Time for joint jirga

REPORTS that the Americans might resort to a military operation inside Pakistan’s western borderlands to avert a repetition of 9/11 as the Pakistani Taliban challenge the writ of the government with impunity should prompt the concerned authorities to consider seriously a move to convene a Pakistan-Afghanistan jirga to defuse the crisis.

In the absence of a road map for combating terrorism and securing the western borderlands, the Pakistan government is threatened not only by Al Qaeda-supported militants but also others who see the country as a front-line state and expect it to play an active role in that capacity. Convening a jirga has also become important in view of the aggressive posture adopted by the governments in Kabul and New Delhi.

Well-placed sources have reported that Washington is exerting pressure on Islamabad to not only agree to a ‘surgical operation’ in the tribal areas but also to the presence of undercover personnel who would provide security to Nato’s oil supplies through Pakistan. This should prompt us to pay heed to the advice of the dynamic Afghan minister of state for parliamentary affairs, Farooq Wardak, who believes there cannot be sustainable peace without including opposition forces in the negotiation process. He told me in Kabul recently that this would be his advice to President Hamid Karzai, while he urged Pakistani authorities to convene a follow-up jirga to resolve contentious issues. The same view is shared by many on this side of the Durand Line but the crisis has been exacerbated by a mishandling of the situation.

Hence the matter was taken up when Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and the prime minister’s interior affairs adviser, Rehman Malik, visited Kabul. Though the authorities in Kabul were assured that a list of Pakistani participants would be sent to them soon, nothing much has happened so far.

It is up to both Pakistan and Afghanistan to act urgently. If a jirga were held Pakistan would have the opportunity to focus on the issue of 2.5 million Afghan refugees, for whom there is no allocation in the $21bn package pledged by the Paris conference.

Since both Kabul and Washington claim there are militant sanctuaries inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, it would be logical for Islamabad to insist that the repatriation and resettlement of refugees in their own country should also be given top priority by Kabul and the international community. Perhaps Pakistan should also come out with a road map in the National Assembly’s upcoming session.

The Afghans believe that the composition of the Pakistani delegation at the jirga does not represent the whole of Pakistan. Aftab Sherpao, who was the interior minister when the jirga was first agreed on, says that when he proposed that representatives from Punjab and Sindh should be included in the delegation, President Musharraf and the foreign minister opposed the idea.

He points out that when the Grand Jirga was held, representatives from Waziristan and Fata MNAs did not visit Kabul “out of fear”. Mr Sherpao is of the view that it will be in the interest of the two countries and the region to convene the follow-up jirga as soon as possible. If the NA decides to draw up a fresh list of participants, or wants the security adviser to head the delegation, he will have no objection.

According to Mr Wardak, negotiations with the militants through the joint jirga stand a better chance of peace. Strangely enough, Kabul wants a role in deciding matters inside Pakistan but is not ready to allow Islamabad a say in the areas on the Afghan side.

Wardak is not the lone voice for a peaceful and negotiated approach to the problem. Afghan legislator Dr Bakhtar Aminzay is among those who share his views. He firmly believes that “if the peace jirga continues between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the situation will get better and the world will also appreciate this.”

When I asked Dr Aminzay how this could be achieved when there is so much mistrust between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and when the government in Kabul and the US-led coalition forces are opposed to dealing with the Taliban, Dr Aminzay said: “If the Taliban are included in the peace talks as a third party, the result will be more fruitful and will bring peace to the area. I think Mr Karzai and America will have no objection if we include the Taliban in the peace talks. We are not foreigners. We are the natives of this country to which we are trying to bring peace. Similarly they will have no objection to having a dialogue with Hekmatyar. These days the US position is weaker than before. It is also undergoing a change as the environment in Afghanistan is also changing. They now want to check the militants and start talks with them.”

Dr Aminzay believes that if Pakistan and Afghanistan cooperate with each other in bringing peace through a jirga, the US position in the area will be weakened and it will be difficult for America to achieve its long-term political objectives. But the question arises, why would the US support a process that would weaken its position and was contrary to its long-term political and security-related objectives in the region?

Dr Aminzay sounded overly optimistic when he said that representatives from Waziristan can be taken on board by sending delegations to them and asking them what they want. But in the prevailing volatile security environment in Fata, where the militants who call themselves the Taliban do not even recognise the authority of the State of Pakistan, how will it be decided who represents Waziristan in the jirga?

Why will the foreigners who have entrenched themselves in the region after being abandoned by the US following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan not try to sabotage a peace process that forces them to surrender and leave the area? There are also elements within Karzai’s ruling alliance, as well as the western coalition, who would like to keep the pot boiling.

Israel’s barrier wall

THE vigour with which the western world is currently moving against individuals and regimes it considers culpable of misbehaviour is striking.

Last week the International Criminal Court (ICC) had been considering an indictment against Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir for alleged crimes against humanity in Darfur. Iran, meanwhile, is threatened with draconian sanctions and/or military action because of its nuclear programme.

China’s human rights abuses against the people of Tibet has brought forth calls for a boycott of the Olympics to be held in Beijing. In May, the Burmese rulers’ neglect of their own people after Burma’s devastating floods was roundly condemned and plans were laid for aid agencies to bypass the Burmese government. And Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is relentlessly pilloried as a tyrant and arch villain and has been made into an international pariah.

Whatever justification there may be for selecting these cases — some would argue against blanket condemnations of Iran’s or Sudan’s leaders — conspicuously missing from the list is Israel. Four years ago this July, the ICC passed a majority decision that Israel’s barrier wall was illegal where it crossed into the occupied Palestinian territory, and called for its demolition and for reparations to be made for the damage it had done to the Palestinians.

Israel started building this wall in 2002 and never kept to the Green Line or 1949 armistice border between it and the West Bank. It dismissed the court’s ruling and pursued its building programme undeterred. Today the wall, projected to be 450 miles long, is more than half complete. It will absorb 9.5 per cent of West Bank territory and, since its course is determined solely by Israeli interest, the resulting carve-up of land has already shattered Palestinian life and agriculture.

For most of its length, the wall is in fact a barrier, a 50-metre-wide barbed wire stretch with electrified sections and deep trenches. Near Palestinian towns it becomes a tall, eight-metre-high concrete wall with watchtowers.

It is an awesome sight, and I was alarmed to see the rapid pace of its construction when I visited the Palestinian areas earlier this month. In the six years since building began, the wall has become an established feature of the Palestinian landscape. To see it in its ugliest and most forbidding manifestations, one must visit the towns of Qalqilya and Bethlehem as I did. In Qalqilya the whole town is encased in the tall slate-grey concrete structure, impenetrable and prison-like. Each road in the town comes to a dead end smack against the wall, which almost blocks out the sunlight.

I never saw anything comparable outside of the Wormwood Scrubs maximum security jail in London. The entrance to Bethlehem, the once picturesque historic city, is deformed by the wall’s huge concrete slabs with their mean and sinister watchtowers. The streets inside are crudely obstructed and cut off from the outside in order to prevent Palestinians from getting near Rachel’s tomb, an ancient burial site of obscure origin which had survived under centuries of Arab rule without walls or barriers. Normal life in these cities is impossible, resulting in the danger of emigration, which anecdotal evidence suggests is increasing.

Israel’s alleged reason for building the wall is to prevent Palestinian terrorism. In fact the aim is clearly to annex the major illegal Jewish settlements to Israel. The wall will enclose 83 per cent of West Bank Jewish settlers in 69 settlements. It will also grab the best Palestinian agricultural land and the major water sources. A map of where these are sited shows how the wall snakes round to enclose them on the ‘Israeli’ side of the barrier.

Trapped in the areas between the old Green Line and the wall there are currently some 10,000 Palestinian villagers. These poor people are cut off from their land, and need permits to leave this no-man’s-land for their basic needs on the ‘Palestinian’ side of the barrier. And most ironic of all, they require residency permits to simply stay in their own homes. The Jewish state regards them as ‘resident aliens’, as if they had been recent migrants and not people who have a natural right to be there. When the wall is completed, there will be 60,000 more Palestinians in this position.

Every one of these actions is illegal under international law. They are also cruel and inhumane. Amidst a catalogue of abuses that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, the wall is distinguished by being the subject of an ICC ruling, a rare event for the record of any state. If ever there was a case of misbehaviour for action by the western world it is this one. Had action been taken, it would have demonstrated a respect for the ICC and the rule of law.

Instead Israel has got off scot-free. Nothing was done to force Israel to halt its wall-building programme and no censure or penalty was ever exacted or proposed. While the practice of western double standards is well documented — the western attack on Iraq is the most blatant — the impunity accorded to Israel is unique. This has allowed Israel’s vicious siege of Gaza to continue, causing widespread starvation, poverty and untold suffering.

It has permitted the routine assaults on ordinary Palestinians, the theft of their land and the destruction of their homes to go unnoticed with scarcely a comment. With such licence, it is not surprising that Israel feels free to do whatever it deems necessary for its well-being. That includes an attack on Iran with untold consequences.

The prospects for peace in this scenario are not promising. In the attempt to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict and stabilise the Middle East, western states have focused on the wrong targets. The current discourse is about Palestinian division, terrorism and corruption, ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’, Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism. The real obstacle to peace is none of these but rather a reckless western indulgence of Israel that puts it beyond the reach of law, justice or morality.

The writer is the author of Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine.

Talibanisation: what kind of war?

LOOKING at the movement of Talibanisation in the Pashtun belt, we find three prominent theoretical frameworks.

First, the Taliban are fighting a war of liberation. Second, the Taliban’s war is to bring about an anti-feudal and anti-capitalist revolution. Third, the Taliban’s war is a fully fledged insurgency that will end in anarchy and chaos. On the basis of observations in Swat and Fata recently, I would like to offer readers some realities regarding these frameworks.

Several Pakistani officials and people from the state intelligentsia have been busy describing the Taliban of Afghanistan as a resistance movement waging a liberation war against occupation forces. Interestingly, this theoretical framework is deemed fit only for the Taliban of Afghanistan and not for the Taliban of Pakistan. These official circles would have us believe that the Taliban movement in Afghanistan does not have any link with the Taliban of Pakistan.

Official circles in Pakistan think that the Taliban movement initially started to bring about some method to the madness perpetrated by Afghan warlords and later switched to the agenda of liberation after US forces dislodged the Taliban in 2001. They conveniently ignore the fact, to quote Ahmed Rashid, that “up to 60,000 Pakistani Islamic students … three-quarters of whom were educated in Pakistani madrassa[h]s” fought alongside the Taliban during the 1990s.

They also ignore the MMA’s avowed support for the Taliban government, and later on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. They want us to forget about the continuum of the Taliban code from the south-eastern parts of Afghanistan to Fata and later on the settled districts of north-western Pakistan. In this way, the pro-establishment writers have tried in vain to justify their not-so-covert support for the Taliban of Afghanistan. Their mindset also sheds light on the slackness, disorganisation and uncoordinated use of force, for ideological and geostrategic reasons, against the Taliban of Pakistan.

The second framework, that the Taliban are fighting an anti-imperialist war, is more interesting than the first. Writers and ideologues in this category offer examples from the Fazlullah militia’s action against the local khans and Baitullah’s strikes against tribal elders.

Irrespective of the classical notion of class war, one is surprised to see that the code for which the Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan are fighting is antithetical to the interests of the very class they are presented to be fighting for. The people living in areas under the influence of the Pakistani Taliban are faced with three core issues: marginalisation and particularisation through the FCR and Pata regulations, need for economic and infrastructural development, and lack of representative governance.

The Taliban movement in Fata and the NWFP wants to replace the FCR and Pata regulations with a medieval legal framework that is reminiscent of the Arab tribal era. If implemented, it will further marginalise the subalterns of the areas under Taliban influence. Moreover, those who are killed in bomb blasts and suicide attacks, and those who are decapitated by this ‘Islamic’ brigade, are none other than the already exploited and marginalised. A careful estimate of those killed in these attacks shows that 80 per cent of them are the subalterns. None of the Taliban outfits has yet come out with a comprehensive charter of demands that addresses the real issues of the people in areas under the influence of militants.

The Taliban in different parts of Fata and NWFP have, however, been busy dishing out vigilante criminal justice. They have come down hard on criminals to get the people’s support but feel comfortable with all those criminals who join their ranks.

The huge presence of criminals in Mangal Bagh’s brigade, Fazlullah’s militia and Baitullah’s army is ample proof of this thesis. The Taliban movement has yet to challenge any economic paradigm that increases disparities between the haves and the have-nots. The militants use lethal modern weapons and other technically advanced war apparatuses, as well as modern vehicles, but despise technology that may interest or benefit the marginalised classes.

It is also a matter of great interest to analysts to visualise the impact of the Taliban’s so-called anti-imperialist war. They have, intentionally or otherwise, paved the way for the American empire to get a foothold in a geostrategically important part of the world.

The talk these days in Washington about raiding Fata and the recent visit by US congressmen who wanted to convince the Government of Pakistan that such raids should be allowed are the culmination of this so-called anti-American war by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A large number of people living in the affected tribal areas have already started aspiring for US intervention as the reality of the Taliban movement and the failure of the local security apparatus to put a stop to it is all too clear to them.

The Taliban movement in Pakistan and other parts of the world is bent on disrupting state institutions without providing for any alternative. It seems to be a full-fledged insurgency which has to be debated in parliament and dealt with accordingly. It is important to keep the following questions in mind while debating the issue of Talibanisation in the Pashtun belt.

Do we want to keep the nation state on the assumption that it will in due course of time develop institutions that will do away with structural violence? If we suppose that nation states like the US, Pakistan, China, Iran, Russia, India, etc are part of the problem then what is the alternative? If we think that nation states have the right to use force against non-state actors to establish their writ and the rule of law, what will be the intensity of the force used? Is it possible for the Pakistani state to single-handedly fight militant organisations that are out to obliterate whatever worthwhile is left in the Pashtun belt? Should we allow the militants leeway on the assumption that they represent a ‘revolutionary force’? Do we want the US to stop all kinds of intervention in the Pashtun belt?

The writer is coordinator for the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.

Khadim.2005@gmail.com

Paris remembers Grace Kelly

ISN’T it great to be living in a thoroughly toxined, blogged and Youtubed age when everyone can afford to be not only beautiful but can also claim to be a writer, a music composer and a film director!

The organisers of The Grace Kelly Years apparently had in mind a finer, more fastidious concept of elegance that was in its final throes anyway 30 years ago and started fading soon after she was gone. It was obviously for this reason alone that the tragic death of the fairytale princess on Sept 14, 1982 following a car accident on the Nice-Monte Carlo corniche is never even evoked in the entire show.

That point is already subtly made in the choice of a black-and-white 1954 close-up for the posters that can be seen today all over Paris. The enigmatic regard slips somewhat distractedly past the right shoulder of the onlooker and one can almost count all the hairs in the naturally arched, bemused eyebrows. There is no botox pout there; the graceful, guileless lips projecting a sunshine of a smile in a most candid manner and the abundant crown of hair simply brushed back, casually.

Grace Patricia Kelly was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, USA to Irish immigrant parents who had made a fortune in the manufacture of bricks. You get to see a jittery, black-and-white motion picture screened at the very entrance of the exhibition starting with her parents’ wedding in 1924, then showing her growing up from a toothy toddler into a slim, tall teenager who appears somehow already awkwardly aware of the gift of a Grecian beauty that was to be bestowed upon her in the coming years. Her father, an athletic two-time Olympics gold medallist, can also be seen donning a bricklayer’s shirt, sporting a trowel and soundlessly yelling “Kelly for Brickwork” into the camera.

There is an entire wall adorned with covers from Life, Paris-Match, Oggi and a plethora of other international magazines, many having ceased publication since. Also laid along the wall is an interminably extended table serving as an album with works by the photographic legends of the day — Howell Conant, Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, you name it. Flanking Grace Kelly are the beautiful people of the epoch — John and Jackie Kennedy, Maria Callas and of course Prince Rainier of Monaco among many, many others.

The space devoted to her film career inevitably takes up a vast section of the exhibition space and many projections of choice excerpts from her movies are made endlessly on dozens of strategically placed screens. Dial M for Murder, The Rear Window, To Catch a Thief and of course The Country Girl for which she was awarded the 1954 Oscar for best actress. You get to see William Holden handing over the golden statuette to her in a screen projection just behind a two-metre-tall reproduction of the Oscar.

The historically minded will be pleased to learn that there are plenty of authentic letters in the show. You get to see handwritten notes from Sir Alfred Hitchcock, President Charles de Gaulle, Jackie Kennedy, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford and so many others congratulating her for her Oscar win, thanking her for the wonderful party the evening before or expressing their profoundest regrets at not being able to attend the party on account of travel or some other previous engagement.

Partying would become such a preoccupation after her marriage to Prince Rainier in 1956, her last movie being High Society with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra the same year, that a disgruntled Parisian journalist, doubtless a leftist, would name Grace Kelly “the Queen of the ephemeral.” She would thankfully accept the compliment and would do all in her power thenceforward to live up to its import. An entire collection of palace invitation cards on display bears irrefutable testimony to this newly discovered but so delectable proclivity.

She would even literally kidnap (on a higher salary, of course) Christian Dior’s chief designer André Levasseur whose new job at the Grimaldi Palace would also consist of designing themes and decors for the princely parties. The two walls of a long corridor display Levasseur’s sketches in a scintillating background of glass cases containing party dresses that he had designed for the princess. In showcases you also have her jewellery and handbags, including a giant-size reproduction of a celebrated handbag called ‘Kelly’ and especially designed for her by Hermès.

A whole section is devoted to the wedding ceremony, complete with photographs, films projected on the screens, her wedding dress and a fully laid dinner table exposing the china, silverware and crystal glasses belonging to the Grimaldi palace. The centres of the plates are pared in rectangles to accommodate tiny screens showing more films of the celebration.

The Grace Kelly Years exposition runs through Aug 16 at Hôtel de Ville. You don’t pay a eurocent to get in but you can spend your profuse cash on souvenirs which are aplenty. The socialist types, surely not to be pleased with all this unabashed display of glamour and wealth, can always buy a black T-shirt, a replica of the one worn by the princess’s father in 1935 and emblazoned with his famous advertising plug: ‘Kelly for Brickwork’.

Amateurs of freak, horror historic coincidences will be thrilled to learn that on the date of Princess Grace Kelly’s death, the 14th of September 1982, just nine days before he was due to take office Lebanon’s President-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated along with 25 of his party members.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.