Peacemaking in poppy lands

In less than three weeks from now – on April 3 and April 4 – 26 leaders from 26 NATO countries will clink glasses in Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany. Over glasses of pinot noir and pilsner, the NATO buddies will celebrate their 60th anniversary summit. It has also been 26 years since the embarrassing disintegration of the Soviet Union. Hence the two-day celebrations! The clink of burgundy glasses notwithstanding, NATO is caught up in quick sands in Afghanistan. In a recent well-argued policy paper F. Stephen Larrabee, Distinguished Chair in European Security, Rand Corporation, goes on to deduce that NATO's very reputation is at stake in Afghanistan.

NATO seems to be losing it in the craggy hills and poppy meadows of Afghanistan. Since the invasion of this beautifully desolate country in 2001, NATO has lost close to 600 personnel. Taliban, rejuvenated and resurgent, backed by stealth elements in Pakistan’s notoriously naughty Inter-services Intelligence [without whom the cold war might still have been on] is back in business. The hugely influential American think-tank Brookings Institution [which everyone at Washington reveres] accurately sums it up: The south [of Afghanistan] is in worse shape. For the last two years, British, Canadian and Dutch troops have been fighting desperately to stabilize Kandahar, Helmand and Urzugan provinces against a determined Taliban based across the border in Pakistan.

Mullah Omar’s recent statements point to the audacity and confidence of Taliban. The one-eyed boss of Taliban [good plus bad] says that NATO forces will leave defeated shortly, like the Soviets in 1989. Omar has gone to the extent of offering NATO safe passage out of the country. All independent reports coming out of Afghanistan indicate that Taliban is encroaching steadily into the provinces around Kabul. In any case President Karzai’s writ is limited to the capital only. He faces elections in August and has begun to make tough noises. He has lost his mentor’s [US] blessing, which is openly calling him a useful idiot. When news reports in American and British newspapers start calling a foreign puppet government corrupt, it should consider its days numbered.

Amidst this escalation Obama, caught up neck deep in the recession ravel, is planning a charm offensive in Afghanistan. He is poised to increase troop levels pretty soon, perhaps by as many as 30,000. Tariq Ali, the brilliant British intellectual perhaps rightly points out that Obama advisors on Afghanistan are not on the button. One reason why NATO won’t succeed in the country is because they are by and large seen as complete aliens, talking an imperial language. They don't know anything about Afghanistan. Neither the language, nor the culture. Importantly the shelf life of any foreign army in Afghanistan has historically been limited.

Holbrooke is the special envoy in the region. Now the guy did help resolve Bosnia after the Balkan war. Since his arrival, there has been a sudden change in the American lexicon. The term ‘enemy combatant’ [made infamous by that Texan brute] has been dropped now. Suddenly there is good and bad Taliban. How does one determine who’s good and who’s bad Taliban, I asked the Afghanistan Ambassador to India, Sayed Makhdoom Raheen today. ‘Those who owe their allegiance to the constitution of Afghanistan and agree on a participatory democracy constitute the good Taliban’, Mr Ambassador replied. We can’t afford to lunch with that dreaded Omar, he chuckled to make it easier for me to place the bad Taliban. Simple. [Journalists are so dumb!]

Afghans have always been warriors. They have been weird in equal measures. Today, nearly 30 years after he was killed in a communist coup, Afghanistan’s president Mohammad Daud – who overthrew his cousin King Zahir Shah in 1973 and became the country's first president -- was reburied in Kabul. Since 1700 30 men have ruled Afghanistan [Karzai being the 30th]. Of these, only four served out their terms and died a natural death. Others were dethroned, assassinated, imprisoned, deposed and killed, deposed and exiled, deposed and hanged, beaten to death and so forth.

The country continues to baffle.

Sameer

Liberty

June was pretty eventful. It rained, clouds burst, lightening flickered and people shouted quite a bit. So while Europe played some spry football in relentless rain and as parts of India witnessed their first queer parade, Kashmir marched to re-claim its forest land. The endgame warmed some hearts and ached others. So while the Spaniards walked away with the UEFA cup and the unqueer bystanders watched the Delhi parade in a mix of horror and amusement, two significant things went completely unnoticed.

Both things concern us -- at a very basic level. And they are both connected to the larger question of human freedom and civil liberty. First, the US Supreme Court ruled on a key constitutional case. The 5-4 verdict stated that all prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay are now constitutionally entitled to bring Habeas Corpus in a federal court to challenge the legality of their detention, thus upholding the iconic right of any individual, whether guilty or not, to petition. Second, in the UK, the very courageous David Davis, Britain’s shadow home secretary shocked everyone when he resigned over a proposed 42-day detention plan [part of the Counter Terrorism Bill] authored by Messer’s Gordon Brown and co.

Both instances have been moral victories, if nothing else, for all those who value and cherish freedom and who find it preposterous that Prez Bush and his British acolytes are hell bent on trampling the fundamental freedoms of human beings. Bush, the war-monger, whose political countdown has already begun and who is, for sure, going to go down in text-books as a classical case of America’s most stupid Prez, began this by suspending the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of a human being -- the Habeas Corpus. Under Bush, anyone with a slightly different skin-hue, could arise the suspicion of the state, and hence could be held against his wish. Interrogated and thrown in some hell-hole to rot. Worse still, he could not fight or prove his innocence in any court of law. Thankfully the Supreme Court, in its June 2008 order, set the record straight -- while Bush is still in the dying days of his flawed Presidency. That is like one more egg on his arrogant face.

Across the Atlantic, continuing with the mini-me policies of the discredited Tony Blair, one fine afternoon Gordon Brown came up with his own parchment of draconian laws. He wanted to extend the detention period of anyone, innocent or otherwise, with a slightly different hue of skin -- and hence perfectly mistrustful -- to 42 full days from the current 28, reducing the emblematic and historic Magna Carta to a joke. Having convinced the Conservatives, Brown did manage to pass the parchment in the House of Commons. Just when it looked like a connivance, there was light: David Davis stood up in the Westminster to tell his own party and Brown -- that they had got it all messed up. Just like the kid in Andersen’s Emperors new clothes, he uttered the real truth: The 42-day joke was nothing more than an erosion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. David resigned, while Brown fumed. However hope bobbed in the island country.

As I post, a major poll for the respected Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has found that more than 61% of Britons believe six weeks detention is too long. The Upper house in the British Parliament or the House of Lords appears set to reject Brown’s parchment, since Labor has no majority in the upper house. Most political scientists in the UK now opine that the 42-day clause is almost certain to be scooped out of the Counter Terrorism Bill and thrown into history‘s trash bin. Meantime, David Davis is expected to do well, as he stands for a by-election tomorrow, having resigned his MP post on the issue, and stirring a nation-wide debate on liberty and rights in his country. I hope he makes it.

But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,
And give my rage a brother! Liberty!

Oscar Wilde wrote in the Sonnet to Liberty. It was in the 19th century. I am convinced he was right, then, as he sounds now.

Sameer

Friday, November 30, 2007

Old man and the sea

Why do we run into cul-de-sacs in life? Why do we change course suddenly only to go into maelstroms? Why do we run smooth and then tumble as we walk? Eventually we realize our mistake but it’s often too late. We sob as we look back on life, perhaps, because we know that deep down all of us are inherently human. Flawed. Animated. Shaky. Emotional.

Plato, the ancient Greek thinker, one of the world’s most influential philosophers, who walked on God’s green earth between 428-348 BC, waxes eloquent, “All learning has an emotional base.”

It didn’t come as a surprise to me that Musharraf choked with emotion and shed a tear, betraying his usual bravado, two times in as many days: First, as he bid farewell to his army and second time when he took oath as the civilian President of Pakistan. [The first military Gen to do so]

Often enough when there is an intense bout of wits between two warring factions and the more powerful one is made to eat humble pie, a sense of dreariness follows. Methinks Musharraf must be contemplating – and lamenting may be -- the enormous goodwill he earned when he took control of the rudderless ship -- called IRO [Islamic Republic of] Pakistan. Like an able captain, he put together a smart crew to navigate through some very rough waters. Everything looked right on.

Then something extraordinary happened. Another mighty ship [big, opulent, powerful like the Titanic] called America was attacked. 9-11. The day changed the world. NYC’s twin towers – iconic symbols of America’s corporate might were brought crumbling down in a matter of minutes. Pentagon – the military jugular of US power was set ablaze in broad daylight. It looked surreal but it was happening – across the Atlantic – on live TV. America got dandered up like that proverbial Spanish bull that is shown a rag. Bush’s war team decided to go rampaging. Their target was clear: Afghanistan.

The good old captain – Mushy -- was contacted mid-night and given a now-famous ultimatum. ‘You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists’. Period. Swiftly and prudently, a wooly-eyed Mushy got the message. He understood, as army commanders are expected to, rather quickly, that something major has happened. That geo-strategic alignments have altered overnight. Briskly, like a keen sailor, he decided to go with the favorable winds. With the west.

The war on terror was won, partly thanks to Mushy’s intelligence folks. They yanked the baddies out of their sleeping beds and turned them over to the US. Once more in history Pakistan rose to the occasion -- providing top level intel, bases, support and backup against the war on terror. Major terror networks and finances were frozen. This greatly angered the Islamists. OBL had a new foe.

The pragmatic captain’s ship had again meandered into rough waters. Between devil and the deep-sea. US, flush with a victory in Afghanistan, went onto mission Iraq, briefly forgetting about Pakistan [like post-soviet-Mujahidin times]. The attention ebbed. And the Islamist tribe in Pakistan grew. Their writ ran large. Suicide bombing became fashionable. They attacked Prez Mush a couple of times, even getting close to him. He survived each storm. The ship wobbled a little but sailed on.

Suddenly a judge from Baluchistan, who used to dye his hair and moustaches black every morning, decided to play tough. He wanted the names of tribals and other blokes who went missing during the war on terror. Now some of these guys had already been handed over to the US, some imprisoned in Afghanistan and some very high value detainees lodged in Guantanamo bay. I am sure some guys must have been eliminated by the military intelligence – either during the round up or in gun-battles. Judge Ifty was summoned to Army House, Rawalpindi and as is the norm in military, told to put in his papers. When he refused [and the army is not programmed to hear Nays] he was suspended.

The decision was to prove shellacking. Around this time, the captain of the ship alienated some of his passengers. Most of the people traveling aboard the ship had been a secular majority but they thought of the captain as being too tough, too pro-west, too dictatorial and hence planned to thrown him into the sea. The tide turned. I wonder what went through Mushy’s head as he shed the first tear this Wednesday. Was he recounting those ill fated hours when he decided to kick out the corny judge. Soon after the lawyers rebelled. Nawaz came back from exile and was promptly dispatched back. Another mistake. Another tear.

And then the beauty – Benazir -- sashayed down the aisle of the ship. The ramp didn’t burn. Instead 150 people were incinerated. It was a clear message of how far the extremists could go. The court, with the dyed hair judge in control once more, was playing truant again. The captain decided to change direction of the ship and instead made the judge with a grudge, annoying journalists, several lawyers and other trouble makers walk the plank. Another fluke. More Tears.

The rest, as they say, is history. As the countdown to the D-day [general elections in Jan 2008] begins, the crew on the ship has changed and the captain, like Archibald Haddock, is more sober now. Big bro, US is pleased again [often a good sign]. In the next 40 days, we will see a mixture of good, bad and the ugly happening on the ship. Fisticuffs may break out. The beauty [West backed], the old warhorse [Saudi blessing], two brothers from Punjab called the Chowdarys [Mushy favor] and other motley crowd. The captain stays albeit his guns have been taken away from him. We have a new first mate -- Kiyani -- on the ship. He, they tell us, will control the direction now. The captain will only guide. No more flukes.

The ship sails on.

Sameer

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Emergency!

The excitement is over. Pakistan is finally under a state of emergency. It had been on cards for quite some time but mid-morning calls from Condy Rice -- in the past -- procrastinated the announcement. I reckon, Mush could hold it no more. Permission from DC came in the end. A public statement by White House [official] can safely be ignored. The military has completely taken over now, as I post [18:30 IST], while the constitution has been put under an animated suspension.

Fundamental rights may go out of the window. That is often the first causality in such a scenario. The judiciary will now be effectively muzzled and the freshly active political parties will go back to their cocoon. Media would be put on a tight leash. The all-powerful Pakistan army is now expected to flex its muscles and a heavy crack down on the gun-totting bad-guys is imminent.

Mush is shortly expected to address the nation explaining reasons for imposition of emergency. I think a new temporary constitution called provisional constitutional order (PCO) will come into effect. It would replace the original constitution of Pakistan. Under Pakistani law, emergency can be imposed only when the security of the country is under threat. The PCO gives sweeping powers to the Prez.

Looks like Mush took the extreme step because Pakistan was fast slipping into anarchy. Extremists were on the prowl. Everywhere. They first attacked Benazir’s convoy, killing 150. Then they struck near the Prez house, another daring suicide attack. Emboldened, a few days later they ripped apart an air force bus, killing a dozen officers. An antiquated radical culture was taking root. Balochistan is on boil. The insurgency in the volatile NWPF is spearheaded by the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM), a banned Islamic organization. In Swat, armed tribals have been parading captured Pakistani troops like prized trophies. This was clearly sending a wrong signal in the command and control.

As if it was not enough, an increasingly active judiciary, which has been looking into the petitions filed against Mush’s re-run for presidency was making more trouble for him. The Supreme Court was expected to deliver a verdict validating/invalidating his second term as Prez in the next couple of days. Also the much talked about American backed deal with Ms Bhutto, it now appears, was not working out.

As we wait for a word from Mush, Democracy in Pakistan has been put on the backburner. The activist CJ of Pakistan’s Supreme Court can now water his manicured lawns. A new CJ may be sworn in any moment. Nawaz can stay put in the Jeddah palace. The radical blokes in the NWFP should now gear up for a tough, long, bloody fight including aerial attacks [complete with laser guided precision bombs] with the Pakistan military.

Reports are coming in that Benazir is on her way back to Pakistan from Dubai where she had gone to see her family. The tribals, calling for imposition of Sharia [Religious rule] in the sensitive Swat, have a visceral hatred for both Bhutto and Mush, whom they see as America's gophers.

Can Mush tame the ultraists? Does the deal with Bhutto still hold? Pakistani politics, as ever, remains ever so unpredictable. Bizzare.

Sameer