Exclusion of the people
TELEVISION stations donned green early in preparation for the country's 59th Independence Day on August 14. Discussions and talk shows have been the staple of programming over the past few days.
How many of us will bother to look at the past as we mark Independence Day? Will some of us count the number of independence anniversaries that we have celebrated under martial law or with military-led governments in power? Or even how most things have remained unchanged over the past many decades?
In an editorial marking the 10th independence anniversary of the country, which surely must have been seen as a great landmark, the old Pakistan Times wrote, inter alia: “In public and in private, inside homes and out in the market place, the speech of the people is sick with disgust and frustration, streaked with impotent anger. There are many reasons for this, but there is one basic cause which enters into them all. And this basic cause is the complete exclusion of the people from the power which should have devolved on them with the coming of independence, the power which has been rightfully theirs ever since this day ten years ago, but has been withheld from them by a succession of self-appointed coteries.
“For ten years, one person (or a group of persons) after another, with the help of few cronies, and camp-followers, has set himself up as the custodian of the people's political belongings, and each such regime has been speedily undone by the jealousies, intrigues, and machinations of rival pretenders.
“With the passage of time these conflicts in the ruling camp have sharpened, the methods of attaining or retaining power have become more ruthless and more corrupt, the contact between the ruler and the ruled becomes steadily more remote. Crisis, emergencies, deadlocks, enthronements and dethronements, squabbles and hand -- clasps, attachments and detachments, are all enacted within the same small group which changes shape and colour with every change of season and ever remains the same.
In none of these transactions have the people ever had a hand and in many of them even the present hand-picked legislators are allowed little voice. And this is the cause -- this arrogation of power by an apparently irremovable few, this forcible suspension of the peoples' right to choose their own governments and call them to account through popular institutions -- for all our ills, political, economic, moral, and psychological.” *
This was just a year before the country's first martial law that formally inducted the military into the “same small group which changes shape with every change of season and ever remains the same”. Now of course the military dominates this elitist power group, and the people continue to be confronted with the arrogation of power by an “apparently irreplaceable few”. If in such circumstances, there is a sense of despair rather than joy, cynicism rather than faith at national anniversaries, should anyone be surprised?
If in 1957, when the country had seen only civilian, political governments, however venal they may have been, there was so much frustration as reflected in the rather longish Pakistan Times excerpt above, what can be the level of popular alienation at the present time? We continually alternate between political parties with selfish agendas and the armed forces whose passion for governance and for reforming and civilising us remains undimmed despite all the previous experiences.
If military governance was a factor that was not applicable then, another element that was non-existent in the form in which we know it today was the dominance of the political agenda by the conservatives and the religious parties. Both elements had made their appearance by that time in one form or another -- the fundamentalist-driven anti-Ahmadiya agitation in 1953, leading to the imposition of limited martial law. But neither the military nor the maulvi had become such an imposition as now. Religious revivalism had not come to permeate every level of society as it does now, thanks again to a military dictator, Gen Ziaul Haq.
So, in other words, the political situation may have become worse and more complicated since 1957 even if the country has advanced on the economic front. The tragedy is that there doesn't appear to be much realisation of this sad reality either by the political parties or civil society. Our failure to develop vibrant institutions, including political organisations, and to preserve and strengthen the existing ones has been abysmal. Our responses to political developments at home and abroad remain retarded. Rule of law and constitutional proprieties win only the most perfunctory of nods from ministers and officials. The checks and balances considered necessary in an accountable democracy are seen here more as irritants that prevent a dynamic leadership from getting ahead and getting work done. The representative character of governments fashioned by the military such as the present PML government remains questionable.
You can continue to point out things like this till you are blue in the face, and the official reaction remains the same: one of indifference. Even small irritants never get addressed: Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada remains part of governments as a minister or adviser, and so far his advice has only led us into even murkier constitutional eddies. Enjoying the status of a federal minister in the present set-up, he was yet hired by the Privatisation Commission to defend it in the Steel Mills case in the Supreme Court -- and was reportedly paid a handsome fee for the brief. The case was lost for the government. The chief election commissioner says that a president who is also chief of the army staff cannot canvas for a political party. But does that persuade our president to follow the straight and narrow?
We could have in all these years since independence at least attempted to attack some of the social evils that have dogged us because of the powerful influence of backward feudal and tribal leaders and religious charlatans. But here too we have stood still, the current onfusion about amendments to the Hudood Ordinances being one instance, with Federal Law Minister Sher Afgan proving himself to be the typical loose canon in parliament, debating whether or not it is religiously just for husbands to beat their wives. Everyday brings some new example of such juvenile utterances or behaviour.
Our air chief, in a statement the other day, has neatly reduced the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and the Palestinians to a matter of military strength and prowess. After meeting the Punjab governor in Lahore, he told reporters that the Lebanese prime minister was forced to cry before the media because of the weak defence capability of his country (Dawn, page 12, Aug 9). Which shows the necessity of keeping Pakistan well armed. Ergo. That's how depoliticised we have become -- and yet military officers who have done PhDs and MScs are considered to be absolute whiz kids and masters of political strategy and suitable to be appointed as members of the Federal Public Service Commission.
The editorial ferred to at the beginning concluded by saying: “And yet these abuses, and the state of mind they have engendered among our people, are by no means native to our national genius or national temperament, as many prophets of doom would have us believe. They are as artificial and as hand-made as the arbitrary political structure which has given them birth. They will endure as long as the present irreparable political structure endures.”
So that's something else from the past that applies to the present and which should be kept in view as we move towards Independence Day.
* From“Pakistan: The First Twelve Years”,
The Pakistan Times editorials of Mazhar Ali Khan (OUP), 1996
Did it begin on July 12?
THE Middle East conflict did not begin on July 12, 2006. This point needs to be emphasised, because Israel and its supporters would have us believe that whatever is happening in the Levant today began on July 12 when Hezbollah fighters went inside Israel, killed eight Israeli soldiers and took two prisoners. If Hezbollah had not done this, we are told, the situation in the Middle East would not be what it is today.
There is no point in beginning with the Balfour declaration, which in 11 years will be a century-old. But we can follow the situation in the reverse chronological order so as to be nearer to the events in time and space and see whether the Hezbollah attack inside Israel disturbed an existing peace — an idyllic peace which, but for that Hezbollah attack, would have endured and everybody would have lived happily ever after.
On July 12, the day Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, the Israeli war machine was spilling blood in Gaza and destroying buildings with women and children in it. The Israeli incursion into Gaza began on June 28 after Palestinian commandos dug a tunnel, killed two Israelis and captured one of them. Again, one can blame the Palestinians for the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza — “a rescue mission”, as the BBC would call it. But on June 9, Israelis had killed a family of eight Palestinian picnickers by firing at a Gaza beach.
On July 2, the Israeli air force hit the offices of the Palestinian prime minister and on July 6 Israeli troops killed 23 Palestinians. Result: Hamas vowed revenge and broke the 16-month truce which it had unilaterally observed. So who fired the first shots in what is today a slaughter of innocent people depends on which event you choose as a benchmark.
Why did the Israelis choose to murder the Gaza picnickers and, more important, what business do Israeli troops have to be in the Palestinian territories 13 years after signing the Declaration of Principles (DoP) which had provided for the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state on April 13, 1999? This question — which is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict — must not be allowed to disappear behind the smokescreen of non-issues invented by Israelis and their supporters to obfuscate the real issue.
If Israel had abided by the Oslo peace process, which was given the form of an international treaty to which Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, among others, were signatories, an independent Palestinian state would have emerged on Sept 13, 1999, and there would have been no need for the gruesome events of last June and July — the massacre of Gaza picnickers by Israel, the attacks by Palestinians and Hezbollah on Israeli troops and Israel's destruction of eastern Beirut.
The DoP, signed on the lawns of the White House on Sept 13, 1993, provided the following programme for a settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict:
Oct 13, 1993: DoP becomes effective and the Israeli military administration begins to transfer authority in the occupied territories to “authorised Palestinians”.
Dec 13, 1993: Israel and Palestinians sign a protocol on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and Jericho.
April 13, 1994: Israel completes its military withdrawal from Gaza and the Jericho area and transfers power to nominated Palestinian authority, marking the beginning of the five-year period of interim self-government leading to a permanent settlement.
July 13, 1994: elections to a Palestinian council are held, followed by the dissolution of the Israeli military-run civil administration in the occupied areas.
April 13, 1996: Israel and Palestinians begin negotiations on a permanent settlement.
April 13, 1999: the permanent settlement is enforced.
Did Israel implement the DoP? Instead, the man who signed the DoP and shook hands with Arafat was murdered by a Jewish fanatic, and Rabin's successors — Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak (ignoring interim Prime Minister Shimon Peres) — set out to destroy the DoP.
Netanyahu won the election on a hawkish programme, pledging to undo the Oslo process, while Barak won the next election on a peace programme but adopted a hawkish line once in power. Together, Netanyahu and Barak saw to it that the process was reversed and there was to be no withdrawal from the occupied territories.
With Clinton’s full backing, the accords were re-negotiated at a series of summit meetings — Wye, Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh I and II — and the peace process came virtually to a halt. However, even the Israeli pretensions to a faithful implementation of the DoP disappeared when Ariel Sharon became prime minister. He renewed his hobby of spilling Palestinian blood when he visited Islamic holy sites in September 2000 when he was still in the opposition, leading to the beginning of the second intifada. After becoming prime minister in February next year, Sharon set out in earnest to destroy the peace process.
He reoccupied the areas Israel had vacated earlier and then in the summer of 2002 carried out a personal war against Arafat by destroying Muqatta, his headquarters, brick by brick. In what indeed was a test of Arafat's nerves, Israeli tanks stood yards away from the PLO leader's living quarters in Ramallah and reduced the entire built-up area around it to a heap of rubble. But Arafat did not surrender.
With the Oslo process dead, President George Bush unveiled a roadmap in April 2003. Drafted by the US, EU, UN and Russia, the roadmap visualised a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state coming into being “by 2005”. Arafat immediately accepted the roadmap, Sharon signalling his acceptance weeks later with 14 reservations.
After accepting it, Sharon went to the White House and made it clear to Bush that Israel would not withdraw from the entire West Bank and would retain “some” land. Bush immediately held a press conference and endorsed Sharon's views. He also announced that 2005 was an unrealistic date for a Palestinian state to emerge. He sabotaged the roadmap he had himself unveiled.
Is it then fair to accuse the Arabs of ignoring the diplomatic option? Did Israel and America pursue the diplomatic option in earnest to ensure the faithful implementation of the Oslo process and the 2003 roadmap? What went on at the Camp David summit in July 2000 is a story in itself. In his book The Truth about Camp David American author Clayton E. Swisher said the US delegation headed by Clinton virtually acted as an Israeli team. Two-thirds of the US delegation consisted of American Jews — Madeleine Albright, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross among them — and it wanted Arafat to sign on the dotted lines, even though the proposals by the Israeli-American side made no mention of the two issues vital to the Palestinian question — the future of Jerusalem and the right of the Palestinian refugees to return home. Arafat refused to barter away his people's rights, and for that reason was accused by Clinton of being “afraid of peace”.
On July 12, when Hezbollah made that foray, the peace process lay dead; the Israelis were killing Gaza civilians and were in occupation of the West Bank. What choice do Hezbollah, Hamas and PLO now have except to fight for their rights so that the peace process is revived, bloodshed stops, Israel withdraws from lands that do not belong to it, and a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital comes into being.
Iraq: a reality check
IS IRAQ IN THE MIDST of a civil war or, as Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior US commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, only in danger of moving toward one? For purposes of US military and political planning, that may be a distinction without a difference.
What matters is that sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, is, in Abizaid's words, "as bad as I've seen it" and getting worse. That is a reality that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki essentially ignored last month when, in a speech to Congress, he portrayed the carnage in his country as a struggle between a new democratic government and an alliance of Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists. That simplistic narrative cried out for a reality check, and Abizaid has provided it.
It isn't just American observers who are worried. In a memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair, a British diplomat in Baghdad recently warned that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy." Some in the US military take comfort in the fact that the Iraqi army has not yet broken down into sectarian fighting forces, a textbook precursor to civil war seen everywhere from the Balkans to the Mason-Dixon line. Yet Iraqi police forces already are taking sides, with some joining the deadly militias responsible for Iraqi-on-Iraqi killings.
That violence has forced a change in US military tactics, resulting in the deployment of 3,700 troops in the Iraqi capital - a move that Sen. John McCain fears might undermine pacification efforts elsewhere. In the longer term, generals concede that tying up so many US resources in Iraq makes it more difficult for the military to confront extremist terrorism around the globe.
And the escalating civil strife will force the White House to confront the implications of Bush's June statement that "success in Iraq depends upon the Iraqis."
—Los Angeles Times