Time to review foreign policy

AS Pakistan sizzles, as it should in the month of August and also in the heat of political controversies that need not have been there, an unseasonable squall of allegations and threats from the United States has also hit it. The people of Pakistan simply do not know where they stand in the comity of nations.

The much trumpeted non-Nato ally status of the country is buffeted mercilessly by the Indo-US nuclear deal, the offer of F-35 aircraft to India and Israel and the frequent warnings that the United States would not respect the international frontier if it needs to take out targets on Pakistan’s soil.

The average Pakistani has never accepted at face value the eloquent claims made by the president, prime minister and the foreign policy establishment of Pakistan that they have pulled off a coup that no previous government ever managed — the coup, a veritable miracle, of forging a strategic partnership with the sole superpower of our times and the greatest military power of all times that is immune to the vicissitudes of international politics and power shifts.

Amongst the more informed of Pakistanis, an increasing percentage has long since stopped treating seriously constructs like the war on terror and concluded that led by the United States, the West is waging a war for the re-conquest of the Broader Middle East and that Pakistan’s imprudent plunge into it has sucked it into a conflict that its prime movers expect to last at least a whole generation.

A third element that is earnestly engaged with the national situation and is equipped with sufficient tools of social, political and economic analysis knows all too well that only a broad coalition — perhaps nothing less than a government of national reconciliation — can reverse the self-destructive forces that a military-dominated regime has unleashed in Pakistan during the last eight years.

The state does not seem to have the capacity to solve any of the more daunting problems of the nation ranging from the defence of national sovereignty to the question of provincial autonomy and on to more mundane things like the generation of enough power to sustain a GDP rate of growth that can keep the country afloat.

In the midst of Pakistan’s gravest crisis since the secession of Bangladesh, the nation is grappling with a number of highly important issues. It is seeking ways and means by which the political dispensation that emerged as a consequence of the military putsch of October 1999 would after eight long years become compatible with the Basic Law of the land. It involves reference to the people and probably a simultaneous intervention by the highest courts of law. Events demand a fresh balancing of civil-military relations. In the provinces, the question being frequently asked is if the arrangements set out in the Constitution of 1973, even if it is fully restored, meet their idea of a true Pakistani federation.

The emphasis laid by the government on battling religious militancy to justify its participation in the American war in Afghanistan has become a self-fulfilling prophecy; the battlefield now obligingly spans both sides of the Durand Line.

Pakistani soldiers die every day in a conflict that neither the executive nor the parliament can accurately define. The process began with the claim that the alternative to jumping into this cauldron was to be bombed into the Stone Age.

It is petering out into an equally arbitrary division of the nation into moderates and extremists, a polarisation that may perpetuate for some more time the stranglehold on power of an oligarchy but will at the end of the day sow the seeds of the destruction of Pakistan as a nation-state.

Judged against this menacing backdrop, the avalanche of statements from US officials, Congress, individual politicians including aspirants to the office of the president of the United States, think-tanks and media figures is just about the most unfriendly thing that the people of Pakistan could imagine at this hour.

When Professor Stephen Cohen wrote his ‘Idea of Pakistan’, he made a case for a gentle if sustained American engagement with Pakistan with a view to encouraging positive transformative social and political processes. What is happening at present is an attempt to bludgeon Pakistan into something that nobody defines.

In terms of ground realties, it is a crude attempt to embroil the Pakistan army into an endless and, by definition, no-win conflict with a substantial part of the nation.

The worst explanation offered to the people of Pakistan is that Barack Obama’s promise to do to Pakistan that which was warded off in 2001 and Congressman Tancredo’s repeat prescription of solving problems of our times by obliterating Makkah and Madina are unsavoury aspects of American electioneering.

So far Ms Clinton has not tried to influence the Italian-American vote by undertaking to drop a smart nuclear blockbuster on the Vatican. She will not even think of doing it because she knows that this is no way to go about it in an educated, informed and sophisticated political culture. So how has the destruction of Pakistan become a short cut to power and influence in American politics? Not even Fidel Castro’s Cuba has ever been invoked with such abandon to set the stage for an American election.

Is this bizarre undercurrent in American politics today intrinsic to their own culture — some grotesque mutation of Islamophobia — or is it the bitter harvest of the claims made by Pakistan’s leaders that without them in absolute command, 160 million Pakistanis would, to the last man and woman, become a horde of terrorists, the new barbarians at the gate?

Step aside the lunatic fringe of American politics and look for the truly sophisticated enclave of western strategic opinion. Consider the following from the July 31 report of the International Crisis Group: “The (Pakistan) military’s recent onslaught against the higher judiciary is the latest manifestation of a policy of subordinating countervailing state institutions which is producing a failing state that endangers its own and its region’s security. The alternative is a country ruled by democratically-elected governments, with the legitimacy and popular support to take it back to its moderate roots. That country would be far less a threat to itself or to neighbours.”

This report does not prescribe cross-border raids but asks the international community to support what millions of Pakistanis who came out to support an honourable restoration of the Chief Justice of Pakistan demanded: ‘Pakistan’s internal cohesion requires an elected civilian government with the legitimate authority to resolve ethno-religious and other political conflicts within the institutional framework of the state’.

There is, however, another view too that has gained wide currency in the United States. It is articulated day in and day out and may well explain the tone and tenor not only of Congressmen whose knowledge of the region is at best perfunctory but also of officials like Frances Townsend and Mike McConnell who have on their tables the quintessential wisdom (remember the irrefutable intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?) of 16 intelligence services or Mr Burns who presumably can read in real time many of the dispatches that pour into Washington from its diplomatic posts abroad.

An instant illustration of that viewpoint is the following observation in Carnegie Foundation’s just published ‘Rethinking Western Strategies Toward Pakistan’, presumptuously sub-titled : ‘an action agenda for the US and Europe’: “Pakistani military leaders have mobilised religious parties, militant foreign ‘freedom fighters’, and other players to get and keep national power and resources. They also have adeptly used their external vulnerabilities — to the Soviet Union and, more recently, to Al Qaeda and ‘bearded mullahs’ – to elicit US support and assistance”.

In its own words, the report makes the case that the Pakistani state bears responsibility for the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, the resurgence of the Taliban, terrorism in Kashmir, and the growth of jihadi ideology and capabilities internationally.

I have mentioned two reports that have very different motives and objectives. Different as they are, they identify one common dynamic at work: Pakistan’s present predicament has an internal provenance and that the country needs a return to democracy.

The recent onslaught on Pakistan was severe enough to bring a strong riposte from its leaders. A well-considered estimate of the implications of Indo-US nuclear deal for Pakistan has come from the national authority responsible for strategic weapons.Expressions of dismay in Pakistan have led to a typical American zigzag of public utterances but the last word in any cluster of statements is a reiteration of allegations. One wonders if President Musharraf pointed out to President Bush that the last word at the moment of that conversation by phone was not that of weary half-crazed aspirants for party nomination for the presidential election but from Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns.It would be out of character for President Musaharraf to have asked this question. But let the national parliament redeem itself in its dying hours with an honest review of our foreign policy. The temptation to compete in expressing righteous indignation at the outrageous remarks about Kaaba and Madina would be great but it must be restrained so as to focus on urgent matters of our medium-and long-term policy.

More than a billion Muslims all over the world know how to defend Makkah. Let our legislators raise their voice in defence of the sovereignty of Pakistan before they ride into history. Let them show the path to an executive that has entangled itself in webs of its own making.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Tracing the roots of the malaise

THE Lal Masjid incident is symbolic of the malaise afflicting Pakistan and has the potential of tearing the country apart. Understanding the affliction and how it came to spread in the body politic is the first step before administering a prescription.

The roots of the malady can be traced back to 1979, the events of this tumultuous year proved defining in the development of Muslim societies.

On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, spearheading the revolution, returned to Iran after the Shah fled. On April 4, 1979, the military government of General Ziaul Haq executed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the elected prime minister of Pakistan. Whilst clergy rule in Iran had popular support, General Ziaul Haq’s anointment was a marriage of convenience between the military and the mullahs with little or no public support.

On November 20, 1979, Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, was taken over by heavily armed extremists, led by Juhayman al Otaibi. Juhayman alleged that the ruling Al-Saud dynasty had lost its legitimacy having become corrupt, ostentatious and westernised. Armed intrusion into the holy site was made in the name of Islam, despite Quranic strictures against violence and bloodshed within the area of Al Masjid-Al Haram in Makkah.

Shah Khalid secured a fatwa (religious opinion) from the ulema after three days permitting the use of arms in the holy place, but the Saudi Arabian National Guards failed to regain control despite many casualties. The Saudi government then called upon the Pakistani forces stationed in Saudi Arabia for assistance. In the ensuing battle, 250 people died and 600 were wounded.

The Pakistani military action proved successful. Juhayman was killed and his fellow rebels who survived were handed over to the Saudi authorities. Except for one all 123 militants were publicly beheaded and their executions were broadcast live.

The only person released was the influential Mahrous bin Laden (Osama bin Laden’s half brother) who had assisted the rebels in smuggling weapons into Makkah in trucks belonging to the Bin Laden family companies. Guns were smuggled into the area of the Kaaba in coffins, and bullets came wrapped in dates.

On November 20, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini stated in a broadcast that the United States of America was behind the seizure of the Kaaba. On November 21, 1979, an enraged mob in Islamabad, after a five hour siege of the US embassy, destroyed it. That day all security personnel in Islamabad had been deployed to protect General Ziaul Haq, who was taking a bicycle ride.

Juhayman distributed pamphlets (printed in Kuwait) entitled ‘Saba Rasail’ (‘Seven Letters’) outlining the basic tenets of his violent and extremist ideology. A similar ideology was espoused by those in control of the Lal Masjid. Islamic teachings should be employed to expose these flawed ideologies. The 1979 Makkah events demonstrate that even a small unknown extremist group can hold a state hostage and rupture society.

In December 1979 the Soviet military invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia came together to fight the Soviets and the Moscow-backed Marxist regime. Jihadis or Mujahideens were recruited for the purpose. Washington provided the weapons and training, Riyadh funnelled the money and Islamabad the crucial ground and logistics support. The outcome was a resounding success for the Americans as the only competing superpower keeled over and sank.

However, Pakistan did not benefit from this historic moment. Instead, the country was inundated with guns and heroin, and some in the army became fabulously rich. General Zia and his coterie also sought to perpetuate themselves and commenced the transformation of state institutions and the political landscape, digging their heels into the peoples’ flanks after subjugating them.

Judges of the superior judiciary were required to take an oath of loyalty to General Zia. The independence of the judiciary was further corroded by creating a parallel system of courts, the three tiered Sharia courts. National unity and cohesion were ruptured by the duplicitous use of religion, and masquerading laws in Islamic terminology (Hudood, Qisas and Diyat Ordinances and Qanun-i-Shahadat Order), but which in fact parodied Islam. Zia divided society vertically and horizontally.The Constitution was amended and for the first time since the country’s creation, and contrary to all that the Quaid professed, separate electorates for Muslims and adherents of other faiths, were introduced.

National political parties were targeted whilst parochial, ethnic and regional parties were encouraged. Sectarian beliefs of citizens, too, became the business of the state. For instance, only those belonging to a particular sect were compelled to pay zakat. Zia’s religious mentors drew their religious inspiration from centres embedded in India, whose followers had openly opposed Jinnah and his Muslim League.

General Zia aligned himself with extremist forces to counter the challenge from mainstream political forces. He used the state’s security and intelligence apparatus to both support and create militant entities. He gave possession of the Lal Masjid land to the two brothers, who in the heart of the capital flouted the state and its laws. The brothers gained further strength when a stalwart of this government and son of the same army chief intervened to stop criminal cases being registered against them after illegal and prohibited weapons were discovered in their vehicle.

It was not surprising that Ejazul Haq was delegated to liaise with the two brothers, his father and he having created the phenomenon that they had become. GHQ, too, felt comfortable that the matter was attended to by the son of its former chief. But extremism spurned the favours that had been bestowed and Ejazul Haq failed miserably.

For Zia, the state always came second. Political forces were squashed whilst those brandishing guns (whether pseudo religious, ethnic, sectarian or tribal) were encouraged. This was without precedent; division and extremism is anathema to any state, government or authority. Extremism from the earliest times has plagued Muslim societies, but in our case the rulers themselves fed and encouraged it.

Members of a ‘puritanical’ Muslim sect, that came to be known as the Kharijis, would murder anyone, including the companions of the Prophet (PBUH), whom they thought were not following the ‘true path’.

Abdul Rahman ibn Muljam struck a blow to Hazrat Ali’s head, cleaving his skull, in the mosque of Kufah during Ramazan in the 40th year of the Hijra. Four years earlier, the third caliph Hazrat Usman ibn Affan was quietly reciting the Quran at home when he too was murdered by a Muslim.

The Kharijis resolutely stuck to their extremist views making no concessions; self-righteousness, narrow vision, an obdurate mind and a constricted heart resulted in unbridled hate. This is the same attitude that one finds reflected in the mindset of the Lal Masjid brigade and all those who seek compulsion in religion, forgetting Quranic proscriptions to the contrary.

Stratocracy not only runs Pakistan but has become its principal thinker and strategist, however, regrettably without the prerequisite knowledge of Islam and history. Skewed doctrines like ‘strategic depth’ that emanate from deep within the intellectual brain of the nation (the ISI) perish when put to the test. The extremist ideology and groups that General Ziaul Haq employed have begun to undermine the state. These very entities have come back to bite the hand that fed them. Former proxies are turning rogue; Zia’s instruments are now in business for themselves.

Extremists are committed to overthrowing the government and destroying Pakistan, but the government continues to live in a fool’s paradise and views the Pakistan People’s Party and the genuine Pakistan Muslim League as its enemies. Is it not time to openly invite the leadership of Pakistan’s two main political parties into the country to help develop national consensus against extremism and violence in all its forms (including its secular version that was witnessed in Karachi on May 12)?

Closeted in secret negotiations, bartering the state for personal benefits is abhorrent to the people. Citizens need to be involved and empowered to shake off the monster of extremism. Leaders with petty personal interests will not douse the suicide bomber’s determination to his cause.

The people of Pakistan want to know from General Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, the military, ISI, et al, whether the legacy of General Ziaul Haq will continue to be honoured or will Pakistan and its people be placed first, since it has been irrefutably established that both are diametrically opposite.

A tale of two poles

THE world's children may soon be needing to write to Santa Claus in Russian if Moscow's claim to the North Pole, made last week without a trace of humour, is realised, giving new life to the phrase "cold war".

No sooner had the Russians made their announcement than the US Coast Guard said it would be dispatching an icebreaker to the Arctic on a "research mission" this week.

Sending submarines to the pole to plant a Russian flag on the seabed more than two-and-a-half miles down is all very well, but ignores the fact that there are four other countries with territory inside the Arctic Circle: Canada, Norway, the United States and Danish Greenland. Under the UN convention on the Law of the Sea, they also have economic rights to a zone up to 200 miles from their respective coasts. In a rare moment of foresight, George Bush urged Congress as long ago as May 15 to belatedly ratify the convention as it was in "America's best interest" to do so.

Canada's foreign minister, Peter MacKay, dismissed the Russian claim out of hand: "This isn't the 15th century," he said. "You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say, we're claiming this territory." It isn't the 16th century either, or the 17th, 18th, 19th or 20th, in all of which many a territorial grab was made by going ashore and planting a flag.

Britain has a long record in this field, most recently in 1955, when it formally hoisted a flag on the uninhabited island of Rockall, 250 miles north-west of Ireland. The claim was disputed by Ireland, Denmark and Iceland. In the Falkland Islands, the union flag planted there in 1833 was the third colonial banner to go up. The French and Spanish flags preceded it, but the Royal Navy applied force majeure. The Argentinian colours taken ashore 25 years ago spectacularly failed to take root, but the challenge to British sovereignty has not gone away.

Jamming a flagpole in the sand brings no guarantee of permanence. Sri Lanka was held in turn by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, each for about 150 years, before independence. European powers hoisted their colours over vast swaths of the Americas, Africa and Asia, but all these territories have long since hauled down the colonial banners and gone their own way.

If there were any justice, Australia would be called New Holland, thanks to the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman. He was the first to sail round the island continent, going ashore in various places. He also "discovered" New Zealand (600 years after the Maoris), which through its name retains the link with the Netherlands, even though it was the union flag that was hoisted there in 1840. His posthumous consolation is the Tasman Sea and the island of Tasmania.

The most famous flag planter in British history was surely Captain James Cook, who laid claim to the east coast of Australia in 1770, in good time to provide an advance solution to the problem of the authorities at home, who would soon have to find somewhere else to dump convicts, after the American declaration of independence in 1776.

His last voyage began in that year, when he was sent over the Pacific to look for a passage across the north coast of North America. Pausing only to discover, and suitably beflag, the Sandwich Islands, he got to the Bering Strait, not far from where the Russian subs did their nefarious work last week, before he was forced to turn back. He arrived in Hawaii in 1779 to a friendly reception, which turned sour when he went back ashore to recover a stolen boat and was murdered. Hawaii is the only state in the union to incorporate the union flag in its standard, in Cook's honour.

Mr MacKay may be making a false analogy when he refers to such colonialist efforts because the Russian flag was planted in "inner space" some 5,000 metres under water, a move without precedent (the Americans planted the Stars and Stripes in outer space on the moon in 1969, but with admirable restraint did not lay claim to it).

Vladimir Putin and his submariners would however be well advised not to underestimate the Canadians, who have proved capable of seeing off the mighty US navy. There is a record of a dialogue between them and the USS Abraham Lincoln, a 100,000-tonne nuclear aircraft carrier, which asks the Canadians to divert 15 degrees north to avoid a collision. "Negative," says a Canadian radio voice. "You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision." The US captain describes the awesome assets of his battlegroup and demands compliance "or countermeasures will be taken".

Canadian reply: "This is a lighthouse. Your call." ––The Guardian, London

The writer is a military historian and author of “The Atlantic Campaign.”

Surge in oil price

NINE of the last ten serious downturns in the world economy followed a spike in the price of oil, and we are heading for another spike, with oil back up near the peak of $78.40 a gallon that it reached almost exactly a year ago.

A record number of options contracts are now being sold that entitle customers to buy oil in the future at $100 a barrel. That tells you where the inside players think the price of oil is heading, since those options will only be of value if the price were actually above $100 a barrel.

That is the price that Goldman Sachs, the world's biggest brokerage house, predicted oil would reach by 2009. However, one big negative headline -- further disruption of supplies from Nigeria or Iraq, say -- and oil could be trading at over $100 a barrel by this month. But the concern is not really about oil prices. It's about what more expensive oil will do to the world economy, and the professional optimists are still optimistic.

The spike at $78.40 in July, 2006 didn't cause a recession, so why should this one? Indeed, why would even $100 a barrel cause a global economic crisis, given that one hundred US dollars today is only worth about the same in most other currencies as $78.40 was a year ago?

Oil sales are almost all denominated in US dollars, which are worth almost a third less in euros, pounds or yen than they were two years ago, so the countries of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), are not rolling in sudden wealth. The oil exporters spend most of their income in other currencies, so from their point of view the recent surge in the oil price only restores the purchasing power that they lost over the past two years due to the US dollar's slide.

More importantly, most of the big importers of oil in the industrialised world are not really paying much more for oil than they were two years ago. The rising dollar price has been largely cancelled out by the fall in the value of the dollar, so it's not really busting their budgets.

American consumers are feeling victimised, but they get little sympathy in the Middle Eastern countries that dominate Opec, as most of these governments believe that President Bush's invasion of Iraq has made their neighbourhood a far more dangerous place. Opec is not going to pump more oil out of gratitude for Mr Bush's policies. ––Copyright