A way out

The judiciary too has said that it will not be thwarted from ‘doing justice’, which is invariably interpreted as a desire to nail Mr Zardari in the cases against him.

Zafar Hilaly

It took three months to shape the battlefield in South Waziristan before the army moved against the TTP. It will take longer for Mr Zardari's opponents to shape the political battlefield before operations to remove him commence. Skirmishing has been under way for some time.
Much of the press has been won over and this is evident by the manner in which papers with the largest circulation are baying for his blood. The majority of TV anchors too are ill disposed towards him, judging by the amount of bile they exude at the mere mention of his name.
The judiciary too has said that it will not be thwarted from 'doing justice', which is invariably interpreted as a desire to nail Mr Zardari in the cases against him.
His coalition partners, fearing taint by association, have been quick to publicly distance themselves from him at the first sign of trouble whatever they may be saying to him, and his emissaries, in private.
As for the military's contrived disinterest in politics and the fate of Mr Zardari, it fools no one. We know that they have the deepest interest in who leads Pakistan. Their focus has, alas, always been on the person rather than the process and how amenable he is to their demands and whether he shares, in the main, their worldview of the direction in which the nation is headed.
As for the hapless public, they are forever on the qui vive for someone who will deliver them from the current perdition that seems their fate. Sensing that Mr Zardari is not the knight in shining armour that they pray for, he having failed to persuade them that he is, they are psychologically ready for change.
And finally the Americans, who are watching aghast at the government's flaying efforts to get its act together, are now at the point that they privately concede that while the next man may do no better, he can hardly do any worse.
In a sense, therefore, just about everything is ready for the big push and every day brings fresh evidence of the looming battle. The decision of Nawaz Sharif not to contest the Rawalpindi election is put down to his belief that as another election is round the corner, why bother being part of the current defunct parliament. The MQM's antics are meant to clear the decks of obstacles to what will surely be, unless the election commission summons up the courage to intervene, its inevitable 'landslide' victory whenever elections are held in their urban fiefdoms in Sindh. Lyari, the sole PPP stronghold in Karachi, now appears like the beleaguered Alamo ripe for the taking.
The Sindh ANP, torn between protecting Pathans in Karachi and losing pelf and the little power that it enjoys as a member of the increasingly ramshackle coalition that pretends to govern Pakistan, is at its wits' end. It knows what it should do but cannot bring itself to do it.
News that NAB has moved to freeze presidential assets in Sindh hardly stirred any interest. It is common knowledge that the judges have the bit between their teeth and there is no stopping them.
Whether all that is happening is part of a grand design or merely coincidental is difficult to say but the unmistakeable feeling that the decisive battle is about to begin is all around us.
Mr Zardari, a veritable political Houdini, must be fashioning his strategy. What can he do? His minions have loudly proclaimed their intention of galvanising Sindh, even if it comes to threatening the federation, if his party is hounded out of office. But however much Mr Zulfiqar Mirza may rant and scream at the antics of the MQM, the choice the PPP faces is stark. Put up with them or lose power in Islamabad; and that is a prospect that Mr Zardari is not prepared to countenance. He intends instead to cave in to the MQM at the cost of further depleting his popularity, if that is possible.
Mr Zardari could also, as he seems to be doing, use intermediaries to mend fences with the army, the judiciary and the press. But he must know that if you live among wolves it is no use acting like sheep; you must act like a fox. But then, as we know too well, however cunning the fox may be it is usually run to the ground. In fact, if one looks around and sees the amount of fox pelts in some countries, one wonders whether the fox really deserves its reputation for cunning. No, acting like a fox will not help Mr Zardari.
What will help is for him to act as a statesman but more so as a populist politician, which he in fact is. These traits may appear mutually exclusive but they need not be. There are several recent examples in the third world of leaders who were able to combine them effectively.
Mr Zardari needs to pitch his appeal to the people above the heads of his conniving opponents and the establishment, which while it has repeatedly shown cannot be out foxed, can be surprised and is at a loss to know how to react when it comes to tackling a leader who promises to break the mould in which politics has been cast.
Mr Zardari will discover that the defiance of established authority, social and political, religious and secular, is what Pakistanis today are primed to do if only they had a leader to guide them. And if he is prepared to assume that role Mr Zardari will further discover that the populace will warm to him. Hence, perhaps his approach should be somewhat along these lines as he addresses gatherings: "The time has come. There is a terrific thunder cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up. It is going to blow away all this hopelessness, joblessness, idleness and the indifference to your fate that exists today."
After all, what does Mr Zardari have to lose by becoming a populist? Why not be one? We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan. He can be reached at charles123it@hotmail.com

  An unwinnable war

The American withdrawal, when it does take place, should not be viewed as the result of a negotiated settlement. It should be seen as retreat from a war that was found to be unwinnable.

Anwar Syed

The Taliban are fundamentalist, militant Muslims who are persuaded that they alone are the true believers and all others who claim to be Muslim are in fact hypocrites who deserve to be thrown out of the pale of Islam or, better still, eliminated. They also want to drive the western powers and their 'pernicious' influences out of the Muslim world.
No wonder then that 'nominal' Muslims and western people consider the Taliban a dangerous lot to be subdued, chased out of their present locations and, if necessary, killed. Enormous amounts of money, weapons and manpower have been deployed in recent years to eradicate them, but this enterprise has not so far been successful. The Taliban have occasionally suffered reverses and dispersed, but they have subsequently reassembled and reorganised themselves as a force capable of disrupting the existing order of things.
More than 100,000 American troops were stationed in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban from taking Kabul and other large towns. President Obama has recently decided to send another 30,000 to supplement the existing force level. The American mission in Afghanistan is made particularly difficult by the fact that President Hamid Karzai's government is generally seen as corrupt, ineffective and a product of rigged elections. It is to be noted also that America's military and political presence in Afghanistan is costing the country something like a billion dollars a month.
President Obama has decided to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. The withdrawal is to begin next year. The cost of continued engagement is one reason for this decision. But the president may also have figured that there is nothing in or about Afghanistan that involves America's vital interests. It is said in certain quarters that Afghanistan's strategic location will enable anyone stationed there to keep an eye on the Central Asian states, and that any oil pipeline coming out of one of these states and going east has to pass through Afghanistan at least part of the way. This is not good reasoning.
The US government does not need these facilities. Its satellites, revolving around the earth, take pictures of every inch of the ground below. Its people do not have to sit in Afghanistan to know of the happenings in Central Asia. American oil companies can negotiate transit fees that may have to be paid to the government in Kabul for the pipeline's passage through Afghanistan. It should be noted also that Afghanistan is a small and poor country with little of known resources that outsiders may covet.
It follows that there is no good reason for America to keep its forces in Afghanistan. What is likely to happen when they leave? Critics of American policy say that if the forces withdraw and leave the country to rival factions, a ruinous civil war will follow with the Taliban re-emerging as a potent force and capturing power to become rulers of Afghanistan once again.
The American withdrawal, when it does take place, should not be viewed as the result of a negotiated settlement. It should be seen as retreat from a war that was found to be unwinnable.
As a Taliban regime in Kabul settles down to governing, it will find that it cannot operate in isolation from the rest of the world, and that it has to do business with other governments, which it cannot on its terms. It will have to bend to the rules and usages of international politics. In other words, it will mature and mellow as most revolutionary movements do if they are to survive the opposition they have generated. The rest of the world, including America, will also be prepared in time to do business with a Taliban government in Kabul.
Let us now come to the problem that Pakistan faces with the Taliban within its own territory, particularly its tribal regions. Not only do these militants think that they alone are the true Muslims, they believe that they are also entitled to enforce their ways on others and kill them if they don't submit.
Their way includes strict segregation of men and women and, for the most part, women's confinement to their homes. If they must go out, they should be fully covered and accompanied by a close male relative. They may not work in places where men are present. The Taliban are opposed to modern, western type of education and they have closed, even burnt down, schools. The Taliban are exclusively concerned with establishing their writ through religious dogma, and they have no interest in the good health or even survival of Pakistan as a state. They are convinced also that if their version of Islam is to be implemented, they must be the rulers.
They want the state and government of Pakistan to step out of their way, and since they won't yield, the Taliban are at war with them. The government of Pakistan, on its part, also regards its confrontation with the Taliban as a war. The Pakistan Army has been fighting them for some time. We may be sure that this is going to be a long haul, for the Taliban are tough fighters, well supplied with funds, and well equipped with modern weapons which they are trained to use.


The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics. anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Ban this ban!

From France to Sweden, rightwing elements are up in arms against these roughly 2,000 burqas, supposedly for the rescue of European Enlightenment.

Farooq Sulehria

Absurdities come in many varieties. The latest example is the French ban on burqa. Worse, the French action is proving contagious.
In Denmark, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who heads a right-wing government, has hinted at a ban on burqa, even though no woman in Denmark wears it. The notorious rightwing Jyllands Posten newspaper had to retract a story that three or four women wear it in Denmark. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden is being quizzed by the press corps on the subject of burqa.
But the respective countries' media have found merely 100 women in Sweden and 1,900 in France who wear burqa. A sizable minority among burqa-clad women consists of European converts. From France to Sweden, rightwing elements are up in arms against these roughly 2,000 burqas, supposedly for the rescue of European Enlightenment.
However, only three decades ago, rightwing governments in France encouraged Muslim immigrants to grow beards and wear burqas. Islamised immigrants were considered a safe bet against unionised immigrants.
The ultimate victim of the burqa ban is enlightenment itself, even though the effort to undermine enlightenment is sophisticated, with Europe's culture being invoked. How absurd! Enlightenment does not need protection by governments headed by rightwing politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy. If Pakistan were to go Taliban tomorrow and the Taliban imposed burqa on Pakistani women, they would justify their action by invoking the French ban on burqa. No one banned burqa in Pakistan, but no woman in my family wears it anymore, although my mother used to.
By the way, long before Sarkozy's France got alarmed at burqa, the founding fathers of Muslim countries like Turkey and Tunis, Mustafa Kemal Atarurk and Habib Bourguiba, had banned headscarves - for entirely different reasons though. In both these countries now, many young women wear headscarves, as a symbol of defiance. Last year in Istanbul, I saw a girl in a Che-shirt, with her head covered by a headscarf. Ironically, Islamists have thrice won general elections in Atarurk's Turkey. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Islamist. Bans never work.
The burqa ban is a discriminatory measure directed not merely against French Muslims but ultimately against the democratic rights of the entire working class of France. Instead of leading to integration, the ban on burqa will contribute to anti-immigrant and communalist sentiments, thus fuelling divisions among French citizens. The Nazis targeted Jews before settling scores with broad layers of the working masses.
The ban negates the basic rights of religious freedom and a citizen's control over his or her own body. It grants the French state new powers to intervene in matters of individual choice on what dress to wear. In essence, it is false to equate the progressive democratic principle of secularism (separation of church and state) with a government edict that abridges individuals' right to dress the way they want.
In a grotesque way, the French ban is France's "Talibanisation." Many proponents of the ban claim that it is directed against the oppression of women, of which the burqa is a symbol. This argument is an example of sophistry. It is impossible to attribute a democratic and liberating character to a law that stigmatises an entire group of people, based on their dress choice.
The inevitable result of this discriminatory law will be to encourage the development of religious separatism and communalist thinking among Muslim immigrants who feel, justifiably, that they are being singled out for persecution. Religious prejudices can be fought back through the political development and education of the masses in the struggle for democratic rights, not through state decrees imposed from above, by governments that serve the interests of the elite.


Email: mfsulehria@hotmail.com