitutes touting for trade on the Malecon, the professional couple reduced to beggary in a slum, in despair for their children’s future, the ageing intellectual, his library adrift in time, unreplenished since the 1950s, the empty shops and the half-filled ration quotas.” The international press is full of such criticisms.

A couple of days after the last missile had been published, this writer ran into an old friend at a marriage reception. The friend turned on him, a little vociferously and said, “Shame on you for writing against the education system in Cuba. Didn’t you know they sent hordes of doctors to the north after the earthquake?”

One wanted to tell him that the fact that President Musharraf had sent lots of Pakistani doctors to Indonesia after the tsunami, did not necessarily point to the assumption or endorse the view that there were exceptionally high educational standards in Pakistan. It just pointed to the fact that there are still people who care about those who are less fortunate than they are.

Instead, I politely asked my friend if he had seen the original article, or if he was going by what he had read in the letters’ column, which is usually what happens in the majority of cases. Of course, he hadn’t seen the original piece, but promised that he would that same evening. The next day he called to say that my remarks on the educational system notwithstanding, he had not come across, in this part of the world, somebody who had such a profound affection for the Cuban leader.

Getting back to the letter from the embassy, perhaps one should hasten to point out that the article was essentially about Castro, the man — and not about the system that he was shepherding. No political organisation or arrangement is perfect, though the Cuban revolution aspired and continues to aspire to the ideals of Lenin. The standard of living might be low, but so is the cost of living. But while one is on the subject, it would be pertinent to point out that no Cuban goes hungry; every Cuban has clothes to wear and a roof over his head. And the country has an enviable health system.

In conclusion one must point out that the article in question would have probably gone the way of most articles written in this neck of the woods, had there not been this retort from the spokesman of the Cuban embassy in Islamabad.

The $500,000 question

COMMENTATORS often urge cricket’s governing bodies to modernise and to speak with one clear voice. In the past week the Australian umpire Darrell Hair appears to have unwittingly pushed the sport towards doing both.

It was Hair who, with the agreement of his fellow umpire Billy Doctrove, penalised the Pakistan cricket team for illegally tampering with the match ball during the fourth test against England at the Oval on Sunday. When Pakistan protested, Hair awarded the game to England, setting off an international furore that has continued for the rest of the week.

Some lauded Hair as a judicial enforcer, upholding cricket’s ancient laws. But those claims were eroded after yesterday’s publication by the International Cricket Council of communication it received from Hair after the game ended - in which he first offered to step down in exchange for a payment of $500,000.

Incredibly, Hair then emailed the ICC to say that following accusation against him of racism, “the sum indicated in my release offer is being revised”. The effect of these revelations has been to unite cricket as rarely before: former umpire Dickie Bird yesterday described Hair’s demand as bigger than Bodyline, the 1933 controversy when England’s fast bowlers gave Australia’s batsmen a battering.

Hair’s desire for a huge pay-off gives the Pakistan cricket authorities a lever for calling into question all of his decisions taken on the fateful day of the test. It also offers the ICC authorities a way out. The ICC should as quickly as possible drop the charges of ball tampering and bringing the game into disrepute against Pakistan’s captain Inzamam-ul-Haq. It should also apologise to Inzamam and, in the light of what has transpired, downgrade any sanction against Pakistan for its dressing room sit-in to a slap on the wrist.—The Guardian, London