VISITORS’ LOG: War on terror is jihad: Dr Spencer
Dr Meredith, who was in Karachi recently to deliver lectures on “Religion and the promotion of democratic ideals in US foreign policy”, says that at least two of the greatest democracies in the world achieved their current exalted status after undergoing a tumultuous process marked by the use of force and violence.
“If you look at two long-standing democracies -– the United States and France -– military action was very much involved, specifically the United States because it grew out of the American Revolution. So, I don’t think it is legitimate to say military means have no place in the process of becoming a democracy simply because dictatorial regimes don’t want to let go of power. It is very important to remember the Declaration of Independence. In the first section, they state very clearly that they have used force as a last resort. In that sense, if the use of military force today follows the same guidelines, it would be consistent with the best traditions of democracy,” he argues.
Although Dr Meredith asserts that he is an independent academic and could be critical of the policies of the US government, his espousal of the Republican line of argument with respect to the Middle East becomes obvious when he describes the current Iraq war “as the fulfilment of what should have taken place in 1992-93”.
“Right after the First Gulf War, Bush Senior gave tremendous amounts of aid to the Kurds in the north and the Shias in the south to build a grass-root movement to overthrow the dictator and support democracy. But then a policy shift took place when Bill Clinton came into office. He said: ‘Wait a second. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.’ He started to worry that if there was a revolution in Iraq, the whole thing could fall apart. He pulled the plug on all the money in the south and the north and, as a result, Saddam wiped them [the pro-democracy dissidents] out. I think that if that policy shift had not happened, we would not have been in this position. And this president is trying to get back to that original place. The problem is that he can’t erase the memory of 10 years ago of being left hung out to dry.”
Dr Meredith argues that religion has always played an important role in American politics, adding that there is nothing extraordinary about President Bush’s emphasis on religion and morality in foreign policy. “And this is clearly not a war of religion. I know it looks like one, but it is not. And I don’t think that US foreign policy is governed by religion any more than you’re governed by your glasses. But you see through your glasses. Yes, George Bush is a devoutly religious person. And that informs what he does.
“Now, that could be a scary thing and that could be a good thing. The good thing is that people in a religious society, say in the Middle East, have a greater potential to understand the true intentions of George Bush than those in secular Europe. Apart from protecting the United States, he is trying to do something good [in Iraq], which is not going well, but he’s trying. Actually the war on terror should be described as a ‘jihad’ in the true sense of the word,” he says in defence of the US president.
— Bahzad Alam Khan
A book lover’s paradise?
But if past experience is any guide, there would be no long queues of bibliophiles in front of the NBF office in Karachi wanting to become members — certainly not the kind that would be in evidence if a club in Defence threw upon its doors to aspiring members on payment of a nominal sum.
The NBF must realize that in this age of fast-paced marketing, it cannot remain competitive by keeping a low profile or placing a few newspaper advertisements.
The stated objective of the NBF, which came into being through an act of parliament in 1972, is to make “books available to the public in general and students in particular at moderate prices”. But few among the reading public of the city know exactly where NBF titles are sold and what kind of publications it has brought out over the years. It is not well known that the NBF has to its credit at least 15 titles on Amir Khusrau and over 75 titles of “Darul Musanifeen”, including articles and letters written by luminaries like Allama Shibli Nomani and his equally talented student Syed Sulaiman Nadwi.
It is a pity that most of the general interest titles of the National Book Foundation have been out of print for long. Ask an official of the organization why such interesting and potentially sellable titles are not reprinted, and you are told that only books – mostly textbooks – which are sold early are reprinted. And the argument for this course of action is that the National Book Foundation does not want to end up with tons of shop-soiled books gathering dust in warehouses.
At a time when other publishing houses, notably those located in Lahore, have made an industry out of republishing books on which copyright has expired, one wonders how the National Book Foundation loses its competitive edge by bringing out its own long-forgotten titles. Just one example: leading broadcaster Zulfiqar Ali Bohkahri’s memoirs found a ready publisher in a small-time printer at Urdu Lahore when the title, originally published by the National Book Foundation, remained out of print for a long time.
Now that poet and man of letters Iftikhar Arif is at the helm of affairs at the National Book Foundation, one hopes that out-of-print titles would be dusted, re-proofed and reprinted.
The city government elections in the city have again boiled down to the number game amid hints of federal pressure to have its own nominee for the city nazim slot.
The bench mark set up by the Niamatullah Khan team for the city has also put the stakeholders in a tight corner, because they will be expected to do more — even better.
But claims made by various group have also confused the political analysts, because the total number of councillors claim to have been won by them exceeds the strength of the electoral college of 2,314.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement leaders claimed their Haq Parast group had won over 1,400 seats while the PPP-backed Awam Dost panel claimed over 400. The Jamaat-i-Islami-backed Al-Khidmat says it has over 500 councillors while the ANP claims to have pocketed about 100. The JUP is also claiming 80 while Sunni Tehrik could muster 25. The PML (N) claims it won over 80, though this claim appears to be highly exaggerated. The JUI claimed winning over 100. About 100 independents have also emerged victorious.
While these claims are being made, the MQM’s statement that it will not accept any federal nominee for the top slot in the metropolis has raised many questions. If the MQM does have the required number, how could anyone pressure it, especially when it is an integral part of the ruling coalition?
Names of Safwanullah, Babar Ghori, Wasay Jaleel, Tariq Javed, Moinuddin Haider, M. Usmani, Arif Abbasi and Ahmad Maqsood Hameedi have been in circulation, but some of them have expressed their inability to hold the office.
But why does the federal government want its nominee? A senior official on condition of anonymity said that the federal government wanted its nominee because Karachi is the hub of business and industrial activity and it has the potential of becoming an international city. Any breakdown of law and order and setback to infrastructural development due to political acrimony would negatively reflect on the country. It was therefore felt imperative to have this arrangement. The MQM is reluctant to accept this but it is expected to find a way out, despite its stated position on federal intervention.
There is a feeling that at the end of the day the MQM will spring another surprise and throw up a person who is identified with the party but at the same time enjoys good connections within the Establishment. After all no one had expected that Dr Ishratul Ibad would become governor of Sindh.
Corruption comes in all shapes and sizes. Those who thought that it occurs usually in large-scale government projects or in defence procurement deals had better think again. A colleague’s child was born at Lady Dufferin Hospital at the end of May. After a couple of weeks, he thought of getting his son’s birth certificate. For that, he was told, he would have to go to the union council registrar’s sub-office situated on the premises of the hospital, but manned by a city government clerk.
Since local elections were to happen in a few weeks’ time, the colleague was given four weeks’ time to come and pick up his child’s birth certificate. The fee, he was told by the clerk, was Rs 50 and in case he wanted the information typed out (for easy reading), he would have to pay another Rs 50, which he did. When the deadline passed, he decided to pick up the document, an ordeal in itself given Lady Dufferin’s location near the old city.
On the first visit, he noted that his wife’s NIC number had an error. He was asked to come again by the clerk, who was not in the least apologetic about the mistake, which meant that the colleague would have to make another trip. A few days later he went again and the birth certificate was ready.
Later that evening, the colleague was going through the small print and also went through what was written at the back. The fee, according to the document, was Rs25 and not Rs50 as stated by the clerk. The colleague had assumed that it was Rs50 because that is what he was told.
Perhaps, to avoid this from happening the charge for obtaining birth certificates should be clearly posted at all such offices.
The colleague and his wife are quite miffed that even in the procurement of their son’s birth certificate, even if unknowingly, paying a bribe.
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com
Of history and hysteria
THERE are three loaded footnotes in Gunnar Myrdal’s Asian Drama, a thorough work of social inquiry into our region’s many and deep problems, that has influenced our thinking since the 1960s. All his observations came into focus last week as the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel shook hands in Turkey and a predictably glum reaction came from India to the landmark moment.
Myrdal’s first point pertains to Jawaharlal Nehru’s comment to an American journalist in 1963, a few months before he died, that a loose confederation with Pakistan was India’s quest with its neighbour but he feared that whenever New Delhi mentioned it, Pakistanis took it amiss.
The second footnote speaks of how Pakistani diplomats were perceived (at least till the time the book was written in the 1960s!) to possess social graces and spirit of conviviality, nothing less, that seemed to elude their Indian counterparts. A third footnote put forth a radical view about the political genesis of Pakistan. It spoke of how several European analysts rightly or wrongly saw the Pakistan Movement as a kind of “Muslim Zionist” movement, in other words the nub of a pan-Islamic idea to bring together the world’s Muslims under one political canopy, without necessarily dissolving their national sovereignty. This claim must look truly ironical after the events in Turkey last week.
The point about a confederation too may look remote today for a variety of reasons, not the least because Nehru was talking of a loose union with a united East and West Pakistan. Today there is the fact of a Bangladesh replete with its own problems to tackle before such a vision becomes a reality. Yet, the words of Pakistan’s Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah in New Delhi last week were not too different from what Nehru as well as the Quaid-i-Azam had hinted at. A secure and stable Pakistan is in India’s interest and a peaceful India is vital for Pakistan. This old mantra is being energized today for a good reason which may not be too far removed from the photo frame of Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom shaking hands last week.
For vicarious reasons too the handshake was important. For one it took the breath out of the so-called Brajesh Mishra thesis, whereby the former Indian national security adviser had promoted an axis between India, Israel and the United States to manage the war on terrorism in South Asia and West Asia. Of course we didn’t have to wait for the Kasuri-Shalom handshake for the Indian thesis to be rendered null and void. There were at least two occasions before last week when Israel similarly “let down” India’s anti-Pakistan hawks. For example, the 2003 visit to Delhi by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was an opportunity for the Indian hawks to go for the kill. They tried everything to align Israel against Pakistan and they failed miserably.
At a news conference in Delhi during the Sharon visit Israel’s deputy prime minister Joseph Lapid, who any knowledgeable Israel watcher would identify as a right-winger from the far right of even Sharon, was goaded by the predictable Indian media to speak his mind on Pakistan and its alleged help to terrorists in Kashmir.
What they got in return was fulsome praise from Lapid for Pakistan’s all out efforts against global terrorism. Worse for Indian diplomacy, the Israelis laid into Iran, a Delhi ally, throughout their discourse in India even as they scrupulously avoided saying a word out of line against Pakistan.
The visit was as much a defeat for Indian lobbyists as it was a reaffirmation of the conversation that took place in Washington on May 28, 1998, between Riaz Khokhar, then Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and Israeli Ambassador in Washington Eliahu Ben-Elissar. The telephone call by Ben-Elissar was prompted by a palpable fear in Islamabad that day that Israel and India were planning to attack Pakistan’s nuclear facilities on the eve of the Chaghai tests.
Not only did the Israeli ambassador flatly deny any move to attack nuclear targets, he went on to assure Khokhar, way out of protocol, that his country was not involved in the Indian-Pakistani conflict and that it had no intention of being dragged into it. All this was water off duck’s back as far as Indian hawks were concerned. The alarm with which a senior columnist of the Brajesh Mishra school reacted to the Turkey handshake reflects a typical unease with which the rightwing hawks in India see the road ahead.
In their view the apparent rapprochement between Islamabad and Tel Aviv will not only have a huge symbolic value in the Middle East, the Indian establishment too will wonder whether its special relationship with Israel will now come under stress. “Pakistan, which has been chaffing at Israel’s advanced military and high technology transfers to India, has been looking at an appropriate moment to unveil a new relationship with Israel,” observed the columnist in the Indian Express. “The televised withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip last month provided a political opportunity for (President Pervez) Musharraf to limit the inevitable backlash from the Islamic parties in Pakistan.”
Finally, the columnist urged the Indian leadership to physically rush to Israel before Pakistan gets there! “If the Indian PM and President do not find time to visit Israel, Musharraf could become the first head of government or state from the Subcontinent to be serenaded in Israel.” That’s hysteria in its un-distilled form, bereft of any roots in history. All that any good Indian needs to do is to look at the compulsions that prompted us to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. You don’t have to be a brilliant historian to divine that if you take two right turns, it is equal to taking an about turn. The first rightward turn for India and indeed for the rest of the world came in 1990, the second came right turn came in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. On both those occasions Pakistan’s diplomats seemed better equipped to negotiate the turns than their Indian counterparts. Wonder what Myrdal would have to say.
According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, India ranks 134th among 183 countries in terms of the percentage of the women legislators (8.3 per cent) in the national parliament (Lok Sabha). Further it says in comparison, the Parliament in Pakistan comprises 21.3 per cent women, placing it at a highly respectable rank of 40, higher than many Western countries. While no country has more women than men in its national parliament, Rwanda, which saw an ethnic holocaust barely a decade ago, heads the list with an impressive 48.8 per cent of its parliamentarians being women.