Tragedy in Turkey

The suicide bombings of synagogues in Istanbul followed a week later by attacks on the British consulate and a British-owned bank in two very different areas of Istanbul which killed 58 people, injured 750 and brought home with terrifying urgency to our Turkish brethren that a new era of terrorism is now upon them. These were defenceless innocent victims leaving behind inconsolable families.

Turkey has suffered from such violence in the past generated by Kurdish nationalists but this was confined, for the most part, to the eastern region — the Kurdish majority region bordering on Iraq — and nationally by a Marxist movement. Both these were effectively dealt with. An intelligence and security infrastructure created to deal with these threats continues to be visibly in existence. Metal detectors exist in virtually every major building in Turkey and security checks are frequent.

None of these, however, helped as Turkey confronted for the first time attacks by terrorists calling themselves Muslims and espousing the so-called Islamic causes. They wreaked havoc in the city that represented in more ways than one the glories of “renaissance Islam” and was the city in which the ruling Justice and Development Party with its Islamic roots had its strongest base of support.

Ostensibly the targets were the Jews and the “hated British”, possibly as surrogates for the even more hated but better protected Americans, but the victims were primarily Turkish nationals. The perpetrators, to the chagrin of Prime Minister Erdogan, were Turkish nationals and while the pattern — almost simultaneous attacks on two widely separated targets — suggested Al Qaeda, the credit for the consulate and bank bombings was claimed by a new group, the Islamic Great East Raiders Front.

Beyond stating that the perpetrators were Turks there is little officially released information about them. One newspaper, the Guardian has however reported that two of the seven persons arrested in connection with the latest bombing were Azad Ekinci and Feridun Ugurlu. The former had fought in Chechnya and Bosnia while the latter was said to have trained in camps in Pakistan (possibly meaning Afghanistan). They were said to have been close friends of the two men who carried out the attacks on the synagogues a week earlier and all four were said to be from Bingol — a city where the Turkish authorities had recently carried out operations against Kurdish separatists — and were said to belong to an Islamist paramilitary group widely known for killing liberal opponents.

Whether this indicated any connection between the Kurdish extremists and the extremists of another complexion is not clear but it does seem that they sought inspiration for the methods employed from the Al Qaeda.

Our Turkish brothers are furious and bewildered. Conspiracy theories are beginning to emerge. The Posta, a Turkish newspaper says some people think that this is the handiwork of a small fundamentalist group that is opposed to the Justice and Development party’s general approach. Some secular leaders and commentators who oppose Erdogan’s government have accused the prime minister of largely ignoring the simmering problem of fundamentalist Islamic youth who have fought or trained in Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia or Chechnya and may have returned to Turkey with new connections to international terrorist organizations. Yet others have opined that the secular forces, deeply suspicious of the Erdogan government and its Islamic roots allowed the attacks to go forward to discredit the government.

There is of course a great deal of tension between the Turkish armed forces, which see themselves as the guardians of the Ataturk’s secularism and the Justice and Development party but in the recent difficult period there have been indications that a “modus vivendi” has been developed. Problems will continue to arise in the future but it is, to say the least, implausible that anyone wielding power or influence would condone, much less connive at such an incident that is bound to adversely impact on the fragile process of rebuilding Turkey’s shattered economy and restoring international confidence in Turkey’s economic future.

It would perhaps be wrong to suggest that the West generally and America in particular view with equanimity the accession to power in Turkey of a religious party. There is however recognition of the fact that the Party has overwhelming public support. An effort has therefore been made to quell suspicions and to portray Turkey as a model Islamic state in which a religious party can exercise power without forsaking secular principles and without descending to the extremist interpretations of Islam that cause nightmares to the West. Not only the Justice and Development party but many in the West would probably agree with the view expressed by one Turkish commentator that “The attacks send a message to the Islamic world that those countries which reform and acquire democratic values, like Turkey, will be a target of Islamic radicalism”.

But that too does not represent the whole truth. A major contribution to the fanning of sentiments that create terrorists has been made, in the words of a Turkish commentator writing in the “Yeni Safak” by “The satanic policies of Mr Bush... and [the Israeli prime minister] Ariel Sharon” which “have made terrorism more widespread and violent, at levels never seen before. The more the ‘lords of the world’ insist on militarist... policies, the longer the bloodshed will continue in our world.”

Perhaps the foregoing explains better than any domestic consideration the spread of senseless violence in one Islamic country after another and of which the attacks in Turkey are the latest example. Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia and most importantly, in terms of their weight in the Islamic world, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have suffered from such violence and are having to look at ways and means by which they can cope with a situation in which emotion driven public opinion is muted in its criticism of such violence despite its destructive effect on the political, economic and social fabric of the country in question.

The Muslims, both in terms of human lives lost and in terms of economic, political and social damage are the main victims of this so-called battle against the West and its values.

American policy may, in the view of the Muslim countries, be the driving force behind the growth of extremism but many in the West question whether any change in American policy would make a difference to the growth of extremism and mindless violence in the Muslim world choosing to attribute it to a lack of democracy and misgovernance.

The question is however academic at this time. Each Muslim country has to understand, that in an American election year, there is little hope of such external changes as will discourage extremism. All indications are, in fact to the contrary. Each Muslim country must therefore act on its own to encourage democratic forces, to eliminate in draconian fashion if need be, domestic extremism and to insulate such extremism to the maximum extent possible from pernicious foreign influences.

Despite its Islamic credentials, the present Turkish government will take strong and perhaps extra-legal measures to eliminate extremist groups just as they did in the past with Marxist and other threats to stability. I do not think that considerations of electoral support such extremist organizations provided in the past will weigh heavily with a government that sees itself, rightly, as beleaguered and that sees Turkey’s economic recovery as being at risk.

For Pakistan the position is even trickier than with Turkey. American analysts have calculated that approximately 20,000 people from 47 countries passed through the training camps of the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan from the mid-’90s to October ‘01. Most of the camps used by the Al Qaeda were those that had been set up with CIA cooperation during the late 70s and early 80s to train Mujahideen for the fight against the Soviets.

In both periods it would be fair to assume that a large part of the trainees were Pakistanis in these camps as also in the madaressahs and camps that were set up simultaneously in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis, most but not all in dire economic circumstances have therefore been force-fed extremist doctrines.

On the external plane, as a sympathizer and well wisher of Afghanistan I deeply regret the fact that there appears to be little prospect of peace and stability returning to Afghanistan in the near future. The best we can do is to take whatever measures we can to prevent an aggravation of Afghanistan’s difficulties and to take whatever measures we can to insulate ourselves from the continued turmoil in that country.

The banning of extremist and terrorist organizations and requiring suspect extremist to post bonds are long over due steps in the right direction. But much more needs to be done. The vacillation on the madressah question must end. Those that don’t accept revised curricula must close.

We need to send back to their country of origin all those who have been and continue to be supporters of extremist views and, as a first step to act at the federal level — if the provinces are not prepared to cooperate — to ensure that until such deportation or expulsion can be arranged our own nationals are insulated from their pernicious influence. No afghan national should be permitted to teach in Pakistani madressahs or to preach in Pakistani mosques.

At the same time we must demand from the Americans and the Afghans that “who, where and when” details must accompany any allegation levelled against Pakistan about allowing Taliban meetings in Pakistan at which attacks on the Afghan government are planned. We must demand greater American and Afghan flexibility while promising greater cooperation on reintegrating “moderate” Taliban into Afghan society.

The attacks in Turkey are a clarion call not only for the Turks but for all other Muslim countries and particularly for a country as precariously placed as Pakistan.

While seemingly out of place in this article may I felicitate the Prime Minister on having taken the bold step of announcing a unilateral ceasefire on the LOC. This too could have a salutary impact on our anti-extremism policy.

The writer is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.

Donating more for charity

ACCORDING to a rough estimate, approximately three billion rupees will be donated by the Pakistanis as Fitra on the auspicious occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr. The Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy has calculated that five years ago a sum of Rs 70.5 billion was donated by the Pakistanis towards philanthropic causes. This figure must have grown since.

If one were to add to that what people dole out to beggars on the street and the money the devout voluntarily deposit in the donation boxes in mosques, Imambargahs, and mazars — mostly unaccounted for — philanthropy would emerge as a venture which generates probably more what the government collects as revenue.

This is an interesting phenomenon. First of all it belies the general conception that the Pakistanis are not generous in parting with their money for the welfare of others. At the same time it gives rise to some fundamental questions.

Why are the Pakistanis such reluctant taxpayers when they can be so large-hearted in their philanthropy? In fact, many of the same people who are guilty of tax evasion give massive amounts in charity.

This would appear to be a contradiction in terms. But this mindset can be explained in the light of the taxpayers’ lack of confidence in the government. The fact is that many of those who are required to pay revenues to the CBR or any other authority actually feel cheated, given the failure of the government to perform its functions efficiently and with integrity. The benefits that these taxes are supposed to fetch — not necessarily for the person who pays them but for his compatriots — are missing in most cases.

This is to be attributed either to corruption or misplaced priorities in planning and policy making. Take the example of the motor vehicle tax. Can the motorists be blamed for feeling resentful when they have to drive on bumpy and pot-holed roads after they have been paying their MVT regularly? The corruption that is so visible in every branch of the government leaves one wondering where the taxes go and which pockets they line.

There is no reason why the Pakistanis would be reluctant about paying taxes were there more transparency and visibility in how their taxes are spent. After all, they very willingly give donations to help sustain the many non-government projects which depend heavily on public financial support. It seems that once a project gets going and begins rendering worthwhile service to the public, the person running it has established his/her credibility and the results are visible for all to see, getting people to support it is not an impossible task.

As the government has disengaged itself financially from many areas of public life while it has disowned its social welfare responsibilities, it has assigned these tasks to the private sector. This was initially sought to be done by devising a vague concept of public-private partnership. But it soon came to be realized that the private sector in the conventional sense operated only on the basis of profit-making. That rendered its projects beyond the reach of the common man.Hence the concept of the Non-Profit Organizations has been now introduced. Since they are funded by public donations they do not have the compulsion to make profits by imposing high charges.

This pattern of partnership has mostly been applied successfully to health facilities where enterprising health professionals in public sector hospitals have procured funds from the public to upgrade their own departments/wards. Thus islands of excellence have been created in a sea of decay owing to the efforts of a handful of enterprising and motivated individuals. Several wards of the Civil Hospital, Karachi, have been beneficiaries of such efforts which have attracted public donations.

The most outstanding example is the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation which has grown from the urology ward to an autonomous institute for renal diseases and organ transplantation which compares with the best anywhere in the world. There are also the cardiac surgery unit and the intensive care unit in the same hospital which have been equipped with modern technology with help from private donors.

Can this strategy on an ad hoc basis resolve the massive problems the country faces in the social sectors and help alleviate poverty? Given the backlog of illiteracy, ill-health and lack of facilities, can philanthropy meet the needs of the country in all the areas of national life where the government has failed to deliver?

Obviously the government feels that with so much philanthropy floating around in the shape of corporate donors, individual contributors, and the Pakistani diaspora, an impact can be made by mopping it up and channellizing it to important projects. Hence it has proceeded to adopt two measures. First, the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy was set up in December 2001 with the proclaimed object of enhancing the “volume and effectiveness” of philanthropy in Pakistan by facilitating collaboration between the various stakeholders.

The next step was the establishment of the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) in June 2002 which seeks to support the government’s line departments mainly in primary education, literacy, income generation and basic health care services. Since the NCHD has the government’s blessing it enjoys some advantages. Thus the president is the patron-in-chief, the chairman is a minister of state and the government has given it a grant of $32 million for its initial seed capital.

But it could also lose the donors’ confidence and goodwill if it fails to deliver on its promises. Moreover, if the NCHD is to serve as a clearing house for the donations which are sent in, it could meet the same fate as the NGO Coordination Council which was set up in 1985 to channel aid/grants to population NGOs but gradually came to be bypassed.

The NCHD will presumably be concentrating mainly on the big donors. There is need to institutionalize the charity given out at the grassroots level, such as the Fitra which many of those living below the poverty line also give out. The amount donated individually may not be very big but it adds up to a substantial amount given the massive number of donors involved.

It is important to set up neighbourhood/community welfare funds to give assistance on a small scale for the same projects which the NCHD will be promoting, namely education, health and income generation.It is a pity that a lot of this money which is donated goes waste because many people believe that charity means doling out money to the beggars most of whom have adopted beggary as a money-making profession.

The story of census

I SHOULD be writing about the vagaries of the Eid moon and our so-called failure as a nation to celebrate this great festival on one day, but there are so many aspects to it that I shall not. One, everybody else is commenting on it. Two, it is my firm belief that if we cannot follow astronomy in these modern times then the best thing is to let people do what they like.

In this context I prefer the old system — whoever saw the crescent celebrated Eid, and whoever did not just put off the celebration to the next day. I am sorry I do not equate same-day Eid with national unity or some such high ideal. For all I care the ruet-i-hilal committees can go where they came from.

Actually I had something else on my mind as the topic for today. I have just finished reading a lot of papers on population and family planning for a friend. When I was young I never understood the purpose of holding a population census. It was only when I grew up that I learned that there can be no development planning — not even family planning — without a reasonably correct census.

Pakistan was going to have its 1991 census in 1994 but it was postponed by a year because some people in Sindh didn’t want anyone to know the composition of their province’s population. It was finally held in 1997. Normally a census should pass off without agitation and protest, but my peers in journalism will recall that the census of 1961 created a minor sensation and a lot of protest among the journalist community. It arose out of the fact that, while grouping various professions together, some bright chap in the census department had lumped reporters and editors with “entertainers, including the professional singing and dancing classes.”

I do not remember now whether street-walkers and women of easy virtue on their part did or did not protest at being bracketed with us journalists, but of course we all did raise a lot of hue and cry. I was in government information then, but we were somehow always considered part of the press corps. The grouping had to be cancelled.

Journalists never protested when that flamboyant fire-eating Mardan politician (of the Awami League), Ghulam Muhammad Khan of Lundkhwar, called a press conference in Hira Mandi, Lahore’s red light district, in 1949.

It was a very political news conference and the only justification for the venue was that whenever he came to Lahore the Khan stayed with his permanent girl friend in that romantic locality. (He married her later.)

I was there as correspondent of Dawn though I recall neither music nor dance as any of the items on the Khan’s press briefing. It was just like any other news conference, except that most of us went red in the face when a pretty girl from among the hostess’s entourage insisted on putting betel leaves into our mouths with her own hand. “This is the custom with these people,” said the Khan by way of explanation.

Actually I have been reminded of that grouping by a recent letter in a newspaper. It drew indignant attention to a school textbook which showed a man giving another man a haircut and calling himself a bureaucrat. It was a letter of protest from a government officer who averred that he was smarting under the insult because his daughter had said to him, “Abu, you too are a bureaucrat. Do you cut hair in office?” For a dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat who thinks himself only a cut below the pharaoh Tutankhamen, to be equated with a barber was like being demoted form Grade-21 to Grade-18 and then being posted in the ministry of religious affairs.

Now of course it is too late, but I had a couple of suggestions for grouping of professionals during a population census. One was to put legislators and horses in one category. Of course there is the difficulty about counting horses as human beings but the matter can be stretched a bit on the ground that some horses are more intelligent and certainly more loyal than elected representatives of the people. However, if horses are going to protest at this grouping I withdraw it at once.

I may tell you that I have always had my suspicions about the census people. They are rather secretive about their work and don’t let their left hand know what their right hand is doing. For example most people in Islamabad will be able to tell you at once where the government’s cloak-and-dagger business is conducted, but if you hold a prize quiz for well-informed persons to point out the address of the census office you will draw a blank.

When I was a college student I was drafted as one of the enumerators in the 1941 census. Those were the days when we were fired by the Muslim League idea and our objective in census work became to put in as many Muslims as we could in the tally for Lahore’s Model Town where we lived and where the majority of the population was either Hindu or Sikh. My friend Ashfaque Naqvi (who writes a column in Dawn on Lahore’s literary scene) and I and a couple of other boys did our best and recorded the names of a number of non-existent Muslims, including two holy men called Sain Mauj Mela and Sain Fauj Mela. At that time we thought we had done something great for the cause of Islam and Pakistan.

Later we came to know that our Hindu and Sikh friends had being doing the same for their co-religionists. In addition some of them had made every Hindu give Hindi as his mother tongue whereas ninety per cent of them could not even read the language, their medium of instruction being Urdu. So the missionary efforts on both sides must have been evenly balanced.

I don’t know if our zeal as mujahids helped us in getting Pakistan or not, but I did apply for a gold medal to the Punjab government a few years ago on the basis of that unparalleled service. As usual the officials were prejudiced and were mean enough to give the medal to someone who had gone to jail during the Pakistan movement.

The question is debatable whether it is more demeaning for a journalist to be counted among women of loose morals or for a bureaucrat to be lumped with barbers. I think this is an issue that deserves to be discussed at the highest intellectual level. The Federal Union of Journalists and the Pakistan Administrative Staff College can jointly sponsor a seminar to thrash out the matter. Having remained both a bureaucrat and a journalist I know there are some common features, but I won’t say more, otherwise I may be named as the object to be thrashed first!

Patient shouldn’t be saved

REPUBLICAN leaders in Congress, made bold by feverish lobbying from the Bush administration and a $7-million ad campaign launched last week by the seniors organization AARP, are on a final push to add a $400-billion drug benefit to Medicare.

Such a benefit was a campaign promise by President Bush, and few members of Congress want to say no in an election year. But the Medicare bill is such a complicated mess, full of concessions to one interest group after another, that it actually stands a chance of being defeated. It should be, especially in this year of record deficits.

It is full of tortuous detail that is poorly understood by legislators, much less the public. It is opposed by some fiscal conservatives for its absence of cost controls and by liberals because it aims to push more of the elderly into private insurance programmes.

The final text of the bill has not been released, meaning GOP leaders are worried and still tinkering. It’s true that there are simple changes that would improve it. For instance, there is broad bipartisan support for bolstering a ridiculously weak provision asking the Food and Drug Administration to consider legalizing prescription drug purchases from Canada. The measure should require, not ask. If the government won’t help control costs, it has no business stopping the free market from doing so.

The proposal not only fails to include cost controls; it prohibits them by barring government from negotiating better drug prices, a cost-saving tactic employed by many countries, including Canada.

A more fundamental problem is that, beyond the drug benefit, the bill would force traditional Medicare to compete with private managed-care organizations. — Los Angeles Times

Rise in terrorist attacks

THERE are, naturally enough, efforts afoot to nail down a cause for the suicide bombings that have lately claimed at least 50 lives in Istanbul. Turkey, after all, did not join the “coalition of the willing”. Although influential members of its ruling elite were keen to chip in, the option was rejected by the parliament — and, to its credit, the nation’s powerful armed forces chose not to overrule the democratic verdict.

And when Turkey decided to accede to an American request for assistance in policing post-war Iraq, its offer of troops was rejected by Kurdish members of Iraq’s so-called governing council.

Whether the situation in Iraq can indeed be categorized as “postwar” is, of course, arguable. In recent weeks, in response to progressively more daring acts of violent resistance, the occupation forces have resorted to acts that belie the supposition that “major combat” ceased six months ago. But that’s another story.

The fact remains that Turkey has not intervened in Iraq on a large scale. It does, on the other hand, maintain close relations, bordering on an alliance, with both the United States and Israel. Some Turkish commentators cite this as the likeliest reason for the terrorist operations. Others cite Turkey’s European aspirations, and the fact that the democratic ascendancy of a reputedly Islamist party has not led to a fundamental change of course.

Although founded as an Islamic republic, Turkey felt confident enough to discard the religious clause from its constitution shortly afterwards and has generally been proud of its secularism.

There have consistently been tensions, however, and the army has been prone to intervene frequently in politics, sometimes in the name of preserving Kemal Ataturk’s legacy. Amid the intermittent experiments with democracy, the state has earned a reputation for human rights abuses, particularly against Kurds aspiring for a degree of autonomy and the right to preserve their culture.

Nonetheless, given that Turkey is 98 per cent Muslim (with minuscule Jewish and Christian minorities), its secularism is creditable — as well as a red rag from the narrow-minded Islamist perspective.

Therefore, there may well be some merit in both the explanations offered for the targeting of Turkey. However, the likeliest reason for the outrages is simply the accessibility of the targets and presence in Turkey of cells capable of carrying out such acts of destruction.

The November 15 attacks were aimed at Jews: one bomb exploded outside the Neve Shalom synagogue, another in the distinctively Jewish neighbourhood of Sisli. The bombs killed more Muslims than Jews, but that does not exacerbate the atrocity: it would have been equally awful if all the innocent victims had been Jews.

The Jews of Istanbul, who number about 17,000 now, have lived in harmony with their Muslim neighbours for five centuries. Their forebears were 15th-century refugees from Europe’s Christian fundamentalism. Fiachra Gibbons, the British author of a forthcoming book on minorities in the Ottoman empire, describes them as “living proof that Jews and Muslims can coexist in harmony”. She adds: “Theirs is one of the great anomalies of Jewish history — a happy story. [But] this truer picture of what Jewish-Muslim relations can be has been obscured and all but erased in the handful of decades since the creation of Israel.

“They are the last survivors of the great Islamic-Judeo civilization of al-Andalus, and they carried its language and cultural achievements with them to Turkey when Sultan Beyazit II sent “mercy ships to rescue them from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 .... Four decades before their expulsion from Spain, within weeks of the fall of Constantinople and the ending of the old Byzantine empire, Beyazit’s father Mehmet II ordered that Jews from all over his empire be brought to his new capital. A city without Jews, the sultan reasoned, was no city at all.

“Happiness isn’t supposed to last, but in Istanbul it has lasted for more than five centuries ... Even now, close to the grand bazaar in Istanbul, a mosque and a synagogue share the same building.”

The next attack, last Thursday, was aimed at British interests and representatives. The bombs targeted the HSBC bank and the British consulate, claiming the life of British consul-general Roger Short and 26 others — most of them, once again, Muslims.

One of the organizations that claimed responsibility for these murderous and utterly inexcusable acts styles itself as the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, named after a deceased close collaborator of Osama bin Laden, and claims to be acting in coordination with Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, arrests by the Turkish authorities and the identification of the suicide bombers suggest that the perpetrators were Turks rather than outsiders.

Whatever the merit of these claims, it is widely accepted that the attacks on British symbols were timed to coincide with George W. Bush’s state visit to Britain. During that trip the self-proclaimed crusader for democracy was kept well protected from the people of his host nation, an estimated 200,000 of whom clogged the streets of London in what could well be the largest weekday protest in the British capital. Led by an American — the well-known disabled Vietnam veteran and peace activist Ron Kovic, a banner behind whom read: “Proud of my country, ashamed of my president” — they pulled down a large effigy of Bush in a mock re-enactment of the American orchestrated toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein.

The demonstrators were shaken but not all that surprised as news came in of the atrocities in Istanbul. As Lindsay German, the convener of the Stop The War coalition, put it: “I hate to say we told you so, but we have been saying from the beginning that the war with Iraq would inevitably lead to more terrorist attacks.”

Inevitably, neo-conservative hacks will seek to portray such opinions as a rationalization of terror. That is ultimately a self-defeating view, because terrorism cannot effectively be tackled by those who religiously refuse to recognize its well-springs or its internal logic.

At a press conference in London, Tony Blair and his guest (who was spared the embarrassment of having to address the Mother of Parliaments, wherein he may have encountered opposition from a substantial section of the prime minister’s party) pushed the usual buttons: The terrorists struck because they hate freedom. We will fight them on every front, and as long as necessary. We will eradicate them...

The hatred-of-freedom phrase features frequently in Bush’s utterances, partly because his aides realize they cannot trust him to coherently articulate more complex notions. But do they realize how utterly hypocritical the word “freedom” sounds coming from the mouth of someone whose administration is so doggedly determined to deny its exercise not only to people in faraway lands, but to the Americans as well?

Perhaps not. And perhaps they also do not realize that thus far their war against terror has been an abysmal failure. In seeking to combat the phenomenon by military means, they have only bred more terror. It cannot be said for certain, but it’s a fair bet that the suicide bombings in Istanbul, and the ones in Riyadh before that, are a direct consequence of the conquest and occupation of Iraq.

And then there is the daily death toll in Iraq. More American troops have been killed in Iraq thus far than in the first three years of the Vietnam War. They are not the only victims, of course. Iraqis are dying too; and the thousands who have been incarcerated reportedly face torture among a variety of humiliations. And other members of the military coalition are, inevitably, also being targeted. There is an important difference, of course, between striking at occupation forces in Iraq and killing innocents in Istanbul or Riyadh. It’s a difference that fanatics cannot be expected to appreciate. But if they cannot be brought to heel, is it absolutely necessary to go on provoking them?

The worst fears of those who suspected that an unnecessary war against Iraq would progressively reduce the Middle East to a bloody mess are now being realized. The US could indeed do something to reduce the terrorist threat: it could pull out of Iraq, instead of boasting about the absence of an exit strategy. Even the expedited handover of responsibility to Iraqis is intended to create a comfort zone for the American military presence rather than to end it.

As for the conscience-keeper of the “free” world, his prevarications have become legendary even among his own countrymen. “Now we know that no other president of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably,” Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, recently told a gathering of American intelligence officers, diplomats and Pentagon officials, according to a report by John Pilger. He went on to say: “The presumption now has to be that he’s lying any time that he’s saying anything.”

That assessment is hard to argue with. It can’t be extended, however, to Bush’s defence secretary, if only because his sentences are difficult to digest. Donald Rumsfeld is a veritable folk poet, straddling the fine line between profundity and nonsense with a dexterity that would shame Bob Dylan.

In shock and awe, then, let’s allow him the penultimate word: “The message is that there are known knowns — there are things that we know we know. There are known unknowns — that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns .... things we do not know we don’t know. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.”

Is that clear? Why, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

e-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net