Foreign policy consensus

Z.A. BHUTTO once said that foreign policy could not be subjected to mobocracy. The observation is of special relevance to Pakistan where of late some powerful sections of politicians are inclined to view foreign policy through the prism of religious sentiments. It goes without saying that no country pursues foreign policy based purely on religious considerations. While religion may play a part in shaping one’s view of the world and giving it some, though not all, fundamentals of foreign policy orientation, the choice of friends and foes is determined by such factors as history, geography and vital national interests. The relationship with India stems from history and geography, while the close and ‘all-weather’ relationship with China owes itself to India’s hegemonic ambitions in the region and India’s war with China in the winter of 1962. The web of relations with the US has been complicated and the level of understanding often uneven. Nevertheless, the 9/11 trauma has once again brought them together in what Mr Khursheed Mehmud Kasuri called on Friday a beneficial strategic alliance. In a wide-ranging speech following two days of debate in the Senate on foreign policy, the foreign minister dwelt on Pakistan’s relationship with other powers and groups and asserted that, while pursuing a policy of close alliance with Washington, Islamabad had not compromised on its vital national interests. He specifically cited three cases — sending troops to Iraq, Iran’s nuclear question and the Dr A.Q. Khan episode — where he said Pakistan had not given in to American pressure.

Pakistan’s relationship with the US, especially the military part of it, does not fall in the same category as Islamabad’s ties with Beijing. The ties with the latter had enjoyed a national consensus in Pakistan, and even at the height of the Cold War our China policy received the wholehearted support of those religious elements which were then America’s zealous supporters in the latter’s crusade against communism and which today believe in America-baiting. The military government’s decision to throw in its lot with the US in the wake of 9/11 has been the subject of much criticism not only from the religious parties but also from some liberal sections of public opinion. But in a unipolar world, where continental America had been targeted for the first time in its history, Pakistan had no option but to be pragmatic. As subsequent events have shown, a country like India, which throughout the Cold War had sided with Moscow, now finds itself firmly ensconced in the American camp.

To be of long-term interest to Pakistan, the ties with the US must be based on a national consensus. That does not appear to be the case at present. Statements from the highest in Washington, no doubt, speak warmly of Pakistan’s role in the war on terror, but it is also in Washington that fears are expressed about Pakistan’s nukes falling into the wrong hands or the kind of situation that may develop if there is a change of leadership in Islamabad by extra-constitutional means. Foreign policy like state policies in all matters ultimately must be determined by the people’s representatives. There may be differences among the people’s representatives and parties, but ultimately it is through a free interplay of democratic forces that a national consensus emerges. The military-led government’s foreign policy might have given dividends to Pakistan, but stability in relations with the US and all other powers can be achieved only through a national consensus which only governments elected through fair and free elections can develop.

Trouble in Turkey

THE murder of a secularist judge, a member of the top administrative court, by a religious fanatic calling himself the ‘soldier of Allah’ has triggered a wave of protest in Turkey. On Thursday the country saw massive demonstrations that have put the Justice and Development Party (AKP), an Islamist one, under considerable pressure. The protests clearly indicate the presence of a strong secularist opinion in Turkey. This is not surprising because ever since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk laid the foundations of modern Turkey on secularist principles, the country has had a long tradition of a system of government that does not derive its legitimacy from religion. The army which has been strongly entrenched in Turkish politics since the days of Ataturk has sought to preserve this principle in Turkey’s governance, its legal system and the socio-cultural traditions of the country. The Islamist parties began to gain strength in the late nineties mainly because of the factionalism of the secularist parties. In 2002, the AKP won a landslide victory by capturing a massive majority of seats in the parliament.

Today Turkey is polarised between the Islamists and the secularists. Since the country’s laws and governance are not Islamic, one can see the element of frustration in the religious parties’ approach to public affairs. The court whose judge was killed was strongly criticised by the government for his headscarf ruling. But the AKP has not been able to change the rules. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s reaction to the killing of the judge was intriguing. He described it as a conspiracy in which the opposition leader was allegedly involved. This is indicative of the growing confrontation between the two sides. On previous occasions too the secularists have demonstrated their strength when their creed came under attack as in 1993 when a journalist working for a newspaper championing the secularist cause was killed by a car bomb. Given the considerable popular support secularism enjoys in Turkey, where the army perceives itself as the guardian of secular principles, the Islamist parties have not been able to change the system. But their propensity to resort to violence could spell trouble for the country.

Contaminated water casualties

THE outbreak of gastroenteritis in a Faisalabad neighbourhood has resulted in the death of at least three children and an adult since Friday. Hundreds of others from the same locality have sought medical help, suffering from symptoms of the water-borne disease. The civic administration, however, has shown little inclination to deal with the situation on an emergency footing, while there continues to be a rush of patients to the city’s hospitals and clinics. For its part, the inept Water and Sanitation Agency has precluded in its initial findings that the outbreak has been caused by the consumption of tap water supplied by the utility. According to Wasa, those affected rely on underground pumped water. Area residents, however, complain of being supplied tap water that looks brackish and smells foul. Whatever the case, the outbreak on such a scale needs to be taken more seriously by the civic authorities than is being done. The people should be advised to take necessary precautions and ways found to stop the disease from spreading to avoid further casualties.

This is not the first time tap water supply is being blamed for the deadly outbreak. Last year, scores had succumbed to gastroenteritis in a Lahore neighbourhood in a similar manner before the authorities concerned took remedial measures. Earlier on, deaths were also caused by contaminated water supplied to residents in a number of Hyderabad neighbourhoods. The disease now affecting parts of Faisalabad is more likely to be traced back to a similar source. Meanwhile, residents must be warned against the use of brackish tap water by the authorities concerned, instead of Wasa evading responsibility by fudging the issue. The agency must be directed immediately to make alternative arrangements to supply drinking water to the affected area. This is the least the city-district and the Punjab governments can do to ease the situation.

Man who rescued dogma from dogmatism

BUDDHADEB Bhattacharjee has buried the ghost that hovered over Jyoti Basu’s table for two decades — that his remarkable run of victories was tainted by rigging. It was an easy accusation to make, and an easier one to believe outside Bengal, precisely because India had never witnessed anything like the democratic miracle engineered by Basu and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The facts of course did not quite justify the accusation. Marxist support was anchored in solid economic benefits for the underprivileged, and lifted by the unique charisma of Jyoti Basu, a charisma that magnetised the Bengali voter. But it was the only accusation that a hapless, and then a hopeless, opposition could make.

This charge was essential to the self-esteem, and therefore survival, of the Congress and its truculent child, the Trinamul. Without self-esteem you cannot offer hope; without hope, you cannot have a cadre. Mamata Banerjee can sustain her individual self on a diet of negative and near-hysterical cacophony. But why should the young, or even the old, person in search of a political career invest in her if all she can offer is 40 years in the wilderness?

It is a fair bet that, after Moses, the Congress family in Bengal is the only leadership that offers 40 years in the wilderness and hopes to survive. The journey to nowhere began in 1977. For 29 years the Congress family has been staring at a lost horizon. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has now set course for at least another 11 years. We shall check horizons again after the elections of 2016.

And Buddhadeb Babu has done it in style. The election commission pulled out all the stops in its determination to prevent any rigging. This election was as clean as it gets. The results were as overwhelmingly one-sided as possible. The difference was so huge that even the opinion polls could not get it wrong. Every government tries to use state machinery to its advantage, but no government has been able to change the course of a tide.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s great achievement is that he corrected the course of the tide when he found that it just might go the other way, and set about this task almost from the moment he inherited Basu’s extraordinary legacy. He introduced the dialectic of change into Marxist terminology. Like any Marxist, he is a child of ideology, but he rescued dogma from dogmatism. He was ahead of the youth curve.

The biggest danger for any establishment is to run adrift of the shifting perception of the young. Every generation rewrites the rules of economic aspiration, within the context of new technology and emerging opportunity. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee saw the future in the Chinese model, but not quite in the way we imagine. There was a subtle variation, even as he understood that communism had to integrate with market forces. He realised that the Chinese Communist Party could survive a Tiananmen Square because the system was essentially authoritarian. But in a democracy such an upsurge would have been sufficient to unseat a government in the subsequent election. His responsibility and challenge therefore was to prevent disillusionment, and ease the anger of the young before it erupted.

He did not succeed in isolation, as is sometimes made out to be. He was not a voice outside the party’s politburo. The CPI(M) is now led by younger men and women with a vested interest in the future. And they are going to find that future with the steely determination of the generation that has provided them with an invaluable legacy. Till yesterday, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was a chief minister of Bengal. Today he has become a leader of his people.

Obviously he has been helped by the fact that the Trinamul and Congress had nothing to offer except emotional, non-intellectual and often unintelligible mishmash. Mamata Banerjee is the headmistress of the tired school of cliches. She confuses street theatre with politics. Bengalis may love jatra but they don’t vote for drama queens. And as drama queens go, Mamata Banerjee is no Suchitra Sen.

But she also emerges from a political tradition in Bengal. Marxist historians must never forget to thank three Bengalis for the rise of the CPI(M): P.C. Sen, Ajoy Mukherjee and Pranab Mukherjee.

Sen was Congress chief minister after Dr B.C. Roy, and led his party to defeat almost as surely as Dr Roy led his party to victory. Sen fell in the elections of 1967 to a United Front crafted by Ajoy Mukherjee, the aging Congress rebel, Pranab Mukherjee, the rising young tactician, and Jyoti Basu. (Pranab Mukherjee is an aging tactician now, but still a tactician.)

1967 marked the beginning of a decade of struggle and trial for the Marxists: through the fires of Naxalite havoc, Congress repression in the state and then the nationwide emergency. In 1977, the emergency was lifted and the mood of the north was passionately anti-Congress. Sen, now leader of the Janata Dal, did the Marxists an unparalleled favour. Basu offered an alliance. Sen arrogantly rejected it. The left front swept to power in 1977 in Bengal. No one has discovered the means to remove it in three decades. A historic blunder (the phrase is Jyoti Basu’s) in 1997 prevented the Marxists from taking a quantum leap forward in their political evolution. The CPI(M) politburo prevented Jyoti Basu from leading a coalition and becoming the first Marxist prime minister of India. No party has used power to expand its base better than the CPI(M). Today, the Marxists have been restricted to two and a half fortresses (Tripura would be the half), and only one of those fortresses is under permanent possession (Bengal). With Jyoti Basu in Delhi, the party would have had a unique chance to take its message, as well as its management style, across the country. The results might not have been immediate, but they would have come.

A decade has passed since that historic blunder, and generations have changed. Can Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Prakash Karat reverse that blunder?

They have one great advantage, which was not so evident a decade earlier. When Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh ushered in economic reforms in 1991, they promised emancipation to all. Their work was carried forward by governments that were hostile to the Congress: the Vajpayee coalition was as committed to those reforms as its originators. In a sense, these policies were endorsed by a right coalition, which could have evolved into a right front. Fifteen years later, it is obvious to everyone but the blind that economic reforms have been only a partial success. The Maoist insurgency is violent evidence of the despair in the darker side of India — the moonlit India, as opposed to neon-lit India.

We must not lose what we have achieved through economic reform. But it is equally true that the next phase of economic growth is going to be impossible without a far greater commitment to equity and social change. If the first phase of economic growth was sustained by a right front, then the next phase will need a non-dogmatic left front in power.

The poor will not wait much longer. If they are not included in rapid progress then they could even destroy what has been achieved.

The only political party with any credibility among the poor within the democratic ambience is the CPI(M). The Maoists are a splutter of anger, an important alarm bell, but they are not the solution to this growing problem. Their relevance is limited. The CPI(M) can seed a left front that re-establishes Delhi’s equation with India. Step forward, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.

Roman candour

ROMANO PRODI caused little surprise when he announced on Thursday that Italian troops would be withdrawn from Iraq over the coming months.

But the new centre-left prime minister emphasised the importance of the decision by making it public in his first speech since taking power. Silvio Berlusconi, defeated in last month’s elections, would have done the same had he been returned to office.

But he would not have agreed with Mr Prodi’s candid statement that the war and occupation had been a “grave error”. That is hardly news to millions of Italians, other Europeans and Americans too, to judge from George Bush’s rapidly declining ratings on the issue. But it is nevertheless significant that the leader of a country which had been a key member of the US-led “coalition of the willing” in Iraq has said it loud and clear.

Mr Prodi and his new foreign minister, Massimo D’Alema, are anxious not to follow the example of the Spanish prime minister, Josi Luis Rodrmguez Zapatero, who infuriated the US by bringing his boys home from Iraq within weeks of defeating the centre-right in 2004, and shortly after the Madrid bombings. Italy’s 2,600 troops are now doing little except protecting themselves in the Nassiriya area and will be pulled out under a timetable to be agreed with the remaining coalition allies.

The US and Britain are used to this, since the Spanish were followed by the Poles, Ukrainians and South Koreans. The impact of the Italian move has also been softened by long advance warning. The muted response reflects the fact that the situation in Iraq is so bad. In 2003 or 2004 it was just possible to argue that it was too soon to say whether the war had been a success. Three years on Iraqi politicians are finally close to forming a national unity government but sectarian mayhem is threatening outright civil war.

Outside Kurdistan it is hard to find anything positive except the demise of Saddam Hussein.

—The Guardian, London