Pervez Musharraf became a civilian* today. The elections are scheduled and candidates across the country are filing their candidacy papers - in great numbers, especially in the troubled regions. This despite great debate across the two major political parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz on whether to participate or boycott the elections. Their hesitance is understandable. Pervez Musharraf, as a civilian President will rule under the 1973 Constitution which has the oft-used Eighth Amendment to the Article 58, enacted by the last dictator Zia ul Haq in 1985. The Amendment grants the President the power to "dissolve the National Assembly where, in his opinion,…the Government of the Federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and appeal to the electorate is necessary". The amendment was used first by Zia ul Haq against the civilian government of Muhammad Khan Junejo, then by Ghulam Ishaq Khan against Benazir Bhutto, then by Ghulam Ishaq Khan against Nawaz Sharif and again by Farooq Leghari against Benazir Bhutto. The last Nawaz Sharif government nullified this power of the President by passing the Thirteenth Amendment Act in 1997. In 2002, under the Legal Framework Order, General Musharraf fixed it right back.
Basically even if these elections take place as scheduled, even if all the political parties participate, even if they are fair, open and untampered elections (to whatever extent possible) ... President Pervez Musharraf can, at his will, dismiss the elected government when he pleases. Historians predicting the future need only point to the past.
Nawaz Sharif's touted return (after his touted unceremonious departure) has caught the attention of those who deem it necessary to find hidden links. It is pretty straightforward: Nawaz Sharif is the protogé of Zia ul Haq and a close intimate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He comes here because they cleared the way with Pervez Musharraf. He does not enjoy a broad support - his party has many other rivals for leadership including his brother, Shahbaz Sharif. Although, he is also not touched by the obvious stain of being a US-engineered candidate. So maybe that helps?
*Those curious about his successor to the military throne, General Kiyani should consult this profile. I venture that he is more in the mold of General Aslam Beg than Zia ul Haq or Pervez Musharraf. It would be interesting to see if he continues his support of Musharraf - the civilian.
Read more on this article...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Gloves are off in Iran as Parliamentary Elections Near
Iranian pre-election political dynamics are always raucous and full of surprises. But this time around, as we get closer to March 2008 parliamentary elections, things look a bit more intense than in the past. The intensity of the competition becomes even more curious with the realization that this time around the bipolar nature of Iranian politics is showing itself in the fight between hardline conservatives (or "principlists" as they call themselves in Iran) and the center of Iran’s political spectrum and not between reformists and hardliners.
Of course, one could argue that this new polarity was already evident in the Ninth presidential election which ended with the defeat of the centrist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 presidential election and continued with a push back by the centrists in the 2006 elections for the Assembly of Experts and municipal councils. It reached a new peak in the competition for the head of the Assembly of Experts after its long standing leader, Ayatollah Meshkini, died. The hardliners, through their newspapers such as Kayhan and websites such as Rajanews and Khedmat, made every effort to discredit Hashemi Rafsanjani and prevent him from taking the helm of that assembly. Although they were successful in making the fight over the chairmanship of that institution competitive for the first time in its history, they failed in their attempt to prevent his ascent.
One would have thought that two unsuccessful attempts at dislodging Hashemi Rafsanjani and his centrist supporters from all positions of power would have been sufficient lessons for the hardliners not to try again. But faced with the possibility of yet another defeat in the upcoming parliamentary elections in the hands of centrist forces, the hardliners have taken their gloves off and are directly aiming at Hashemi Rafsanjani and in the process placing all the key players in Iranian politics in a very uncomfortable position.
The occasion for this rather ugly fight was the decision by Ahmadinejad’s Ministry of Intelligence about seven months ago to accuse and arrest Hossein Moussavian, Iran’s former ambassador to Germany, former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, and deputy director of the Strategic Studies Center affiliated with the Expediency Council, on charges that were initially quite vague but suggested giving secret information to a foreign government (later revealed to be UK). After a while, through the reporting on various hard-line sites, these charges solidified into spying for a foreign government, holding of secret documents, and propaganda against the system.
The gravity of these charges and the closeness of Moussavian to both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during Khatami’s presidency, shook the Iranian political scene. Moussavian was released on a relatively mild bail in 9 days, causing the parliament to call in for questioning Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei. It indeed the charges were so severe, what justified Moussavian’s release, members of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security reportedly asked in closed door meeting? Ejei’s answer was a weak one: As far the Intelligence Ministry was concerned Moussavian’s crime was evident but the bail decision was set by the judge and his decision must be respected.
Worries about what the judge in the case would decide seemed to have been the trigger, prompting Ahmadinejad to go public on November 12 and announce in front a student audience that if domestic elements do not stop pressure regarding the nuclear file, they will be introduced to the people of Iran, adding “they are traitors… they are now putting pressure on the judge of a case so that a spy is exonerated… The People of Iran will not allow some, using their economic and political influence, to save criminals from people’s reprisal.”
Hashemi Rafsanjani’s action on the same day had more nuance. He simply allowed Moussavian to attend an official function of the Expediency Council and sit two seats apart from him and next to Moussavian’s former boss, Hassan Rowhani, who later chastised the president for finding someone guilty before the judge renders his decision. The message was clear. Hashemi Rafsanjani was not going to back away from his support of a loyal state manager.
All this led to public uproar. Hard-line media accused Hashemi Rafsanjani of trying to influence the case while the centrists accused the president of doing the same through his public announcements. In an opinion piece in the hard-line Rajanews, a commentator, in a not so subtle hint directed at Hashemi Rafsanjani, even raised the specter of Iran’s biggest foreign policy scandal of 1980s (revelations of Iran’s secret arms dealings with the United States), the execution of Mehdi Hashemi, and the ultimate purging of the then designated supreme leader to be, Ayatollah Hossein-ali Montazeri, for his unwavering support of the man who was found to be a traitor and executed.
Meanwhile, subtly criticizing Ahamdinejad, an increasing number of important conservative players, such as Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator until recently, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, and Ahmad Tavakoli, the head of Majles’ Research Center, began wondering about the wisdom of using the nuclear issue in a factional fight. Tavakoli suggested that these conflicts, instead of publicly, should be taken care of through “communication of the situation to the office of the leader.” The conservative newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami, even hinted at the prosecution of Ahmadinejad for defamation of a public servant prior to the decision made by courts.
The leader, meanwhile, is heard only making empty calls for national unity in a year ironically identified as the year of "national unity and Islamic solidarity" without any reference to the specifics of the conflict between the hardliners and the centrists or its intensity. He clearly wants to stay above the fray in a situation that may not allow him to do so.
Yesterday, the preliminary judge in the case finally rendered his decision, essentially throwing away the two charges of spying and holding secret documents, only upholding the nebulous charge of propaganda against the system (I say nebulous because almost all those arrested for political reasons are charged with this) and handing out a suspended sentence. This led to an immediate call by Ahmadinejad for the release of close to dozen conversations between Moussavian and foreigners which will prove his crime. The Intelligence Minister said that the Ministry will appeal and all this commotion paid off as Tehran’s chief prosecutor (who has very close ties to the supreme leader) refused to confirm the case today and in fact voided the suspended sentence, ordering a re-investigation. However, the chief prosecutor also ordered the Intelligence Ministry to keep the evidence it has secret.
So the drama will continue as Ahmadinejad and his supporters, including Minister of Intelligence Ejei, see no choice but to push full throttle in order to prove themselves right in making the conflicts over the nuclear file so public. Their supporters have called on members of the Basij militia to demonstrate in front of the judicial compound on Monday to protest the judge’s decision.
By elevating the case and posing a direct challenge, however, Ahmadinejad and his supporters have also made it impossible for Hashemi Rafsanjani to back down as this will be seen as an important loss for him. They have also antagonized a whole array of more moderate conservatives who are unhappy with the outright politicization of the nuclear issue for political gains.
Hashemi Rafsanjani is of course not immune to losses. On two important occasions he has lost through an electoral process. In the 2000 parliamentary elections, in which reformists won handily, he took an incredible amount of criticism from the reformers (who dubbed him “The Red Eminence” behind many malicious acts of the Islamic Republic). Voters had to be convinced about the reformers’ intent. Their strategy worked and many new voters thought that if the reformers could attack Hashemi Rafsanjani, the literal backbone of the Islamic Republic, so freely, then their desire for reform was serious.
Hashemi Rafsanjani also lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election on the basis of a campaign that made the former’s wealth and corruption an issue. Whether or not Ahmadinejad and his supporters can get mileage from the same theme after more than 2 ½ years of their own service is not entirely clear. This theme, publicly replayed through the Moussavian drama, will certainly excite Ahmadinejad’s own base of about 4 to 5 million who voted for him the first round of the 2005 election. But it is not clear if it would similarly excite the relatively large number of voters (again about 4 to 5 million) who shifted their allegiances from reformist and centrist candidates to vote for Ahmadinejad, presumably in an anti-Hashemi Rafsanjani move in the second round of the 2005 election.
Ahmadinejad supporters are also faced with the problem that parliamentary elections in Iran are a lot more parochial than presidential ones and the most important contest occurs in the city of Tehran which has 30 seats; with most of the leaders of the parliament coming from this capital city where reformist and centrist forces traditionally do better than hardliners if relatively large number of voters come out and vote.
Added to this problem is the fact that Hashemi Rafsanjani will not be on the ballot, only many former ministers, ambassadors, and prominent state managers who are identified with him or former president Khatami. By making accusations against Moussavian and essentially the entire previous nuclear team, hardliners hope to keep the connection to Hashemi Rafsanjani alive and convince the electorate to continue their pattern of mostly anti-elite vote that began with the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997.
But this strategy runs the risk of further alienating a large number of more moderate conservatives with long-standing ties to Hashemi Rafsanjani and the former state managers who are gearing up for the election. Many such the former presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri have called for the acceptance of the judge's decision.
In 1997, the reformists attacked Hashemi Rafsanjani in order to mobilize voters who were dissatisfied with the Islamic Republic. The hardliners attack on Hashemi Rafsanjani, this time around, will in all likelihood fire up their own base but probably not many more. The effect will more likely be like the 2006 Assembly of Experts election when Hashemi Rafsanjani garnered the largest number of votes in the city of Tehran out of the fear that his loss will push the scale too much to the side of the hardliners.
At the end, though, let us also remember that we are talking about Iran and nothing is settled until elections are actually held. The only thing for sure is that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be represented as a fight between the new elite (who deem themselves as incorruptible, in favor of social justice and hard-line but are represented by opponents as incompetent and hard-line) versus the old elite (who are represented as economically and politically corrupt by opponents but represent themselves as centrist and in favor of balance between social justice and capital accumulation). Not much of a choice, to be sure, but a choice nevertheless that has to be made by the voters either by voting in favor of one side or non-voting (as non-voting traditionally helps the hardliners in Iran). Read more on this article...
Of course, one could argue that this new polarity was already evident in the Ninth presidential election which ended with the defeat of the centrist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 presidential election and continued with a push back by the centrists in the 2006 elections for the Assembly of Experts and municipal councils. It reached a new peak in the competition for the head of the Assembly of Experts after its long standing leader, Ayatollah Meshkini, died. The hardliners, through their newspapers such as Kayhan and websites such as Rajanews and Khedmat, made every effort to discredit Hashemi Rafsanjani and prevent him from taking the helm of that assembly. Although they were successful in making the fight over the chairmanship of that institution competitive for the first time in its history, they failed in their attempt to prevent his ascent.
One would have thought that two unsuccessful attempts at dislodging Hashemi Rafsanjani and his centrist supporters from all positions of power would have been sufficient lessons for the hardliners not to try again. But faced with the possibility of yet another defeat in the upcoming parliamentary elections in the hands of centrist forces, the hardliners have taken their gloves off and are directly aiming at Hashemi Rafsanjani and in the process placing all the key players in Iranian politics in a very uncomfortable position.
The occasion for this rather ugly fight was the decision by Ahmadinejad’s Ministry of Intelligence about seven months ago to accuse and arrest Hossein Moussavian, Iran’s former ambassador to Germany, former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, and deputy director of the Strategic Studies Center affiliated with the Expediency Council, on charges that were initially quite vague but suggested giving secret information to a foreign government (later revealed to be UK). After a while, through the reporting on various hard-line sites, these charges solidified into spying for a foreign government, holding of secret documents, and propaganda against the system.
The gravity of these charges and the closeness of Moussavian to both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during Khatami’s presidency, shook the Iranian political scene. Moussavian was released on a relatively mild bail in 9 days, causing the parliament to call in for questioning Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei. It indeed the charges were so severe, what justified Moussavian’s release, members of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security reportedly asked in closed door meeting? Ejei’s answer was a weak one: As far the Intelligence Ministry was concerned Moussavian’s crime was evident but the bail decision was set by the judge and his decision must be respected.
Worries about what the judge in the case would decide seemed to have been the trigger, prompting Ahmadinejad to go public on November 12 and announce in front a student audience that if domestic elements do not stop pressure regarding the nuclear file, they will be introduced to the people of Iran, adding “they are traitors… they are now putting pressure on the judge of a case so that a spy is exonerated… The People of Iran will not allow some, using their economic and political influence, to save criminals from people’s reprisal.”
Hashemi Rafsanjani’s action on the same day had more nuance. He simply allowed Moussavian to attend an official function of the Expediency Council and sit two seats apart from him and next to Moussavian’s former boss, Hassan Rowhani, who later chastised the president for finding someone guilty before the judge renders his decision. The message was clear. Hashemi Rafsanjani was not going to back away from his support of a loyal state manager.
All this led to public uproar. Hard-line media accused Hashemi Rafsanjani of trying to influence the case while the centrists accused the president of doing the same through his public announcements. In an opinion piece in the hard-line Rajanews, a commentator, in a not so subtle hint directed at Hashemi Rafsanjani, even raised the specter of Iran’s biggest foreign policy scandal of 1980s (revelations of Iran’s secret arms dealings with the United States), the execution of Mehdi Hashemi, and the ultimate purging of the then designated supreme leader to be, Ayatollah Hossein-ali Montazeri, for his unwavering support of the man who was found to be a traitor and executed.
Meanwhile, subtly criticizing Ahamdinejad, an increasing number of important conservative players, such as Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator until recently, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, and Ahmad Tavakoli, the head of Majles’ Research Center, began wondering about the wisdom of using the nuclear issue in a factional fight. Tavakoli suggested that these conflicts, instead of publicly, should be taken care of through “communication of the situation to the office of the leader.” The conservative newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami, even hinted at the prosecution of Ahmadinejad for defamation of a public servant prior to the decision made by courts.
The leader, meanwhile, is heard only making empty calls for national unity in a year ironically identified as the year of "national unity and Islamic solidarity" without any reference to the specifics of the conflict between the hardliners and the centrists or its intensity. He clearly wants to stay above the fray in a situation that may not allow him to do so.
Yesterday, the preliminary judge in the case finally rendered his decision, essentially throwing away the two charges of spying and holding secret documents, only upholding the nebulous charge of propaganda against the system (I say nebulous because almost all those arrested for political reasons are charged with this) and handing out a suspended sentence. This led to an immediate call by Ahmadinejad for the release of close to dozen conversations between Moussavian and foreigners which will prove his crime. The Intelligence Minister said that the Ministry will appeal and all this commotion paid off as Tehran’s chief prosecutor (who has very close ties to the supreme leader) refused to confirm the case today and in fact voided the suspended sentence, ordering a re-investigation. However, the chief prosecutor also ordered the Intelligence Ministry to keep the evidence it has secret.
So the drama will continue as Ahmadinejad and his supporters, including Minister of Intelligence Ejei, see no choice but to push full throttle in order to prove themselves right in making the conflicts over the nuclear file so public. Their supporters have called on members of the Basij militia to demonstrate in front of the judicial compound on Monday to protest the judge’s decision.
By elevating the case and posing a direct challenge, however, Ahmadinejad and his supporters have also made it impossible for Hashemi Rafsanjani to back down as this will be seen as an important loss for him. They have also antagonized a whole array of more moderate conservatives who are unhappy with the outright politicization of the nuclear issue for political gains.
Hashemi Rafsanjani is of course not immune to losses. On two important occasions he has lost through an electoral process. In the 2000 parliamentary elections, in which reformists won handily, he took an incredible amount of criticism from the reformers (who dubbed him “The Red Eminence” behind many malicious acts of the Islamic Republic). Voters had to be convinced about the reformers’ intent. Their strategy worked and many new voters thought that if the reformers could attack Hashemi Rafsanjani, the literal backbone of the Islamic Republic, so freely, then their desire for reform was serious.
Hashemi Rafsanjani also lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election on the basis of a campaign that made the former’s wealth and corruption an issue. Whether or not Ahmadinejad and his supporters can get mileage from the same theme after more than 2 ½ years of their own service is not entirely clear. This theme, publicly replayed through the Moussavian drama, will certainly excite Ahmadinejad’s own base of about 4 to 5 million who voted for him the first round of the 2005 election. But it is not clear if it would similarly excite the relatively large number of voters (again about 4 to 5 million) who shifted their allegiances from reformist and centrist candidates to vote for Ahmadinejad, presumably in an anti-Hashemi Rafsanjani move in the second round of the 2005 election.
Ahmadinejad supporters are also faced with the problem that parliamentary elections in Iran are a lot more parochial than presidential ones and the most important contest occurs in the city of Tehran which has 30 seats; with most of the leaders of the parliament coming from this capital city where reformist and centrist forces traditionally do better than hardliners if relatively large number of voters come out and vote.
Added to this problem is the fact that Hashemi Rafsanjani will not be on the ballot, only many former ministers, ambassadors, and prominent state managers who are identified with him or former president Khatami. By making accusations against Moussavian and essentially the entire previous nuclear team, hardliners hope to keep the connection to Hashemi Rafsanjani alive and convince the electorate to continue their pattern of mostly anti-elite vote that began with the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997.
But this strategy runs the risk of further alienating a large number of more moderate conservatives with long-standing ties to Hashemi Rafsanjani and the former state managers who are gearing up for the election. Many such the former presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri have called for the acceptance of the judge's decision.
In 1997, the reformists attacked Hashemi Rafsanjani in order to mobilize voters who were dissatisfied with the Islamic Republic. The hardliners attack on Hashemi Rafsanjani, this time around, will in all likelihood fire up their own base but probably not many more. The effect will more likely be like the 2006 Assembly of Experts election when Hashemi Rafsanjani garnered the largest number of votes in the city of Tehran out of the fear that his loss will push the scale too much to the side of the hardliners.
At the end, though, let us also remember that we are talking about Iran and nothing is settled until elections are actually held. The only thing for sure is that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be represented as a fight between the new elite (who deem themselves as incorruptible, in favor of social justice and hard-line but are represented by opponents as incompetent and hard-line) versus the old elite (who are represented as economically and politically corrupt by opponents but represent themselves as centrist and in favor of balance between social justice and capital accumulation). Not much of a choice, to be sure, but a choice nevertheless that has to be made by the voters either by voting in favor of one side or non-voting (as non-voting traditionally helps the hardliners in Iran). Read more on this article...
Fighting Drugs and Building Peace
The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung has published a report I co-authored with Alexandra Guaqueta on a conference on how to implement counter-narcotics policies in a conflict or post-conflict situation. The conference was co-sponsored by FES, the Center on International Cooperation (NYU), the Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (Bogota), and the Open Society Institute. The conference also benefited from support from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
FES describes the report as follows:
FES describes the report as follows:
A frequently overlooked feature of the fight against drugs is the linkages between the production of illegal narcotics and the political dynamics in post-conflict countries. Afghanistan and Colombia are cases in point.Post-conflict situations not only attract the cultivation of crops used for the production of illegal drugs. Events in Guinea-Buissau and Haiti illustrate that the same sad logic applies to the international drug mafia’s selection of trading “hot spots”.It is against this background that a debate has ensued on the policy coherence between the international community’s fight against drugs and its parallel efforts to sustain peace in post-conflict countries.Download the pdf file here. Read more on this article...
"Why are We in Afghanistan?" December 5 Public Lecture by Barnett R. Rubin at Tufts University
I will be giving a public lecture next Wednesday evening (December 5) at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University. The subject is "Why are We in Afghanistan?" I wanted to let any readers in the Boston area know about it.
You can register online for a webcast of the event.
If there are any points that readers would like me to cover, please leave requests in the comments section. I'll try to post a video or audio recording of the lecture afterwards. Read more on this article...
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Will the results justify the pre-Annapolis boilerplate?
Are you wondering about the Annapolis meeting that will open this week? Will the meeting exceed the low expectations that now embrace it? The confab has already been downgraded from a “conference” to just a “meeting.” I have posted an authentic copy of the official “boiler plate” that has been circulated to U.S. diplomats. In other words, what you read is the language that has been crafted prior to the meeting by State department officials intent on convincing you, and me, that the Annapolis meeting is a bona fide step forward.
Were you the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, the political officer in El Salvador, the cultural affairs officer in Russia, the consular affairs officer in Poland, the economic attache in France or the State deparment spokesperson in Washington, this is the suggested language ("boilerplate") for responding to public inquiries and questions from the press about Annapolis.
See the crosslisting: Speaking Truth to Power from Boston: Annapolis boilerplate Read more on this article...
Were you the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, the political officer in El Salvador, the cultural affairs officer in Russia, the consular affairs officer in Poland, the economic attache in France or the State deparment spokesperson in Washington, this is the suggested language ("boilerplate") for responding to public inquiries and questions from the press about Annapolis.
See the crosslisting: Speaking Truth to Power from Boston: Annapolis boilerplate Read more on this article...
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The Akond of Swat
Who or why, or which, or what, is Maulana Fazlullah of Swat? Recent headlines from Pakistan have been grim - pitched battles with many reports of casualties and mass migration of civilians from the conflict region. Yet, the foreign media hasn’t really focused on Maulana Fazlullah - perhaps thinking that the story of “Talibanization” covers this particular mullah just as well as it does any other (Baitullah Mehsud, in Waziristan, is slowly getting some attention, though). At a cursory glance, it all does blend in. The overall deterioration in the NWFP (North Western Frontier Province) and the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) areas in recent years - specifically in Waziristan, the Malakand Agency regions, Dir, Bajaur, Swat and areas around Peshawar - is often called “Talibanization” and is often pegged to the aftermath of the Afghanistan war of 2001. There is, though, a longer history that offers some additional venues of thought. At the very least, it tells us to pay attention to the local even as we highlight transnational movements like the Taliban.
Shah Ismail (1789-1831) and Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi (1786-1831), specifically, are pivotal figures in the memory and history of Swat.1 In the late 1820s, they waged a religious war against Ranjit Singh’s forces for the control of Peshawar. They succeeded briefly, declared themselves an emirate where the creed of Muhammad held sway, and were swept away in 1831 - killed in battle. Shah Ismail and Sayyid Ahmed, though defeated, emerged as an integral part of the narrative of anti-imperialism. But not simply for their militant struggle for the establishment of an Islamic polity, they came to represent a profound connection to the revivalist thought of nineteenth century Muslims in India. Shah Ismail was the grandson of Shah Waliullah - the progenitor of the deobandis, who have continued to enjoy a wide following in NWFP. I know that it is more fashionable nowadays to connect Shah Waliullah to Abdul Wahhab and build an argument about some unitary “fundamentalist” strain of Islamic thought - but, it is a wrong notion. There are crucial difference, not only in history but in the theological arguments underlining deobandi and wahabbi ideologies of revivalist Islam. The deobandi, in particular, combined the idea of a polity based on Islamic Shar’ia and free from foreign influences with a more quixotic attempts to “migrate” or “settle” a Caliphate in Afghanistan. (The migration of thousands of Muslims to Afghanistan in 1920 needs recent historical attention.)
The mountainous regions between Kabul and Peshawar and across Baluchistan and Gilgit remained an odd absence in the centralizing ideology of Pakistan. Partly it was due to the linguistic and ethnic communities that stretched beyond the nation-state. Partly it was a function of the lack of political legitimacy for any federal government in the region. The Pakistani State, created with unequal halves of East and West Pakistan, proved unequal to the task of imagining itself. In 1971, Bangladesh emerged out of the political chaos and opportunism and military destruction wrought by West Pakistani armies. In 1972, Pakistan embarked on a new path to re-affirm itself. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir Bhutto, was the chief architect of a program of Islamization to glue together the rest of Pakistan. He looked towards the Pan-Islamic movement to position Pakistan as an international entity that wasn’t simply a footnote in the red hot Cold War. Bhutto’s Islamization efforts continued under Zia ul Haq, who overthrew Bhutto in 1977. Except, that under Zia ul Haq, they became the Sunnification efforts to counter his (and Saudi) fears of a Shi’a revolution sweeping out of Iran and across the Muslim world. The frontier, as always, of these efforts was the NWFP. It is around this moment that the Soviet-Afghan war overshadows all local narratives but I would like to put in a call to study the movement of Pashtun men out of NWFP territories and into the urban centers of Karachi and Lahore - and further to Riyadh and Doha - for economic reasons. We are sorely lacking scholarship that can trace these movements back to the origins where petro-dollars (from doing labor in the Gulf States) transformed these small communities. (It is one sad casualty of our current myopia that we are interested only in the monolithic account of Soviet-Afghan war and the “Talibanization” and continue to stress “top-down” factors in our analysis.)
In November 1994, the year old government of Benazir Bhutto faced a crisis in NWFP. Some of the Pashtun tribal chiefs, led by a Maulana Sufi Muhammad proclaimed that Shari’a needed to be enforced in NWFP. His movement, the Tehrik Nifaz-i Shariat Muhammadi (Movement for the Establishment of the Path of Muhammad), enjoyed wide-spread support. He was shutting down airports and businesses and making life hard for the PPP. So, she cut a deal. It may be shocking to remember that this same Benazir Bhutto who is now proclaiming herself as the Sole Secular Leader was none too shy about cutting deals where it suited her. The Musharraf regime also turned to TNSM and Maulana Sufi Muhammad to try and operate in the Swat region. But, the Bajaur strike and the Lal Masjid crisis ended their partnership. Maulana Sufi Muhammad is under arrest but Musharraf is actively trying to broker another deal.
The reason is Maulana Fazlullah and his declaration of open hostility against the Pakistan military. Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad and has organized his own army called Shaheen Commandos. He is operating in and around Matta and openly calling themselves the Taliban. He is young - 30 or 32 - and comes from Imam Dheri area in Swat. Around a year or so ago, as the Imam of the seminary in Imam Dheri, he established an FM radio channel in the area to deliver sermons and became a local celebrity.2 After the Lal Masjid crisis, he declared jihad on the state of Pakistan. His Shaheen Commandos now control Matta. And the fight is slowly reaching the capital.
This is certainly a complex and deeply troubling development for the state of Pakistan. The rise of local militias and the oppressive reaction by the military was certainly a contributing factor in the secession of East Pakistan. And a similar pattern is clear in Baluchistan. Just two days ago, Mir Balach Khan Marri was killed - something that is sure to have wide repercussions for thatseparatist movement.
So to wrap it up: separatist religious movement in Swat, separatist nationalist movement in Baluchistan and a separate Musharraf from his dictatorship movement in the rest of the country. Things can only get better, no?
———
- See, for example, http://ghazwah-urdu.sitesled.com/Articals/Jihad/Qafla/11.htm [↩]
- FM radio channels have proliferated in the past 3 years as the key means of transmission of ideas and information. They are very cheap to set up, mobile and can usually transmit up to 80 miles. No militant is without one. [↩]
Baghlan Massacre: The Teetering Half-Full Glass
I started this blog by posing myself the common question, was I optimistic or pessimistic about Afghanistan? The answer, readers may recall, was, "No." I borrowed a neologism (in translation) from Palestinian novelist Emile Habiby, to style the refusal of attitudes as "pessoptimism."
I pursued the same line of thinking through a different metaphor, by asking, "Is the Afghan glass half empty or half full?" I concluded:
On November 6 a suicide bomber assassinated opposition spokesman Sayed Mustafa Kazemi and six other members of the National Assembly at a newly privatized sugar factory in Baghlan, northern Afghanistan, setting off panicked shooting, by the end of which over 70 people had been killed, over 59 of them schoolchildren (funeral at left). In an article for Madrid's El Pais, I analyzed how this one event demonstrates the fragility of all that has been achieved in Afghanistan. The International Herald Tribune has now published this article in English.
Since that time the Senlis Council has reported:
I pursued the same line of thinking through a different metaphor, by asking, "Is the Afghan glass half empty or half full?" I concluded:
The Afghan glass may be half full, a tenth full, or near to overflowing. But it is standing on a very rickety table in an earthquake prone area. It will not matter how full the glass is if the table collapses or one of the region's unstable tectonic plates suddenly shifts.
On November 6 a suicide bomber assassinated opposition spokesman Sayed Mustafa Kazemi and six other members of the National Assembly at a newly privatized sugar factory in Baghlan, northern Afghanistan, setting off panicked shooting, by the end of which over 70 people had been killed, over 59 of them schoolchildren (funeral at left). In an article for Madrid's El Pais, I analyzed how this one event demonstrates the fragility of all that has been achieved in Afghanistan. The International Herald Tribune has now published this article in English.Since that time the Senlis Council has reported:
In the five years since international military operations began, Afghanistan’s security situation has deteriorated significantly. After a period of relative calm during the first few years that followed the removal of the Taliban, violence is spreading once again throughout this country. As a consequence, many Afghans now perceive their country to be less secure than it was in 2001. Although “democratic government” is now in place, the Afghan population has not yet experienced many of the promised economic and social stability benefits of peacetime. Specifically, international military operations have failed to achieve their main objective which was to assure security and stability in Afghanistan, both essential foundations for democracy and economic development.The report presents a misleading map of Afghanistan showing a clear frontline between a Taliban-controlled south and a government-controlled north. This map exaggerates the extent of control by both the government and the Taliban. The reality is much more a patchwork of access by different actors for different purposes and a population that is sick of false promises, brutality, and incompetence from everyone. It is harder to depict this fractal reality than to show an oversimplified, dramatic "front line." But amid all the criticism of the Senlis Council that is sure to follow, I would like to mention one over-riding impression: this report largely echoes what Afghans tell me in Afghanistan. Official statements issued by the U.S., NATO, and the UN do not. Read more on this article...
Monday, November 19, 2007
Is it freezing yet?
Ehud Olmert stated on Monday that "It is impossible to repeat that the 2002 Road Map is a strategic asset for Israel and at the same time to ignore our obligations. Let us admit to ourselves: We committed not to built new settlements - we won't build new settlements. We promised not to expropriate land - we won't expropriate. We promised to raze illegal outposts - so certainly, we will raze them." How much credence should we put in these three promises and what is the declaration’s significance?
Bismarck is reputed to have warned against believing promises made on eve of elections, wars, and weddings. It is probably a good idea to add to this list promises made on the eve of peace conferences. A new round is to start in Annapolis next week.
Olmert carefully omitted from his list the obligation to freeze settlement activities, including natural growth due to births and the formation of new families. The Israeli promise to freeze settlements under the Road Map is now dead letter. Indeed existing settlements will continue to grow. As the past record demonstrates, Jewish settlements in the West Bank can either expand or shrink; they are never frozen. The raison d’être of the settlements is expansion and, consequently, the settlers are mobilized by any threat of freeze.
But Olmert’s other promises are significant in themselves. One of the great Palestinian worries is the building of new housing for Jews by the Israeli government in the E-1 area. This is the last remaining unsettled area that connects the Old City and some of the other Arab neighborhoods to the West Bank. Building in E-1 would put the cork in the bottle of the Israeli encirclement of East Jerusalem by Jewish townships. Presumably the promise not to build new settlement signals a willingness not to expand into this area. That we have come this far, namely to a point where a single new settlement can sever East Jerusalem from a future Palestinian state shows just how late in the game of peacemaking we are and how devastating a failure of the Annapolis talks can potentially be.
Olmert’s other promise to begin dismantling illegal settlements is also significant, especially, if in contrast to similar promises given in the past, it will be implemented. Such policy’s importance is not due to its impact on settlements –after all, for most of the word all settlements are illegal—but to its impact on the settlers. Dismantling any settlement, whether authorized or not by the government, is a major manifestation of Israeli political will. It will demonstrate that the settlers’ support is limited and their stranglehold on the peace process is broken. One of Sharon’s contradictory legacies was the object lesson of two withdrawals from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Olmert was at Sharon’s side during the latter and during the last election campaign run on the platform of continuing the process in the West Bank. But if nothing concrete comes out of Annapolis he will be able to conveniently forget this pre-peace conference promise. One more false promise for Bismarck to chalk up.
Finally, the significance of Olmert’s promises is that they will allow Saudi Arabia to attend the Annapolis conference. In fact, for the Israelis this might be the real lure of the conference. But it is probably equally important for the Saudis themselves to sit down with the Israelis. The Saudis, after the inconclusive Israel-Hizbullah war of last summer and the Iranian nuclear sabre rattling, are intent on pulling together the Sunnis of the Middle East. For the purposes of an anti-Iranian and an anti-Iranian-supported-Shi’a coalition, the Israelis seem to qualify as honorary Sunnis. Read more on this article...
Bismarck is reputed to have warned against believing promises made on eve of elections, wars, and weddings. It is probably a good idea to add to this list promises made on the eve of peace conferences. A new round is to start in Annapolis next week.
Olmert carefully omitted from his list the obligation to freeze settlement activities, including natural growth due to births and the formation of new families. The Israeli promise to freeze settlements under the Road Map is now dead letter. Indeed existing settlements will continue to grow. As the past record demonstrates, Jewish settlements in the West Bank can either expand or shrink; they are never frozen. The raison d’être of the settlements is expansion and, consequently, the settlers are mobilized by any threat of freeze.
But Olmert’s other promises are significant in themselves. One of the great Palestinian worries is the building of new housing for Jews by the Israeli government in the E-1 area. This is the last remaining unsettled area that connects the Old City and some of the other Arab neighborhoods to the West Bank. Building in E-1 would put the cork in the bottle of the Israeli encirclement of East Jerusalem by Jewish townships. Presumably the promise not to build new settlement signals a willingness not to expand into this area. That we have come this far, namely to a point where a single new settlement can sever East Jerusalem from a future Palestinian state shows just how late in the game of peacemaking we are and how devastating a failure of the Annapolis talks can potentially be.
Olmert’s other promise to begin dismantling illegal settlements is also significant, especially, if in contrast to similar promises given in the past, it will be implemented. Such policy’s importance is not due to its impact on settlements –after all, for most of the word all settlements are illegal—but to its impact on the settlers. Dismantling any settlement, whether authorized or not by the government, is a major manifestation of Israeli political will. It will demonstrate that the settlers’ support is limited and their stranglehold on the peace process is broken. One of Sharon’s contradictory legacies was the object lesson of two withdrawals from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Olmert was at Sharon’s side during the latter and during the last election campaign run on the platform of continuing the process in the West Bank. But if nothing concrete comes out of Annapolis he will be able to conveniently forget this pre-peace conference promise. One more false promise for Bismarck to chalk up.
Finally, the significance of Olmert’s promises is that they will allow Saudi Arabia to attend the Annapolis conference. In fact, for the Israelis this might be the real lure of the conference. But it is probably equally important for the Saudis themselves to sit down with the Israelis. The Saudis, after the inconclusive Israel-Hizbullah war of last summer and the Iranian nuclear sabre rattling, are intent on pulling together the Sunnis of the Middle East. For the purposes of an anti-Iranian and an anti-Iranian-supported-Shi’a coalition, the Israelis seem to qualify as honorary Sunnis. Read more on this article...
Friday, November 16, 2007
Politics of Reporting on IAEA Reports
It is always interesting to read the actual text of reports issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding Iran not only because of what they reveal about Iran’s program, but also because of the interestingly partial way various news organizations and governments end up interpreting or representing the report to audiences they are sure will not read the reports themselves.
The IAEA report that just came out regarding Iran was much anticipated because of the agreement on a work plan between the IAEA and Iran regarding a time frame for the resolution of “outstanding issues” that had remained regarding Iran’s past activities. Based on this agreement Iran was expected to cooperate and effectively divulge information that would allow the IAEA to assess whether or not Iran has come clean on its past activities. This process is still ongoing but the November report was expected to give a hint about the extent of Iranian cooperation.
The IAEA and its director Mohammad ElBaradei were heavily criticized by the United States and several European governments for the work plan because of its focus on Iran’s past activities or breaches and the possibility of the resolution of the questions regarding these past activities undercutting the force of the UN sanctions regime that demands suspension of Iran’s enrichment program. As such, the report issued on November 15 had to be, and is, very clear that “contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities.”
The IAEA report also states that “since early 2006 [this is when Iran suspended its voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol due to UN Security Council initiated sanctions against Iran], the Agency has not received the type of information that Iran had previously been providing, pursuant the Additional Protocol and as a transparency measure. As result, the Agency’s knowledge about Iran’s current programme is diminishing.”
On the remaining major issues relevant to the scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear program, however, the report paints a cooperative picture of Iran and states: “The Agency has been able to conclude that answers provided on the declared past P-1 and P-2 centrifuge programmes are consistent with its findings. The Agency will, however, continue to seek corroboration and is continuing to verify the completeness of Iran’s declarations.” This is not a statement of closure of the issue as the Iranian leaders are claiming but is an important steep forward. In fact, the language of Iran providing information that is “consistent with the Agency’s findings” or “information available to the Agency” from other sources is repeated several times in the report regarding a variety of issues.
Also positively reported is Iran’s level of cooperation. The report explicitly states that “Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on issues raised in the context of the work plan. However its cooperation has been reactive rather than proactive.” This I take to mean that Iran has responded to questions and cooperated in specific areas when asked but not before. The IAEA clearly wants Iran to engage in “active cooperation and full transparency” in a proactive manner but the report does not state that Iran’s reactive approach has led to lack of cooperation as agreed upon in the work plan.
Finally, the IAEA is also quite explicit that “the Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.” But, as mentioned above, the Agency wants Iran to implement the Additional Protocol to prevent its “diminishing” knowledge of Iran’s current program (this is by the way something Iran has said, at least in the past, that it will do if Iran’s nuclear dossier returns to the IAEA).
So a close reading of the report suggests that the IAEA is unhappy with Iran’s continuation of enrichment (because it is contrary to the Security Council decisions) and would like Iran to voluntarily implement the Additional Protocol as it did in the past. At the same time, the report suggests good progress on the issue of Iran’s past activities. It also reveals no evidence of diversion to a weapons program despite “a total of seven unannounced inspections” carried out which are beyond Iran’s current NPT obligations (as I understand it, IAEA inspectors have been issued multiple entry visas to enter Iran as they wish).
I lay the report out in detail because I think it is important as a backdrop to the hesitance shown by Russia and China in approving another set of sanctions against Iran before IAEA’s engagement with Iran through the work plan is finished.
But as I said above it is also interesting and quite revealing to see how the report itself is reported. In Iran, the statements about non-diversion and consistency with the Agency’s findings are trumpeted by government officials as an affirmation of Iran’s righteousness. The United States government, on the other hand, has found the report inadequate and in fact has immediately called for a Security Council meeting to discuss a new round of sanctions (a meeting China reportedly initially refused to attend but has now reluctantly agreed to do so after Thanksgiving)
These are expected governmental positions. Perhaps also not too unexpectedly, the American newspapers and news agencies also do seem a bit too willing to tow the U.S. government line. The New York Times, in a piece entitled “Report Raises New Doubts on Iran’s Nuclear Program,” reports that the Agency “said in a report on Thursday that Iran had made new but incomplete disclosures about its past nuclear activities, missing a critical deadline under an agreement with the agency and virtually assuring a new push by the United States to impose stricter international sanctions.” No where in text of this piece, however, there is anything about what these “new doubts” are or where exactly the report has said that a critical deadline has been passed. Also not referred to are the explicit statements about non-diversion of nuclear material and consistency with the Agency’s findings.
The piece goes on to say, “the report made clear that even while providing some answers, Iran has continued to shield many aspects of its nuclear program.” The report says no such thing but the NYT piece takes the report’s reference to Iran’s “reactive rather than proactive” cooperation, mentioned in the paragraph about Iran’s “sufficient” and “timely” cooperation with the work plan, along with the suspension of the Additional Protocol (calling it instead “restrictions Iran has placed on inspectors”) as the reasons for why the “agency’s understanding of the full scope of Iran’s nuclear program is diminishing” and represents this as a "shielding" by Iran.
The Associated Press’ heading is “IAEA: Iran Not Open About Nuke Program,” while the opening of the piece is: “The U.S. called for new sanctions against Iran after a U.N. report Thursday that said the Tehran regime has been generally truthful about key aspects of its past nuclear activities, but is continuing to enrich uranium.”
After several changes in the Internet versions, the Washington Post’s heading ended up slightly less provocative (“U.S. to Seek New Sanctions against Iran: UN Report Faults Tehran’s Input on Nuclear Program”). But the text begins by saying “The Bush administration plans to push for new sanctions against Iran after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported yesterday that Tehran is providing "diminishing" information about its controversial nuclear program, U.S. officials said. In a critically timed assessment, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran provided "timely" and helpful new information on a secret program that became public in 2002, but that it did not fully answer questions or allow full access to Iranian personnel. Iran is even less cooperative on its current program, the IAEA reported.” This reporting is not only flatly wrong regarding what the report said about full access to Iranian personnel but also completely mum, like the reporting from AP and NYT, about the reasons for the “diminishing” information (the suspension of the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol which was instigated by the Security Council action).
If you are wondering if there is reporting that accurately uses the language used by the IAEA findings, I think the BBC piece entitled “Mixed UN Nuclear Report for Iran,” although short and still mum on the reasons for why the Additional Protocol is no longer voluntarily implemented by Iran, gives a relatively accurate description of the issues involved. So it can be done! Why it is not, make a guess…. Read more on this article...
The IAEA report that just came out regarding Iran was much anticipated because of the agreement on a work plan between the IAEA and Iran regarding a time frame for the resolution of “outstanding issues” that had remained regarding Iran’s past activities. Based on this agreement Iran was expected to cooperate and effectively divulge information that would allow the IAEA to assess whether or not Iran has come clean on its past activities. This process is still ongoing but the November report was expected to give a hint about the extent of Iranian cooperation.
The IAEA and its director Mohammad ElBaradei were heavily criticized by the United States and several European governments for the work plan because of its focus on Iran’s past activities or breaches and the possibility of the resolution of the questions regarding these past activities undercutting the force of the UN sanctions regime that demands suspension of Iran’s enrichment program. As such, the report issued on November 15 had to be, and is, very clear that “contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities.”
The IAEA report also states that “since early 2006 [this is when Iran suspended its voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol due to UN Security Council initiated sanctions against Iran], the Agency has not received the type of information that Iran had previously been providing, pursuant the Additional Protocol and as a transparency measure. As result, the Agency’s knowledge about Iran’s current programme is diminishing.”
On the remaining major issues relevant to the scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear program, however, the report paints a cooperative picture of Iran and states: “The Agency has been able to conclude that answers provided on the declared past P-1 and P-2 centrifuge programmes are consistent with its findings. The Agency will, however, continue to seek corroboration and is continuing to verify the completeness of Iran’s declarations.” This is not a statement of closure of the issue as the Iranian leaders are claiming but is an important steep forward. In fact, the language of Iran providing information that is “consistent with the Agency’s findings” or “information available to the Agency” from other sources is repeated several times in the report regarding a variety of issues.
Also positively reported is Iran’s level of cooperation. The report explicitly states that “Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on issues raised in the context of the work plan. However its cooperation has been reactive rather than proactive.” This I take to mean that Iran has responded to questions and cooperated in specific areas when asked but not before. The IAEA clearly wants Iran to engage in “active cooperation and full transparency” in a proactive manner but the report does not state that Iran’s reactive approach has led to lack of cooperation as agreed upon in the work plan.
Finally, the IAEA is also quite explicit that “the Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.” But, as mentioned above, the Agency wants Iran to implement the Additional Protocol to prevent its “diminishing” knowledge of Iran’s current program (this is by the way something Iran has said, at least in the past, that it will do if Iran’s nuclear dossier returns to the IAEA).
So a close reading of the report suggests that the IAEA is unhappy with Iran’s continuation of enrichment (because it is contrary to the Security Council decisions) and would like Iran to voluntarily implement the Additional Protocol as it did in the past. At the same time, the report suggests good progress on the issue of Iran’s past activities. It also reveals no evidence of diversion to a weapons program despite “a total of seven unannounced inspections” carried out which are beyond Iran’s current NPT obligations (as I understand it, IAEA inspectors have been issued multiple entry visas to enter Iran as they wish).
I lay the report out in detail because I think it is important as a backdrop to the hesitance shown by Russia and China in approving another set of sanctions against Iran before IAEA’s engagement with Iran through the work plan is finished.
But as I said above it is also interesting and quite revealing to see how the report itself is reported. In Iran, the statements about non-diversion and consistency with the Agency’s findings are trumpeted by government officials as an affirmation of Iran’s righteousness. The United States government, on the other hand, has found the report inadequate and in fact has immediately called for a Security Council meeting to discuss a new round of sanctions (a meeting China reportedly initially refused to attend but has now reluctantly agreed to do so after Thanksgiving)
These are expected governmental positions. Perhaps also not too unexpectedly, the American newspapers and news agencies also do seem a bit too willing to tow the U.S. government line. The New York Times, in a piece entitled “Report Raises New Doubts on Iran’s Nuclear Program,” reports that the Agency “said in a report on Thursday that Iran had made new but incomplete disclosures about its past nuclear activities, missing a critical deadline under an agreement with the agency and virtually assuring a new push by the United States to impose stricter international sanctions.” No where in text of this piece, however, there is anything about what these “new doubts” are or where exactly the report has said that a critical deadline has been passed. Also not referred to are the explicit statements about non-diversion of nuclear material and consistency with the Agency’s findings.
The piece goes on to say, “the report made clear that even while providing some answers, Iran has continued to shield many aspects of its nuclear program.” The report says no such thing but the NYT piece takes the report’s reference to Iran’s “reactive rather than proactive” cooperation, mentioned in the paragraph about Iran’s “sufficient” and “timely” cooperation with the work plan, along with the suspension of the Additional Protocol (calling it instead “restrictions Iran has placed on inspectors”) as the reasons for why the “agency’s understanding of the full scope of Iran’s nuclear program is diminishing” and represents this as a "shielding" by Iran.
The Associated Press’ heading is “IAEA: Iran Not Open About Nuke Program,” while the opening of the piece is: “The U.S. called for new sanctions against Iran after a U.N. report Thursday that said the Tehran regime has been generally truthful about key aspects of its past nuclear activities, but is continuing to enrich uranium.”
After several changes in the Internet versions, the Washington Post’s heading ended up slightly less provocative (“U.S. to Seek New Sanctions against Iran: UN Report Faults Tehran’s Input on Nuclear Program”). But the text begins by saying “The Bush administration plans to push for new sanctions against Iran after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported yesterday that Tehran is providing "diminishing" information about its controversial nuclear program, U.S. officials said. In a critically timed assessment, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran provided "timely" and helpful new information on a secret program that became public in 2002, but that it did not fully answer questions or allow full access to Iranian personnel. Iran is even less cooperative on its current program, the IAEA reported.” This reporting is not only flatly wrong regarding what the report said about full access to Iranian personnel but also completely mum, like the reporting from AP and NYT, about the reasons for the “diminishing” information (the suspension of the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol which was instigated by the Security Council action).
If you are wondering if there is reporting that accurately uses the language used by the IAEA findings, I think the BBC piece entitled “Mixed UN Nuclear Report for Iran,” although short and still mum on the reasons for why the Additional Protocol is no longer voluntarily implemented by Iran, gives a relatively accurate description of the issues involved. So it can be done! Why it is not, make a guess…. Read more on this article...
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACEMAKING AND ITS DISCONTENTS
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACEMAKING AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Gershon Shafir
University of California, San Diego
Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable and, in particular, why did the Oslo process --the most ambitious attempt to bring it to resolution through compromise-- fail so tragically? This short article cannot do justice to all aspects of the conflict and in the following I only promise to explore the twin issues of colonization and extremism.
Most analyses of the Oslo and post-Oslo process have been conducted from an international relations perspective which highlights the asymmetry of power between the two sides, a view also accepted here. This "realist" methodological perspective also portrays each side as a single actor animated by one will; an approach that any sociological perspective must contest. From the latter vantage point the conflict is best analyzed not as being between 'Palestinians' and 'Israelis' as such, but between the extremists of both societies who gained disproportionate influence and thereby sideline, sometimes silence and, on occasion absorb, their own larger moderate camps.
In the following I will argue that from a comparative-historical perspective the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the last unresolved legacy of the colonial era. Consequently, the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians is a decolonization process which, however grotesquely, coexists with continued Israeli colonization. The agonies of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking are related to this split political personality disorder. Continued colonization perpetuates the territorial core of the conflict and is stimulating political and, in particular, religious extremism on both sides. Jewish messianic fundamentalism, on its part, legitimates Israeli settlement in the "holy land," and Palestinian jihadist movements simultaneously engage in acts of indiscriminate terror and shelling to prevent territorial compromise.
I. COLONIZATION AND SETTLEMENTS
The Oslo Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993 relegated all the truly divisive issues: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders to article V, paragraph 3, and postponed their resolution to the final status negotiations to be concluded in five years time. It was unrealistic to contemplate such a long hiatus. The downward spiral of the peace process began as soon as the implementation of the Oslo DOP collided with prior Israeli colonization.
The original Oslo plan implicitly envisioned Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories while leaving the individual settlements within the Palestinian-administered territory. But just a month later, Israel grouped the Jewish settlements in Gaza and their intermediate land into three continuous blocs that, in effect, cut Gaza into separate cantons. The Gaza blocs of Jewish settlements, military installations, and bypass roads gave the then 6,000 Israeli settlers one third of the territory, whereas the 1.1 million Gaza Palestinians received the other two thirds. The AInterim Agreement,@ or Oslo II agreement of September 28, 1995, extended this arrangement to the West Bank and formalized it by dividing the region into three types of jurisdiction. Area A, consisting mostly of the seven major Palestinian towns, was to be under the Interim Palestinian Authority's civilian and security control. In Area B, which incorporates the remaining Palestinian population centers and some of the refugee camps and villages, civilian control was to reside with the Palestinian Authority while security control was to remain in Israeli hands. Area C, comprising Jewish settlements and military bases as well as public land, was left under both Israeli civilian and military jurisdiction. In September 2000, the eve of the al-Aksa intifada, Area A comprised about 17 percent, Area B about 24 percent, and Area C the remaining 59 percent of the West Bank. The West Bank was so fragmented that the Palestinian Authority had under its full or partial control 227 cantons separated by cantons under Israeli control.
Instead of laying the groundwork for separating Israelis and Palestinians into two distinct geopolitical entities, the Oslo process became a plan to accommodate the Israeli colonies. These settlements fell into three different types. Conflicting motivations and disagreements over post-1967 political goals gave rise to distinct military, religious and suburban settlement waves. Security settlements were built along the Jordan River (which serves as the border with Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), suburban settlements along the old armistice line between the West Bank and Israel (the Green Line) and, in-between, atop the mountain range that is densely populated by Palestinians, a messianic drive mapped settlements onto the region's rich ancient religious geography. The latter's effect was the most deleterious since it had prioritized a map which disrupted, frequently deliberately, Palestinian territorial contiguity and ignored Palestinian demography. These religious settlers spearhead the settlement movement.
Under the guise of peacemaking, Israeli occupation was continued in another significant respect as well. Between the signing of the Oslo DOP and the outbreak of the al-Aksa intifada, the Israeli settler population grew roughly by 100,000, in effect doubling in seven years.
The large shadow cast by Israel over the Oslo process is explained, most commonly, as "hegemonic peacemaking." (The term hegemony is not used in the Gramscian sense of moral and intellectual leadership but is drawn from the literature in international relations and means its opposite - domination.) Stable peace agreements, in this view, are concluded between relative equals or between a victor and a vanquished enemy, whereas the Oslo agreement was signed by two "significantly unequal powers," namely Israel backed by the U.S. versus the PLO which enjoys mixed Arab support (Robinson:17). Consequently, it is pointed out, "the Oslo process...did not represent the end of Israeli occupation but its continuation, albeit in less direct form" and Palestinians are worse off in the wake of Oslo DOP than they were before (Roy:9). The ability of Israeli governments to significantly shape the Oslo process is unmistakable but the "hegemonic peacemaking" model endows only a sole actor --the Israeli government-- with agency. Other Israeli actors are conflated with the government, whereas Palestinians of various stripes appear to be but passive observers as their destiny is being determined by outsiders.
However, anyone even vaguely familiar with Israeli political life will testify that ever since the 1973 War it has been deeply polarized: divided roughly equally between supporters and opponents of the Aland for peace@ idea that undergird Oslo. The proportionate electoral system both represents and reproduces this fragmentation: no party has received absolute majority in the Knesset and fragile coalitions based on complicated trade-offs between multiple parties are needed to form coalition governments. In the thirteen years since signing the Oslo DOP, six Prime Ministers alternated and no Israeli government completed its full term in office. Even small groups can tilt the balance of power between the two blocs and, as a result, small ideological groups committed to single issues have amassed disproportionate power.
The most effective of these groups is the settlement movement, that comprises both secular and religious elements. While the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C may be explained by reference to the settlement map as it was in 1993, the continued expansion of settlements cannot be. Why did both Labor-led and Likud-led Israeli governments agree to withdraw from parts of the West Bank, but continued building new colonies and settling new colons? And as long as Israeli governments wished to expand settlements, why did they not do it strategically? Why were settlements that were obviously unviable, such as those in the Gaza Strip from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in September 2005, also expanded? In short, why would Israeli governments tie their own hands? There appear to be too many questions that cannot be explained by thinking of Israel as a unitary actor.
The continued expansion of the settlements as well as the indiscriminate nature of their expansion suggests the pervasive influence of the Council of Yesha - the organization of the existing settlements, Members of Knesset who reside in the occupied territories, and especially the religious settlement movement Gush Emunim and Amana, its settlement arm. Not surprisingly, they take credit for detouring Oslo around their settlements. In one article with the telling title: "The Maps of the Oslo Accord are the Maps of Jewish Settlement," a settler leader triumphantly concluded that "the Oslo process is the best example...of the influence of Jewish settlement on the political process."
Settler representatives and the Israeli military establishment played an inordinate role in negotiating the extent and layout of the phased Israeli withdrawals. The negotiations were either conducted by or led behind the scenes by the Israeli military, especially the Central Command in charge of the West Bank, which sought to retain control over vital roads or demanded the construction of "by-pass roads" in order to ensure the settlers' safety. Before Oslo II was approved, the Secretary General of Gush Emunim's settlement arm was allowed to recommend changes to the agreement. When it was discovered that the provisions of a map already approved by Knesset hurt settler interests, the map was surreptitiously changed. The committee to prepare the map for the three withdrawals agreed to at the Wye Plantation Accord of October 1998 was composed entirely of settlers, representing the various Israeli ministries, even the military itself. Even at the low point of the settlers' influence, Ehud Barak's December 2000 final status plan, which offered to withdraw from all of Gaza and over 90 percent of the West Bank, extended two deep territorial Afingers@ into the West Bank east of Ariel and Ma=aleh Adumim, in effect subdividing the Palestinian state into three cantons and controlling the major artery connecting them. When they could not have their way, settlers and their sympathizers cursed, condemned, threatened, carried out vigilante style attacks on Palestinians villagers, and murdered Yitzhak Rabin.
II. BOMBINGS AND CLOSURES
Whereas the polarization of Israeli politics invested the settler population with influence disproportionate to its size, we encounter the opposite dynamic in Palestinian political life but, ironically, with the same outcome. After the 1948 naqba, Palestinians have become one of the most fragmented national groups in the world both geographically and in terms of legal standing and the major challenge facing the PLO leadership was to try and forge a measure of unity among disparate factions and scattered communities. As a coalition of organizations, the PLO managed to maintain its grip by accepting an artificial consensus rather than seeking majority rule. "Consensus politics granted disproportionate influence over decisions making to the smallest group..." which, often was the most militant one. (Sayigh:679; Rubin:200)
This preference dovetailed with the historical rejection of compromise with the Jewish nationalist-colonialist project and the accompanying use of an extraordinary measure of violence aimed against the Jewish settler-immigrants but also against moderate Palestinian leaders. As Khalidi points out, even after the PLO seemed to have agreed to a two-state solution and renounced terrorism it continued equivocating for many years under the influence of its more radical constituent groups in regard to the use of violence (Khalidi:146). And today, even when the Hamas government undertakes to cease fire from Gaza it does not stop Islamic Jihad from lobbing Qassam rockets at southern Israeli towns.
The exception to the pursuit of consensus was the signing of the Oslo DOP by Arafat. This he did at the time when public support began moving away from the PLO and it became afraid of being upstaged by the new revolutionary leadership of the spontaneous intifada, the younger generation of the Tanzim, and a politicized Hamas. The 100,000 "Tunisian" returnees of the PLO were an outside elite that did not lead the intifada but returned to end it. Maybe it is not so surprising that under Arafat the Interim Palestinian Authority, fearful of the new forces and unable to either catch up with or incorporate them, adopted such an authoritarian bend. Ultimately, the inability of the Tunis leadership to deliver the "goods" of Oslo limited its appeal. That failure pushed Arafat to rely more and more on the forces behind the intifadas, in particular on Hamas, in spite of the fact that their extremist agenda had diverged from his (Robinson:19-20).
Just as the analysis of settlements may be used to illuminate the autonomous role and decisive influence of the settlers and their organizations in Israel, so a discussion of terrorism will rekindle the question of agency and highlight the diversity within Palestinian society. The Hamas ideology consecrates all of Palestine for future Muslim generations as an Islamic endowment and homeland that could never be surrendered to non-Muslims, and asserts that jihad to wrest control of the land from Israel is a religious duty for individual Muslims. Consequently, Hamas is opposed to forswearing violence, pursuing territorial partition, and a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad travel the well-trodden path of extremism. Terror had primarily been a tool of propaganda and recruitment as far back as the Russian nihilists and European anarchists. Such groups target innocent noncombatants with the express purpose of provoking a disproportionate governmental response that will increase solidarity for terrorists causes. "The victim's innocence," as Michael Gross points out, "is a necessary condition for terror, without which its perpetrators fail to provoke moral outrage of sufficient intensity to elicit the response they desire" (Gross: 370). Significantly, terror had regularly been unleashed when other, less violent options of reform and change, were available. In Russia it was Alexander II, in Weimar Germany Walther Rathenau, in Sri Lanka Neelan Tiruchelvam - all moderates, who were murdered. The worst ETA terrorism was directed not against Franco's regime but the newly emergent Spanish democracy. The peak of the IRA attacks date not to Protestant Ascendancy but to the 1970s when the British government sought to improve Catholic citizenship rights. The al-Aksa intifada broke out not under Netanyahu but Barak (Ignatieff: 63-66, 102-104). And, of course, a Jewish terrorist murdered Yitzhak Rabin, the signer of the Oslo DOP.
As Kydd and Walter conclude: "...terrorist attacks...show a clear and recurrent pattern: violence is timed to coincide with major events in a peace process." "Extremist violence plays on the uncertainty that exists between moderate groups and can lead them to reject a peace settlement even if the majorities on both sides initially favored the deal" and, consequently, "extremists...are surprisingly successful in their aims" (Kydd & Walter:263-265).
The gravest over-reaching of the Palestinian resistance organizations was to adopt the weapon of suicide bombings and, in particular, to aim it against all Israeli civilians (Khalidi: xxiv) since such attacks show an "inability...to understand the limits of violence" (Khalidi: 178). The choice of suicide bombings as a strategy of resistance by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and later Fatah=s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade is far from self-evident. Suicide bombing, a strategy originally invented by Shi'ites in Lebanon, was at odds with, and required the reinterpretation or radicalization of Islamic traditions and tenets of warfare, martyrdom, and suicide. The suicide attack was also deplored as an illegal form of resistance, for example by Human Rights Watch which designated it, even when perpetrated on civilian settlers, as a crime against humanity and as a war crime (HRW: "Erased in a Moment"). It proved "disastrously counterproductive strategically" (Khalidi: xxv). Attacks not only against settlers in the occupied territories but residents within the 1948 Green Line put into practice the view that all of Israel is occupied territory. Consequently they undermined of support for the peace process among Israeli moderates; and saw the election of Sharon as Israel's Prime Minister, the reoccupation of Palestinian towns, raids, targeted assassinations, closures, and the construction of separation walls.
The work of the extremists in both camps Bthe shielding of Israeli settlements from the Oslo DOP and the terrorist attacks-- quickly interlocked: the cantonization of the West Bank and Gaza provided the infrastructure for the imposition of effective closures on the Palestinian population. Closures were first imposed in early 1991 "in response to heightened violence by Palestinians against Israelis inside Israel," but produced their most deleterious mark once they operated in tandem with the canton system. Even more than the expansion of settlements, the closures, according to Sara Roy, had the "single most damaging effect on the Palestinian economy." (Roy: 9)
At the same time, suicide bombings, wrapped in the guise of martyrdom, had generated massive support far and beyond the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad: they were adopted by Fatah=s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and at times hailed by the majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Moderate Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas and intellectuals who wished to engage in a non-violent intifada or restrict it to attacks on soldiers and settlers, were unable to be heard or implement their vision. In the longer run, the lowering of moral constraints which allows the indiscriminate targeting of civilians might return to haunt Palestinians themselves, as it did in Algeria where the campaign of terror against the French occupiers and settlers in the 1960s has been replicated during the civil war between Islamicists and the government in the 1990s. Recently, Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas government's own spokesman, caused a stir by sharply asking whether violence has become a "Palestinian disease."
CONCLUSION
There is no shortage of explanations which portray Israeli colonization or Palestinian violence, respectively, as self-sustaining forces. There have emerged, in fact, a school which sees only an "Israeli conflict" and another which thinks that there is only a "Palestinian conflict," each respectively holding that the opposing side is doing what it does not only because of what it wants but because of what it is. I belong to the older school that perceives an "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" in which the strongest cause of behavior seems to be the impact of each side on the other, and in particular, the impact of the extremists of each side on the moderates of both sides.
My admittedly partial survey demonstrates what Michal Walzer has laid out so clearly: there are not two but four sides to this conflict, and consequently four wars or conflicts are fought between Israelis and Palestinians. They are the Palestinian war to destroy Israel, the Palestinian war to create an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, the Israeli war for security within the 1967 borders, and the Israeli war for the settlements and Greater Israel (Walzer:113). Two of these are waged by the extremists, the other two by the moderates of each side. The failure of Oslo resulted from the crowding out of the moderate conflicts by the extremist wars.
It will be argued that the boundaries between moderates and extremists are not fixed; the size of these respective camps ebbs and flows. This holds true for followers and leaders alike; Sharon and Arafat for example, were at times leaders of the moderates and at other times of both the moderates and the extremists. The size of the extremist camps swells at times of violent confrontation since ethnic or religious identities require closing ranks but such transfer of loyalties, after all, is the very goal of extremist strategies of faits accomplis, provocation, and terror. It would, however, be a mistake to take the extremist strategy as an accurate description of two irreconcilable camps; the question for the peacemaker is how to enlarge the moderate camp and shrink the extremist one.
What does this analysis suggest for the future? The Oslo DOP left a legacy within which the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains impossible, but without it would not be possible. First, Oslo is conterminous with the mutual recognition and legitimation of Israel and the PLO, namely with transformation of an existential war into a political conflict. Six Israeli Prime Minsters (Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and Olmert) and two Palestinian Presidents and two Prime Ministers (Arafat, Qurei, Abbas) accepted, some with clenched teeth, the inevitability of certain aspects of the Oslo process. During the second intifada, Palestinians elected Abbas to continue it. Second, Oslo also saw the beginning of Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities and the creation of the institutions of a Palestinian state, though admittedly, the former incomplete and reversed, the latter imperfect and corrupt. And this process did not stop there, for the first time the unthinkable issues, Jerusalem and the refugees, were put on the table during the Camp David II summit in July 2000 and later in Taba. It is too soon to write off the Oslo process of "land for peace," leading through partial decolonization to a two-state solution.
How can this process be best resumed? None of the current proposals for addressing the conflict are viable. The Israeli withdrawal of settlers and troops from Gaza in September 2005 was carried out in a singularly counterproductive fashion. Though it has shown that against moderate resolve settlers are powerless, this withdrawal was carried out in a unilateral fashion which played into the hands of Hamas. Though Barak offered to fully withdraw from Gaza in 2000, when it was carried out five years latter, the withdrawal seemed to have been a capitulation to the violence of the second intifada. The ten year cease fire idea Hamas floated in return for complete Israeli withdrawal is a non-starter. There is no reason that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority not be based of international law but on an ambiguous Muslim historical tradition which can only be arbitrated by Islamic ulema. President Bush=s June 2002 Road Map, which was adopted in April 2003 by the E.U., Russia, and the UN, and was supposed to have led to the creation of a Palestinian State in stages by 2005, was never implemented.
It is a sad conclusion that given the stalemate of Israeli-Palestinian relations in result of their respective extremists influence, the best and maybe only hope for now, is to seek the help of moderates from the outside. Now that the U.S.'s prestige and influence are at an ebb in the Middle East due to its own extremism, room has opened up for less influential players to play a greater role and try out new models of peacemaking. Two come to mind. The first is the March 28, 2002 Beirut Declaration put forward by the, then Saudi Crown Prince and now King Abdullah and adopted by the Arab League. In return for full Israeli withdrawal and a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem it offers to "establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace" and "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended" (http://www.al bab.com/arab/docs/league/peace02.htm).
This plan was never considered seriously since March was one of the bloodiest months of the al-Aksa intifada and on the proceeding day a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up at a Passover seder in Netanyah and Israel retaliated by re-occupying parts of the West Bank it vacated under the Oslo accord. Recently Israeli cabinet members spoke of the declaration approvingly and Hamas and Fatah have considered adopting a version of it.
An alternative or complimentary approach, made more probable with the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, would be the establishment of an interim international governing authority which would prepare Palestine for an end to Israeli occupation and independence for the Palestinian people. Such a United Nations mission would be modeled on the Security Council's United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) as an integrated, multidimensional peacekeeping operation that was fully responsible for the administration of East Timor during its transition to independence from October 1999 to May 2002. Resolution 1272 mandated UNTAET to provide security and maintain law and order; to establish an effective administration; to assist in the development of civil and social services; to ensure the coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance, to support capacity-building for self-government; and to assist in the establishment of conditions for sustainable development (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unmiset/background.html). To gain legitimacy such governing authority would have to be approved by a Palestinian referendum and, as in East Timor, local participation in the governing authority would be required.
Though needing further elaboration, either the Beirut declaration or an UN plan would tip the balance away from the extremists and re-energize moderates. The involvement of the moderate Arab states in resolving the conflict would add the regional dimension that has been missing since the early 1990's Madrid talks and UN's imprimatur would bring legitimacy based on international law and precedent.
December 2008
Postscript
About six month after the submission of this article, the Palestinian civil war it forewarned about had come to pass. Though the Hamas putsch in Gaza was over so quickly that it seemed as if it did not happen, its impact is profound. Hamas most likely had overplayed its hand by overthrowing the democracy that elected it, inflicting violence on fellow Palestinians, becoming more dependent on Israel, and effectively partitioning Palestine. Abbas’s uncharacteristically energetic actions had also reduced Hamas’s institutional power and authority. The moderates and the extremists are now separated not only ideologically, but are rooted in different geographical locales and led by separate governments. The existence of a “moderate” West Bank, buttressed by Israeli gestures and supported by US and European financial aid seems to give new life to a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
But no amount of Israeli gestures will help out Abbas as long as Israeli occupation and colonization continue in the West Bank. The Israeli settlement project, as we have seen, can either expand or shrink, but had never stayed at a steady state. Israel had not negotiated with the PLO in earnest in a long time. It is questionable whether in the wake of the Lebanon War’s mixed results Israel will have a government both strong enough and sufficiently willing to confront the settlers in order to reach a full-fledged two-way peace agreement with Abbas, knowing that Hamas will not abide by such compromise. Hamas had rejected past agreements with Israel - now it would become irrelevant if it changed course or looked the other way.
Can support from moderates from outside the region make a difference? Now that it had upped the ante by taking sole control in Gaza, Hamas is not likely to accept any limitation on its power by an East Timor type U.N. sponsored trusteeship or transitional administration. An attempt by the Arab League or its moderate members to see the 2002 Beirut Declaration implemented would carry more authority. In the past, Arab states shrank from playing a mediating, let alone interventionist, role in regard to the resolution of the Palestinian issue. The current polarization in the Arab, and even more so the Islamic, world that radiates out of Iraq and Iran has already pushed moderate Arab states to be more assertive. Hamas would find it hard to violently resist an agreement, guaranteed by the Arab League, that ends Israeli occupation on the basis of the two-state solution. And yet, in the near future run such intervention is likely to further deepen the divide within the heart of Palestinian politics.
July 22, 2007
SUGGESTED READINGS:
Bitterlemons is an internet newsletter that presents Palestinian and Israeli viewpoints on issues of controversy: www.bitterlemons.org
Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Boston, Beacon, 2006 is a revisionist perspective of the Palestinian side by a prominent expert and intellectual.
Kydd, Andrew & Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization, Vol.56, No.2. Spring 2002, pp.263-296, offer a theoretical and quantitative study of the impact of extremism.
Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, A Bimonthly Publication of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, http://www.fmep.org provides carefully gathered and updated information.
Robinson, Glenn E., "Israel and the Palestinians: The Bitter Fruits of Hegemonic Peace," Current History, January 15, 2001, pp. 15-20
Roy, Sara, "Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy," Current History, January 8, 2002, pp. 8-16. Both Robinson and Roy represent the "realist" international relations approach.
Walzer, Michael, Arguing about War, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2004 presents this eminent philosopher's observations on contemporary military conflicts and the ethical issues they raise.
(A version of this article appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Contexts: http://www.contextsmagazine.org/content_vol6-4.php) Read more on this article...
Gershon Shafir
University of California, San Diego
Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem so intractable and, in particular, why did the Oslo process --the most ambitious attempt to bring it to resolution through compromise-- fail so tragically? This short article cannot do justice to all aspects of the conflict and in the following I only promise to explore the twin issues of colonization and extremism.
Most analyses of the Oslo and post-Oslo process have been conducted from an international relations perspective which highlights the asymmetry of power between the two sides, a view also accepted here. This "realist" methodological perspective also portrays each side as a single actor animated by one will; an approach that any sociological perspective must contest. From the latter vantage point the conflict is best analyzed not as being between 'Palestinians' and 'Israelis' as such, but between the extremists of both societies who gained disproportionate influence and thereby sideline, sometimes silence and, on occasion absorb, their own larger moderate camps.
In the following I will argue that from a comparative-historical perspective the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the last unresolved legacy of the colonial era. Consequently, the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians is a decolonization process which, however grotesquely, coexists with continued Israeli colonization. The agonies of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking are related to this split political personality disorder. Continued colonization perpetuates the territorial core of the conflict and is stimulating political and, in particular, religious extremism on both sides. Jewish messianic fundamentalism, on its part, legitimates Israeli settlement in the "holy land," and Palestinian jihadist movements simultaneously engage in acts of indiscriminate terror and shelling to prevent territorial compromise.
I. COLONIZATION AND SETTLEMENTS
The Oslo Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993 relegated all the truly divisive issues: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders to article V, paragraph 3, and postponed their resolution to the final status negotiations to be concluded in five years time. It was unrealistic to contemplate such a long hiatus. The downward spiral of the peace process began as soon as the implementation of the Oslo DOP collided with prior Israeli colonization.
The original Oslo plan implicitly envisioned Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories while leaving the individual settlements within the Palestinian-administered territory. But just a month later, Israel grouped the Jewish settlements in Gaza and their intermediate land into three continuous blocs that, in effect, cut Gaza into separate cantons. The Gaza blocs of Jewish settlements, military installations, and bypass roads gave the then 6,000 Israeli settlers one third of the territory, whereas the 1.1 million Gaza Palestinians received the other two thirds. The AInterim Agreement,@ or Oslo II agreement of September 28, 1995, extended this arrangement to the West Bank and formalized it by dividing the region into three types of jurisdiction. Area A, consisting mostly of the seven major Palestinian towns, was to be under the Interim Palestinian Authority's civilian and security control. In Area B, which incorporates the remaining Palestinian population centers and some of the refugee camps and villages, civilian control was to reside with the Palestinian Authority while security control was to remain in Israeli hands. Area C, comprising Jewish settlements and military bases as well as public land, was left under both Israeli civilian and military jurisdiction. In September 2000, the eve of the al-Aksa intifada, Area A comprised about 17 percent, Area B about 24 percent, and Area C the remaining 59 percent of the West Bank. The West Bank was so fragmented that the Palestinian Authority had under its full or partial control 227 cantons separated by cantons under Israeli control.
Instead of laying the groundwork for separating Israelis and Palestinians into two distinct geopolitical entities, the Oslo process became a plan to accommodate the Israeli colonies. These settlements fell into three different types. Conflicting motivations and disagreements over post-1967 political goals gave rise to distinct military, religious and suburban settlement waves. Security settlements were built along the Jordan River (which serves as the border with Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), suburban settlements along the old armistice line between the West Bank and Israel (the Green Line) and, in-between, atop the mountain range that is densely populated by Palestinians, a messianic drive mapped settlements onto the region's rich ancient religious geography. The latter's effect was the most deleterious since it had prioritized a map which disrupted, frequently deliberately, Palestinian territorial contiguity and ignored Palestinian demography. These religious settlers spearhead the settlement movement.
Under the guise of peacemaking, Israeli occupation was continued in another significant respect as well. Between the signing of the Oslo DOP and the outbreak of the al-Aksa intifada, the Israeli settler population grew roughly by 100,000, in effect doubling in seven years.
The large shadow cast by Israel over the Oslo process is explained, most commonly, as "hegemonic peacemaking." (The term hegemony is not used in the Gramscian sense of moral and intellectual leadership but is drawn from the literature in international relations and means its opposite - domination.) Stable peace agreements, in this view, are concluded between relative equals or between a victor and a vanquished enemy, whereas the Oslo agreement was signed by two "significantly unequal powers," namely Israel backed by the U.S. versus the PLO which enjoys mixed Arab support (Robinson:17). Consequently, it is pointed out, "the Oslo process...did not represent the end of Israeli occupation but its continuation, albeit in less direct form" and Palestinians are worse off in the wake of Oslo DOP than they were before (Roy:9). The ability of Israeli governments to significantly shape the Oslo process is unmistakable but the "hegemonic peacemaking" model endows only a sole actor --the Israeli government-- with agency. Other Israeli actors are conflated with the government, whereas Palestinians of various stripes appear to be but passive observers as their destiny is being determined by outsiders.
However, anyone even vaguely familiar with Israeli political life will testify that ever since the 1973 War it has been deeply polarized: divided roughly equally between supporters and opponents of the Aland for peace@ idea that undergird Oslo. The proportionate electoral system both represents and reproduces this fragmentation: no party has received absolute majority in the Knesset and fragile coalitions based on complicated trade-offs between multiple parties are needed to form coalition governments. In the thirteen years since signing the Oslo DOP, six Prime Ministers alternated and no Israeli government completed its full term in office. Even small groups can tilt the balance of power between the two blocs and, as a result, small ideological groups committed to single issues have amassed disproportionate power.
The most effective of these groups is the settlement movement, that comprises both secular and religious elements. While the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C may be explained by reference to the settlement map as it was in 1993, the continued expansion of settlements cannot be. Why did both Labor-led and Likud-led Israeli governments agree to withdraw from parts of the West Bank, but continued building new colonies and settling new colons? And as long as Israeli governments wished to expand settlements, why did they not do it strategically? Why were settlements that were obviously unviable, such as those in the Gaza Strip from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in September 2005, also expanded? In short, why would Israeli governments tie their own hands? There appear to be too many questions that cannot be explained by thinking of Israel as a unitary actor.
The continued expansion of the settlements as well as the indiscriminate nature of their expansion suggests the pervasive influence of the Council of Yesha - the organization of the existing settlements, Members of Knesset who reside in the occupied territories, and especially the religious settlement movement Gush Emunim and Amana, its settlement arm. Not surprisingly, they take credit for detouring Oslo around their settlements. In one article with the telling title: "The Maps of the Oslo Accord are the Maps of Jewish Settlement," a settler leader triumphantly concluded that "the Oslo process is the best example...of the influence of Jewish settlement on the political process."
Settler representatives and the Israeli military establishment played an inordinate role in negotiating the extent and layout of the phased Israeli withdrawals. The negotiations were either conducted by or led behind the scenes by the Israeli military, especially the Central Command in charge of the West Bank, which sought to retain control over vital roads or demanded the construction of "by-pass roads" in order to ensure the settlers' safety. Before Oslo II was approved, the Secretary General of Gush Emunim's settlement arm was allowed to recommend changes to the agreement. When it was discovered that the provisions of a map already approved by Knesset hurt settler interests, the map was surreptitiously changed. The committee to prepare the map for the three withdrawals agreed to at the Wye Plantation Accord of October 1998 was composed entirely of settlers, representing the various Israeli ministries, even the military itself. Even at the low point of the settlers' influence, Ehud Barak's December 2000 final status plan, which offered to withdraw from all of Gaza and over 90 percent of the West Bank, extended two deep territorial Afingers@ into the West Bank east of Ariel and Ma=aleh Adumim, in effect subdividing the Palestinian state into three cantons and controlling the major artery connecting them. When they could not have their way, settlers and their sympathizers cursed, condemned, threatened, carried out vigilante style attacks on Palestinians villagers, and murdered Yitzhak Rabin.
II. BOMBINGS AND CLOSURES
Whereas the polarization of Israeli politics invested the settler population with influence disproportionate to its size, we encounter the opposite dynamic in Palestinian political life but, ironically, with the same outcome. After the 1948 naqba, Palestinians have become one of the most fragmented national groups in the world both geographically and in terms of legal standing and the major challenge facing the PLO leadership was to try and forge a measure of unity among disparate factions and scattered communities. As a coalition of organizations, the PLO managed to maintain its grip by accepting an artificial consensus rather than seeking majority rule. "Consensus politics granted disproportionate influence over decisions making to the smallest group..." which, often was the most militant one. (Sayigh:679; Rubin:200)
This preference dovetailed with the historical rejection of compromise with the Jewish nationalist-colonialist project and the accompanying use of an extraordinary measure of violence aimed against the Jewish settler-immigrants but also against moderate Palestinian leaders. As Khalidi points out, even after the PLO seemed to have agreed to a two-state solution and renounced terrorism it continued equivocating for many years under the influence of its more radical constituent groups in regard to the use of violence (Khalidi:146). And today, even when the Hamas government undertakes to cease fire from Gaza it does not stop Islamic Jihad from lobbing Qassam rockets at southern Israeli towns.
The exception to the pursuit of consensus was the signing of the Oslo DOP by Arafat. This he did at the time when public support began moving away from the PLO and it became afraid of being upstaged by the new revolutionary leadership of the spontaneous intifada, the younger generation of the Tanzim, and a politicized Hamas. The 100,000 "Tunisian" returnees of the PLO were an outside elite that did not lead the intifada but returned to end it. Maybe it is not so surprising that under Arafat the Interim Palestinian Authority, fearful of the new forces and unable to either catch up with or incorporate them, adopted such an authoritarian bend. Ultimately, the inability of the Tunis leadership to deliver the "goods" of Oslo limited its appeal. That failure pushed Arafat to rely more and more on the forces behind the intifadas, in particular on Hamas, in spite of the fact that their extremist agenda had diverged from his (Robinson:19-20).
Just as the analysis of settlements may be used to illuminate the autonomous role and decisive influence of the settlers and their organizations in Israel, so a discussion of terrorism will rekindle the question of agency and highlight the diversity within Palestinian society. The Hamas ideology consecrates all of Palestine for future Muslim generations as an Islamic endowment and homeland that could never be surrendered to non-Muslims, and asserts that jihad to wrest control of the land from Israel is a religious duty for individual Muslims. Consequently, Hamas is opposed to forswearing violence, pursuing territorial partition, and a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad travel the well-trodden path of extremism. Terror had primarily been a tool of propaganda and recruitment as far back as the Russian nihilists and European anarchists. Such groups target innocent noncombatants with the express purpose of provoking a disproportionate governmental response that will increase solidarity for terrorists causes. "The victim's innocence," as Michael Gross points out, "is a necessary condition for terror, without which its perpetrators fail to provoke moral outrage of sufficient intensity to elicit the response they desire" (Gross: 370). Significantly, terror had regularly been unleashed when other, less violent options of reform and change, were available. In Russia it was Alexander II, in Weimar Germany Walther Rathenau, in Sri Lanka Neelan Tiruchelvam - all moderates, who were murdered. The worst ETA terrorism was directed not against Franco's regime but the newly emergent Spanish democracy. The peak of the IRA attacks date not to Protestant Ascendancy but to the 1970s when the British government sought to improve Catholic citizenship rights. The al-Aksa intifada broke out not under Netanyahu but Barak (Ignatieff: 63-66, 102-104). And, of course, a Jewish terrorist murdered Yitzhak Rabin, the signer of the Oslo DOP.
As Kydd and Walter conclude: "...terrorist attacks...show a clear and recurrent pattern: violence is timed to coincide with major events in a peace process." "Extremist violence plays on the uncertainty that exists between moderate groups and can lead them to reject a peace settlement even if the majorities on both sides initially favored the deal" and, consequently, "extremists...are surprisingly successful in their aims" (Kydd & Walter:263-265).
The gravest over-reaching of the Palestinian resistance organizations was to adopt the weapon of suicide bombings and, in particular, to aim it against all Israeli civilians (Khalidi: xxiv) since such attacks show an "inability...to understand the limits of violence" (Khalidi: 178). The choice of suicide bombings as a strategy of resistance by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and later Fatah=s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade is far from self-evident. Suicide bombing, a strategy originally invented by Shi'ites in Lebanon, was at odds with, and required the reinterpretation or radicalization of Islamic traditions and tenets of warfare, martyrdom, and suicide. The suicide attack was also deplored as an illegal form of resistance, for example by Human Rights Watch which designated it, even when perpetrated on civilian settlers, as a crime against humanity and as a war crime (HRW: "Erased in a Moment"). It proved "disastrously counterproductive strategically" (Khalidi: xxv). Attacks not only against settlers in the occupied territories but residents within the 1948 Green Line put into practice the view that all of Israel is occupied territory. Consequently they undermined of support for the peace process among Israeli moderates; and saw the election of Sharon as Israel's Prime Minister, the reoccupation of Palestinian towns, raids, targeted assassinations, closures, and the construction of separation walls.
The work of the extremists in both camps Bthe shielding of Israeli settlements from the Oslo DOP and the terrorist attacks-- quickly interlocked: the cantonization of the West Bank and Gaza provided the infrastructure for the imposition of effective closures on the Palestinian population. Closures were first imposed in early 1991 "in response to heightened violence by Palestinians against Israelis inside Israel," but produced their most deleterious mark once they operated in tandem with the canton system. Even more than the expansion of settlements, the closures, according to Sara Roy, had the "single most damaging effect on the Palestinian economy." (Roy: 9)
At the same time, suicide bombings, wrapped in the guise of martyrdom, had generated massive support far and beyond the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad: they were adopted by Fatah=s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and at times hailed by the majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Moderate Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas and intellectuals who wished to engage in a non-violent intifada or restrict it to attacks on soldiers and settlers, were unable to be heard or implement their vision. In the longer run, the lowering of moral constraints which allows the indiscriminate targeting of civilians might return to haunt Palestinians themselves, as it did in Algeria where the campaign of terror against the French occupiers and settlers in the 1960s has been replicated during the civil war between Islamicists and the government in the 1990s. Recently, Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas government's own spokesman, caused a stir by sharply asking whether violence has become a "Palestinian disease."
CONCLUSION
There is no shortage of explanations which portray Israeli colonization or Palestinian violence, respectively, as self-sustaining forces. There have emerged, in fact, a school which sees only an "Israeli conflict" and another which thinks that there is only a "Palestinian conflict," each respectively holding that the opposing side is doing what it does not only because of what it wants but because of what it is. I belong to the older school that perceives an "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" in which the strongest cause of behavior seems to be the impact of each side on the other, and in particular, the impact of the extremists of each side on the moderates of both sides.
My admittedly partial survey demonstrates what Michal Walzer has laid out so clearly: there are not two but four sides to this conflict, and consequently four wars or conflicts are fought between Israelis and Palestinians. They are the Palestinian war to destroy Israel, the Palestinian war to create an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, the Israeli war for security within the 1967 borders, and the Israeli war for the settlements and Greater Israel (Walzer:113). Two of these are waged by the extremists, the other two by the moderates of each side. The failure of Oslo resulted from the crowding out of the moderate conflicts by the extremist wars.
It will be argued that the boundaries between moderates and extremists are not fixed; the size of these respective camps ebbs and flows. This holds true for followers and leaders alike; Sharon and Arafat for example, were at times leaders of the moderates and at other times of both the moderates and the extremists. The size of the extremist camps swells at times of violent confrontation since ethnic or religious identities require closing ranks but such transfer of loyalties, after all, is the very goal of extremist strategies of faits accomplis, provocation, and terror. It would, however, be a mistake to take the extremist strategy as an accurate description of two irreconcilable camps; the question for the peacemaker is how to enlarge the moderate camp and shrink the extremist one.
What does this analysis suggest for the future? The Oslo DOP left a legacy within which the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains impossible, but without it would not be possible. First, Oslo is conterminous with the mutual recognition and legitimation of Israel and the PLO, namely with transformation of an existential war into a political conflict. Six Israeli Prime Minsters (Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and Olmert) and two Palestinian Presidents and two Prime Ministers (Arafat, Qurei, Abbas) accepted, some with clenched teeth, the inevitability of certain aspects of the Oslo process. During the second intifada, Palestinians elected Abbas to continue it. Second, Oslo also saw the beginning of Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities and the creation of the institutions of a Palestinian state, though admittedly, the former incomplete and reversed, the latter imperfect and corrupt. And this process did not stop there, for the first time the unthinkable issues, Jerusalem and the refugees, were put on the table during the Camp David II summit in July 2000 and later in Taba. It is too soon to write off the Oslo process of "land for peace," leading through partial decolonization to a two-state solution.
How can this process be best resumed? None of the current proposals for addressing the conflict are viable. The Israeli withdrawal of settlers and troops from Gaza in September 2005 was carried out in a singularly counterproductive fashion. Though it has shown that against moderate resolve settlers are powerless, this withdrawal was carried out in a unilateral fashion which played into the hands of Hamas. Though Barak offered to fully withdraw from Gaza in 2000, when it was carried out five years latter, the withdrawal seemed to have been a capitulation to the violence of the second intifada. The ten year cease fire idea Hamas floated in return for complete Israeli withdrawal is a non-starter. There is no reason that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority not be based of international law but on an ambiguous Muslim historical tradition which can only be arbitrated by Islamic ulema. President Bush=s June 2002 Road Map, which was adopted in April 2003 by the E.U., Russia, and the UN, and was supposed to have led to the creation of a Palestinian State in stages by 2005, was never implemented.
It is a sad conclusion that given the stalemate of Israeli-Palestinian relations in result of their respective extremists influence, the best and maybe only hope for now, is to seek the help of moderates from the outside. Now that the U.S.'s prestige and influence are at an ebb in the Middle East due to its own extremism, room has opened up for less influential players to play a greater role and try out new models of peacemaking. Two come to mind. The first is the March 28, 2002 Beirut Declaration put forward by the, then Saudi Crown Prince and now King Abdullah and adopted by the Arab League. In return for full Israeli withdrawal and a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem it offers to "establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace" and "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended" (http://www.al bab.com/arab/docs/league/peace02.htm).
This plan was never considered seriously since March was one of the bloodiest months of the al-Aksa intifada and on the proceeding day a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up at a Passover seder in Netanyah and Israel retaliated by re-occupying parts of the West Bank it vacated under the Oslo accord. Recently Israeli cabinet members spoke of the declaration approvingly and Hamas and Fatah have considered adopting a version of it.
An alternative or complimentary approach, made more probable with the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, would be the establishment of an interim international governing authority which would prepare Palestine for an end to Israeli occupation and independence for the Palestinian people. Such a United Nations mission would be modeled on the Security Council's United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) as an integrated, multidimensional peacekeeping operation that was fully responsible for the administration of East Timor during its transition to independence from October 1999 to May 2002. Resolution 1272 mandated UNTAET to provide security and maintain law and order; to establish an effective administration; to assist in the development of civil and social services; to ensure the coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance, to support capacity-building for self-government; and to assist in the establishment of conditions for sustainable development (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unmiset/background.html). To gain legitimacy such governing authority would have to be approved by a Palestinian referendum and, as in East Timor, local participation in the governing authority would be required.
Though needing further elaboration, either the Beirut declaration or an UN plan would tip the balance away from the extremists and re-energize moderates. The involvement of the moderate Arab states in resolving the conflict would add the regional dimension that has been missing since the early 1990's Madrid talks and UN's imprimatur would bring legitimacy based on international law and precedent.
December 2008
Postscript
About six month after the submission of this article, the Palestinian civil war it forewarned about had come to pass. Though the Hamas putsch in Gaza was over so quickly that it seemed as if it did not happen, its impact is profound. Hamas most likely had overplayed its hand by overthrowing the democracy that elected it, inflicting violence on fellow Palestinians, becoming more dependent on Israel, and effectively partitioning Palestine. Abbas’s uncharacteristically energetic actions had also reduced Hamas’s institutional power and authority. The moderates and the extremists are now separated not only ideologically, but are rooted in different geographical locales and led by separate governments. The existence of a “moderate” West Bank, buttressed by Israeli gestures and supported by US and European financial aid seems to give new life to a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
But no amount of Israeli gestures will help out Abbas as long as Israeli occupation and colonization continue in the West Bank. The Israeli settlement project, as we have seen, can either expand or shrink, but had never stayed at a steady state. Israel had not negotiated with the PLO in earnest in a long time. It is questionable whether in the wake of the Lebanon War’s mixed results Israel will have a government both strong enough and sufficiently willing to confront the settlers in order to reach a full-fledged two-way peace agreement with Abbas, knowing that Hamas will not abide by such compromise. Hamas had rejected past agreements with Israel - now it would become irrelevant if it changed course or looked the other way.
Can support from moderates from outside the region make a difference? Now that it had upped the ante by taking sole control in Gaza, Hamas is not likely to accept any limitation on its power by an East Timor type U.N. sponsored trusteeship or transitional administration. An attempt by the Arab League or its moderate members to see the 2002 Beirut Declaration implemented would carry more authority. In the past, Arab states shrank from playing a mediating, let alone interventionist, role in regard to the resolution of the Palestinian issue. The current polarization in the Arab, and even more so the Islamic, world that radiates out of Iraq and Iran has already pushed moderate Arab states to be more assertive. Hamas would find it hard to violently resist an agreement, guaranteed by the Arab League, that ends Israeli occupation on the basis of the two-state solution. And yet, in the near future run such intervention is likely to further deepen the divide within the heart of Palestinian politics.
July 22, 2007
SUGGESTED READINGS:
Bitterlemons is an internet newsletter that presents Palestinian and Israeli viewpoints on issues of controversy: www.bitterlemons.org
Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Boston, Beacon, 2006 is a revisionist perspective of the Palestinian side by a prominent expert and intellectual.
Kydd, Andrew & Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization, Vol.56, No.2. Spring 2002, pp.263-296, offer a theoretical and quantitative study of the impact of extremism.
Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, A Bimonthly Publication of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, http://www.fmep.org provides carefully gathered and updated information.
Robinson, Glenn E., "Israel and the Palestinians: The Bitter Fruits of Hegemonic Peace," Current History, January 15, 2001, pp. 15-20
Roy, Sara, "Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy," Current History, January 8, 2002, pp. 8-16. Both Robinson and Roy represent the "realist" international relations approach.
Walzer, Michael, Arguing about War, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2004 presents this eminent philosopher's observations on contemporary military conflicts and the ethical issues they raise.
(A version of this article appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Contexts: http://www.contextsmagazine.org/content_vol6-4.php) Read more on this article...
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Not Yet Nation
Several senior administration officials said that with each day that passed, more administration officials were coming around to the belief that General Musharraf’s days in power were numbered and that the United States should begin considering contingency plans, including reaching out to Pakistan’s generals. NYT, U.S. Is Looking Past Musharraf in Case He Falls, Nov 15, 2007.
I have argued, for a while and to earlier criticisms, that the American support for Pervez Musharraf is wrong-headed - not just on ideological terms (our self-proclaimed call for Freedom's March Across the Muslim World) but also in the strategic terms (our efforts to eliminate al-Qaeda and counter extremist ideologies in Western Asia).
The support for Musharraf on ideological terms seems to me to be a rather indefensible position but people still manage to do it, including the White House. The defense hinges on the "Not Yet Thesis" - freedom is good, dictators are bad, but Pakistan is not yet ready for freedom and must depend on dictators to build civic institutions, train the electorate and, in future, bring democracy. (Which is akin to waiting for the fox to install security in the henhouse. Makes perfect sense.)
We maintain that the man we know - a benevolent dictator named Pervez Musharraf - is better than the multitudes we do not know. We fear the multitudes on two fronts. One is that we conceive of them as masses without politics - forever hostage to gross religious and ideological provocations. Masses which do not constitute a body politic or act with an interest in self-preservation or self-growth. Faced with that absence of reason, we are forced to support native royals to do the job (from Egypt to Pakistan). We justify it by stressing that we may not like these dictators but we know that if we did not have them, the masses would instantly betray us to the very forces of extremism that we seek to destroy. This ignores, of course, actual historical and political realities in those countries. Such mis-engagement means that our knowledge remains sketchy, undifferentiated and reliant on gross generalizations of the "masses". It intimately links us to the gross abuses of power that our dictators exert - with means provided by us. Second is that these masses are Muslim. This fear grounded in our history can, at best, be understood as the fear of the "Other" and, at worst, as the Lewis/Huntington model of civilizational clash. Either case, it is borne out of our inherent belief in "difference". They are not like us. They do not possess reason, etc. (Ask Dick Cheney why nuclear deterrence worked with the Soviets but cannot work with Iranians.)
The strategic case is just as nonsensical. The fight against extremism is a fight that ordinary Pakistani citizens have much more at stake in. It is their immediate freedoms that are threatened by the Talibanization of their society. It is their frustrations that are being capitalized upon by the Islamists. The historical, political and social trends have always clearly shown that the Pakistani publics predominantly prefer a moderate and open society. If we really are serious, we need to empower the Pakistani publics and not facilitate their oppression.
The conventional wisdom, however, remains against such a reading. Take Fareed Zakaria's Pakistan’s Pinstripe Revolution in Newsweek - where he feels that benevolent dictators should be cut some slack and that Pakistan needs that helping hand. But Zakaria seems to misread Pakistan's judicial and political history and, at the very least, Musharraf's entire public persona. He argues that the judicial problems of Musharraf begin in 1999 when he asked - for the first time - for the Supreme Court justices to resign and re-take their oaths of allegiance. What he fails to point out is that Musharraf was simply following in the footsteps of every dictatorial regime in Pakistan - all of whom asked the judiciary to re-take their oaths and that the judiciary acquiesced in every single case. The 'new-ness' of Pakistan's recent judicial crisis is that only recently did they decide not to rubber stamp the military regime. The causes for this break are diverse and I have outlined them elsewhere.
Zakaria makes further dubious claims: "He turned the country's strategic orientation away from the Taliban, revived the economy with real reforms, empowered women and spoke out against the pernicious influence of Islamic extremism." He turned the country away from Taliban insofar as he didn't. The Taliban continue to find solace and refuge in the northwestern province and his relationship with Karzai's regime have never gone below the boiling point. He revived the economy insofar as US poured 10 billion dollars into the Pakistani military-industrial complex since 2001. This influx of money has created the biggest land and industry holding entity in Pakistan's history - the Pakistan Army. Please look at Ayesha Siddiqa's Military, Inc. for a solid understanding of that immediate history. Empowered women insofar as he allowed the Hisba Bill to pass in NWFP and it was only the Supreme Court that stepped in to stop it. And finally, on that Islamic extremism front. I do not really think that publishing an editorial in the Washington Post about "Enlightened Moderation" qualifies as doing much if one constantly cuts deals with Islamist militants in NWFP, Swat, Quetta and Islamist parties in Islamabad.
Another recent piece, Lee Smith's Mixed Messages, in Slate is even worse. It argues not only that we should support Musharraf but that that is the only way to combat extremism. Leaving aside the Orientalist reading of history, Smith appears horribly mis-informed about Pakistan. He claims, for example, that, "The Pakistani military, as is the case with most armed forces in the Muslim world, is the citadel of the country's modernity, its most significant secular institution and protector not only of the modern nation state but the idea of the nation state itself." I don't really know what being a citadel of modernity actually means but the Pakistan Army has undergone a rigorous program of Islamization and faith-based militancy since Zia ul Haq in 1979. Whatever lingering secularism is there, belongs to the older cadre of senior staff that came into the military pre-80s. Folks like Musharraf. The main troop strength comes from rural Punjab, Baluchistan and the Northwestern province and no one is reading Karl Marx or Nietzsche, I assure you.
Therein lies the heart of our problems with making a ideological or strategic case for aligning with dictators. We trust and privilege the narratives they provide us. Musharraf, like Zia ul Haq before him, has successfully explained Pakistan and the world to us. The forces of darkness hover at the border and only the rightfully guided leader can shepherd the nation. For Musharraf the bugaboo is extremism, for Zia ul Haq it was Communism. In both cases, we pumped amazing amounts of liquid cash and military hardware and waited for the eventual victory. Some how we still act surprised when victory doesn't materialize.
The good news is that, as I watch the Democratic Presidential debate - Biden, Obama, Edwards and Richardson are all agreeing that we need democracy in Pakistan before we need to prop up Musharraf's dictatorship. Tide is shifting. The people of Pakistan may yet escape the not yet. Read more on this article...
I have argued, for a while and to earlier criticisms, that the American support for Pervez Musharraf is wrong-headed - not just on ideological terms (our self-proclaimed call for Freedom's March Across the Muslim World) but also in the strategic terms (our efforts to eliminate al-Qaeda and counter extremist ideologies in Western Asia).
The support for Musharraf on ideological terms seems to me to be a rather indefensible position but people still manage to do it, including the White House. The defense hinges on the "Not Yet Thesis" - freedom is good, dictators are bad, but Pakistan is not yet ready for freedom and must depend on dictators to build civic institutions, train the electorate and, in future, bring democracy. (Which is akin to waiting for the fox to install security in the henhouse. Makes perfect sense.)
We maintain that the man we know - a benevolent dictator named Pervez Musharraf - is better than the multitudes we do not know. We fear the multitudes on two fronts. One is that we conceive of them as masses without politics - forever hostage to gross religious and ideological provocations. Masses which do not constitute a body politic or act with an interest in self-preservation or self-growth. Faced with that absence of reason, we are forced to support native royals to do the job (from Egypt to Pakistan). We justify it by stressing that we may not like these dictators but we know that if we did not have them, the masses would instantly betray us to the very forces of extremism that we seek to destroy. This ignores, of course, actual historical and political realities in those countries. Such mis-engagement means that our knowledge remains sketchy, undifferentiated and reliant on gross generalizations of the "masses". It intimately links us to the gross abuses of power that our dictators exert - with means provided by us. Second is that these masses are Muslim. This fear grounded in our history can, at best, be understood as the fear of the "Other" and, at worst, as the Lewis/Huntington model of civilizational clash. Either case, it is borne out of our inherent belief in "difference". They are not like us. They do not possess reason, etc. (Ask Dick Cheney why nuclear deterrence worked with the Soviets but cannot work with Iranians.)
The strategic case is just as nonsensical. The fight against extremism is a fight that ordinary Pakistani citizens have much more at stake in. It is their immediate freedoms that are threatened by the Talibanization of their society. It is their frustrations that are being capitalized upon by the Islamists. The historical, political and social trends have always clearly shown that the Pakistani publics predominantly prefer a moderate and open society. If we really are serious, we need to empower the Pakistani publics and not facilitate their oppression.
The conventional wisdom, however, remains against such a reading. Take Fareed Zakaria's Pakistan’s Pinstripe Revolution in Newsweek - where he feels that benevolent dictators should be cut some slack and that Pakistan needs that helping hand. But Zakaria seems to misread Pakistan's judicial and political history and, at the very least, Musharraf's entire public persona. He argues that the judicial problems of Musharraf begin in 1999 when he asked - for the first time - for the Supreme Court justices to resign and re-take their oaths of allegiance. What he fails to point out is that Musharraf was simply following in the footsteps of every dictatorial regime in Pakistan - all of whom asked the judiciary to re-take their oaths and that the judiciary acquiesced in every single case. The 'new-ness' of Pakistan's recent judicial crisis is that only recently did they decide not to rubber stamp the military regime. The causes for this break are diverse and I have outlined them elsewhere.
Zakaria makes further dubious claims: "He turned the country's strategic orientation away from the Taliban, revived the economy with real reforms, empowered women and spoke out against the pernicious influence of Islamic extremism." He turned the country away from Taliban insofar as he didn't. The Taliban continue to find solace and refuge in the northwestern province and his relationship with Karzai's regime have never gone below the boiling point. He revived the economy insofar as US poured 10 billion dollars into the Pakistani military-industrial complex since 2001. This influx of money has created the biggest land and industry holding entity in Pakistan's history - the Pakistan Army. Please look at Ayesha Siddiqa's Military, Inc. for a solid understanding of that immediate history. Empowered women insofar as he allowed the Hisba Bill to pass in NWFP and it was only the Supreme Court that stepped in to stop it. And finally, on that Islamic extremism front. I do not really think that publishing an editorial in the Washington Post about "Enlightened Moderation" qualifies as doing much if one constantly cuts deals with Islamist militants in NWFP, Swat, Quetta and Islamist parties in Islamabad.
Another recent piece, Lee Smith's Mixed Messages, in Slate is even worse. It argues not only that we should support Musharraf but that that is the only way to combat extremism. Leaving aside the Orientalist reading of history, Smith appears horribly mis-informed about Pakistan. He claims, for example, that, "The Pakistani military, as is the case with most armed forces in the Muslim world, is the citadel of the country's modernity, its most significant secular institution and protector not only of the modern nation state but the idea of the nation state itself." I don't really know what being a citadel of modernity actually means but the Pakistan Army has undergone a rigorous program of Islamization and faith-based militancy since Zia ul Haq in 1979. Whatever lingering secularism is there, belongs to the older cadre of senior staff that came into the military pre-80s. Folks like Musharraf. The main troop strength comes from rural Punjab, Baluchistan and the Northwestern province and no one is reading Karl Marx or Nietzsche, I assure you.
Therein lies the heart of our problems with making a ideological or strategic case for aligning with dictators. We trust and privilege the narratives they provide us. Musharraf, like Zia ul Haq before him, has successfully explained Pakistan and the world to us. The forces of darkness hover at the border and only the rightfully guided leader can shepherd the nation. For Musharraf the bugaboo is extremism, for Zia ul Haq it was Communism. In both cases, we pumped amazing amounts of liquid cash and military hardware and waited for the eventual victory. Some how we still act surprised when victory doesn't materialize.
The good news is that, as I watch the Democratic Presidential debate - Biden, Obama, Edwards and Richardson are all agreeing that we need democracy in Pakistan before we need to prop up Musharraf's dictatorship. Tide is shifting. The people of Pakistan may yet escape the not yet. Read more on this article...
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Israel, free speech, and the Oxford Union
Avi Shlaim
Mirrored here with the author's permission from Alternet.
Israel is often portrayed by its supporters as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. But these very same supporters, in their excessive zeal for their cause, sometimes end up by violating one of the most fundamental principles of democracy -- the right to free speech. While accepting free speech as a universal value, all too often they try to restrict it when it comes to Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. The result is not to encourage but to stifle debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Britain prides itself on its tradition of free speech and civilised debate on all subjects, including Israel. The great majority of British Jews are part of this tradition. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, is a notable example of this fair-minded, liberal, and pluralistic tradition. One of his sixteen books is called The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. On the other side of the Atlantic, on the other hand, the public debate on the subject of Israel is much more fierce and partisan, leaving relatively little space for the dignity of difference. The passion with which many prominent American Jews defend Israel betrays an atavistic attitude of "my country, right or wrong".
One example is Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor and crusader on behalf of Israel. One of his books is called The Case for Israel. As the title suggests, this is not an objective, academic treatise but a lawyer's brief for his client. The lawyer in question is no friend of free speech when it comes to criticism of Israel, however well substantiated. Recent events in Oxford suggest that those of us who thought that attempts to stifle free debate about Israel are confined to American campuses need to think again.
A debate dissolves
The Oxford Union is one of the world's most illustrious debating chambers and a bastion of free speech. It was founded in the 19th century to uphold the principle of free speech and debate in England at a time when they were being severely curtailed. Recently, however, the union failed to live up to its lofty ideals. A debate was scheduled for 23 October 2007 on the motion "This house believes that one-state is the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict". Ilan Pappé, Ghada Karmi and I agreed to speak for the motion; Norman G Finkelstein, the American-Jewish academic, David (Lord) Trimble, the Northern Irish politician, and Peter Tatchell, the gay-rights activist, accepted the invitation to speak against. In the end the debate took place without any of the scheduled speakers after an ugly and acrimonious, American-style row over the make-up of the panel.
Various friends of Israel complained to Luke Tryl, the president of the Oxford Union, that the debate was "unbalanced" because it included Norman G Finkelstein, a well-known critic of Israel, on the "pro-Israel" side. What they failed to grasp, or deliberately chose to ignore, was that the motion was not for or against Israel but about alternative solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Professor Dershowitz was the first and the most aggressive of the protesters. He himself had been invited to speak but he replied that he would participate only if he could dictate the motion and approve the other speakers. These preposterous conditions were rejected and Dershowitz stayed away. But he did not simply sulk in his tent: that is not his style. He wrote to Tryl that it was outrageous for the union to give Finkelstein a platform but, once again, he met with a rebuff. Dershowitz then turned his polemical blunderbuss directly against Finkelstein, calling him "an anti-Semitic bigot" in an article he posted on FrontPageMag.com on 19 October 2007 under the title "Oxford Union is Dead".
Peace Now-UK co-chair Paul Usiskin not only added to the pressure on Tryl to drop Finkelstein but offered to take his place. On 14 October a small delegation of Oxford undergraduates went to see Tryl to question the inclusion of Finkelstein and Tatchell on the "pro-Israel" side and to argue that the whole debate was unbalanced. It is perfectly legitimate for members of the union to communicate their concerns to their president. But the insistence on balance in relation to an unbalanced international actor like Israel raises more questions than it answers.
Israel's policies towards the Palestinians surely cannot be described as balanced by any stretch of the imagination. The Biblical injunction of "an eye for an eye" is grisly enough, but Israel goes even farther by its habitual practice of exacting an eye for an eyelash! As Israel's policy towards the Palestinians becomes more heavy-handed and violent, the very notion of balance needs to be re-examined. Luke Tryl displayed neither wisdom nor courage in dealing with these broader issues and he eventually caved in to the pressure. On 19 October, four days before the debate, he curtly informed Finkelstein that his invitation was rescinded. Paul Usiskin realised his burning ambition to be included in the debate as a member of the team opposing the motion.
On 21 October I wrote to Luke Tryl: "I understand that you have been subjected to a lot of pressure recently. You have my sympathy. But perhaps it was a mistake to give in to the pressure. Some people are never satisfied. In any case, I cannot see how dropping Norman Finkelstein can be squared with the principle of free speech."
Paul Usiskin greatly inflated his own part in this sorry saga in the hopelessly distorted account he gave to the correspondent of the Jerusalem Post. He even claimed the credit for having prevailed on Tryl to drop Finkelstein, although Dershowitz has a stronger claim to this dubious distinction. Usiskin told the Post that the proposers of the one-state solution were disgruntled at his inclusion in the debate and demanded Finkelstein's re-invitation. The truth of the matter is that it was not of the slightest interest to me whether Usiskin took part in the debate or not. My only concern was with the infringement of the principle of free speech at my own university by excluding an academic expert from the debate on solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The fact that Finkelstein and I were on opposite sides of the debate was irrelevant. Finally, Usiskin told the Jerusalem Post that I am a key figure in the campaign for the academic boycott of Israel. In fact, I strongly oppose the boycott because it would infringe the freedom of Israeli academics.
Démarche and diminuendo
In the two days before the debate was due to take place, all other five of the original speakers pulled out. David Trimble, not unreasonably, was fed up with all the controversy. So was I. Luke Tryl invited me to take part in the debate as far back as 11 July. Although I did not like the motion, I made no attempt to modify it out of respect for the student officers of the union. Nor did I try to influence the line-up of the speakers. Tryl left me the choice to speak either for or against the motion and I hesitantly opted to speak for. I have in fact always been a supporter of the two-state solution but I planned to argue that that since Israel is systematically destroying the basis for a genuine two-state solution by its constant expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the one-state is the only remaining alternative. These nuances were lost in the media reports and spin that came to surround the collapse of the debate.
My colleagues and I did not withdraw from the debate when we realised that we were going to lose, as our detractors told the media. Our démarche was intended as a protest against the shabby treatment of our academic colleague and the violation of the principle of free speech at the Oxford Union. Even at the eleventh hour we were still ready to rejoin the debate but only on condition that Norman G Finkelstein was re-invited. He was not re-invited, so we stayed away. The debaters on the night were the ubiquitous Paul Usiskin and five students. The motion was defeated by 191 votes to 60. Groucho Marx once said to his host: "I had a great evening but this was not it!" I feel somewhat the same way about this particular Oxford Union debate.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St Antony's College, Oxford.
Among his books are The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (WW Norton, 1999) and (as co-editor) The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His most recent book is Lion of Jordan: the Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (Penguin, 2007)
Read more on this article...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Enlightened Dictators
Things to keep in mind: Thursday, November 15th is officially the end of Musharraf’s current term as president. Which means The General has to take the new oath - which he is prohibited to do by the house-arrested Supreme Court - and he has to do it as a civilian. The General wants new election for the dissolved assemblies by Jan 9th. My bet is that Musharraf keeps that army uniform on for the while and maybe we will have another "crisis". Yeah?
Benazir Bhutto is getting tons of press. Our intrepid reporters should note that unlike virtually every other opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, seems to have direct access to all international and state media - including holding gloriously orchestrated press conferences. Still, she has been ratcheting up her rhetoric - declaring now that "I will not serve as prime minister as long as Musharraf is president". Of course, she follows that with the clear-eyed assessment that "even if I wanted to work with him, I would not have the public support." Ah, the machinations of freedom's glorious march across the Muslim world.
I say what I said before, these protests are fulfilling a crucial role: they are making sure that things do not return to status quo, that the vacuum persists and that back-channel deals are forced into the public. In that regards, the role of internet-based distribution of information cannot be stressed highly enough. Benazir may have landed in Pakistan with deals but the democratic forces - those lawyers and college kids - are forcing her to play by new rules. And I say "forcing" because, trust me, she is no Aung San Suu Kyi.
Which isn't to say that there is no other 'viable' leadership in Pakistan (a common refrain from the likes of "realists" like Fareed Zakaria and Zakaria-lites). NYT has a great profile of Aitzaz Ahsan - a stalwart of opposition in many a regimes. He is currently in jail.
Perhaps feeling the inevitable Buyer's Remorse, Pervez Musharraf has been out of sight but he makes a brilliant comeback to the press limelights. First off, he is mad at being called "our sonofabitch" and so he kicks out the Telegraph reporters. Then, the interview, which promises to be just scads of fun with some amazing quotes from the NYT write-up:
Asma Jahangir is currently under house arrest.
And finally, Stephen Zunes, writing in FPIF Policy report, concludes: Given the unwillingness of both the Republican administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to stop U.S. military support for the current Pakistani dictatorship, it may be time once again for concerned citizens to engage in similar nonviolent actions to end U.S. support for the oppression. For those at risk as a result of U.S. policy are no longer just those currently oppressed by the Pakistani regime. Some day, as a result of a possible blowback from this policy, it could be Americans as well. Read more on this article...
Benazir Bhutto is getting tons of press. Our intrepid reporters should note that unlike virtually every other opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, seems to have direct access to all international and state media - including holding gloriously orchestrated press conferences. Still, she has been ratcheting up her rhetoric - declaring now that "I will not serve as prime minister as long as Musharraf is president". Of course, she follows that with the clear-eyed assessment that "even if I wanted to work with him, I would not have the public support." Ah, the machinations of freedom's glorious march across the Muslim world.
I say what I said before, these protests are fulfilling a crucial role: they are making sure that things do not return to status quo, that the vacuum persists and that back-channel deals are forced into the public. In that regards, the role of internet-based distribution of information cannot be stressed highly enough. Benazir may have landed in Pakistan with deals but the democratic forces - those lawyers and college kids - are forcing her to play by new rules. And I say "forcing" because, trust me, she is no Aung San Suu Kyi.
Which isn't to say that there is no other 'viable' leadership in Pakistan (a common refrain from the likes of "realists" like Fareed Zakaria and Zakaria-lites). NYT has a great profile of Aitzaz Ahsan - a stalwart of opposition in many a regimes. He is currently in jail.
Perhaps feeling the inevitable Buyer's Remorse, Pervez Musharraf has been out of sight but he makes a brilliant comeback to the press limelights. First off, he is mad at being called "our sonofabitch" and so he kicks out the Telegraph reporters. Then, the interview, which promises to be just scads of fun with some amazing quotes from the NYT write-up:
About Benazir Bhutto, speaking as a dejected suitor promised a scented garden: “You come here on supposedly on a reconciliatory mode, and right before you land, you’re on a confrontationist mode. I am afraid this is producing negative vibes, negative optics.”
....
And next speaking as a truly enlightened man of the 21st century:
He called Ms. Jehangir, the leading human rights advocate in Pakistan and one of the first women lawyers, “quite an unbalanced character.”
General Musharraf criticized Ms. Jehangir for being too ambitious in her agenda on how to achieve better rights for women.
Pakistani women deserved more opportunities, and he cited his own legislation that amended the laws to protect women against accusations of rape and adultery.
But Ms. Jehangir, he said, wanted to go too fast, and would therefore fail.
Asma Jahangir is currently under house arrest.
And finally, Stephen Zunes, writing in FPIF Policy report, concludes: Given the unwillingness of both the Republican administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to stop U.S. military support for the current Pakistani dictatorship, it may be time once again for concerned citizens to engage in similar nonviolent actions to end U.S. support for the oppression. For those at risk as a result of U.S. policy are no longer just those currently oppressed by the Pakistani regime. Some day, as a result of a possible blowback from this policy, it could be Americans as well. Read more on this article...
El Pais (Madrid): Afganistán, ¿hacia el abismo?
My commentary on last week's suicide bombing in Baghlan, north Afghanistan, appeared in El Pais today. Opening in English:
Sources in the Afghan security services tell me that they have collected evidence showing that this was a suicide bombing, most likely traceable back to the training camps identified in a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
The bombing killed Sayed Mustafa Kazemi (on right in photo with U.S. ambassador Robert Finn), spokesman of the opposition National Front in the National Assembly, and one of the rising stars of Afghan politics. I met Kazemi at the UN-sponsored Bonn talks in 2001, where he was a member of the Northern Alliance delegation. He later became minister of commerce and was emerging as a young political leader who bridged gaps among ethnic groups and factions in the National Assembly. His death is a great loss, as is the killing of 59 schoolchildren and many others.
One more excerpt from the article:
The November 6 terrorist bombing in Afghanistan’s northern province of Baghlan, which killed over 70 people, including 59 school children, symbolizes where the country is today: the real progress the country has made in the past few years is under serious threat from deteriorating security.I hope the English version will appear soon.
Sources in the Afghan security services tell me that they have collected evidence showing that this was a suicide bombing, most likely traceable back to the training camps identified in a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
The bombing killed Sayed Mustafa Kazemi (on right in photo with U.S. ambassador Robert Finn), spokesman of the opposition National Front in the National Assembly, and one of the rising stars of Afghan politics. I met Kazemi at the UN-sponsored Bonn talks in 2001, where he was a member of the Northern Alliance delegation. He later became minister of commerce and was emerging as a young political leader who bridged gaps among ethnic groups and factions in the National Assembly. His death is a great loss, as is the killing of 59 schoolchildren and many others.One more excerpt from the article:
A year ago, an Iranian official warned me that militants were coming from Iraq to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train Afghans and Pakistanis in these same tactics. He wanted to share information with the US government, but because of the growing conflict between Washington and Tehran, he could speak only to me, a private citizen. The purpose of such attacks, he said, would be to spark ethnic and sectarian conflict in Afghanistan.In today's highly charged atmosphere, alas, it might work. Read more on this article...
Monday, November 12, 2007
Going Public
The tide seems to be receding. The protests are not spreading beyond the lawyers and the students. The opposition parties have had no luck mobilizing. Benazir Bhutto's me-first strategy is d.o.a. That robust media, Aaj TV, Geo TV, ARY TV remain inaccessible to the majority of the population. The Supreme Court justices are in house arrest. The majority of the opposition is under strict duress. The General has made a series of announcements while jiggling his Google Calendar and seems to be announcing something for January. Enough, in any case, to placate the White House.
Is it over? This nascent movement for democracy and freedom.
It is, if you conceive of it as an instant reaction to an authoritarian step - a flash of anger and frustration that is slowly simmering back down. It is, if you believe that the lawyers and the students represent rather insulated factions of the overall society who do not effect life in a significant enough manner for "ordinary Pakistanis". There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that Musharraf's crackdown on "information" is working. He has sequestered most of the trouble makers. He has cut off any public discussion. He is threatening to try civilians in military tribunals. And the only possible alternatives look like Benazir Bhutto. These are indeed massive odds.
Yet, I do not believe that these are KwiK E Protests that will just go away. Think back to the amazing crowds - hundreds of thousands - that mobilized for the Chief Justice. Think also of those reports about the unpopularity of Musharraf, the fall from grace of the Pakistan Army, the growing discontent about the state of affairs in Pakistan. None of that has changed. None of those miseries have gone away. The Baluchistan crisis is now the Swat and Baluchistan crisis. The Islamists have not disappeared.
These nascent protests will not go away. In fact, they have awakened a new segment of the civil society against The General. A fact that is abundantly clear to those inside. Read more on this article...
Online Lectures by Barnett R. Rubin on Afghanistan
Electronic versions of the lecture I gave in Missoula, Montana, on September 11, 2007, are now available as a podcast or video. Entitled "What is at Stake in Afghanistan?" this was the Ezio Cappadocia Memorial Lecture on Politics and History, part of the President's Lecture Series at the University of Montana.
A webcast of a conference, "Le Canada face au défi afghan," held in Montreal on September 20, is also available online. My keynote speech (Conférence d’honneur académique) is available in video in what are labeled as French and English versions, but as far as I can tell the "English" version is also in French. Perhaps this is required by Quebec law.
You can also watch Canada's Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, being repeatedly interrupted and heckled by protesters as he gives his speech at the opening dinner. A ne pas manquer!
Other speakers include former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General Chris Alexander (former ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan), and Omar Samad, ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada. Read more on this article...
A webcast of a conference, "Le Canada face au défi afghan," held in Montreal on September 20, is also available online. My keynote speech (Conférence d’honneur académique) is available in video in what are labeled as French and English versions, but as far as I can tell the "English" version is also in French. Perhaps this is required by Quebec law.You can also watch Canada's Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, being repeatedly interrupted and heckled by protesters as he gives his speech at the opening dinner. A ne pas manquer!Other speakers include former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General Chris Alexander (former ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan), and Omar Samad, ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada. Read more on this article...
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sadegh Kharazi on US-Iran Relations
I am pasting below an interview done by Maziar Bahari of Newsweek with Sadegh Kharazi, Iran's former ambassador to France and the person reported to have penned the famous 2003 Iran offer to resolve outstanding issues with the United States.
I think the interview is a good window in understanding how Iranian officials (or at least a good number of them) have come to view the way the United States in general, and the Bush Administration in particular, has approached Iran and the problems associated with that approach. Kharazi is related by marriage to Ayatollah Khamenei but also has close ties to former president Khatami. In the Iranian press, as he does here, he has expressed his misgivings about Ahmadinejad's foreign policy (he was one of the first ambassadors to be removed from his job once Ahmadinejad became president).
But here he explains why U.S. policies have directly contributed the the rise of Ahmadinejad's government and his policies. He further lays out why the current U.S. policy of trying to create divisions among various Iranian factions will not work. Finally, he talks about the shared interests Iran and U.S. have in the region and gives as clear a hint as I have seen anywhere about who the United States should talk to if indeed it is interested in resolving the issues it has with Iran diplomatically.
The bottom line for Kharazi is that Iran is ready to negotiate about everything that is of concern to the United States so long as the U.S. is ready to take into account some of Iran's key concerns, which not surprisingly are all related to Iran's economic and political security.
‘A Wall of Mistrust’
A former Iranian diplomat discusses nukes, the Holocaust and how Washington can win Tehran's trust.
By Maziar Bahari
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 4:24 PM ET Nov 9, 2007
NEWSWEEK: In a press conference with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, President George Bush insisted on a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program. Why do you think he adopted a milder tone than before?
Sadegh Kharazi: Because of the disastrous results of American unilateralism in Iraq, they are looking for an international support of their initiatives vis-à-vis Iran. Everyone knows that an American military attack will not only damage Iran but also other countries in the region as well as American interests in the Middle East. It is interesting that Bush and Sarkozy insisted on a diplomatic solution, but we have to wait and see what they mean by diplomacy: new sanctions or new negotiations.
Do you think Iran-U.S. relations can ever improve?
The Americans say that Iran's nuclear program is a threat against the international community. But I think what they are really worried about is Iran's influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, where almost 200,000 American soldiers are stationed. By insisting on Iran's nuclear threat they portray Iran as a threat against their national interests. Unfortunately, it is not only the American government that is doing it but also some of the presidential candidates. I think this way of thinking will have tragic results. The United States has much more in common with Iran than any country in the region, or some European countries, including France. We have almost zero differences of opinion about the stability and the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, instead of working with Iran, America has allied itself with the dictatorships in the region. Americans say that they want to promote democracy in the region. Which one of America's allies in the Persian Gulf region is a democracy? Look at what is happening in Pakistan. After many years of supporting a pro-America dictator, most Pakistanis support Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This policy will inevitably have catastrophic results. Americans should change their view of the realities in the Middle East. The United States is under the illusion that it has a monopoly on truth. As long as it is an idealist and ideological view, they can't have the right policies.
How about Iran's ideological views and monopoly on truth?
We may have the same illusion. In either case it's wrong. Both sides should put aside the smear campaign against each other and populist slogans and adopt more pragmatic policies.
Do you think Americans know Iran?
Americans in general have misperceptions about Iran. The Americans' main source of information is the Iranian opposition in the United States. The opposition is mainly composed of people who haven't been to Iran for the past three decades. They present the facts for the American government with their own interests in mind and customize the information according to what Americans like to hear. There is also the Israeli lobby, which is very strong in the Congress. The third [source] is the Arab lobby, which regards any rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. as against the interests of Arab governments in the region. If Iran and the United States normalized their relations, that relationship would overshadow the one between Arab countries and the U.S.
So what is the way out?
There is a wall of mistrust between Iran and the United States. But until Americans designate a budget to change the government in Iran, we cannot have normal relations with the United States. Americans can take four steps to gain Iran's trust: 1) Recognize the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran and cancel all the programs for regime change. 2) Return frozen assets of Iran in the United States. 3) Stop its support for anti-Iranian terrorist organizations like the MKO cult based in Iraq, the Kurdish separatist group PJAK, and pro-Taliban Baluch separatists, Jondollah. 4) Annul previous sanctions against Iran and do not impose new sanctions.
But you can't seriously think that either the Bush administration or any of the presidential candidates will take these initiatives.
In diplomacy everything's possible and nothing is impossible. I think both countries should lay all the issues on the table and discuss their problems. There is no problem that cannot be solved. If both countries recognize each other's rights, then they can collaborate on many issues, including Iraq, Afghanistan and smuggling of narcotics. They can have differences of opinion, but there is no reason for the current hostility. America has its own differences with China, Russia and even Europe, but that doesn't mean that they cannot talk.
One of the main problems for foreigners is that they don't know who runs Iran and who they should talk to. Is it the foreign ministry? The president? Pragmatic politicians like former president [Ali Akbar Hashemi ] Rafsanjani? Or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei?
The government of Iran executes foreign policy decisions made by Iran's supreme leader. Americans should not try to circumvent the supreme leader and talk to other people in the government. Talking to the Iranian government means talking to the supreme leader. He is informed about every word exchanged in the negotiations. Iran's domestic politics may be decentralized, but the foreign policy is highly centralized. Americans shouldn't think that they can use the internal factionism to their advantage.
But Ayatollah Khamenei is vehemently anti-American.
Even though Iran is ready to defend its interests by any means necessary, the first priority of Iran's supreme leader and the government of Iran is stability of the region. They don't want war and tension. That is why Iran cooperated with the United States to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei Iran has normalized its relations with many countries who were our enemies in the past.
You were forced to resign from the foreign ministry by President Ahmadinejad. What do you think about his self-proclaimed aggressive foreign policy?
I belong to a generation of Iranian diplomats who believe in rapprochement and diplomacy. I may not like some of our current government policies and may think they are against our national interests, but this government and its policies are a result of wrong American policies.
What do you mean?
What our current government is doing is a reaction to years of Americans ignoring Iran's positive gestures. During the presidency of Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, whenever we wanted to have a rapprochement with the United States they demanded more. We cooperated with them in Afghanistan and we were called a member of the Axis of Evil. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq we sent them a letter with a package of proposals, but they chose to ignore it. Extremism breeds extremism.
What do you think about Ahmadinejad's comments about wiping Israel off the map and denying the Jewish Holocaust?
I don't want to justify what President Ahmadinejad says, but Israel has been threatening Iran with military action for more than a decade. So it is Israel that has created the tense atmosphere—and as we say in Persian, you don't exchange terms of endearment in a brawl. Israelis are using the president's comments about the Holocaust in their smear campaign against Iran. We, Iranians, have to be more careful about what we say and be more sensitive to the grief of other nations. The Jewish Holocaust was a crime against humanity. But I also believe it was not the first crime against humanity and neither the last one.
Which presidential candidate in the United States would be able to improve Iran-U.S. relations?
Iran has been an issue in American presidential debates for the past three decades. We cannot cheer for one candidate against the other, because the foreign policy of the United States is made by different parts of the American government and not only the president. Some of the worst sanctions were imposed against Iran during Democratic administrations. But I think the current Democratic candidates are not warmongers like their Republican counterparts. A democratic presidential candidate would be more rational than a Republican one. But it's just a guess.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69268 Read more on this article...
I think the interview is a good window in understanding how Iranian officials (or at least a good number of them) have come to view the way the United States in general, and the Bush Administration in particular, has approached Iran and the problems associated with that approach. Kharazi is related by marriage to Ayatollah Khamenei but also has close ties to former president Khatami. In the Iranian press, as he does here, he has expressed his misgivings about Ahmadinejad's foreign policy (he was one of the first ambassadors to be removed from his job once Ahmadinejad became president).
But here he explains why U.S. policies have directly contributed the the rise of Ahmadinejad's government and his policies. He further lays out why the current U.S. policy of trying to create divisions among various Iranian factions will not work. Finally, he talks about the shared interests Iran and U.S. have in the region and gives as clear a hint as I have seen anywhere about who the United States should talk to if indeed it is interested in resolving the issues it has with Iran diplomatically.
The bottom line for Kharazi is that Iran is ready to negotiate about everything that is of concern to the United States so long as the U.S. is ready to take into account some of Iran's key concerns, which not surprisingly are all related to Iran's economic and political security.
‘A Wall of Mistrust’
A former Iranian diplomat discusses nukes, the Holocaust and how Washington can win Tehran's trust.
By Maziar Bahari
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 4:24 PM ET Nov 9, 2007
NEWSWEEK: In a press conference with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, President George Bush insisted on a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program. Why do you think he adopted a milder tone than before?
Sadegh Kharazi: Because of the disastrous results of American unilateralism in Iraq, they are looking for an international support of their initiatives vis-à-vis Iran. Everyone knows that an American military attack will not only damage Iran but also other countries in the region as well as American interests in the Middle East. It is interesting that Bush and Sarkozy insisted on a diplomatic solution, but we have to wait and see what they mean by diplomacy: new sanctions or new negotiations.
Do you think Iran-U.S. relations can ever improve?
The Americans say that Iran's nuclear program is a threat against the international community. But I think what they are really worried about is Iran's influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, where almost 200,000 American soldiers are stationed. By insisting on Iran's nuclear threat they portray Iran as a threat against their national interests. Unfortunately, it is not only the American government that is doing it but also some of the presidential candidates. I think this way of thinking will have tragic results. The United States has much more in common with Iran than any country in the region, or some European countries, including France. We have almost zero differences of opinion about the stability and the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, instead of working with Iran, America has allied itself with the dictatorships in the region. Americans say that they want to promote democracy in the region. Which one of America's allies in the Persian Gulf region is a democracy? Look at what is happening in Pakistan. After many years of supporting a pro-America dictator, most Pakistanis support Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This policy will inevitably have catastrophic results. Americans should change their view of the realities in the Middle East. The United States is under the illusion that it has a monopoly on truth. As long as it is an idealist and ideological view, they can't have the right policies.
How about Iran's ideological views and monopoly on truth?
We may have the same illusion. In either case it's wrong. Both sides should put aside the smear campaign against each other and populist slogans and adopt more pragmatic policies.
Do you think Americans know Iran?
Americans in general have misperceptions about Iran. The Americans' main source of information is the Iranian opposition in the United States. The opposition is mainly composed of people who haven't been to Iran for the past three decades. They present the facts for the American government with their own interests in mind and customize the information according to what Americans like to hear. There is also the Israeli lobby, which is very strong in the Congress. The third [source] is the Arab lobby, which regards any rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. as against the interests of Arab governments in the region. If Iran and the United States normalized their relations, that relationship would overshadow the one between Arab countries and the U.S.
So what is the way out?
There is a wall of mistrust between Iran and the United States. But until Americans designate a budget to change the government in Iran, we cannot have normal relations with the United States. Americans can take four steps to gain Iran's trust: 1) Recognize the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran and cancel all the programs for regime change. 2) Return frozen assets of Iran in the United States. 3) Stop its support for anti-Iranian terrorist organizations like the MKO cult based in Iraq, the Kurdish separatist group PJAK, and pro-Taliban Baluch separatists, Jondollah. 4) Annul previous sanctions against Iran and do not impose new sanctions.
But you can't seriously think that either the Bush administration or any of the presidential candidates will take these initiatives.
In diplomacy everything's possible and nothing is impossible. I think both countries should lay all the issues on the table and discuss their problems. There is no problem that cannot be solved. If both countries recognize each other's rights, then they can collaborate on many issues, including Iraq, Afghanistan and smuggling of narcotics. They can have differences of opinion, but there is no reason for the current hostility. America has its own differences with China, Russia and even Europe, but that doesn't mean that they cannot talk.
One of the main problems for foreigners is that they don't know who runs Iran and who they should talk to. Is it the foreign ministry? The president? Pragmatic politicians like former president [Ali Akbar Hashemi ] Rafsanjani? Or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei?
The government of Iran executes foreign policy decisions made by Iran's supreme leader. Americans should not try to circumvent the supreme leader and talk to other people in the government. Talking to the Iranian government means talking to the supreme leader. He is informed about every word exchanged in the negotiations. Iran's domestic politics may be decentralized, but the foreign policy is highly centralized. Americans shouldn't think that they can use the internal factionism to their advantage.
But Ayatollah Khamenei is vehemently anti-American.
Even though Iran is ready to defend its interests by any means necessary, the first priority of Iran's supreme leader and the government of Iran is stability of the region. They don't want war and tension. That is why Iran cooperated with the United States to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei Iran has normalized its relations with many countries who were our enemies in the past.
You were forced to resign from the foreign ministry by President Ahmadinejad. What do you think about his self-proclaimed aggressive foreign policy?
I belong to a generation of Iranian diplomats who believe in rapprochement and diplomacy. I may not like some of our current government policies and may think they are against our national interests, but this government and its policies are a result of wrong American policies.
What do you mean?
What our current government is doing is a reaction to years of Americans ignoring Iran's positive gestures. During the presidency of Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, whenever we wanted to have a rapprochement with the United States they demanded more. We cooperated with them in Afghanistan and we were called a member of the Axis of Evil. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq we sent them a letter with a package of proposals, but they chose to ignore it. Extremism breeds extremism.
What do you think about Ahmadinejad's comments about wiping Israel off the map and denying the Jewish Holocaust?
I don't want to justify what President Ahmadinejad says, but Israel has been threatening Iran with military action for more than a decade. So it is Israel that has created the tense atmosphere—and as we say in Persian, you don't exchange terms of endearment in a brawl. Israelis are using the president's comments about the Holocaust in their smear campaign against Iran. We, Iranians, have to be more careful about what we say and be more sensitive to the grief of other nations. The Jewish Holocaust was a crime against humanity. But I also believe it was not the first crime against humanity and neither the last one.
Which presidential candidate in the United States would be able to improve Iran-U.S. relations?
Iran has been an issue in American presidential debates for the past three decades. We cannot cheer for one candidate against the other, because the foreign policy of the United States is made by different parts of the American government and not only the president. Some of the worst sanctions were imposed against Iran during Democratic administrations. But I think the current Democratic candidates are not warmongers like their Republican counterparts. A democratic presidential candidate would be more rational than a Republican one. But it's just a guess.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69268 Read more on this article...
Saturday, November 10, 2007
No island is an island
We live in an intimately inter-connected world as newspaper headlines, shifting investment flows and fluctuating gas prices readily remind us, but we also inhabit vastly different worlds due to natural accidents of geography and man-made maps of language, religion and culture. One only has to cross a land border or a body of water to appreciate how close yet how far neighbors can be.
Teaching in Japan, doing research in China, I often find myself pondering these things while shuttling back and forth on full capacity flights, the lack of elbow room itself a testament to the booming links between Asia's two economic giants, ranked two and three in the world respectively. Sometimes for a change of pace, I take the slow boat to China, one of the several ferries plying the waters between Japan and China. Moving back and forth between East Asia's two great historic rivals by boat serves to remind that liquid ties are among the most enduring.
As I will be posting from China in the next few weeks, I'd like to introduce a series of random essays on East Asia with "No island is an island", originally published in the International Herald Tribune.
I grew up on Long Island, which is an island and not an island, and I think something of the same applies to Japan.
...
Meanwhile: No island is an island
Philip J. Cunningham
Japan is often described, with just a hint of defensiveness, as an island country, as if that somehow underscores uniqueness or excuses exceptions to being a good neighbor. Yet sailing from Japan to China offers ample evidence that no island in today's world is truly an island; far-flung points of land are what they are today due to long-standing liquid links.
Taking the ferry from Kobe to Tianjin, a leisurely two-day, two-night journey through the peaceful but contested waters where Japan's Japan Sea, Korea's East Sea and China's Yellow Sea swirl and overlap is an eye-opener for the harried, jet-age traveler. There's a lot of time to think, with daily activity reduced to the simple, older rhythms of no-frills boat travel. Three meals a day and a book, plus walking the deck and staring at the sea is about all there is on the menu. No Internet, no satellite television, no news.
Albert Einstein was on board such a ship en route to Japan when he learned, very belatedly, the news of his Nobel Prize. Einstein commenced his long trip back to Europe by boarding a boat in Kobe and sailing to Shanghai, disembarking on the Bund. Making a voyage more than half a century later, it was not only possible to follow a similar sea route, but to disembark on the Bund and check into the crumbling but ornate Pujiang Hotel where a sign announced that Einstein was once a guest, back when it was called the Astor.
Nowadays, nobody takes the boat, at least nobody in the Washington or Hollywood sense of the word. The slow boat to China is as slow as ever, chugging along at an unhurried pace, but it's clean and comfortable, and the stretched out sense of time it engenders brings to mind a largely forgotten way of doing things.
And therein lies some of the charm, especially to anyone tired of the long lines, repeated security checks and tense, hermetically-sealed environments of modern airports. The ferry aficionado of today keeps company with fellow travelers content with simplicity - exchange students, retirees, war orphans and ethnic Chinese with Japan-acculturated kids, seeking an inexpensive holiday back in the motherland.
As the Yanjing pulls out of the port of Kobe, it sweeps past giant naval shipyards where a large submarine is being constructed in plain view, then traverses the Seto Inland Sea, hugging barren rocky outcroppings and islets that appear to be isolated but are tightly linked by magnificent bridges, rail infrastructure and soaring power lines, not to mention the invisible television and telecommunication links to Tokyo.
Physical and political isolation have been further reduced by the speed and scope of air travel, of course, but the older paradigm of linkage - that of seaborne traffic - continues to shore up age-old patterns of politics and trade, linked by a web of shipping lanes largely out of view to the landlocked.
Sea routes may not figure high in contemporary consciousness, but they are vital and pulsing with traffic; upon the entrance to critical narrow straits like Shimonoseki, giant electric signboards blink instructions as boats line up in single file like jets on a runway, rocking gently in the wake of the long line of boats passing as they plow in the opposite direction.
Once passing beyond the breath- taking natural gateway formed by the rock fortress extremities of Honshu and Kyushu, the ferry overtakes a number of the heavily laden cargo ships that dominate the waters off Japan. Off the south coast of Korea, numerous fishing boats work close to the coastline.
Standing on deck and watching the sea go by, one is reminded not only of the vastness of our planet's watery surface but its vulnerability. The restless waves are littered with paper, plastic bottles, and bobbing bits of Styrofoam, so much so that a skilled captain could probably navigate from port to port by following the undulating trail of rubbish.
The sheer volume and seemingly endless flow of traffic on this busy water road linking Asian neighbors offers a fresh perspective on the sporadic stream of anti-Japan protests on the streets of Shanghai or Seoul. It will take a lot more than childish displays of nationalism to sink the buoyant business of burgeoning trade.
There is something deeply reassuring about the sea doing what it always has done, offering dependable links from one shore to another, offering a sense of a shared fate on a shared planet, even as it appears to divide.
(Philip J. Cunningham is a professor of media studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto.) Read more on this article...
Teaching in Japan, doing research in China, I often find myself pondering these things while shuttling back and forth on full capacity flights, the lack of elbow room itself a testament to the booming links between Asia's two economic giants, ranked two and three in the world respectively. Sometimes for a change of pace, I take the slow boat to China, one of the several ferries plying the waters between Japan and China. Moving back and forth between East Asia's two great historic rivals by boat serves to remind that liquid ties are among the most enduring.
As I will be posting from China in the next few weeks, I'd like to introduce a series of random essays on East Asia with "No island is an island", originally published in the International Herald Tribune.
I grew up on Long Island, which is an island and not an island, and I think something of the same applies to Japan.
...
Meanwhile: No island is an island
Philip J. Cunningham
Japan is often described, with just a hint of defensiveness, as an island country, as if that somehow underscores uniqueness or excuses exceptions to being a good neighbor. Yet sailing from Japan to China offers ample evidence that no island in today's world is truly an island; far-flung points of land are what they are today due to long-standing liquid links.
Taking the ferry from Kobe to Tianjin, a leisurely two-day, two-night journey through the peaceful but contested waters where Japan's Japan Sea, Korea's East Sea and China's Yellow Sea swirl and overlap is an eye-opener for the harried, jet-age traveler. There's a lot of time to think, with daily activity reduced to the simple, older rhythms of no-frills boat travel. Three meals a day and a book, plus walking the deck and staring at the sea is about all there is on the menu. No Internet, no satellite television, no news.
Albert Einstein was on board such a ship en route to Japan when he learned, very belatedly, the news of his Nobel Prize. Einstein commenced his long trip back to Europe by boarding a boat in Kobe and sailing to Shanghai, disembarking on the Bund. Making a voyage more than half a century later, it was not only possible to follow a similar sea route, but to disembark on the Bund and check into the crumbling but ornate Pujiang Hotel where a sign announced that Einstein was once a guest, back when it was called the Astor.
Nowadays, nobody takes the boat, at least nobody in the Washington or Hollywood sense of the word. The slow boat to China is as slow as ever, chugging along at an unhurried pace, but it's clean and comfortable, and the stretched out sense of time it engenders brings to mind a largely forgotten way of doing things.
And therein lies some of the charm, especially to anyone tired of the long lines, repeated security checks and tense, hermetically-sealed environments of modern airports. The ferry aficionado of today keeps company with fellow travelers content with simplicity - exchange students, retirees, war orphans and ethnic Chinese with Japan-acculturated kids, seeking an inexpensive holiday back in the motherland.
As the Yanjing pulls out of the port of Kobe, it sweeps past giant naval shipyards where a large submarine is being constructed in plain view, then traverses the Seto Inland Sea, hugging barren rocky outcroppings and islets that appear to be isolated but are tightly linked by magnificent bridges, rail infrastructure and soaring power lines, not to mention the invisible television and telecommunication links to Tokyo.
Physical and political isolation have been further reduced by the speed and scope of air travel, of course, but the older paradigm of linkage - that of seaborne traffic - continues to shore up age-old patterns of politics and trade, linked by a web of shipping lanes largely out of view to the landlocked.
Sea routes may not figure high in contemporary consciousness, but they are vital and pulsing with traffic; upon the entrance to critical narrow straits like Shimonoseki, giant electric signboards blink instructions as boats line up in single file like jets on a runway, rocking gently in the wake of the long line of boats passing as they plow in the opposite direction.
Once passing beyond the breath- taking natural gateway formed by the rock fortress extremities of Honshu and Kyushu, the ferry overtakes a number of the heavily laden cargo ships that dominate the waters off Japan. Off the south coast of Korea, numerous fishing boats work close to the coastline.
Standing on deck and watching the sea go by, one is reminded not only of the vastness of our planet's watery surface but its vulnerability. The restless waves are littered with paper, plastic bottles, and bobbing bits of Styrofoam, so much so that a skilled captain could probably navigate from port to port by following the undulating trail of rubbish.
The sheer volume and seemingly endless flow of traffic on this busy water road linking Asian neighbors offers a fresh perspective on the sporadic stream of anti-Japan protests on the streets of Shanghai or Seoul. It will take a lot more than childish displays of nationalism to sink the buoyant business of burgeoning trade.
There is something deeply reassuring about the sea doing what it always has done, offering dependable links from one shore to another, offering a sense of a shared fate on a shared planet, even as it appears to divide.
(Philip J. Cunningham is a professor of media studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto.) Read more on this article...
Islam Forbids Nuclear Weapons: Tehran Friday Prayer Leader
The USG Open Source Center translates a Friday sermon by Ayatollah Emami-Kashani asserting that nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law and that Iran is not trying to get them.
'Iran: Tehran Friday Prayer Leader Says Islam Forbids Nuclear Weapons
Second sermon from the Friday prayers at Tehran University delivered by Experts Assembly member Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani, temporary Tehran Friday prayer leader, on 9 November -- recorded
Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1
Friday, November 9, 2007
Document Type: OSC Translated Excerpt
The hegemonic powers are honing in on these three points (speaks in Arabic). These are three key issues and, where our country is concerned, the world arrogance is zooming in on precisely these three points. The enemy creates disturbances along the borders, plans domestic panic, wages psychological warfare by threatening military action, and imposes economic sanctions to hamper commerce. The enemy is concentrating its efforts on the very three things that the holy Koran says are the secret to security in a place. Of course, they make false accusations -- the hegemonic powers make unfounded accusations against Iran; claiming that it is seeking to produce nuclear weapons.
In Iran, the person who is a mufti, who has the right (to issue) fatwas, who is recognized as a jurist and is the leader of the community -- he who is the highest authority in the nation and is our eminent Leader [Ali Khamenei] -- has made it abundantly clear, as have others, that the destruction of nations, any nation, women and children, large or small -- the massacre of innocents is wrong. The same is true of the atomic bomb and atomic weapons. The very idea of an atom bomb is forbidden, the very deed is a sin.
The foremost authority in this country, one who is in a position to issue fatwas, in political affairs, and in decision-making processes has stated it explicitly.
Nevertheless, the enemy says you want to make atom bombs. It is like the other things they say -- they say things like you train terrorists and you make this and that place unsafe. They make such claims about an Iran that believes in security in all places, an Iran and an Islamic regime that believes that all places must be safe; because this is what the Koran tells us. The Koran tells us (passage omitted: in Arabic) God does not love those who sin on earth. The earth has primacy for an Islamic society. Any ground, anywhere, any religion, be it Judaism or Christianity, one and all, Islamic societies, Islamic thought and the holy Koran believes in security for all. It is so without a doubt. It is so for the Islamic regime and it is so for our constitution.
Religious minorities in this country believe it to be true -- that this is our view toward the world at large. The point of discussion is their (the enemy) crimes. We should be talking about them and how they are gobbling up the world and are willing to commit all manner of crime while professing themselves to be proponents of peace.
Iran is a country whose (citizens) young and old await the rapture and the coming of the promised Mehdi, may god hasten his return. We believe that the future holds peace for us, that the future will bring security. We have a messiah. He will come and peace will prevail in this world and upon this earth. Such a system does not desire to perpetuate the kinds of crimes and murders you commit.
I will finish here. I call on the pious including myself to worship but one god and have faith (passage omitted: prayer in Arabic). '
(Description of Source: Tehran Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 in Persian -- state-run television)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Current History--annual Middle East issue is due out in December.
ICGA readers will find some familiar authors here.
Speaking Truth to Power from Boston: Current History--annual Middle East issue is due out in December. Read more on this article...
Speaking Truth to Power from Boston: Current History--annual Middle East issue is due out in December. Read more on this article...
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Memo to Media: Supporting Musharraf is NOT Realism
Now that I am out of Pakistan, I can watch international news again. (General Musharraf, author of the doctrine of "enlightened moderation," has shut down access to international cable channels, presumably because they undermine the fight against international terrorism.) I have been able to watch the same lawyer in Multan get arrested several times. I have seen Benazir Bhutto arrive in Islamabad, sticking her head out of an armored car in case anyone would like to make up for missing it in Karachi.
Watching the international media framing the events reminded me of a Bob Dylan song I was listening to on the plane:
This is supposedly "realism," not just in the sense of being tough rather than idealistic, but in following the analytic and prescriptive precepts of the realist paradigm in international relations. According to this paradigm, the main actors in international relations are states, states act out of rational motives of self-preservation, these self-regarding interests result largely from international power relations, and the internal structure of states is largely both independent of their international behavior and impervious to international influence. Hence promoting democracy is a noble endeavor that has limited effect and sometimes has to be subordinated to urgent security interests. In the case of Pakistan, the realist frame states, "Even if General Musharraf is a dictator, we need his help in the war against terror."
I agree that promoting democracy (even if it were done sincerely and intelligently, which is not the usual practice) sometimes has less priority than other goals. In any case, democracy cannot function without internal security and the rule of law.
But don't the reporters notice that the very pictures they are showing contradict the realist frame? General Musharraf has not suspended the constitution to fight terrorism. He has not even continued to fight terrorism while suspending the constitution for other reasons. Of course the Pakistan Army is happy to pocket the $100 million a year it receives for giving the U.S. basing rights and otherwise supporting the effort in Afghanistan (while undermining it in other -- and cheaper -- ways). The Pakistan Army is not about to commit suicide by openly defying the whole international community and cutting off support for NATO operations in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Musharraf sent his police to arrest lawyers, liberal politicians, and human rights activists, while doing virtually nothing against those Taliban in their scary turbans, who are taking over Swat:
That does not mean, as stated in the usual blackmail note passed by Pakistani generals to American leaders, that only the Army stands between Islamabad's nuclear weapons and a mass Islamic revolutionary uprising. Support for a Taliban government is marginal in Pakistan. Even the mainstream Islamist parties like Jamaat-i Islami, who support the "resistance" in Afghanistan, are against it. But the military regime has not been able to provide an alternative legitimate leadership, and its own institutional interests prevent it from doing so.
The military and in particular its leader, General Musharraf, has a vital interest in staying in power. The generals believe their own rhetoric, that their personal and institutional interest is identical to the national interest, but few other Pakistanis do, and we should not either. The problem of how to handle the tribal agencies illustrates the dilemma.
For the past 30 years, initially using U.S. and Saudi covert action funds, the Pakistani military empowered jihadi groups in the tribal agencies. Along with the growth of a commercial economy based on smuggling, drug trafficking, and remittances, this support to militants undermined the tribal leadership through which the British colonial state and its successor, the Pakistani military state, controlled the border region. This closed area provided a deniable platform for the "covert" use of jihadis against the USSR, India, and Afghanistan.
When the U.S. demanded that the military join the "War on Terror," it responded by sending in the army and arresting some Arabs and Uzbeks, while leaving the Taliban able to operate in Afghanistan. When the U.S. finally demanded more action, Islamabad claimed that the local Pashtuns supported the Taliban and that therefore military action alone would not work. Instead they reached an agreement with government-controlled "tribal leaders" in South Waziristan to control militant activity. Some in the Pakistani government sincerely hoped this agreement would work. It did not. Trying to regain control of the tribal agencies by reviving the tribal leadership is like trying to reconstitute the Mediterranean out of bouillabaisse. (My apologies to Marseille.)
Pashtuns in the tribal agencies are constantly sending messages complaining of how the militants are terrorizing them, how they don't want to be used against Afghanistan, and how they are being blamed for the covert actions imposed on them by the Pakistani military. A few days ago, after I gave a lecture at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, two students from NWFP came up to me in a very agitated state, with the same protests, that Pakhtuns are not Taliban and that this "terrorism" had been imposed on them. These areas are ripe for political leadership that would oppose both the militants -- absorbing many of the youths they are recruiting -- and military rule. But creating conditions for such leadership to develop would require not sending in the military to bomb and shell the tribes, but legalizing political parties and social organizations (which are outlawed in the tribal agencies) and enabling the people of the tribal agencies to exercise self-government. Rather than give up its own power, the military balances the militants and the weakened tribes.
Only a transition toward more democratic civilian rule would create a constituency that would enable the Pakistani state not just to suppress militants by force but to offer a legitimate alternative to militancy. This the military regime will not and cannot do. Only a democratic transition, with its attendant uncertainties, offers a chance for Pakistan not so much to defeat militancy as to render it irrelevant. Genuine realism -- which includes an analysis of the role of legitimacy in state capacity -- requires support for the rule of law and transition to democracy.
Dylan again:
Watching the international media framing the events reminded me of a Bob Dylan song I was listening to on the plane:
If there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now.I see Bush talking about his "freedom agenda," Musharraf at the White House, arrested lawyers, turbaned Taliban taking over another town in northwest Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto asking the world to live up to its ideals, U.S. planes swooping over Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein on behalf of President Reagan (that sure worked out real swell!), and, finally, Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, explaining that China can help us with North Korea, Saudi Arabia can help us against Iran, and that sometimes democracy promotion has to take a back seat to security concerns.
This is supposedly "realism," not just in the sense of being tough rather than idealistic, but in following the analytic and prescriptive precepts of the realist paradigm in international relations. According to this paradigm, the main actors in international relations are states, states act out of rational motives of self-preservation, these self-regarding interests result largely from international power relations, and the internal structure of states is largely both independent of their international behavior and impervious to international influence. Hence promoting democracy is a noble endeavor that has limited effect and sometimes has to be subordinated to urgent security interests. In the case of Pakistan, the realist frame states, "Even if General Musharraf is a dictator, we need his help in the war against terror."
I agree that promoting democracy (even if it were done sincerely and intelligently, which is not the usual practice) sometimes has less priority than other goals. In any case, democracy cannot function without internal security and the rule of law.
But don't the reporters notice that the very pictures they are showing contradict the realist frame? General Musharraf has not suspended the constitution to fight terrorism. He has not even continued to fight terrorism while suspending the constitution for other reasons. Of course the Pakistan Army is happy to pocket the $100 million a year it receives for giving the U.S. basing rights and otherwise supporting the effort in Afghanistan (while undermining it in other -- and cheaper -- ways). The Pakistan Army is not about to commit suicide by openly defying the whole international community and cutting off support for NATO operations in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Musharraf sent his police to arrest lawyers, liberal politicians, and human rights activists, while doing virtually nothing against those Taliban in their scary turbans, who are taking over Swat:
The imposition of emergency in Pakistan has not put any pressure on Taliban in Swat district. Taliban have taken over police stations in Matta, Khawazkhela and Charbagh. This scribe visited the Matta police station after the imposition of emergency in Pakistan. Taliban there have replaced the Pakistan's flag with their own at the police station after more than 120 soldiers surrendered two days ago. Taliban commanders controlling Matta police station were not worried about the emergency.Why is this happening? Because an illegitimate military regime could not motivate the security forces it has trained for jihad in defense of Islamic Pakistan to fight against domestic jihadis, even if it really wanted to. Realism assumes that states are constituted once and for all and that their capacity is a function of their economies and order of battle, not their legitimacy. But that is wrong. In Afghanistan the Afghan National Army, on which the U.S. has spent billions of dollars, is being undermined by mullahs, who in some areas will not pray at the funerals of fallen ANA soldiers. Pakistani troops and police are surrendering rather than fight the militants at the behest of a dictator beholden to the U.S.
Immediately after President Musharraf's speech, the Pakistan Army swapped 25 Taliban fighters for 211 kidnapped soldiers in South Waziristan. There was a feeling of achievement among local militants over the banning of private TV channels all over the country as they think Musharraf had accepted their point of view in this matter.
Taliban leader Maulvi Fazlullah is moving around half of the Swat area like a ruler with full protocol. He has appointed his own 'governors' in Kabal, Matta and Khawazkhela. He has also ordered setting up of Islamic courts for providing justice in areas under his control.
That does not mean, as stated in the usual blackmail note passed by Pakistani generals to American leaders, that only the Army stands between Islamabad's nuclear weapons and a mass Islamic revolutionary uprising. Support for a Taliban government is marginal in Pakistan. Even the mainstream Islamist parties like Jamaat-i Islami, who support the "resistance" in Afghanistan, are against it. But the military regime has not been able to provide an alternative legitimate leadership, and its own institutional interests prevent it from doing so.
The military and in particular its leader, General Musharraf, has a vital interest in staying in power. The generals believe their own rhetoric, that their personal and institutional interest is identical to the national interest, but few other Pakistanis do, and we should not either. The problem of how to handle the tribal agencies illustrates the dilemma.
For the past 30 years, initially using U.S. and Saudi covert action funds, the Pakistani military empowered jihadi groups in the tribal agencies. Along with the growth of a commercial economy based on smuggling, drug trafficking, and remittances, this support to militants undermined the tribal leadership through which the British colonial state and its successor, the Pakistani military state, controlled the border region. This closed area provided a deniable platform for the "covert" use of jihadis against the USSR, India, and Afghanistan.
When the U.S. demanded that the military join the "War on Terror," it responded by sending in the army and arresting some Arabs and Uzbeks, while leaving the Taliban able to operate in Afghanistan. When the U.S. finally demanded more action, Islamabad claimed that the local Pashtuns supported the Taliban and that therefore military action alone would not work. Instead they reached an agreement with government-controlled "tribal leaders" in South Waziristan to control militant activity. Some in the Pakistani government sincerely hoped this agreement would work. It did not. Trying to regain control of the tribal agencies by reviving the tribal leadership is like trying to reconstitute the Mediterranean out of bouillabaisse. (My apologies to Marseille.)
Pashtuns in the tribal agencies are constantly sending messages complaining of how the militants are terrorizing them, how they don't want to be used against Afghanistan, and how they are being blamed for the covert actions imposed on them by the Pakistani military. A few days ago, after I gave a lecture at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, two students from NWFP came up to me in a very agitated state, with the same protests, that Pakhtuns are not Taliban and that this "terrorism" had been imposed on them. These areas are ripe for political leadership that would oppose both the militants -- absorbing many of the youths they are recruiting -- and military rule. But creating conditions for such leadership to develop would require not sending in the military to bomb and shell the tribes, but legalizing political parties and social organizations (which are outlawed in the tribal agencies) and enabling the people of the tribal agencies to exercise self-government. Rather than give up its own power, the military balances the militants and the weakened tribes.
Only a transition toward more democratic civilian rule would create a constituency that would enable the Pakistani state not just to suppress militants by force but to offer a legitimate alternative to militancy. This the military regime will not and cannot do. Only a democratic transition, with its attendant uncertainties, offers a chance for Pakistan not so much to defeat militancy as to render it irrelevant. Genuine realism -- which includes an analysis of the role of legitimacy in state capacity -- requires support for the rule of law and transition to democracy.
Dylan again:
I met the sons of darkness and the sons of lightAnd what were both the sons of darkness and the sons of light looking for in those bordertowns?
In the bordertowns of despair
Wise man lookin' in a blade of grassIt shouldn't be that hard to understand. Read more on this article...
Young man lookin' in the shadows that pass
Poor man lookin' through painted glass
For dignity.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Islamabad: Parting Thoughts on Policy
Islamabad -- Before I leave in a few hours, I wanted to jot down a few notes on what Pakistanis are saying about the United States in particular and the "West" in general.
The most common feeling toward the U.S. I have encountered is a kind of anger mixed with disappointment. Pakistanis are angry at the U.S. and consider it hypocritical because it has consistently supported dictatorship in Pakistan. Many are also baffled and furious because they see clearly the complicity of part of the Pakistani security forces with the Taliban on both sides of the border and cannot comprehend U.S. continued support for that same military.
They see a weak reaction by the U.S. to the virtual martial law decreed by General Musharraf. In particular they hear U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates say, "We are reviewing all of our assistance programs, although we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts." What they hear is, the U.S. will review its support for education and health programs, but it will continue its massive subsidy (an estimated $1 billion per year) to cover the cost of operations by the Pakistan military: the same military that has declared a pseudo-emergency (in reality, martial law), under which protesting lawyers have been beaten and hundreds of non-violent democratic political leaders arrested, while the militants continue their campaigns without hindrance.
Naturally conspiracy theories abound. [The following conspiracy theories are NOT endorsed by the author and should NOT be circulated all over the internet and attributed to the author, who is merely trying to convey some of the flavor of local discourse.] The U.S. wants the Pakistani Taliban to surround Islamabad so that it has the excuse it seeks to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Musharraf has promised the U.S. some sort of assistance in a war against Iran. And these are only the more plausible theories I have heard.
Let me describe the situation on the ground to which Musharraf has responded by suspending the constitution, arresting several senior judges, and detaining hundreds of non-violent democratic political leaders. According to sources in the Northwest Frontier Province, the Taliban (Afghan and Pakistani) have established an Islamic Emirate centered in Mirali, North Waziristan, the home base of Commander Jalaluddin Haqqani (Afghan Jadran from Khost) and his son Sirajuddin. This Emirate acknowledges Mullah Muhammad Umar as Amir, but it is mainly run by the Haqqanis, with the Pakistani Mehsud leader, Baitulah Mehsud of South Waziristan, as its main public face. The Emirate has established structures in all seven Tribal Agencies, though it is strongest in North and South Waziristan and has not penetrated the Shi'a areas of upper Kurram. Besides Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns, its forces include the Uzbeks displaced from South Waziristan and others from the former USSR (collectively if not accurately called "Chechens"), whom the local people accuse of the greatest brutalities, such as the beheading of prisoners.
From these bases, the Emirate has launched its offensive in Swat and has infiltrated around Peshawar from several directions. Recently Taliban appeared in Qisakhani Bazaar in the old city of Peshawar and ordered traders to remove "un-Islamic" posters. There was no reaction from the police or administration. There are dozens of Taliban FM stations broadcasting calls to jihad in both the tribal agencies and the "settled" (administered) areas of NWFP. Not one of them has been shut down; instead the martial law regime has blocked transmissions of liberal cable television stations and blocked the Blackberry network used by the political elite.
Many if not most of my Pakistani interlocutors do not believe that the Pakistani military is using either martial law or U.S. assistance for "counter-terrorism." They believe it is using it to perpetuate its own power in the service of a national security project that serves neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan and is doing great harm to both. Any civilian government would, for the first time in Pakistan's history, assert its authority over formerly prohibited areas of policy: Afghanistan, Kashmir, the frontier agencies, perhaps even military expenditure. Therefore the generals fear, and international security interests demand, a rapid transition to civilian democratic rule.
As I understand them, the most urgent requests to foreign governments and organizations put forward by the Pakistani supporters of democracy whom I have met are: (1) Clear and strong condemnation of the state of emergency, which is only a thinly disguised form of martial law; (2) Termination of assistance, especially assistance going directly to the Pakistani military, until the constitution is restored and the democratic transition back on schedule; and (3) Use for the same purpose of all levers of U.S. and international influence, including suspension of ongoing military contracts.
My Pakistani interlocutors do not seem to fear the destabilizing effect of such measures nearly as much as they fear the destabilizing effect of a martial law regime. Unlike past martial law regimes, this one enjoys little popular support (though I met a few elite women who believe that only Musharraf will defend their rights effectively). Musharraf's rhetoric about fighting terrorism they largely see as an unconvincing and transparent disguise for maintaining his personal power and the dominant position of the army at the expense of the rule of law.
For a statement of some of these views by a leading Pakistani writer, see Ahmed Rashid in the Washington Post. Read more on this article...
The most common feeling toward the U.S. I have encountered is a kind of anger mixed with disappointment. Pakistanis are angry at the U.S. and consider it hypocritical because it has consistently supported dictatorship in Pakistan. Many are also baffled and furious because they see clearly the complicity of part of the Pakistani security forces with the Taliban on both sides of the border and cannot comprehend U.S. continued support for that same military.
They see a weak reaction by the U.S. to the virtual martial law decreed by General Musharraf. In particular they hear U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates say, "We are reviewing all of our assistance programs, although we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts." What they hear is, the U.S. will review its support for education and health programs, but it will continue its massive subsidy (an estimated $1 billion per year) to cover the cost of operations by the Pakistan military: the same military that has declared a pseudo-emergency (in reality, martial law), under which protesting lawyers have been beaten and hundreds of non-violent democratic political leaders arrested, while the militants continue their campaigns without hindrance.
Naturally conspiracy theories abound. [The following conspiracy theories are NOT endorsed by the author and should NOT be circulated all over the internet and attributed to the author, who is merely trying to convey some of the flavor of local discourse.] The U.S. wants the Pakistani Taliban to surround Islamabad so that it has the excuse it seeks to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Musharraf has promised the U.S. some sort of assistance in a war against Iran. And these are only the more plausible theories I have heard.
Let me describe the situation on the ground to which Musharraf has responded by suspending the constitution, arresting several senior judges, and detaining hundreds of non-violent democratic political leaders. According to sources in the Northwest Frontier Province, the Taliban (Afghan and Pakistani) have established an Islamic Emirate centered in Mirali, North Waziristan, the home base of Commander Jalaluddin Haqqani (Afghan Jadran from Khost) and his son Sirajuddin. This Emirate acknowledges Mullah Muhammad Umar as Amir, but it is mainly run by the Haqqanis, with the Pakistani Mehsud leader, Baitulah Mehsud of South Waziristan, as its main public face. The Emirate has established structures in all seven Tribal Agencies, though it is strongest in North and South Waziristan and has not penetrated the Shi'a areas of upper Kurram. Besides Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns, its forces include the Uzbeks displaced from South Waziristan and others from the former USSR (collectively if not accurately called "Chechens"), whom the local people accuse of the greatest brutalities, such as the beheading of prisoners.
From these bases, the Emirate has launched its offensive in Swat and has infiltrated around Peshawar from several directions. Recently Taliban appeared in Qisakhani Bazaar in the old city of Peshawar and ordered traders to remove "un-Islamic" posters. There was no reaction from the police or administration. There are dozens of Taliban FM stations broadcasting calls to jihad in both the tribal agencies and the "settled" (administered) areas of NWFP. Not one of them has been shut down; instead the martial law regime has blocked transmissions of liberal cable television stations and blocked the Blackberry network used by the political elite.
Many if not most of my Pakistani interlocutors do not believe that the Pakistani military is using either martial law or U.S. assistance for "counter-terrorism." They believe it is using it to perpetuate its own power in the service of a national security project that serves neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan and is doing great harm to both. Any civilian government would, for the first time in Pakistan's history, assert its authority over formerly prohibited areas of policy: Afghanistan, Kashmir, the frontier agencies, perhaps even military expenditure. Therefore the generals fear, and international security interests demand, a rapid transition to civilian democratic rule.
As I understand them, the most urgent requests to foreign governments and organizations put forward by the Pakistani supporters of democracy whom I have met are: (1) Clear and strong condemnation of the state of emergency, which is only a thinly disguised form of martial law; (2) Termination of assistance, especially assistance going directly to the Pakistani military, until the constitution is restored and the democratic transition back on schedule; and (3) Use for the same purpose of all levers of U.S. and international influence, including suspension of ongoing military contracts.
My Pakistani interlocutors do not seem to fear the destabilizing effect of such measures nearly as much as they fear the destabilizing effect of a martial law regime. Unlike past martial law regimes, this one enjoys little popular support (though I met a few elite women who believe that only Musharraf will defend their rights effectively). Musharraf's rhetoric about fighting terrorism they largely see as an unconvincing and transparent disguise for maintaining his personal power and the dominant position of the army at the expense of the rule of law.
For a statement of some of these views by a leading Pakistani writer, see Ahmed Rashid in the Washington Post. Read more on this article...
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Musharraf and Lincoln
Since many folks are noting the reference to Lincoln in the General's speech (translated below) ... I just wanted to point out that he has been making this reference since 2002 ... here he is talking to Ikram Sehgal, Managing Editor of Defense Journal of Pakistan (January 22, 2002):
So, just to be crystal clear. It is Lincoln through Nixon.
From this undated interview on the General's website:
Q. Which book have you read recently and really enjoyed?
A. Leaders by Richard Nixon Read more on this article...
When US President Abraham Lincoln’s name cropped up, he brought out an extract from Richard Nixon from his book "Leaders". He read, "Lincoln’s consuming passion during the time of crisis (the American Civil War 1861-65) was to preserve the Union. "Towards that end he trampled individual liberties. His justification was necessity. Explaining his sweeping violation of constitutional limits, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter in 1864: My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground and now avow it" unquote. Pervez Musharraf laughingly hoped that this would not be misconstrued, "The period after Oct 12, 2002 is of great concern to me, not only to maintain the momentum of reforms enacted but to sustain continuity. I want to strike the right balance so that the system can not be manipulated by any individual’s discretion for his own selfish, personal motives. I am confident about taking bold decisions, "because I have no skeletons in my cupboard, I can look you in the eye!", unquote.
So, just to be crystal clear. It is Lincoln through Nixon.
From this undated interview on the General's website:
Q. Which book have you read recently and really enjoyed?
A. Leaders by Richard Nixon Read more on this article...
Musharraf Adopts Bush-Cheney Doctrine of "Lawfare"
Islamabad -- One of the curious aspects of General Musharraf's speech last night (by the way, it is General, not President, as he first annulled the constitution and then invoked one of its provisions to declare an Emergency, acting not as president but as Chief of Army Staff), at least to this observer, was the general's thoroughly un-self-conscious invocation of two major threats to the security and integrity of Pakistan: terrorism and "judicial activism." It did not seem to occur to the general that, to some observers, even flawed or over-reaching attempts by duly constituted bodies to uphold the law might not be equivalent to mass murder. Judging by the General's actions, judicial activism is a much more sinister and immediate threat than terrorism, as all of his actions since yesterday have targeted the former rather than the latter. Indeed Musharraf's agents managed to pirate the codes to prevent Geo TV from uploading its programs to satellite, while Maulana Fazlullah's FM station in Swat continues to broadcast calls for jihad without impediment.
Opposing "judicial activism" is one of the rallying cries of the American right. Initially this was simply a cover for racism, as the most salient examples of "judicial activism" were Brown vs. Board of Education and other decisions by the Warren Supreme Court overturning American apartheid. Over time, however, the term began to cover a larger protest against attempts to extend the rule of law to the disadvantage of the powerful.
Not until the Bush administration, however, was this political code word integrated into the National Security Doctrine of the United States. Scott Horton of Harper's, writing on "Bush's War on the Rule of Law" describes how the attack on judicial activism entered national security doctrine through the concept of "lawfare":
Comparing England and India in the 19th century, Karl Marx wrote, "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” But the 20th century refuted Marxism through praxis, giving birth to new laws of history. In the 21st century, the country that is less developed institutionally only shows to the more developed the image of its own future.
Update: Uncanny echoes from the Borowitz Report:
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Opposing "judicial activism" is one of the rallying cries of the American right. Initially this was simply a cover for racism, as the most salient examples of "judicial activism" were Brown vs. Board of Education and other decisions by the Warren Supreme Court overturning American apartheid. Over time, however, the term began to cover a larger protest against attempts to extend the rule of law to the disadvantage of the powerful.
Not until the Bush administration, however, was this political code word integrated into the National Security Doctrine of the United States. Scott Horton of Harper's, writing on "Bush's War on the Rule of Law" describes how the attack on judicial activism entered national security doctrine through the concept of "lawfare":
According to Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr., now the Air Force’s deputy judge advocate general, lawfare is the “strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.” As the neoconservative lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey have put it, lawfare aims to “gain a moral advantage over your enemy in the court of world opinion, and potentially a legal advantage in national and international tribunals.” The concept, which has been discussed in the Federalist Society and at National Review Online, became doctrine in the March 2005 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: “Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.” Note the equation of “international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.” In other words, turning to courts for the enforcement of legal rights, appeals to international tribunals, and terrorism are seen as the elements of a single consistent enemy strategy. In the strange reasoning of the lawfare theorists, lawyers who defend their clients, or who present their claims to domestic or international courts, might as well be terrorists themselves.This could serve as a cogent summary of the doctrine presented by President Musharraf. Unlike Bush, Musharraf at least had the decency to announce to the whole world that he was placing the constitution "in abeyance" and arrogating all power to his sole person. The Bush administration prefers to promulgate shadowy memoranda, signing statements, and Humpty-Dumpty like amendments to the meaning of common words. Since the courts are instruments of terrorists (and can even be used to demoralize the security forces!) counter-terrorism logically requires the abolition of the rule of law.
Comparing England and India in the 19th century, Karl Marx wrote, "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” But the 20th century refuted Marxism through praxis, giving birth to new laws of history. In the 21st century, the country that is less developed institutionally only shows to the more developed the image of its own future.
Update: Uncanny echoes from the Borowitz Report:
In what he described as “an emergency mission to help a key ally in the war on terror,” President George W. Bush flew to Islamabad today to give General Pervez Musharraf tips on how to eliminate democracy.Worth a quick read.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush said that while he commended General Musharraf’s impulse to eliminate democratic institutions, he felt that the military strongman was going about it the wrong way: “When you’re getting rid of democracy, the last thing you want to do is tell people you’re doing it.”
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The General Speaks
The printed text is a bit off from what he actually said. Below is my hasty translation. I have tried to stick as close to his formulations as possible. It is a surprising speech (in many respects). Reading between the lines - ie, the english and urdu lines, I venture an opinion that this was not done with the approval of the US/State. Perhaps even done in defiance of them. The other observation is that when I called him a megalomaniac earlier, I was being circumspect. The state of Pakistan, at times, seems an extension of his very personality. Note the references. The third observation, my how the times have changed ... there is no mention at all of India. This is a testament to how drastic is the shift in South Asian geopolitics since the invasion of Afghanistan. China's role in the economic growth of Pakistan - from their investment in mobile and transportation infrastructure to their investments in Baluchistan emerge out at the top while American concerns are barely mentioned - and are actually completely absent in the English portion of his remarks.
President Musharraf speaking on national TV, 03-Nov-07, 23:00 hr::
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My dear brothers and sisters, Assalam o Alaikum.
Today, I am speaking to you as Pakistan stands at a dangerous crossroads. It is in inner turmoil, everything that is happening, it is due to internal reasons.
This moment ... in the history of many nations there are moments of painful decisions ... this is such a moment for Pakistan when important and difficult decisions have to be made. And, I fear, that if we don't act immediately, then God forbid, the very union of Pakistan is in danger.
Before I say anything else, I just want to make one promise to this nation. That whatever I do, whatever decision I have made, it is, before all, on the basis of Pakistan ... and that is my guiding principle. Before all, Pakistan. Beyond personal benefit, beyond personal consideration, Pakistan first. And I hope that the nation will also feel the same way.
My brothers and sisters, in the past months, the circumstances have changed rapidly in Pakistan. I want to speak with you about that - frankly. One thing I have been saying all along - terrorism and extremism has reached extreme levels. Right now, suicide attacks are happening across Pakistan. That which happened in Karachi, and then in Rawalpindi, and then in Sargogha, in all of Pakistan, it is intensifying. Extremists are roaming across the country without fear and without hindrance. In fact, they are not even scared of the law enforcement agencies. They are confident. Things were happening in the frontier provinces and we were dealing with that. Some of it spread to the settled areas. You know what is happening in Swat and in southern districts as well. We have faced that challenge. But, the tragedy is that in Islamabad, the heart of Pakistan, the capital of Pakistan ... even here, extremism has spread and people are uncertain. These extremists are taking the writ of government in their own hands. They want to establish a state within our state. And the worst bit is that their corrupt ideas about Islam, they want to forcibly enforce them upon the peace and justice seeking people of Pakistan. And in my view this is a direct challenge to the union of Pakistan.
Let us move forward. How is the government functioning? In my view, it is in semi-paralysis, stricken. All of the senior representatives of the government are constantly going to the courts - especially to the Supreme Court. They are being giving sentences. They are being shamed publicly in the courts. Hence, they don't want to take any more decisions. At least 100 suo moto cases are currently running in the Supreme Court. And I am being told that thousands of applications are pending. And all of these suo moto cases are concerning the executive branch of the government. Functioning of the government is paralyzed at the moment.
Let us look at law enforcement agencies. In my view, they are demoralized - especially in Islamabad. They have given up hope. Why? Because their officers are being punished - same trips to the Supreme Court. Ten officers - including two Inspector Generals - are suspended or convicted. And so, we have a demoralized force with low morale, afraid to take any action. They don't want to do anything except sit with their arms crossed.
Next, let us look at the democratic systems - the practice of democracy. In that, hurdles have been placed. In 1999, when our government came, I put together a plan of action - with three stages - a transition to take the country towards democracy. Because in 1999, we had a failed, defaulted state; the systems of democracy were broken; no government had finished its tenure; there was only nominal democracy. That is why, in Stage One, from 1999-2002, we acted according to my plan. I was in total control. I ran the government. Then came Stage Two - from 2002 to 2007. A democratic system with elected governments, national assemblies, provincial assemblies, local government and a full democratic system of elected officials which I oversaw. I watched over it, sure, but the state functioned on its own. I was President and Chief of Army Staff. That was the second stage - which we passed in good stead. There were problems but we set a record that for the first time the assemblies and the government fulfilled their electoral term.
Now, we are in the final stage of this transition. Stage Three. I mean, I had hoped that in 2007, when the assemblies finish their tenure on November 15, we can have, with decorum, Presidential elections, with all the candidates for Presidency. And then General elections. And an elected government - whoever wins - can go forth in a new age of political reconciliation and full democracy. I had hoped that. As I said, for the first time, we tried to do a transition with a well thought out plan.
But, in my view, with great sorrow, I must say that certain powers are interfering in this democratic plan, putting hindrances and trying to stop it. Just as all the time had already passed and only a few months remained, this third stage is being sabotaged. In my opinion, this is being done deliberately for personal and political gain, and for the detriment of Pakistan.
All this that I have told you - the terrorism, extremism, the judicial cases, the demoralizing of the law enforcement, has caused, and I say this with great sorrow, a decline in our economic upswing. Though it can still be reversed. I am observing that Capital and Business that was flowing into the country is now stopped - they are now questioning whether to invest here or not Pakistan will remain stable. Our economy, the livelihood of our nation which improved over the last 7 years - in economy, in livelihood, in infrastructure, roads, ports, airports, railways, telecommunication, mobile telephone, landlines, rural telephone, information technology, building and construction, the entrepreneurs across the land, the rapid development across Pakistan, the thousands of industries launched, water irrigation, dams, canals, canals with brick linings, water courses, and then the social sector, education, health on the primary and secondary level, and education at every level - on all these Pakistan was moving forward, all this. I am very saddened, God Forbid, that 7 years of hard work may be washed away. And I am very sad, because I was personally involved in these development scheme. I cannot watch them get destroyed.
Under great duress, based on all these reasons, the whole nation is depressed and uncertain. I am getting phone calls from everywhere ... my own acquaintances, private, from outside the country, from inside the country, asking, "What is going on?" I am being taunted, "What are you doing?" They are taunting me that I was the decision maker, "What happened to you now? Why can't you decide now?" I have listened to these taunts in silence, and watched in disbelief what has been happening to Pakistan, in Pakistan. I had hoped that the judiciary and the government establishment will deal with these challenges ... and in that hope I sat silently and watched ... for improvements. But in my opinion this didn't happen. And the situation was getting worse by the day. And Pakistan was going rapidly into a negative direction.
And I also want to say, as I am sitting in front of television cameras, I want to say that the media - certain channels, and certain programs on certain channels - has also contributed to this downslide, this negative thinking, this negative projection. And I am saddened by this too. Saddened because this is the same media, in 1999, that there was only PTV in Pakistan and independent media did not exist. I gave that independence. Because I believed that media should be independent - that is the only path to progress for a civilized society. That is why I am saddened and I have said many times that negativism should be curtailed and positivism encouraged. That doesn't mean that we hinder the media. It should be independent, of course. But with responsibility towards the State and for the sake of the nation. And so, I am saddened by the situation in some channels.
I would like to ask the whole nation. Why? Why this state of affairs? In my opinion, it is the judicial activism - which is a pillar of states in clash with the other two pillars, the executive and the legislative. The judiciary has interfered with the other two. And now every one is suffering and is paralyzed in every manner and in every department.
Thats the basic issue.
In my view, this began from March 9th of this year when I filed a reference on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, against the Chief Justice to the Supreme Judicial Council. This was completely in accordance with constitutional and legal requirements. I was not personally motivated in this. I thought there were grave and serious accusations in the reference and I took a completely constitutional step - and nothing else. We can leave that aside but the situation that emerged after that was very bad. There was a complete breakdown of law and order to a tragic extent. And political opportunists entered into the matter and made it worse. I don't want to go into details here but will just state that if any member of the law enforcement community did anything wrong, then it doesn't mean that whole country should be destabilized. And secondly, this reference which contained grave complaints, which I sent to the Supreme Judicial Council ... all that happened and the judgement came. And whether I agree or disagree with the judgement, it did not even address the grave complaints contained within the reference. I accepted the judgement fully, with good grace and good intentions. Because, it was the decision of the Supreme Court. I accepted it. With a conciliatory attitude, to stop the conflict - for the benefit of Pakistan, I rose above the personal to work for the stability of the institution. Unfortunately, the matter was not solved. Even though, I tried my best, gave full cooperation with good intentions, but still the matter was not settled.
That was the reference and the judicial and legal issue.
Now. We saw the event of Lal Masjid in Islamabad where extremists took law into their own hands. In the heart of Pakistan - capital city - and to the great embarrassment of the nation around the world. Only I know how much shame that brought on us. We, who are such a great power, cannot control our own capital - where people are able to form a state within a state. Our image suffered tremendously. Our stature. Our standing was affected. These people - what didn't they do? - these extremists. They martyred police. They took police hostage. They burned shops. The Chinese, who are such great friends of ours - they took the Chinese hostage and tortured them. Because of this, I was personally embarrassed. I had to go apologize to the Chinese leaders, "I am ashamed that you are such great friends and this happened to you". And then they burned down the ministry's building and torched their cars. What are we to do in this condition? We were publicly humiliated for months and people kept saying we were not taking action. But I was not taking action because I wanted to save lives not take lives. So then, as a last resort, when we did take action, I commend all of the law enforcement agencies that they acted against this humiliation, this embarrassment against us and finished it. Many of our were martyred. I pray for their salvation. May Allah bless them all Paradise. They acted for this nation and this country, not themselves, and sacrificed their lives.
After that, unfortunately, came the decision of the Supreme Court. The trials kept going. Now the situation is that, the 61 terrorists which had been declared "Black" by the Intelligence agencies, which means "confirmed terrorists" were released by the Court. They are roaming free. No one knows whether the Rawalpindi bomb blasts or the Karachi ones or the Sargodha ones were done by one of those 61. They are at-large. Who knows what they will do next? And how much harm will come to us.
Then, the madrasas which were engaged in extremism were ordered re-opened by the Court. We want to build madrasas. The government has a plan to construct 'Model' madrasas where the poorest children can go study, live with the finest standards. It is not the case that government is against madrasas. We want them in finest locations, with great education and living quarters. That is our plan being set in motion. But those madrasas where extremists are operating - those were reopened by the Court. And now the security situation in Lal Masjid is back to the same people who were in charge earlier. A mosque does not need security. And who knows, if those guarding Lal Masjid will take the rifles back inside and we return to the same place where we started. The same elements who were challenging the state before - their relatives - are now challenging the state. Whatever actions are taken by law enforcement agencies in Swat, is declared wrong by these elements and their relationships with terrorists across Pakistan is affirmed publicly from Islamabad.
So that is the other situation before us.
Then came the Presidential elections a month ago. The procedure was adopted according to the Constitution and the Law. The Election Commissioner gave the schedule within the constitutionally mandated time frame. Chief Election Commissioner examined all the nomination papers from all candidates - including myself - and accepted them. But some references were filed, especially against myself, in the Supreme Court. That is no problem. It is fine. A matter of Law. But then a 7 member bench was formed. Then after a while it was turned into a 9 member bench and then it was turned into a 11 member bench and the case keeps on dragging interminably without a decision. Then the Presidential elections happened in which I was fortunate enough that the assemblies gave me 57% of the vote. I am thankful to all from Provincial assemblies, Senate and National assemblies who voted for me. But the case is still dangling. The vote was counted. The unofficial result was announced but we cannot notify because the case is there. Now the case is going. No decision is forthcoming. It inches along. Now one gentleman wants to go to his daughter's wedding. So lets delay it even more. As if the entire nation, stuck in a strange state of hopelessness and uncertainty, can just keep hanging on indefinitely.
Even the Prime Minister examined this grave situation and sent me a written analysis that there is a great deal of difficulty for the government to function in this situation.
My brothers and sisters, what is happening in Pakistan? What is happening to us? What is happening to this country? In which direction are we headed? Which way? This country lives in my heart. This country lives in my blood. And it lives in my soul. I cannot watch it decline.
So the time has come to take action. What are we going to do? I have analyzed everything - the whole situation. How will we stop this decline. In my view, these three pillars of state - the judiciary, the executive and the legislative - must be harmonious. We will bring harmony to them , and then we will have good governance and we will be able to fight terrorism and extremism with our full capabilities. That is the only way to get the government back on track. Before we completely fall apart.
After examining this situation, I consulted with the military, bureaucratic, political and private leaders, friends, overseas Pakistanis - and after taking in their council, I made my decision. And this decision is to get back to that Third Stage of democratic transition that I discussed earlier and finish it - God Willing. The hurdles on the path to democracy must be removed. And my original intentions, my current intentions, are to complete Stage Three. God Willing, I will do so.
To do it, I have declared Emergency. I have issued a Provisional Constitutional Order which was being televised earlier - you must have seen it. I must state that there will be no changes in the government. The Prime Minister, the Governors, the Chief Ministers all remain on their posts. All the assemblies will continue - Senate, National Assembly, Provincial Assembly will all function as before. This is my decision. In my view, this is the easiest way to get Pakistan back on track and protect the economic development and finish the final transition to democracy.
Now to take advantage of this opportunity, I want to say something in English.
(In English)
I have just spoken to the people of Pakistan in Urdu and I want to speak now to you in general, particularly to our friends in United States, European Union and the Commonwealth. I would ask you to kindly understand the criticality of the environment inside Pakistan and around Pakistan. Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization, if not arrested in time. Now without losing any further time or delaying the issue. The saddest part of everything which saddens me the most ... that after all we have achieved in the past 7 years I see in front of my eyes, Pakistan's upsurge taking a downward trend.
I personally, with all my conviction and with all the facts available to me, consider that inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan. I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.
Therefore, I had to take this action in order to preserve the democratic transition which I initiated 8 years back. I would like to repeat that - I said it in Urdu - I started with a three stage transition. The first stage from 1999 to 2002 where I remained in control. The second stage from 2002 to 2007 - 5 years of democratic rule, all assemblies functioning, local governments functioning - I oversaw it as the Chief of Army Staff and President combined and now I am launching the third phase which was to be completed in only a few months where complete democracy, return to civilian rule, myself being only a civilian President - if elected. It is this third stage that is being subverted today. And it is this third stage which I want to complete with all my conviction and if we don't take action, I don't think we are going to this third stage. I don't know what chaos and confusion will follow.
So therefore, I request you all to bear with us. To the critics and idealists against this action, I say please do not accept or demand your level of democracy which you learned over a number of centuries. We are also trying to learn, and we are doing well. Please give us time. Please also do not demand and expect your level of civil rights, human rights, civil liberties which you learned over the centuries. We are trying to learn. And we are doing well also. Please give us time.
I would, at this time, venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of supreme crisis and that was to preserve the Union - because the Union was in danger. Towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary powers, he trampled individual liberties, his justification was necessity. Explaining his sweeping violations of Constitutional limits, he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote,
"My oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensabale means, that government -- that nation -- of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it."
End quote. We are also learning democracy. We are going through a difficult stage. It is the nation which is important. And for me, for every Pakistani, Pakistan comes first. And everyone else's consideration after that. I look at it from this point of view. So whatever I do, is for Pakistan. And whatever anyone else thinks, comes after Pakistan. With all my sincerity, whatever I am doing is in the interest of Pakistan. And therefore I am doing it with full conviction and my full heart and soul and mind in it.
--In Urdu
My brothers and sisters, I hope that all of you will recognize the seriousness of this situation. In my view, everything that I have done now, there was no alternative. If I have to sacrifice my life for the country, then it is available. I will not surrender to circumstances. I fight circumstances. I never surrender. I fight. And now I will fight. Not for myself. For this nation. For this country. For the life of my country men, for their progress. If I have your companionship, I have no doubt, God Willing, Pakistan will be back to the forefront and this derailed train will be, God Willing, back on track. I have no doubts that the nation wants progress, it wants to go forward. The common people are concerned with prices, concerned with unemployment and poverty. They are tired of this uncertainty in the name of democracy. The people are tired of these terrorists who in the name of Islam kill Muslims. The people are tired of this.
I want to tell my brothers and sisters, lets fight this together and take Pakistan forward. May God be by your, and by Pakistan's, side. Pakistan Hamisha Paindabad.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
AMERICA CANNOT BE SAID TO BE GOOD
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
George W. Bush may indeed be the worst president ever, and Dick Cheney the worst vice-president imaginable but that does not exonerate the American people because Americans have the constitutional right and responsibility to remove miscreants from office.
The Bush-Cheney administration has not just given freedom a hollow ring, they have not just made a mockery of American democracy and human rights in the present, and they have not just put future generations at risk with reckless deficit spending, environmental degradation and the burden of war without end, but they have effectively caused the past to be rewritten as well. America is beginning to understand what it’s like to be on the wrong side of history.
This point was driven home to me when I read that respected American historian Herbert Bix, author of “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” recently pointed out some striking similarities between Tojo’s Japan and Bush-Cheney’s America, particularly the willful disregard of international law, the pursuit of diplomacy by force and failure to account for war criminality.
Let’s consider for the moment that current US policy bears some eerie parallels to that of Tojo’s Japan. Is that a result of having judged militarist Japan unfairly, or has America gotten worse? Is that to say Japan's criminal past was not as bad as we used to say it was, or is it still every bit as bad, only now, we, the American interlocutors, are debased in such a way that the moral distance is less distant?
Scholars have long been familiar with US lapses in civilized behavior, even in the great and just war carried out by the "greatest generation." The enemy was understandably viewed with contempt for his actions, but improperly viewed with racist contempt. Indiscriminate killing took untold innocent life, nowhere more vividly than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with equal cold-blooded consequences in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
For decades now, scholars have been effectively challenging the Truman era myth that the atomic bombing was necessary and saved millions of lives. While reasonable interpretations differ, the twin atomic bombings remain a uniquely uncomfortable and awkward topic for Americans who subscribe to the otherwise generally positive national narrative that starts with the day of infamy, the day on which the peace-loving US was sneakily attacked at Pearl Harbor, and continues with a series of heroic battles for sea, sky and land control across the Pacific, followed by a generally enlightened occupation of Japan’s home islands.
Given the incessant mutual violence that the war extracted from both sides, epitomized by the brutal battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it took decades for ordinary soldiers on both sides to be viewed with sympathetic respect --basically unfree men following orders as required by the tragedy of the time. Last year Clint Eastwood did a remarkably even-handed job of conveying the equivalency of the rank and file on both sides of the Pacific with the twin films “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”
The US occupation of Japan saw many a samurai’s sword turned into treasured souvenir, if not plowshare. It was none other than US war hero Douglas MacArthur who set the tone for sanitizing and containing Japan's war criminality at the elite level by letting the Emperor off the hook and selectively exonerating war criminals who were of utility to the US. But if it wasn't the people, and it wasn't the penultimate leader, then who takes the blame?
To blame everything on a few bad apples is bad history, incongruent with the complex, interactive way things usually happen, but it allows nagging, difficult-to-resolve issues to be buried or put on the back burner as happened at the Tokyo trials. The entirety of Japan’s war guilt was deftly shifted onto the shoulders of Tojo and a handful of "Class A War Criminals.
Scapegoating, even of the obviously odious, is not fair, but it is expedient because it staves off more damaging and nuanced reckonings. That's not to say scapegoated Class A war criminals are innocent in the same way their hapless victims were; the criminality of the Class A men is clearly documented. But they were unfairly singled out and unfairly apportioned more of the blame than even their cruel shoulders could bear. They were made caricatures of evil in contrast to the aloof, doddering emperor and the witless soldier in the field.
George W. Bush publicity handlers take note; better to spin your client as a dodderer playing with something less than a full deck than have him be held accountable. In today’s America, as in wartime Japan, there is plenty of blame to be passed around, but no takers. It's too hurtful to the American ego to even contemplate war criminality. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not an option. The State Department has granted immunity to the criminally negligible including the thugs of Blackwater. Is this apparent benevolence not just another type of denial, that Americans don't torture, Americans don't commit crimes of war?
Eventually, narratives that blame no one have to round up a few suspects, and that's where the bad apples come in. But this sort of selective justice unduly burdens middling war criminals with more historical agency than they ever possessed.
Does making Tojo an example of evil incarnate exonerate Japanese war veterans, among them mean-spirited soldiers who violated the conventions of war by gratuitously killing, raping and torturing non-combatant Chinese? And what about Japanese civilians on the home front, making weapons, churning out propaganda, feeding the beast? Blame it on Tojo?
What about people like Akira Kurosawa who worked uninterrupted with ample state support during a war that wreaked murder and mayhem on Japan's neighbors under the guise of racial superiority? To hear Kurosawa tell it in his biography, his main beef with the Tojo authorities was over artistic control, not the insane politics of the time.
The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.
The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.
The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial. Denial is the worst thing about the Japan's rightists, not their contrarian desire to challenge the America-centric narrative as articulated in the admittedly clumsy and compromised Tokyo War Crimes Trials.
Americans are starting to learn more about war crimes and denial they they ever dreamed of. The divisive words and belligerent actions of George W. Bush, the contempt for diplomacy, the lack of accountability, the tortured rhetoric and the rhetoric defending torture have caused America’s global prestige to drop to an unprecedented low. America is increasingly seen as the crux of the problem rather than a flawed but otherwise normal country, let alone a beacon of hope.
The horror of an unjust and unnecessary war is forcing Americans to confront the opacity of their own self-image, and in doing so, to seek lessons and parallels than now, in a way not possible even four years ago, make it possible to see Tojo and Japan's war criminality in slightly more sympathetic way. This is not to exonerate but rather to heave a heavy sigh of understanding, to acknowledge that even the most refined and civilized of nations can be disfigured and disabled by the politics of fear and denial.
America has been diminished to such an extent under the Bush-Cheney “unitary presidency” that a crime like torture -- once comfortably seen as beyond the pale because it was only associated with the most despicable of enemies-- suddenly resonates in an uncomfortably familiar way.
Just as it should be acknowledged that the people of Japan share a certain culpability in Tokyo’s terrible war, a war that ravaged Asia and eventually Japan itself, Americans have to own up to Iraq. But it can also be said in defense of the average Japanese in the days after Pearl Harbor that there was much they didn’t know and couldn’t talk about; --the media was completely censored and the Kempeitai dealt brutally with domestic opposition.
When the day of reckoning comes for ordinary Americans to assess their culpability in the debacle of Iraq, a hideous and heinous war fought in view of a free media and in the context of relatively unfettered freedom to protest, what will the excuse be?
If Bush is unjust, if he is, as they say, the worst ever, then the free people who support, tolerate and enable him cannot be said to be good.
PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM TEACHES AT DOSHISHA UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN Read more on this article...
George W. Bush may indeed be the worst president ever, and Dick Cheney the worst vice-president imaginable but that does not exonerate the American people because Americans have the constitutional right and responsibility to remove miscreants from office.
The Bush-Cheney administration has not just given freedom a hollow ring, they have not just made a mockery of American democracy and human rights in the present, and they have not just put future generations at risk with reckless deficit spending, environmental degradation and the burden of war without end, but they have effectively caused the past to be rewritten as well. America is beginning to understand what it’s like to be on the wrong side of history.
This point was driven home to me when I read that respected American historian Herbert Bix, author of “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” recently pointed out some striking similarities between Tojo’s Japan and Bush-Cheney’s America, particularly the willful disregard of international law, the pursuit of diplomacy by force and failure to account for war criminality.
Let’s consider for the moment that current US policy bears some eerie parallels to that of Tojo’s Japan. Is that a result of having judged militarist Japan unfairly, or has America gotten worse? Is that to say Japan's criminal past was not as bad as we used to say it was, or is it still every bit as bad, only now, we, the American interlocutors, are debased in such a way that the moral distance is less distant?
Scholars have long been familiar with US lapses in civilized behavior, even in the great and just war carried out by the "greatest generation." The enemy was understandably viewed with contempt for his actions, but improperly viewed with racist contempt. Indiscriminate killing took untold innocent life, nowhere more vividly than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with equal cold-blooded consequences in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
For decades now, scholars have been effectively challenging the Truman era myth that the atomic bombing was necessary and saved millions of lives. While reasonable interpretations differ, the twin atomic bombings remain a uniquely uncomfortable and awkward topic for Americans who subscribe to the otherwise generally positive national narrative that starts with the day of infamy, the day on which the peace-loving US was sneakily attacked at Pearl Harbor, and continues with a series of heroic battles for sea, sky and land control across the Pacific, followed by a generally enlightened occupation of Japan’s home islands.
Given the incessant mutual violence that the war extracted from both sides, epitomized by the brutal battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it took decades for ordinary soldiers on both sides to be viewed with sympathetic respect --basically unfree men following orders as required by the tragedy of the time. Last year Clint Eastwood did a remarkably even-handed job of conveying the equivalency of the rank and file on both sides of the Pacific with the twin films “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”
The US occupation of Japan saw many a samurai’s sword turned into treasured souvenir, if not plowshare. It was none other than US war hero Douglas MacArthur who set the tone for sanitizing and containing Japan's war criminality at the elite level by letting the Emperor off the hook and selectively exonerating war criminals who were of utility to the US. But if it wasn't the people, and it wasn't the penultimate leader, then who takes the blame?
To blame everything on a few bad apples is bad history, incongruent with the complex, interactive way things usually happen, but it allows nagging, difficult-to-resolve issues to be buried or put on the back burner as happened at the Tokyo trials. The entirety of Japan’s war guilt was deftly shifted onto the shoulders of Tojo and a handful of "Class A War Criminals.
Scapegoating, even of the obviously odious, is not fair, but it is expedient because it staves off more damaging and nuanced reckonings. That's not to say scapegoated Class A war criminals are innocent in the same way their hapless victims were; the criminality of the Class A men is clearly documented. But they were unfairly singled out and unfairly apportioned more of the blame than even their cruel shoulders could bear. They were made caricatures of evil in contrast to the aloof, doddering emperor and the witless soldier in the field.
George W. Bush publicity handlers take note; better to spin your client as a dodderer playing with something less than a full deck than have him be held accountable. In today’s America, as in wartime Japan, there is plenty of blame to be passed around, but no takers. It's too hurtful to the American ego to even contemplate war criminality. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not an option. The State Department has granted immunity to the criminally negligible including the thugs of Blackwater. Is this apparent benevolence not just another type of denial, that Americans don't torture, Americans don't commit crimes of war?
Eventually, narratives that blame no one have to round up a few suspects, and that's where the bad apples come in. But this sort of selective justice unduly burdens middling war criminals with more historical agency than they ever possessed.
Does making Tojo an example of evil incarnate exonerate Japanese war veterans, among them mean-spirited soldiers who violated the conventions of war by gratuitously killing, raping and torturing non-combatant Chinese? And what about Japanese civilians on the home front, making weapons, churning out propaganda, feeding the beast? Blame it on Tojo?
What about people like Akira Kurosawa who worked uninterrupted with ample state support during a war that wreaked murder and mayhem on Japan's neighbors under the guise of racial superiority? To hear Kurosawa tell it in his biography, his main beef with the Tojo authorities was over artistic control, not the insane politics of the time.
The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.
The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.
The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial. Denial is the worst thing about the Japan's rightists, not their contrarian desire to challenge the America-centric narrative as articulated in the admittedly clumsy and compromised Tokyo War Crimes Trials.
Americans are starting to learn more about war crimes and denial they they ever dreamed of. The divisive words and belligerent actions of George W. Bush, the contempt for diplomacy, the lack of accountability, the tortured rhetoric and the rhetoric defending torture have caused America’s global prestige to drop to an unprecedented low. America is increasingly seen as the crux of the problem rather than a flawed but otherwise normal country, let alone a beacon of hope.
The horror of an unjust and unnecessary war is forcing Americans to confront the opacity of their own self-image, and in doing so, to seek lessons and parallels than now, in a way not possible even four years ago, make it possible to see Tojo and Japan's war criminality in slightly more sympathetic way. This is not to exonerate but rather to heave a heavy sigh of understanding, to acknowledge that even the most refined and civilized of nations can be disfigured and disabled by the politics of fear and denial.
America has been diminished to such an extent under the Bush-Cheney “unitary presidency” that a crime like torture -- once comfortably seen as beyond the pale because it was only associated with the most despicable of enemies-- suddenly resonates in an uncomfortably familiar way.
Just as it should be acknowledged that the people of Japan share a certain culpability in Tokyo’s terrible war, a war that ravaged Asia and eventually Japan itself, Americans have to own up to Iraq. But it can also be said in defense of the average Japanese in the days after Pearl Harbor that there was much they didn’t know and couldn’t talk about; --the media was completely censored and the Kempeitai dealt brutally with domestic opposition.
When the day of reckoning comes for ordinary Americans to assess their culpability in the debacle of Iraq, a hideous and heinous war fought in view of a free media and in the context of relatively unfettered freedom to protest, what will the excuse be?
If Bush is unjust, if he is, as they say, the worst ever, then the free people who support, tolerate and enable him cannot be said to be good.
PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM TEACHES AT DOSHISHA UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN Read more on this article...
Live-Blogging the Emergency: Military Morale
Islamabad -- A major reason for the declaration of emergency is the catastrophic loss of morale among the Pakistani army and police. Musharraf referred to this in his speech, saying that the judiciary had demoralized the security forces. The Emergency Declaration also mentions the low morale of the police. But is the army, his own institution that concerns Musharraf above all.
At a recent dinner in the region, a senior Pakistani diplomat confirmed that President Musharraf's top priority was and always will be the institutional integrity of the Pakistan armed forces. A contact from the intelligence community who has worked on the ground with the Pakistan Army referred me to this article in the Times of India, which he says captures the rock-bottom morale in the army, which has seen hundreds of desertions by soldiers in the field. Musharraf is well aware of assessments such as this from the Indian "security establishment":
At a recent dinner in the region, a senior Pakistani diplomat confirmed that President Musharraf's top priority was and always will be the institutional integrity of the Pakistan armed forces. A contact from the intelligence community who has worked on the ground with the Pakistan Army referred me to this article in the Times of India, which he says captures the rock-bottom morale in the army, which has seen hundreds of desertions by soldiers in the field. Musharraf is well aware of assessments such as this from the Indian "security establishment":
The Pakistani Army is "bleeding", and quite profusely at that, in its ongoing bloody skirmishes with extremists in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, with a "high" casualty rate as well as "unprecedented" levels of desertions, suicides and discharge applications.Syed Shoaib Hasan of the BBC reports:
But just as much as the political imbroglio, it was the growing loss of morale in Pakistan's armed forces which was a source of concern. Pakistan's army, deployed throughout the country's tribal regions to combat pro-Taleban militants, was losing ground to them. The last straw, in this regard, came when at least 300 army troops surrendered to militants in South Waziristan. Since then, the government and its security troops have all but lost control to the militants in the tribal areas. The emboldened militants have subsequently moved forward into settled regions - Pakistani territory where normal law applies. The most recent of these is the growing insurgency in the Swat valley.Some U.S. analysts have already given up on the Pakistan Army as an effective ally in counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism. As the Indian security establishment signals its perception of the Pakistan Army's weakness, it is no wonder that Musharraf has declared the Emergency. He spoke last night about the need for the three pillars of the state -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- to work together in harmony. But the architect and master builder responsible for harmonizing these pillars in his scheme of things is the Army. And right now that central institution is revealing a terrible weakness at its heart, despite its nuclear weapons. Read more on this article...
Live From Islamabad: President Musharraf
I'm watching Musharraf speaking in Urdu on television. I can't understand everything he is saying, but the gist of it seems to be that as a responsible president he has been caught between two extremist forces: Islamic militants and the judiciary. Apparently the rise of Islamic militancy in Pakistan is due to the irresponsibility of the judiciary, which has demoralized the armed forces and the forces of law and order.
Judging from my brief unscientific survey, this argument is not likely to play well (or at all) with the public. Musharraf has shut down cable TV and international news channels. But this is Pakistan's first post-mobile phone and post-internet coup. Musharraf may be in for a surprise.
Now he is speaking in English, telling us foreigners that Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization. Somehow people have been doing this behind the back of the president. He is taking this action to prevent Pakistan from committing suicide and to preserve the democratic transition. He says that the third and final stage of his democratic transition (election of new legislatures, his serving as a civilian president if elected) is being subverted.
To us critics and idealists he says, don't demand the level of democracy that you learned over centuries. Please don't demand or respect your level of civil rights and human rights. We are trying to learn. Please give us time. Now he is reading from Abraham Lincoln, whose supreme passion was maintaining the Union. He is portraying Lincoln as a ruthless dictator who broke all laws for the sake of the state. "Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the constitution?" A limb may be amputated to save a life, but a life should not be given to save a limb. He is making the argument from necessity to preserve the nation.
"For me and every Pakistani, Pakistan comes first," he says. He claims that with all sincerity he is acting for Pakistan. But the Pakistanis with whom I have been speaking generally believe he is doing it for Pervez Musharraf.
The text messages and emails will start in the morning, as Benazir Bhutto returns to the scene from Dubai. Read more on this article...
Judging from my brief unscientific survey, this argument is not likely to play well (or at all) with the public. Musharraf has shut down cable TV and international news channels. But this is Pakistan's first post-mobile phone and post-internet coup. Musharraf may be in for a surprise.
Now he is speaking in English, telling us foreigners that Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization. Somehow people have been doing this behind the back of the president. He is taking this action to prevent Pakistan from committing suicide and to preserve the democratic transition. He says that the third and final stage of his democratic transition (election of new legislatures, his serving as a civilian president if elected) is being subverted.
To us critics and idealists he says, don't demand the level of democracy that you learned over centuries. Please don't demand or respect your level of civil rights and human rights. We are trying to learn. Please give us time. Now he is reading from Abraham Lincoln, whose supreme passion was maintaining the Union. He is portraying Lincoln as a ruthless dictator who broke all laws for the sake of the state. "Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the constitution?" A limb may be amputated to save a life, but a life should not be given to save a limb. He is making the argument from necessity to preserve the nation.
"For me and every Pakistani, Pakistan comes first," he says. He claims that with all sincerity he is acting for Pakistan. But the Pakistanis with whom I have been speaking generally believe he is doing it for Pervez Musharraf.
The text messages and emails will start in the morning, as Benazir Bhutto returns to the scene from Dubai. Read more on this article...
Pakistan: The Emergency Plus Edition
The wag will say that the nation has never left the state of emergency, but that is just being silly.
We now have a legal State of Emergency in Pakistan. Actually, it is officially being called "Emergency Plus" - more than "Emergency" but less than "Martial Law". Just right.
The move is hardly surprising considering the chaos engulfing Pakistan at the moment - from political (Supreme Court deliberations on the fate of the "election") to military (the tribal/militant conflict has spread to Swat and Peshawar) to ideological (Baluchistan) to international (Rice has decided she wants democracy).
According to the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) declaring emergency, the steps were taken because of the recent terrorist attacks, the release of terror-suspects by the judiciary, the lack of oversight of the judiciary and the low morale of police and army in the nation. See the text here [pdf].
The emergency law, Article 232 of the Constitution: (summarized) The Proclamation of emergency is issued by the President if he deems that the country is threatened by internal or external violence or disturbance. The Federals can take over the Provinces, the High Court. It has to be affirmed by joint Assemblies within two months or it will automatically end. All the supreme courts in the country will have to re-take their oaths to the state and they will be barred from issuing any orders against the army or the state.
Musharraf has suspended the tv broadcasts - and prohibited any "print or electronic media discussion or analysis that hurts the national interests".
The Supreme Court, which was expected to rule on Musharraf in a few days, is currently boarded up. Cities like Sarghoda, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad have mobilized against suicide attacks.
Emergency Rule, maybe Martial Law, the replacement of Klashnikovs with Suicide Belts, the Vanished ... Pakistan needed our help a year ago. It needed a genuine push for democratic processes back in March. We left unchecked, and unhindered, a megalomaniac "enlightened moderator". We keep insisting on our own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our belief that those people are not as developed nor as functional as we would like them to be. Pakistan needs a strong dictator. The fallacy ... the gross oversight ... has always been that he was never in control. He did not control Baluchistan where a genuine call for accountability and justice was quashed by horrific military violence - including missile assassinations. Baluchistan should have been afforded our attention in 2005 - but we were too busy in Iraq. It became, contiguous with Waziristan, the outpost and then the center of Taliban/extremist insurgents over the next two years. We insisted on supporting the one person who had no legitimate power to negotiate or fight for over 40% of territorial Pakistan. Can you imagine that?
Next up? Martial Law. More bombings. And the eventual drain of all that capital that had accumulated in the country in the past 8 years. Zimbabwe, here we come. Unless, US and China can come to their senses and do some actual diplomacy. The status is bleak. Let us say that Musharraf resigns and leaves. The Supreme Court declares an election date, the new government solves the Baluchistan issue, th US redeploys significant troops to Afghanistan (and keeps them there), the Pakistani military combats within cities and mountains of Pakistan. War. Chaos. Uncertainty. And this, my gentle readers, would be the best case scenario. A more likely option is a military state somewhere between Mugabe's Zimbabwe circa 2005 and Gandhi's India circa 1976. I must be proven wrong.
For now, we have a new Chief Justice of Pakistan Supreme Court. But in an unprecedented move, only 4 judges have signed on to re-take the oath under PCO. This is big, big news. See this backgrounder for the significance.
Musharraf is to speak on “Meray Azeez Hum Watano” at 11:00 PST.
I also recommend following Democracy and Freedom Blog for video clips. Read more on this article...
We now have a legal State of Emergency in Pakistan. Actually, it is officially being called "Emergency Plus" - more than "Emergency" but less than "Martial Law". Just right.
The move is hardly surprising considering the chaos engulfing Pakistan at the moment - from political (Supreme Court deliberations on the fate of the "election") to military (the tribal/militant conflict has spread to Swat and Peshawar) to ideological (Baluchistan) to international (Rice has decided she wants democracy).
According to the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) declaring emergency, the steps were taken because of the recent terrorist attacks, the release of terror-suspects by the judiciary, the lack of oversight of the judiciary and the low morale of police and army in the nation. See the text here [pdf].
The emergency law, Article 232 of the Constitution: (summarized) The Proclamation of emergency is issued by the President if he deems that the country is threatened by internal or external violence or disturbance. The Federals can take over the Provinces, the High Court. It has to be affirmed by joint Assemblies within two months or it will automatically end. All the supreme courts in the country will have to re-take their oaths to the state and they will be barred from issuing any orders against the army or the state.
Musharraf has suspended the tv broadcasts - and prohibited any "print or electronic media discussion or analysis that hurts the national interests".
The Supreme Court, which was expected to rule on Musharraf in a few days, is currently boarded up. Cities like Sarghoda, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad have mobilized against suicide attacks.
Emergency Rule, maybe Martial Law, the replacement of Klashnikovs with Suicide Belts, the Vanished ... Pakistan needed our help a year ago. It needed a genuine push for democratic processes back in March. We left unchecked, and unhindered, a megalomaniac "enlightened moderator". We keep insisting on our own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our belief that those people are not as developed nor as functional as we would like them to be. Pakistan needs a strong dictator. The fallacy ... the gross oversight ... has always been that he was never in control. He did not control Baluchistan where a genuine call for accountability and justice was quashed by horrific military violence - including missile assassinations. Baluchistan should have been afforded our attention in 2005 - but we were too busy in Iraq. It became, contiguous with Waziristan, the outpost and then the center of Taliban/extremist insurgents over the next two years. We insisted on supporting the one person who had no legitimate power to negotiate or fight for over 40% of territorial Pakistan. Can you imagine that?
Next up? Martial Law. More bombings. And the eventual drain of all that capital that had accumulated in the country in the past 8 years. Zimbabwe, here we come. Unless, US and China can come to their senses and do some actual diplomacy. The status is bleak. Let us say that Musharraf resigns and leaves. The Supreme Court declares an election date, the new government solves the Baluchistan issue, th US redeploys significant troops to Afghanistan (and keeps them there), the Pakistani military combats within cities and mountains of Pakistan. War. Chaos. Uncertainty. And this, my gentle readers, would be the best case scenario. A more likely option is a military state somewhere between Mugabe's Zimbabwe circa 2005 and Gandhi's India circa 1976. I must be proven wrong.
For now, we have a new Chief Justice of Pakistan Supreme Court. But in an unprecedented move, only 4 judges have signed on to re-take the oath under PCO. This is big, big news. See this backgrounder for the significance.
Musharraf is to speak on “Meray Azeez Hum Watano” at 11:00 PST.
I also recommend following Democracy and Freedom Blog for video clips. Read more on this article...
Live Blogging State of Emergency in Pakistan
Islamabad-- I was giving a talk this afternoon at the Institute for Policy Studies here, which is affiliated to the Jamaat-i Islami. There were two American journalist friends there, both of whom left early. I figured they had another appointment. After my talk during the reception my hosts told me that a prominent Pakistani politician was calling -- someone I know (I'm not giving the name here). We were talking when my interlocutor mentioned that he (Musharraf) had amended the Army Act to apply to civilians. I asked if that meant he would do it if he declared emergency. Came the reply, He has declared emergency!
He did it during my talk. At lunch today another prominent political figure here was very concerned. This man is a leader of the president's own party, but he was in a minority -- he had told the President that declaring an Emergency would be a mistake. Today's Pakistan would not tolerate military rule.
One of my hosts is from Mardan in the Northwest Frontier Province. He reported that "militants" in the area had threatened to suicide-bomb the girls' school his cousin attends if they did not all wear burqas instead of their traditional parda (hijab). The poor families cannot even afford the burqa, but they are afraid. The local people do not know where these "Taliban" are coming from. They consider them extremists -- and these are people who voted for the Islamist parties in the elections five years ago....
So far it looks like the Army has kept the politicians out of Islamabad by arranging for PIA to go on strike on Friday, when they are all in their constituencies. So far it is calm. I'll report as I can. Read more on this article...
He did it during my talk. At lunch today another prominent political figure here was very concerned. This man is a leader of the president's own party, but he was in a minority -- he had told the President that declaring an Emergency would be a mistake. Today's Pakistan would not tolerate military rule.
One of my hosts is from Mardan in the Northwest Frontier Province. He reported that "militants" in the area had threatened to suicide-bomb the girls' school his cousin attends if they did not all wear burqas instead of their traditional parda (hijab). The poor families cannot even afford the burqa, but they are afraid. The local people do not know where these "Taliban" are coming from. They consider them extremists -- and these are people who voted for the Islamist parties in the elections five years ago....
So far it looks like the Army has kept the politicians out of Islamabad by arranging for PIA to go on strike on Friday, when they are all in their constituencies. So far it is calm. I'll report as I can. Read more on this article...
Shabby McCarthyism from the Weekly Standard
Shortly after my first post on the Post-Labor Day Product Rollout for War with Iran, I got a call from Michael Goldfarb, author of the blog "Worldwide.Standard.com" at the Weekly Standard. Noting that he had read and admired my scholarship in Afghanistan, he inquired about my sources, asking in particular if I had relied on a person whose reliability was in question. I didn't know the person, and he didn't write anything.
Now, however, Goldfarb has found that the U.S. public agrees with him rather than with me and the rest of the "left." Writing on October 30th about the "NeoCon Nation," Goldfarb drew unfounded conclusions from a poorly conducted survey, and then tarred all who disagree with the rush to war with Iran as "the left."
First, the shabbiness:
He notes that on July 6 of this year, a survey showed that "60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran." Now, however, he claims, "a majority of Americans now favor military action against Iran."
The July poll from Angus Reid asked, "If the U.S. government decides to take military action in Iran, would you favour or oppose it?" 63% said they would oppose it.
The recent Zogby poll asked if voters "would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon." 52% said yes.
As anyone with the most microscopic acquaintance with polling knows, these are not the same questions. Iran says it is not building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency (whose record on such matters is far more reliable than that of the Weekly Standard) says it has no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, noting that the rhetoric on Iran of people like Goldfarb "has lost all connection to reality," reminds us that "Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA."
Given these "facts," (sorry to bring that up), a military strike by the U.S. against Iran now and a military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon are not the same thing. The latter is invoked to justify the former.
Now for the McCarthyism:
The reason for this alleged change in public opinion? Goldfarb: "The left has done a terrible job of laying out their case against a strike." Get it? Those against a war with Iran are "the left." People like Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) who has called for "Direct, Unconditional, Comprehensive Talks with Iran." Also US Central Command Commander William Fallon, who confirmed to some mutual acquaintances that he had indeed responded positively to Sen. Hagel's recommendations. Not to mention Fareed Zakaria, whose views have been summarized here by both Farideh Farhi and me. Zakaria is such a notorious leftist, that when the White House asked the American Enterprise Institute to assemble a small group of thinkers to deliberate on how to respond to September 11, Zakaria was one of the dozen or so invitees. I can't find the link right now, but Bob Woodward reported it in Bush at War.
I could go on naming many against war with Iran who are neither leftists nor "libertarians," but just sensible reality-based thinkers about national security who think there are alternatives. But according to Goldfarb and his ilk, we are all "leftists," like those naive appeasers who claimed that the Soviet Union might actually withdraw from Afghanistan....
Maybe I'm getting too old, but I've been through this too many times.
Now, however, Goldfarb has found that the U.S. public agrees with him rather than with me and the rest of the "left." Writing on October 30th about the "NeoCon Nation," Goldfarb drew unfounded conclusions from a poorly conducted survey, and then tarred all who disagree with the rush to war with Iran as "the left."
First, the shabbiness:
He notes that on July 6 of this year, a survey showed that "60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran." Now, however, he claims, "a majority of Americans now favor military action against Iran."
The July poll from Angus Reid asked, "If the U.S. government decides to take military action in Iran, would you favour or oppose it?" 63% said they would oppose it.
The recent Zogby poll asked if voters "would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon." 52% said yes.
As anyone with the most microscopic acquaintance with polling knows, these are not the same questions. Iran says it is not building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency (whose record on such matters is far more reliable than that of the Weekly Standard) says it has no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, noting that the rhetoric on Iran of people like Goldfarb "has lost all connection to reality," reminds us that "Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA."
Given these "facts," (sorry to bring that up), a military strike by the U.S. against Iran now and a military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon are not the same thing. The latter is invoked to justify the former.
Now for the McCarthyism:
The reason for this alleged change in public opinion? Goldfarb: "The left has done a terrible job of laying out their case against a strike." Get it? Those against a war with Iran are "the left." People like Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) who has called for "Direct, Unconditional, Comprehensive Talks with Iran." Also US Central Command Commander William Fallon, who confirmed to some mutual acquaintances that he had indeed responded positively to Sen. Hagel's recommendations. Not to mention Fareed Zakaria, whose views have been summarized here by both Farideh Farhi and me. Zakaria is such a notorious leftist, that when the White House asked the American Enterprise Institute to assemble a small group of thinkers to deliberate on how to respond to September 11, Zakaria was one of the dozen or so invitees. I can't find the link right now, but Bob Woodward reported it in Bush at War.
I could go on naming many against war with Iran who are neither leftists nor "libertarians," but just sensible reality-based thinkers about national security who think there are alternatives. But according to Goldfarb and his ilk, we are all "leftists," like those naive appeasers who claimed that the Soviet Union might actually withdraw from Afghanistan....
Maybe I'm getting too old, but I've been through this too many times.
Update: In my haste to finish this post before a lunch with a member of parliament in Islamabad, I left out the main point. In my original post, I reported that the supporters of a war with Iran thought they had to get public support up to 35-40% first. They must have been looking at the Angus Reid poll from last summer showing less than that. Goldfarb refers to this benchmark I reported as context for quoting the Zogby poll, showing they have the support they think they need, provided they can convince the public that a military strike on Iran is necessary to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Hence President Bush's reference to a "nuclear holocaust" caused by a country that is years away from being able to make a nuclear weapon. We are definitely in the danger zone.
Read more on this article...Globalization and Corruption
I've been in Afghanistan and am now in Pakistan, and neither my schedule nor the speed of my internet connections have facilitated blogging. I will offer some updated thoughts on whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about Afghanistan (and Pakistan) -- the answer is still "no" -- as soon as possible.
Meanwhile I received a short article from Yale Global Online that includes a very cogent analysis of the drug problem in Afghanistan by someone who has never concerned himself with Afghanistan, as far as I can see. In an article entitled Globalization and Corrupt States, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic explains that the globalization of trade and transport create the conditions for the corruption of weak states. The prohibition of certain goods and services (e.g. drugs, prostitution) that can be traded or provided globally at relatively low cost creates economic returns for businessmen who can create or exploit conditions of illegality. The market assures that the production of prohibited goods and services become concentrated in places enjoying what I have called a "comparative advantage in the production of illegality and insecurity."
In such countries illegal industries grow and dominate the economy. The political result is predictable:
Milanovic's proposal:
Meanwhile I received a short article from Yale Global Online that includes a very cogent analysis of the drug problem in Afghanistan by someone who has never concerned himself with Afghanistan, as far as I can see. In an article entitled Globalization and Corrupt States, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic explains that the globalization of trade and transport create the conditions for the corruption of weak states. The prohibition of certain goods and services (e.g. drugs, prostitution) that can be traded or provided globally at relatively low cost creates economic returns for businessmen who can create or exploit conditions of illegality. The market assures that the production of prohibited goods and services become concentrated in places enjoying what I have called a "comparative advantage in the production of illegality and insecurity."
In such countries illegal industries grow and dominate the economy. The political result is predictable:
Once organized crime and its supporters become the largest employers in the country, they play the same role that a more conventional business plays in other countries. They try to influence the political process. Moreover, they need to control the political arena - election of presidents and parliaments - even more tightly than "normal" business people because their very existence depends on having a government willing to tolerate violation of international rules as the country's main activity.Corruption in such countries is not due to "bad governance" that can be fixed by improving the political structures:
Governance structures respond to underlying incentives, and to expect an honest person to rise to power in a corrupt state is akin to expecting a person with no financial backing from big business to be elected president of the US. In both cases, the outcome of a political process reflects the country's underlying economic conditions.I was once on a panel on Afghanistan in Washington, where a questioner from the International Crisis Group asked a well-informed question about the presence of known drug traffickers in the Afghan parliament. He wanted to know why such people had not been excluded (using the passive voice of course, enabling him to avoid thinking about who could do the excluding). I replied that it was not possible to hold a free election anywhere while excluding the representatives of the country's largest industry. My co-panelist, the native of a poppy producing village in Badakhshan, smiled sadly.
Milanovic's proposal:
Legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking.Read the article. Read more on this article...
The key is that meaningful reforms do not begin in the corrupt states themselves, but in the rich world that is the main consumer of illegal goods and services.
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