When Balochistan bleeds, Why Pakistan Doesn’t Feel the Pain? Letter to DT:

Staged drama?

Sir: Last Friday’s failed assassination attempt against Shaukat Aziz makes me wonder if the planners had actually intended to harm him. Terrorists usually do not engage in operations that they think will fail.

But if the intention was not to harm Mr Aziz, then what was the motive?

While I am happy that Mr Aziz survived unhurt, it cannot be denied that he come out a ‘winner’ to some extent. Considered and alien by much of the electorate, he was in desperate need of public sympathy and support. Moreover, he also needed an appropriate vehicle to showcase his strong commitment to this country.

Mr Aziz also won a public relations coup when he announced compensation for families of those killed or injured in the explosion. And while this seems a generous gesture, let us not forget that the finance minister is issuing compensation from public funds. So, why then, can’t long-term funding be found for the 40 percent of our population who lives below the poverty line?

Also, whenever such incidents occur, we are promised independent inquiries, the findings of which will be made public. However, such promises are soon forgotten, thus denying the people of this country our constitutional and democratic rights. The national interest of this country is our national interest. Isn’t it about time that the government took us into it is confidence?
IMRAN HOTIANA
Lahore


Flawed logic

Sir: I write in response to Imran Hotiana’s letter “Staged drama?”, (Daily Times, August 5).I must say that his take on the assassination attempt against Shaukat Aziz is most bizarre.

He says: “Terrorists usually do not engage in operations that they think will fail.” However, there are no certainties when it comes to terrorist strikes. But we do know that the suicide bomber killed a number of innocent people and got close enough to Mr Aziz to kill his driver. And even if we pursue Mr Hotiana’s flawed logic, such a high risk “staged drama” would never have been authorised since Mr Aziz could easily have been killed.

And what was the intention of the suicide bomber if all this were merely staged? Did Mr Aziz’s backers convince the bomber that by blowing himself up, he would inject an invaluable boost to the would-be prime ministers’ political campaign? Shaukat Aziz does not need any sympathy from the masses, and his popularity (or lack of it) makes no difference in the end, for he will become the PM since that has already been decided by President Musharraf.

As for Mr Hotiana’s musings about why long-term funding could not be provided to the “40 percent of our population who lives below the poverty line?”, I would like to point out that there is a difference between providing short-term relief to a handful of victims of terrorism and about 50 million Pakistanis who live below the poverty line. Also,according to the CIA Factbook, 35 percent of our population lives below the poverty line.
TAIMUR M. KHAN
Philadelphia, US


Dramatic timings

Sir: I agree with Imran Hotiana’s that the recent assassination attempt against Shaukat Aziz might have been planned.

Let us consider, while many people, especially in the US, were glued to their television to watch the eagerly awaited Democrat Convention, the news suddenly came that the two Pakistani hostages held in Iraq had been executed. The cynical amongst us may well believe that the timing of the news was carefully calculated to remind the world that Pakistan too is a victim of the war on terror.

Indeed, last year, on December 14, world attention was focused on news of the arrest of Saddam by coalition forces in Iraq. Then suddenly, this news was followed by the announcement that an attempt had been made on President Musharraf’s life. Was this a ruse to send a to Washington that while it may rejoice that at least some breakthrough had been made in its war on terror, it could ill afford to reduce its commitment to the Pakistani leader, who after all, had fought on the right side of this war?

Calling such incidents staged dramas is quite apt. After all, most dramas want to be scheduled when they can be sure of maximum coverage.
MUHAMMAD ISMAIL KHAN
Islamabad

The Door To The Barracks This is a letter in the Pakistan newspaper, The News:

Help me

Zulfiqar Gul

I want to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Can someone vacate his set for me? I am waiting.

Swat

missing_in_action_10@hotmail.com

Why do Pakistani newspapers publish such garbage?? I regularly read this crap in The News and The Nation. Both are garbage newspapers, but this is just too much.

Welcome to the 21st Century An interesting MSN group on Pakistan Popular Culture History:

http://groups.msn.com/PakistanPopularCultureHistory

A Few Hundred Dollars An interesting MSN group on Pakistan Popular Culture History:

http://groups.msn.com/PakistanPopularCultureHistory

Re-thinking Kashmir An interesting MSN group on Pakistan Popular Culture History:

http://groups.msn.com/PakistanPopularCultureHistory

Dear Sisters, Meet Maria Sharapova An interesting MSN group on Pakistan Popular Culture History:

http://groups.msn.com/PakistanPopularCultureHistory

Pakistan and Civil Society Daily Times, 6/26/04

EDITORIAL: Don’t keep Bihari refugees in a black-hole

Press reports from Bangladesh say thousands of Bihari refugees protested in Dhaka on June 24 and demanded that they either be repatriated to Pakistan or given Bangladeshi nationality. The refugee leaders also said they wanted a tripartite meeting among Pakistan, Bangladesh and the representatives of the refugees to sort out this issue immediately. Nearly 250,000 ‘Bihari-Pakistanis’ remain stranded in Bangladesh and live in abject poverty in 66 camps scattered in 13 districts of that country. How should Pakistan respond to their plight?

In all fairness to Dhaka, the onus of responsibility for these Bihari-Pakistanis lies with Islamabad while much of the blame for their present plight must also be apportioned to the Bihari-Pakistani leaders themselves. But before we go any further, let’s take a look at the genesis of the problem.

Some one million Biharis first came to Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, in October-November 1947 after nearly 30,000 were killed in what came to be known as the ‘Great Bihar Killing’. Most of them were from the eastern Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim, according to a South Asia Forum for Human Rights report quoting official BD documents on the refugees. Until 1971, it is generally accepted that these refugees did not assimilate and remained a distinct cultural-linguistic group. To that extent they were closer to and identified with West rather than East Pakistan’s Bengali (now Bangladeshi) culture. There is evidence that they also enjoyed official patronage. Later, with the Urdu-Bengali controversy emerging, the Biharis definitely got the upper hand after the Pakistan government announced Urdu as the official language of the country. On the language issue too (and the riots that would break out periodically) the Biharis sided with West Pakistan. Similarly, on the political front, in the 1954 provincial elections as well as in the 1970 general elections, they supported the Muslim League.

Things came to a head in 1970-71. The Biharis supported the military action against Bengali insurgents and some even participated actively against the Mukti Bahini. The resentment that was growing among the Bengalis (Bangladeshis) against them resulted in the killings of Biharis by the Bengali nationalists during and after the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Most of them were displaced and their properties taken over by the Bengalis. It was not until mid-1972 that nearly a million of them were domiciled in camps through a presidential order.

Later, the same year, Dhaka offered them citizenship through a Presidential Order. Bangladeshi official records say some 600,000 accepted this offer while 539,669 Biharis “registered with the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) opting to return to their ‘country of nationality’ — Pakistan” (SAFHR report). Under international law, henceforth they were Pakistanis. But Islamabad did not show much interest in the issue then. However, it was forced to look at it seriously when Dhaka linked diplomatic relations with Islamabad to repatriation of those Bihari refugees that had opted for Pakistan. Under the 1973 Delhi Agreement as well as in the Tripartite Agreement of 1974 Pakistan agreed to receive these refugees. As part of this agreement, the “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) facilitated the return of 108,750 Bihari refugees by June 1974” but had to suspend operations for lack of funds. The issue could also not be resolved in the 1974 Bhutto-Mujib summit and has since then hung fire. It is periodically visited but nothing has come out of it.

At this point it is important to go back to the question of what can be done. Pakistan needs first to feel responsible for these refugees. However, taking them in at this stage is a difficult though not impossible option for a number of reasons, not least because of Pakistan’s internal problems. An attempt was made by the Nawaz League government in the early 1990s to get some of these refugees and settle them in the Punjab. But that did not work because there are no jobs in the Punjab and because of ethnic, linguistic, economic and cultural reasons these refugees will always tend to drift to Karachi in the south. But that city has already become a tinderbox. Its infrastructure is crumbling under the weight of irresponsible governance and migration to it of Pakistanis from across the country. Thus there is no way it can accommodate these refugees without further sociological upheaval. Already, nearly 100,000 Biharis have illegally migrated to Pakistan and are living on the fringes of socio-economic life in Karachi.

After decades of living in Bangladesh, it is realistic to make efforts to get these people to assimilate in that country. Those Biharis who refused in the seventies to take up Dhaka’s offer now realise they may have made a mistake. Given their plight they cannot be made to suffer the consequences of it any more. They may not be averse to accepting a similar offer now. This is where Pakistan needs to start shouldering its responsibility not only in terms of helping Dhaka bear the financial burden of these Biharis but also in finding money from international sources to help Bangladesh absorb them. In the final analysis, of course, Pakistan must make arrangements to receive those among them who still insist on coming to Pakistan, despite any demographic problems that they may unwittingly create in their chosen homeland (Pakistan).

The stranded Biharis represent a human tragedy and neither Dhaka nor Islamabad can allow so many people languish in a black-hole. The Awami League government in Bangladesh has generally tended to flog this issue to score points against Pakistan. It will perhaps be easier for Pakistan at this point to take up this issue seriously with the present government of prime minister Khaleda Zia. There are of course problems on all sides but the gravity of the situation demands that a process be initiated in good faith that aims at ending this human tragedy. *

Pakistan and Civil Society The tragedy of Bihari-Pakistanis

Sir: This is in reference to your editorial ‘Don’t keep Bihari refugees in a black-hole’ (Daily Times, June 26). While there are a number of things that can be done to ameliorate the plight of the Biharis, it should be clear to all parties that inaction is not an option. As your editorial cogently points out, the effort to help these stranded Pakistanis has to be a collaborative one between the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh, International Organisations and NGOs. However, the lead on the issue has to be taken by Pakistan, and this crucial factor has sadly been missing in the last few decades.

Some organizations have been formed specifically to deal with this issue. One such recently formulated charitable organisation is the Texas-based ‘Stateless People in Bangladesh’ (www.statelesspeopleinbangladesh.net). In and of themselves, these organisations cannot solve the issue. They can, however, be very useful in raising awareness and money. They can facilitate the process to a great degree. The Pakistan government would do well to form a department to oversee the ‘Bihari’ issue and coordinate with all the different organisations working on this issue.

It is imperative that the Pakistan government realised the gravity of the situation and its own responsibility. It must initiate a serious process that seeks to rectify this unacceptable situation that has been allowed to persist for more than three decades. A solution would obviously require compromises from all parties and may include repatriation of a number of people and financial packages (to help in the integration process) for others who wish to stay in Bangladesh.

Before speaking out for Palestinians, I would urge Pakistanis to look at their own region and concentrate on ending this human tragedy. This is not a favour we should be doing to the Biharis; it is our duty to help them, and their right to live in their own country, a right which has been denied them. As they continue to yearn for the land that has denied their very existence, it is up to all of us to undo this great injustice and give them what they deserve; a place to call home.
TAIMUR KHAN
Philadelphia

Open Letter to Prime Minister Jamali Daily Times

EDITORIAL: Dispensing with poor Mr Jamali

Someone is giving General Pervez Musharraf bad advice. Yesterday, even as Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s words that ‘I’m going nowhere’ were reverberating, news came in that he had been nudged to resign. This newspaper had already reported in its June 26 issue that Mr Jamali would resign the same day. But we are not happy to be proved right because we have consistently opposed this move for many reasons. But now that this has happened, let us see why it happened and what may lie in store for General Musharraf’s ‘democracy’.

Mr Jamali’s sacking will certainly breed uncertainty and may even lead to instability. We shall have an interim prime minister in Chaudhry Shujaat and then General Musharraf will move heaven and earth to get Shaukat Aziz elected from a ‘safe’ National Assembly seat so that he can become prime minister and dance to General Musharraf’s tune. Meanwhile, the opposition will join hands to thwart this move and allegations of ‘rigging’ will rent the air and boycotts will follow in the assembly. In the end we shall have not one (General Musharraf) but two ‘leaders’ who will have been thrust on the nation by reason of the brute force that General Musharraf enjoys because Mr Aziz will be even more of a party ‘loner’ than Mr Jamali ever was.

We hear that General Musharraf was unhappy with Mr Jamali’s inability to deliver and reduce the level of political opposition to him. If this is true then we are surprised at General Musharraf’s reasoning. First, he created a system where the prime minister is less than even a figurehead; then he handpicked Mr Jamali because the latter was thought to be most pliable; now he was peeved at Mr Jamali’s seeming inability to deliver. And pray, how might Mr Aziz be better at delivering General Musharraf’s political agenda where Mr Jamali failed because General Musharraf was not prepared to give to the prime minister what is due him in a parliamentary system?

Take a look at a whole range of issues from the negotiations on the Legal Framework Order to the peace process with India. Did anyone see Mr Jamali’s imprimatur on anything? He was there simply to do as the ‘boss’ wished and he did this admirably. Then how can his ‘performance’ or the ‘lack of it’ be used to indict him?

But there may be another perspective to this whole affair. General Musharraf seems disinclined to honour his legal and constitutional commitment to shed his uniform by December this year. That is clear by now even though he has tried to be circuitous on the issue every time the question has been put to him. It seems that he thinks, or has been made to think, that this would require a re-booting of the system. Seen from this perspective, Mr Jamali’s sacking should merely be the first step towards ‘other’ measures that might follow.

The foremost opposition to General Musharraf on the issue of the uniform will come from the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal with whom he made the commitment as part of the deal on the LFO. Now, while General Musharraf has made it clear that he does not think he is beholden to the MMA because the alliance has not kept its end of the bargain by opposing the NSC, the fact is that General Musharraf’s commitment is now legal and he cannot simply shrug it off without precipitating a constitutional crisis. The MMA has already refused to participate in the proceedings of the NSC and the only way, going by this logic, would be to decapitate its government in the NWFP and, by extension, the alliance itself. The move itself would entail sacking the NWFP government, ordering re-elections in that province and ensuring that the MMA does not win by playing on the internal fissures of the alliance and rigging the rest.

But the question is: Since much of this is to be done by General Musharraf himself, why get rid of Mr Jamali? The only answer that makes sense is that Mr Jamali was not 100 percent with General Musharraf on the schemes that the latter might want to hatch, from the NSC to the issue of the uniform. General Musharraf likes to clear the decks before the battle and it would make sense from his point of view to pack off anyone who was not fully with him.

But does all this add up to something? For a start it shows how General Musharraf’s much-flaunted system is both arbitrary and frail. He has been in the driver’s seat for over five years now. He has exercised unfettered powers to do as he wished. He has tempered with the system as he pleased. He had all the time in the world to tailor-make it for himself, which is exactly what he has done. In doing this he has put down political opposition and shown complete disregard for legal-normative criteria. But to what end, we may ask?

The system remains riven with inconsistencies and contradictions. The irony is that no matter how much more General Musharraf may try to make it work, it won’t. Why? Because no political system can be made to work without allowing the real and natural political actors to play their role unhampered. The desire to oversee the conduct of the politicians and monitor and corral the political parties simply does not work.

In the event, we cannot help but suspect that there may be a larger and longer-term agenda at stake. Is Mr Shaukat Aziz going to be groomed as General Pervez Musharraf’s ‘running mate’ in a new round of select provincial or general elections next year in which the Muslim League under General Musharraf’s helmsmanship is going to try and whip up a two-thirds majority in parliament to amend the constitution radically and manufacture a hybrid presidential system that fits General Musharraf like a glove? Two clichés come to mind: there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip; and the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. *

Karachi a Pawn EDITORIAL: Taking on the MMA

The new Sindh administration has caught MMA secretary general Maulana Fazlur Rehman at Karachi airport and sent him back to Islamabad. The same treatment was meted out to the MMA’s parliamentary leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad. Reason: the MMA was preparing for a big show of muscle in its ‘peace march’ in the big city yesterday despite the warning from the new chief minister of Sindh, Arbab Ghulam Raheem, that the march would not be permitted. He thought the MMA should hold it in the NWFP where it had its own government. Karachi, he believes, is already on the boil after the recent MMA-MQM clashes. He then went ahead and arrested the secretary general of Jama’at-e-Islami, Munawwar Hassan, who was most likely to stir things up for the new chief minister.

The crisis in Karachi, which began by the MQM and MMA killing each other’s supporters during a by-election, was resolved by President Pervez Musharraf in favour of the MQM. A weak chief minister was removed and the only political governor in the country, the MQM’s Dr Ishratul Ibad, was retained. The MMA had demanded that the ‘terrorist’ governor be removed and the PPP, with the largest representation in Sindh Assembly, be allowed to form the new government. Instead, General Musharraf called the MQM parliamentarians to the presidency Saturday and said ‘yes’ to all their demands arising out of the controversial by-elections. The MQM had issued an ultimatum against possible changes in Sindh which it thought inimical to its political position. Islamabad’s response to the ultimatum was positive, after which the wife of MQM leader Altaf Hussain arrived in Karachi from London, triggering rumours that she may be a kind of precursor of his own return to the country one day.

President Musharraf has been irked by the MMA’s gathering challenge to his authority. He has complained bitterly over its negation of the commitments given during the negotiation of the Legal Framework Order (LFO), especially with regard to the National Security Council (NSC) which the MMA later forced out of the 17th Amendment and then boycotted at the last moment. Many analysts see in the presidential plaint a threat that he may not stand by his own pledge to remove his uniform at the end of the year. The MMA policymaking has been dominated by Qazi Hussain Ahmad who tends to upstage Maulana Fazlur Rehman by holding him to the extremist demands of the constituency that mostly belongs to the latter’s JUI. In the event, it is quite possible that Maulana Fazlur Rehman may live to regret that he allowed Qazi Sahib to run away with the clerical alliance.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad thought that he would put the cat among the pigeons by calling the MQM a ‘terrorist organisation’ and then inviting the PPP to take on Altaf Hussain and his lieutenants in Sindh. But President Musharraf saw through that and moved closer to the MQM, despite its track record and because there are elements of the MQM’s analysis of the political situation in the country that make sense to General Musharraf — the MQM correctly argues that terrorism has come out of jihad and that jihadi terrorists are being covertly supported by the religious parties in the MMA. In the streets of Karachi the two combatants are more or less similar in their style. While the MQM has been known to employ violence to achieve its ends, the Jama’at has been using its street-fighting student wing behind the rhetoric of religion. (Karachi’s secretary-general Munawwar Hassan is a former Jamiat leader like Qazi Sahib.) Thus it appears that President Musharraf has decided to throw the weight of the government behind the MQM to take on the MMA and make it suffer for what it has done to him and his plans for the country’s future.

Karachi’s peace has been bought in the past by meeting violence with violence. Unfortunately this has received the approval of many who see no political solution to a city that continues to be described in international journals as the ‘city of terror’. Violence will not resolve the crisis of Karachi. Disorder returns to the city again and again because violence simply begets more of it and assumes the pattern of a cycle depending on who comes to power. Good governance is the solution provided the politicians allow the administration to act professionally. But we should prepare for more violence between the MQM and MMA. *

Pakistan and Civil Society OP-ED: Change of PM and the future of democracy —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

An entrenched presidency may manipulate the weak political forces to its advantage but it cannot give enough resilience to the political process to cope with the challenges which range from political alienation, economic deprivation, religious and cultural intolerance and terrorism

Nobody was surprised at the June 26 resignation of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali. For the last two months, the presidency was planning to replace Jamali with a new favourite. What surprised most observers during this period was that the presidency did not frame any specific charges against the Jamali government. It seems that some key people in the presidency got alienated from Jamali and decided to get rid of him without taking into account the injurious implications of such a move for the polity. The parliament or the ruling coalition was not involved in initiating this move, although they endorsed it when President Pervez Musharraf decided to nudge Jamali out.

Jamali’s removal reflects three aspects of Pakistan’s current political scene. First, despite the restoration of civilian constitutional rule the president and his army-intelligence affiliates and advisors hold the high cards in the political system. The president occupies a pivotal position in the political system. Strongly believing in the ‘unity of command’, Musharraf makes sure that there is no doubt about who commands the state power. He became quite active in managing state affairs during the last couple of months. The change of prime minister demonstrates his continuing hold on power.

Second, the ruling coalition played no direct role in deciding Jamali’s fate. Although the PML president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, was in contact with the presidency and knew about its political agenda, the key leaders of the ruling coalition and most parliamentarians did not know the dynamics of the politics of change. The decision to remove Jamali was made in the presidency and the ruling coalition went along. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s nomination as prime minister with the approval of the presidency helped create the consensus on the change. There was hardly anybody in the meeting of the parliamentary party of the ruling coalition that asked Jamali to stay on or give reasons for his resignation.

Third, the national assembly was not relevant to the change. The decision was made outside the NA without the active involvement of the ruling party. However, it would approve the decision when the matter is referred to it on June 28. The irony is that the prime minister had to quit two days after the approval of his government’s budget by the NA even though the approval of the budget is always considered a vote of confidence in the government. Many members of the Jamali cabinet are expected to join the cabinet of the new prime minister.

Jamali’s removal can be compared with the dismissal of Khawaja Nazimuddin by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad in April 1953 soon after he got his budget approved by the central legislature. The ruling Muslim League did not object to his removal and reposed confidence in Muhammad Ali Bogra who was summoned from the US to become prime minister. Several members of Nazimuddin’s cabinet joined the new cabinet. Now, Jamali has got a raw deal at the hands of Musharraf and most of his ministers are keen to join the new cabinet.

Jamali was selected prime minister by the presidency in November 2002 to head the first government under the post-military rule political arrangements. He had the qualifications to become prime minister under these arrangements that protected the centrality of Musharraf (president and army chief) to the political process. Jamali had no independent political base and he openly acknowledged his dependence on the president, whom he described as his boss. He maintained a low profile and did not object to Musharraf’s efforts to expand his role in political management and governance. And he did not hesitate to resign when the presidency advised him to do so because he knew that the ruling PML listened to the president rather than to him.

Jamali’s exit can also be interpreted as a setback to the political arrangements crafted by the presidency and its army-intelligence affiliates to civilianise the military rule in October-November 2002. The elections were carefully managed to enable the pro-military PMLQ to emerge as the largest party at the federal level. The presidency was instrumental in creating the ruling coalition led by the PMLQ. Jamali was also its choice. Now, the presidency has abandoned him and wants to bring in a more trusted person.

There was no known political crisis in the country or revolt in the ruling coalition that warranted the change of the prime minister. However, press reports indicated in April 2004 that the presidency wanted to change the prime minister which created uncertainty in Islamabad. The president gradually built pressure on the prime minister and began to spend time in his chamber in the parliament house and held consultations with parliamentarians of the ruling coalition. He also consulted his military colleagues and summoned the first meeting of the National Security Council. The president took these steps to demonstrate that he was in full command of the situation and had the capability to undercut the support of the prime minister, if he defied him.

Initially, the PML leaders like Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain had reservations about the political change. However, he and has close associates could not afford to annoy the president. A dialogue between him and some key personnel of the Presidency removed these reservations and they agreed on Jamali’s successor. Press reports indicate that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s elevation to premiership is an interim arrangement. The presidency will select a prime minister in a month or so. This means the aspirants for the top political job would be cultivating the presidency and some degree of uncertainty would prevail in Islamabad until a prime minister is finally selected.

This episode removes whatever façade of democracy existed in Pakistan. The civilian institutions that came into existence after the 2002 general elections have not been able to acquire autonomous role and depend heavily on the presidency and its strong army-intelligence affiliates and advisors. This was the main reason that nobody in the ruling coalition questioned the role of the presidency in changing the prime minister. They do not want to alienate the presidency by questioning its political management. Some of them do not hesitate to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to Musharraf in parliament and outside.

In this situation, the future prospects of democratic institutions and processes do not seem bright in Pakistan. It is now firmly established that access to power and influence is possible only through co-optation by the presidency and the army-intelligence establishment. The availability of this option makes it difficult for civilian institutions and processes to acquire salience and sustainability.

An entrenched presidency may manipulate the weak political forces to its advantage but it cannot give enough resilience to the political process to cope with the challenges which range from political alienation, economic deprivation, religious and cultural intolerance and terrorism. When the political institutions cannot address the key challenges and are unable to cope with the participatory pressures, they suffer from the crisis of legitimacy which makes it difficult for them to acquire sustainability. This appears to be the fate of the current Pakistani political system.

Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

An Alternative Blow to Terrorism OP-ED: Change of PM and the future of democracy —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

An entrenched presidency may manipulate the weak political forces to its advantage but it cannot give enough resilience to the political process to cope with the challenges which range from political alienation, economic deprivation, religious and cultural intolerance and terrorism

Nobody was surprised at the June 26 resignation of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali. For the last two months, the presidency was planning to replace Jamali with a new favourite. What surprised most observers during this period was that the presidency did not frame any specific charges against the Jamali government. It seems that some key people in the presidency got alienated from Jamali and decided to get rid of him without taking into account the injurious implications of such a move for the polity. The parliament or the ruling coalition was not involved in initiating this move, although they endorsed it when President Pervez Musharraf decided to nudge Jamali out.

Jamali’s removal reflects three aspects of Pakistan’s current political scene. First, despite the restoration of civilian constitutional rule the president and his army-intelligence affiliates and advisors hold the high cards in the political system. The president occupies a pivotal position in the political system. Strongly believing in the ‘unity of command’, Musharraf makes sure that there is no doubt about who commands the state power. He became quite active in managing state affairs during the last couple of months. The change of prime minister demonstrates his continuing hold on power.

Second, the ruling coalition played no direct role in deciding Jamali’s fate. Although the PML president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, was in contact with the presidency and knew about its political agenda, the key leaders of the ruling coalition and most parliamentarians did not know the dynamics of the politics of change. The decision to remove Jamali was made in the presidency and the ruling coalition went along. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s nomination as prime minister with the approval of the presidency helped create the consensus on the change. There was hardly anybody in the meeting of the parliamentary party of the ruling coalition that asked Jamali to stay on or give reasons for his resignation.

Third, the national assembly was not relevant to the change. The decision was made outside the NA without the active involvement of the ruling party. However, it would approve the decision when the matter is referred to it on June 28. The irony is that the prime minister had to quit two days after the approval of his government’s budget by the NA even though the approval of the budget is always considered a vote of confidence in the government. Many members of the Jamali cabinet are expected to join the cabinet of the new prime minister.

Jamali’s removal can be compared with the dismissal of Khawaja Nazimuddin by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad in April 1953 soon after he got his budget approved by the central legislature. The ruling Muslim League did not object to his removal and reposed confidence in Muhammad Ali Bogra who was summoned from the US to become prime minister. Several members of Nazimuddin’s cabinet joined the new cabinet. Now, Jamali has got a raw deal at the hands of Musharraf and most of his ministers are keen to join the new cabinet.

Jamali was selected prime minister by the presidency in November 2002 to head the first government under the post-military rule political arrangements. He had the qualifications to become prime minister under these arrangements that protected the centrality of Musharraf (president and army chief) to the political process. Jamali had no independent political base and he openly acknowledged his dependence on the president, whom he described as his boss. He maintained a low profile and did not object to Musharraf’s efforts to expand his role in political management and governance. And he did not hesitate to resign when the presidency advised him to do so because he knew that the ruling PML listened to the president rather than to him.

Jamali’s exit can also be interpreted as a setback to the political arrangements crafted by the presidency and its army-intelligence affiliates to civilianise the military rule in October-November 2002. The elections were carefully managed to enable the pro-military PMLQ to emerge as the largest party at the federal level. The presidency was instrumental in creating the ruling coalition led by the PMLQ. Jamali was also its choice. Now, the presidency has abandoned him and wants to bring in a more trusted person.

There was no known political crisis in the country or revolt in the ruling coalition that warranted the change of the prime minister. However, press reports indicated in April 2004 that the presidency wanted to change the prime minister which created uncertainty in Islamabad. The president gradually built pressure on the prime minister and began to spend time in his chamber in the parliament house and held consultations with parliamentarians of the ruling coalition. He also consulted his military colleagues and summoned the first meeting of the National Security Council. The president took these steps to demonstrate that he was in full command of the situation and had the capability to undercut the support of the prime minister, if he defied him.

Initially, the PML leaders like Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain had reservations about the political change. However, he and has close associates could not afford to annoy the president. A dialogue between him and some key personnel of the Presidency removed these reservations and they agreed on Jamali’s successor. Press reports indicate that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s elevation to premiership is an interim arrangement. The presidency will select a prime minister in a month or so. This means the aspirants for the top political job would be cultivating the presidency and some degree of uncertainty would prevail in Islamabad until a prime minister is finally selected.

This episode removes whatever façade of democracy existed in Pakistan. The civilian institutions that came into existence after the 2002 general elections have not been able to acquire autonomous role and depend heavily on the presidency and its strong army-intelligence affiliates and advisors. This was the main reason that nobody in the ruling coalition questioned the role of the presidency in changing the prime minister. They do not want to alienate the presidency by questioning its political management. Some of them do not hesitate to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to Musharraf in parliament and outside.

In this situation, the future prospects of democratic institutions and processes do not seem bright in Pakistan. It is now firmly established that access to power and influence is possible only through co-optation by the presidency and the army-intelligence establishment. The availability of this option makes it difficult for civilian institutions and processes to acquire salience and sustainability.

An entrenched presidency may manipulate the weak political forces to its advantage but it cannot give enough resilience to the political process to cope with the challenges which range from political alienation, economic deprivation, religious and cultural intolerance and terrorism. When the political institutions cannot address the key challenges and are unable to cope with the participatory pressures, they suffer from the crisis of legitimacy which makes it difficult for them to acquire sustainability. This appears to be the fate of the current Pakistani political system.

Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

Pessimism with Growth, Why? OP-ED: A social miracle? —Andleeb Abbas

According to Bourguignon redistribution of poverty can only be done under exceptional circumstances, which often involves political violence and can hardly be considered an economic policy option

The Pakistan Economic Survey 2004 makes some interesting revelations. It lists wonderful economic achievements: the economy has progressed and nearly every imaginable indicator has made robust progress. It appears the government got a little carried away by this feel-good factor. Consider.

Based on the findings of the survey, the finance minister made the stunning announcement that the incidence of poverty in the country had decreased by a good 4 percent. The logic behind this achievement is the old-fashioned economic theory that growth eventually has a trickle-down effect and reaches the poor masses.

The interesting fact is that even the proponents of this theory i.e., financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, are revisiting this theory. In a recent presentation aired live at the World Bank Islamabad office, Dr Bourguignon, a French national, presented a contrary view. He claimed that growth alone is no panacea for alleviation of poverty unless such growth is accompanied by redistribution of assets and incomes in order to enable the poor to accumulate financial and human capital.

Bourguignon is the author of a recent book on the impact of economic policies on poverty. His presentation was particularly relevant in the context of Pakistan, a country where land reform is the most pressing issue and which presents a typical case of negative linkage between growth and poverty alleviation and employment generation. As we see in the latest economic survey, GDP has increased by 6.4 percent while unemployment has reached a historic high of 8.2 percent.

According to Bourguignon redistribution of poverty can only be done under exceptional circumstances, which often involves political violence and can hardly be considered an economic policy option. Illustrating the negative correlation between wealth inequality and economic growth, Bourguignon said if rich individuals in a society have access to a credit with a rate of interest of 10 percent, while the poorest face a 50 percent interest rate, all projects with a rate of return of 10 percent or higher will be undertaken by individuals in the first group.

If, however, some wealth were redistributed from the first to the second group, poorer individuals would have less need to borrow and could undertake projects promising a rate of return slightly below 50 percent. In this case, redistribution from the rich to poor would actually generate more investment and/or a high rate of return of capital with benefits accruing to the beneficiaries as well as the society. For example, the poor people cannot offer their children good education, cannot obtain loans to start a business and cannot afford insurance, however profitable their enterprises may be. Countries with a high poverty headcount or an unequal distribution of wealth, thus under-utilise their productive and growth potential to a greater degree than countries with fewer poor people or with a more equitable distribution. This equation thus also results in sub-optimal investment levels.

The countries that experienced the sharpest drops in growth after 1975 were those with divided societies and weak institutions, crippling the ability of their political system to respond effectively to external shocks. As is also the case with Pakistan, these countries failed to invest in human and social development when growth was taking place.

The present budget of Pakistan is definitely a growth-oriented budget, but again, at the expense of social development. Education still has a less than 2 percent of GDP allocation and health less than 1 percent. Figuratively the PSDP budget has been increased to Rs 202 billion, but does this numerical increase correlate with an increase in development indicators. Sadly no. Analysis reveals that almost Rs 60 billion of the PSDP budget allocated last year lies unutilised, while the funds which have been put to use have not materialised in any social benefit as bureaucracy and corruption have retarded their progress inevitably.

The recent economic survey also shows that while the literacy rate has improved, female literacy continues to lag behind male literacy; health indicators remain dismal and the agri-sector has suffered a serious setback. All these indicators lead to an increase in poverty. Even so the finance minister claims that poverty has been reduced. How can that be explained?

There may be two ways to explain it. As they say miracles do happen, and that is why this phenomenon defies any logical analysis, or, as my wise colleague once said “there are lies, there are damned lies, and there are statistics”. We, as people of deep faith in the powers of our economic managers hope and pray that the first possibility is true.

Andleeb Abbas is a development consultant and an analyst

An Alternative Blow to Terrorism ZNet | Interviews

Interview with Noam Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky and Timo Stollenwerk ; ZNet Germany; June 11, 2004

Oldenburg: In one chapter of your book Understanding Power - recently published in Germany under the title Eine Anatomie der Macht - you describe an interview situation in Canada. The interviewer got angry, cause you started criticizing Canada and not - as he preferred - the United States. You point out that one of the reasons for the foreign mainstream press to interview you is because you criticized the United States, but not the guest country you`re interviewed in. So, I would like to talk to you about what implications your writing and activism could have for European countries and especially Germany.

I do try wherever I go to focus criticism on the country I`m going to but it`s not my main concern. Actually, what happened in Canada was - I remember that - it`s the main national sort of interview program in Canada and every time I landed in Toronto they were delighted to have me come, and this one time I decided that I was sick and tired of it. The first question I was asked was ``When did you come?`` I said that I just landed at the war criminal airport, what you called Lester B. Pearson Airport. He said: ``What do you mean, Lester Pearson was a war criminal?`` Then I started running through Lester Pearson`s record. He is there a big hero, Nobel Prize Winner. He has a horrendous record. The guy was getting red in the face and I sort of went from the air. He just broke it up and started screaming.

When I was walking out, you know, they have those switchboards that light up from calls all over the place - there were calls from all over the country. They were very angry at him. Not people who liked what I was saying but, you know, but you just can`t act like that. As I left, they said we would really like you to come back and we`ll do this right. I said that I don`t know if I have the time, maybe next time I`m here. They actually sent a team to Boston for an interview just to calm down their public but I was never invited back. That has happened a few other times in Canada and elsewhere.

Oldenburg: Yesterday, you received the Carl von Ossietzky Prize for your lifework (congratulations) as someone criticizing US foreign policy, but also for your research work concerning the function of the media in democratic societies. Together with Edward Herman you have developed an analytical framework that tries to explain the performance of the mainstream media in the US. According to this propaganda model, the media serve the interests of state and corporate power and present the world view they represent. Do you think the propaganda model can be applied to the European, respectively, German, media market as well?

Well, I don`t read the German press regularly, so I can`t tell you. But, to the limited extent I know, yes. And I suspect if the German press were investigated as intensively as the American press is, one would find the same things. It`s a rather striking fact that media criticism is very heavily concentrated in the United States. In the United States there are a lot of people working on this - and there`s a lot of analysis and discussion.

In Canada, there`s virtually nothing, in England, there`s some, there`s a good media institute in Glasgow and a couple of other things. In France there`s very little. In Germany, as far as I knew up until yesterday, there was none, but I was told last night by a professor here that they do some work on it. So, maybe, there`s some but I couldn`t go into it. But, that`s really a question you`d have to ask yourself. You have to look at your media systematically. It`s not enough to read the papers when you show up every couple of years. When I do, it seems to me that it`s the same as what I`ve left behind.

Oldenburg: Do you think that the range of the media is influenced by the fact that in Europe we used to have workers` parties, like Social Democrats - they`re disappearing very quickly - but, we used to have that. Do you think this influenced the range of opinions that appear in the press?

Probably, you`d expect to. In England - that I know better - there`s still a labor movement and something called Labor Party. But there was a labor-based press and it was widely read, supported, and effective. The Daily Herald was the most widely read newspaper in England, with a strong readers` involvement. It lasted until the early sixties. In fact, in the 1960s the tabloids, like the Daily Mirror, were labor-based and labor-oriented. This had been declining for a long time and by the 1960s it sort of ended. Mainly through processes of capital control and reliance on advertising and so on.

There is less and less reflection of the point of view from the world of working people. Actually, I saw this a couple of days ago in England. I gave talks in many different places, this was in Liverpool. There was a talk organized by the dockers who had been sacked a couple of years ago - it was a big labor incident, hundreds of dockers were thrown out, replaced by scabs, as part of the efforts to destroy the unions.

This happened to be post-Thatcher, but it`s the same thing. They didn`t give up, they fought quite a struggle about it and they were finally sacked, but they turned to other activities, cultural activities in Liverpool and political activities, and among other things they had an annual event and this was part of the annual event. The audience was just more mixed. Their kind of point of view of the world does not get to the media. In the United States, if you go back to the early part of the century, about a century ago, there was Appeal to Reason, which was kind of a left social-democratic journal which had the scale of the commercial press. If you go back to the mid 19th century, there was a very lively workers` press, and by the 1950s there were still about 800 labor-based newspapers which reached maybe 20-30 million people, by now it`s down to almost nothing. And gradually, as capital control took over, the independent media declined.

Every newspaper used to have a labor columnist, somebody in the paper who covers labor news, nobody does now. Now sometimes the business correspondent writes an article on a strike or something but they have all got big business sections. Every newspaper has separate sections on business but the idea that they should have separate articles on labor - that is almost unheard of, which tells you quite a lot.

If, say, you want the stock market prices you can find them easily, but if you want to get the wage level, or the work hours, you`ve got to do some work through complicated statistics. And, in fact, some information is not even presented in the United States. The United States is one of the few, maybe the only, industrial society, where the official data, the government data - although it`s extremely extensive on everything - has no class-based data. If somebody wants to study, say, health and mortality among industrial workers as compared with professionals, the only way you can do it is by working through the data that they do have and working out complicated correlations. There`s a reasonably close race/class correlation and there are plenty of data on race, and if you work through them and work through other things, you can figure out some of the class related data...

Oldenburg: In Germany there are very few data on rich people. On the wealthy end it`s very hard to find out. You have to use the same methods that you described for the health of the working people if you want to find out who has what and how much.

Part of the reason is something different. There are sociological studies on the poor, but there are very few sociological studies on the rich. Part of the reason is, they won`t talk to you. It`s only vulnerable populations who will let you come in and ask your questions. If you go to a slum and start asking people questions, maybe they will talk to you. If you go to the rich suburbs they will throw you out of the house. This is none of your business - plus other biases attributed to you then.

But it`s perfectly true, anthropological, sociological or psychological studies are mostly studies of the oppressed. And that`s interesting about the data, you can find data about the distribution of wealth but if you try to look at things that correlate with it, like health, it`s tricky.

In fact, in the United States people have drilled into their heads that they are all middle class. My daughter teaches in a state college, where people come from what we would call working class or less, many of them are just transients... people are underclass. But, the first day of class she always asks people ``What class do you belong to?`` and everybody says middle class and then she starts bringing out what their aspirations are. ``What you go to college for?``, ``What is your father doing?`` and so on. It turns out, you know, my father is a janitor, when he has a job and I`m hoping to be a nurse, but they`re middle class. Everybody is middle class.

Actually, I read the British press - coming over yesterday. I read an article in one of what is called the left journals, the Guardian or the Observer. Somebody had an interview with Michael Moore down in Cannes, and he tries to write a kind of critical article saying he is a hypocrite and a fraud and one of the things he said was that the guy pretends to be working class in his background but the truth is that he was really from the middle class suburbs. It turns out later that his father was an autoworker - but that doesn`t make him working class. He was able to buy his own home. This guy was an autoworker and he is faking and pretending to be working class. I`m sure the writer didn`t see anything funny about it, probably the readers don`t see it either.

Oldenburg: In the discussion about the Gulf War, the German chancellor and the government have been praised for their anti-war attitude, even though Germany allowed US warplanes to overfly German airspace on their way to Iraq and to use NATO infrastructure. Germany also reinforced its own engagement in Afghanistan so that the US could send more of its own troops to Iraq. What do you think were the motives for Germany and other European countries to oppose the US intervention in Iraq?

I don`t know enough about Germany to give a serious answer, but it`s kind of an interesting question. It is the question that ought to be asked: What were the motives for France and Germany to not go along with the US war? Nobody asks, why Italy agreed to go along, or why Spain agreed. The fact of the matter is that their populations were strongly opposed to this war, in fact, they were more opposed in Italy and Spain than they were in France and Germany. If anybody believed in democracy - unfortunately nobody does - but if anybody believed in democracy, they wouldn`t ask this question. There`s nothing to ask when a government accepts the same position as the will of the majority of the population, that`s what they`re supposed to do in a democratic society. But, the question only arises for those who didn`t take their orders from Crawford, Texas. You`ve got some kind of a problem. The ones who disregarded 90 percent of the population and took their orders from the boss, no question. As, to why the German government decided to follow the will of 70 percent of their population, I don`t know. But in a democratic society such a question shouldn`t come up. They shouldn`t have a choice. Yes, that is what they should do or they`d be kicked out.

Oldenburg: Are the differences between ``Old Europe`` and the US over Iraq an expression of a increasing political and economic rivalry between ``Old Europe`` and the United States?

The concept of ``Old Europe`` is kind of interesting for a number of reasons. It was invented by Rumsfeld and then picked up by the world. It is standard in the Western elites. As for the criteria whether a country is in ``Old Europe`` or in ``New Europe,`` that`s very sharp. A country is in ``Old Europe`` if the government, for whatever reason, took the same position as the vast majority of the population. It`s in ``New Europe`` if it overruled an even bigger majority of the population and took its orders from Washington. ``Old Europe`` is condemned and ``New Europe`` is praised and the hope for the future. This is an expression of such hatred for democracy that it`s indescribable. And it passed virtually without comment.

The most dramatic case was Turkey. In Turkey 95 percent of the population was opposed to the war and everybody was surprised: By a slim, small vote the parliament voted to go along with 95 percent of the population. Colin Powell immediately told them, they`re gonna lose all their aid, Paul Wolfowitz, the great visionary, condemned the Turkish military because they didn`t intervene to prevent the government from this horrible mistake. He ordered them to apologize to the United States and recognize that their task is to help America. He`s still the great visionary.

Actually, the press reacted quite interestingly. Almost All of them condemned Turkey and, for the first time, they started reporting the Turkish atrocities against the Kurds in the 1990s - they`d never done that before - but, just to show how awful the Turks were for not taking orders they started describing what the Turks had done to the Kurds. Of course, they kept very quiet about the fact that they were able to do this because they got all the military aid from the United States and that this aid went up when the atrocities went up. And, obviously, they (the press) didn`t mention that they themselves had been silent about it when they could have stopped it. That never comes up.

In fact, Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times correspondent, had an article on hypocrisy. That was the topic. It was on the hypocrisy of the Arab states who are now protesting US atrocities but never protested the atrocities of the Turks against the Kurds. That`s true, that`s hypocritical. But, what about Nicholas Kristof when the atrocities went on, funded by the United States? If he had talked about it, they might have easily stopped, but not a word. In fact, now not a word either, nor will anybody make that comment about him because they don`t know or they don`t want to talk about it.

So, that`s one criterion, there`s another criterion which more or less correlates with it. ``Old Europe`` is the economic, commercial, industrial and financial center of Europe. ``New Europe`` is where the fringe is. The U.S. is deeply concerned since the Second World War, not just now, that Europe might move to an independent course. By about 1970 it had recovered enough so that it was economically on a par with the United States. 1973 was ``The Year of Europe.`` Europe was supposed to celebrate its recovery from the war. Henry Kissinger made an important address here - the Year of Europe Address - in which the basic theme was that he told the Europeans that they should keep to their ``regional responsibilities`` within the ``overall framework of order`` managed by the United States.

Potential European independence will be rooted in France and Germany, that`s the problem. That`s one of the reasons the United States is so interested in EU enlargement. They figure they can dilute the influence of Europe by bringing in those former satellites, which they figure, probably correctly, will be more under US influence. The US wants Turkey in for the same reasons, for the EU to be more under US influence.

And by now there`s an even bigger threat: Northeast Asia. Northeast Asia is the most rapid-growing economy in the world, its GDP is well beyond North America`s or Europe`s, it`s got about half of the financial reserves of the world, they have resources in Siberia and they could move in an independent direction. It has two of the biggest industrial economies in the world: Japan and South Korea. China is growing in the area of the periphery of Eastern Siberia where there are plenty of resources - a large percentage of the world`s oil reserves, for example.

So, these are the real problems of global order and a lot of what`s going on in the Middle East has to do with it. The US needs to control the major sources of energy to ensure that Europe and Asia don`t go off on the wrong path. And, they`re partially obedient but, not completely, like, for example, their policies towards Iran. The US is trying very hard to prevent Europe and Japan from investing in Iranian oil, but they`re doing it. Japan just made a multi-billion dollar contract for the development of a big Iranian oil field. The US didn`t like it but there`s not much they can do about it and these conflicts are serious.

Part of the reason for the invasion of Iraq was that France and Russia had the inside track, they were running the Iraqi oil system - okay, that`s finished now. So, yes, these are issues that go way back.

I mean, in fact, they involve Germany seriously. In 1952 Stalin made an offer to allow Germany to be unified with democratic elections - internationally supervised democratic elections which the Communists would have certainly lost. He had only one condition, that Germany not be rearmed as part of a Western military alliance - which made pretty good sense if you take a look at recent history. That was kind of suppressed in the United States when it was announced because it was an embarrassing moment, since they were just trying to get funding for a huge increase in military spending, but it was kind of leaked out and there was some discussion about it.

There was a book by a pretty well known and influential political commentator, James P. Warburg, of the Warburg family, such a big guy, in which he brought this up. It was called ``Germany, Key to Peace`` and came out 1953, and in it he brought this up but he was criticized and he was bitterly ridiculed: ``How could you think that Stalin would have made peace?`` Well, we don`t really know. As it turns out in the Russian archives they were probably serious about it.

Oldenburg: Actually, what we`ve learned in history class was that it wasn`t a real offer, that it was just a tactic by Stalin.

That`s just not true. That`s what was said at that time but, the way to find out if it was a tactic was to accept it. To say, okay, let`s do it and if he backs off, then it was a tactic, if he doesn`t back off it was real but they didn`t want to do that. And the historians won`t state this simple point. So now, the archives and other materials are coming out and this increasingly indicates, that it was probably serious - for one reason because it turns out that the Russians understood very well how the United States was hoping to drive them into the ground, namely by an arms race. They knew the US had a much stronger economy, they couldn`t possibly keep up with the United States in military spending. Even the worst monsters like Beria made the same offer as Stalin about Germany: to unify Germany with democratic elections, as long as it is not militarized. And this is one of the worst monsters. Both he and later Khrushchev said straight out, the United States is trying to spend us to the ground, we can`t compete with this military spending and in 1954, when Khrushchev took over, he offered Eisenhower a proposal to the effect that both sides should reduce military spending and cut back offensive military forces. The Eisenhower Administration disregarded it but they did it anyway, on the Russian side, unilaterally and over the objections of the Russian generals who didn`t like it. Later, they cut back Russian military forces - offensive forces - quite sharply and asked the Kennedy Administration to do the same. They thought about it and what they did was escalate military spending. Then came the Cuban missile crisis in which the Russians were really humiliated. The Kennedy Administration went all the way to humiliate them and the Russian military couldn`t take it anymore, they threw Khrushchev out and went in this mad arms race and they did kind of match the U.S. in military spending, but they ruined the economy. In fact, if you look at the Russian statistics, it`s in the 1960`s when the economy started to stagnate and the health statistics started to decline and so on and so forth. It`s really the Kennedy Administration that drove them into bankruptcy. If they had gone along, if they had agreed, it is possible that a Gorbachev figure might have come along earlier, the world would have been saved from all sorts of horror, and Russia might have made a smooth transition to some kind of social-democratic economy, instead of the catastrophe of the last 10 years. I doubt that they teach you that lesson in history, either. But among serious scholars this should not really be controversial anymore.

Even the most anticommunist scholars, like Adam Ulam, who I happen to have known personally, and who was a very good Polish-American Sovietologist at Harvard, hated the Russians, like every Pole, and he was very anti-communist, he died a few years ago - but, towards the end of his life he started to write articles on the 1952 offer and said that it looks more and more that this was really serious: We can`t prove it but it was certainly a mistake to not explore it, so if your teachers are to the right of Adam Ulam, they`re very far to the right, I can tell you.

Oldenburg: There is a discussion in our intellectual elites about a problem called the ``democracy deficit,`` with regard to the European Union institutions. This problem is commonly discussed as a mere public relations problem - it was understood that democracy meant ``a situation where leaders are accountable and ultimately removable by a majority of people`` and according to this, it was sufficient when the elected parliaments appointed their representatives for the European institutions. What is your opinion on that? Does the European Union constitute an attempt to reduce public influence on politics?

It`s interesting that the right wing in the United States is appalled by the democratic deficit in Europe. You find articles in Foreign Affairs - that`s not really rightwing but, you know, like mainstream conservatives - that harshly condemn the independence of the European Monetary Bank which is highly undemocratic and has a huge impact on European economy - mostly harmful - and it`s completely out of any public control, I mean, it`s much more than the Federal Reserve in the United States, that`s been condemned in Foreign Affairs.

This idea, that representatives can be removed by their constituencies, is sort of true if you have actual democratic function, but democratic function means participation of the public and it`s not a matter of pushing a button every few years, so it means organizations, picking your own candidates, regularly recalling them and so on and so forth, nothing like that exists. What exists is a kind of political class, closely connected to the economic elites and leadership, selected among them. And the people are able to ratify their choices but that`s not democracy. In fact, in political science it`s called polyarchy, not democracy.

It`s true to an extreme extent in the United States but it`s largely true in Europe, not quite so much because of what you said before, Europe had popular parties - labor-based parties, social-democratic parties and so on - and that made some kind of difference. For example, the voting participation in the US is far lower than in Europe and there have been extensive studies on this, the most important of which was a long time ago, back in 1980. Today it`s even more extreme.

Walter Dean Burnham - who is a political scientist, he did a kind of social economic analysis of the nonvoters in the United States - and it turns out that their profile is very similar to the voters in Europe who vote for the labor-based or social-democratic parties. That option just isn`t there in the United States, so these people just don`t vote. But it is less and less true in Europe. Europe is kind of a drag-along of the American model - which means moving away from democracy and toward polyarchy. In the United States it was set up that way, so that`s the way the Constitution was framed and it kind of stayed that way, for all sorts of reasons. But European countries have their own history, and it`s clearly a drift in that direction.

In fact, you know better than I know, I don`t like to talk about Europe, but my impression is that Europe is moving in two directions. On the one hand it`s moving towards centralism and democracy deficit, on the other hand it`s moving toward regionalism, I think, in reaction. If you look around Europe there`s a lot more pressure for regional autonomy, revival of traditional languages, of cultures, a degree of political autonomy and so on and so forth. The place where it is most advanced is Spain. Spain is becoming rather federalized, like Catalonia. Catalan has revived completely - it`s the language of Catalonia - Catalan practices have revived. I stayed in the hotel in the town center of Barcelona a couple of years ago and on Sunday, in the morning the people were streaming into the town square in front of the Cathedral from all over the place, doing traditional Catalan folk dances with Catalan music and things like that. The same is happening in the Basque country, it`s happening in Asturia, in Galicia, and there is pressure to break up the quite artificial Spanish state into more authentic regional areas. It`s happening in England. In Wales the local language is revived, kids on the street speak Welsh, there`s a Welsh national identity, it`s happening to an extent in Scotland, it`s a little bit happening in France.

My own feeling is, these are pretty healthy developments, they`re, maybe, a counterweight to the centralizing tendencies of the European Union and they may weaken the clear democratic deficit that comes from a centralization that`s making power more remote from the population. It`s not a bad idea. The national state system is a very artificial and brutal system, and that`s why Europe was the most savage place in the world for centuries: Because they tried to impose this crazy system, and most of the conflicts in the rest of the world are residues of European attempts to impose it. Breaking down this system could be a very healthy development.

Oldenburg: You often point out that there is a basic moral principle you follow: ``You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your own actions, you`re not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else`s actions.`` Does this imply that European activists should focus more on what their own governments do and less on what the US does globally?

That depends on asking yourself: ``What are the consequences of my involvement in what the US does globally?`` Actually, there are consequences, it`s not zero. Like, if Germany takes a position and German people in Germany take a position on something, that indirectly influences US action. So, you always have to evaluate. For example, for Germans to go out on the streets and protest against the war in Iraq was highly significant, that affects US policy.

But, it`s the same criterion, I mean, that criterion is not even debatable. If somebody can`t understand that, they should just shut up and say okay, I`m a Nazi. Because that is just elementary in personal affairs, but what that criterion implies is a complicated matter. It may imply that you should pay more attention to the local problems of Oldenburg, it may imply that you should worry about the World Trade Organization, the US initiatives there. How the criterion applies to real cases you have to figure out, but the criterion isn`t debatable. The fact is that Germany is not Rwanda, it has a huge impact on world affairs, so what is going on in Germany can make a big difference. Take the issue you raised before, about European independence. If Europe moves towards a more independent role in the world, that could have a huge effect. Actually, Europe could play a very effective role right now in settling the Israeli-Arab conflict. It would have to break with the master. It would have to stop taking orders from the master. European elites don`t want to do this, but if they were pressured to do it, they could intervene and mediate a solution to the conflict outside of US control. And the same is true in plenty of other areas.


Oldenburg: There is one question in this regard that is almost automatically raised by the German and European left: How can you prevent your own state, once it has a more independent role, from trying to play a new imperial role? For example, I was at a rally where Palestinians raised the idea that Germany should send troops to the Middle East. I had to tell them this was absolutely absurd.

This is crazy. This is absolutely absurd. But an international force is not a bad idea. They`ll never allow it in Israel, so you can forget about it, but in the occupied territories, why not? An international force in the occupied territories, monitoring total Israeli withdrawal, or the implementation of something like the Geneva Accords. It makes perfect sense, it would protect the Palestinians, it would protect them against Israeli attacks, so why not? Obviously not Germany.

But how do you stop unified Europe from playing an imperial role? By stopping it, that`s always gonna happen, you always expect it to happen. It`s not an argument against independence, it`s like asking: ``How do you deal with the question that the post-apartheid regime in South Africa will impose horrendous economic conditions?`` It`s not so simple. In fact, the people are probably worse off now than most of them were before apartheid ended. But, that`s not an argument for keeping apartheid. It`s just saying, look, you make this small gain and you have the next mountain to climb.

Oldenburg: I would like to stick to that particular point. There`s an upcoming conference in Cologne against the wall in Palestine, where this is of interest. What could the composition of such an international force be? I agree that this is a reasonable idea, but the composition is of course an important question.

Europe and Latin America are the obvious choice. It can`t be South-Asia, in this case. It could be in some cases, but not in this case. Obviously, it can`t be the Arab states. Europe is a possibility. Latin America is far away from it, it could contribute a force. There are problems because Latin America is largely under US control. I mean, there`s no perfect answer but, something basically under the authority of the UN General Assembly, so it is not controlled directly by the great powers.

I don`t think much of an international force is needed, frankly. If Israel would withdraw, the problems are mostly solved. They`ll not be totally solved, there`re still gonna be problems inside, and problems of ensuring that Israel doesn`t encroach. But, an international force can have an effect. The very weak UN force in Southern Lebanon did have an effect, it didn`t make anything perfect but it did have an effect. For example, in the 1996 Israeli invasion Clinton had to call them off, after they, Israel, started attacking the UN forces. They had no military force, a few people, like the Fiji Islands. That was a difficult situation, and that was kind of a buffer. It gave some protection to the population and that`s important.

This separation wall is a total atrocity. What Europe could do right now is support the people that are protesting it. I mean, there are people like Tanya Reinhart who writes for ZNet, she is right out there now, in fact.

Oldenburg: There is this conference in Cologne, and the Education Minister of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia was supposed to be introducing it and he was called to the ``Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland`` (``Central Council of the Jews in Germany``) together with his whole cabinet. He was told that this would be a total atrocity and an affront and it couldn`t be done - and now it will not be done.

Germany is obviously in a sensitive position. Israel and the Jewish community here obviously use the Holocaust as a battering ram to prevent criticism of Israel and they know Germany is particularly vulnerable. I mentioned to you that they use it against Catholic universities in the US also. They`re using it in any way and it`s totally disgraceful, I mean, the idea to use the Holocaust to justify these things is beyond discussion. Germany ought to resist that, but you can see that it`s not going to be easy. It should be dealt with. But, opposition to this wall ought to be universal. There`s opposition in the United States - so much opposition that, to my amazement, the New York Times asked me to write a piece on it. That never happens unless there`s strong elite opposition. And there is.

I`m sure I that the Times` editors are worried about how the lunatics are running the asylum, or something like that. The wall is just crazy, or, if it`s not crazy that they`re doing it, it`s certainly a horrendous idea. It has nothing to do with security, it`s caging Palestinians into dungeons. It`s worse than in South Africa. Importantly, there is nonviolent resistance going on but, of course, it`s being smashed cause nobody is paying attention to it. Putting that aside, German journalists could be there. Just taking photographs - that takes away violence. They`ll be arrested and deported but that`s okay too, they`re not going to be killed.

Oldenburg: There is a huge question hanging in the air and that`s always brought up by Palestinians I`m talking to: The question of the refugees, what to do about them? How is it possible to get them involved as agents of their own fate?

I must say, this is an argument I`ve had with Palestinian friends for 35 years. Palestinians can, if they want to, stand on principles and forget the consequences for the victims - which is fine if you are in Europe and the United States, if you`re teaching at a university and you can have a seminar where you stand on principles, but that`s dooming the people to misery and suffering. There is a real world, you can not pretend it is not there because you don`t like it. In the real world the refugees will never return to Israel in more than a token return, I mean, that is just a fact of life. There`s no international support for it. If international support ever developed, which is extremely unlikely, Israel would actually refuse American orders. They would never permit it, they would turn to nuclear weapons, if they had to, to stop it. They`re not going to accept giving up their own country anymore than people in Massachusetts would accept to give their land to the people that were driven out. There are just things that are not going to happen and we might as well face it. It`s not doing any favor to the refugees to dangle in front of their eyes hopes that are never going to be realized. Things have to be done to help them to come to terms with the reality of the world. There may be token returns, they can certainly be given compensation. If there`ll ever be Palestinian independence, they can be returned to Palestine, which is not where they come from, mostly. Or they have to be given a chance to have their own choice to settle elsewhere, actually, here is something which Europe could do easily. Bring them to Europe. Most of them would probably rather be in Europe than in a savage refugee camp. This would be a concrete step.

Actually, the US ought to do it, cause it`s mostly responsible for it. But I think we probably can`t manage that. But offering hope of return is just an insult to them, in my opinion, and it`s also blocking the hope for any political settlement, cause there`s no visible group in Israel - maybe five people - who would agree allowing them to come back there. In fact, the demand is a gift to the rightwing in Israel. It`s an argument that the rightwing can use, saying, look, the Palestinians want to drive us out, so, therefore we just have to drive them out. This is essentially what the meaning of it is. There`s no point in pretending otherwise. I must say that I`ve been having big arguments with my own Palestinian friends and Israeli dissidents for about 35 years, and I haven`t convinced them.

Oldenburg: This is going on all the time and the interesting thing is that many of the people who are bringing up this argument are from Europe and have a safe distance.

There is a safe distance. If you`re sitting in a refugee camp or in the West Bank - there, it is preserving settlements and offering more arguments for building a wall and shooting them and so on.

Oldenburg: Could you say something on the subject Latin America - since the implementation of the Plan Colombia, since the Uribe Government came to power?

Since Plan Columbia came in, atrocities have increased, the struggles were militarized, the numbers of people who have been murdered have increased, the number of Union activists murdered has increased sharply, in fact, Columbia - I forget the numbers - has a large percentage of the worlds` union activists murdered. The number of people who have been driven out of their land has increased, more people are driven into the slums, I have some figures about it in the Hegemony or Survival book. You`re always a year behind in statistics. Another effect is that it turned FARC into just another paramilitary force, I mean, whatever FARC had been, it did grow out of peasants` concerns and demands and had a kind of political program that had some meaning - that all has gone. Now, it`s just another terrorist force preying on the peasants. So, it did succeed in militarizing the conflict. Not very good for Columbians. I was down there in Southern Columbia about a year ago.

They are just afraid of talking about it, peasants who have been driven out of the land by these chemical warfare programs. They are just as afraid of the FARC as they are of the paramilitaries at this point.

Oldenburg: Can you explain this in more detail?

The Columbia Plan intensified the war and, in reaction to it, FARC became more of a military force and dropped their social program. That is a pretty natural reaction when you come under military attack. They did come under harsher military attack. They were driven out of some of the areas that they controlled, and they responded to it by becoming more of a militant terrorist force and you could see the changes. By now, they barely have a social program, I don`t think the peasants and human rights activists that were kind of sympathetic to them see them any longer as a social political force. ELN, maybe, likely, but they are a pretty marginal group. There is now an effort going on to integrate the paramilitaries into the society which means to sort of formalize their role as enforcers. How that will go, I don`t know.

It`s extremely hard to say anything about public opinion in Columbia because they take polls, but they are totally meaningless. The polls are mostly taken by telephone - three quarters of the population never heard of a telephone. This is one of the reasons why they were so surprised at the last election. Even in Bogotá they got the predictions all wrong. That`s kind of what happened in India, they just don`t know what most of the population is thinking because they`re kind of out of the wealthy system. It just looks like an intensification of every ugly feature there. As for the effects on cocaine production - which is irrelevant anyway - but, it appears to have no effect. The way to measure the cocaine production is to look at the price in New York and London: It is going down. I just read in England when I was there a couple of days ago that cocaine prices are at about the lowest level they have been in recent memory, which means, the production is soaring. You drive it out one place and then to somewhere else. But the whole idea of fighting drugs this way is grotesque anyway. But even if you somehow accept it, it probably has little or no effects. It does have the effect to drive peasants off their lands. You drive them off the land, the mining company comes in, they strip-mine the mountains, agro-business comes in, produces export crops, the usual business.

The indigenous communities and the peasants are resisting at various places - which is pretty amazing - but without outside assistance they don`t have a chance.

Oldenburg: Can you estimate the role of the US in the coup d`état against Chavez and the recent actions against him?

We don`t know if the US instigated the coup. I wouldn`t be surprised but there`s no direct evidence. But they certainly supported it, that`s very clear. They immediately recognized the coup government. They had to back off because of the Latin American reaction. Latin America was strongly opposed to recognizing the coup, so, the US kind of backed off. But then the coup was thrown out in a couple of days. That`s not the end of the story. The Supreme Court, which is the residue of the former regime, refused to allow the government to try the coup leaders and amazingly, they agreed. So, they didn`t bring the coup leaders to trial. This didn`t get reported cause this doesn`t fit in the image of the totalitarian Chavez government. A couple of weeks later there was a terrorist bombing in Caracas, and the investigation of it led back to two of the military officers who had been participating in the coup. They fled the country to Florida and asked for political asylum. Venezuela asked for them to be extradited, to face charges - tells you how much they care about the war on terror. That was in early March - I have never heard anything about it, as far as I know, there was nothing in the media. That`s very hard to find out because nothing is reported.

Oldenburg: Justin Podur wrote about it. He had an article about Columbia, combining it with the situation in Venezuela, talking about the Columbian paramilitary forces which were recently found in Venezuela...

We really don`t know. We have two sides saying different things. The Venezuelan government claims are perfectly reasonable, but Columbia denies it and we don`t have independent evidence. We have no evidence, no investigators, it`s kind of guess work at this time. The whole region, from Venezuela to Argentina, is out of control, from a US point of view. These things are happening everywhere. That, they don`t like and they really can`t do a lot about it. You can imagine what they are trying to do but the US is in a fairly weak position. If they had won the war in Iraq easily, as I rather suspected - I assumed they would, but they didn`t, amazingly - if they had succeeded in Iraq, my guess at the time was that the next target was gonna be the Andean region. It is surrounded by military forces, military bases, troops all over the place. It`s extremely important for the US. It`s even an oil resource. Right now, I think, they`re too weak to carry it out. They may try subversion. I don`t think the US population would tolerate any military actions at this point, after the Iraq fiasco.

They`ve got other problems, take Argentina, they are refusing to take IMF orders and the IMF can`t really do anything about it. They can`t really let the economy collapse because US banks and lenders have too much invested there. So, they sort of go along with the Argentinean refusal, they don`t have a lot of options. And Argentina is doing pretty well.

Oldenburg: A few weeks ago some Argentinean people came to Hamburg, explaining to us that the Kirchner Government is not as fine as it is portrayed in German newspapers. They suppress the piqueteros and so on.

I`m sure that`s true, but they`re also refusing IMF orders. Nobody expects them to be a left government. They don`t like piqueteros - for obvious reasons. No central government likes independent action.

Origins of Hijab The Rediff Election Special / Amberish K Diwanji in Godhra

In Godhra, Muslims don`t matter

April 20, 2004


In Godhra, the marginalisation of the Muslim is complete.

The BJP does not care for them. ``They are not going to vote for us, so why
bother?`` asks Dr Chandrakant Pandya, who sat in the party`s city office while
its candidate Bharat Solanki was out campaigning in the villages.

Pandya was the first, and last, person to allow me to use his real name. All the
others that I met in the city over the next four hours insisted that I not
mention their names. And the photographer who accompanied me to Godhra remained
unemployed: no one -- Hindu or Muslim -- wanted his photograph taken, while we
did not want to shoot political workers!

Back to the Muslims. The BJP does not give a damn and says so openly.

But the Congress is also unwilling to touch the Muslims with a barge pole, and
says so too. In fact, a Congress leader in the city, manning the party`s
electoral office, proudly said there were no Muslims either in his office or
involved in the campaign. ``They have no choice but to vote for us, so why do we
need to bother with them?``

The Congressman did give me his name, but then requested that I not mention it.
I suspect that even the name he gave me was a false one.

The Congress and its candidate Rajendrasinh Patel are busy wooing the Hindus.
They have deliberately kept all Muslims out of the campaign, or even any
official position in the party. The aim is clearly to appear to be a party of
the Hindus, for the Hindus and, most important, by the Hindus. Even mild
interaction with Muslims could spoil this cultivated image.

A Hindu (in this city the only identity that matters is the community) who owns
a handcart selling plastic toys at an important road crossing insisted the city
is peaceful now. ``It is all the politicians who come from outside and create
trouble,`` he said.

The vendor said the campaigning has been low key, a sentiment others shared.
``Everyone is tired,`` he said, ``because during every election, communal tensions
rise.``

After the Sabarmati Express compartment was burnt on February 27, 2002, just
outside Godhra station, the city itself remained peaceful even as communal
frenzy and carnage tore through central and eastern Gujarat. But Godhra`s peace
was deceptive: there were riots last year during the Ganesh Chaturthi
festival.

A Muslim sitting in a small restaurant along with his friends near the notorious
Signal Falia area (the men who torched the train carriage allegedly hailed from
this quarter) insisted that no Muslim had pelted stones on the Ganesh
processions as alleged by the police. ``Are we mad to do such things?`` he
asked.

``The politicians do it to create trouble. Hindus and Muslims live in peace. We
trade with them. In fact, one of the partners of this shop that you are
standing in is a Hindu. If Hindus were enemies, would I work with them?``

But it proves a case of the man protesting too much. Muslims and Hindus do
trade, but beyond this token dealing there is no interaction at all between the
communities.

In Godhra, Mohammed Ali Jinnah`s words seem so prophetic today: Hindus and
Muslims are separate peoples forced to share a common space. And they do so by
living in different localities, which are referred to, rather unimaginatively,
as `Hindustan` and `Pakistan.`

The Muslim shopkeeper admitted that perhaps this is not the best way to live,
but then pointed out that it is because the Muslims are not in the Hindu areas
that perhaps no one was killed, a sentiment Hindus agree with. But living
separately means the two communities are just that: two different communities.

The Muslims are also extremely resentful of the daily humiliations they suffer.
``Our boys are just picked up at random by the police and accused of being one
of the hundreds who participated in torching the train. When a lawyer went to
defend some of them, he too was booked and jailed,`` said the Muslim shopkeeper
who outwardly appeared calm.

This is the biggest grouse of the Muslim community in Godhra today: that young
men are just picked up at random whenever the police feel like it. The police
station in this area, just outside Godhra railway station and running parallel
to the tracks, is buzzing with policemen.

Those arrested for their alleged involvement in torching the train are booked
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; this means they can be locked up for up
to a year without trial or being brought before a magistrate. And with local
Muslim leaders out of action, it is difficult to get them out of jail.

Years ago, a social scientist studying communal riots had made a wry
observation: Muslim areas have police stations; Hindu areas have schools.

In Godhra, this was how it happened. The government-run school in the Muslim
area was shut down. The reason given was that there are not enough students.
But as the Muslim shopkeeper said, ``Keep the school open and students will
come.`` Now students have to trudge far to private schools. Given the grinding
poverty so very evident, many will drop out before they matriculate; few, if
any, will go beyond that.

Muslims see no scope of getting government jobs; and the factories in and around
Godhra, which lies in the industrial belt of Gujarat, are slowly shutting down.
They run petty businesses, where margins are paltry. Others work as truck
drivers and cleaners, or operate garages.

Many young Muslims in this area are involved in the transport business, but no
one actually owns a truck; they just can`t afford to buy one. So they rent
trucks from the owners, which only reduces their earnings.

I met a Hindu shopkeeper who runs a shop adjoining the Muslim locality. He
declared in front of a small crowd that had gathered that many of his customers
are Muslims, and then loudly proclaimed that Hindu-Muslim relations are fine
and that it is only the media that keeps seeing divisions in the city. He said
people vote on the basis of performance and the Congress might have a chance.

After 30 minutes of discussing sundry issues of little relevance, most of the
others in the shop had left. That was when he visibly relaxed and let his guard
down.

``I will only vote for the BJP,`` he told me conspiratorially. ``I can`t risk the
Congress returning to power because then the Muslims will get the upper hand
and make life hell for us.``

The shopkeeper admitted he had never had any problems with Muslims. ``In fact,
whenever things get difficult, it is the Muslims who come and tell me to shut
my shop; they don`t let it be damaged as they know me.``

He even admitted he quite dislikes the BJP, especially local MLA Haresh Bhatt.
``That man is terrible,`` he said. ``I was in difficulty last year and he just
won`t help any of us. But even then I will vote for the BJP.``

His explanation revealed sharp business logic. ``Look, the BJP will form the
government at the Centre. So it is better to vote for Solanki than Patel, who
will end up in the Opposition.``

Asked if he faced any trouble, he laughed and seconded what the Muslims had said
earlier. ``Today, no Muslim dare do anything. The police now simply pick up
anyone even thinking of creating trouble and lock him up on the charge that he
was a conspirator in the Godhra massacre.``

Two years on, the Godhra incident continues to cast a long shadow over the city
and its people. The election is of little importance to the people here. It
will make no difference to their lives.

Some Mother’s Son Re#2 by ZahraJ:

Good comment overall Zahra, especially this, ``[There is strength and inspiration to be drawn from those who use their pain, not to cause further destruction, but to heal and move ahead.]``