A new patriarch is born

THE referendum is done and the results are in. The initial official count of the turnout is placed at an unexpectedly high 50 to 60 per cent. In Pakistan, voter turnout in general elections has seldom passed 30 to 35 per cent. There are suggestions by some western observers that the ballot boxes may have been padded by returning officers. Of those who went to the polls, 98 per cent voted in favour of General Pervez Musharraf staying in office for another five years.

Such a high level of support suggests a sham election of the type the countries in the Middle East hold periodically. But Musharraf’s referendum was a different matter. A person who went to the polling station was not likely to cast a negative vote since the questions he (or she) was being asked could not possibly elicit a negative response. It is for this reason that those who were trying to measure the extent of support for the general looked at the turnout data rather than the number of people casting a “yes” vote.

Has the referendum provided President Musharraf what he was looking for? Three days before the referendum was held, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous verdict that gave it a legal cover. Opposition parties and Islamic groups had challenged the referendum as unconstitutional since the Constitution provides that the president should be elected by the members of the national and provincial assemblies. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition and allowed the government to go forward with the vote.

As was to be expected, the opposition is not prepared to accept the results issued by the Chief Election Commissioner. This is not the first time that a dispute has arisen about the results of a poll. Disputes such as these have had profound impact in Pakistani politics. It was the refusal by Pakistan National Alliance to accept the results of the 1977 poll that eventually let to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s removal from office by the military. In keeping with this tradition, the Pakistan People’s Party declared that the turnout had been around five per cent and called on Musharraf to resign. “The general has lost all moral, political and legal basis to impose himself on the people”, the party said in a statement issued while the counting of votes was still going on.

Foreign press reports, while not as dismissive of the outcome of the referendum were, nonetheless, sceptical. “The government took conspicuous pains to suggest an enthusiastic outpouring for Musharraf. In one such effort, the information ministry ferried a handful of foreign reporters to polling stations in the North-west Frontier Province municipalities of Peshawar and Abbotabad” wrote a reporter for The Washington Post.

The scenes the western press saw “illustrated a fundamental change in Pakistan’s political structure. Under Musharraf’s government, power that formerly resided in the provincial level patronage networks of Pakistan’s two main political parties has devolved to lower levels. Last year voters elected new layers of local government — councillors or nazims, who form key components of Musharraf’s political machine.”

The western reporter had picked an important point about the evolving strategy of political management being pursued by the military government. Whether this policy of substituting a system of local government for established political parties is the right approach to adopt is a question to which I will return a little later. For the moment I will stay with the reactions to the referendum.

The editorial pages of American newspapers also carried comments by a number of experts writing on South Asia. A good example of what the readers of American newspapers were being offered is an article in The New York Times by Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre of Policy Research in New Delhi. His article appeared on the eve of the referendum in Pakistan. “The move by Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military ruler, to legitimize and cement his grip on power through a referendum today to extend his self-declared presidency for five years is likely to see him emerge far weaker politically and more vulnerable on the legitimacy question”, he wrote.

The Indian professor invited the United States to persuade Pakistan to follow a different line. “Washington needs to insist on a two-fold reform process — dismantling the jihad structures in Pakistan and restoring democracy there — and link aid to progress on these fronts.”

There is little point now in revisiting the strategy that prompted General Musharraf to go the referendum route to arm himself with the powers he believes he needs to guide Pakistan back to democracy. In preparing public opinion inside as well as outside Pakistan, the military government did not communicate with convincing force what should have been its main argument all along. It should not have given the impression that General Pervez Musharraf was only looking for ways to legitimize his rule for another five years. Instead, he and his colleagues should have urged the people of Pakistan as well as those watching developments from the outside to look at this country’s record when it was practising democracy.

The record of those periods is clear. Pakistan’s politicians and political parties failed the people since they themselves showed little respect for the rule of law, the most important aspect of any democratic system. It is perfectly legitimate for General Musharraf to redesign the system as long as the intention is to make it truly democratic. Democracy is good for development and Pakistan desperately needs development. It cannot, therefore, do without democracy.

It is important, therefore, for General Pervez Musharraf to demonstrate in the weeks and months to come that what he has achieved by way of the referendum will prove to be a happy event in the country’s development. History will judge the president not in terms of the exact count of the number of people who turned up to vote for him. It will gauge him by what he will accomplish with the political security that he appears to have bought for himself.

The question now is where does President Musharraf go from here? A new political patriarch was born on April 30, 2002. Will he be able to govern smoothly without being disrupted by the political elites he has quite deliberately sidelined? Will he succeed in managing Pakistan’s political development to ensure the country the stability it has craved for so long?

Will he be able to give the country a political structure that will have the confidence of all the people? Equally important, will the newly elected president succeed in bringing economic growth back to the country and will he be able to arrest the disturbing and unrelenting increase in the incidence of poverty? Will he succeed in making Pakistan a dynamic part of the rapidly evolving global economic system?

The reaction of many established political elites notwithstanding, I believe most citizens of Pakistan — including those living and working abroad — want General Pervez Musharraf to succeed. They want him to bring Pakistan out of darkness into daylight. Most of the western world also shares this hope. As Ralph Peters, a contributor to the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, put it recently: “If we really believe that Islam is a great world religion, we need to treat it as such and engage it where it is still developing - on its vibrant frontiers, not in its arthritic Arab homelands.”

Ralph believes that Pakistan is one such place but the problems it faces are acute. “Frankly there may be greater hope for Afghanistan, which has hit bottom and may climb back up. But even in Pakistan the price of engagement is small, while the cost of walking away is enormous”.

Will President Musharraf live up to these expectations? Remember what the final haiku of Basho, the great Japanese poet, wrote in expressing the disappointment he felt with his own accomplishments? He said:

Stricken on a journey My dreams go wondering round Withered fields.

Does President Pervez Musharraf feel the same way? Does he recognize that in arriving at where he is now, his journey took him through some withered fields? He ran into a lot of outgrowth in these fields watered by groups of political elites with narrow social and economic interests? Will he be able to clear this under brush and get the new plant of democracy he is promising to put in the political soil of Pakistan to grow and flourish?

There can be no doubt that the journey he is embarked upon will not be easy. He will run into many obstacles and hurdles. He must be prepared to clear them or else he will stumble. He must prepare himself well for the journey. Are there lessons he could draw from the experiences of other political patriarchs in our history and in the histories of other developing countries? Let us begin by first looking at our own past.

It is inevitable that President Musharraf’s ambition to restructure the Pakistani society will be compared with the military leaders who preceded him. But such a comparison can be over-drawn. There are not many similarities between General Musharraf, the man, and Generals Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq, his military predecessors. Also, the situation General Musharraf confronts is very different from those faced by Ayub and Zia.

There may be some things in common in the way Ayub Khan approached the task of nation-building with the efforts being currently made by General Musharraf. Ayub, like Musharraf, relied on a local government structure to appeal to the masses. He was as sceptical of established political parties as Musharraf is today. Ayub also placed a great deal of emphasis on economic progress. But there are some important differences between Ayub’s outlook and what Musharraf has articulated as his ambition.

General Musharraf seems much more interested in political development than Ayub Khan ever was. For Ayub, politics was a distraction.

If we accept General Musharraf’s pronouncements reflecting his true intentions, he seems genuinely persuaded that it is important to take the country towards what he calls “true democracy”. He has, however, not clearly defined what he means by that term. I would like to help him in that area but before getting to that subject, I should also compare him with Zia-ul-Haq.

Zia was not interested in democracy. He was also not much concerned with economic development, either. His main aim was to stay in office for as long as possible. Whether his interest in an Islamic system of governance was a part of this strategy or whether he was convinced that Pakistan’s salvation lay in adopting an Islamic political, social and economic order is something that remains open to debate. Nonetheless, what Zia gave Pakistan was not what the majority of Pakistanis wanted. Whether he knew that to be the case is another question historians will need to answer at some stage. For the moment, one of General Musharraf’s great challenges is to rid Pakistan of Zia’s legacy, to rid the society of religious extremism, and to accept that religion cannot — in fact, should not — intervene in the way a country is governed.

(To be concluded)

Bush to ‘unsign’ ICC treaty

APRIL 12, 1961 was a historic day in modern world history when the late Yuri Gagarin became the “first man in space” as he orbited the earth in 89 minutes in the space ship Vostock before returning to the then Soviet Union.

Almost 41 years to the day after the first human venture into space, another historic milestone was crossed when on April 11, 2002 an event that would trigger the existence and operation of the world’s first permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) took place in New York. The ICC treaty which was signed by more than 120 countries in Rome on July 17, 1998 required that sixty countries must ratify it before the Statute of the ICC comes into force.

Before April 11 there were fifty-six ratifications. When 10 more countries deposited their instruments of ratification at the United Nations on that date it achieved, and exceeded, the requisite numbers for the “triggering mechanism” that would enable the statute to come into effect on July 1, 2002.

The first proposal to establish a “world criminal court” was made as early as 1876. In adopting the Genocide Convention in December 1948 the UN General Assembly expressed its hope that a Permanent International Criminal Court could be established to try persons who are accused of committing genocide. More than 53 years after its formal mooting by the UN, the ICC is set to become operational some time in 2003.

The court would have jurisdiction to try persons who are accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity either in the territories of the State parties or by the nationals of the state parties. These crimes must have been committed by those persons after July 1, 2002 — the date the statute of the ICC is scheduled to come in force.

Moreover, the ICC would have “complimentary” jurisdiction: that is, it would initiate proceedings only when state parties are unable or unwilling to take ‘action’ against such future offenders who would breach the most basic norms of international law.

This significant milestone and joyous occasion is marred by the attitude and actions as well as the contemplated action of the world’s remaining superpower — the United States. When the ICC treaty was adopted in Rome in July 1998 by over 120 countries, the United States was one of the only seven countries which voted against it. The United States was “concerned” about its nationals being “dragged before the ICC” for “politically motivated prosecutions”. And the US still voted against the treaty notwithstanding the fact that the ICC meeting in Rome had addressed most of the demands made by the US delegation and had incorporated many procedural safeguards into the ICC statute. Still, in one of his last acts as president, Bill Clinton signed the ICC treaty on December 31, 2000 though he refused to send the treaty “in its present form” to the US Senate for ratification.

Now, Clinton’s successor George W. Bush wants to backtrack totally by “unsigning” the ICC treaty that his predecessor had signed. “Dubya’s” dubious move or contemplated action of “unsigning” the ICC treaty would be unprecedented in the legal history of the United States and also possibly in the annals of modern international law. It has been claimed that no United States president had in its 225 year history “unsigned” an international treaty. And many jurists are contending that such an act, even if permissible under international law, is rare if not unprecedented.

Two legal issues could be extrapolated from the contemplated action of the Bush administration:

* Is a “successor administration” generally bound in international law by the treaty commitments of its predecessor administration?

* What are the legal consequences and precedential value of such “unsigning” from a major international treaty?

As to the first issue even in cases of unconstitutional or forcible changes of government the “successor” government is, as a rule, bound by the international treaties its predecessor government had ratified. In international law only treaties which are in force and which had been ratified or acceded to by a state “binds” it.

In the case of the ICC treaty, Clinton had only signed the treaty and the United States Senate has not ratified the treaty. So the United States is not “bound” by it. Nonetheless, an important provision of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which is in force can be cited to analyze and critique the Bush administration’s contemplated action. It states that once a state (the official term for a “country” or nation in international law) has signed a treaty and even if it has not ratified it, the country has an “obligation to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of the treaty”.

The Bush administration’s actions in recent months including its alleged covert actions to “dissuade” or pressure some countries from ratifying the ICC treaty is clearly a breach of that obligation. The additional “threat” to “unsign” the treaty added a further dimension to the questionable legal practices of this administration. In this writer’s opinion, in terms of precedent in recent international history, the US threat to “unsign” the treaty has only two parallels or analogies. One is the withdrawal from United Nations membership of Indonesia in 1965. There are no provisions in the UN Charter concerning withdrawal of a member state from the world organization. Yet in protest against its then “enemy” Malaysia being elected to the UN Security Council, the late President Sukarno effected Indonesia’s withdrawal from the UN. There were discussions among jurists as to the legal significance and consequences of such a move but it soon became academic as Indonesia rejoined the UN in 1966.

Unlike Sukarno’s erratic decision to withdraw from the UN the Bush administration’s “unsigning” of the ICC treaty could, like diamonds, be “forever”. Or at least it could last for a long time. If it takes place, it could arguably give a green light to some recalcitrant countries to follow suit not only in relation to the ICC treaty but also encourage them to “unsign” other major international conventions like the Chemical Weapons convention and the Kyoto Protocol concerning the emission of greenhouse gases. At least in relation to the Kyoto Protocol the Bush administration’s position is downright hostile and is again at odds with the position of most members of the international community.

A few years ago the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea withdrew from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which it has been a state party since the 1980s. It did so after repeated complaints from the commission established under the ICCPR that North Korea was in breach of its obligations under the ICCPR. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties do have provisions for withdrawal from a treaty.

Such withdrawals from and denunciation of a treaty which is in force and which has been signed and ratified by a state party are very rare. It is arguable that the Vienna Convention is not unambiguously clear — if not silent — on the significance of “unsigning” a treaty which a State has signed but not yet ratified. This is in contrast to the right of a state to withdraw or denounce a treaty to which it already is a party.

It is ironic that the closest parallel of the threatened or contemplated action of the United States in regard to the ICC treaty was that of one of the world’s most isolated and repressive states under the tutelage of Kim Jong Il. It barely needs mentioning here that George W. Bush has only recently (in)famously accused the North Korean regime of belonging to an “axis of evil”.

“One seasmum seed cannot produce oil” is a fairly well-known Burmese saying. No one should be under the illusion that the enormous power and influence of the United States is even remotely comparable to that of a puny seasmum seed as far as producing the results and having its “own way” are concerned.

But there is also another Burmese saying to the effect that if one can say “no” (to temptations and pressures) one would never go poor or be impoverished even in old age. Even if the United States do unsign the ICC treaty, other members of the international community (especially those more than sixty countries which have signed but not yet ratified the ICC treaty) can say “no” to the current United States administration by categorically refusing to follow its example.

By doing so we can expect or at least hope that the fledgling International Criminal Court will be born smoothly and also that it will not (metaphorically) “grow old”. By not following the United States example and its cynical, cavalier and hostile attitude towards the ICC, the international community will also have taken a “rich” and positive step for the progressive development as well as the rule of international law.

The Vietnam path: ALL OVER THE PLACE

THE United Nations constitutes a fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of a massacre in Jenin. Israel promptly tells the United Nations to go to hell and the United Nations, dutifully, complies, that is to say, goes to hell.

Kofi Annan disbands the commission and, as the expression goes, not a dog barks. The question arises: Is there any need for such a body as the United Nations? With or without the United Nations, the world goes its merry way and if one country wishes to wage war against another, it does so, if one group of people wishes to murder another group of people, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.

And Israel appears to be a special case. It is, after all, the favourite nephew of a most powerful uncle. What hold does Israel have on the United States that it is able to dictate the United States foreign policy in the Middle East? It can’t be oil because Israel has no oil of its own. There was a time once when Israel, armed to the teeth, was the watchdog of US interests in the Middle East and what the United States could not openly do, to keep up appearances, it made Israel do, like knocking out Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

But Israel is also a major player in American domestic politics. And certainly in the state of New York, no one can be elected even a dog-catcher without the support of the Jewish vote. When Hillary Rodham Clinton was running for a Senate seat from New York, she did a major volte face on a Palestinian state and her pro-Israel statements would have even embarrassed the most die-hard Israeli.

What Israel is doing in the Occupied Territories is nothing short of a crime against humanity. And it is doing so with impunity and the whole world is just watching, helplessly and the one country that can bring a halt to it — the United States — is scolding Yasser Arafat instead, holding him personally responsible for the occasional suicide-bombings and calling Ariel Sharon “a man fo peace.”

I cannot imagine a greater obscenity. The Israelis have lifted the blockade of his headquarters in Ramallah but Ariel Sharon has warned that if he (Arafat) travels abroad, he may not be allowed back. The devastation wrought by the Israelis in Ramallah has been so savage and so great that it will require several billion dollars for the Palestinian refugees to be rehabilitated and the town rebuilt. With no guarantees that the Israelis will not once again move their tanks in and start shooting.

Ariel Sharon’s popularity graph goes up in Israel with each atrocity. The Israelis, as a people, approve of the murder of the Palestinians. Will they, like the German people, claim ignorance when their leaders are held to account, as they surely must be, some day? That day will come when the United States realises that far from being an ally, Israel has become a liability, a millstone around its neck.

There is more than anger in the Arab World. And the anger grows by the day. This rage will turn to cold fury. It may take months, it may take years. Suicide-bombings were acts of utter despair. That a young man or a woman was prepared to give up his/her life, preferred death to the dishonour of the abject slavery to which their lives had been reduced was the only form of protest available. But what Israel has done is to have awakened the Middle East. The Americans discovered in Vietnam that it may have been possible, for a while, to do business with friendly, puppet regimes but in the end, it was the people of Vietnam that they had to fight.

The wake-up call in Vietnam came on January 31 1968, the Viet Cong took advantage of Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday, to launch a surprise offensive against installations in cities and towns throughout the country, penetrating even the US Embassy compound in the middle of Saigon. Till then, the field commanders, the generals in Saigon, the CIA and the Pentagon were vying with each other to tell the American public how the war in Vietnam was being won. No one seemed to be bothered to ask, if indeed the war was being won, why more and more troops were being sent and why more and more body bags were arriving.

Vietnam may be history but it is recent history and though it may be embarrassing to remember it, it would be a folly to forget it. There is now, in the Arab World, a collective anger. This must not be underestimated. The wounds inflicted on the Arab psyche have been deep ones and even rulers of Arab counties who have been traditional friends of the United States are feeling the heat of this anger.

The United States needs to take a hard look at its Middle East policy. It must work out a cost-benefit ratio of its unswerving and unconditional support of Israel. The realisation has to dawn that the Palestinians are people, they are human beings as much as the Americans themselves. That they have been thrown out of their own homes and have lived in the moot pathetic conditions. Now, even their refugee camps have been destroyed. What we have is a humanitarian disaster.

What does it take to rouse the conscience of the world? A friend is someone who will give advice no matter how unpalatable it may be. Tony Blair struts the world stage as if he is a soul-mate of George Bush Jr. Surely, the British are more skilled in diplomacy. Shouldn’t Tony Blair be telling his friend in Washington DC that the present Middle East policy could lead America down the Vietnam path?

Let us support the process of change: Our basic contradictions-II

LET us discuss another important facet of our national ethos: Having two contradictory thoughts at the same time and accepting both of them. Because of our muddleheadedness and resultant confusion, we are neither clear about a value system reflecting modern requirements nor about our heroes. Two examples would suffice.

When Turkish people were trying to get rid of the archaic, incompetent and corrupt institution of ‘Khilafat’ and had found a new hero in Ata Turk (who saved Turkey from virtual annihilation at the hand of rapacious European powers), Muslim middle classes in India (led by Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar) started a movement to save Khilafat. Interesting thing is that Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who later became our hero, opposed the Khilafat movement saying it was against the interests of the Muslims and advised them to keep away from it.

When Khilafat movement was abruptly abandoned and a large number of Muslims suffered because of the shortsighted and emotional approach of Muhammad Ali Jauhar, he should have been taken to task, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah should have been applauded for his correct advice. But we keep on admiring both of them on the same issue.

Another classic case is that of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and those who were opposed to his ideology and approach. After 1857, Sir Syed advocated three things: a) there was no use opposing the British rule. The interest of Indian Muslims would be far better served if we convinced them of our loyalty, b) Muslims should move towards modernism by learning English, science and technology, and c) there should be no literalist interpretation of the holy Book. During his life-time Sir Syed was opposed by orthodox Muslims tooth and nail - and was declared a heretic and ‘Kafir’ by many.

In his opposite camp were the ulema (mainly coming from seminaries like Deoband and Nidwa) who declared that India was a ‘darul harb’. Muslims should, therefore, migrate to the neighbouring countries like Afghanistan, and in no case should serve the British Empire. A large number did follow their advice and migrated to Afghanistan (what happened to them there is another story). So far so good! There can be two or more than two points of view, but the problem is that most of our educated classes eulogize both the approaches at the same time. They appreciate Sir Syed for his contribution in introducing modern education to Indian Muslims and making it possible for a large number of young men to join government jobs. But at the same time those ulema are also their heroes who put up a fight against Britishers and asked the Muslims to give up government jobs.

These are just two examples to illustrate the point. Many more can be added to the list. We admire the socialistic Islam of sufis like Hazrat Abuzar Ghaffari, and the pomp and show of Haroonur Rashid and other Muslim rulers at the same time. We admire Hasrat Mohani for his unbelievably simple living and Mr. Jinnah for his aristocratic elegance and western life-style — both at the same time. Our middle classes have not been able to evolve a set of values of their own (like the Protestant ethics) on which they can judge a person. We keep on going from one extreme to the other, and have not been able to get rid of the archaic and obsolete ‘darbari’ ethos which was based on sycophancy, duplicity, opportunism and intrigue.

Now, we come to the crux of the problem. It is clear that we did not have our Reformation and Renaissance when it was most needed and that is the cause of many of our problems. For example it is almost blasphemous to talk about secularism in this country because it is taken as atheistic dogma or ‘ladeeniat’. Mind you it is the same secularism, which is declared the best shield for the Indian Muslims against Hindu fundamentalism, not by ordinary Pakistanis, but by the learned ‘ulema-i-Karam’ (For details please see the Anti-Ahmadia Riots Report).

It is also sacrilege to say that religion should be one’s private affair, having nothing to do with the affairs of the state as Mr. Jinnah had declared on Aug 11, 1947. Lack of clarity on this basic issue has created many distortions and imbalances. Liberalism, free thinking and openness in society are its worst victims. Conversely, it has given rise to religious bigotry and fanaticism. This can also be the reason why our tolerance level has become so low and why our fanatics kill people in mosques, ‘imambargahs’, churches, and even graveyards.

At religious level there is another problem. Most Muslims have a guilty conscience because they do not, and perhaps cannot, live up to the (ritualistic) standards as enunciated by the clergy. They are not able to reconcile compulsions of modern day living with the rigidity demanded by the orthodoxy. In this confusion, some of them revolt against religion itself, while others embrace militant Islam with a vengeance or become ‘tableeghis’ to satisfy their conscience.

Vibrant nations keep pace with changing times. They also know that if the process of change is stifled, things won’t remain static. There is a natural process which slowly and gradually brings about changes in response to felt needs and demands of society. Most of these changes are not perceptible but their cumulative effect is felt once they cross a threshold. In Muslim societies in general, and Indo-Pak subcontinent in particular, we tried to gag the process, but things changed nonetheless.

For example, see what the ulema said about the role of women, the ‘purdah system’, the English education, the dress code, the hairstyle, the use of modern equipment of daily use, and see how things have changed in the last 150 years. Before partition, Muslim middle class women couldn’t imagine to go out without a ‘palki’. Purdah was essential even while travelling by tonga, rail or steamer. But today see how many middle class women are working in offices alongside men? The number of girl students in some of our universities is more than the boys; at least in medical institutions they far outnumber the boys.

It is also interesting to note that initially the ‘ulema’ had declared radio, microphone, telephone and all such gadgets as ‘Satanic’ inventions and forbade their use. Loudspeaker was opposed tooth and nail when it was first introduced. But now the same ‘maulvis’ need loudspeakers as their survival kit. Same is true of photography. Interestingly, there is hardly any maulvi who has not been photographed but if you ask him for a ‘fatwa’, he would still say, it is ‘haram’.

The point is that the urban-industrial age in which we are living has its own compulsions. We cannot stop the process of change which comes in its wake. In many ways urbanization results in weakening the feudal and tribal structures and evolves its own parameters. It breaks the joint family system and liberates the migrants from many social taboos. Women benefit the most, as the restrictions imposed by caste, creed and clan are loosened. In most cases, they are forced to work alongside men because of economic reasons. In these inflationary days, it is difficult to survive on one income of the male bread earner.

Information revolution and mobility across continents has already changed the psyche of our people. They have hope, new aspirations and a yearning to know more about the world around them. If you look closely, it appears that we are passing through a period of Renaissance and Reformation without acknowledging it. Changes that have taken place at social and economic level have now been accelerated by the forces of liberalization, followed by globalization. Can we, or for that matter the ulema, stop the dynamic, upbeat and relentlessly upward mobility of urban youth?

Or for that matter, can we ignore the demands of a rising new middle class of Pakistanis that wishes to be integrated with the modern world? In a way they are already very much a part of the global culture - internet, fast food, pop music, CNN, Star World, T-shirts and jeans. Is it possible to put the society in reverse gear or to survive in isolation? We hardly have any choice. If we do not go along with the fast changing world, we will surely be doomed.

One thing which should be clearly understood is that (except a few sections) the ethos of our society in general is liberal and tolerant. Vast majority of Pakistanis are moderate and law-abiding people. The illiberalism, bigotry, extremism and intolerance we see today is not natural to our people. Most of it has either been foisted from above, or is the result of our political failure. Our ruling elites have consistently failed to deliver.

To cover up their weaknesses, the rulers started using religion as a political tool. In a country where 95% population is Muslim and has had no problem in practising it, Islam should not have been made an issue. But unfortunately our establishment found a good alibi in it and have been misguiding the people since long. On top of it, they started using it as an instrument of foreign policy as well. It was not love of Islam, but an effort to perpetuate their rule and expand their domain that they raised the flag of Islam.

Let us support the process of change; and at the same time institutionalize the changes that have already taken place at the grass-root level. And the first thing that we must do is to acknowledge that this country belongs to everyone and not to the self-styled guardians of ideological frontiers.

Concluded