Iraqi polls in limbo

The Washington Post, quoting an Iraqi regional newspaper reported on Monday that the entire 13 member election commission of Anbar province, that includes Fallujah and Ramadi, had resigned and gone into hiding.

The Iraqi newspaper quoted the head of the commission, Saad Abdul Aziz Rawi, as saying that "it was impossible to hold elections in the province" and that officials who maintained otherwise "were kidding themselves".

This was perhaps the most telling indication of the success that the insurgents have had in intimidating Iraqi officials, and is only the latest in a series of events showing the unease of even those Sunnis who form part of the government about the timing of the elections and the poll process.

Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, the Iraqi president, who not long ago was feted at the White House by President Bush and who at that time was prepared to endorse the January 30 date for elections, has now said in an interview that escalating violence would make it difficult to hold proper elections.

He maintained that many figures in the Iraqi government agreed with this but were not authorized to postpone the election which could only be done by the independent election commission.

He called upon the UN to assess whether the elections could be held as scheduled, pointing out that the purpose of the elections was to create an assembly that could draw up a constitution reflecting the aspirations of all the Iraqi people and that this would clearly be impossible if a large segment of the population remained un represented in this assembly.

President Yawar's interview followed a meeting in a Baghdad mosque of hundreds of Sunni leaders all of whom sought the postponement of elections. This, of course, was some time after the main Sunni party had announced its withdrawal from the election process.

There is little room for doubt now that the Iraqi Sunnis are virtually unanimous in opposing the holding of the elections according to the present schedule. Many of them are also opposed to the format of the election which almost guarantees in the present conditions that the Sunnis will be under-represented.

On January 3, Prime Minister Allawi reportedly called President Bush, after a series of deadly incidents in Iraq that left more than 20 people dead, and discussed the "impediments" to the holding of elections.

American sources insisted that he had not suggested a postponement of polls, but significantly it was the same day on which his defence minister speaking in Cairo had suggested just this.

Since then, Prime Minister Allawi has reiterated his determination to hold elections as scheduled and has dismissed as personal views the suggestions for postponement coming from his cabinet colleagues or the Iraqi president.

He has also extended the "state of emergency" declared two months ago - to facilitate the attack on Fallujah - and has made it clear that his government would exercise the powers granted under the emergency proclamation to allow elections to go forward.

Reports indicate that under these emergency powers, Iraqis will not be allowed to travel outside their home districts and a virtual state of siege will be created to prevent insurgency attacks on polling stations and election officials.

Allawi is being driven not by opinion within Iraq, though it is clear that the Shia parties would oppose any delay, but by that of President Bush who has turned a deaf ear to the many influential voices in Washington arguing for postponement and for a change in the format of the elections.

Most prominent among them is Gen Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the senior President Bush and one of the most respected Republican foreign policy experts.

He told a public policy group that "The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict". Asked to respond Mr. Bush replied: "Quite the opposite.

I think elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people," and went on to add that he regarded the elections as an "historical marker for our Iraq policy." He has made it clear that from the perspective of his administration the question of postponing elections does not arise.

It can be said that the law under which the election is to be held does not permit postponement. It can also be said that any delay in the holding of polls would provoke a violent Shia reaction and possibly plunge Iraq into civil war, which is exactly what the insurgents want.

It can be argued further that any concession at this time would be seen as a victory for the insurgents and would give fresh impetus to their recruitment drive and to their popular appeal.

These are, of course, weighty considerations but it would be wrong to assume that these problems cannot be worked out by the Iraqis if the Americans were to give them the green signal to do so.

The main problem, however, is that President Bush, whose views are reinforced by his coterie of advisers, refuses to acknowledge that a mistake may have been made and to take the necessary corrective steps.

Conspiracy theorists, of course, are also prepared to propound the thesis that flawed elections will lead to civil war and the break-up of Iraq. This is why the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration are insistent that elections be held on time.

Whatever the factors prompting Bush's obduracy, it does seem that elections are bound to go ahead on the scheduled dates. Every day media reports indicate that both the political and security situations in Iraq are deteriorating and that elections would be difficult to hold.

But it would perhaps be useful to do a more detailed ground reality check. The prestigious American think tank, the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) puts together from various sources statistics about the situation in Iraq.

By January 7, according to this institute, American casualties amounted to 1,342 dead, of whom 1,056 were killed in action; 10,252 were wounded, of whom 4,856 returned to duty within 72 hours. In the four days that have passed since newspaper reports indicate that the American have suffered a further 12 fatalities and an unknown number of wounded.

So far, the casualty figures have not prompted a strong public reaction from American public opinion. Far too many have bought the Bush thesis that the war in Iraq is the war against terrorism.

But there have been vociferous complaints about the quality of the equipment given to American troops. There have been reports that the head of the American army reserve force has said that as a result of the discriminatory use of his force it is rapidly degenerating into a "broken" force.

Now the Americans have to contend with the fact that if the Iraqis cannot handle security, the US army may have to have a permanent addition of 30,000 men at an annual cost of $3 billion and that reservists may be required, despite the resentment this would create, to serve for periods longer than the current 24 months.

Again, according to the same think tank's collation of figures, insurgent attacks on coalition forces from May 2003 to December 16, 2004, numbered 17,140 - about 30 a day - while the estimated number of insurgents detained or killed was 32,000.

Other reports indicate that in late 2003, when the insurgency started gathering momentum, the number of attacks averaged 50 a day and rose to more than 80 a day before tapering off in Ramadan this year.

Now, according to General Metz, the commander of the American ground forces in Iraq, it is anticipated that the number of attacks on American and coalition forces will go up from the current 70 a day to 85.

General Metz also conceded that in significant portions of four of Iraq's 18 provinces, the situation currently was not such as to permit the holding of elections. These provinces - Baghdad, Anbar Nineveh (where Mosul is situated) and Salahdin (Saddam's hometown of Tikrit is located here) comprise one third of Iraq's total area and are home to about 50 per cent of the population.

This would suggest that not only the Sunnis, but a substantial part of the Shia population would also be disenfranchised. President Bush, while dismissing the significance of the current situation is these four provinces, was apparently not aware of or chose to ignore the weight these provinces have in Iraq.

Polling is to take place at some 9,000 stations. Security for these stations and the polling staff is to be provided by Iraqi security forces. At the last count, according to the CFR figures, they numbered 127,000 people as against the 274,000 that the Americans believe are needed for the country.

Of the 12 categories into which these forces are divided only three - police 53,135, National Guard, 40,063, and the army, 4,414 - would appear to be suitable for election day duty.

It has been conceded in report after report that their training leaves much to be desired as does their discipline and fighting spirit. The Pentagon has now dispatched a highly respected retired four-star general to Iraq to look at, among other things, the training programme and how it can be improved.

Combine this with the fact that police chiefs in a number of cities are being targeted by the insurgents along with other senior Iraqi administrators - the killing of the Baghdad governor and Baghdad's deputy chief of police are examples - and it would appear extremely doubtful that these forces would suffice to provide the security needed.

The Americans, however, have made it clear that their own troops will not be deployed for election duty and will be called to act only if there is a dire need to do so.

According to American estimates, as quoted by the CFR, there are about 20,000 Iraqi insurgents and about 3,000 foreign insurgents in Iraq located primarily in the Sunni triangle.

According to the Iraqi intelligence chief, Major General Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, as many as 30,000 well-trained terrorists are actively operating throughout Iraq at the behest of former regime leaders based in Syria.

"They operate," he said in an interview to the London based Arabic newspaper Sharq-Al-Awsat, "mainly in the Sunni areas where they receive moral support from about 200,000 people." Is this number going to diminish in the 20 days that remain? There is reason to be sceptical.

The Iraqi intelligence chief also claimed that he had seen no changes in Syrian and Iranian policies following Iraqi accusations of interference and that, "the problems are still coming from these two countries because the borders are open and the support is going on to serve their interests."

While these are the two countries on which attention is focused and while it is probably true that Baathist leaders in Damascus are directing part of the insurgency, the fact is that sympathizers for the Iraqi Sunnis are far more numerous in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and there can be little doubt that the American pressure notwithstanding the governments in these two countries have not been able to stem the flow of resources to the insurgents from private Jordanian and Saudi sources.

The Americans were able to ensure that leaders from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia met in Saudi Arabia and urged the Sunnis in Iraq to participate in the elections. But whether this changed the sentiment of the man in the street in these countries is open to question.

The Americans are stepping up their anti-insurgency operations and their intelligence gathering capabilities are apparently being improved but given the ground reality spelt out above, it seems unlikely that this will make much of a difference in the 20 days that remain. The outlook is for continuing carnage and mayhem in Iraq and an election that few will accept as credible.

Must the school adopters wait?

The adopt-a-school programme (ASP) launched by Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) in 1997 is in danger of falling prey to maladministration, misuse, corruption and apathy of the city government.

At present there are 173 government schools which have been adopted by 44 NGOs and individuals in the province. The adopters and some donor agencies have poured Rs 42.8 million into these schools in the last five years.

Admittedly, the programme has not brought about a radical transformation in the public sector school system to create a momentum to sustain itself without the patronage of the SEF. But it has certainly made a difference to the schools which have been adopted. If sustained the programme could produce an impact on a larger number of institutions and thus change the lives of many children.

The brainchild of Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, the managing director of the Sindh Education Foundation, the ASP is designed to improve the quality of public sector schools which have remained neglected for decades.

Lack of funds and absence of good supervision and effective management have resulted in rapid deterioration in these institutions, leading to a fall in enrolment.

Hence the idea behind the ASP was to induct the private sector into a replicable and systematic programme and thus "redefine its traditional role from a sceptical bystander to that of a proactive stakeholder".

According to the SEF this was also expected to lead to an enhancement of the quality of education by "identifying, revitalizing and evolving systems for efficient service delivery" in educational institutions. There were cynics who questioned the utility of this programme when the entire education sector was in a mess.

Yet, initially the programme got off to a good start with a number of adopters coming forward to act as god-parents to one or the other school in their neighbourhood.

The education department was also pleased because the adopters brought funds with them. As was understandable, they focused on the physical environment in which the students had to spend several hours of their day.

A school which was filthy and in a decrepit state, had no toilets or drinking water and could not provide proper desks and benches to the children could not be expected to attract pupils.

Small wonder the dropout rate was so high. Moreover, these drawbacks were an eye sore and caught everybody's attention immediately. Hence the first of task the adopters was to clean up and repair the school building and the upgrading of the facilities available.

Some friction set in when the adopters wanted - and rightly so - to look into the management and running of the schools. Many of the headmaster/headmistresses and teachers resented the presence of the adopters. The more serious ones would visit the schools very regularly to check on their working.

Some even appointed a representative to keep an eye on the running of the school. Having been spoilt by decades of "freedom" from supervision and inspection by the education department, the teachers were not always pleased by the intrusion of these "strangers" who demanded more efficiency, punctuality and regularity of attendance from them.

As the adopters' investment in a school grew so did their interest and involvement in their project. They wanted to send the teachers for training workshops to improve their calibre - though not all teachers were overly keen about such exercises which required greater exertion from them.

Even matters like the administration of the schools, admissions, timings and the academic calendar at times needed adjustments which required the cooperation of the education department.

From the start, the relationship between the adopters, the school and the education authorities was never institutionalized even at the time when Prof Ghulam Ali was the Sindh minister of education in 1999-2002. At best she mediated between the adopters and the department to find ad hoc solutions to the immediate cause of friction.

Now the problems appear to have multiplied as the devolution of power has made the city government responsible for the administration of school education, with policy planning still in the domain of the Sindh government.

It is not just matters like absenteeism, punctuality and performance that are emerging as sore points for the adopters. There have been complaints against the city government which is said to be interfering in the adopted schools in a bid to take advantage of the facilities provided by the adopters.

There is the case of the Nazimabad school adopted by the Helping Hands Trust set up by the late Karrar Haider and now managed by his widow. The computer lab set up by the adopter is under-utilized because the headmaster says he does not have teachers to supervise the class.

But worse still, the city government has taken over the lab since the end of November to prepare the 'seniority lists' of teachers, whatever they are. It would be happier still if the adopter also gave it the services of the computer science teacher who was helping the students on a part time basis while working for the Trust.

Mrs Haider is surprised that the city government does not have its own computers and operators to perform this function that must be done as a routine every year. Where have the education department's computers gone?

In another adopted school, it is said that the playgrounds are being leased out for wedding parties in the night. The residue that is left behind is testimony to the extra-academic activities of those in charge much to the chagrin of the adopter.

What will become of this programme which if allowed to move in the right direction holds the promise of bringing about some positive changes in the schools that come under its purview? Prof Ghulam Ali has written a letter bringing the complaints of the adopters to the notice of the nazim of Karachi. Nothing has come out of it.

The nazim's adviser when contacted said that a meeting of the adopters and the education department would be called within a week to sort out the problematic issues.

More than ten days have passed and no meeting has been convened so far. Besides at the moment the city nazim would have other matters to keep him occupied, notably the forthcoming local bodies polls. Obviously the handful of adopters will not fetch him an electoral bonus. So education can wait.

Conspicuous compassion

The thing you have to love about George W. Bush is that his deepest feelings seem evident on his face. It was, in fact, his face - joyless, lacking almost all expression - that told you precisely what he thought about the current effort by the United States to win friends in the Muslim world by raining money on tsunami-afflicted nations: not much.

As almost everyone knows, and as the Beatles once sang, money can't buy me love. In fact, given the way the United States has gone about the business of charity, it could just buy some seething anger.

From the president on down, it has become the stated purpose of the aid not only to help the victims of the tsunami but to establish our credentials as a supremely good guy. "We're showing the compassion of our nation in the swift response," Bush said at the White House the other day.

Colin Powell, dispatched to what the State Department calls "the region," made a similar point about American aid and the Muslim world: "I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action."

It's hard to quibble with any of these sentiments, or with the assertion that America is a good and charitable nation. It is also hard to quibble with the assertion that the Bush administration was trying desperately to play catch-up.

Its initial response to the tsunami had been woefully slow and low-keyed, and the president had not roused himself from brush-cutting and other vacation pursuits to represent us all and to say, merely and in awe, that something terrible had happened and we were sorry. For too long, the United States had a chief executive but hardly a head of state.

That opportune moment is gone and will not reoccur. Nor will our money - a generous $350 million in government funds - suddenly make us the darlings of the Muslim world.

As the late Susan Sontag bravely pointed out in a New Yorker essay published right after Sept. 11, 2001, those terrorist attacks were in response to American policy in the Middle East - not, as Bush has said repeatedly since, because Islamic radicals cannot abide freedom.

No amount of money is going to change the fact that Jerusalem remains in Israeli hands and the House of Saud rules Saudi Arabia - and the United States, understandably, likes it that way.

That is the truth, and we must not be disappointed when our aid, both public and individual, buys us little - as, in fact, it should. Long ago, the great Jewish sage Maimonides promulgated his Eight Degrees of Charity. "The highest degree," he wrote in the year 1180, is a gift or loan that makes the needy person self-sufficient. -Dawn/Washington Post Service

There's much in a name

Does the Arabic word "Laila" which actually means the night but is widely used as a name among Muslim women all over the world, have a religious connotation? None, that I've been able to ascertain.

Even the famous Laila of the Laila-Majnu love legend was an Arab of the pre-Islamic period. Why do Muslims of Pakistan get indignant whenever an Arabic name, or even an Arabic word, is not given the respect they think it deserves?

A recent Urdu column of well-known writer Munnoo Bhai informed the readers that a lawyer of Lahore had sought an injunction from the court of a senior civil judge that former film star and now film director Shameem Ara be restrained from naming her little dog Laila because "it implies contempt of the human race."

This set me thinking. Suppose, I said to myself, the lawyer wins the suit and the court orders Shameem Ara not to call the dog by that name, what will prevent her from continuing to do so in private? Also, would the lawyer take it upon himself to inform the dog that it was no longer Laila and if his mistress ever calls it by that name it should at once report the matter to the police?

That's the trouble with insufficient details in newspaper reports. Was the lawyer demanding that no dog should be given a human name? Was he only anxious to prevent Shameem Ara from insulting the human race? Was he so out of touch with life around him that he didn't know that every pet dog is given a name? Would it be OK with him if, instead of the Arabic Laila, the name was the Persian Shireen or the Punjabi Heer? Surely it was not only his abhorrence of a dog being called Laila that took him to court. What did he actually want the court to do in a general sense? Or is it that he just wanted his name in the papers?

Before I tell you the terribly grim purpose for which Munnoo Bhai wrote about the lawyer and Laila, let me take you back a long time ago. As a student in Aligarh I was travelling by train to Delhi.

A passenger had with him some volumes of Alf Laila, the Thousand and One Nights in the original Arabic, that vast collection of fairy and sometimes pornographic tales. Without knowing the language I began to look into one of them.

As the bulky book slipped from my knee and fell on the carriage floor, another passenger, obviously a Muslim, picked it up, saw that it was in Arabic, kissed it, touched it to his eyes, and handed it back to me. The owner and I exchanged amused glances. Such is the Muslim reverence for the language.

In his column Munnoo Bhai was indignant in his quiet and caustic way. Here was a lawyer worried about violation of respect of the human race because a film star had decided to name her dog Laila, but he hadn't read the report of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission published the same day which stated that during the past year, on an average, five women were murdered every day in Punjab and two were abducted, with the tally of rapes coming to one every two hours.

Did the lawyer think that naming a dog Laila was more insulting to the human race than these crimes against women in his homeland? Munnoo Bhai mentioned many such criminal acts that should make Muslims hang their heads with shame, but what struck me particularly was an aspect that would never have occurred to me as a writer.

He asked, "The countless robbers, drug smugglers, rapists and murderers who go about with names including the word Allah and the name of the Holy Prophet, were they not guilty of insulting the Muslim ummah, its Maker and its Prophet? And what about the self-confessed monster who killed a 100 children flaunting the name Javed Iqbal which he will carry down to his grave?"

This kind of hypocrisy and twisted thinking is not confined to rare individuals like that lawyer. It prevails all over the country, even among thoughtless intellectuals, that is if a true intellectual can be thoughtless.

Our religious leaders preach day and night about the importance of piety and the need to observe the rituals of Islam, but I have never seen any of them issuing a statement to condemn gang rape and honour killing of young brides.

In the latter case they never quote the Islamic principle which allows an adult woman to marry the man of her choice or her right to refuse to accept someone who is being thrust on her by her elders.

This reminds me of what an IG of Police of Punjab said some years ago about the increasing number of cases of rape in the province and invited wrathful statements from WAF and other women's organisations.

If the human rights people did not have so much respect for human life they would have demanded that he be strung from the nearest lamp-post upside down, and I would have agreed with them.

Instead of condemning the bestial trait in some men which makes them assault women sexually, this IGP had said, in a masterpiece of insensitivity and callousness, that most women themselves invite rape and then make a lot of noise about it, which they shouldn't if they are really self-respecting.

If this is the attitude of a supposedly enlightened member of the central superior services, and that too a custodian of law and order, what do you expect from poorly educated imam masjids to think of the matter, influenced as they are not by Islam but by the prevailing male chauvinism in Pakistan?

Lawyers in Pakistan have always been in the forefront of the struggle for human rights and civil liberties, and this is a most creditable feature of their profession.

If this lawyer, who is protecting the name Laila from being degraded by Madam Shameem Ara, were to join some human rights organisation he would have many opportunities to do good to suffering humanity and fight against acts that truly involve "contempt of the human race."

A relatively sane outlook

A familiar face - with its shock of indifferently combed white hair, outsized moustache and an expressive pair of eyes - is likely to become even more familiar as the year progresses.

Apart from scores of seminars and exhibitions, there are plans for large-scale merchandizing, with the aforementioned visage turning up on everything from T-shirts and mugs to mouse-pads and screensavers.

Why try to make an icon out of someone who could already be considered one and someone whose name is a byword for genius and whose popular image is an epitome of the absent-minded professor?

Well, there is certainly a good excuse: a centenary. In 1905, a seemingly unexceptional 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern published three papers in Annalen der Physik, a German physics journal.

Those three papers - on the photoelectric effect, which refuted the theory that light travels in waves; on Brownian motion, which proved that atoms exist; and on special relativity, which proved wrong Newton's and Galileo's theories about the way the universe works by unravelling some of the mysteries of time and space - changed the way scientists look at the world.

Small wonder, then, that in the annals of physics, 1905 is looked upon as a particularly hallowed year - or that, in commemoration, 2005 has been designated as the Year of Physics. As well as Einstein Year.

Soon after Albert Einstein published his groundbreaking papers, he progressed to academic posts that had earlier been denied to him. Within a couple of decades, he had expounded his general theory of relativity and been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. He, thereafter, became the best-known scientist on the planet.

His fame has, by and large, endured - even though people familiar with the equation most closely associated with Einstein are unlikely, unless they are scientists, to be aware of its implications.

The equally iconic Charlie Chaplin wasn't being facetious when he remarked to Einstein: "The people applaud me because everyone understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you."

However, although his scientific achievements were the dominant aspect of Einstein's personality, they were by no means the only one. He was also a committed humanist who devoted considerable time and energy to the pursuit of peace and social justice.

It would be most unfortunate if his hopes and fears for humankind were to be overlooked this year. Einstein understood the danger posed by militarism back in 1914, when he was a signatory, alongside other German intellectuals, to the Manifesto for Europeans.

During the First World War, he joined an organization that not only sought peace in the short term but also called for the formation of a supranational organization that would preserve it in the future.

This became an enduring theme in Einstein's political interventions. He recognized the risks involved in establishing a world government, but felt that without it competing nation-states would inevitably seek to settle disputes militarily. "Do I fear the tyranny of a world government?" he asked in a 1945 article. "Of course I do. But I fear still more the coming of another war."

Until the early 1930s, Einstein advocated the "violent" path of conscientious objection as a means of depleting military machines. Later in the decade, with the Nazis clearly preparing for war, he changed his mind about the efficacy of this approach, realizing that conscientious objectors in Germany would be shot, whereas elsewhere in Europe they would only weaken the forces that could be expected to resist the Nazi onslaught.

In 1939, he wrote to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out that experiments being conducted by E. Fermi and L. Szilard suggested "the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future" and that this could lead to the possible construction of "extremely powerful bombs of a new type".

"A single bomb of this type," he added, "carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove too heavy for transportation by air."

He was wrong about that. But those who imply his letter led directly to the Manhattan Project are also wrong. And he wasn't allowed anywhere near the project because the American government did not trust him.

Einstein was justifiably concerned at the time that the Germans would unlock the atomic key before anyone else. Six years later, he was as appalled as anyone else about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1946, he noted in a telegram to prominent Americans: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."

He knew the genie could not be returned to the bottle. "The secret of the bomb should be committed to a world government," he proposed, "and the United States should immediately announce its readiness" to do so. He did not believe any good would come from sharing it with other powerful nations, such as the Soviet Union.

Suspicious as he had become of Anglo-American intentions, Einstein couldn't possibly have known the leadership's mindset. According to Winston Churchill's personal physician, Baron Charles McMoran Wilson, the former (and future) British prime minister confided to him that very year: "We should not wait until Russia is ready ... America knows that 52 per cent of Russia's machine-building is located in Moscow and can be destroyed with one bomb. It would probably cost three million human lives, but they couldn't care less, those Americans."

Among the matters on which Einstein remained resolute throughout his life was what he described in 1931 as "the worst outcrop of herd life, the military system". Anyone who revels in soldiering, he said, "has only been given his big brain by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed".

"This plague-spot of civilization," he went on, "ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business."

Later in his life he described nationalism as "an infantile disease ... the measles of mankind", and the armaments industry as "the hidden evil power behind the nationalism which is rampant everywhere".

Had Einstein lived longer, one of the things that would arguably have hurt him most was Israel's evolution into a militarist state. Like many other socialists and idealists in the aftermath of the Holocaust, he supported the emigration of European Jews to Palestine, envisaging a single state in which they would live side by side with Palestinians.

In 1952, he turned down an offer to become president of Israel - but even at that juncture he would have been horrified to learn that Israelis would make it a national duty to replicate so much of the oppression so many of them had suffered in the 1930s and 1940s.

He would also have been disappointed by the UN's failure to heed the advice he had directed towards the General Assembly in 1947, asking it to strengthen its authority relative to a Security Council "paralysed by the shortcomings of the veto provisions" and recommending that national representatives should be democratically elected rather than picked by governments. Nearly 60 years on, many of the same debates continue to rage.

Earlier in his life, in order to escape conscription, Einstein had renounced his German citizenship and taken up that of Switzerland. After Adolf Hitler came to power, he settled in the United States, got a job at Princeton and became an American citizen.

Einstein's initially favourable disposition towards the US changed, however, in the face of reality - he abhorred the racism, the anticommunist witch-hunts, the militarism.

The authorities, particularly Edgar J. Hoover's FBI, viewed him as a potential subversive; they spied on him, kept voluminous files on his political activities and sought to link him to Soviet espionage; only his renown as a scientist kept him out of their clutches.

Undeterred by all intimidation, Einstein joined Paul Robeson in co-chairing a crusade against lynching, sought clemency for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and waged a vigorous battle against McCarthyism. Not bad for someone who, dividing his "time between politics and equations", found that "our equations are much more important to me".

One doesn't have to be an Einstein to grasp the significance of peace and understand that the scourge of war can be banished only through international agreement and enforceable guarantees of security; or to appreciate that the progress of humankind will necessarily be piecemeal and uneven under a system that concentrates wealth and disperses poverty.

It is nonetheless reassuring to know that one of the finest minds of the past 100 years devoted his intellect not just to understanding the world but also to changing it for the better.

And, 50 years after his death, it is encouraging to remember that the 20th century's foremost genius was also, in the best sense of the word, an incorrigible troublemaker.

Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.