Challenge before Islamic world

THE Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) is in a state of hibernation. As if unconcerned, it silently watches its member states facing taunts, pressures, intimidation and threats from regional bullies and global warlords.

Palestine is pulverized. The US and British military forces limber up in the Gulf region to pounce on Iraq even though UN monitors have not so far found any ‘smoking gun’. Iran faces US pressure. The US-Saudi relations have dipped low and sponsored leaks in Western media suggest that plans are in hand to gain control of Gulf oil. Afghanistan simmers and may remain under foreign control for a decade or so. State-sponsored terrorism continues in Kashmir. Pakistan, technically an allied partner in combating global terrorism, is increasingly criticized in Washington.

The Westerns media launches a premeditated blitzkrieg against Muslim countries and creates a psychosis of anger, hate and war. Muslims are psychologically brainwashed and called fanatics. In orchestrated media trials, ‘accused’ persons and states are condemned even before charges are framed against them. The aggressive and arrogant West is pushing the world back into the ancient ages in which might was considered right. These developments disturb those who cherish freedom, peace and sovereign equality of all states.

The events of 9/11 — regrettable and despicable as they were — exposed security weaknesses and US vulnerability and highlighted the urgency of removing the endemic causes of conflicts that disturb peace in troubled regions. The world condemned the dastardly attacks, prayed for the departed souls, and sympathized with the aggrieved families and states.

Domestic compulsions influenced President Bush to try to net the culprits and bring them to justice. He seized the opportunity to flex his military muscle and dominate the world. The Bush slogans were, ‘I dictate, you obey’, ‘you are with me or against me’, ‘I define terrorism, you accept my definition’. Overnight, Osama bin Ladan and Mulla Omar became symbols of hate and revenge even before the investigation process had started in the US.

The Taliban met their deserved fate, and not many tears were shed over their exit. But, in the process, the US lost respect by mounting a massive military effort to destroy a puny and disorganized semi-military group. The ‘victory’ in Afghanistan emboldened Washington. Catchy slogans were coined to put its adversaries and targeted countries on the defensive.

The phrase ‘cold war’ had served its purpose. With the implosion of the ‘Evil Empire’, communism virtually died. The US-led West needed another ‘threat’, real or imaginary, to maintain its domination. The myth of ‘Clash of Civilizations’ made headlines. Three of the four states in the US-declared ‘axis of evil’ were Islamic. Washington soon clarified that no military action was planned against the fourth, North Korea. The secret was out: only Muslim countries were US targets.

Many countries have criticised President Bush’s declaration that the US will disarm Iraq with or without UN participation. America’s own record is no better. The Human Rights Watch world report 2002 criticizes the US for “keeping prisoners in cages at the Guantanamo Camp without charges or access to legal aid and classified as enemy combatants”. America’s lukewarm criticism of the government-sponsored anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, India, in which 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed damages its own image.

Laws should be common for all. The US decision of selectively applying the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) law, passed in 1996, on 25 countries, including Pakistan, shows bias because 24 of the 25 countries put under the net of INS are OIC member-states. The US contention that eventually this controversial law will cover all countries neither allays fears nor carries conviction. This insulting treatment depicts Washington’s mindset. The INS smells of racial apartheid. Its enforcement has generated anti-US feelings in Pakistan and will discourage voices of moderation.

Islamic countries, at present under siege, face exploitation and threats. They pay a heavy price for lagging behind in the race of knowledge. Their humiliation is a wake-up call for them to come out of their deep slumber and catch up with the developed world in all fields before it becomes too late. Disunity in the OIC exposes it to vulnerability and blackmail. The member-states run the risk of being targeted one by one by the developed world. Today, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein face its ire. Tomorrow, other names may be added to the list.

The slogan of ‘war on terror’ is now a smoke screen. The real target is different. The West does not seek changes in the Gulf states for the love of Arabs or democracy. Their eyes are focused on the oil wealth that lies under the surface. Professor E. Cohen of the John Hopkins School of International Studies frankly states that America’s real enemy is not terrorism, but militant Islam. The word militant is prefixed with Islam by those who themselves are guilty of following militant policies.

Muslim countries have abundant natural and other resources in all fields that remain semi-exploited. These can be used for the common good of all. At this critical juncture in history, the OIC suffers from a crisis of leadership and vision and its inaction is inexplicable. It needs infusion of a new spirit and a sense of urgency in its present dormant state. Its leaders must read the writing on the wall. Greater self-reliance is the need of time. It should cover all fields, economic, and psychological. The OIC must establish credible media organizations to project the views and policies of the Islamic countries.

It should pool the resources of all member-states and establish institutions of excellence in higher learning in all fields, particularly in science and technology, in those Muslim countries that possess the necessary know-how and infrastructure. Understandably, this proposal may take time to mature.

In the meantime, scholars and experts may be encouraged to write on current themes like ‘poverty breeds retaliation’, ‘Co-existence of civilizations’, ‘Unsettled disputes erode peace’, ‘Terrorism vs right of self-determination’, and so on.

Pakistan could act as a catalyst in proposing an early OIC summit meeting for reviewing the global scenario and discussing the pressing problems faced by Muslims. This summit may also discuss ways and means of adopting a unified approach to protect the image and resources of Muslim countries. In particular, it may initiate steps for improving educational facilities on an urgent basis.

The writer is a retired general of Pakistan Army

The right to protest

FORTY years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. penned his defence of nonviolence from a Birmingham, Ala., jail cell, Americans easily might forget the steep political and personal price he and others paid for registering their quiet opposition to legal segregation.

Today, on the official anniversary of King’s birth, Americans in dozens of cities assume their right to protest a likely U.S. war in Iraq without facing fire hoses or police dogs.

In the decades since black Americans first marched in Montgomery, Birmingham

and Selma, Ala., nonviolent demonstrations have become a fixture of American political culture. Health-care workers massed last year, hoping to block Los Angeles County budget cuts.

Almost 100 women from Northern California’s Marin County, opposed to the current U.S. military buildup, arranged their naked bodies on the beach to spell “peace.” And until he was dislodged this month, environmentalist John Quigley spent 71 days in a Santa Clarita, Calif., oak tree, holding off construction workers from moving the old tree so they can widen a highway.

Nonviolent protest has become part political theater, part publicity stunt, part serious demonstration of public opinion. City officials routinely grant rally organizers permits and cops reroute traffic.

It wasn’t always like this. King travelled to Birmingham in 1963 to lead a campaign to end segregation at stores, schools and restaurants. Black men and women calmly sat down at lunch counters and politely asked for a cup of coffee. They faced insults and rotten tomatoes from restaurant managers and then the fury of police who forcibly removed them. Not bound to King’s philosophy of nonviolence, Birmingham police in 1963 beat protesters, loosed their German shepherds and turned high-pressure water hoses on crowds before arresting and jailing King.

Stung by criticism from white and black ministers that he had risked lives just so African Americans could eat a sandwich where they chose, which then seemed an almost impossible goal, King tried to explain why he thought it imperative that so many put themselves in harm’s way. “We present our very bodies,” King wrote, “as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the community ... Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”— Los Angeles Times

Same as the old boss?

THE great philosopher Pete Townshend once summarised his exploration of how politics really works with the famous phrase: “Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.” Have 30 million Kenyans been fooled again?

At first glance, it certainly looks like it. Mwai Kibaki, who won the presidential election last month by a two-to-one majority, is personally clean, but many of the key people around him are the former cronies and henchmen of outgoing president Daniel arap Moi, the man whose 24 years in power earned Kenya its place in Transparency International’s top five most corrupt countries in the world.

The slogan of Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) was “Without Moi, Everything Is Possible,” and that was exactly what desperate Kenyans wanted to believe. Kenyans of every tribe and class were fed up with the bandit politicians who had vandalised their economy and ruined their lives, and most Kenyans were delighted when Narc’s victory was confirmed on Sunday. But the awkward fact is that Kibaki couldn’t have won without an avalanche of last-minute defectors from Moi’s ruling party.

It all unravelled very fast for Moi, who seemed fully in control of the succession as late as last July. Moi took power on the death of national hero Jomo Kenyatta, who led Kenya to independence in 1963, and ruled the country in the classic African ‘big man’ style for 24 years until last month. Those who played along with him got very rich; those who opposed him were bankrupted, driven into exile, or even killed. And ordinary people just got poorer.

In 1971, when Kenyatta was still president, Kenya’s economic indicators were about the same as Singapore’s. Now, the average Singaporean earns fourteen times as much as the average Kenyan, whose income is actually about a fifth less than it was in 1971. Yet Kenya is a big, resource-rich country with a relatively well-educated population. Only brazen corruption on the most spectacular scale could have brought it so low so fast, but Moi and his cronies provided it.

Moi’s troubles began with the end of the cold war, which brought pressures on one-party systems everywhere to democratise. In Kenya there was also a strong internal demand for democracy, so in 1991 Moi was forced to let other parties form and to promise free elections — at which point Kibaki, who had been finance minister for thirteen years and then vice-president for ten, resigned from the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), and formed the first serious opposition party. His democratic credentials are impeccable, but until recently he was a marginal figure and a failure.

Moi won the 1992 and 1997 elections by manipulating tribal rivalries (over 3,000 people were killed in politically motivated ethnic violence in the two elections) and by straight bribery. Indeed, the scams and rip-offs by Kanu politicians and officials grew even bigger and bolder in the 90s, as money was now needed for buying elections in addition to the normal nest-feathering purposes. It got so bad that foreign aid donors froze the annual $500 million that they gave to Kenya; it would just be stolen by government ministers if they sent it.

What tripped Moi up was the constitutional provision banning him from seeking another term. His plan was to ensure that power passed to a reliable successor: just as he had ensured that nobody ever inquired into how the late Jomo Kenyatta’s family got so incredibly rich, so he would pass power on to somebody who would block inquiries into the origins of his own vast wealth. And who better than Kenyatta’s 42-year-old son Uhuru? One good turn deserves another.

It was a blunder of historic proportions: in reaching down a full generation to pick Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor, Moi made the fatal mistake of alienating his partners-in-crime of his own generation. The first to bail out, in August, was Vice-President George Saitoti, a man deeply implicated in the regime’s corrupt dealings, but others of the same ilk followed rapidly.

Mwai Kibaki, who had been waging a lonely battle against the Kanu machine for a decade, saw his opportunity and invited the Kanu defectors to join him in the National Rainbow Coalition. They did, and together they have won. But that is the problem: some of the most accomplished thieves in the country are leading members of the winning coalition, and will require the reward of a cabinet post in which they can resume stealing from the Kenyan people.

When they asked George Saitoti what was the coalition’s policy on chasing down the crimes of the past, he replied: “We will not be driven by retribution” as well he might, given that he was a leading figure himself in the massive Goldenberg scam of the early 90s, which defrauded the Kenyan state of almost half a billion dollars. So have the Kenyans really been fooled again?— Copyright

Musharraf’s visit to Moscow

THE timing of President Pervez Musharraf’s planned visit to Moscow seems rather inopportune. It will take place shortly after Russia has signed a three-billion-dollar deal with India for the supply of some of the most sophisticated military hardware. The deal will provide India with four long-range nuclear bombers and two nuclear capable submarines.

Experts believe that the acquisition of the new Russian military hardware will act as a spur to the arms race in the region. In the words of the noted Indian analyst and anti-nuclear campaigner, Praful Bidwai. “We are just going into a vortex that steps up the nuclear arms and missile race in the region.”

Although the Foreign Office in Islamabad has ruled out the possibility, it is difficult to see how the question of Russian arms supply to India can be kept out of any bilateral review of the troubled subcontinental scenario during President Musharraf’s talks in Moscow.

It must be recognized that Russia has a decades-old military and economic relationship with India, besides the 1971 treaty of friendship and cooperation, which was renewed recently. Moscow not only intends to complete its latest deal with India without any problem but also “pump more money into a joint programme to develop a long-range nuclear-capable cruise missile.”

An earlier initiative to improve ties with Moscow might not have made any difference to Russia’s political and military commitment to India, but for reasons of a better understanding of the tension-ridden subcontinental situation, it was worth trying.

It is worth recalling in the context that shortly after Pakistan came into being, Moscow sent an invitation to the then prime minister, Mr Liaquat Ali Khan, to visit Moscow. The invitation was accepted in principle but the date proposed by the Russians for the visit — August 15, 1949 — was too close to Pakistan’s independence anniversary. So Liaquat Ali Khan could not accept it.

The invitation was later renewed but then Pakistan and Russia took unduly long to establish diplomatic relations and the modalities of the visit could not be worked out for quite some time. In the meantime, the Americans extended an invitation to Liaquat Ali Khan which was promptly accepted.

The prime minister went to the US in May 1950. According to Prof. S.M. Burke, an International Islamic Conference in Karachi was seen by Moscow as the preparation of the ground for the setting up of an anti-Soviet Muslim bloc. Prof Burke contends that Mr Liaquat Ali Khan was willing to journey to Russia after his trip to the US “but the Soviet Union on the one hand assumed a sphinx-like silence about the visit and on the other became increasingly acrimonious about the prime minister’s alleged anti-Soviet moves in partnership with ‘imperialist’ Britain and America.

Quite obviously, Russia cannot be unaware of the implications of its military deals with India for Pakistan. The Indian leaders have lately assumed a particularly threatening posture towards Pakistan. The newly appointed army chief, Gen Nirmal Chand Vij, has publicly stated that the Indian troops (massed on Pakistan’s border until a month ago) could be recalled at a short notice “as the score with Pakistan has not been settled.” The general’s reference is to India’s repeated allegation that Pakistan is involved in cross-border terrorism in Kashmir.

Addressing the UN Security Council in New York on Monday, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri stressed that the Kashmiri people’s struggle for self-determination could not be equated with terrorism.

In view of its close equation with New Delhi, Russia is in a position to help defuse the strains in India’s relations with Pakistan. President Putin had at one time offered to mediate in the disputes between India and Pakistan but New Delhi blocked the possibility by rejecting any move for mediation. Even otherwise it is important to have a proper relationship with Moscow which may at some stage decide to play a useful role in promoting peace and stability in South Asia.

For its part, Moscow should realize that the supply of sophisticated military hardware to India will contribute to the escalation of tensions and jeopardize the prospects of peace and stability in the region. Since the contacts between Pakistan and Russia at the political level have been few and far between and bilateral matters are often left to be dealt with by diplomats and bureaucrats, the two countries have not been able to develop sufficient understanding of each other’s problems and concerns. President Pervez Musharraf’s intention “to seek and give more meaning and depth to bilateral relations” during his talks with President Putin should serve to make up for this critical gap in mutual understanding.

It may be recalled that in January 1966, at the Tashkent meeting following the 1965 war, Ayub Khan told a group of Soviet journalists: “We are your neighbours separated by about 17 miles of Afghan territory. The consciousness is dawning that there is need for close friendly relations between Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Pakistan had made a late start but mutual confidence was growing.”

Ayub Khan believed that the Tashkent Declaration had not gone as far as it should have in providing a framework for resolving the Kashmir dispute. However, he added: “One day the Indian leaders will realize the value of settling the Kashmir dispute because they have a lot to gain by this.” Ayub Khan also emphasized the importance of both India and Pakistan reducing their defence expenditures “so that national resources could be devoted to the welfare of the people.”

Unfortunately, even 44 years after the Tashkent meeting between Pakistan, India and Russia, the Kashmir dispute has remained unresolved and in many ways it has become even more complicated. However, President Pervez Musharraf has taken the initiative to visit Moscow. One visit may not remove all the cobwebs of misunderstanding and misperception that have gathered over the years. But it can add to a clearer understanding of the problem critically at stake. If Moscow, with its clout with New Delhi, can get the Indian leaders to move somewhat away from their present unyielding position on the issue, the first step towards stabilization of South Asia will have been taken.