Bush’s Asian agenda
In last week’s article I looked at the growing strength of the large economies of East Asia and the weight they have now acquired in the global economy and in the world of finance. Increasingly, the United States, the world’s largest economy, has become dependent on the East Asians for sustaining its growth, consumption and investment. How will the East Asians — in particular China which, by one measure, is now the world’s second largest economy — use this newly acquired leverage?
I answered that question by speculating that China and other large Asian economies will work with America rather than against it. They are not likely to challenge the United States the way France and Germany did in the late ‘sixties. The European challenge ultimately led to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates which the US had supported by pegging its dollar to gold at the rate of $35 to an ounce. Once the US had gone off the peg, the laboriously built post-war financial structure came tumbling down.
The foundations of this structure were laid by the victors of the Second World War at the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire, United States. Much chaos ensued the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. It resulted in high levels of inflation all over the world, a sharp increase in the price of oil, and the default on sovereign debt by a number of middle income countries, not just from Latin America but also from North Africa and the Middle East.
Dependency produces leverage and leverage can be used in a disruptive way. This, the Asians are not likely to do since, unlike the Europeans, they view the world in an exceptionally long-term context. The evidence that this would be their approach came a day after I had written the first article on the subject. In late October, China announced that it was responding to the Bush administration’s sustained pressure to reduce its $103 billion trade surplus. That would be done by the Chinese going on a spending spree in the United States that would include the purchase of Boeing commercial aircraft in multi-billion dollar deals and the purchase of aircraft engines for the planes the Chinese are themselves manufacturing. The latter will also cost China billions of dollars.
But, as I said last week, finance and economics were not the only items on the Bush’s agenda. They were two other subjects the American president wished to pursue on his visit to Asia. One, to close ranks around North Korea and persuade that country to give up on its ambitions to develop a nuclear arsenal. Two, to begin some systematic work to save the predominantly Muslim countries in the region from coming under the influence of the forces of radical and political Islam. Bush scored some success in the former but appears to have further complicated his relations with moderate Islam.
Let us first take up the question of North Korea, dubbed by President Bush in January 2002 as a member of the ‘axis of evil’. Not surprisingly, this categorization antagonized Kim Jong Il and his comrades. The only way the North Korean leaders know how to react to an adverse change in their environment is to create a sense of insecurity among their neighbours. As the scholar Nicholas Eberstadt wrote in his 1999 book, “The End of North Korea,” Kim and his colleagues are not prepared to follow the very different examples of their two giant neighbours that also once pursued communist ideology with great earnestness.
China’s way out was to concentrate on economic reforms while keeping its political system under the control of the Communist Party. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, chose to open its political system to competition before undertaking economic reforms. Which of these two approaches was more successful is a question historians will ask for a long time. For the moment it is important to understand that the North Korean regime considers both approaches dangerous for its survival. “Credible military menace is now at the heart of North Korea’s economic strategy - and of its very strategy for state survival,” writes Eberstadt. The author argues that the North Koreans are afraid of any “ideological and cultural infiltration” which they equate with “an invasion without the sound of gunfire.”
After much reflection and debate within its own ranks, the Bush administration has concluded that it is dangerous to resort to name calling (membership in the club of evil) or use an example (regime removal by force as in Iraq) to influence the behaviour of North Korea. Engagement with the country within a multilateral context appears to be the only route open to Pyongyang. During his East Asian journey, President Bush offered an assurance of security to North Korea in order to get that country back to the negotiating table. He couldn’t offer a security treaty since that would involve the approval of the US Senate, a time consuming process even at the best of times. Instead, a multilateral assurance of security was put on the table.
The North Koreans’ first response to the Bush proposal was dismissive; later they showed some interest. This flip-flop behaviour is not an indication of Pyongyang’s inability to make up its mind. The North Koreans have perfected the art of using ambiguity as a weapon of diplomacy. It appears at the time of this writing that Kim Jong Il would return to the negotiating table with America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea occupying the other chairs.
The small opening provided by President Bush may ultimately result in a fundamental change in the way the countries of East Asia relate to one another. As one Asian scholar, Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Services, wrote in a recent article, “the absence of multilateral security cooperation has always been cited as one of the region’s greatest ailments. Nothing comparable to NATO exists and many see the need for such an organization to cope with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and China’s inevitable rise.” If North Korea can be brought out of isolation and persuaded to join the rest of East Asia, the Americans would put a lot of pressure on getting the countries in that region to organize themselves into a multilateral security arrangement.
Improving America’s understanding among the world’s Muslims was the third item on the Bush’s agenda for the Asian trip. Here he stumbled. He has said all along that the war on terrorism launched by his administration after 9/11 is not a war against Islam. There is no reason why he should not be believed. As is his wont, he neatly divides the world into two halves — good and bad, virtuous and evil, friend and foe.
Following this pattern of thinking, President Bush believes that there are two types of Muslims — those who follow the great faith of Islam, a religion that teaches peace, and those who are trying to hijack the Islamic faith and cast their struggle as a war between religions. He would like to see the states in the Muslim world follow the more accommodating path. One purpose of his discourse with the moderate Muslim leaders of Indonesia was to convince them of his own open attitude towards the Muslim faith.
But the environment soured as Bush was reaching out to the world of Islam. While he was on his way to Bali, it was brought to the attention of the public that a senior military official — a three star general occupying an important position at the Pentagon — had made a number of derogatory remarks about Islam.
Lt. General, William Jerry “Boykin” had spoken before a number of church audiences and had given a simple message. The US’s war on terrorism was against a religion, not against a group of stateless territories. At one such meeting, the general pulled out slides of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and told his audience that America’s real enemy was “a guy called Satan.” In another speech he recounted his exchange with a Somali warlord and remembered telling him that Boykin’s Christian God was bigger than Somalis’ Muslim God. “I know that my God was a real God and his was an idol,” he told his audience.
How could a senior official of the Bush administration express such views and, even more important, with those views having become public, why was he not immediately removed from office? One answer was provided by E.J. Dionne, a respected Washington based news analyst, in an article published recently. I would like to quote him in some detail since he nicely sets out the corner into which the Bush administration has painted itself in dealing simultaneously with the worlds of Islam and fundamental Christianity.
“The obvious response to the Boykin case is to say that because he is now deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence, he should be relieved of his post. His religious spin on the struggle against terror would seem to contradict the administration’s official line that this battle is not a religious war. But without intending to, Boykin has revealed the difficulties with our usual arguments on behalf of religious liberty. For the administration, it’s not just that Boykin presents a political problem, because the most loyal part of Bush’s base is made up of evangelical Christians, many of whom share Boykin’s view.. . . Cashiering Boykin would thus raise two problems: the political problem of offending religious conservatives and a theological problem. If Boykin is fired or transferred because of what he said, the administration would have to explain rather precisely where Boykin’s views contradict the president’s — and when they did not. Bush does not want to be drawn into an extended theological controversy.”
But Boykin is not the only professedly devout Christian who serves the Bush administration in a senior place. Another example is that of Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose deep religious beliefs are well known. The way Ashcroft’s justice department has implemented the admittedly draconian provisions of the Patriot Act of 2001 has left a clear impression with America’s Muslims that they no longer enjoy equality in their adopted homeland.
And then there is the problem created by the way President Bush has handled the Israel-Palestine problem with a clear and pronounced tilt towards the Jewish state. One example of this tilt is Washington’s response to the building of a wall by Israel to physically separate itself from the bits of land occupied by the Palestinians. Rather than build a wall around itself, the Israelis have entrapped the Palestinians behind an impervious obstacle which they have no hope of breaching. In July Bush called the wall “a problem;” in October the signal went out to Israel that the Bush administration will not stand in the way as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues with his project.
President Bush has still to convince the world’s Muslim population — including the moderate elements in that world — that his administration has nothing against their faith. While the American president himself is seen to be sincere in his pronouncements on Islam, this cannot be said about a number of senior officials in his administration. That gap will have to be breached if America wishes to work with the world of Islam.
Hatred as a force in politics
WE were — at root — talking fear and loathing, rivalry and ambition, bitterness and hate, but the prime minister merely smiled gently and raised an eyebrow. The higher you go in politics, the loftier the rhetoric about principle and policy, the greater the reluctance to let hate howl its way into the act. Yet look at that particular prime minister now.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting for his political life, and Sri Lanka is fighting to keep one of the world’s most perilous peace processes on track. Why? Because the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga — another chip off the Bandaranaike block — has staged a ludicrous quasi-constitutional coup (made possible by a ludicrous quasi-constitution). And why should Mrs Kumaratunga strike thus? Because she can’t stand Wickremesinghe. Because she boils at the thought of him. Because her life has become hostage to the need to bring him down.
That, in turn, is a pretty ludicrous situation. When I was in his office a few months ago, leading a delegation of journalists anxious to cement the press freedoms that Wickremesinghe, and his campaign to make peace at last with the Tamil Tigers, had begun to put in place, the prime minister talked optimistically about a Sri Lanka free from terror and open for media business, a south Asian tiger in the most benign sense of the word.
He is funny and shrewd and approachable. How on earth could anyone — least of all President Kumaratunga — loathe him so? But then, his (newspaper-owning) family and her family go back a long way. There’s the corrosion of history. There’s the fact that he almost got her job last time round (and will surely try again come 2005). There’s his success, and the galling revelation that the voters of Sri Lanka prefer a life of negotiation without bombs and bloodshed.
Do they quite see it that way in the presidential mansion? Of course not. There the chat is all about the sanctity of the state, the need for properly signed accords and due preservation of the old Bandaranaike legacy. But let’s not kid ourselves. This is a feud, up close and personal, putting everything that’s been achieved at risk. This is red mist time.
And meanwhile, as another embattled PM and his chancellor dine late in Downing Street, with John Prescott playing a mix of Jeeves and U Thant, what are we supposed to take away with our After Eights? Here the chat is said to be about more great issues: who shall sit on the national executive committee, how our public services are to be reformed. But nobody believes that for a second.
More red mists (and the strongest argument against paternity leave since records began). Gordon Brown began this latest spasm of contempt and challenge on a Bournemouth Monday, only to see the usual Blair eloquence trump him on Tuesday. He seems to have seethed ever since, through Telegraph features pages to BBC breakfast TV interviews. He’s blowing his mountainous top again, and people are watching and skirting him gingerly. Who wants to be caught in a Pompeii bath-house when Vesuvius explodes?
The natural reaction, as ever, is oil on troubled waters; a Prescottian intervention here, a party appeal there. Will nobody, please, mention the word “Mandelson” for a week! But how much more fear and loathing can this broken relationship between Downing Street neighbours take? It isn’t a falling-out now, but a relentless descent into the pits. It is the one rift that could ditch Labour next time. But is it any longer susceptible to treatment by word, embrace and polite concession?
Take that ancient recipe of pride, rivalry and thwarted ambition, stir in a little Sri Lankan coconut milk for luck, and you know there can be no settled rapprochement. Things have gone too far, too badly. Policy stitch-ups and jobs for the boys have reached the point beyond balm as hate begins to dominate the menu, served hot with a cold side-dish called revenge.
So is this, in the brave new world of Howard Conservatism, the chance his party has been praying for? See how we love each other! Wonder at this extravaganza of amity as our reshaped shadow cabinet surfaces today!
But the trouble with hate, naked and unashamed, is that it doesn’t blow away in an instant, a morning mist before some freshening breeze. Just as jolly Ann Widdecombe can’t shrug and say, with total credibility, that her nightmares are all over now, so Michael Portillo cannot suddenly wander into the sunset without more questions asked. He could have been a big number on Howard’s front bench, but he says he’s lost the taste for the cut and thrust. He says he can’t stand the “distrust” around him any longer.
Distrust, though, is an umbilical part of the hate game. Once contracted, never thrown off. What Portillo means is that too many parliamentary Tories loathe him, a little or a lot, and that there’s no chance they will find love or respect instead. In sum, he isn’t a leader in waiting when Michael Howard is 64 in 2005. Hate rules him out of the action.
And if Portillo feels that, then what about the rest of them? What about the once and nearly Clarke supporters, watching an arch-sceptic succeed and claim a European “unity” that can’t endure any strain. What about IDS and his loyal 75 supporters if they see Francis Maude and other shadow lurkers brought into the fold? What about the voters, who had a pretty settled and dim view of the new leader - and show no polling sign of changing their minds?
Hate is a driving human emotion. Hate - at an individual, personal level - lingers. Hate is not about compromise, but victory or defeat. Hate can break a peace, wreck a government, tear apart a party. Hate is the true hidden something of politics, howling in the night.— Dawn/Guardian Service
If they aren’t there
WHEN the news came out that weapons of mass destruction could not be found in Iraq, the president said, “I know they are there. We have to look harder.”
“Yes sir, Mr. President. You are not the only one who believes it. Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld and Karl Rove all insisted they were there and that is why we attacked Iraq.”
“Why isn’t David Kay, our WMD inspector, on our side?” Bush asked.
“Perhaps because he is on the other side.”
“Either that or he hasn’t looked hard enough,” the president said. “I’m not going to go all around America justifying the war if we don’t find any weapons of mass destruction. I know for a fact, because the CIA told me, that once they find Saddam he will tell us where they’re hidden. What will it cost to continue the search?”
“A lousy $600 million, sir, not counting the $200 million we’ve spent so far.” Mr. Bush said, “Who in his right mind would complain about that kind of tip money?”
“The boys in the basement have an idea. Suppose we buy weapons of mass destruction from Iran and North Korea? We could ship them to Baghdad by Federal Express.”
The president said, “It is a good idea. I would rather buy them than look for them. What do we do about David Kay?”
“We don’t tell him. After the package is delivered, someone will tip him off as to where the weapons can be found. Once he ‘finds’ them, Colin Powell goes on David Letterman and breaks the news to America.”
The prez said, “Either Letterman or Jay Leno, whoever is more believable.”
“Then after Colin confirms there are WMDs in Iraq, your election campaign will start in earnest. You will say your reason for going to war has been justified, and all the naysayers will have to eat crow.”
Bush said, “Suppose the Axis of Evil tells us they can’t afford to spare their weapons of mass destruction? What do we do then?”
The aide said, “We’ll promise to replace them from our own stock of WMDs.”
“Good thinking. Does the CIA have to know?”
“No way. They’re a rogue agency and the less they know, the better it is for us.”
The president said, “We’ll send Don Rumsfeld on a goodwill mission to Iran. He can propose the deal to the ayatollah.”
“This thing looks better and better. Who should we send to North Korea?”
“Ambassador Wilson. He can talk to Kim while his wife finds out how many WMDs they have.”
“Can the Wilsons be trusted?”
“They did a job for Vice President Cheney and he was pleased with their reports.”
Mr. Bush said, “Let’s do it. We can take the money out of the Head Start programme.”
“Sir, you are going to make the boys in the basement very happy.”
“I’m not doing any more than Martin Sheen would do in ‘The West Wing’.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services
Never a dull day
A LONG time ago I read a book called Johnny Got His Gun. I have forgotten the name of the author and much of what the book was about beyond being anti-war in that war was reduced to starkly human terms.
Inspired by it, I wrote a short story about a young soldier who goes to battle and his entire small town turns up to bid him farewell in what is a festive parade with the town’s school band playing Souza’s marches and the mayor making a rousing, patriotic speech and a proud mother embraces her son looking so grown-up in his shining uniform.
The story returns to this small town with its good folk waiting to receive a coffin draped in the national flag and the irrepressible mayor consoling the weeping mother by telling her that the boy died for his country. “He was a good boy,” the mother says.
The magazine I sent the story to rejected it on the ground that it only printed stories with happy endings. I wrote back to the magazine and said that I could change the ending and the soldier-boy returns as a war-hero but as a basket-case with both legs amputated. The magazine chose not to enter into further correspondence with me. Probably because the ending was not happy enough.
The number of coalition soldiers killed in Iraq is constantly updated and we have, more or less, precise numbers but the number of those injured is not disclosed and we have only an approximation. Will those injured ever be whole persons? Casualties must include those who are rendered half-living. There is, of course, no tally kept of the Iraqis, dead or injured. They do not come into the reckoning.
The kill-ratio favours the coalition armies and at a guess-estimate for every coalition soldier killed, 15 Iraqis have died and these include women and children. Since the efficient way of fighting a war is to minimize casualties while inflicting the maximum damage on your enemy, the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq has gone well and went even better in Vietnam where against 58,000 Americans, 3 million Vietnamese were killed.
It may be asked whether these deaths were necessary and whether they achieved their stated moral purpose? This is slippery ground. Vietnam was a long time ago and is forgotten and the cold war has ended and communism has been replaced by terrorism as the new enemy. Vietnam is only useful in drawing parallels with the predicament of the coalition armies in Iraq, whether they find themselves in a quagmire and whether the Iraqi resistance has evolved into a guerilla war.
At the moment, the Pentagon remains cheerful in public and President George Bush with an eye on his re-election dismisses all talk of an exit-strategy and his speech writers have stuck to the script that good will prevail over evil.
Unfortunately, for the next year, only those policies will be followed that impact favourably on George Bush’s re-election bid. If war-mongering is seen as patriotic, it will be full steam ahead in Iraq and all talk of scaling down the military operations will be condemned as defeatist and thus unpatriotic. If the casualties continue to mount and more Chinook helicopters are downed, the American voters are likely to get restless and may begin to feel that they need a regime change of their own!
Opinion polls are notoriously unreliable and though there may be some disapproval of Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq, there continues to be a general approval that the regime of Saddam Hussain was toppled, albeit through waging a war that is far from over and the world has become a better place without the brutal dictator. Whether Iraq will emerge as a shining democracy and become a beacon of light in the Middle East is a moot point though one does not see Ahmed Chalabi and his ilk as standard bearers of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
There are still people whose memories are haunted by the Pinochets and the Argentine generals and the Greek colonels. No one has been anointed as the successor to Saddam Hussain and who knows what the morrow may bring? A guy with a moustache who bears a resemblance to Saddam Hussain but who is “our kind of a son of a bitch” as once described the plethora of despots that the Free World took to its bosom.
George Bush’s clarion call at the National Endowment for Democracy for a forward strategy in the Middle East that would cancel the past and set new and lofty goals has a childlike simplicity. It preaches to the converted which is his domestic audience while he hurls platitudes and self-evident virtues at the Arab regimes. He would appear to have a poor understanding of democracy if he believes that it can be transplanted.
In 1956 when I went to the People’s Republic of China, I met a trade union leader. I mentioned to him the perception that China wanted to export its revolution to other Asian countries. He was a grave man but he lightened up and told me that you don’t open a letter of credit and order a revolution. “A revolution is not a commodity “ he said. The same would have to be said of democracy.
In the present climate in the Middle East, a democracy would throw up regimes that would not be acceptable to the United States for they would represent the anger and despair of the Arab streets. The hungry only dream of bread. The Arabs want to see an end to Israel’s brutalities in Palestine, they want their lands back and they want the Palestinian refugees to return home. None of this figured in George Bush’s speech.
Suddenly, there is a deafening silence about weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair hasn’t been heard from. He seems to be keeping a low profile and Condoleezza Rice has discovered that “the terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world many years before Sept. 11, 2001.” There’s never a dull moment and we are learning something new every day.
The feuding tribes of students
FOR three straight days in mid-October, Punjabi and Pakhtoon students fought a pitched battle at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. With sticks, stones, pistols, and automatic weapons they hammered away. Then, on the fourth day, one student died of gunshot wounds and the university closed down. Although classes resumed three weeks later, the fear of revenge killings continues to stalk the campus. This last murder was the fourth this year at Pakistan’s supposedly most prestigious public-sector university.
It should come as no surprise that Pakistan’s public universities are so prone to blood-letting. Even the “big names” — Punjab, Karachi, QAU — are populated by feuding tribes of students. The tribalism is not new but it was greatly accentuated by the banning of student unions over 15 years ago on grounds they brought national politics into educational institutions. Today the only student representation permitted is through ethnic and religious groups. Their hate-filled propaganda succeeds in rallying together the violent lumpen element.
Religious vigilantes are adding to intellectual desertification. On their orders, drama, theatre, and musical events are forbidden, as is any activity that can bring male and female students together. In Punjab University, which is effectively run by the Jamaat-i-Islami, males and females must sit in separate sections of the classroom. A fanatical student mob ransacked the Department of Visual Studies of Karachi University last week, destroying musical instruments, sculptures and paintings.
Religious piety is all-pervasive and evident in the burqas and beards that dominate campuses across the country. The “azan” is regularly given, even during class times, inside departments. Student activists from the universities rove the streets in Peshawar and Lahore, throwing paint on billboards showing women’s faces. Posters on stair-walls in my department instruct one about the proper prayer to use while ascending or descending.
Violence and ethnic conflict are just one manifestation of a deeper and more disturbing reality. Pakistan’s public universities are utterly barren. Apart from an occasional event, there are no seminars, colloquia, public lectures, debates, or open discussions on contemporary scientific, cultural, or political issues. Consequently Pakistan’s universities are factories for the mass-production of “lumpen” graduates. Ignorant and uncurious, with poor reading and writing skills, incapable of coherently articulating an argument, with little sense of politics or history, this kind of student exhibits few of the qualities that one associates with a university education.
Contrary to what is generally held to be true, the intellectual impoverishment of Pakistan’s universities has very little to do with inadequacy of resources, and very much to do with inappropriate values and attitudes. And here the primary fault lies with the teachers rather than the students.
With some honourable exceptions, teachers at public universities care little about the subjects they teach, freely conveying their confusion and ignorance to students. Many admit that they never consult a textbook and choose to dictate from notes they saved from the time when they were students in that same department. Questions in class are usually frowned upon, treated as an affront to authority. Promotions are time-bound and automatic. All teachers receive full salaries until retirement, and incompetence is the most minor of sins. I am not aware of any university teacher receiving punishment for not knowing his or her subject.
No academic staff association, or any other body of teachers, has ever demanded that entrance tests be instituted to select good students and thereby raise teaching standards, nor have penalties ever been discussed for the widespread abuse of a teacher’s power or to combat many widely practised ways of academic fraud. And yet, at a moment’s notice, armies of university teachers sally forth to “defend their rights” and defeat any new scheme that even remotely challenges the present system of their life-time free-loading.
It is absurd to think that paucity of resources lies behind the decline of the intellect in Pakistan or, for that matter, in the Islamic world. Consider mathematics and theoretical physics. The resources needed to develop these are next to zero. Nevertheless they are recognized as hardest and most rigorous disciplines to master in intellectual terms. Together they constitute the foundation of all science, the firm bedrock of scientific inquiry.
Tragically, today there is not even one Pakistani under 50 years of age, living in Pakistan, who has any degree of international recognition as a mathematician or theoretical physicist. But 30 years ago, when I started teaching at Quaid-i-Azam University, one could have counted up to 20 names across the country. This is just one indication of the fantastic decline in intellectual capabilities in Pakistan across the board.
Enter Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, appointed by General Pervez Musharraf as chairman of the Higher Education Commission and charged with reforming universities. Here is a man of considerable brilliance and dynamism. Most importantly, he has billions in cash to give. In consequence many university departments are today awash in research funds and special incentives have been announced for Ph.D students and their supervisors. An optional tenure-track scheme for rewarding high-performing faculty has been announced, while 300 foreign faculty members are to be hired on contract at international-scale salaries.
Thirty years ago, Atta’s schemes could have worked wonders. Even today, they represent the only serious attempt at university reform in 56 years. No one else has come up with any better ideas. But the rot is now so much deeper that the outcome of any technical fix, however clever, is far from certain.
Pakistan’s violent international image drives away foreigners who may otherwise want to live in Pakistan and help transform its universities; the still dwindling number of Pakistani faculty members who can properly guide Ph.D research is now minuscule; students registered for Ph.D research (and often their supervisors!) are shockingly deficient in their basics; and private universities are tearing away the remaining good faculty from public universities. Therefore, success is likely to be partial. But Atta’s efforts still deserve our cautious support. To keep matters in perspective, the cost of his failure will surely be no greater than losing a single F-16 in an accident.
For decades there have been grandiose declarations of building MITs and Harvards in Pakistan, or at least something close to the many Indian Institutes of Technology. But these have come to naught because the most important single fact has been ignored — good universities are self-governing communities of scholars engaged in free inquiry, discovery, and transmission of knowledge. Such institutions can grow only if personal freedom and liberty are valued and respected, if the urge to innovate and experiment is rewarded rather than punished, and when a society looks towards the future rather than the distant past.
Universities lie at the heart of modern civilization, the secret behind its awesome strength. Without them we cannot hope to confront Pakistani society’s general disaffection with the scientific method, rationality and democracy. Pakistan has yet to get its first real university. Building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and having generals run the country, is no substitute.
The writer teaches physics
at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Waiting at Guantanamo
A YEAR ago, federal officials said the government was nearly ready to go ahead with military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Last May, a senior defence official said, “Pretty much, we’re ready to go.”
Last week, Army Col. Frederic L. Borch III — the chief prosecutor for the planned trials — declared, yet again, that their start was “imminent.” In light of the previous delays, this promise should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. The tribunals were announced with much fanfare and controversy — and no small sense of urgency — barely two months after the 9/11 attacks.
Yet the administration’s urgency has waned — no doubt partly because it has discovered that indefinitely detaining Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured abroad is a lot easier than the messy process of trying them. Nearly two years after President Bush ordered their preparations, the tribunals are ever impending but never seem to arrive.
In the meantime, however, the need for a viable military tribunal system has become painfully apparent. The war on terrorism has demonstrated that certain detainees can neither be responsibly released nor be tried in American federal courts without doing real damage to the justice system.
Without a functioning tribunal system, Guantanamo Bay has become a kind of human warehouse: About 660 people are imprisoned there, with an untold number of others locked up at other military facilities abroad. Fewer than 70 of the Guantanamo inmates have been repatriated, a reflection presumably of the military’s judgment that the overwhelming majority remain dangerous.
—The Washington Post