Road map to Kabul

HAVE you ever tried to kill a fly with a hammer? Try and you will find it near impossible; the chances are you might end up causing grievous hurt to yourself. Yet, this is what the American bombing seems to be doing in Afghanistan for the past 13 days. The fly and the hammer have opposite strengths and weaknesses. Has America got it wrong again?

The anguished cry of America over the terrorist carnage is certainly justified. Circumstantial evidence does point to bin Laden. Less probable is that he planned the outrage of September 11; more likely he blessed it. That of course does not diminish his culpability. America was shocked by the first ever attack on the American mainland by an enemy. In its scope and content it was truly audacious and is certainly the biggest act of terrorist attack in all history. As a watershed event it marks the true beginning of the 21st century — just as the bullet of a Serbian terrorist started the chain of events leading to world War I, which is regarded as the commencement of the real 20th century.

Strange are the ways of fate. Yesterday, the world mourned with America; today, wide swathes of the Muslim opinion have the perception (right or wrong) that America has declared war on Islam. Yesterday, unending lines of people all over the world filled the condolence books of American consulates. Today, thousands mass the Trafalgar Squares of western cities to protest against American bombing in Afghanistan. Shades of Vietnam all over again?

Wars are remembered not by their content or motivation but by their consequences. Who dares to predict the consequences of the current Afghan war? One unintended and unimaginable consequence of the last Afghan war (1979-87) was that it directly contributed to the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991; but, who could imagine such a consequence when the Soviet tanks swept into Afghanistan in 1979.

First and foremost, it is in the US interest — and Pakistan’s — that bombing of cities stop immediately. It should not have taken more than three or four days to knock out the puny military assets of the Taliban; after all the US had over three weeks to identify the military targets. Now that bombing is in its 13th day, this strains the credibility of the American war machine. Bombing of cities makes it a war against Afghanistan. What was intended was the capture or liquidation of Osama bin Laden and the Mulla Omar faction of the Taliban. Reports indicate that the bombing has scarcely hurt the mobility of the Taliban, but it has caused extensive damage to Afghan civil society.

This week’s Time magazine informs us that the US and British commando troops are about to be parachuted once the Taliban are “softened” after the bombing. White troops — be they Russian, British or American — have been are the bane of the proud Afghans through the centuries. The only way to glue the ever-rebellious Afghans, history tells us, is to have them invaded by white troops.

Everyone today talks of the Loya Jirga. But is it not idle to talk of it when there are no clear plans of how to expel the Taliban from the key southern Pakhtoon cities of Jalalabad, Kandahar and Kabul? The Loya Jirga did its work in an older Afghan polity. Will it work today in a society which has been brutalized for over two decades by revolution, foreign invasion, civil war and famine? Will the country revert to warlordism again? Will a post-Taliban government in Kabul have the power and the means to enforce its writ?

It is high time for the UN Security Council to enter this fray. The Security Council should sanction an armed force, principally constituted of Muslim troops from countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Bangladesh, to clear the road to Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar to demilitarize and hold these cities. An Afghan force loyal to the king or at least certifiably anti-Taliban should be in the vanguard of such a UN force and paid for by the UN. The key to this operation is food. The US should declare these cities and roads leading to them to be bomb-free. Food distribution centres should be set up in the above-mentioned Afghan cities and the roads tracks leading to them.

Food distribution should be gradually shifted away from Pakistan’s borders. Food is the magnet, which will persuade the refugees to return to their homeland. UN-protected armed food convoys to the cities no doubt will meet Taliban resistance. And precisely this is the nub of the matter: to break the civil writ of the Taliban, offer the masses employment for road-building and repair. Only then a stage would be set for peace and convening of a Loya Jirga in a demilitarized Kabul.

Provided the Jirga is seen by the majority of the people as a body truly representative of the ethnic, tribal and religious composition of Afghanistan and law and order maintained by a UN force — largely Muslim (as opposed to an American/British force) — only then can the political process enfold, and that too with luck.

The ideological battle for Afghanistan will be fought in Pakistan. If Pakistan is destabilized in this war, a “victory” in Afghanistan will truly bring about the fruition of the worst fears of the West — clash of the civilizations between Islam and the West. In that event, there would be radical changes in many Muslim countries, especially the oil-producing Arab countries. It is, therefore, important that the Americans be restrained if not by virtue then by prime necessity.

We now see in retrospect the tragic folly of entrusting our Afghan policy to the ISI — an institution full of intelligence but devoid of wisdom. Its narrow-minded dogmas nurtured the Frankenstein of Kandahar (Mulla Omar) in some mistaken belief of Islamic unity, till practically the whole Islamic world turned against Pakistan and its Taliban protege. The obsession for secrecy was also a cloak for corruption. It talked down to the institutions of democracy.

I recall an instance of the late 1980s when General Hamid Gul, the ISI chief of the time, arrogantly addressed members of the National Assembly in the manner of a head master addressing a freshmen class. No question-and-answer session followed.

Such are the wages for subverting the democratic order. The presumed superior wisdom of the few and the dullheadedness of the many.

It is also noteworthy that our government promotes a Loya Jirga in Kabul but denies the same in Islamabad. Right-wing obscurantism has filled the political vacuum in Pakistan. The mainstream parties, which are the natural allies of President Musharraf, are in limbo. Prudence would demand the immediate formation of a National government consisting of clean and respected political personalities drawn from major parties, followed by general elections soon after the coming Ramazan.

Pakistan must make it clear to the Americans that the bombing must stop immediately, otherwise the two countries’ national interests would collide. The UN must be involved in the pacification of Afghanistan. It does not behove the world’s greatest power to be chasing shadows in the barren hills of Afghanistan. Once the civil writ of the Taliban is broken, the bin Ladens of Afghanistan will eventually be “smoked out”, America’s white anger is perfectly understood, but Pakistan as a friend must participate in framing policy objectives in its neighbourhood.

America should remember that when we warmed up to China in the early sixties we incurred their wrath and disapproval. History proved us right. We were the bridge to China. We brought two great nations closer together. Later, Pakistan played a crucial part in the last Afghan war, which led to the unravelling of Reagan’s “Evil Empire.” Once the troubles were over, we were cast aside like empty cartridges for over a decade. Imperial America should cease to be a fair-weather friend to Pakistan and take into serious consideration our concerns.

Be that as it may, America must reflect and ask itself why the vast majority of the billion Muslims regard it as an unfriendly, indeed hostile, power? The answer does not require much introspection: it is perceived to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel on the usurpation of the Palestinian homeland. Any people deprived of, and expelled from, their homeland have an inherent right to turn to terrorism. And the same can be said of India and Russia in occupation of Kashmir and Chechnya respectively. Until Israel withdraws to its 1967 frontiers as ruled by the UN, the Muslim world is likely to remain alienated from the US. The late Shah of Iran paid the price for being on the fault lines between Islam and the West. Whose turn will it be this time?

One can only hope that once the dust of white anger settles, the American electorate will reassess the true causes of September 11. Terrorism will not wither away with the elimination of the Al-Qaeda network or the Taliban. It will acquire new forms and will haunt the US and the West again.

When minor South Pacific islands have long achieved sovereignty, is it fair to deprive a major people — the Palestinians — of their land, nationhood and dignity? Does it not reflect the crass injustice of the great powers?

September 11 signals the American people to be just and fair to the Palestinians; but, till then the fly will buzz round the head of the hammer — and if killed, will leave its spores in some secret corner, which like hydra will grow new heads. Must America wait till the next monstrous act of terror?

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly.

Strikes: not under duress

NO STRIKE call fails in Pakistan, yet the purpose behind it is hardly ever achieved, nor has the person or party giving the call ever coasted into power on its crest. Further, every strike is professedly voluntary and peaceful but duress and violence inevitably follow.

The strikes called by the religious parties on September 21 and again on October 12 and 15 were no different. Leaving aside the radio, TV and government handouts which, by their charter and tradition, never concede the success of a strike, the newspapers reported all the three were complete or nearly so and violent at places like Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar where either the tribal links with Afghanistan are stronger or the orthodox parties sponsoring the strikes have madrassahs and their alumni in large numbers.

The grief and anger over the bombing of Afghanistan is widely shared. It is as acutely felt by the majority which does not approve of the Taliban rule as it is by the minority which does. The difference of opinion arises only on the point whether the strikes would help or harm the cause for which they are launched and that cause, undisputedly, is to end and not prolong the sufferings of the people of Afghanistan. An answer to this question should be sought in the outcome of the strikes staged in the past to advance one or the other cause.

A spate of labour strikes struck the country in the closing years of the decade of sixties and early seventies. The chief demand was for higher wages and greater security. The union bosses, like the religious sages of today, held the peace and production, employers and administration all to ransom. Resultantly, the wages went up but productivity and discipline went down, factory after factory closed, some never to reopen.

The security of employment for which the whole struggle was launched ultimately became its prime victim. Today a vast majority of the workers in trade and industry are employed on daily wages or on contract. Textile, the mainstay of the country’s economy, which was the bastion of the labour unrest is now run almost entirely with contract labour. Only the specialists whose skill is their security and remnants of the union leadership remain on the permanent payroll.

The setback caused to the economy has been long lasting. Hundreds of closed or sick mills and the billions they owe to the banks are a painfully lingering reminder of that period. The lesson learnt is that any campaign propelled by emotions and marked by shutdowns and violence benefits only its leaders. All the rest — the cause, the people and the economy — lose.

The right to strike is the universally recognized and protected right only of the labour. Every body else now goes on strike in Pakistan but not the industrial labour. The other classes now using strike as an illegal and irksome device to promote their interest should pause to reflect why the labour has given up what legally belonged to them, because it doesn’t pay.

In more recent times the political parties and religious groups, the merchants and the federation of industry and commerce and then, the most weird of them all, even the government have called and enforced strikes. In February 1996 the Nawaz Sharif government gave a strike call. It was, perhaps, for the first time in the history of the country that a party in power chose to harm the economy to gain cheap popularity. The ostensible cause for the total shutdown was to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Kashmir. Everybody thought that the sentiment could be better expressed by working overtime and donating money, but then who doesn’t like a holiday?

How the entire population of Pakistan, by lounging through the day and causing a loss of billions to the economy, helped the cause of Kashmir was never explained, not even in emotional terms. Then, again perhaps for the first time ever, the federation of industry and commerce gave a call for strike. It couldn’t but be successful. In keeping with the spirit of the times, even the privileged and the rich felt that violating the law was more rewarding than obeying it.

In 1998, the merchants of Karachi wrote a new chapter in the annals of strikes by drawing their shutters down for six consecutive days. They closed not to create lawlessness but to protest against the gangsters and government alike. Neither went away. The toll was a hundred dead.

Seldom a day looked sadder and more desolate than the Pakistan day (March 23) of 1998. Nineteen people fell dead in Karachi alone on that day. Then there were the incessant strikes called by the MQM to protest against injustices done to it. The whole decade was held hostage to the most weird kind of power contest. Its chief contenders are now either in prison or in exile while the country continues to suffer its ill-effects.

The people of Afghanistan, ravaged by internal strife and foreign invasion, need food, shelter and safety in their own country. No other government and people are better placed than Pakistan to provide all that to them. How will the strikes and murders help them is difficult to comprehend.

The protesting groups need to ponder if Pakistan were not to side with America and the rest of the world, or were even now to break rank, could it have prevented the impending disaster in Afghanistan? Surely, it would not have. Instead, it would have prolonged the agony of its people and, in the bargain, placed Pakistan in the league of suspected terrorist states. That is what our enemies have long been trying. Pakistan thus would have destroyed itself without saving Afghanistan from destruction.

The savage American attacks and the inability of the Taliban militia to manage their famished and brutalized country have created a worldwide surge of sympathy for the Afghan people. There is a general realization that they should be spared the brutality both of the American missiles and of the Taliban rule. The government and the people of Pakistan can play a key role in consolidating that sentiment to the lasting benefit of the people of Afghanistan instead of dissipating it through vain, directionless agitations.

Our collective endeavour now should be to save the people of Afghanistan and not Osama bin Laden or the Taliban. Over the past years both have added to the woes of the people. Bin Laden has played his part in Afghanistan. If he is a true rebel in the cause of the oppressed, let him now carry his revolution to some other land. One Guevera did that to become a legend in death.

The people of Afghanistan and its refugees need material help to survive hunger and cold. That is left to old ubiquitous Edhi to provide. The angry rhetoric or long march on Islamabad would not help the Afghans. It would not bring an end to military rule either; it would only prolong it. That was the outcome of the strikes and marches against Ayub and Bhutto. This time round it could be no different.

Siring from the clink

A panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that male prison inmates have an inalienable right to create babies via overnight air freight and artificial insemination. In a 2-1 ruling that creates new law for nine Western states, the judges held that a prisoner’s right to marriage survives incarceration and, therefore, so does the fundamental right to procreate.

The court, apparently failing to distinguish between the ability to produce sperm and its consequences, decided that creating a new life for which the father shall never exercise familial responsibility is permissible. Guess who probably will end up financially supporting many of the children produced by such means during the enforced absences of thousands of prisoners now legally empowered to become deadbeat dads?

The drive to procreate is admirable when it involves real parental love and nurturing. But is it primarily a right or a responsibility? Making a baby is the easy part; raising one is something else. This decision is prima facie stupid. This is prison. Being in the pen has a downside. That’s the point. California’s attorneys should appeal. —Los Angeles Times.

Is there a propaganda war on?

AS the American war in Afghanistan moves from one phase to the next, a significant parallel development is taking place on the media front. This is the propaganda war which has been unleashed. For the western television and radio channels as well as the press the crisis which has emerged since September 11 has come as the opportunity of the century to make news. Focusing on the frontline, that is Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, they have served America’s strategic goals well — whether calculatedly or inadvertently, history alone will tell.

Initially the two major international news networks, the CNN and the BBC, helped soften the ground for the impending attacks by creating a climate of fear and uncertainty. For nearly four weeks, the 3,000 or so journalists from the major electronic and print media who poured into Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, very successfully reported non-events in such a way as to make them appear to be events of major significance signalling the start of a big war.

It is now being confirmed that the foreign journalists on whom their companies have spent millions had to do something to justify their presence in this ‘war zone’. London’s Economist writes, “so scarce has been the news that some have even reported upon what they say have been the first skirmishes, though more in the hope of accidentally being right than becau-se of any actual information”.

It might not have been calculated, but the media certainly conveyed the impression that war was a few days away. It actually took the Americans nearly four weeks to deploy their forces and launch the first strikes against Afghanistan. But the TV networks started their build-up much earlier.

This served a useful purpose for the American war machine. It facilitated the putting together of the so-called coalition as states fell dutifully in line with it.

Isn’t this the basic aim of war propaganda? When employed skillfully it seeks to influence the actions of individuals and groups. The propagandist has a message to put across and he may even try to do that by resorting to distortion of facts. In the Second World War, the Axis powers as well as the Allies had extensively employed propaganda as a psychological weapon to destroy the morale of the people — civilians and soldiers alike. Aircraft were used to drop leaflets which were very scientifically prepared.

A leaflet dropped by the Germans on the Italian front even carried an inscription in Urdu for the benefit of the Indian soldiers in the Allied armies.

In the present situation, the Americans have not been required to go to this extreme, because the satellite and cable television has performed this function for Washington remarkably well.

It might have been quite inadvertent, but the fact is that it has served the American interest by demoralizing the people and governments in the vicinity of Afghanistan.

The repercussions of this media exercise are now coming to the fore. The most dramatic development has been the use of Al-Jazeera television by Osama bin Laden, the main target of the American offensive, and his protagonists, the Taliban, to launch their own psychological warfare. This hitherto obscure satellite channel launched in Doha in 1996 was making ripples in the region by its independent political reporting in Arabic — something quite new in the Middle East.

It has now shot into international fame when it telecast messages from Osama warning the US and Britain of further attacks.

Since Al-Jazeera is the only channel with a live link with Kabul in these momentous times, the CNN and the BBC link up with it when there is something to report from inside Afghanistan.

The impact has been shattering, so much so that the American government has even advised the CNN not to broadcast Osama bin Laden’s messages unedited.

This psychological sparring might not be propaganda in the conventional sense of the term. As the Economist was quick to point out, propaganda disseminates untruths and America’s task is to disseminate the truth about its motives and intentions. But in today’s world of information overload, one doesn’t have to resort to blatant lies to influence the minds and thoughts of people. The channels ‘manage’ news in subtle ways.

First, they focus heavily on the events which they want to project as the major developments of the day. For instance, doesn’t a JUI protest rally which is telecast repeatedly throughout the day make a strong impact?

The images of awesome expressions and defiant gestures of bearded men burning effigies and chanting angry slogans convey the impression to those not familiar with our society that the whole country is up in arms in support of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

The worried messages from friends in the West and the surprise expressed by visitors here confirm that television is creating the impression worldwide that Pakistan is a Talibanland. Shopkeepers and others have confirmed that some channels are known to have sensationalized a situation by actually getting people to pose for them for shots which create a dramatic effect.

Secondly, to lend credibility to their news reports the media have either sent their staff here in large numbers — some have virtually set up camp offices in Peshawar/Islamabad. Excepting the foreign correspondents posted in Pakistan, the others who have flooded our cities have little knowledge of this country.

They depend on local sources of information not all of which are reliable and a lot of money is said to be changing hands.

As a result, all the news as it appears in print or on television screens is not intelligent journalism.

Is this calculated policy (propaganda) or is it to appease the insatiable appetite of round-the-clock news channel for sensationalism? The most negative repercussion of the phenomenon of the news channel with their own compulsion to fill in viewing hours is that it has an addictive effect on its viewers who are gradually robbed of their analyzing faculty.

In one way the advent of Al-Jazeera has had a very pronounced and positive impact on the reporting of the western media. They are now being forced to be more objective and non-partisan. They have learnt that propaganda is a double-edged sword. It can do harm to the West too when it travels home.

The Vietnam war is an example. With no CNN around at that time, it had arguably taken some time for the media to have an impact on the American public opinion.

How has satellite and cable television affected the course of events since September 11? It is creating the impression in the West that the entire Islamic world is getting set for jihad against the “Christian West”. This can be expected to inflame feelings in the western countries specially when people there generally have limited knowledge about Islam and the Third World.

The media have had a destabilizing effect around the globe. How else can one explain the communal violence which erupted last week in northern Nigeria — so far removed from the scene of action in Afghanistan. They have whipped up fear and intolerance in the West which will prove destabilizing for its economy and society. The anthrax episode gives the impression that the public is in panic.

Given the fact that western societies have enjoyed a higher degree of development and freedom, they are more vulnerable to fear and uncertainty.

Before the media circus gets out of hand, it is time for the major actor in this game, the Bush administration, to stop and think. The media thrive in a climate of crisis, melodrama, uncertainty and insecurity. These are the conditions being created by the United States’ ill-considered policy vis-avis Afghanistan today. Is the war achieving any strategic/political goals for Washington?

In Robert Frisk’s (The Independent, London) words, we have “the most powerful military force on earth” bombing “the world’s poorest, most ravaged Muslim nation” with missiles costing billions of dollars. The bombardment came as a boon for prime time television.

But will it really help in the capture of Osama bin Laden? The Arab world’s most respected political commentator, Mohammed Haikal, former editor of al Ahram, has the answer: “As a symbol of American imperialism, the attack on Afghanistan is potent. But there are likely to be far-reaching repercussions. Inevitably, when there is a vacuum, Islam — a ready-made cultural unifier and the answer to the region’s multiple identity crises — is there to fill it.”

Not exactly what President Bush had in mind when he launched on his Afghan adventure.