COMMENT: Method in madness pays off for Pakistan in South Africa

ALL square at the end of two with one left to play. The third Test at Cape Town will doubtlessly be one for the ages, unless anti-climax, the spectator’s arch-nemesis, shows up to spoil the party. The last time Pakistan won a Test in South Africa, they needed no more than a draw in the following game to wrap up a series victory. The return of Wasim Akram for the game at Port Elizabeth should have buoyed on the players but instead things fell apart in traditional Pakistani fashion. While the flare for the dramatic has not left this team, under Inzamam and Bob Woolmer — Ovalgate and the drugs fiasco aside — Pakistan seems to have got its house in order, ‘seems’ being the key word here because with Pakistan things are rarely what they appear.

Even on this tour there have been moments where things have threatened to go awry. That these incidents have surrounded Shoaib Akhtar should come as no surprise. Those calling for his head are happy to see his back but Pakistan could still use his services, particularly at the World Cup. And let’s not forget that Shoaib did play a critical role in restricting South Africa to a first innings total of 124. And after a first Test that lacked desperately in drama on the final day, Shoaib’s presence added some excitement to the proceedings. Even those who feel he is a bad influence on this team would feel better if he were available for the final Test.

While Pakistan might be a little light on the bowling side now that Shoaib and Omar Gul have been ruled out, the second Test witnessed the resurgence of the middle-order, and Kamran Akmal in particular. His form behind the stumps might have left much to be desired but Akmal’s match winning 57 and subsequent return to form could be the key to a Pakistan victory at Cape Town. A fragile top-order has meant that the big three, Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf and Inzamam-ul-s Haq, have shaped the fortunes of this side for the last few years. Akmal’s presence and invaluable contributions since his defining innings against India at Chandigarh two years ago have played an integral part in Pakistan’s revival since Bob Woolmer took charge. If this team is going to be successful, players like Akmal, Yasir Hameed, Danish Kaneria and the openers (whoever they might be) need to deliver on a consistent basis.

Once again, however, it was Inzamam who led Pakistan to victory. While Mohammad Asif might have ended the game with seven wickets and come a step closer to being hailed as the next Glenn McGrath (in eight matches he has 44 at an average of 20.22), Inzamam’s 92 in the first innings was the platform that set up a Pakistan victory. He might have missed elusive hundred against the Proteas, but this knock is among the greatest he has ever crafted.

Javed Miandad might still be regarded Pakistan’s best ever batsman but Inzamam is surely the most influential. Along with 18 match-winning centuries, Inzi has numerous forgotten knocks such as the 58 not out against Australia at Karachi which have been equally significant. They way he guarded Asif form Pollock and Ntini while building a vital lead for his team is something those who watched will not soon forget. That he did it on a pitch offering assistance to one of the best fast-bowling pairs in the game today makes the innings even more special. No wonder Inzamam has called this his best win. The question now is whether his side can turn it into Pakistan’s best ever Test series.

Finally, I would like to add a few words to all that has been said about the incident involving Herschelle Gibbs. A few nights ago I was at a restaurant and a group of people were making a fair bit of noise. Suddenly one of the waitresses commented to no one in particular: “Do they think they are in the jungle”. The customers were black. They weren’t rowdy, or threatening, just a bit loud. It’s understandable that at midnight a waitress might reach her threshold but the choice of words was quite revealing of the conceptions and ideas that we have of each other. For racism is not about a bunch of hooded hate mongers in the deep American south. It is a historical idea that boasts its own language, attitude and psychology. So when Herschelle Gibbs called the Pakistani supporters in the Centurion crowd “a bunch of bloody animals” among other things, it was not about an athlete reaching boiling point but the words he used to vent his anger.

Aziz may face tough questions over Taliban

PRIME Minister Shaukat Aziz can expect tough questioning on Pakistan’s support for Taliban forces battling alliance troops in

Afghanistan during his visit to Nato headquarters on Jan 30.

With many Nato policymakers expecting a major spring offensive by insurgents, the US government and many others in the 26-nation alliance are adamant Pakistan must do more to curb the cross-border movement of Taliban forces into Afghanistan.

But the calls for tougher border controls will be accompanied by repeated assertions by alliance officials that Islamabad has a vital role to play in helping Nato achieve its ambitious stabilisation goals in Afghanistan.

“It is not useful to blame and shame,” Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told Dawn ahead of Mr Aziz’s visit to Nato. “We want to see Pakistan as part of the solution” in Afghanistan, said Scheffer, insisting on the need for stronger cooperation between Nato, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Nato officials insist that Pakistan is making “significant efforts to try and stem the flow” of Taliban into Afghanistan. However, “we need to work together to step up the effectiveness of those measures,” said alliance spokesman James Appathurai.

The message to get tougher with the Taliban will go hand in hand with a Nato offer of a broader political relationship between the alliance and Pakistan. Nato governments did not want just a simple military relationship with Pakistan but also a “deeper and broader political relationship”, said Appathurai.

Asked if Nato was concerned this could fuel fears in India, Appathurai insisted that Pakistan and India shared a common interest in stabilising Afghanistan. “It is Nato’s view that a stronger relationship with Pakistan should in no way be seen as anything but good by other governments, including India,” he insisted.

Practical Pakistan-Nato cooperation is already under way. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Afghanistan, and Pakistan have set up a joint intelligence-sharing centre at ISAF headquarters in Kabul. Nato officials say they expect the new centre to coordinate the fight against insurgents coming from Pakistan into Afghanistan without tackling the highly charged questions of where the border lies or how it should be secured.

Mr Aziz’s visit to Nato headquarters certainly comes at a crucial time for the 26-nation organization’s operations in Afghanistan, with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates saying recently he would consider sending more troops to Afghanistan to combat an expected spring offensive by the Taliban.

Gates’ pledge follows warnings by several senior Nato military officials who say alliance governments must send more money and troops to defeat the Taliban.

The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen David Richards, warned recently that Nato could win the war in Afghanistan within a year, provided governments were ready to send additional soldiers and more development aid to the country.

Richards also called on civilian aid agencies to speed up reconstruction efforts and on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to root out corruption and improve relations with Pakistan.

Nato chief Scheffer insists that the 32,000-strong Nato mission in Afghanistan is the alliance’s “number one priority”. But with ISAF troops engaged in almost daily violent encounters with the Taliban -- more than 4,000 people were killed in Afghanistan on both sides in 2006, including nearly 170 foreign troops – Nato officials now insist that military solutions alone cannot stabilise the country.

Improving governance and stepping up reconstruction and development efforts are equally crucial, said Appathurai. Scheffer told reporters that greater international cooperation -- between Nato, the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank -- was needed to ensure peace in the country.

Calls for a stronger international commitment to Afghanistan will top the agenda of a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels on Jan 26, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expected to urge European allies to match Washington in injecting more development funds into Afghanistan.

US officials say Rice will tell Nato and EU counterparts that 2007 could emerge as a key year in efforts to subdue the stubbornly resistant Taliban-led insurgency and push forward with often patchy reconstruction work.

“We’ve got to kick up our investment. The US is going to do that and we’d like to see our allies do that. 2007 is a year in which we can make a profound difference,” the official, who requested anonymity, told reporters, adding: “We’ve made a lot of promises to Afghans and a lot of promises to ourselves.”

Rice’s appeal reflects a US policy review that concluded Afghanistan needs more resources both to fight the Taliban and to win local support with tangible benefits like roads, schools and electricity.

US officials have said the Bush administration could seek $5 billion to $6 billion in a supplemental budget request to Congress that would cover a stepped-up effort to train the Afghan military and police as well as improve infrastructure.

The EU has promised to provide more development aid to Afghanistan and is currently considering the deployment of a police mission to train Afghan security forces. Japan has also vowed to grant more development funds to Afghanistan.

While such assistance was good news, Scheffer insists that the alliance must do more to win Afghan hearts and minds. “I still think we can do better,” he said ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting.

Nato countries vowed at an alliance summit in Riga last November to make their troops in Afghanistan more mobile and ready to help out other national contingents in times of emergency. But there is little appetite among NATO allies to step up their military presence, especially in the dangerous south of the country.

British officials have so far played down media speculation they could send up to 1,000 more soldiers and diplomats say France has pointed out its army is already stretched by peace missions in Africa, Lebanon, the Balkans and elsewhere.

Germany has also said repeatedly that its troops will not go south from their current base in the relatively calmer north of the country.

However, Berlin is currently debating the deployment of Tornado surveillance aircraft in southern Afghanistan.

Americans, Iranians share hopes and fears

WASHINGTON: As speculation mounts about a possible military confrontation between the two nations over US allegations that Tehran is building a nuclear weapon and interfering in neighbouring Iraq, a poll has revealed a high degree of mutual suspicion and hostility, but also a surprising number of common concerns.

“The polls show that majorities in both countries are deeply suspicious of each other, but nonetheless agree on a wide range of issues,” said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), which carried out the poll along with a non-governmental group, Search for Common Ground.

Strong majorities in both countries share a strong dislike for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, consider international terrorism a “critical threat”, believe that the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks worldwide, and consider democratic governance to be “absolutely important” to them personally, according to the survey.

Strong and similar majorities in both countries gave their respective governments generally positive assessments of their compliance with democratic ideals and human rights. While US respondents gave their government a slightly higher rating on democratic governance, their Iranian counterparts were somewhat more positive about the degree to which human rights are respected in their country.

The poll also found strong support in both countries for the United Nations and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as indications that an agreement whereby Iran could enrich uranium at low levels subject to strict international verification would be broadly acceptable to US public opinion.

Nonetheless, about half of respondents in both countries said it is either “somewhat” or “very likely” that the US will take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities “in the next year or two”.

That finding underscored the suspicion and hostility that underlies their relationship, although US respondents appeared substantially more willing to engage Tehran.

Although Iranian respondents were roughly evenly split between mainly positive and negative impressions of the US people, 93 per cent said they felt negatively about the current US government. Conversely, 78 per cent of the US respondents said they had a negative impression of the current government in Tehran, while 59 per cent felt the same way about the Iranian people.

Still, four of five US respondents said they favoured direct talks between the two countries, and two out of three said they favoured increased trade and more people-to-people exchanges. Iranians, on the other hand, were somewhat more reticent. Just over half favoured increased trade while large pluralities of close to half said there should be direct talks and more exchanges.

The Iranian component of the survey, which featured face-to-face interviews on 134 detailed substantive questions with 1,000 respondents located throughout the country both in urban and rural areas, was carried out between Oct 31 and Dec 6.

That was before the latest rise in bilateral tensions sparked by the detention by the US military of Iranian officials in Iraq in mid-December and again on Jan 10, just hours before President George W. Bush himself charged that Tehran was providing “material support for attacks on American troops” in Iraq and vowed to “seek out and destroy the networks” that were allegedly doing so.

At the same time, he announced the deployment of a second aircraft carrier group to the Gulf in what many observers here and in the region interpreted as the latest escalation in the growing confrontation between the two nations. Senior US officials have since depicted Iran as the leading threat among a farrago of “extremist” and “radical” forces in the Middle East that include Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas and Al Qaeda.

Bush himself, according to the survey, was viewed more negatively than any other world leader cited in the survey. No less than 86 per cent of Iranian respondents said they had a “very unfavourable” opinion of the US president, compared to 71 per cent and 48 per cent who held the same opinion of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac, respectively.

Similarly, three out of four Iranian respondents said they felt that US influence on the world was mainly negative, exceeded only by the 83 per cent who described Israel in the same way. Sixty per cent said the same about Britain, while pluralities said the influence of Russia, France and Europe were “mainly positive.”

As evidence that Iran is increasingly looking eastward for friends, three out of five Iranian respondents described the influence of India and Japan and the rise of China to great-power economic status as “mainly positive”.

The Iran component of the survey also found little basis for the Bush administration’s depiction of Iran -- or at least its public opinion -- as a force for extremism or a “totalitarian threat”. Nearly two-thirds of Iranian respondents said they considered economic globalisation to be good for their country (compared to 60 of US respondents), and nearly 60 per cent said they considered global companies to exert a “mainly positive” influence on the world (compared to 49 per cent of US respondents).

Less than a quarter (24 per cent) of Iranians said they believed Western and Islamic culture were “incompatible with each other” (compared to 36 per cent of US respondents), as opposed to 54 per cent of Iranians (56 per cent of Americans) who said they agreed with the statement that the two cultures could find “common ground”.

Iranians were also more likely to reject terrorist attacks against civilians, although a modest majority appeared to make an exception for Palestinian attacks against Israelis under some circumstances. Eighty per cent of Iranians said terrorist attacks against civilians can “never” be justified, compared to 46 per cent of US citizens who took the same position.

Iranians also voiced strong support for the UN Security Council despite its recent resolutions against Tehran on the nuclear issue. Seventy per cent said the UN should become “significantly more powerful in world affairs,” compared to 66 per cent of US respondents who agreed.

“The numbers we see here don’t confirm the image of Iranians being swept up in a revolutionary Islamic framework,” Kull said. “There’s strong support for the multilateral system and the NPT regime, they have positive feelings toward Europe, and there’s a lot of data that suggests that they’re a lot more integrated with the world as a whole.”

On nuclear issues, 84 per cent of Iranians support the government’s effort to enrich uranium, and majorities and large pluralities reject a list of incentives, such as a US non-aggression guarantee, to persuade Tehran to abandon the programme.

At the same time, two-thirds of Iranians support their country’s continued participation in the NPT, even when reminded that it would ban Tehran from building nuclear weapons. Only 15 per cent said they believe Iran should withdraw from the treaty. —Dawn/The IPS News Service

‘Sundown towns’ still haunt blacks

LOS ANGELES: Remember "sundown towns"? That was the picturesque-sounding name used for small cities and communities across the country that had an ugly policy of not allowing blacks on the streets after dark - or not allowing them period. Sundown towns included such unassuming enclaves as Hawthorne. And though the phrase had a distinctly Wild West overtone, for the blacks who coined the term, it was pure old South. And, as they had in the South, blacks generally followed these rules of de facto segregation - not going north of Slauson Avenue, for instance - because, as usual, they had no choice.

All that began to fall away with the legal unravelling of racial housing covenants in the late 1940s. But a sense among black people of geographic vulnerability - a sense that where they live is determined less by choice than by social forces that are always subject to change - persists.

This has been lately and painfully illustrated in Harbor Gateway following the December shooting of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black girl. Her death was part of a 12-year campaign by members of the Latino 204th Street gang to push blacks out of the tiny neighbourhood it has long regarded as its own.

The media immediately characterised the problem as mostly one of gang turf, with reports noting that the 204th Street gang preys on fellow Latinos as well. Citywide, gang-related crime is overwhelmingly not interracial. Everyone who lives in gang-populated neighbourhoods lives in fear.

Yet these facts - that the Green shooting was about gang turf and also a reflection of unchecked gang violence - fail to convey the larger truth. The violence in Harbor Gateway is different. Much of the violence is reminiscent of sundown towns and their "just-move-along" animus toward blacks that most of us thought were history.

In Harbor Gateway, the consequence for blacks straying "out of bounds" - in this case, north of 204th Street - can be fatal. A few Latinos from the area were quoted on radio reports saying that blacks are "dirty" and that they came in and "messed up" a perfectly good neighbourhood - comments that could have come from the mouths of working-class whites 50 years ago.

That such comments come from Latinos makes for a bitter irony, especially given the backdrop of an overwhelmingly Latino immigration rights movement that has effectively adopted the model of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Granted, the comments were made by a hostile few. But they sting nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the black response to the Harbor Gateway matter has been less about anger or even indignation than about conciliation and acceptance. In the absence of any visible black leadership, Green's mother, Charlene Lovett, and other activists have been extending olive branches since the Dec 15 shooting with marches and public attempts to display ethnic solidarity across turf lines. One such attempt was an ill-fated truce that gave all negotiating power to gang members and none to blacks.

Still, the outreach makes a certain kind of sense. Despite the oppressiveness of the last dozen years, black residents such as Lovett are probably more anxious to figure out how to stay in Harbor Gateway than how to leave it, mostly because they're running out of places to go. Yes, the cross-cultural, let's-get-together-now news conferences were naive, implying a moral and actual equivalence between Latino and black gang activity that doesn't exist. But they also express a real hope on the part of blacks that Harbor Gateway can be the better place they imagined.

Lovett and her family had that kind of hope when they moved to the Torrance-adjacent neighbourhood from South L.A. So did another African American, a man named Carl Wagner. But he got shot in the leg last August and wound up going back to South L.A. after his landlord warned him that it was best for him to get out of town. He was lucky.

It's understandable that the news media and various leaders, black and otherwise, would want to downplay or actively counter the starkly racial elements of this latest troubled story about black and brown. They don't want to aggravate an escalating conflict, or they simply resist the idea that blacks are the main victims here. Lost in all the posturing, however, is the ancient but still urgent cause of black people's right not just to live where they want, but to have someplace to call home.

—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service

Modern ways to look at race

ST PAUL: Going to the Science Museum of Minnesota was no pleasure trip for Monica Gorde and her four children. The newest attraction, a special exhibit on race, was something she felt they had to see.

Gorde and her adopted children -- three from India, one from Guatemala -- were transfixed as they passed through the exhibit, which argues that differences in skin colour are insignificant.

“My 11-year-old son cannot talk about race,” Gorde said. “I think this visit has been emotionally draining for him. He’s off hiding right now.”

The “Race: Are We So Different?” exhibit that debuted here last week will visit museums around the US over the next five years, including stops in Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. Its creators hope it will help change the way people talk about, view and learn about race.

“We need to see race as a social, historical concept,” said Alan Goodman, president of the American Anthropological Association, which conceived the exhibit. “It no longer makes sense to see it as a biological, genetic concept. Race is not a genetic concept.”

“I hope over time that we can have an impact where we raise the conversation about race to where it’s accurate,” said Yolanda Moses, who was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1995 to 1997, when the group originated the idea for the exhibit amid former President Bill Clinton’s national Dialogues on Race.

The exhibit aims to plumb biological, historical and contemporary dimensions of race. The biological aspects try to show how race is only one among countless human variations, with biology not the determining factor in a population’s skin colour.

“Sunlight and vitamins determine our skin colour, not race,” reads the header on one display.

“People will have different points of view and we will welcome them,” said Robert Garfinkle, the exhibit project leader for the Science Museum.

“Race was not found in nature but made by people in power,” reads one bit of display copy.—AP

Forgiveness better than revenge

MAKKAH: Two men were involved in two separate killings in this holy city. The first murdered his cousin, the second his brother. Both were Saudis, according the Saudi newspaper Al-Madinah.

But families of the murderers tapped into Sharia law called the “Pardon Provisions”, which enables convicted murderers to appeal to the families of the deceased, also known as the “blood-owners”, for forgiveness as instructed by the Holy Quran.

The two cases here could then be transferred to the “Pardon Committee,” a semi-official body formed from public figures and citizens known for their “wisdom, intellect and piety”. These activists try to convince the ‘blood-owners’ to be forgiving.

This system allows the ‘blood-owners’, to offer a pardon in return for a dya, a sum of money or other compensation for the death. They may also offer a complete pardon solely “in pursuit of Allah’s own sake and forgiveness”.

Human Rights Watch has estimated that Saudi Arabia carried out more than 100 executions in 2005. It reports that Saudi Arabia imposes the death penalty for drug-related offences and robbery, crimes which should not be ranked among the most serious. Executions are often carried out by the sword.

But Saudis counter that the practice of “forgiveness” has recently been witnessing a revival as the country sees an upsurge in adherence to Islamic teachings. This means a reduction in the number of executions.

The Makkah “Pardon Committee” reports that with the its two recent successfully resolved cases, the number of pardons country-wide totalled 105 last year. This is in a country of 25.6 million people.

Mohammed Rabei Soliman, a journalist on the Al-Madinah newspaper who has followed such cases over the past 20 years, confirms that the number of victims’ families accepting the pardon process is increasing.

“This is a deeply conservative society that abhors crime. So it only takes gentle reminding of the good aspects of forgiveness for people to embrace the idea. They trust the promise of Allah that those who forgive will be rewarded in this life and in the afterlife,” he said.

But even if the ‘blood-owners’ forgive, the state still has retains rights under the system. A judge may still sentence a murderer to a prison term -- although this is usually no more than three years.

Soliman remembers a case five years ago when the father of a murdered man refused to accept a huge amount of compensation money. He was offered five million riyals (three million US dollars). He also rejected the intervention of powerful public figures and members of the Saudi royal family. Despite all of the public efforts, the father did not choose the pardon option. It just didn’t convince him.” —Dawn/The IPS News Service

Takers for Iraq-Vietnam analogy growing in number

WASHINGTON: Another Vietnam? Defenders of President George W. Bush’s Iraq war policy have long shrugged off such comparisons. But as the war heads toward the four-year mark and a newly empowered Democratic Congress takes aim at presidential spending for more troops, the comparisons are becoming more frequent.

Despite President Bush’s State of the Union appeal for Congress to give his new war strategy a chance, congressional Democrats joined by some Republicans are opposing Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

Congress has clear constitutional authority to declare war and set spending levels. Yet limiting troops or war spending has never been easy. In Vietnam, it took years.

Nine years after Congress in its Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorised President Lyndon Johnson to escalate the Vietnam War, Congress voted in 1973 to cut off remaining funds for combat operations in Southeast Asia. By then, President Richard Nixon had already withdrawn most ground troops.

Nixon was responding as much to terms of the Paris peace accords signed with Hanoi on Jan 27 as to mounting congressional pressure. In 1975, Congress voted to cut off further financial aid to South Vietnam, helping lead to a final push by North Vietnam and the evacuation of remaining Americans.

Both Johnson, a Democrat, and Nixon, a Republican, dealt with a Congress controlled by solid Democratic majorities.

Current anti-war legislation is headed for possible Senate action next week after the Foreign Relations Committee approved it on Wednesday. The resolution lacks teeth, but it would be a strong signal from the newly Democratic-run Congress of disapproval with Bush’s war strategy. Some lawmakers have proposed even stronger legislation that would actually seek to block funds.

While the 58,000 US military deaths in Vietnam dwarf the just over 3,000 US casualties so far in Iraq, the financial costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other military anti-terrorism activities are beginning to rival that spent on Vietnam.

Other similarities: Both wars initially had majority support from Americans that evaporated as the war dragged on without clear-cut victories.

Successive escalation by Presidents Johnson and Nixon were billed as setting the stage for victory, to be followed by “Vietnamisation” in which South Vietnamese forces would stand up as US forces stood down. Sounds like Bush’s game plan for Iraq.

Before a recent admission of mistakes, Bush had been consistently upbeat. So were Johnson and Nixon administration figures, going back to Gen. William Westmoreland’s premature 1969 sighting of a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Just as Iraq is depicted as the central front in a global war against terrorism, Vietnam was portrayed as pivotal in a global war against communism.

“The way in which Iraq is similar to Vietnam is the profound effect this war is having on the military. We have the same problems winning a guerrilla war on the guerrilla’s home turf,” said Jon Alterman, director of Mideast programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The way they are dissimilar is this is a war that has been easy to ignore. It is a war with almost no public sacrifice. It feels like somebody else’s war, it feels remote in a way that Vietnam did not.”

Vietnam flashbacks are becoming a regular part of the war debate raging on Capitol Hill.

Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, evoked his own history as a Vietnam War veteran-turned protester as he dropped a 2008 presidential bid on Wednesday, saying he wanted to stay in the Senate to continue to oppose Bush’s war policy.

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, another Vietnam vet, called Bush’s planned increase of 21,500 troops “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

Some of the president’s congressional allies are talking about Vietnam too. “We were able to walk away from Vietnam. If we walk away from Iraq, we’ll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world’s most volatile region,” said Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam and a 2008 presidential hopeful.

The amount spent on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other anti-terror activities tops $500 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. Another $100 billion request is going to Congress next month.

The total is fast approaching the cost of the Vietnam War, roughly an inflation-adjusted $614 billion in today’s dollars.

A bookkeeping manoeuvre helped Johnson cloak the true cost of the Vietnam War from Americans. He had the Social Security Trust Fund -- then running a large surplus -- added to the government’s regular budget. That turned a war-driven deficit into a small surplus in 1969.

“There was no doubt that Johnson used a gimmick to hide what would have been an even larger deficit under the old rules,” said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.

“In this case, there are huge attempts to hide the costs of the Iraq war. The budgets the president submits every year don’t include the costs of the war. They’re only included after they are approved,” Collender said.

The Bush administration has submitted a series of emergency “supplemental” appropriations bills to pay for the war. The administration insists, however, that the $100 billion installment next month will be the last, and that from now on war costs will be included in the regular budget.

In the 1970s, Congress began putting limits on presidential war activities, rescinding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passing the War Powers Act, prohibiting combat operations in Cambodia and Laos, even capping the number of ground troops. But the war for the most part continued until the final cutoff of funds.

“Getting out of a war is still dicier than getting into one, as President George W. Bush can attest,” wrote Melvin R. Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defence.—AP

China aims to become leader in science

BEIJING: Celebrated as the inventor of development milestones such as the compass and printing, China is aspiring to become a global player in science and technology in the 21st century, casting off decades of neglect of academia and political persecution of intellectuals.

A leading British think tank predicted this month that China is on the way to becoming a scientific superpower, thanks to the massive increase in its spending on research and a trend for scientists to return home from abroad.

“The centre of gravity of innovation has started moving from the West to the East,” the newly released report by the London-based Demos, ‘The Atlas of Ideas: Mapping the New Geography of Science’ says. It went on to warn that the pre-eminence of the United States and Europe in scientific innovation could no longer be taken for granted.

Demos report is not the first one to pinpoint China’s efforts at reviving its scientific capabilities. A recent study from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) claimed that in 2006 China had overtaken Japan as the world’s third largest spender on research and development (R&D) after the United States and European Union, spending a total of 136 billion US dollars.

The drive to implement the concept of “scientific development” has indeed become one of the tenets of China’s top leadership in recent years. President Hu Jintao has called on China to transform itself into an “innovative country” by 2020. The government’s target for China to establish itself as a scientific powerhouse is 2050.

The top leadership’s ambitious agenda has resonated with the public. A recent TV documentary broadcasted by the Chinese Central Television ‘The Rise of the Great Nations’ received high rates of approval for showcasing innovation as a key element in creating a superpower.

“We need to undo the influence of our Confucian heritage in thinking that dutifully pursuing knowledge is everything,” wrote one anonymous netizen on Internet forum. “The examples of the US and Japan show that only by fully embracing technology and science can a country achieve great power.”

Optimistic projections aside, in terms of concrete scientific achievements China’s figures are less impressive. In 2005, China ranked No.10 globally in the number of international patent applications filed, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation. According to government statistics, the same year China spent only 30 billion dollars on research and development.

Experts believe the surge in research spending in 2006 reported by OECD is partly tied to foreign companies moving some of their research operations to China, and to the fact that a lot of research talent and advance equipment is internationally mobile.

Chinese government officials have tried for years to persuade multinationals to invest in local research sites but these efforts have been hampered by the weakness of China’s intellectual property (IP) protection regime. The United States has complained for years, and recently threatened a WTO copyright case against Chinese companies producing illegal optical disks and computer software.

Nevertheless, government pledges to support scientific development and improve standards of IP protection have succeeded in persuading a range of multinationals, in telecommunications and computer industries in particular, to site their research centres in China. In 2006 many pharmaceutical multinationals such as Pfizer, Roche, Novartis and Bayer announced they are also forging ahead with research initiatives in China.

The trend of outsourcing research and development to China is expected to continue with the country poised to become the second largest if not the largest market in cars, mobile phones and other products.

The rising number of multinational research centres, as well as the steady return of Chinese scientists from abroad and the growing pool of China’s own university graduates are seen as some of the factors that would determine China’s emergence as a scientific superpower, according to Demos report.

“Beijing’s university district alone has as many engineers as all of Western Europe, and you can imagine how dynamic the potential is,” James Wildson, co-author of the Demos report, was quoted by the official ‘China Daily’.

The Chinese leadership has unveiled plans to boost investment in scientific research and development to 900 billion yuan (116 billion dollars) by 2020. By then, Beijing hopes research spending would account for 2.5 per cent of GDP.

—Dawn/The IPS News Service

Ray gun to make enemy drop his weapon

LONDON: The American military has unveiled its latest hi-tech weapon -- a virtual flame-thrower on top of a Humvee that microwaves enemies at 500 paces.

American defence experts are also developing artificial black ice to put the skids under adversaries.

The ray gun, which is supposed to be harmless, is designed to make people feel they are about to catch fire and drop their weapons.

The futuristic new weapon, called the Active Denial System, was tested on Wednesday on ten journalists who volunteered to be fired at.

Airmen zapped beams from a dish on a Humvee at the volunteers. They were treated to a blast of 54 degree centigrade heat, that was said not to be painful but intense enough to make them feel they were about to ignite.

The test was carried out at a distance of 500 yards -- nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets.Military officials say it would help save lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is not expected to go into production until 2010.

“This is one of the key technologies for the future,” said Marine Colonel Kirk Hymes, director of the non-lethal weapons programme which helped develop the new weapon.

“Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force, especially in the environments our forces are operating in.”

The system uses tiny waves, which only penetrates 0.4mm of the skin, just enough to cause discomfort. By comparison, common kitchen microwaves penetrate several centimetres of skin. The system was developed by the military, but the two devices currently being evaluated were built by defence contractor Raytheon.

Airman Blaine Pernell, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk.

“All we could do is watch them,” he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops “could have dispersed them”.

A new document from the US Defence Advance Research Projects Agency (Darpra) also reveals a programme to come up with spray-on “polymer ice” to cause pursuing enemies and their vehicles to skid and slide. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service