Doing the ‘doable’

MOST of us have by now become used to the ebb and flow in relations between Pakistan and India. But the stand-off created by the recent Mumbai blasts had worried even the most hardened observers, particularly since it provided a further opportunity to opponents of the peace process to renew their charge that Pakistan was needlessly striving for accommodation in the face of an adamant and accusatory India. This week’s exchanges of milder and more positive statements from both sides are, therefore, doubly welcome. President General Pervez Musharraf has not only reiterated confidence in the peace process, but has also spoken again of some of the proposals made by him earlier aimed at reaching a settlement of the Kashmir crisis. Responding to a suggestion by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh for “institutional arrangements” to bring India and Pakistan closer on Kashmir, the president underlined the need for “doable” parameters such as demilitarisation and self-governance (as opposed to independence, which the general ruled out as unacceptable to both India and Pakistan). He went so far as to indicate that once a settlement was reached on Kashmir, the two countries could crown the entire process with a treaty of peace and friendship as proposed by Dr Singh.

New Delhi has always been wary of specific ideas and solutions put forward in newspaper interviews or statements rather than through accepted diplomatic channels. This has some validity because there is always the danger of proposals or suggestions thus made being seen as part of point-scoring. They also immediately open up a public debate, much to the delight of the hawks and hardliners on both sides. The government is unnecessarily put in a defensive position. However, the form should not be allowed to deflect attention from the substance of any proposal made and the spirit behind it. It should have become clear to the Indians by now that the Pakistani establishment and the people are prepared to go very far indeed in trying to extricate the subcontinent from the persisting imbroglio over Kashmir. India itself had sent a “non-paper” on the subject to Islamabad, but its details are not generally known. All the proposals made in the past few months and weeks should be clubbed together and discussed, quietly, at an appropriate level. It is important that the discussions should be sustained and not carried on haltingly so that the current impression that the peace process and confidence-building measures have stalled is dispelled. While there is no need for a headlong rush into anything, equally there is no reason for either side to be seen as being obstructive and dragging its feet.

Meanwhile, is it only one’s impression that the Kashmiri leadership itself has lately somewhat receded into the background? Until only a few months ago, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, which is the closest that we have to an organisation representing the people of Indian Kashmir, was most active, with formulations of its own (a “triangular” dialogue, and so on). Needless to say, real progress cannot be made without taking fully into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir. New Delhi particularly has to get the Kashmiri parties into the loop to help it formulate a politically “doable” compromise and meet the aspirations of what Dr Singh has described as “a large constituency for peace and shared prosperity”.

Why this apathy?

“LACK of quorum” seems to have become all too convenient an excuse for the National Assembly when it comes to taking up important national issues. Had it not been so, the protection of women bill aimed at amending the Hudood Ordinances would have been tabled for a debate on Friday. The required quorum entails the presence of as few as one-fourth of the elected members in the House. Many of the combined opposition MNAs deliberately stayed away from the proceedings because there are serious differences among opposition parties on the issue: the PPP wants the repeal of the Hudood laws while the MMA does not want them to be touched at all. A similar chasm is said to exist on the subject among the treasury MNAs. This explains the absence from the House on Friday of a large number of the ruling coalition members, who could have provided the required quorum by turning up. Even otherwise, absenteeism plaguing the working of parliament over the last four years has shown the elected representatives’ lack of interest in lawmaking. The only business this House has conducted successfully so far is giving the elected members a hefty pay rise and a substantial increase in their perquisites and privileges, which can hardly be justified given the lack of any meaningful legislation undertaken by lawmakers since their election in 2002.

The MPs’ apparent apathy to national issues such as the state of women in the country, as reflected in the case of the Hudood laws enacted by the late dictator Gen Ziaul Haq in 1979, is appalling. The ordinances were enforced through a decree; they are simply bad in law, as adjudged by a special judicial committee set up by President Pervez Musharraf earlier on, followed by an Islamic Ideology Council ruling. The failure of the government to build a consensus on amending the controversial laws among its own MPs should prompt liberal and democratic forces to push for an outright repeal. Every treasury and opposition MNA should vote according to his/her own conscience. The least the government can do is to ensure a quorum.

Quality of relief goods

IT IS disappointing to note that UN agencies are refusing to allow local authorities to check the quality of medicines and food items meant for earthquake victims, currently in storage at warehouses. According to a news report, local authorities believe they have enough reason to doubt the authenticity of some of the essential drugs and vaccines being provided by the World Health Organisation, a charge the agency has denied, saying that it has handed over all its items to Erra which is responsible for supplying it to hospitals. But one food and drug inspector in Bagh claims to have seized some medicines which he had tested and found to be spurious. Then there is the allegation that WHO refused to have its goods inspected at the warehouse in Bagh. Authorities now claim that this is not the first time they have brought the matter of quality of goods to the notice of international agencies. They had earlier questioned the quality of such food items as biscuits and even cooking oil donated by foreign countries, but they claim that nothing came of discussions that followed. It may be hard to believe allegations that reputable international agencies could be in violation of providing quality goods but that should not prevent authorities from going ahead with their inspection demands. By the same token, international agencies should not stand in the way of such tests especially where human life and health are at stake.

It is important to check the validity of essential drugs particularly in the light of complaints of gastroenteritis cases in some of the quake-affected areas. Doctors believe that these complaints can be attributed to the consumption of expired medicines. Until the matter is sorted out, it would be best if alternative drugs are used so as to avoid health risks associated with expired or substandard medicines.

Nothing Islamic about fascism

SO, five years after 9/11 are we back to the beginning? Not quite. Complexity has been replaced by simplicity, but the magnitude of ambition remains steadfast. However, there are subtle changes in the big story, and fresh curves in the small ones: the diameter has changed, there is more than one centre in this circle, and the spokes spreading from these centres to the edge have multiplied. One size does not fit all.

The good news I presume is that the plot to blow up 10 aircraft over the Atlantic was pre-empted. The police had to move on suspicion and information from the shadows of an uncertain world, so there is a natural degree of scepticism in the absence of hard evidence. But those entrusted with our security need the benefit of doubt.

We hear that the famed British intelligence picked up the first signals as early as last December. It was a long wait, but they surely had their reasons. They had a mole from within the British Muslim community, and they received much better intelligence from Pakistan. During the G-8 conference in St. Petersburg, George Bush went out of his way to praise General Pervez Musharraf for help in the Bush-Blair war on terror. Did this information travel from Islamabad to London around that time?

The focus is again on Pakistan, but that is a known, familiar and legitimate focus for any spotlight. The real worry for Tony Blair should be at home.

Five years ago, he, along with Bush, bombed Afghanistan to destroy the perpetrators of 9/11. This time, almost all the suspects are British-born.

Why? What has happened that has alienated British Muslims from Blair? What is Blair going to do now? You can’t bomb the suburbs of London, can you? Bush and Blair are good at winning a war on the ground. They are experts at losing the battle for the mind.

Their firepower is impressive. Their persuasive power is abysmal. There is no mystery in this. No one really believes what they say, because they have made a habit of shifting the truth to define their objectives, or shifting the objective when facts have changed.

Armed action always finds support when it is perceived to be just, which is why there was so much support for the war that ended the Taliban government in Kabul.

But five years later, the limitations of even a just war are also obvious. Bush and Blair went to war to find Osama bin Laden. If the Taliban had handed Osama over for trial, the ostensible reason for war would have disappeared.

Five years of power later, Bush and Blair still cannot find Osama. Osama bin Laden can find any television channel he wants, when he chooses to send a videotape message. Any journalist from a television channel can get in touch with his group. Those videos do not travel from Pakistan to Qatar on a flying carpet, do they? But the combined might of CIA, MI6 and Pakistan’s ISI cannot find Osama.

The true consequences of the unjust war that Bush and Blair perpetrated, in Iraq, are being measured in slow, painful, bloody, deadly steps. War is a difficult business; occupation of necessity will turn brutal when soldiers come under pressure or succumb to the worst form of temptation, as in cases of rape and consequent murder.

Bush and Blair may tabulate death with the cold eye of a statistician. Young men in anonymous streets might react differently. Blair invites so much scepticism that many young Muslims in Britain simply disbelieve that there was a “liquid plot” and that this is another effort to exploit insecurity for political gain. They do not keep such thoughts to themselves anymore. They tell CNN.

Bush has a worse problem. The Democrats in America did not waste much time before wondering whether the timing of the plot disclosure had a political dimension.

Five years down a difficult line, there are too many questions, wherever one looks. A favourite phrase of America and Britain five years ago was narco-terrorism. Terrorists were using the wealth from Afghanistan’s poppy crop to finance their evil. It is sometimes dangerous to lose as effective an alibi as the Taliban.

In the five years of Bush-Blair management, Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation has reached a record high. This narcotic is not meant for Afghans, or it would fetch a very devalued price. Its true value comes from the euros and pounds and dollars it fetches in Europe and America. Those are the currencies that keep farmers in Afghanistan happy, and the criminals who run the drug trade in comfort. Have you ever wondered why not a single supply line of drugs from Afghanistan to the West is ever busted by the military forces stationed in Afghanistan? I may have missed the news, but have you ever heard of smugglers being caught and punished?

Failure is terrible, and terribly contagious as well. It wreaks havoc on both foe and friend. High on their own agenda, Bush and Blair blithely ignored one of the real causes of international conflict, and thought that an occasional verbal morsel thrown towards Palestine would see them through their terms in office.

They contorted the logic of their own favourite moral horizon, democracy, when free elections brought into power a force they did not want. There was more than one way to deal with Hamas. They chose obstinacy. When you have blindsided yourself, reality becomes invisible.

Their policy towards Palestine was at least partly rooted in contempt for the Arabs, born out of the conviction that the Arabs could never fight, and even if they did, were no match for Israel. Bush and Blair had absolutely no idea of the forces that they had revived, or given birth to.

In five years, Arab governments may have remained their usual static self, but the Arab street has become a different place.

There was a virtual smile on the faces of Bush and Blair in the first week of the Lebanon war, when with characteristic smugness, they rushed weaponry to Tel Aviv and gave Israel “time” to finish the job (that is, eliminate Hezbollah) before they defined the terms of a ceasefire.

A month later, Israeli tanks lie disabled before shocked cameras. A small paramilitary force of irregulars without a single tank, battleship or aeroplane, with rockets that were widely dismissed as defunct, has held its own against the fabled might of the Israeli Defence Force.

Time has stripped away the disinformation that all sides use during war. For instance, Israel accuses the Hezbollah day in and day out of hiding behind civilians in order to justify the awful destruction of a nation, but no one tells you that Israeli military installations are in civilian areas in north Israel.

This much is clear. The myth of Israeli invincibility lies buried in the hills of Lebanon. The body language, as well as language, of Shimon Peres, a veteran of every war that Israel has fought, has changed in 30 days. A statement that I heard him make on CNN had more fizzle than fizz: “We did not start this war, so we don’t have to win it... We have to stop it...”

When was the last time that Israel’s media were demanding the resignation of their prime minister in the middle of war? There was no last time. This is the first time. The days when an Israeli general could stroll into Beirut, conduct operations at will, and stroll back are over. The cost of even trying to stroll towards the Litani river has been very heavy.

Problems cannot be solved unless they are first understood. Bush and Blair now give the impression that their sole purpose is to stretch whatever remains of their credibility to last till they have to leave office. They need the enemy they set out to destroy, or the logic of their survival will collapse.

Bush still jumps from one inappropriate phrase to another, unable to see the damage he causes in the process. When claiming the obligatory victory against terrorists who had failed to carry out the “liquid hijacking”, he blamed it on “Islamic fascists”.

I wish someone would tell him that there is nothing Islamic about fascism. Some Muslims are indeed fascist in their outlook. I could name a few who survived on American cash and goodwill. Why blame Islam for the sins of a few Muslims? Bush and Blair are believing Christians who go to church as often as they can. Does anyone in his senses describe their wars as “Christian wars”?

The sadness is that 9/11 was a historic opportunity to find answers in a spirit of collective sorrow.

Instead, all we see is the debris of unanswered questions. Bush and Blair perhaps believe that they can survive on the strength of media headlines. Today’s headlines are so often tomorrow’s boomerangs. Bush and Blair have lost the plot.

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