:: Saturday, March 29, 2003 ::

The Nadimarg Massacre: A Continuing Cycle of Violence:

This horrific killing of 24 Kashmiri Brahmins has caused outrage amongst the community and has further served to inflame communal passions while dealing another blow to the resolution of the secessionist conflict in Kashmir. It has been much reported and commented on in the press and print media; the usual commiserations and condemnations have been sounded out and the usual accusations and recriminations have been made . Alarmingly, it has become a politicised issue as well, with Hindutva supporters eager to point out the supposed lukewarm reaction in condemning the massacre by the secular and leftist political formations as further examples of “pseudo-secularism” and general double standards. This is the typical tactic used and in fact ignore the substantial level of cross-party unity that this incident has aroused with the entire opposition criticising the fact that the BJP MLA, S. Kishore was prevented from speaking in the Kashmir legislative assembly, the entire Opposition including the National Conference, Jammu State Morcha, BSP and the People's Democratic Front Majid stalled House proceedings shouting that "this was a House of Rogues" where a democratically elected representative was not allowed to speak. NC members stormed the Well of the House. The People's Democratic Front (PDP) president has condemned the attack and the PDP vice-president has said that it is a deliberate attempt to derail the peace process. The BJP, Hurriyat (hardly the best of bedfellows in normal times) and several other organisations have called for a bandh in Jammu to commemorate and protest the killings. Yet still the same old platitudes about the non-Saffronist parties and organisations ‘ignoring’ the plight of the Hindus can be heard.

It is indeed no accident that the massacre occurred when it did since the PDP state government has been talking some time about implementing a return to the valley of the Kashmiri Brahmins. Most of the 100,000 strong community of Kashmiri Brahmins fled the valley after the onset of the insurgency in 1989 and only about 10,000 now remain in Kashmir. Together with refugees from Jammu and Ladakh they eke out a miserable existence in refugee camps on the outskirts of New Delhi, numbering nearly 300,000. Facilities and compensation has been inadequate as has been steps to either reassure their safe return or re-integration elsewhere. Part of the problem is that no strong political constituency is interested in their return; with relations being communalised in the Valley itself, and in the Centre successive Congress and BJP led governments have found the plight of the Kashmiri Brahmins as an effective mobilisational tool both against the national minority Muslim community as well as against Kashmiri regional nationalism; their effective return and re-absorption into Kashmiri society would certainly be a blow for the BJP and deprive Saffronists of a major propaganda instrument. What is more worrying is that the militants could carry out this attack despite the presence of state security forces in region and the police forces stationed in the village, who put up no more than a token resistance to the attack and were all to willing to hand over their weapons and let the militants carry out their objectives. If the Kashmir state government is serious about ensuring the safety of minority civilian populations in the state then more adequate measures need to be taken and the planning of counter-insurgency measures more seriously thought through. As for the Federal government, appeals to Pakistan to desist support of the militants is not an effective response; Pakistan has no reason to abandon this tactic in the medium or long term as it has by far been most succesfull approach to the Kashmir problem from its side. Failure to subonr Kashmir in the past such as Operation Gibraltar in 1965 due to the adherence of the local Kahsmiri population to the Indian state has shown that it needs far more than mere Pakistani malign desings to creeate such a situation: there needs to be a loss of legitimacyt to Indian nationalism and a decline in the ability to incorporate regional ethno-nationalism through democratic and pluralsit poiltics. None of these has effectively been addressed or maintained by successive Indian government and have eroded over time; any realistic solution to the current situation involves looking at these areas as a policy of more repression and military responses has not decreased but rather intensified the violence by the irredentist movements.

In a sense this repeats a cycle that is already well known. When a panel of Kashmiri leaders of highly regarded and eminent Muslim and Hindu Kashmiris formed a committee to embark on a goodwill mission to reassure the Kashmiri Brahmin community in 1990; one of its members, its vice-President HN Jatto recalled that several militant groups urged the Kashmiri Brahmins not to leave their homes in the valley and welcomed their announcements. However, soon after this joint committee was set up, Jatto was visited by a DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) sent by the Governor (the then hardline Governor of Kashmir was Jagmohan) with an air ticket for Jammu and advice to leave Kashmir immediately. The official attitude while not directly obstructive was far from co-operative and did little to stem the flight of Kashmiri Brahmins from the Kashmir Valley. Of course the rise of new militant groups more aggressive and communal in their nature, incidents such as the appearances of posters warning the Kashmiri Brahmin community to leave as well as several targeted killing within the community contributed to the general sense of uncertainty and insecurity which increased the migration. Despite popular perceptions though, the majority of the casualties of the insurgency both by the militants and the security forces were Kashmiri Muslims killed in the cross fire; in fact until the mid-1990s by far the largest category of people killed were those civilians caught in between the two opposite sides despite not being combatants: almost all of whom were Muslims.

Nonetheless the distance between the migrant Kashmiri Brahmins and the Kashmiris Muslims grew rapidly both in geographic and emotional/political terms. Communal elements in both communities seized the opportunity to increase and solidify this gulf, replacing the old pan-communal Kashmiryat identity. Mutual recriminations led to a schismogenetic breakdown of understanding: many Kashmiri Brahmins tended to believe that Muslims could not be loyal to the country and many Muslims came to believe that the Kashmiri Hindus could not be loyal to Kashmir and that every Kashmiri Brahmin was a potential mukhbar (informer). Militants could and did use this suspicion as a basis to kill Kashmiri Brahmins. Rumours proliferated that the government itself was facilitating the migration of Kashmiri Brahmins in order to carry out even more widespread counter-insurgency operation in the valley. Two incidents of bomb blasts involving Kashmiri Brahmin youths were used to malign the entire Brahmin community in Jammu and Kashmir. In one incident, two young boys were injured in an RSS office while assembling a bomb and in the second one Kashmiri Brahmin was killed and another injured in an abortive attempt by the two to blow up an examination centre. The RSS and BJP paid tributes to the two groups and the State government in its order banning the RSS, following a similar ban in the rest of the country after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6th December 1992, specifically mentioned these incidents as additional grounds for the ban. Other Kashmiri Hindu groups published exaggerate figures of Kashmiri Hindus killed in the conflict, exceeding the total number of deaths in the insurgency; unfortunately the government never publicly saw fit to contradict or repudiate these figures even though they grossly exceeded the officially published casualty list for the region. Together with other wilful misrepresentations and disinformation such as the widespread demolition or vandalisation of Hindu temples in Kashmir (something the Press Trust of India has specifically said there is not evidence for) or examples of inter-communal co-operation eg the guarding of abandoned property left behind in the name of Kashmiri migrants by their Muslim neighbours have gone unnoticed by in large in the mainstream media and the popular consciousness.

What emerges is a pattern of state complicity and an unwillingness to defend the secular fabric of society in the face of communal pressures of one sort or another; not only is part of this due to the manipulation of communal sentiment for electoral proposes by the various regimes in power it is also a failure of the failure to democratise the valley and evolve a pluralistic and inclusive politics. The cycle of violence now seems to be escaping the control of the state apparatus; statements by the Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani that urge Pakistan to respect the integrity and life on Kashmiri citizens is only reflective of the inability for the Indian state to protect and ensure that it can override and stand above other power centres which profess an independent access to regulated violence. If a Nation-state cannot at least assert primacy over regulating the functioning of violence in its territorial sphere and credibly offer assurances to its citizens that it can protect them then serious questions must be raised about is viability in acting as an effective vehicle for popular hopes and aspirations. A last word must be said on this sorry episode; I cannot help but note yet again the disparity between the public, official and media reaction to this massacre and the much more muted reaction to the massacre of slum dwellers in the shantytown of Quasim Nagar in Jammu, that took place last year in July . Part of this discrepancy can be explained in the fact that the Kashmiri Brahmins, often referred to as Pandits, have traditionally been the dominant Hindu community in Kashmir and as such have a symbolic value in their return acting as a sign of normality; yet at least some of the disjuncture seems to me to be the result that as the victims in this latest tragedy come from a community that is part of the dominant socio-economic elite and from the upper strata of the caste hierarchy; their plight is all the more visible to the public gaze, despite the fact that their situation is no more visceral than that of several other communities in the same situation (Hindu refugees from Bangladesh in West Bengal come to mind as an immediate example).

One wonders why voices that are now raised in protest are so often too quiet when similar injustices are inflicted on those who come from different communities.

:: Conrad Barwa 1:50 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Confronting Pakistan's Problems under the Current Regime: Part Two External Constraints:

Pakistan's military rivalry with India had led it to test nuclear weapons shortly after India conducted such tests in 1998. Despite the resulting U.S. economic sanctions, the Musharraf regime has been unwilling to abandon this costly nuclear program or to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, largely because India has refused to do so. Although the national rallying cries of Indian "hegemony" and Kashmiri "liberation" are often used by Islamabad to distract Pakistanis from their daily struggles to survive, outside experts argue that as long as Pakistan remains obsessed with challenging its larger and far more powerful rival, it will be unable to afford or concentrate on desperately needed economic changes at home. Even more inimical to Musharraf's goal of international acceptance and support is Pakistan's friendly relationship with another neighbor, Afghanistan. Since 1996, that country has been largely controlled by a radical Islamic regime, the Taliban, which has been shunned by most of the international community for fomenting terrorism and repressing women's rights. The Taliban movement was largely spawned by Pakistani religious groups based amongst the Pashtun refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion and military aid during the years of Soviet occupation and civil war. Although Musharraf's own views of Islam are far said to be more moderate, the Taliban maintains close ties to Islamic groups in Pakistan and to segments of the military.

To a large extent, Musharraf's refusal to shun Afghanistan or rein in the Kashmiri guerrillas reflects his government's uneasy and complex relationship with Islamic groups in Pakistan, even those that espouse fundamentalist views and violence. These groups developed their power base during the Afghan war and have since become the principal source of manpower and arms for the insurgency in Kashmir. Sectarian violence and terrorism have now become a serious problem within Pakistan itself, leading observers to warn of the potential "Talibanization" of the country. This is especially true in border regions and independent tribal areas where Afghan influence is strong, smugglers operate without government interference, and fundamentalist Islamic clerics exercise widespread influence; as well as still smouldering resentment within the regional states such as Sindh and Baluchistan resentful of Punjabi dominance within the polity and the armed services not to mention the on-going Mohajir conflict within Karachi. Many observers now believe that the most serious long-term threat to democracy and stability in Pakistan is the growing influence of radical Islam, especially the spread of armed "jihadi" groups committed to a so-called holy war against India. Musharraf has proven reluctant to challenge these groups, as his cold feet on both the blasphemy law and the Kashmir cease-fire demonstrated. As a result, his credentials as a potential counterbalance to radical Islam have begun to weaken, and some observers fear that a serious confrontation is inevitable. Ultimately, unless Pakistan can resolve its internal identity crisis between Islamic and secular authority, it may be unable to develop a stable democracy and will remain vulnerable to potential takeover by Islamic forces.

A second, even more important, constraint on Musharraf's ability to change foreign policy comes from his own institution, the army. Despite his ultimate authority as army chief of staff, he is traditionally dependent on the consensual support and advice of senior army leaders, including the nine corps commanders. While their views are not known or account-able to the public, several powerful senior officers are believed to have more conservative Islamic views than Musharraf. The general's institutional authority is also somewhat weakened by ethnic insecurity: He is from an Urdu-speaking minority in a Punjabi-dominated army. Finally, the large military-intelligence community is viewed as a power in its own right, strongly committed both to the Kashmiri cause and to close relations with the Taliban as one air-force officer remarked to me "We are all afraid of the ISI" (the Pakistani much feared intelligence service). Musharraf's reluctance to alienate the armed forces is the major reason that he has done nothing to reduce military spending, although it consumes more than one-fourth of Pakistan's annual budget and leaves little room for desperately needed education, health, and other social services. Furthermore, although Musharraf has pledged to implement impartial, across-the-board public accountability, he has done little to touch the lucrative defense contracts and sinecures of the defense establishment, raising further questions about his ability to curb corruption and set an example of impartial reform for civil society. Despite the army's low-profile presence in the streets of Pakistan, Musharraf's disarming personal style, and his high-profile appointment of numerous civilians to his cabinet and national security council, military influence has quietly permeated national life under his regime. Retired or active officers have been placed in charge of provincial administrations and sensitive agencies, and troops have been used at key moments to enforce the law or intimidate opponents. One civilian official quit his post in the fall of 2000, saying that he felt like a "puppet" while military officers ran his agency from behind the scenes. Musharraf's aides argue that, for the time being, military control and scrutiny are necessary to combat corruption and monitor the misuse of institutional power at all levels of government. Yet some civilian experts worry that, over time, the military will become too comfortable in power, grow susceptible to corruption, and lose the disciplined approach that it has so far applied to most problems. If things do begin to spin out of control, it could be a short and easy step to full-scale repression. Before handing over power to the civilian Benazir Bhutto regime, the army had realised that it had eroded its public legitamcy and that military rule had a corroding effect on the internal functioning of the armed forces; this led to a marked reluctance to intervene in the sqaubbles between Bhutto and her rivals when the post-military democratic governments started to become unstable. Ultimately is was at least in part the failure of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party or Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League to create credible and durable adminstrations that led to political instability and general loss of legitamcy due to the high levels of corruption and incompetency, creating the oppurtuniy for a resumption of military rule.

Still the major question facing General Musharraf is the one that all military rulers must inevitably face: how and when to restore Pakistan to civilian rule. Musharraf and his aides argue, with some logic, that they need time to plant the seeds of reform securely before they can return Pakistan to civilian politicians. Most Pakistanis may have accepted military intervention for the time being, but everyone--including top military officials--agrees that governance must be returned to civilian control relatively quickly if Pakistan hopes to regain international standing in the post-Cold War world and participate in the rapidly globalizing economy. The looming question is whether the regime, having encountered so many obstacles to its mission, will be willing to bow out if public clamor for change continues to mount, or whether it will succumb to the temptations of armed repression that have plagued Pakistan's previous experiences with military rule. To date, no regime in Pakistan's history has devised a successful exit strategy. Ayub Khan's regime disintegrated on the shoals of a failed military crusade. Zia entered office promising to leave after 90 days, but ended up staying in power for 11 years. Musharraf initially resisted pressure to set a time limit on his rule, saying that he needed to remain in power until the country was well on the road to reform. Then on May 12, a partially tamed Supreme Court, ruling in a court case that challenged the military takeover, declared that while the coup had been justified on emergency grounds of "state necessity," the armed forces should withdraw and elections be held within three years. "Prolonged interference of the military in politics is not good. It will politicize the army, and democracy should be restored within the shortest possible time," the justices said. Eager to benefit from this qualified legal endorsement, Musharraf quickly announced that he would return Pakistan to civilian rule by the end of 2002.

Musharraf has repeatedly asserted that he will not restore the suspended two-party parliament, however, and since the country's political elite had fallen into such disrepute by the time of Sharif's ouster, there has been little clamor for a restoration of the status quo. During his first year in power, moreover, there was virtually no challenge to the regime from traditional politicians. The two major parties are effectively leaderless, with Benazir Bhutto in exile in London and Nawaz Sharif confined to prison. Bhutto's People's Party has remained largely inactive, while the Muslim League has exhausted its energy and credibility in internal squabbles between pro- and anti-Sharif factions. Sharif's wife, Kulsum, has given numerous speeches calling for his release and the restoration of democracy, but so far the public has been too intimidated and too indifferent to respond. Musharraf's treatment of Sharif himself has been indicative of his contradictory desire to silence potential opponents while acting within defensible legal grounds. The former prime minister, who has been in military custody since the coup, was charged with treason and conspiracy in connection with the attempt to hijack Musharraf's plane, and was ultimately convicted on some counts. He is also awaiting trial on various corruption charges. Musharraf repeatedly said that he would not interfere in the case, and he quickly allayed international fears that Sharif would be hanged in a Zia-like vendetta. Nevertheless, the trial was marred by numerous irregularities and, even more alarmingly, by the mysterious daytime execution of one of Sharif's attorneys in Karachi. No one has been arrested or charged in that crime. Obviously interference in the case was occurring and in a sensitive situation the 'wrong' outcome could not be tolerated by the regime in power.

Attempts at Reform: A Partialised Autocracy or Road to Democracy?

In place of the traditional two-party system, Musharraf has proposed a scheme for the "devolution of power" to build a new democracy from the grassroots up. Beginning in December 2000, the regime has scheduled a series of elections for local councils in the country's 106 administrative and electoral districts. The vote will be nonpartisan and staggered in five phases, to end in mid-2001. The next year, provincial assemblies would be elected on the same basis in Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, and the Northwest Frontier Province, following which the nation would vote for the National Assembly and Senate. If this slow but sweeping devolution plan succeeds, government officials and some outside experts believe that it could go far to rectify the systemic injustices that have left most real power in the hands of the centralized bureaucracy, alienating poor and rural voters who comprise the majority of the populace. In the past, district-government administrators have functioned as tax collectors, magistrates, and job dispensers. Teachers, for example, are often given jobs because of political connections, regardless of their qualifications to teach, resulting in public schools run so poorly that thousands of children leave elementary school unable to read and write. The proposed system would separate administrative functions, eliminate conflicts of interest by barring candidates with business ties to government, make police accountable to elected rather than appointed officials, and potentially give real power for the first time to local and regional elected representatives. The regime has also begun a sweeping overhaul of the national voter-registration system in an effort to eliminate voting fraud, and it has instituted reforms of the national Election Commission, empowering it to vet candidates for past abuses and end the practices that allowed convicted criminals and feudal barons to use public office as a bulwark of personal power. Instead, younger, poorer, and female voters would, in theory, be attracted to vote and run for office as well. "On the face of it, this is nothing short of revolutionary," said Najam Sethi, a prominent newspaper publisher in Lahore, when the plan was announced.

To others, however, Musharraf's plan sounds suspiciously similar to previous unsuccessful "guided democracy" initiatives put forth by the Ayub Khan and Zia regimes. In both cases, attempts to empower local elected officials failed because they were too intimidated by military authority to act independently, while the outlawing of political parties allowed religious, ethnic, and regional tensions to fester and stymied the development of a working party system. Some observers say that any military-run electoral system is bound to produce a crop of "pygmy" or "bonsai" politicians--stunted from birth and unable to function independently. The manifest failures of the civilian governments that followed both military eras--under the initial leadership of civilians hand-picked by military men--provide ample evidence that Musharraf's version of grassroots democracy could well meet a similar fate. Not surprisingly, the most severe critics of the "power devolution" plan are Pakistani politicians. They argue that any political system imposed from the barracks cannot work, that the country needs the expertise and negotiating skills of experienced leaders, and that Pakistani politics needs the internal depersonalization and democratization of the existing two-party system. Yet it is unlikely that such reforms can take place, let alone be put to the electoral test, in the current political vacuum. Ultimately democracy cannot in most cases be imposed from above without some co-operation from below; few leaders have managed to handle such a transition without dangerous breakdowns in consensus and power-sharing occurring.

The larger question is not whether this latest military incarnation of guided democracy will work but whether the Musharraf regime will be prepared to leave power peacefully and on schedule, even if its institutional reform plans fall flat and its gradual restoration of civilian power bogs down. Having entered power with an ambitious mission to cleanse Pakistan of its flaws and start over with a new foundation, will Musharraf and the army be willing to let go if they find their self-appointed task impossible to fulfill? More than anything else, Musharraf needs to prepare himself for a graceful exit from power no matter how little he has to show for his efforts. Otherwise, Pakistan may be doomed to repeat its history of messianic intervention by military rulers who stay in power as long as possible, while the political culture continues to wither and alternative forces gain momentum. This time the stakes are higher and the choices starker: If both military and political rule fail to turn the country around, the forces of Islamic fundamentalism are waiting in the wings with an increasingly popular agenda to create a strict, incorruptible theocracy. "The army, when it comes stamping into the political arena, always thinks it will construct a brave new world," Ayaz Amir, a columnist for Dawn, wrote in September 2000. Like many other liberal opinion-makers, Amir initially welcomed Musharraf as the nation's last hope (almost always an action that liberals come to regret), wishing him well on his reformist mission. But a year later, Amir described Musharraf as one more military Sisyphus, trying to roll the impossibly heavy stone of Pakistan up the hill once more. No matter how well-intentioned, Amir concluded, military intervention "only ends up blocking political evolution and adding to the sum of popular frustration. How many times are we fated to walk the same road?"

How many times indeed.

:: Conrad Barwa 8:03 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Bombing Pepsi & Coca-Cola Warehouses:

I have to agree with Conrad that the PWG has gone too far by bombing a Pepsi warehouse in the state of Andhra Pradesh. For one thing this type of act will hurt the US taxpayer rather than the large corporations which more than likely have purchased "Political Risk Insurance" from Congressionally funded agencies such as OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation). When acts of political sabotage occur against US corporate interests, the US taxpayer compensates the corporation. This action does little to hurt corporations, does not influence US foreign policy, and only punishes potential allies in the anti-war struggle as many Americans are already opposed to the war.

It would be much more damaging for those opposed to US foreign policies to peacefully boycott US products. There is no government subsidized insurance for economic losses due to boycotts. In any case, the peaceful boycott of imperial products is part and parcel of the Gandhian mode of non-violent resistance.

:: Vikash Yadav 10:26 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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An Anti-Imperialist Backlash too far?

While I am all for resisting imperialism, this seems to be one act of resistance too far. The Andharite Naxalites under the aegis of the Peoples War Group (PWG), have been engaged in a bitter guerrilla war with the state forces for sometime now; ceasefire talks that have been taking place intermittently since July of 2001 have not yielded any significant progress. Part of this is due to the Naidu governments' belief that it can whether the storm and having a durable electoral majority in the state legislature and a friendly coalition government in New Delhi, it can afford to unleash a force of repression against the Naxalite insurgency. This could be a major error; given the lapse of Naxalite insurgencies in their old centres of influence, the persistence in the poorer Telegana part of Andhra Pradesh is probably due to other factors such as the marked difference in socio-economic performance between this backward and historically deprived region compared to coastal and inland Andhra Pradesh; clearly not all parts of the state have benefited from the fruits of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu's neo-liberal structural Adjustment Programme. The continuance of exploitative agrarian relations, combined with the remoteness of the terrain and the weakness of local institutionalised politics has led to the eruption and growth of armed insurrection by radical leftist groups such as the PWG. Though the latter as has been the tendency of all such movements in India has tended to replicate the indiscriminate violence of the state forces and degenerate into illicit activities such as dacoity, kidnapping and smuggling in order to finance their activities and indulge in pure rent-seeking; they do nonetheless enjoy a measure of support amongst the local population and have retained their strength on the ground in terms of armed cadres and party organisation. The increasingly bitter warfare between the state and the insurgents has resulted in much hardship for the civilians caught in between the two; as both sides have a tendency to use collective punishment as warning to any potential sympathisers of the opposition and to indulge in summary execution of suspected informants. In light of the increasing violence and rising body count, the refusal of the Naidu government to pursue negotiations seriously is a major obstacle to a peaceful resolution to the conflict. This latest episode is just another indication that such a resolution is necessary to avert further violence in the state.

:: Conrad Barwa 10:04 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Confronting Pakistan's Problems under the Current Regime: Part One Internal Constraints:

As Vikash's post points out the current Pakistani regime under General Musharraf has run tinot several diffculties in bolstering popular legitiamcy and support for tis rule. Musharraf’s regime did grasp some of the fundamental problems facing Pakistan quite quickly; these had been outlined in a bleak “Pakistan 2010 Vision statement” issued by the Sharif government on 10th February 1998:

Corruption pervades all three branches of government: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. The result is that none of the three branches act as a check upon the misfeasance of the other two,” the statement read. “The powers to appoint or to reward public officials are used arbitrarily, public property is handled in a cavalier fashion, the system ignores (and often rewards) financial corruption and the misuse of powers, financial institutions have been burdened with unserviceable loans, public lands have been doled out in return for political of financial favours, and publicly controlled institutions….respond neither to citizens’ needs nor to financial imperatives.

Although Musharraf was confronted with a daunting array of problems, he focused on improvement in the areas that would bring the most immediate and concrete results. One was collecting taxes, Pakistan’s economy had never been documented, and only a fraction of the goods and incomes were taxed. Out of a population of 135 million, only about one million people paid any taxes at all. The new regime announced an aggressive tax-reform plan, sending soldiers to homes and businesses to conduct inventories. It offered a one-time amnesty on previously undeclared assets and levied new taxes on more than $2 billion worth of property. Finally, it fired hundreds of revenues agents linked to corruption. Another early initiative was a crackdown on loan defaulters. For years, businessmen had been borrowing money from state banks to invest in speculative or poorly run projects without ever repaying it. Musharraf set up a National Accountability Bureau to pursue these collusive business-loan defaults and other financial wrongdoing. Dozens of prominent defaulters were arrested, and hundreds of others were publicly named and given a deadline to pay up, renegotiate their loans, or risk legal prosecution. In three months, the government claimed it brought in more than $1 billion in cash, assets, pledges and renegotiated loans.

In an effort to reassure international lenders and investors, the new government appointed a Pakistani executive at Citibank in New York, Shaukat Aziz, to serve as finance minister. It also recruited teams of experienced technocrats to work on plans to reform fiscal policies, privatise state utilities, and lower tariffs. As a result, Pakistan won cautious praise from international financial institutions, resulting in a one-year standby loan agreement from the IMF worth $580 million. With an additional possibility of a $1.3 billion bailout package from the IMF and the World Bank, international reprieves seemed likely to buy Pakistan desperately needed time to get its economic house in order. But the long-term task facing Musharraf and his team was daunting. Experts said that drastic measures and structural change was needed to turn around Pakistan’s economy ailing permanently. For years, government expenditures had outstripped revenues, the economy remained far too dependent on a few agricultural exports, and industrial development was undermined by corrupt loan practises and deliberate de-capitalisation. Public institutions were used to dispense patronage and jobs rather than provide services, and the development of a technically skilled workforce was thwarted by low investment in public education. Most Pakistanis cannot read or write beyond elementary school level.

To make a genuine difference, experts warned, the regime would have to undertake tough, unpopular long-term measures to bring spending into line with income, ease the crushing debt, adjust the lopsided trade balance, and bring back foreign investment, which plummeted from $1.1 billion in 1995 to $472 million in 1999. That would require prying loose the grip of entrenched interests, including a feudal system that kept millions of Pakistanis in virtual debt peonage, a huge and corrupt centralised bureaucracy, and a black market in smuggled imports that kept an estimated 70% of the economy unregulated and competing unfairly with legal domestic production. Despite the Musharraf regime’s good intentions and formidable power, it found ambitious promises much easier to make than to implement. In theory, a military government is free to make unpopular moves and attack vested interests because it is backed by force and need not worry about losing voters or allies. But in the post Cold War era when democracy and human rights have become defining international norms, Musharraf has recognised that his credibility and that of his regime abroad, (especially with foreign lenders and investors) depends largely on his refraining from using widespread repression. Constrained from using these measures against his opponents, Musharraf has found himself increasingly a prisoner of the same forces that had thwarted reform under his civilian predecessors.

Musharraf also wanted to be viewed at home as a leader rather than a dictator, someone who could set an example and persuade his compatriots to follow. But with neither an electoral mandate not political allies with a vested interest in his success, he had to depend on the goodwill of the very groups that there threatened by his agenda on the cooperation of the same dysfunctional and corrupt systems that he hoped to reform. While the public clamoured for the principle of change, it remained beholden for daily survival to functionaries, private bosses, and political power brokers who were fighting to protect their interests. In a society where personal fealty has always substituted for public trust, no one was willing to take the first step. As a result after a promising wave of early initiatives, Musharraf began to water down or back off from proposals that met with strong opposition. When he proposed to make minor changes in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws (notoriously used on several occasions to harass minorities) conservative Islamic leaders threatened to unleash disruptive street protests and Musharraf backed down. When business leaders complained that his prosecution of loan defaulters and tax evaders was too draconian, he replaced the military official in charge of that programme with another officer who was more lenient. When commercial traders threatened to strike over his plan to document the economy, he agreed to postpone implementing the survey, while storekeepers and wholesalers promptly hid their merchandise.

Gradually the passage of time has faded the image of a crusader that Musharraf sought to cultivate on his assumption of power; leading to growing disillusionment amongst many Pakistanis. Ironically, even secular liberals who initially supported his initial seizure of power now complain that Musharraf is acting too much like a politician and not enough like a soldier. If even the army cannot clean up Pakistan’s politics then who can they wonder? Other observers suggest a different interpretation of the problem: An army is equipped not to govern but to execute orders; if constrained from the use of force, it has no idea what to do when disobeyed. Musharraf’s adversaries, seeing his sensitivity (some would say vulnerability) to public and international opinion, are calling his bluff. “It is the ultimate paradox: People are asking us to use power in an arbitrary manner, when in fact, we are respecting the norms of democracy more than elected governments have in the past," asserted Javed Jabbar in September 2000, a few weeks before resigning as Musharraf’s minister of information. “It would have been so easy to declare martial law, but that was not done. We have set limits on the use of our power, because our most important goal is to build respect and trust in government. We are trying to prove that the armed forces and democracy can be synergistic, not polar opposites.” Indeed, a tall task, and one which I fear Paksitan's current regime is not up to filling.

However, as its critics have grown louder and more insistent, the regime has exhibited increasing signs of insecurity and repressive tendencies that belie Musharraf’s claims to tolerate criticism and respect institutional checks and balances. In the Spring of 2000, Musharraf banned all public protests and political rallies, and soldiers, began breaking up public gatherings by opposition leaders. In September, a period of heightening criticism from the press, troops raided Karachi offices of Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper, on the pretext on non-payment of utility bill. The most worrying display of military control was the move to ensure the loyalty of the Supreme Court. In January 2000 after the leaders of the Muslim League mounted a court challenge to his military takeover, Musharraf demanded that all senior judges in Pakistan either take an oath of allegiance to his provisional constitutional order or resign. Six members of the Supreme Court, including the Chief justice stepped down, but 89 of the other 102 judges agreed to take the oath. Musharraf has insisted that the basic functioning of the Pakistani courts would be unaffected but the move is disturbingly similar to the loyalty oaths that General Zia had demanded of top jurists in 1981. Human rights activists have claimed that it has effectively emasculated the independent judicial system.

:: Conrad Barwa 9:47 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Some More Questions and Answers on Iraq:

1)Iraqi officials keep saying that American inspectors and other staff working for Unscom spied for their government. Is there any truth in this?

A: There is ample evidence of this. The details are to be found in the stories published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe from mid-1998 to early 1999 - and in Scott Ritter's book Endgame (1999). After years of silence, the extremely discreet Rolf Ekeus, head of Unscom during 1991-97, told the Swedish Radio in August 2002 that the US had planted its nationals into Unscom, who were engaged more in trying to locate Saddam Hussein than carry out inspections or monitoring. The details of the complex 'Shake the Tree' operation, implemented by a team of US inspectors and technicians, to eavesdrop on the highly confidential Iraqi military communications are now known. The US director of this operation shared this classified information with a fellow-American and a former government official, Chalres Duelfer, to ensure that Unscom's eavesdropping procedures remained intact - but not with Duelfer's boss, Ekeus or even his openly pro-American successor, Richard Butler. Furthermore, American undercover agents were assigned to contact the commanders of the elite Special Republican Guard on the eve of a planned anti-Saddam coup on 26 June 1996. Ritter refers to the close links between Butler and the US National Security Adviser, Samuel Berger, to the extent of daily briefings on ongoing inspections which were agreed beforehand with Berger. Barton Gellman in the Washington Post of 28 August 1998 refers to 'a standard procedure' whereby 'Mr Butler's senior staff briefed a liaison officer from the CIA on the target [for inspection]'.

2) Okay, but there is the argument that by trying to deceive Unscom repeatedly, Saddam drove the US to resort to underhand methods and misuse the UN.

A: This argument assumes that what the US did was to react to the acts of deception by Saddam. But there is at least one known example of Washington abusing the UN for its intelligence ends when it did not have the kind of rationale provided by Saddam. That was in 1975. Following the March 1975 Algiers Accord between Iran and Iraq, the Shah of Iran withdrew his support to the Iraqi Kurds fighting the Baghdad government from the Iranian soil. Due to the resulting humanitarian crisis, the UN sent its aid personnel, drawn from a few contributing member-states, including the US, to Iran. The American contingent included American intelligence agents with a mandate to salvage as much of the Kurdish military campaign against Baghdad as they could.

3)Some experts argue that every time the US bombed Iraq, it lost ground diplomatically and generates hatred among Iraqis. Is that true?

A: There is much evidence to support this view. Besides the 43 days of non-stop bombardment of Iraq during the Gulf War, the Pentagon bombed Iraq in January and June 1993, September 1996, December 1998, and February 2001. This series of military strikes convinced most Iraqis that Washington was against them as a people rather than against Saddam and his coterie. The negative diplomatic impact of the 100-hour blitzkrieg of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 - condemned by China, France and Russia - was so severe that it took the Security Council a whole year to come up with a new inspection and monitoring regime under Resolution 1284. China, France and Russia refused to back the resolution, and abstained - primarily because it altered the provision of complete lifting of sanctions, as specified in Resolution 687 (1991), to a suspension of 120 days at a time. Secondly, because the Pentagon's massive Operation Desert Fox could not be implemented while the UN inspectors were inside Iraq, they were withdrawn by Unscom chief Richard Butler. By so doing, he provided Saddam a chance to negotiate their return. Finally, as Americans must know from their own experience, when a country is attacked, its citizens rally round their leader, no matter how inept and/or brutal. This what American did after September 11, 2001. And this is what Iraqis do every time their homeland is hit by US bombs and missiles.

4) There is a big gap between how the people in the West and the Arab and Muslim world view events of international importance. This became starkly obvious during the Pentagon's attack on Afghanistan in 2001. The presentation of the US military strikes on the Arabic language television channels, especially the popular Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television, had little in common with what appeared on the screens showing material supplied by the BBC or the CNN and other American channels. What lies at the root of this disjunction? And between these two broad systems, which one is more objective and trustworthy?

A: To say that the media, especially the broadcasting ones, play a vital role in shaping popular perceptions would be to state the obvious. What even the most enlightened Western journalists fail to realize is that (a) most people in the world get their information primarily from their national radio and television, and (b) most people trust their own media, however censored or distorted. In the English-speaking world, given equal access to the CNN and the BBC, Americans turn to the CNN and Britons to the BBC, with each group trusting more its own television channel than the rival. By the same token, most Egyptians stick with their own radio and television channels, as do most Syrians. The situation is particularly acute in Iraq. Due to the communications and educational embargo since 1990, many Iraqis don't know what a fax is, or a mobile phone. Even large sections of middle and upper middle class Iraqis have no access to foreign publications or television. The people living in Iraq are exposed to nothing but the state-run Iraqi radio and television. The subject of the disjunction between the West and the Arab and Muslim world is very broad, and beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say that this gap, already very wide, will grow dangerously wider, if there is an invasion of Iraq by the US or US-led Coalition. The question of objectivity was addressed succinctly by Max Rodenbeck, the Cairo-based correspondent of the Economist in a New York Times article in April 2002. 'As network coverage of Vietnam shocked Americans with the immediacy of a far off war, satellite television's insistent, graphic imagery of the [Palestinian] intifada has taken this bloody drama into millions of Arab households,' he wrote. 'The drama generates not weariness with war but a thirst for justice, for sacrifice and revengeÉ Some Palestinian casualties have become household names from Morocco to Muscat - Muhammad Dura, the 12-year-old boy from Gaza whose father could not shield him from a hail of Israeli gunfire, or Wafa Idris and Ayat Akhras, the first female suicide bombers.' Yet, argued Rodenbeck , 'Arab coverage of the conflict is not really much more one-sided than, say, America's gung-ho coverage of the Gulf War. Or, for that matter, Israeli reporting on the intifada. It does not require subtle manipulation to frame the ongoing tragedy as an epic struggle of the weak against the strong. The imagery saturating Arab screens of tanks crushing ambulances and helicopters rockets refugee camps is, alas, all too real."

5) Paragraph 14 of the Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) specifies ' the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery'. Eleven years on, the Security Council has taken no steps in this direction. Why has not the US, the sole superpower, goaded the Council to act?

A: For the simple reasons that the Middle East includes Israel, a country which is widely known to have been in possession of atomic bombs since 1968, and whose present arsenal, according to the estimate of Jane's Intelligence Review in 1997, includes "over 400 thermonuclear and nuclear warheads." In addition, biological and chemical weapons research has been in progress at Nes Tziona, south of Tel Aviv, since 1952. It was officially acknowledged in 1983 that Marcus Klinberg, deputy head of the Biological Institute at Nes Tzionba, was given life sentence for leaking information on Israel's biological warfare agents to the Soviet Union.

6) Everybody is aware that Saddam tried to cheat the UN repeatedly on its disarmament program. That is a given. But is it true that as Iraq's disarmament progressed, the US kept shifting the goal post, forcing Saddam to conclude that no matter what he did, Washington would never allow the sanctions to be lifted?

A: Yes. The key moment came in June 1998 when Richard Butler, Unscom chief, told Tariq Aziz that even if the disarmament of the weapons of mass destruction had been judged to be completed, he would want to know the details of the concealment mechanism that the Iraqi government had set up for the WMD. The question that arises is: Was this investigation - akin to investigating a crime rather then disarming a country - part of the original UN mandate on disarmament, leaving aside the issue of some American inspectors in Unscom focusing on the whereabouts of Saddam?

7) We are familiar with Iraq hindering UN inspectors from carrying out their mandate, and the US punishing the Iraqi government for doing so. But what are the overall figures: How many inspection teams carried out many inspections, and how many times did Iraq refuse access to a requested site?

A: Compared to the nearly 6,000 inspections carried out during 91 months (May 1991-December 1998), there were 100 Iraqi refusals, about one a month.

8) It is possible to have 100 per cent disarmament?

A: No, according to Hans Blix, executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic), the latest in a series of disarmament experts, who have said so.

9) America and Britain have kept track of the number of Security Council resolutions that Iraq has breached, and put this information on websites? Do they have a similar figure for Israel, and have they put it out on their websites?

A: Maybe the US and the UK have worked out the figure for Israel. But they have not publicized it.

10) Going by the reports of Western journalists visiting Iraqi Kurdistan, the region seems to be ably and peacefully administered by Masud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Is that so?

A: Most Western reporters' dispatches are deficient on the state of KDP-PUK relationship, which is far from normal. Following a parliamentary election in May 1992, the KDP and the PUK shared power equally. That lasted two years. Then they fought each other bitterly - to the point that Barzani called on Saddam to help him defeat Talabani in late August 1996. Saddam obliged. It took American and British mediators two years to get the rival parties agree to a peaceful co-existence based on each side comprising its rigid position on such issues as sharing revenues. But it was not until September 2002 that they finally agreed to implement their four-year-old accord. All along Barzani has maintained his economic link with Saddam - his supplier of Iraqi oil and oil products at heavily discounted prices for resale to Turkish traders with a large mark-up - to underwrite the expense of administering his part of Kurdistan. Fresh election to the parliament were due in 1996. Yet there are no plans for a fresh poll. Washington dare not press for it because Turkey will view it as a preamble to the emergence of an independent Kurdistan, its nightmare.

11) We hear a lot about the Iraqi opposition coming together and the series of meetings their leaders are holding in Washington or London. But why don't we hear much about the shady background of the leading opposition figure Ahmed Chalabi, who was given two prison sentences in Jordan for embezzling the funds of his Petra Bank after he fled Amman in 1989, or that until recently the state department had refused to deal with him or his Iraqi National Congress?

A: Draw your own conclusions. See further, www.observer.co.uk/international/0,6903,800986,00.html.

12) Some analysts are arguing that 'regime change' in Iraq is euphemism for the invasion of a sovereign state. Is 'imperial America', the term used among others by Condoleeza Rice, on the verge of entering an imperialist phase?

A: It seems that way. There is enough in 'The National Security Strategy of the United States', a document drafted by Condoleeza Rice, and adopted by President George W.Bush on 17 September 2002, to support the thesis that America has formally entered a neo-imperialist phase, where it seeks worldwide dominance not only in diplomacy and military but also in culture.

13) There is a growing school of analysts and commentators that argues that the Bush Jr. administration's Middle East policy is driven by the pro-Israeli lobby which is close to the neo-conservative ideologues. Is that so?

A: The evidence so far points in that direction. Nothing illustrated the power of the pro-Israeli lobby more vividly than when President George W. Bush publicly and insistently demanded in early April that Israel withdraw its forces from the West Bank. 'Now,' he declared,. 'and I mean now'. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon paid no attention, took his time, and withdrew the troops four weeks later. For this open defiance of the world's most powerful person, he got invited to the White House for a cordial meeting with the leader whose advice he had blatantly ignored. The US hawks and pro-Israeli lobbyists are pursing the strategic aim of making Israel's eastern front secure. Beyond Jordan, a military cipher, lie Iraq and Iran. Their overall objective is to ratchet up the policy of keeping Saddam in a box to his overthrow under the rubric of a pre-emptive strike. If, as and when that aim is achieved, they will turn their guns on Iran.

14) What are the implications of the US unilaterally adopting the doctrine of pre-emption in the international arena?

A: Pretty alarming. If Russia were to follow the example of America, it will pre-empt the Chechen threat by invading Georgia where, it claims, the Chechen terrorists are now based. And if India follows Washington's lead, it will attack Pakistan to pre-empt the threat of cross-border terrorism being perpetrated by Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri Muslim fundamentalists. And so on.

15) With Christians like Tariq Aziz holding important positions in the Iraqi regime, President Saddam Hussein cannot be an Islamic fundamentalist. Yet in a rare interview to a non-Arab politician or journalist in August 2002, he told George Galloway, a British Member of Parliament : 'If Crusaders attack us, we will fight on the streets, from the rooftops, from house to house.' What should one make of his description of Americans as 'crusaders'?

A: Saddam intensified his suppression of Islamic militants in Iraq on the eve of his attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran in September 1980. But he is opportunistic enough to invoke Islam to widen his base of support. On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, he decreed that the credo 'Allah-u Akbar (God is Great)' be inscribed on the Iraqi tricolor. He will most likely depict Washington's invasion of Iraq as aggression against a Muslim country and therefore against Islam. The subsequent rise in militant anti-Americanism in the Middle East will increase Israel's isolation, thus defeating one of the Bush Jr. administration's strategic aims and abetting Saddam's agenda. Furthermore, the negative repercussions will also be felt in the surrounding non-Arab, but Muslim region - in Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A dramatic upset in Pakistan might put the country's nuclear arsenal in the hands of fundamentalist generals. At the very least these developments will curtail foreign governments' cooperation with Washington's war on terrorism and swell the terrorist ranks by driving some radical, secularist groups among Muslims to political violence.

16) When George W. Bush first assumed office, there was talk of relaxation of sanctions leading to an entry of US oil corporations into the untapped Iraqi petroleum reserves. Whatever happened to that scenario?

A: There have always been ideological and pragmatic schools of thought in the foreign policy establishment of the US. In the case of the Middle East, the ideologues back Israel, right or wrong, and the pragmatists prioritize the interests of oil companies, crucial to the American economy. Given the deep roots that Vice President Dick Cheney as well as the Texan-based George W. Bush and his father have in oil industry, it was expected early on that in the new administration oil interests would prevail at the expense of the pro-Israeli lobby. The first sign that this was a vain hope came when the Bush Jr. White House endorsed the Congressional plan to extend by five years the Iraq-Libya Sanctions Act, 1996, due to expire in August 2001.

17) Recently, American hawks have taken to popularizing the idea of invading Iraq on the ground that Saddam's overthrow will open the rich Iraqi oilfields to US corporation. This is a vital consideration for American petroleum companies and their British counterparts who have been frozen out of the Iraqi market due to the policies of their respective governments. US corporations' access to Iraqi oilfileds, say the hawks, will result in reducing America's growing dependence on petroleum from Saudi Arabia - a county which, as the homeland of 15 of the 19 hijackers responsible for the 9/11 attacks, has become deeply unpopular with Americans.

A: One of the unpublicized price that Washington and London paid for their Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 was that Saddam banned direct sales of Iraqi oil to American or British companies or traders, forcing them to buy the commodity from the Russian, French or Chinese intermediaries, thus foregoing their trading profit margins.

19/ So, in the final analysis, will the forthcoming war with Iraq will be about oil - just as the 1991 Gulf conflict was?

A: Yes. This is one point on which both the US hawks, who are determining the Iraq policy, and Iraqi officials, from Saddam downwards, are agreed. As Tariq Aziz put it, 'The weapons of mass destruction is just an excuse. The Americans are after the Iraqi oil.' Explaining the 1991 Gulf War, the worldly wise Muhammad Bagga, an old resident of Saddam City, Baghdad, told the jounralist Dilip Hiro: 'The Big Western Powers got angry because Saddam Hussein wanted to benefit all Arabs from Iraq's oil.'

Sources: "Iraq: A Report from the Inside" - Dilip Hiro; "Saddam Hussein: An American Obssession" - Patrick Cockburn and Alexander Cockburn and "A Clash of Fundamentalisms" - Tariq Ali.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:05 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Some Questions and Answers on Iraq:

1) Saddam is an aggressor. He has invaded two neighboring countries, Iran and Kuwait.

A: Yes. When Saddam attacked and occupied Kuwait in 1990, the US declared him an aggressor, rallied the UN Security Council, led a military Coalition against Iraq, and expelled the Iraqi from the Emirate. In contrast, when he invaded Iran in September 1980, Washington declared itself neutral in the war. At the UN Security Council, putting the aggressor and its victim at a par, it supported a resolution which called for a ceasefire. Actually, using back channels, the administration of US President Jimmy Carter had encouraged Saddam to attack Iran, whose military plans were known to the pro-American rulers of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait weeks before the invasion.

2) Saddam is once again threatening his neighboring countries.

A: Which ones? As it is, in early September 2002 the Arab League's foreign ministers rejected 'the threat of aggression on Arab nations, in particular Iraq', and reaffirmed 'that these threats to the security and safety of any Arab country are considered a threat to Arab national security'. Later when the George W. Bush administration turned to the UN in its conflict with Baghdad, Iraq listened to the advice of Arab capitals and accepted the unconditional return of UN inspectors, thereby keeping intact the Arab League support. Unlike in 1990, this time Iraq has not occupied a fellow Arab state.

3) Saddam gassed his own people.

A: US officials are evidently referring to the Iraqi military's use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August. Since Baghdad's deployment of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time, the question is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side - a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War. During the five years following October 1983, Iraq used 100,000 chemical munitions. From the initial use of such agents in extremis to repel Iranian offensives, the Iraqis went on to deploy them extensively as a vital element of their assaults in the spring and summer of 1988 to retake lost territories. At the time, even as the US government had knowledge of these attacks, it provided intelligence and planning assistance to the Iraqi army, according to an August 18 report by Patrick Tyler in the New York Times. Contrary to its proclamations of neutrality in the war, Washington had all along been pro-Iraq. This tilt became an embrace after the re-election of Reagan as president in November 1984, when Iraq and America re-established diplomatic ties. From mid-1986, assisted by the Pentagon, which secretly seconded its Air Force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts, Iraq improved its accuracy in targeting, hitting Iran's bridges, factories and power plants relentlessly, and extending its air strikes to the Iranian oil terminals in the Lower Gulf. It was against this backdrop that Iraq began striking Tehran with its upgraded Scud ground-to-ground missiles in late February 1988. To recapture Halabja, a town of 70,000 about fifteen miles from the border, from Iran and its Kurdish allies, who had seized it in March, the Iraqi Air Force attacked it with poison gas bombs, killing 3,200 to 5,000 civilians. The images of men, women and children frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington. It was only when, following the truce with Tehran on August 20, Saddam made extensive use of chemical agents to retake 4,000 square miles controlled by the Kurdish rebels that the Security Council decided to send a team to determine if Iraq had deployed chemical arms. Baghdad refused to cooperate. But instead of pressing Baghdad to reverse its stance, or face an immediate ban on the sale of US military equipment and advanced technology to Iraq by the revival of the Senate's bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz chose merely to say that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey, and 'other sources' (which remained obscure), pointed toward Baghdad's using chemical weapons. These two elements did not add up to 'conclusive' proof. Such was the verdict of Shultz's British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe. 'If conclusive evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled out,' he said. But as neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further attempt to get at the truth, Baghdad went unpunished.

4) Saddam is a terrorist.

A: According to the single page, headlined 'Support for International Terrorism', in the White House's 20-page document, 'A Decade of Deception and Defiance', released on 12 September 2002, the last terrorist act sponsored by Iraq was a failed attempt to assassinate former US president, George Bush in April 1993 during his visit to Kuwait. The American Jounralist Seymour Hersh has since demonstrated the weak links that tie this assasination attempt to Iraq.

5) Saddam is harboring Al Qaida.

A: The White House's document, 'A Decade of Deception and Defiance', published on 12 September 2002, makes no reference either to Al Qaida or to an alleged meeting between Muhammad Atta, the hijacker involved in 9/11, and Ahmad Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official posted in Prague; despite the inital claims made by the Czech intelligence authorities, both the CIA and other intelligence agencies were unable to find any such meeting ever having taken place.

6) Saddam is funding Palestinian suicide bombers.

A: Iraq is giving $25,000 each to the families of the Palestinian suicide bombers. After the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada against the Israeli occupation in September 2000, the Palestinian Authority handed over a $2,000 check to the family of the Palestinian killed in the uprising to compensate it for the loss. Following this, the Arab Liberation Front, a pro-Iraq Palestinian faction, started giving a $10,000 check to the family of the latest Palestinian 'martyr'. Later, when Palestinian militants resorted to suicide bombings, the Front raised the compensation by $15,000. Of some 1,500 Palestinians killed during the first two years of the intifada, only 70 were suicide bombers. In other words, Saddam had not singled out Palestinian suicide bombers.

7) Saddam has violated human rights grossly.

A: Saddam has been violating human rights ever since he became vice president of Iraq in 1975. But that did not deter the US from assisting his regime financially, militarily, and intelligence-wise during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and later. China has been violating human rights in Tibet since 1959. More recently it has been persecuting the followers of Falon Gong, a religious movement, on a massive scale. Yet Washington eased China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. None of the Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabi or Turkey are known for their respect for human rights; yet these are key US allies in the region.

8) Saddam is in breach of several UN Security Council resolutions.

A: Every time Iraq breached a UN Security Council resolution, the Council took action against it. To say that the Council was not tough enough in its responses, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair now does, is churlish. He and his US counterpart never mention the numerous times they succeeded in getting their way at the Council.

9) As Iraq has broken the UN Security Council cease-fire Resolution 687 (April 1991), the US is entitled to resume hostilities against it, and does not require a separate Security Council resolution.

A: The UN Security Council, composed of five Permanent Members and 10 non-Permanent ones, is a collective body. It is up to the Council to decide, by the prescribed procedures, whether or not Baghdad had breached its Resolution 687, how serious a breach is, and how to penalize Iraq for it. No single member has the unilateral right to draw its own conclusion - and simultaneously claim that it is acting under the Security Council aegis. What a Permanent Member is entitled to is the right to veto a resolution, passed by the required majority of nine, it does not like. America can attack Iraq unilaterally by claiming that it acted in self-defense, which is allowed according to the UN Charter Article 51. But then it must prove that Iraq threatened it specifically. So far Baghdad has done no such thing. For the US, to invade a sovereign country on the assumption that it will threaten it some time in the future is illegal under international law.

10) Once the US has adopted the doctrine of pre-emption, its pre-emptive strike on Iraq wil be amply justified.

A: The White House document 'The National Security Strategy of the United States', issued on 18 September, shifts US military strategy away from containment and deterrence to pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist groups developing weapons of mass destruction. As a sovereign nation, the US is entitled to devise its military strategy as it sees fit. But so long as it is a member of the United Nation, it must abide by the UN Charter. There is no place for a pre-emptive war in the Charter. It is up to the George W. Bush administration to convince the remaining 189 members of the UN on this issue and modify the Charter accordingly. Until then it must abide by the Charter.

11) Those European states that refuse to back the US on the Iraqi issue are not facing up to the danger posed by the alliance of the terrorist groups with one or more of the tripartite Axis of Evil - Iraq, Iran and North Korea - and are appeasers.

A: Following the bombings of the US embassies in East Africa, the Bill Clinton administration appointed an advisory panel, called the Gilmore Commission, to examine the possibility of a terrorist group acquiring WMD from a rogue state. In its December 1999 report, the Commission concluded that the rogue states would be averse to entrusting such weapons to a terrorist group because of the unpredictability of the group's behavior to the extent of turning the weapon against its sponsor, and that a rogue state itself would be unlikely to use WMD due to the prospect of shattering reprisals. To dub the Europeans differing with Washington as 'appeasers' - the term applied to British Premier Neville Chamberlain in his dealings with Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s - is wrong. Unlike Hitler, Saddam was not threatening territorial expansion, having ciome to grief in the case of Kuwait. Impoverished, de-industrialized Iraq in 2002 had little in common with the militarist, industrialized Germany on the eve of World War II. Finally, no politician in the international community was suggesting buying off Sadddam with concessions.

12) Saddam kicked out United Nations inspectors.

A: Wrong. Advised by Petrer Burleigh, the US ambassador to the UN, Richard Butler, the executive chairman of Unscom, withdrew UN inspectors so that the Pentagon could start its 100-hour blitzkrieg on Iraq, without even informing other Security Council members. By so doing, Butler did an inadvertent favor to Saddam. Earlier, in its tussles with Unscom, Iraq barred UN inspectors of US nationality, and later expelled them. But it never expelled UN inspectors per se.

13) Saddam behaved in a way that led to the withdrawal of UN inspectors.

A: This statement made by Colin Powell is an interpretation of what happened. A contrasting interpretation is that by late 1998, the Clinton administration had concluded that the UN inspections had yielded as much as they could, and that it was also time to make military use of all the intelligence it had collected legitimately through satellite imaging and briefings by Iraqi defectors, and illegitimately by planting its intelligence operatives on the Unscom staff. .

14) Saddam's deep hostility to Israel is a barrier to peace in the Middle East.

A: At the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002, Iraq endorsed the peace plan advanced by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, which offered Israel total peace for its total withdrawal from the Occupied Arab Territories, including, the Arab East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.

15) Saddam possesses chemical and biological warfare agents, and will soon acquire nuclear weapons

A: A day before Vice President Dick Cheney stated the above, Hans Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and an expert on disarmament since 1971, said in a television interview that there was no 'clear cut' evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. What the White House provided in its 20-page document, 'A Decade of Deception and Defiance', published on 12 Septmber 2002, was described by experts as a recycled mixture of dated and circumstantial evidence that Saddam may be hiding the ingredients for WMD, and seeking to develop a nuclear capability and to weaponize biological and chemical agents. On nuclear arms the White House dossier repeated the earlier assessment made by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies that Iraq could build a nuclear weapons but only if it managed to acquire enriched uranium from an outside source. See further, Dana Priest and Joby Warrick, 'Document against Iraq gives little new data about weapons', in the Washington Post, 13 September 2002.

16) The suffering of the Iraqi people stems from the policies followed by Saddam. So he should stop blaming America for their misery.

A: Most outsiders, including American policy-makers, thought that the Iraqi people would blame Saddam for the misery that has visited them since his invasion of Kuwait, and that they would see the connection between the cause (Iraq's aggression) and the effect (UN sanctions, international isolation.). This has not happened. Why? 'Iraqis don't take individual responsibility for the invasion of Kuwait,' explains 'Hatem', a London-based Iraqi professional who does not belong to any opposition group and visits Baghdad periodically. 'The sanctions that flowed from that event have created a popular feeling of "us" and "them", the West. When it comes to apportioning blame, most Iraqis think at the first level, and don't get into secondary and tertiary reasons. They say that Saddam put them in harm's way but did not cause harm. That was caused by the West, led by America. "Saddam did not drop bombs on us, did not cut off our electricity and phones and water supplies; others did that", they say.' And sanctions had provided Saddam with a perfect alibi for all the ills in the country. 'If roads are pot-holed, if phones don't work, if there aren't enough medicines in hospitals, Saddam blames the sanctions. On the other hand, he takes full credit for any improvement, however slight - like, say, flower-beds appearing in Saadoun Street in Baghdad [a thoroughfare].' Sanctions have helped Saddam to further tighten his hold over society in which rationing is at the core of his control mechanism.

17) By lifting sanctions we will let Saddam resume armament.

A: Paragraph 20 in Section C of the UN Security Council Resolution 687 states that once the conditions regarding disarming Iraq and paying compensation to those who suffered due to Baghdad's aggression against Kuwait had been satisfied, then 'the prohibitions against the import of commodities and products originating in Iraq and the prohibitions against financial transactions related thereto contained in Resolution 661 (1990) shall have no further force or effect'. But Security Council Resolution 1284 (December 1999) altered the lifting of sanctions to suspension for 120 days at a time. Not surprisingly, Baghdad refused to accept 1284. Since it is the right of every UN member to defend itself, the Security Council will find it hard to justify a ban on Iraq equipping itself with conventional weapons and missiles with a range of up to 95 miles. After all, Iraq is in a region where every other country is well armed, with some of them being over-armed.

18) Saddam only understands relentless pressure.

A: This runs counter to the age-old wisdom of using carrot and stick to achieve one's aim. Saddam did follow the pattern of cheat-and-retreat. He also saw how the US began moving the goal posts, starting with US secretary of state Warren Christopher's New York Times article in April 1994. It became obvious to him as well as to most dispassionate outsiders that no matter what he did, the US would not allow the clean bill of health to be issued to the point of vetoing such a resolution at the Security Council.

19) The American military action, followed by its occupation of the country, will bring democracy to Iraqis as it did to Japanese after World War II.

A: The length and pervasiveness of the US occupation of Iraq will be determined by the stability of the post-Saddam regime. If the fledgling government proves too fragile, Washington may well decide to put Iraq through the democratization process that General Douglas McArthur did in Japan after its defeat in 1945. Will the US achieve the same result? No. Because, unlike the decimation that Washington is itching to inflict upon Saddam's regime, McArthur kept intact the regime of Emperor Hirohito, and used it as his main instrument to democratize the country which experienced no break in its monarchical order.

20) At the UN Security Council, France and Russia are siding with Iraq because French and Russian oil companies have signed lucrative contracts with Iraq which will become operational as soon as the UN economic sanctions against Iraq are lifted. This is sheer greed on the part of the Russians and the French.

A: It is the prime duty of a government to look after its national interests. The US does it all the time - even at the expense of breaking its international obligations. Remember the Bush Jr. administration imposing tariffs on imported steel in violation of the World Trade Organization rules? In the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula, the American arms manufacturers and other corporations reaped a rich harvest of lucrative contracts in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies after the 1991 Gulf War. And US oil companies, in collusion with their European subsidiaries, rushed to secure contracts for repairing Iraq's petroleum industry from the mid-1990s.

Compiled from: "Iraq: A Report From the Inside" - Dilip Hiro, Granta Books, 2003, London.

:: Conrad Barwa 1:30 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Collateral Damage?

Apologies for the graphic nature of this photo (from Al Jezira Television), but perhaps it will remind us of the graphic nature of this war.

ãä ÖÍÇíÇ ÇáÞÕÝ ÇáÌæí ÇáÃãíÑßí ÇáÈÑíØÇäí Úáì ãÏíäÉ ÇáÈÕÑÉ Ýí ÌäæÈí ÇáÚÑÇÞ ÇáÓÈÊ 22/3/2003

[From the British American air bombardment victims on the Basra city in in south Iraq saturday 3/22/2003.]

:: Vikash Yadav 7:33 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Poverty in Bhutan:

Here is an excellent article from Kuensel Online on the problem of poverty in Bhutan.

:: Vikash Yadav 7:02 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Pakistan Day:

General Musharaff stated today commemorating the Pakistan Resolution of 23 March 1940, "Let us pledge on this historic day to devote all our energies to the fulfilment of the ideals set for us by the founding father and the Pakistan Resolution. May Allah be our guide."

Umm... maybe he could begin with real democracy....

:: Vikash Yadav 5:47 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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