Towards a wider horizon

KNOWN mainly for its self-centred approach Saudi Arabia now seems to be developing a broader vision. The task is challenging, for it has to break loose from a foreign policy anchored safely in a western orientation since the end of World War I. Ever since its creation, Saudi Arabia has never had a problem with the West. Roosevelt and Churchill had warm feelings for Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia — Churchill gave the king a Rolls Royce fitted with accessories for performing wuzu and prayer. The discovery of oil brought the Anglo-Saxons and the desert kingdom even closer. As the Cold War intensified and the wave of Arab nationalism threatened to engulf one Arab state after another, Riyadh found in Washington a reliable ally. This alliance was mutually beneficial. While the US acquired bases on Saudi soil and American oil giants pumped black gold out of the desert, the Saudis got petro-dollars and security against leftist and Arab nationalist threats. The end of the Cold War and 9/11 shook the very basis of this policy.

Even though Saudi Arabia is America’s partner in the war on terror, their relationship has developed fissures. We now know that America withheld certain portions of the report about 9/11 from being released. Those portions concerned Saudi Arabia, and all Saudi attempts to access those pages failed. The Saudis seem to be acutely conscious of being dependent on a power whose policies are guided by unilateralism and a contempt for allies. More important, no American administration has been more pro-Israel than the present Republican administration. This in addition to well-orchestrated attacks on Saudi Arabia by Zionist elements in the American media. No wonder, the new monarch, King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, should think in terms of a new policy that would be less dependent on one power. His current four-nation visit has taken him to China, where a Saudi monarch has gone for the first time since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1990. The two countries have signed four agreements, including one on cooperation in the energy sector. His next stop will be New Delhi, marking the first visit by a Saudi king to India in half a century.

Saudi Arabia may lack military power, but it commands immense influence in the Arab-Islamic world, because the two important Muslim holy places are in Hejaz, and the Saudi monarch is called the Guardian of the Two Holy Precincts. For that reason, a greater role in world affairs by Riyadh will be watched with interest. As a country which has enjoyed a traditionally warm relationship with it, Pakistan should welcome Saudi initiatives to develop closer ties with China. He will be in India for four days and will be a guest at its republic day parade. Given Saudi Arabia’s fraternal relations with Pakistan, and India’s keenness to befriend Riyadh, one expects King Abdullah to play a pro-active role in Indo-Pakistan relations. The normalization process between the two is proceeding well, but there is no indication from India that it is prepared to adopt a realistic policy on Kashmir and seek a peaceful solution. Before he leaves New Delhi, the Saudi king could do a service to the cause of peace in South Asia if he makes the Indian leadership realize the need for giving up rigidity and showing flexibility to respond to the many bold initiatives Pakistan has taken to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

Not the right approach

THE way America is fighting its war on terrorism in the tribal areas of Pakistan is stupefying. Its methods are alienating far too many people in this country and thus creating problems for President Pervez Musharraf. The government finds itself trapped between the devil and the deep sea. The missile strike on Bajaur 10 days ago which killed 18 people is a case in point. The US, which launched the attack, has made it clear that it will pursue its campaign against Al Qaeda relentlessly. In other words, notwithstanding Pakistan’s concerns, American troops are to continue with their operations. This has understandably provoked the people of Pakistan who resent the military operations in Waziristan, more so when American forces are involved. In view of these public sentiments, it was not unexpected that the opposition parties, who are fighting a battle against the government on many fronts, decided to proceed to the scene of the attack in Bajaur to express their sympathies with the local population. What better strategy could they have found than to adopt this mode of protest to embarrass the government?

Being on the defensive, the government decided to bar the group from entering Mohmand Agency. It feared that the opposition parties would exploit a volatile situation and exacerbate the unrest in Bajaur. But will this approach help the government’s case? It has emerged as an oppressive force siding with the Americans against its own people. Had it allowed a delegation of a few of the opposition leaders to proceed to Damadola, where the attack took place, it would have meant a peaceful end to the protest. As it is, not all Pakistanis support Al Qaeda and most of them would want it to leave Pakistan’s soil. But they do not like their territory being used by US forces to attack the terrorists either. Some civilians were killed in the attack and it is still not known whether there were any Al Qaeda casualties. The secrecy which surrounds the happenings in Waziristan and the government’s propensity to hush up every incident has not only added to the public confusion about what is going on but has also deepened it to an extent that resolving it could prove to be quite a challenge.

Negligence at hospitals

NEWS of negligence on the part of staff at public hospitals may be nothing new but a report about a pregnant woman giving birth in a toilet at Lahore General Hospital during the Eidul Azha holidays because she was denied admission for shortage of beds is disturbing. The only positive aspect is that the medical superintendent initiated an inquiry into the incident and suspended three staff members and issued strict warnings to two other officials regarding the incident. It proves that medical superintendents have paid heed to the chief minister’s orders last year to ensure smooth running of hospitals. Mercifully the woman and her newborn child are well and have returned to their village in Kasur. That the woman had travelled so far to give birth in a better hospital like LGH but was unable to do so only points to the state of the country’s public health-care system. The apathetic attitude, which remains extremely patchy and ignores the mofussil areas, only makes the situation worse, particularly for the poor.

Time and again, it has been pointed out how the government must fulfil its responsibility of providing basic health-care facilities to patients who cannot afford private treatment. Many directives have been issued and a host of strategies worked out to deal with problems found at hospitals but they have met with mixed results. Meanwhile incidents of gross negligence at the hands of incompetent doctors or on account of shortage of medication continue to occur. These problems cannot be neglected any longer as they play havoc with peoples’ health and lives.

Poetic justice in Santiago

FOR some Chileans the Pinochet era finally came to an end not when the wily old general left the presidency in 1990, after losing a referendum that had been designed to lend legitimacy to his dastardly regime as well as to extend its tenure, but when he was placed under house arrest in Britain eight years later, on the basis of an extradition warrant from Spain. That signalled the end of Augusto Pinochet’s impunity.

For others, the ultimate conclusion of that nasty phase was marked by an even more remarkable development: the decision by president Ricardo Lagos in 2002 to elevate his health minister, Michelle Bachelet, to the post of defence minister. This qualified as a historical landmark not only because she became the first woman to hold this post anywhere in Latin America, but also because it brought under Bachelet’s jurisdiction those who had tortured her and her mother 27 years earlier.

That wasn’t all. The army was also responsible for torturing to death her father and her boyfriend. Alberto Bachelet was a popular air force general, perceived to be close to the democratic government of Salvador Allende. That perception sealed his fate: he was taken into custody on the day of Pinochet’s September 11, 1973 coup and subjected every day to the sadistic indignities that made the junta a byword for the worst kind of state repression. After six months of such treatment, he succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 50.

Less than a year later, hooded agents of Pinochet’s secret police, DINA, burst into the Bachelet homestead, blindfolded Michelle — then a 23-year-old medical student — and her mother, Angela Jeria, and transported them to Villa Grimaldi, an infamous torture centre. Suspected of being a courier for the anti-Pinochet resistance, Michelle was beaten and tortured for weeks.

Possibly on account of being an ex-general’s daughter, she appears to have been a witness to, rather than a victim of, the more extreme practices common at Villa Grimaldi: rape and electric shocks. Her mother spent five days in a dungeon without food or water. But both of them survived, and the authorities eventually let them go, on the condition that they left Chile immediately. The two women flew to Australia and thence to East Germany, where Bachelet completed her studies, becoming a paediatrician.

Upon returning to Chile in 1979, she worked in a clinic, focusing on children traumatized by the junta’s terror. As a student, she had been a member of the Socialist Youth, and had remained involved with the Socialist Party during her years in exile. Back home, she gradually rose through the party’s ranks, but was virtually unknown to the public when Lagos, upon becoming Chiles first Socialist president since Allende, named her as health minister.

Two years later she got the defence portfolio, which gave her a higher profile and piqued the curiosity of ordinary Chileans. She began drawing crowds wherever she went: It was like travelling with a rock star, says her mother. The combination of Bachelet’s past and her post, not to mention her gender, seemed intriguing to many Chileans.

And for the most part they liked what they saw: a woman with a warm and gregarious personality, bent upon reconciliation rather than retribution. I noticed, she once said, that one of the barriers to full democracy was the fault of understanding between the military world and the civilian world. They spoke different languages. I wanted to help with that. I could be a bridge between those two worlds.

Impressed by her popularity, the grandees of the Socialist Party sounded her out as a potential presidential candidate for Concertacion, the centre-left alliance that has governed Chile since the revival of democracy. Despite all the evidence that Bachelet was widely liked and well respected, her candidacy represented a certain risk. Chile has a reputation for being among the most socially conservative and profoundly Catholic countries in South America. It legalized divorce a little more than a year ago, and abortion is a taboo subject. A twice-divorced and now single mother of three may have seemed like a somewhat audacious choice, not least because she is given to proudly proclaiming her agnosticism.

But it turned out to have been an inspired decision. Although Bachelet wasn’t able to clinch the presidency in last month’s first-round election, she was a clear 20 per cent ahead of her nearest rival, the super-rich businessman Sebastian Pinera. Commenting on that interim result in The New York Times, Chilean journalist Rafael Gumcio wrote of his compatriots: Just as in 1970, when they went to the polls and elected a Socialist president, and again in 1988, when they rejected their dictator, Chileans have proved themselves to be far more daring with their vote than their lifestyles.

“Perhaps this is because when they vote — in secret, where nobody can judge or criticize them — they reveal their truest colours, their passion for change, for improvisation and for leadership in a world that seems hell-bent on moving in the opposite direction.”

He also noted that, in March 2005, the populace that benefits from free-market economics also turned out in droves to pay tribute to Gladys Marin, the president of the Communist party, when her coffin was carried through the streets of Santiago.

That’s a valid point, although it’s worth remembering that in nations where the market has primacy, it is invariably only a section of the population that reaps the benefits. In the Pinochet years, Chile became something of a laboratory for Chicago School neo-liberals. And the tide has never really been turned back, which is why both Bachelet and her conservative rival, Pinera, went into their run-off 10 days ago promising to reduce disparities in wealth.

Bachelet is likely to have come across as more believable on that score, given that Pinera is a billionaire. More remarkably, she may also have benefited from the fact that her opponent more or less shared her outlook towards Pinochet, albeit quite possibly for rather different reasons. Asked to pick the worst president in Chile’s history, Pinera, to his credit, did not hesitate to name the former tyrant a stance that is bound to have cost him a substantial proportion of the Pinochetista vote.

He is, however, by no means the only conservative to be so inclined. Until a couple of years ago, it was said that about a third of Chileans identified themselves as pro-Pinochet. That support has dramatically ebbed away over the past year, amid revelations of the General’s personal corruption he is accused of having surreptitiously stashed away up to $27 million in foreign bank accounts. Pinochet was under house arrest when he turned 90 late last year, facing criminal charges on account of financial improprieties as well as the disappearance of dissidents.

It is unlikely that Pinochet will ever face trial, or even acknowledge the litany of egregious wrongs perpetrated during his rule, but there is a fair chance that he might die during Bachelet’s tenure. And therein lies a dilemma, because protocol would entitle him to a state funeral. I would, says Bachelet, respect all the laws and decrees, but frankly I would say it would be very violent for the Chilean conscience to give a state funeral to someone who has been involved not only in human rights violations, but also (financial scandals).

That comes across as a fairly mild statement, but let’s not forget it comes from someone who has consistently refused to attack her political opponents. There will be no sweeping changes in Chile under Bachelet: the country has reached a stage in its political development where the mainstream Left and Right generally agree on basics and restrict their differences to tinkering on the margins of economics. But Bachelet’s tenure could have long-lasting social consequences. She is the first woman in Latin America to have risen to such a high position exclusively on account of her talents (apart from her professional qualifications, she is fluent in several languages) and endeavours, rather than family connections.

Furthermore, she has announced that at least half her cabinet will consist of women (who, Bachelet says, are used to working twice as hard). That will be a significant world-first, setting a salutary example, particularly for all those countries where legal parity between women and men does not translate into equal representation or power.

Although Chile is broadly construed as being a part of the recent leftward trend in Latin America, it will not go down the revolutionary path taken by Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, nor does Bachelet’s elevation to the presidency represent the sort of sea- change likely to result from the election of Evo Morales, who was inaugurated as the president of Bolivia this week.

However, Chile could hardly have hoped for a brighter symbol of poetic justice. And there have been hints that Michelle Bachelet might prove to be more adventurous and less predictable than Ricardo Lagos. One of these hints — a possible indication of greater continuity with the experiment so rudely interrupted in 1973 — came as she addressed crowds in Santiago on the day of her victory last week. In his famous final address to the people of Chile, hours before he died in the coup, Allende had said: May you go forward in the knowledge that, sooner rather than later, the grand avenues will open up once again. In her speech, Bachelet alluded to the people of Chile once again occupying the grand avenues of Santiago.

Notwithstanding its subtlety, chances are that those old enough to remember the catastrophe of 1973 must have got the message.

E-mail: mahirali1@gmail.com