In the name of freedom

THE difference between the United States and much of the rest of the world, particularly Muslim countries, is personified and indeed accentuated by President George W. Bush. His initial pronouncements following the tragedy of September 11 were well prepared and enunciated to gain the sympathy of an outraged world. His subsequent statements and actions may reassure his fellow citizens but have displayed a serious disregard for the sensitivities of others.

On the one hand, President Bush acknowledges the need to build an international coalition against terror. His entire approach, however, has been combative and coercive: ‘either you are with us, or against us’. If you are ‘with us’, past differences are forgotten, at least temporarily. In the case of Pakistan, sanctions have been lifted and democracy made less of a prerequisite for acceptability and respectability in the community of nations. The issue of human rights on which great emphasis was been placed throughout the past decade was not even mentioned during President Bush’s recent visit to China. Uzbekistan, which had previously been pilloried for its abuse of human rights and democratic norms, is now accepted in the grand coalition of freedom-loving countries formed to fight terrorism and defend liberty.

Freedom and liberty have assumed different meanings in the US and the Third World. The bombing of Afghanistan is justified by the US in the name of these high principles. Yet when the Taliban attempted to portray the plight of suffering Afghans through their single media outlet, Al Jazeera TV, the US urged Qatar to suppress the TV station. This was despite the fact that, less than a year ago, the same Al Jazeera was lauded by the US as a beacon of democracy and free speech in the Middle East. CNN has been pressured to issue a directive to its international correspondents to ‘balance’ images of civilian devastation in Afghanistan with reminders that the Taliban harbour terrorists. In the reported words of CNN chairman, Walter Isaacson, “it seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan”.

Recently, under US pressure, the Pakistan foreign ministry advised the Afghan ambassador not to hold daily press conferences attacking the US. It is regrettable that with all the money and influence of the international media available to the US, they cannot withstand the impact of one single TV station, or the press conferences of a lone ambassador. And all this in the name of freedom and liberty.

If the US can so easily turn its back on its cherished belief in free speech and liberty, what confidence can the world have in the willingness of the US to continue to wage a war against terrorism when it becomes counter-productive to its national interest? President Bush’s record in the past year of unilaterally rejecting or abandoning several important international treaties and obligations because they were not in the US interest lends support to this concern and fear. To mention just a few instances: the international convention on germ warfare, the Kyoto convention on the environment, the submission of individuals to the jurisdiction of a new international criminal court, the Anti-ballistics Missile Treaty with Russia, and the land mines agreement.

True, the September 11 tragedy was the worst ever single catastrophe to befall the US. The fact that it happened within ‘Fortress America’ and against two principal pillars of might gave the Americans an increased sense of vulnerability. President Bush undoubtedly had to lift the morale of his fellow Americans and at least appear to be aggressive and bold in his response. But his ignorance of history, limited political experience and lack of vision and vocabulary helped exaggerate the swagger that has come to be seen as his trademark. Not for nothing is he humourously called the ‘Texan wadera’ in this country.

The West is worried about not winning the propaganda war. This is not surprising when their actions are becoming increasingly unjustifiable in the eyes of the world outside the US. The message conveyed cannot conceal the underlying contradictions in the allied position on terror. Moreover, its projection is not helped by the principal messenger. For the US president to talk about Osama bin Laden being wanted ‘dead or alive’ three times in one brief statement would be amusing but for the unfortunate negative impressions produced. Similarly, such rhetoric as ‘smoke him out’, ‘he can run but he cannot hide’ hardly becomes a head of state claiming to lead the free world. Indeed, his use of the word ‘crusade’ virtually justified Osama bin Laden’s call for jihad against the Christian West. President Bush has helped project Osama as a heroic figure who will not be readily forgotten in the Muslim world.

If the consequences of President Bush’s shortcomings merely resulted in his losing the next elections, that would not be much worrying. Unfortunately, the bitterness engendered, the escalating hatred, the cycle of action and reaction involving the West and the Muslim world present a scary scenario for all reasonable, peace-loving people throughout the world. Even within the US, human rights have been eroded: the ordinary citizen no longer moves about freely without fear, and many with a Middle Eastern appearance have lost their liberty, and some their lives. This state of affairs will last as long as the war against terrorism continues in its present form, and will leave a residue of hatred to last for years to come. Worse still, it may not only prove a long war, as the US has stressed, but in the end an unsuccessful one.

The use of American force against Afghanistan defies the principles enunciated by Colin Powell during and after the Gulf War: force could only be deployed with firm public support, clearly attainable objectives, and an exit strategy. The first condition exists at present in the US, but it remains to be seen how long such support will continue as it depends on a successful outcome. The objectives, however, are in no sense clearly defined, let alone accepted as attainable, even though Prime Minister Tony Blair has recently attempted to spell out limited goals. As for an exit strategy, there is none in view where the Afghan quagmire is concerned.

Gradual military success on the ground in defeating the Taliban and the failure to make progress in constructing a post-Taliban political arrangement have made the US excessively dependent on massive aerial bombardment. It is repeatedly parroted by US leaders and political commentators that there is no alternative to this bombing: ‘show us a better or different way’, they say. Bombing has apparently become a substitute for rational constructive thinking, an end in itself, since the US government has to show some action, if not success. Indeed, even success in purely military terms would not mean the elimination of the Taliban, nor result in the establishment of an acceptable government in a peaceful Afghanistan.

While there has been very little opposition in the world at large to the US assault on terrorism, considerable reservations have been expressed about its effect on the people of Afghanistan. If the Americans are really the champions of freedom, they must pause and consider alternatives to blanket bombing. They must work on a solution to the Afghan problem and not merely further devastate the poor country. It would be a good opportunity to stop the bombing during the coming Ramazan, especially when the Muslim world is calling for it and when all international humanitarian agencies are stressing the importance of immediate aid to prevent famine. Pakistan’s role should be positive and not merely that of a camp follower. The government should continue to press vigorously for a cessation of bombing and actively promote the search for an alternative and acceptable solution.

If the objective is to bring down the Taliban and cut off their support for Al Qaeda, a financial and economic blockade and stringent isolation should suffice, while at the same time undertaking massive humanitarian assistance to win over the support of the Afghan people. If Al Qaeda has operatives and facilities in some 60 countries, as the US claims, then these should be dealt with separately without delay since they are presumably no longer controlled from Kandahar. These and other means to be considered may take longer to achieve the objective, but are preferable to a policy of ‘might is right’. If there is a will to seek a suitable alternative to the current policy of a military solution, then surely a way can be found. That would be an effort worth making in the name of freedom.

Operation ‘Infinite Justice’ has been renamed once. In years to come, let it not be referred to as ‘Infinite Injustice’.

Afghan tragedy: what next?

THE people of Pakistan joined the rest of the civilized world in their deepest sense of shock and grief at the horrible tragedy inflicted upon thousands of innocent people of the United States and some other countries on September 11. Such crimes against humanity cannot be justified by any previous crimes of a similar or even worse nature and dimension.

The people of the Third World including those of Pakistan, who have remained victims of terrorist assaults as a result of foreign aggression and occupation in all their brutal manifestations, (e.g. in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, massacres in Indonesia, in Mai Lai in Vietnam, in Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon and the on-going bombing of Iraq and the Zionist crimes in Palestine), abhor all forms of terror under any lofty and noble covers like exigencies of war, restoring law and order, protecting liberty and the free world or promoting a civilizational or super-religious holy missions.

While rejecting any justification for terror under any pretext, the people of the Third World and for that matter of the whole civilized world cannot pretend to be unaware of the facts that those vociferously proclaiming the horror of terror, and calling for waging a holy war for saving human civilization, happen to be representatives of those very forces which have been practising, instigating and master-minding terrorism against poor and defenceless societies. The vast majority of humanity today continues to bear the scars of such international terrorism.

Nor can it be forgotten that many of those involved in terrorism now, are known to belong to those groups which were enlisted, trained, armed, financed and unleashed by imperialism for heinous acts under the very same cover viz. religious extremism which has been used in the tragedy of September 11.

Humanity has grievously suffered at the hands of dogmatic interpretations of the belief systems leading to intra-religious and inter-religious wars throughout history.

Defying the dogma, enlightened and forward looking leaders of the Muslim world — Salahuddin, Akbar, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Mustafa Kamal Pasha, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Jamal Abdul Nasser, Sukarno and others — instead of treating life as standstill, like dead wood and keeping their eyes fixed only on the past took into account the changes brought about by the realities on the ground and adopted brilliant strategies, flexible tactics and wise policies which ensured success in facing the issues confronting Muslim societies.

What the Muslim world needs today is a forward-looking strategy and tactics based on the awakening of the Muslim masses throughout the world and their unity and struggle based on objectivity, regional and local realities and the spirit and vision of the modern era. They should be able to march forward with the rest of the deprived, oppressed and subjugated humanity to build a world on the foundation of genuine democracy, social justice, equality, freedom of conscience, national sovereignty and equality among nations based on mutual cooperation.

The dogmatic views of history are bound to lead the Muslim world to blind alleys and may even prove to be suicidal.

Dogmatism, fundamentalism, revivalism and social reaction are not, and have never been, the monopoly of the followers of any one particular faith. At this very point of time, along with Muslim fundamentalism, we have Zionist and Hindu fundamentalism.

Ruling classes, cliques, states and empires have always used one or the other form of religions extremism as a weapon against the masses to divide, weaken, manipulate, subjugate and misguide them. In recent years, European colonizers did so in their colonies including India.

Religious fundamentalism and revivalism in various forms are lavishly financed by imperialists in Israel, India, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere for their global power-politics. Their new-found antipathy towards religious extremism and terrorism is selective, selfish and totally hypocritical. Imperialists have been interfering with Afghanistan and committing unpardonable crimes against the people of Afghanistan for centuries.

The peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan will continue to suffer for a long time because of what has been done to them in the past and what is being done to them today. They cannot be punished for the miscarriage of adventurous games that imperialism and its stooges have been playing with their destinies.

The people of Pakistan could not have been used as helpless and obedient tools, if we had not been plundered by our own rapacious and corrupt classes and foreign-appointed ruling cliques. Had those been men of the required intellectual and political insight with some basic honesty, competence and character, they would never have allowed themselves to forget that it was not only the existence of the cultural-historical yearnings and socio-political aspirations of Muslim India and not only the existence of what they complained to be the super-ego, over-confidence and rigidity of the stand of the majority community, that led to the success of Pakistan movement. It was also the enlightened liberal, democratic interpretation of the Muslim ethos, the up-to-date modern constitutional-political skills and flexible and rational strategy and tactics of a modern Muslim leader like Mohammad Ali Jinnah which led their efforts to fruition.

After Afghanistan, Sindh is the worst sufferer of the machinations of the imperialists. It has been flooded with heroin, kalashnikov, hungry, quarrelsome and aggressive Afghan refugees and groups of terrorists.

The people of Pakistan are not alone in demanding that the bombing over Afghanistan be stopped forthwith, foreign forces be recalled and the matter be resolved through a civilized process. Even the fascists and the Nazis who were responsible for the deaths of innocent people and the devastation of the whole European continent, were given a proper and regular trial. Nobody should be allowed to be the complainant, the prosecutor and the judge at the same time. This will tell the world at large, that doors to a fair hearing are closed where the sole superpower is concerned. The results of such a conduct can well be imagined.

A number of fair-minded leaders of public opinion in the West are supporting these demands and calling for the establishment of a new just world order which should ensure a fair deal to all the deprived and oppressed masses including those of Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir And Iraq.

Among the steps that need to be taken immediately are the following:

(a) The bombing of Afghanistan should be stopped forthwith.

(b) An independent inquiry tribunal consisting of universally respected world jurists be established to identify suspects involved in terrorist activities.

(c) The entire international community should join hands in the interest of world stability and progress to arrest the suspects and produce them for trial by an international criminal trial court consisting of international judges including Muslim judges of universally known and acknowledged judicial integrity and independence.

(d) After the completion of the judicial process, the judgement should be implemented in conformity with the honour and integrity of the world community as a whole.

(e) A commission of inquiry under some internationally respected statesmen like Nelson Mandela be appointed under UN auspices to define terrorism, find its causes, identify the forces responsible for breeding, promoting and indulging in terrorism and to suggest ways and means of uprooting terrorism and punishing the culprits.

(f) The people of Afghanistan should be properly compensated for the losses suffered by them because of the wars and they should be helped to create a viable economy with international assistance.

(g) The Afghan people be helped by the international community to construct for themselves a genuinely independent, enlightened, democratic, patriotic, forward-looking, broad-based government capable of leading them to a bright future free of foreign intervention and domination.

(h) An international force consisting of contingents from countries like South Africa, Finland, Switzerland, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Tanzania be deployed to help maintain peace in Afghanistan during the interim period.

When I was king: OF MICE AND MEN

HAVE you noticed that public letter boxes of Pakistan Post Office are again red — a red that is a little warmer than the old colour called “post office red” by the British? When I say old I mean the red of some fifteen years ago before the letter boxes all over the country were suddenly painted yellow.

I can imagine some big shot in the Post Office department, maybe the minister of communications himself, claiming proudly in a departmental meeting how he had done away with the yellow letter boxes which, according to him, had been a blot on the landscape. “It was shocking really, changing the 140-year old post office red into cheap bright yellow.” I can also visualize one of his juniors nodding in agreement and itching to exclaim, “Sir, you are a genius,” but putting off the tribute to a moment when he is alone with the boss.

When the letter boxes were turned yellow in the mid-eighties, it seemed a bit bizarre. We all missed the old red ones, but we had to concede that the new colour was striking and now you could spot a letter box from a mile. The red one merges with its surroundings and does not stand out. Anyway, red or yellow makes no difference to the public, though it does give the officer who brought about the change the feeling that he is a minor revolutionary. Something to boast about in his old age when his juniors are replaced by his grandchildren.

The point of this apparently pointless preface is that if you are button-holed by a retired officer as a respectful listener (known in mass communications as a captive audience) he has so many tales to tell of the innovations that he made in his time, of the many great things he did that no one had the sense to think of before. It’s a different matter that they left no impact. My advice is to avoid the man, even though I too am of the same breed, a retired bureaucrat.

I suppose it is human nature to recount what one takes to be one’s achievements. They are good for the ego. Your own estimate of yourself has to be better and higher than that of others. Now and then I come across former ministers under whom I worked in the information department when they held office, and I can’t refuse if they ask me to sit down for a chat about old times.

They invariably talk about the great things they had done, always adding the remark, “Hafiz Sahib you would of course remember.” This is the stuff that autobiographies of non-entities are made of.

This takes my mind to an observation made by an old friend. Colonel Kiani was building a house for himself in Islamabad some twenty years ago. I asked him why he had opted for the capital when all officers from this part of the country choose to live in Westridge, a locality of Rawalpindi Cantonment. His reaction was one of horror, and this is what he said about that place.

“Yaar, I have retired as a colonel, while Westridge is teeming with former army brass hats. If I had a house there and went out for a walk in the evening, there would be a retired general standing at the gate of every third or fourth house. ‘Hullo Kiani,’ he will say, ‘good to see you. Come in and have a cup of tea’. And then he will bore me for at least an hour with stories of what he did when he was GOC or Corps Commander or when he fought in one of the two wars. There is no fear of that in Islamabad.”

Which means that bragging about one’s past is not the sole confined to the civilian bureaucrat or the ex-minister. It is a widespread habit and hardly anyone is free of it. Your interlocutor may be an ageing teacher or lawyer, journalist or doctor, actor or politician (which is the same thing), businessman or agriculturist — they are all given to reminiscing about old times, and all their stories bring them out in the best possible light. “When I was king!”

If you deal with the federal government you will see that the vertical length of official file covers has been reduced by about two inches. I don’t know whose idea it was, but if I get caught by the innovator I can imagine him telling me how much he had saved for the nation and quoting the exact figure computer by him. “You must write about it,” he will say in parting. I am, though I don’t know his name!

This is a favourite subject with retired officers, the petty saving they brought about in government expenditure when they ruled over a department. Of course there is no mention of the financial burden they imposed on the department by misusing the facilities the government had been good enough to provide them. And if they were in a position to grant favours, the money deposited in their foreign accounts by grateful businessmen and industrialists.

Yes, when I was king! And who can be more kingly in Pakistan than a divisional commissioner or deputy commissioner, to say nothing of greedy and cruel police officers. The other day I met an old hand at the administrative game, a fellow who had remained commissioner in many divisions. He had much to say about the present handling of the anti-American demonstrations by the government.

“All wrong,” he said, “This is not the way to go about it. During service as DC and commissioner I had to face many political demonstrations, some of them violent. Also many processions against successive governments. We were supposed to quell them and, I tell you, we knew how to do it. But not the way we see nowadays when nothing is achieved.”

I was imprudent enough to ask him how he would deal with emotion-charged zealots bent upon displaying their anger and indignation. “That will need time to tell. Here is my card. Give me a ring and come over to my house. You will learn something.” I pocketed the card but I have no intention of going to hear his stories. Who wants to know what happened when he was king!

The refugee crisis

REFUGEE camps near Afghanistan, now being sought out by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war, are in danger of becoming giant petri dishes for the spread of a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease: tuberculosis.

Last year in the United States, TB was at an all-time low, infecting 16,377 people, all but a few of whom were cured. Last year in impoverished nations, however, the ancient scourge killed more than 2 million people.

Afghanistan has the second-highest TB rate of 23 eastern Mediterranean nations surveyed by the World Health Organization. It is one reason why 257 out of 1,000 Afghan children die before reaching age 5, compared with five out of 1,000 in the United States. Because just one person with active, untreated TB can infect 10 to 15 others a year, the refugee camps have become “time bombs,” officials say.

WHO should move immediately to set up emergency TB eradication programs in the camps, and developed nations should help provide the estimated $4 million the program would cost.

According to the World Bank, the Pakistani government, citing lack of funding, has recently scaled back its own successful efforts to stop TB, and additional funding would also be needed to keep these efforts going. TB causes 25 percent of all Pakistani deaths each year.

At a House hearing scheduled for Thursday on U.S. aid to Afghanistan, legislators should press Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, for a response to the Leahy-Leach effort.

The new fund’s model should be the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, initiated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This effective program requires that health agencies document each successful course of treatment. —The Los Angeles Times

A situation of shattered hopes

DOWNSIZING and making personnel redundant is surely not devolution. Genuine devolution is the urgent need of the country and the ideal form of this would be what was promised in the 1940 Pakistan Resolution. But to now no ruler has had the sincerity to concede that and all have wallowed in the luxury of totally centralized power, devolution should at least begin by transferring those subjects entirely to the provinces which are in effect already with them: local government, education, health, food and agriculture, law and order, etc.

Bypassing the provinces and forming district governments with a new set-up worked out by the centre, has only led to the criticism that the rejected One Unit has been re-imposed.

The highly centralized federal system has been practised in the country for fifty-four years and has proved very harmful. It can never work in a multinational state like Pakistan. We are not dealing here with just separate administrative units but with different peoples who have their own lands, cultures, languages and historical backgrounds all of which they guard with their lives. Stubborn refusal to accept this truth has not only led to the break-up of Pakistan but also to the current bankruptcy, administrative collapse, interprovincial conflicts and total chaos.

The country does not have the strength left to bear this state of affairs much longer. It is therefore imperative that a genuine devolution, if not based entirely on the provisions of the Pakistan Resolution, then to start with, at least closely related to those, must be carried out forthwith. In fact, this is how the devolution process should have begun and the matter of district governments, being a provincial subject, should have been left to the provinces.

The new district government system has failed miserably and placed the local population in a whirl. Taking the local body elections first, the voter lists were in a mess and many constituencies were demarcated in an unfeasible manner. The candidates in the elections were nominees of not only political parties, which openly participated in this non-party election, but also of the Pirs, Mirs, Waderas, Khans, Sardars, Chaudhries, Maliks and the new affluent classes which have emerged out of smuggling, gun-running, drug trafficking, corruption and so on.

If the intention was to keep out the usual lot, the success has been only to the extent that their B and C teams have emerged; they not only take directions from them but are totally unfit to carry the responsibilities that have been placed on them. On the day of the polls I felt that the newly elected lot would not even be able to clean up the drains in their areas. This has turned out to be true, or taking Larkana as an example, it will be seen that the city and all the towns of the district are drowned in dirty water and are groaning under the burden of stinking rubbish dumps. Councillors and Nazims are only involved in disputes with each other and the bureaucrats. Whatever funds they can lay their hands on are spent on office furniture, cars and tea parties. The government can give them nothing nor will they be able to levy or collect any taxes.

These new representatives of the people do not even have the ability to express views on the burning issues facing the country — the Afghan war, the financial victimization of Sindh, cutting off of waters of the Indus for Sindh and the total failure of the Sindh government in all fields, including the matter of providing the security of life to the citizens. In fact, the only use Nazims and councillors have is to provide an applauding audience to the government which may tell those who believe that it has the support of the elected representatives of the people. In other words, the district government system is a disaster and it will not be long before the old set-up is restored.

Coming next to the new system of district governments, nobody understands what was in the minds of those who have worked it out. Instead of one DC, now there are twelve or more officers of the same rank doing the same job in the same area. Instead of one commissioner covering three or four districts, now there is more than one officer of the same rank in each of the districts. Surely the authors of the devolution programme are aware that the cost of this has shot up by more than 100 per cent with a corresponding increase in corruption and incompetence. And how is the added expense to be met when there is no money for the salaries of even sanitation staff?

As far as the exercise of authority is concerned, no one knows what he is supposed to do and the people are knocking about from door to door with their applications without finding any solution to the simplest of problems. The government says that being a new system some teething troubles will be experienced, but when it is taken into account that it has laboured for two years in framing this system, in which it is said that foreign expertise is also involved, no more time can be asked for or given by the people who have reached the conclusion that the prevalent chaos is a permanent state of affairs.

It must also be pointed out here that massive rigging took place in the polls in Sindh. Polling staff — including the returning officers, presiding officers and army personnel — were either parties to this or remained silent spectators, and since all complaints were ignored, the impression has developed that the rigging was government-sponsored. Further proof of rigging is provided by the fact that the very few petitions that have been decided by the tribunals have gone in favour of the petitioners. However, thousands of such petitions still remain undisposed and the petitioners are faced with the extreme hardship of having to travel to tribunals which have been located in different districts, to return only with new dates.

Generally speaking, things are desperately bad all around and it is imperative for the military government, which stepped in to put thins right, to take firm and speedy steps in this direction. It is because of such a promise that some applauded the military take-over of October 12, 1999. At least it was felt that the shifted back and forth agony of the country being shuttled between the People’s Party and the Muslim League was over. Added to this, the very positive agenda, announced by General Pervez Musharraf, generated the hope of better days ahead. But alas this was not to be.

All the evils that have plagued Pakistan particularly since the Zia days have reached their peak. The agenda has been forgotten and the PPP and the Muslim League are being resurrected. Even the convicted felons belonging to these parties have been turned loose, giving strength to the propaganda that deals have been made to release more convicts and facilitate the arrival of those absconding in return for a scheme of power-sharing in the future. The government makes policies and announces reforms which are either unimplementable or it cannot implement them. The urgent need to deal with corruption and incompetence, which has become part of our culture, has been compromised by using the National Accountability Bureau as the erstwhile Defence of Pakistan Rules to punish those who step out of line.

The National Reconstruction Bureau should have accepted the challenge of devising ways and means to inculcate the people with patriotism, honesty, a commitment to collective good and a spirit of acting on principles rather than for self-aggrandizement. Instead, it has wasted two years on formulating a district government system which cannot work. In any case, this is a task which should have been left to the lower tiers of the administration while the NRB occupied itself with loftier objectives.

As things are, with corrupt politicians being rehabilitated for the promised elections, corrupt and incompetent officers firmly in the saddle and all the evils of pre-military take-over, including the economic collapse, totally out of control, (the involvement in the Afghan war and its consequences is a separate subject), the people have the right to know why the take-over of October 12, 1999, took place at all.

The writer is chairman, Sindh National Front

Biological warfare

WHATEVER happened to “trust but verify‘? That was former President Reagan’s sensible advice on enforcing a nuclear weapons treaty. It should also be the guiding principle of proposed changes in the global Biological Weapons Convention, but even as anthrax stalks the United States, the Bush administration won’t go for it.

In May, Kofi Annan persuaded a broad coalition of countries to put teeth into the weak 1972 treaty by requiring nations to permit surprise inspections of plants in which bioweapons could be made. Annan’s “draft protocol” died July 25, when U.S. negotiator Donald Mahley rejected it, saying inspectors “would put national security and confidential business information at risk.” —The Washington Post