The fruits of war

How significantly will the world change after the second Iraq war? What will be the impact of the war on the UN system, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), the European Union, and the relations between Europe and America? What will happen to the world oil markets over the short term and over the long run?

What will take place in Iraq once the regime of Saddam Hussein has ceased to exist? Will a democratic regime replace the despotic and dictatorial role of Saddam Hussein and the Baath party or will chaos ensue in the wake of the American invasion? And, from Pakistan’s perspective, what will happen to the Muslim world’s relations with the West and how well will Pakistan succeed in incorporating itself into the post-war international order likely to evolve after the conclusion of this war?

These are many questions and not all of them can be answered in one article. The answers to several of these can only be provided after peace fully returns to Iraq. Nonetheless, even at this early stage, it is possible to speculate a bit since a great deal happened before President George W. Bush issued his final ultimatum to Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein on the evening of March 17 and launch the second Iraq war two days later.

Several of these questions were on the minds of the four leaders who met in Azores on March 16, a day before America’s ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to depart from Iraq. The statement the summiteers released after their brief meeting covered a vast ground and was rich in sentiment and promises made. It dealt in particular with what the leaders of “the coalition of the willing” felt were the real aspirations of the people of Iraq and what kind of country they wanted to live in following the demise of the Baathist regime.

The statement also dealt with the question of the use of Iraq’s natural resources, in particular oil. It gave some inkling of the way this group of leaders saw the role of international organizations in the post-Iraq period. And it spoke about the need for all countries to work together to deal with the world’s many problems, in particular the threat of global terrorism.

It is best to use the words from the statement issued at Azores to indicate how America and its few European friends saw these four issues as they prepared to launch another war against Iraq. In so far as helping the people of Iraq was concerned, the leaders meeting at Azores said that it was their solemn obligation to help them “build a new Iraq to be lifted from insecurity and tyranny” and freed to determine its own future.

“We envisage a unified Iraq with its territorial integrity respected. All the Iraqi people — its rich mix of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and all others — should enjoy freedom, prosperity and equality in a united country. We will support the Iraqi people’s aspirations for a representative government that upholds human rights and the rule of law as a cornerstone of democracy.”

The summiteers also addressed the belief, common among many critics of the American action against Iraq, that the main motivation was to acquire a favourable access to the country’s rich oil resources. That, said the leaders, was not the case. They pledged to protect “Iraq’s natural resources as a national asset of and for the Iraqi people. All Iraqis should share the wealth generated by their national economy,” said the statement.

America was not intending to go alone in the post-war period, rebuilding Iraq and its economy. “In achieving this vision we plan to work in close partnership with international institutions, including the United Nations; our allies and partners and bilateral donors. . . We plan to seek the adoption on an urgent basis of new United Nations Security Council resolutions that would affirm Iraq’s territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq.”

The leaders then went on to talk about collective action to deal with the challenges of the 21st Century. “We will face and overcome together the twin threats of the 21st Century: terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. All nations must unite to defeat these dangers. We will not allow differences of the moment to be exploited in ways that bring no solutions.”

Will the promises be carried out? Will the differences that had so bedevilled the process leading up to the war in Iraq be overcome to redesign Iraq and the world beyond according to the visions laid out in Azores? Many analysts saw President Bush’s Iraq policy as an exceptionally audacious enterprise. Its aim was not only to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, to demolish the country’s capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, to ensure a steady flow of Iraqi oil into the world’s pipelines, and to provide the state of Israel with a sense of security. The Iraq project, as we have suggested in several earlier articles, had even more ambitious objectives. Its aim was to reshape not only the vast Muslim world, but the entire global system. The gate to the world’s future was to be built in Baghdad.

Whether America will succeed in achieving these ambitions would depend not so much on the way the war is fought and how it ends. Washington began its campaign in the expectation that the resistance to its invading forces would quickly collapse and its own troops will be welcomed as they cross the Kuwaiti border and move on to Baghdad. In Baghdad the Americans hoped for a welcome, albeit not as hospitable as the one expected in Basra, the main city in the Shiite part of Iraq.

To this end, President Bush addressed a significant part of his March 17 speech to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military. “If we begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. . . We will tear down the apparatus of terror. And we will help you build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free,” Bush told the people of Iraq.

In directing his remarks to the Iraqi military, he told them it was not too late for them “to act with honour and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. . . I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.”

Following President Bush’s direct appeal to the Iraqi people and the military, the United States launched a massive propaganda and psychological campaign to get the forces controlled by Baghdad not to offer resistance as the American troops marched forward. A million leaflets were dropped within a few days before the war began to convince the Iraqi soldiers that America was not in conflict with them but with their leader who ruled over them with exceptional ruthlessness. The same approach — that America was destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein and not assaulting the people of Iraq, was repeated by President Bush in a brief announcement he made on March 19 telling the world that he had ordered his troops, tanks, aircraft and missiles to attack Iraq.

There was a strong consensus among most analysts that war itself was not the problem, that America would easily triumph over an adversary weakened by a dozen years of sanctions, and that the people of Iraq may welcome the invading army since the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein would mean the end of the extreme deprivation caused by their country’s isolation and pariah status in the international community. But would this welcome last for long? Here history did not provide a comforting message.

After all, the American troops were welcomed in Beirut in September 1982 as were the Israeli troops by the disaffected population of Southern Lebanon. Going further back into history, it is useful to recall that the people of Baghdad welcomed the British commander, General Maud when he entered the city in 1917. As Rashid Khalidi, Director of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Chicago pointed out in an article, “it would be wise to recall what happened in each one of these military occupations that seemed to start so well. US troops unwisely took sides in Lebanon’s civil war and suffered greatly in consequence; Israel’s occupation of South Lebanon provoked fierce resistance; and Britain in 1920 faced a nation-wide revolt in which 500 of its troops and more than 8,500 Iraqis were killed.

Iraq is not an easy place to govern. It has not been able to develop institutions of governance to accommodate the interests of its very diverse people. The success achieved to date is by the Baath party, founded in the 1940s, by a group of socialists who wished to develop the country by creating a strong presence of the state and funnelling the country’s vast resources into social development. Over time, the party’s original purpose was perverted as Saddam Hussein and his coterie established control over it. In 1990, shortly before the first Iraq war, Saddam made a cynical attempt to Islamize the party. He also added the kalima to the country’s flag. He also sought to bring into his camp the tribal leaders from the Sunni segment of the country’s population.

How will the occupying American force create modern and democratic institutions of governance from such dubious raw material? Will the Sunnis, the Shias, the Kurds and other religious and ethnic groups learn to live within a broadly representative system in which the voice of the majority should prevail? Since the majority of the Iraqi population is Shia, will Iraq become a Shia country? How would Iran react to that development? Would the Kurds in the north agree to give up the autonomy they have secured in the “no-fly zone” overseen by the air forces of America and Britain? Will the tribal chiefs agree to accept the authority of a democratic ruler operating out of Baghdad?

We began this discussion with a series of questions; we end it with another set of issues. America may succeed in its Iraq project and if it does the world will be better for it. If it fails, the cost will be borne not necessarily by America alone but by a host of Iraq’s neighbours.

The road map for a Palestinian state

IN a surprise announcement on March 14 US President George W. Bush conveyed his willingness to spell out the ‘road map’ for the Palestinian statehood as soon as President Yasser Arafat formally announced the appointment of his deputy, Mahmood Abbas, a moderate, as prime minister of Palestine.

This announcement was viewed as a desperate attempt to offset the adverse effects of Bush’s pro-Israeli policies, with a view to seeking the Arab leaders’ support for his war against Iraq.

Bush’s announcement was also timed to assuage the European Union which considers the long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians a potential threat to international peace and security. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also focused his attention on the road map for the Middle East in an effort to illustrate what he called an even handed approach to the region. He also said that the proposed peace plan would result in a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 2005.

President Yasser Arafat has already appointed Mahmood Abbas as prime minister of Palestine but, in the meantime, Bush has unleashed a war on Iraq. Thus, the issue of the road map has been overtaken by the events and seems to have been relegated into the background. Yasser Arafat has termed the war on Iraq a ‘coup’ against the region. Political analysts are of the opinion that the coming weeks could be the bloodiest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as, taking advantage of the world’s attention on Iraq, Israel may commit massive violence against the Palestinians, who are already beleaguered and suffering atrocities for two years.

In any case, the fate of the proposed plan for Palestinian statehood has become uncertain since the after-effects of the current war on Iraq are bound to have far-reaching political and economic ramifications in the region. Israel, a protege of the US, is likely to benefit the most from the war. It may emerge as the strongest power in the Middle East, playing a dominant role in any future regional scheme of things.

Regrettably, some of the Gulf states, by siding with the United States in its war against Iraq, have not only betrayed a brotherly neighbour at a critical time but have also failed to realize that by doing so, they have jeoparadized their own long-term interests — indeed their very existence as sovereign states. Iraq will remain but what about these tiny specks on the map? In fact, the emergence of Israel as a dominant power in the region, in nexus with India, should also be a cause for concern for Pakistan as well; it should devise a strategy to face the challenge with a view to protecting its present and future geo-political interests.

The proposed road map to be implemented in three phases by 2005, involves a freeze on the Israeli settlements. At present Israel controls almost 42 per cent of the West Bank and its settlements and bypass roads have virtually encircled the occupied East Jerusalem, making it impossible for the Palestinians to develop and expand this, their most important urban centre.

Israel’s so-called security wall, parts of which are nearly 25 feet high, has more to do with the seizure of the Palestinian land than with its own security. The wall is not being built on the side of an Israel’s border but in the occupied Palestinian territory in such a way as to separate the Palestinians from their adjoining farmlands and water resources. Many Palestinians believe that what Ariel Sharon has in mind is a ‘ghetto’ Palestinian state surrounded by Israeli settlements. For obvious reasons, the Palestinians will not accept such a state.

The Palestinians remain deprived of their inalienable right to self-determination, to have an independent state of their own in their own land as envisaged by the UN General Assembly resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, which provides for the establishment in Palestine of a ‘Jewish state’ and a ‘Palestine state’. Ironically, of the two states to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being, while the one for the Palestinians has been relegated to a secondary position. It appears that the Palestinian state had been perceived only as a byproduct of the Jewish state.

Since September 1993, a number of important developments have taken place in the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, most notable among them being their mutual recognition by the PLO and Israel. These developments led to the withdrawal of Israeli forces from most of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority there. The signing of the Sharm-el-Sheikh memorandum, in September 1999, had rekindled the hope of a durable peace between the PLO and Israel. The Camp David summit, in July 2000, had reaffirmed the commitment of the two parties to a lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of mutually guaranteed security for a Palestinian state and Israel.

Unfortunately, however, Israel’s frequent incursions into the Palestinian-controlled areas and its use of brute force there in the name of self-defence has disrupted the Oslo peace process. Its military offensives against the Palestinians have not only undermined the Palestinian Authority’s position but have also damaged its security and civilian infrastructure.

Israel also continues to reject any solution to the question of the Palestinian refugees and has unilaterally annexed Jerusalem in open violation of the UN resolution of the future status of the Holy City. Thus, Israel is responsible for the most distressing developments in the region and unless there is a real change in its policy it would be difficult to bring about a resolution of the long-standing Palestine problem by peaceful means.

For the last 55 years the Palestinians have been demanding justice in accordance with the principles of international law, the UN Charter and the decisions of the United Nations. It is heartening that the United States has reaffirmed its vision of a region where two states, Palestine and Israel, may coexist side by side.

However, the prospects of the proposed Palestinian independent state, which Israel considers anathema to its long-term interests in the region, will become bleak if Tel Aviv does not withdraw its forces behind the lines as they existed on June 4, 1967, and gives up its opposition to the establishment of a sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state. If Washington is indeed serious in its search for peace in the Middle East, it will have to redouble its efforts to ensure an early and equitable solution of the Palestine problem.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

History repeating itself: ALL OVER THE PLACE

When US fighter pilots in B-2 stealth bombers launched the first air strike of this war in Iraq, the opening salvo included a pair of 2,000 pounds bombs and 36 long-range Tomahawk missiles.

The target was the person of Saddam Hussain, and if any of his sons could be hit, that would be a bonus. In language stripped of sophistry and semantic hair-splitting, it was an attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussain. It was not the first time that an assassination had been attempted through an aerial bombardment. Reagan had bombed the residence of Qadhafi, missed his target and got his daughter instead.

There are, of course, more cost-effective ways of doing the deed. In 1961, John F. Kennedy had decided to effect a regime-change in Cuba. This would be brought about by an invasion of the tiny island by Cuban exiles who were being trained in Guatemala under the watchful eye of the CIA.

The CIA or whoever had led Kennedy to believe that no sooner would these Cuban exiles land on the shores of Cuba, the people would rise up against Castro and Cuba would be liberated. In order for the plan to succeed, it was essential that Castro should first be dead. No problem. Castro would be poisoned. The job was entrusted to Santo Trafficante, a longtime associate of mobster Sam Giancama who had done Kennedy some political favours. Trafficante had been the former Mafia boss of Cuba who was eager to get rid of Castro and go back to the gambling business in Havana.

Seymour Hersh in his book The Dark Side of Camelot discloses: “Trafficante was instrumental in putting the Giancana team in touch with two disaffected Cubans who — upon being promised as much as $50,000 by the CIA — were prepared to murder Castro. The first was Juan Orta Codova, whose official title was director general of the office of the prime minister, he was in effect Castro’s private secretary, with daily access to him, and therefore able, so he told the Giancama team, to slip a poisoned pill into one of Castro’s drinks.

“After much trial and error, the agency (CIA) had prepared a lethal pill dissolvable in cold water; by early February 1961 at least six of the pills had been provided to Giancama’s team for relay to Orta in Cuba. But Orta had already lost his direct access to Castro or was in the process of losing it. A CIA analysis quoted the Mafia leaders as complaining that he had got cold feet.”

The Bay of Pigs was a shambles. The Cuban exiles’ invading force was routed and there was no uprising against Castro and Fidel is still there, still in charge in Havana and it was John F. Kennedy who was assassinated, though not by the Cubans but by a sole gunman, Lee Oswald. The Warren Commission declared him to be acting alone and not as a part of a conspiracy.

For all his spectacular failure, one feels that Kennedy’s methods of using a poison pill to get rid of a turbulent leader was preferable to launching a full-scale war in order to liberate a country. The regime of Saddam Hussain will be destroyed, so too will Iraq. There is something of an over-kill about it, to put it mildly. As Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist put it: “I am not a military expert but I can do the numbers: the most recent US military budget was $400 billion while Iraq spent only 1.4 billion dollars.”

As we follow the war on television, there appears to be little evidence that the armies of the coalition forces (a coalition of the willing which include Tonga) are being greeted with open arms just as the Cuban exiles had not been. The campaign to win the hearts and minds has been a resounding flop. The American GIs had liberated Paris during World War II but had liberated it from the Germans.

Here we have a case of Baghdad being liberated from the Iraqis! The Iraqis are being saved from themselves. It seems to be Vietnam all over again. The Americans passionately believed that Vietnam deserved democracy and were determined to bring its blessing even if they had to kill three million Vietnamese.

In all the talk of a post-war Iraq, there is an echo of Vietnam. In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky write: “Unable to develop any political base in the South, the US government proceeded to expand the war. It was able to do this by continually manipulating the political scene in South Vietnam to assure the attainment of its objective: continued fighting until an anti-Communist regime susceptible to American will, was established in the South.

“Ambassador Lodge observed in January 1964 that ‘It is obvious that the generals are all we have got.’ And we would keep replacing them until we got the right ones, ‘right’ meaning that they were willing to follow orders and fight and not negotiate. One of Diem’s early replacement told newsmen that he found out that he was going to be the next head of state only when his US adviser ‘told me that a coup d’ etat was planned in Saigon and I was to become President.’ General Maxwell Taylor spoke quite frankly about the need of ‘establishing some reasonably satisfactory government, or replacing it if we are not satisfied either with civilians or with a military dictatorship.’”

Not for nothing is it said that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

There is little doubt that the military war will be won but that will only be the end of the beginning. There is no doubt that there will be a regime change. But what happens next? Will Iraq be turned into a UN Mandate? Not if the Pentagon hawks have their way.

One thing is certain: Iraq will not become a democracy with a government freely elected by its people. A democracy may not be all that compliant and could be a positive nuisance in the grand scheme of things being plotted for the oil-rich Middle East. Historically, the United States has been uncomfortable with governments that have a mind of their own.

Living with America’s tunnel vision

EIGHT months ago in the village of Meerwala, a few hundred kilometers south-west of the Pakistani city of Lahore, a village jury sanctioned a young woman, Mukhtaran, to be raped. She ran, she cried and her father and uncle begged the landlords for mercy — but to no avail. And as the whole village looked on, four men, one after the other, ravished her. Then, in a scene reminiscent of Shekhar Kapoor’s powerful film, ‘Bandit Queen’, they made her walk naked to her home.

The village mullah reported to the press and the press to the whole world; major US papers, including the New York Times, carried op-ed articles and cyberspace snarled with contempt and protest. A stunned and nauseated humanity, finding it difficult to believe, questioned how was such a thing possible in the first place. Though scores of people were arrested and punished, the matter would refuse to die; not only the Musharraf government but the whole Pakistani society remained on the defensive.

I was then at Columbia University in New York and at the end of a rather unrelated seminar was grilled. I tried to explain that though this was certainly a horrifying crime against women, it needed to be understood as an act of unbridled power; public humiliation of the weak helps sustain feudal hold; women and children, in a ruthless feudal social structure, become victims for they are weak and defenceless. Angry feminists and fellow colleagues looked at me as if I was an apologetic cartoon caricature.

Yet eight months later, an army of Anglo-American apologists of Bush’s war against Iraq, from London to Washington to New York, look little better than cartoon characters — and helpless ones out that — the biggest of them being the British prime minister himself. One moment we hear in London that he is going to Washington and will convince President Bush for a UN role in the reconstruction of post-war Iraq and after a few hours we see him sitting, and smiling with George Bush agreeing with the US President’s suggestion that involving the UN at this stage will be a negation of the sacrifices given by the US marines.

But Tony Blair is not alone; now on the 20th day of the war a confirmed anti-war pacifist, Joscha Fisher, the German foreign minister, was praying for an early US-UK victory in Iraq, and President Putin has clarified that Russia is not against an end favourable to the US. Soon French may make right noises for they too will not like to miss their share in the war booty, or will they? Is not it interesting the way the civilized world has been humbled, again and again, by the inexorable process of power that is Washington’s. One feels sorry for those at the receiving end — in fact, for the non-American part of the world, like that village jury in Meerwala coerced into supporting whatever the powerful wanted, compelled to contrive theories to justify our helpless inaction and to ease the pain of our conscience — whatever is left of it.

There is no end to this shameless hypocrisy. First, like boarding school children who cannot debate outside the proposition given by the Principal, the world was blowing hot and cold over the so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and now after the battles of Umm Qasr, Nassiriya and Sammawah, everyone is the psychiatrist, in aid of the Pentagon, trying to explain why the Iraqis are not welcoming the so-called liberators? Fear of Saddam? Control on minds? Hostage relatives? But the obvious issues of nationalism and national pride and sovereignty are somehow being ignored. This, despite continuous rhetoric of “us vs. them” right from Huntington to Kagan to Bush.

The Iraqis may not unite behind hated Saddam, the way the Russians did in World War II behind a tyrant Stalin. He is perhaps too disgusting to become a rallying point. But then he has not been abandoned by his people even though the great majority of them do realize that this is too unequal a fight to have any doubt about the final outcome. After all, what chances do they have against history’s most powerful military machine?

This factor alone is so important that the Pentagon could afford to relax; there was no need for those calculated mistakes of bombing civilian market areas. Basra and Baghdad can be asphyxiated into submission and there is evidence to suggest that this process is already going on in Basra.

Yet we must treat the Pentagon’s propaganda, so ably relayed through the CNN and BBC 24 hours, regarding cheering Iraqis with the contempt it deserves. Imagine bombing New Yorkers or Londoners for over two weeks, after depriving them of their Perrier bottles and pizzas; most of them will soon be cheering even the hated Iraqi soldiers with guns in one hand and water bottles in the other. If anything it proves the level to which human dignity falls when we are conquered — so much for the nauseating mantras of liberating!

Iraq was once home to a proud middle class. Yale economist, William Nordhaus, who recently concluded an in-depth study on the “Economic Consequences of War with Iraq” reminds us that in 1979 this unfortunate country had an average per capita income of above $9,000. By 2001, as a result of the costly eight-year war with Iran, then in 1991 with the US over the invasion of Kuwait, and the UN sanctions, it was effectively reduced to between $1,000 and $2,000. The current massive invasion by the US is thus the fourth degradation of its economic, physical and social infrastructure. True, the hated spectre of Saddam looms large in all this but, as prominent Indian analyst, Rammanohar Reddy, points out, the US, “self-appointed protector of democracy, has had a hand in all four phases of destruction”. Somehow, the impact fluctuating US interests have had on this region is often downplayed in the Anglo-American intellectual circles but the rest of the world, especially Muslims in and around Iraq, have known and remember it. This collective memory will be another problem for the US as it sets out to manage a post-war Iraq.

What makes with am Nordhaus’s study so chilling was his scepticism that the idea of a “short, cheap and bloodless war” that the White House was selling to the American Congress and public is no where in sight. The events of the last 19 days have only confirmed his worst fears. The actual war may still not be very long but the expected political basis for creating any sustainable Iraqi administrative set-up has already started to fade.

The way things are going, the US looks destined to be sitting on top of a heap of rubble amidst impoverished and resentful Iraqi people, who will, if anything, become radicalized in unforeseen ways as a result of this war. The emergence of suicide bombers in a society that was governed by fiercely secular Baathists for so long, should serve warnings to those in Washington who have an inclination to heed and a mind to understand — unfortunately not many.

Once the full costs and implications of war in Iraq will dawn on a naive and usually ill-informed US public, the fever of patriotism will, in all probability, give way to an acute sense of self-interest and those calling for generous help in Iraq’s post-war reconstruction will have a tough time selling this idea to the common American. If anyone doubts this, he has only to look at Afghanistan where a small and increasingly paranoid US presence is restricted to Kabul while Afghan warlords grow poppy in the rest of the country and do as they please. No US feminists make documentaries on the plight of Afghan women any more in the changed context.

The world may resemble the village jury in Meerwala but one may ask as to how the mighty Americans arrive at such disastrous decisions? Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins, author of one of the international best seller, ‘The Selfish Gene’, has already explained how. He recently questioned in a newspaper article: How is that a man as ill-suited as George Bush emerges at the top of a 300 million strong nation that boasts the largest number of Nobel Laureates; could there be something seriously wrong with the US constitution or the country’s political system? Also, could there be something seriously wrong with the way public opinion is shaped in United States?

Just before the beginning of the Iraq war, a New York Times / CBS survey revealed that 45 per cent of the Americans believed that Iraq and Saddam were responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. This sounds interesting but what the surveyors concluded from this had a chilling note; President Bush and the White House had used 9/11 and Saddam interchangeably with such frequency that gradually casual listeners started connecting the two.

Influencing and controlling American minds in a certain way has become a near professional art. With media control it is possible to continuously bombard the American mind with the same or similar messages and win it over to a particular point of view. The Pentagon is busy dropping millions of leaflets on Iraq and controlling the airwaves trying to convince the Iraqis of the US mission to ‘liberate’ them.

But little do the Americans realize that, back home, other equally determined forces are busy improvizing strategies to control the American minds. Harvard Professor, Stephen Walt, some times ago said that special interest groups with focused agendas can have a disproportionate influence on the US foreign policy. However, the clever way in which the American public was persuaded to believe in “an unforeseen threat from Iraq” makes Prof Walt’s assessment a gross understatement.

Pride, prejudice and a misguided patriotism prevent American intellectuals to address this issue with a degree of introspection that it deserves. We all have heard of the Taliban madrassas but if we ignore the differences of form and structure, time and space, the role the US media now plays in fostering narrow and inward-looking perceptions of things and people is more or less the same.

The Taliban used a primitive interpretation of religion to block awareness of the world around just as cable lines are busy manufacturing a tunnel vision of things for the Americans to believe in and hold on to. I think I belong to a generation of men and women who, irrespective of their place of birth, had somehow fervently believed in an American dream for the world. However, it was after living in America for some time that I realized that the dream exists but only for less than 400 million Anglo-Saxons of the world.

Worst of all, there has now evolved an architecture of mind control that is giving new expression to old prejudices of race and religion.

Any doubts? Open your eyes and look at the fault lines: on the eve of Iraq invasion there stood three Anglo-Saxon nations alone in the ring telling a sceptical world that it just doesn’t understand that they are there to save the Iraqis from themselves and give them and a better, brighter future! The writer is head of the editorial board of Association of Pakistani Professionals in New York.

E-mail: Pirzada@aopp.org]

Dropping depleted uranium

AT this moment, Air Force A-10 Warthogs are probably strafing Iraqi tanks with ammunition made of depleted uranium. For every minute a pilot holds down the trigger of a 30-millimeter Gatling gun, up to 3,900 bullets tear into enemy lines.

There’s no question that these armour-piercing munitions are effective. Nor, however, is there a question that each fragment adds minutely to the 320 tons of radioactive ordnance that allied forces blasted into the soil of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. When the dust settles at war’s end, the military must stop dodging legitimate concerns about the long-term environmental and health hazards posed by depleted uranium.

No evidence supports some veterans’ charge that these “silver bullets” contributed to the array of sicknesses known as Gulf War syndrome, or that the ammunition played a role in what some Iraqi officials have characterized as soaring rates of cancer and childhood leukemia in that country.

And most experts say the metal — whose radioactivity is reduced or “depleted” to about 40 percent that of freshly mined uranium as technicians forge it from nuclear-waste material left over from making nuclear weapons and fuel — probably doesn’t trigger leukemia and other cancers, as exposure to plutonium can.

However, when depleted uranium burns upon penetrating its target, it turns into a fine dust that can remain highly concentrated in the environment. Pentagon officials have failed to squarely address the concerns of experts who warns that the dust, if ingested, can cause serious respiratory, renal and vision problems. —Los Angeles Times