Towards a mutual knockout?

IN the aftermath of the Afghanistan affair and the shooting events of December 13 in the outer precincts of the Indian parliament, both Pakistan and India are gravitating once again in the direction of an acute confrontation with each other in Kashmir as well as on their common international borders. India has not only moved troops up but Pakistan has done likewise and we are fast approaching an eyeball to eyeball situation. This is indeed now and here a major threat to world peace that we are faced with in our own backyards.

Both countries will only have themselves to blame if the situation gets out of control and the subcontinent of South Asia goes up in the flames of conventional and/or nuclear war. History will of course condemn the leaderships of both countries in all sorts of ways but that would just about be a ‘post facto’ academic exercise of no use to anyone.

An old adage says that wisdom lies in acting well in advance before the event and not afterwards. Both countries need to immediately return to the dialogue table in searching for an immediate ‘modus vivendi’ that can eventually be enlarged into a lasting peace in South Asia. India being the larger country, of course, has a double-duty to contribute towards peace and reduce tension in the South Asian region.

Many people in Pakistan talk about the need to have an international third party mediator for sorting out the Pakistan-India relationship as if there is some magic attached to mediation. The history of mediations is that they only complicate matters and also worsen the situations that are already bad on the ground. The case of the Palestinian-Israeli mediations is a vivid example of how much bad blood can take place between parties which subject themselves to the mediation process and that too after having signed an international agreement to have a peaceful settlement i.e. the Oslo Agreement.

Every one who turned up as a mediator in the Middle East has only made matters worse between the Palestinians and the Israelis — the latest of them being the luckless retired US Marine General Anthony Zinni.

If anything can and should bring peace to the South Asian region it is through a compact between the countries that constitute this region. It is therefore essential that instead of debunking the Simla Pact of 1972 we ought to be invoking it to seek a meeting with India under its umbrella. It is an agreement which India has consistently upheld and which in effect is also what the western powers have been publicly urging us to act upon.

In fact that is the only possible respectable recourse we have available to us in a rapidly worsening international situation. This will not be pussyfooting on our part by any means. We are signatories to the Simla Agreement as is India. And the great thing about this agreement is that it is bilateral and does not ruffle the sensitivities of any of the interested parties. All that it says is that differences between Pakistan and India must be ironed out between them without any outside third party interventions.

Both countries have enough statecraft and maturity available at their disposal to be able to rise to the occasion. The Lahore Agreement of 1999 and the starting of the Lahore process by the top leaders of Pakistan and India provides enough evidence of the possibilities of establishing good relations between the two countries.

But what do we have facing us today — a confrontation with very disastrous possibilities. The lesson that we need to learn from the recent happenings in Afghanistan and the cumulative effects of our past mistakes is that we were unable even in the record time of 20 years available to us to work out a regional settlement of the Afghan problem. Instead of working out some sort of a condominium settlement over there in cooperation with Iran the other significant neighbour of Afghanistan, we let things drift for years altogether and instead attempted a shabby writ on the Pakhtun part of Afghanistan via the Taliban whom we failed to effectively control and who created any number of problems for us. Is it not therefore quite paradoxical that the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Iran could only get together and discuss cooperation among themselves after both countries had been effectively pushed out from positions of being able to influence events in Afghanistan.

That indeed is the story of the recent past. Now that the focus after Afghanistan having shifted to Kashmir in a broader Pakistan-India situation on the issue of cross-border terrorism what can we reasonably expect to happen in the future? Our track record has not been very impressive as we have in the past displayed a lot of ineptitude that is evidence of a gross lack of anticipation of international events and an inability to manage ourselves from being taken by surprise.

Both countries have already moved their troops and other ancillary forces right up to the border. The slightest false move from either side can trigger full-scale war with all its attendant effects. The Indians have indeed been acting a lot cockier this time and it is difficult to know as to how much international support they may be having in making their current moves.

The situation is thus perfectly poised for the arrival of foreign emissaries in the subcontinent as peace-brokers. One must not forget that each such envoy carries with him a tight brief that he must follow and that brief will not necesssarily be for the benefit of the peoples of the subcontinent. It would therefore be advisable that both countries should, before this starts to happen, open up their own direct diplomatic channels and start cooling off things before we make a laughing stock of ourselves before the world.

The paradox is that we happen to be abysmally poor nations and we also seem to have a high propensity of waging war against each other at a time when we are heavily indebted. We only have to take a look at the Middle East elsewhere where mediations by third parties have played such havoc with the local issues. We must settle our subcontinental squabbles among ourselves without running from pillar to post. No wonder Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first and most revered prime minister, was extremely averse to outside mediation in the disputes between Pakistan and India. The same has been the line taken by Prime Minister Vajpayee and it is surprising that he should be cosying up so much to the outside world of late in the wake of the September 2001 happenings.

Pakistan needs to engage India actively as part of a long-range policy. If we have to get anything out of each other it will have to be through the conduct of civilized modes of diplomacy, good manners and politeness towards each other. The cultures of the subcontinent call for a raising of the quality as well as the quantity of the Pakistan-India interaction. Both peoples expect it and we owe it to them that the respective power elites of the two countries take the lead in developing a very special relationship between themselves.

Both countries have indeed made mistakes in the past. But that does not mean that corrective steps cannot be taken now prospectively. If we do not heed the requirements and the demands of the people and continue to play in the hands of the more powerful international players, we may only be inviting catastrophes in South Asia. Pakistan and India should try to avoid mediations in their ‘inter se’ relationship because these will be the forerunners of foreign interventions and re-establish a permanent foreign presence on our soils. This must never be allowed to happen. After all, both countries are philosophically committed to never allowing another East India Company in the subcontinent.

Our respective founders struggled to rid the subcontinent of foreign hegemony. Pakistan’s Founder Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was always committed to a healthy and robust Pakistan-India relationship. Kashmir is an important issue between the two countries but that is not the only problem between us. There are many urgent and burning issues that need to be addressed simultaneously by both countries in cooperation with each other as well as individually.

We must therefore return to the Simla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore process of 1999 and take regular and frequent steps of engaging each other. We are not novice countries that we should be needing mediators, advisers and tutors. We must behave maturely and responsibly within our respective countries as well as abroad. In the instant case of Kashmir and the connected cross-border terrorism issue we need to calm each other rather than cause undue excitement. Think of the thousands of people on both sides of the Pakistan-India border who are right now in the process of being displaced from their villages and homes to provide the space for troop movements and possible hostilities.

If the two countries are not careful in the current situation that has arisen in the region there is the very real danger of both finding themselves totally ousted from the Kashmir jigsaw to their utter surprise and long-term discomfort. A repeat of how Afghanistan has gone cannot be ruled out in Kashmir unless Pakistan and India are able to collect themselves. Because right now Pakistan and India in their current war-like mood are only hurtling towards finding themselves mutually knocked out of Kashmir specifically to the benefit of third parties.

Brinkmanship with a vengeance

THE last “dosti bus” from Lahore left for its destination, New Delhi, on Saturday. It will not make a return journey as a result of the Indian government’s decision to shut down all means of people-to-people contact between Pakistan and India.

This and other measures announced by New Delhi in the past few days are even perceived as a prelude to an armed conflict between the two countries. Saner elements on both sides of the border, however, believe that yet another war will only be one more act of futility, leading to nothing but greater misery and hardship for the people of two of the poorest nations in the world.

In a crude replication of what the US was able to do in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, India has appealed for international support for what it has been describing as Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The words of a leading Indian columnist, Tavleen Singh, seem to have fallen on deaf ears of leaders in her country. Writing in India Today, in early November when the US-led war against Al Qaeda was at its peak, she said: “...the International community finds it hard to put terrorism in Kashmir in the same category as what happened in New York and Washington on September 11. Our tirade against terrorism will only be taken seriously if we make a genuine attempt at finding a political solution in Kashmir because, whether we like to admit it or not, there is a political problem that has so far not been addressed...”

Pakistan’s position on the matter is exactly what Tavleen Singh has said. She has also put it quite bluntly that Prime Minister Vajpayee’s attempts at finding a political solution in Kashmir have been “feeble at best, farcical at worst.”

If the Indian prime minister wants to emulate, in respect of Pakistan, the role that President Bush is playing vis-a-vis Afghanistan, he has obviously failed to fully grasp the lessons of the international coalition’s war against the Taliban. Despite all his jingoistic bluster, it cannot be said that President Bush has established himself as something of a hero. Because of his arrogance and dictatorial style of conducting the campaign against terrorism, he has only succeeded in alienating large sections of the people generally, Muslims in particular, in many parts of the world. New Delhi has adopted a war-like posture and taken steps which can only make Pakistan greatly concerned about India’s real intentions. Since a terrorist attack on India’s parliament house on December 13, New Delhi has incessantly accused Pakistan of complicity in the incident. No serious attempt has been made however, to provide any credible evidence in support of the charges made against this country and yet the rhetoric of many Indian leaders has been becoming increasingly sharp and shrill. The Indian media have also stepped up their propaganda against Pakistan. Indian forces in substantial strength, backed by missiles, air cover and heavy armour, have been deployed along the two countries’ international border and threats have been held out of attacks against what New Delhi calls the bases of the terrorist groups operating from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.

Despite grave provocations, Pakistan has been demonstrating a remarkable degree of restraint and patience. On Aug 14, President Musharraf recalled the Quaid-i-Azam’s statement 53 years ago, in response to a journalist’s question, that Pakistan and India could come to a peaceful settlement of their differences provided New Delhi was prepared to face the realities. Gen Musharraf has vowed to crack down on extremist groups in Pakistan accused of attacking the Indian parliament provided any proof was made available. Earlier, he proposed to India a joint inquiry or an investigation by an international agency. But this was rejected out of hand.

Instead, the Indian government first decided to recall its high commissioner from Islamabad, and followed this up with a series of actions, including a ban on flights over India by the Pakistani airlines, and suspension of road and rail links between Lahore and New Delhi — something that can hurt only the lower income people wishing to travel from one country to the other. It also imposed a reduction of the staff at the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi by 50 per cent. Pakistan has had no alternative but to respond with matching steps.

India has also rejected a US proposal for talks between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the occasion of the forthcoming SAARC summit in Kathmandu. The international community feels deeply disturbed at the heightening of tensions in South Asia, particularly because both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear weapons which may come into play should open hostilities break out at some stage.

Diplomatic moves to defuse the crisis are said to be under way at the initiative of major powers. British prime minister Tony Blair is due to visit New Delhi within next two or three days and there have been reports about Washington wanting to send a high-level emissary to the subcontinent on a peace mission. Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that India is amenable to any counsel for restraint. There has been intermittent cross-border shelling in the area linking Jammu (in Indian occupied Kashmir) to Sialkot in Pakistan. The problem with a situation of this nature is that any odd incident could get out of hand and trigger a bigger flare-up. For their part, though, senior spokesmen of Pakistan foreign office and military establishment have categorically ruled out a resort to the nuclear option.

It is unfortunate that India has decided to adopt a war-like posture on the pretext of Pakistan’s alleged support to fundamentalist militants at a time when President Pervez Musharraf has reaffirmed his opposition to all kinds of terrorism. New Delhi does not seem to appreciate that its bellicosity can hamper Pakistan’s current efforts to rein in the fanatical elements.

Fundamentalist militancy, an offshoot of the jihadi culture promoted and practised by the Taliban regime while it was in power in Afghanistan, has been a cause of great disruption and anxiety in Pakistan itself. Gen Pervez Musharraf has taken firm action against several of the known militant groups and put a stop to their activity in Pakistan and frozen their assets.

The US is concerned about the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, pointing out that Pakistanis duly mindful of the need to curb terrorism, implying that India is exaggerating Pakistan’s perceived role in the attack on the Indian parliament building. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, has spoken of the action taken by Pakistan against terrorist organizations and specifically noted its action of placing some 50 extremists under arrest.

In addition to the US, the European nations, China and the UN have urged the leaders of the two countries to step back from the brink and talk about their differences at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu. India does not appear to be in a mood to listen to any such advice for peace and sanity. Its home minister Lal Krishna Advani has gone on record saying that India was ready for a “decisive battle.”

In contrast, President Musharraf, while addressing Pakistan’s Economic Board (EBA) over the weekend, asserted that Pakistan stood for peace. He did not believe that despite India’s brinkmanship, there would be a war between Pakistan and India. Accordingly, while stressing the need for peaceful negotiations to settle all outstanding issues, the Pakistan president has made it clear that the government has taken all possible measures “to protect every inch of the land.”

Pakistan was never opposed to the idea of seeking external help in resolving its bilateral differences with India. Western diplomats in Islamabad are reportedly of the view that India’s strategy of putting too much pressure on Pakistan can prove counterproductive. As one of them has said, if India pulls too hard on the cord, it could break.

The inimitable Suhrawardy: OF MICE AND MEN

RECENTLY there was an exchange of letters in the correspondence columns of this newspaper on the post-partition politics of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Prime Minister from September 1956 to October 1957, in the particular context of the unity of east and West Pakistan.

The discussion also prompted a letter from his grand-daughter, Barrister Shahida Jamil, currently Federal Law Minister. This made me look at the chapter on Mr Suhrawardy in Abdul Qayyum’s book Three Presidents, Three Prime Ministers, published in 1996.

Once my boss in provincial information, Mr Qayyum had served six rulers of Pakistan, variously as PRO, speech-writer and adviser on sensitive correspondence, and I had found his chapter on Mr Suhrawardy throwing light on some facets of the great man’s official acts and personal traits which are normally missed by biographers. Let me quote him on the subject of the discussion in Dawn:

“Suhrawardy’s commitment to Pakistan as a single, united nation was an article of faith with him. His patriotism as a citizen of Pakistan could never be questioned. He would always attempt to put in perspective the ‘grievances’ of East Pakistan whenever the issue was raised by Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman. There were several occasions when he ticked off Mujib when he thought him to be getting too emotional. Mujib would often turn to me for succour. Pressing my knees, as he was wont to, he would say, ‘Qayyum Bhai, please tell Netaji (as they all called Suhrawardy) not to rebuke me in front of others.”

Again, “Referring to relations between the two wings of Pakistan while addressing a mammoth public meeting at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka on 26 March 1957, Suhrawardy said, ‘There is no difference between East and West Pakistan. We are Pakistanis first and Pakistanis last. It is wrong to say that West Pakistan has been oppressing East Pakistan. The same set of people who have oppressed you have oppressed West Pakistan. We are one. Our prestige is founded on the sense of unity. My one success has been that I have removed mutual hatred from Pakistan’.”

In this regard Mr Qayyum has very firm views and says, “It is my firm conviction — however misplaced in many a myopic eye — that had Suhrawardy not got caught up in Pakistan’s ‘political phenomenon,’ and been allowed to pursue his cardinal objective of holding a general election, as he stated on assuming the office of prime minister, the nation would have been spared the ordeal of successive military regimes and the separation of East Pakistan.”

By Pakistan’s political phenomenon Mr Qayyum probably means the machinations, more aptly illustrated by the Urdu expression jor tor, of President Iskander Mirza who was a pastmaster in maintaining his authority by letting political parties fight. Mr Suhrawardy’s tenure ended when Mirza threatened to dismiss him if he did not resign because he had exposed the treachery of the Republican Party which was his Awami League’s coalition partner in the government. The Republican Party was Mirza’s own political offspring. Mr Qayyum narrates an interesting reaction to the event.

He says: “Suhrawardy’s resignation was so unexpected and sudden that the entire nation — except, presumably, those involved in palace cliques and intrigues — was stunned. The students of the University of Karachi put up a full page advertisement in Dawn inviting applications for the ‘most temporary post of Prime Minister of Pakistan’ from those who would ‘be willing to get the boot without notice’.”

Mr Qayyum’s account of his days with Mr Suhrawardy is replete with stories of his political sagacity, his informal and human approach to life, complete indifference to vanity and pomp, the equal ease with which he talked to the lowliest in his country and the highest in world councils, his love of music and dancing, and (something never seen in any Pakistan leader) is dauntless courage in the face of physical danger. Of this last he cites two instances.

Mr Suhrawardy had decided to address a public meeting in Lahore’s Mochi Gate where the atmosphere was very hostile and the crowd (according to intelligence reports) ready for violence because of his avowed advocacy of joint electorates. Governor M.A. Gurmani advised against going there. But when he added that he couldn’t guarantee the PM’s safety and would not like to be held responsible for physical harm to his person, Suhrawardy asked for pen and paper and wrote a signed note: “Despite the Governor’s advice to the contrary I am attending the Mochi Gate meeting. Should any harm come to me, including losing my life, he should not be held responsible.” Then, handing this note to an aghast Gurmani, he drove off.

At Mochi Gate the air rang with shouts and abuses. Ignoring the hail of stones and invective, the PM took his stand firmly at the microphone and said that in a democracy every citizen had the right to express his views. If anyone in the crowd wanted to speak first he was welcome to take the microphone. When no one came up, he began to speak, on and on, till the shouting died down. Miraculously, when he ended after forty minutes, he was greeted with “Suhrawardy zindabad!” The second instance was when public opinion in the country was terribly agitated by the invasion of the Suez Canal area by Britain, France and Israel. A violent crowd of Karachi University students marched to the PM House and wanted to go inside. This was of course not allowed but they refused to go back. On hearing their shouts Mr Suhrawardy came to the gate and asked for a police van fitted with a loudspeaker. He climbed on to the roof of the van, microphone in hand. The guard did not want to open the gate for him but he ordered them to step aside.

On seeing him come out like this there was a stunned silence. He spoke to the students for nearly half an hour and explained the situation to them in logical words. So persuasive and impressive was his eloquence that the boys dispersed peacefully.

Mr Suhrawardy died in Beirut. I shall conclude this piece with his funeral in Dhaka where literally a sea of humanity was present to bury him in the grounds of the High Court. Many glowing tributes were paid to his qualities as a person and a political leader, but what his famous and trusted colleague Abul Hashim said of him must rank as the most striking. “He died a magnificent pauper, receiving the burial of an emperor.”

Crisis in Argentina

THE political crisis that has engulfed Argentina puts in jeopardy everything the country has accomplished since the end of military rule in 1983.

Against expectations, Argentina had created a constitutional democracy and vanquished hyperinflation; it undertook, but recently failed to see through, brave free-market reforms. Now the departure of President Fernando de la Rua leaves a vacuum that could be filled by the ghosts of Argentina’s history. Market reform could be replaced by economic populism. And unless the country’s political class pulls together to avert a constitutional crisis, the military may be tempted to return to politics.

The task now for Argentina’s leaders is to come to the defence of the nation’s democracy, while recognizing that the recent course of economic policy needs responsible adjustment. In the weeks leading up to the crisis, the government recklessly refused to grapple with the recession by embracing either of the two remedies available: an explicit default on the country’s unpayable debt or a devaluation of its currency.

Instead, the de la Rua administration maintained that it could muddle through by forcing ever more austerity on a public that had already suffered plenty. —The Washington Post

America’s elusive quarry: WORLD VIEW

We seek him here, we seek him there,

— Baroness Orczy, 1905

WHETHER or not Osama bin Laden deserves to be dubbed the Green — or perhaps Black — Pimpernel, he has certainly proved adept at playing cat-and-mouse games with the United States. The State Department and the Pentagon, both of which confess to being virtually clueless as to his whereabouts, have relegated the hunt for Osama bin Laden to a relative sideshow.

Donald Rumsfeld has taken to crowing about the rout of the Taliban — as if anyone could have believed that the Islamist militia had the resources to withstand an all-out air assault by the US. He conveniently forgets that his nation claimed to have embarked upon the so-called war against terror in an effort to track down Osama bin Laden; the fall of the Taliban regime was supposed to be no more than a desirable side-effect.

But, then, the US has never been particularly averse to twisting the facts to suit its (invariably pernicious) purposes. To cite a rather obvious example, President George W. Bush went out of his way to describe the September 11 atrocities as an act of war rather a terrorist attack. Yet the Al Qaeda and Taliban recruits in the US and Afghan custody are apparently to be designated as detainees rather than prisoners of war, because the latter option would make it necessary to treat them according to humanitarian principles outlined by the Red Cross, and make it difficult to subject them to the summary military trials that the US has in mind.

It is certainly interesting that the US plans to hold such prisoners at its military facility at Guantanamo Bay, a slice of Cuba that it imperialistically occupies against the will of the Cubans — a brazen act that wouldn’t stand up to strict scrutiny under international law, any more than the embargo against Cuba, which continues to be tightened 40 years after the revolution that overthrew an American puppet regime. Mr Rumsfeld has said that he does not anticipate any quarrel with Fidel Castro over this move. He is probably not mistaken in this regard, but that is only because the Cubans have no say whatsoever in what goes on at Guantanamo Bay. As for Osama bin Laden, his fate continues to arouse speculation. President Pervez Musharraf has indicated that his corpse may lie buried somewhere amid the rubble at Tora Bora. That is, of course, not entirely improbable. Yet the latest video release, courtesy Al Jazeera, suggests that the Al Qaeda chief was alive and kicking until three weeks or so ago. And an Afghan foreign ministry spokesman has suggested that Osama may have found refuge in Pakistan. Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai saw no reason to endorse this claim, and the Pentagon does not appear to be taking it too seriously so far.

Were the US to indeed begin suspecting that Osama is holed up somewhere in Pakistan, it would in all likelihood insist upon Pakistani forces capturing him and handing him over within days. Should they fail, parts of Pakistan would not be spared the sort of medicine administered to Afghanistan. It’s worth noting that this medicine did not consist exclusively of pinpointed attacks on Taliban personnel and facilities.

According to the first systematic investigation of civilian casualties, conducted by Marc Herold, professor of economics at the University of new Hampshire in the US, and based on reports from the UN, aid agencies and media sources, in the period between October 7 and December 10, at least 3,767 civilians lost their lives as a direct result of US bombardment (in contrast to the 3,234 American civilians believed to have died when the hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Centre). This does not include those who died afterwards from wounds sustained during bombing, nor those who succumbed to hunger and cold because aid supplies couldn9t reach them, nor deaths among those taken prisoner.

It also doesn’t cover the military casualties, estimated at about 10,000. Nor does it take cognizance of the deaths since December 10, including those killed when US bombers attacked a convoy of tribal leaders headed for Kabul to congratulate Mr Karzai on his assumption of power, and then returned to bomb innocent villagers. A similar subsequent attack on villagers prompted local leaders to call upon Mr Karzai to call a halt to US bombing raids. But perhaps they are overestimating the powers of a leader whose writ thus far doesn9t extend far beyond Kabul.

In the wake of Osama’s latest videoed confession, even General (retd) Hamid Gul will find it difficult to continue claiming that the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks were part of a Zionist conspiracy — unless evidence of some sort of link between Al Qaeda and Shin Bet can be unearthed (stranger things have been known to happen).

The bearded phantom’s culpability therefore extends beyond the extensive loss of life in New York and Washington, to the even more extensive loss of life in Afghanistan — given that it would have been ludicrous to expect the US to make amends rather than exact revenge for September 11. In fact, notwithstanding his recent claim that the airliner attacks were aimed at undermining US support for Israel, he could even, at a stretch, be held indirectly responsible for scores of Palestinian deaths, given that it is unlikely Ariel Sharon would have had the guts to fulfil his wishes in the absence of the international anti-terrorist momentum.

This thesis does not radically deviate from the thesis that the events of September 11 would not have taken place but for US foreign policy over the preceding decades. It certainly does not absolve Mr Bush and his cohorts of responsibility for the gratuitous violence against Afghanistan. It does, however, suggest that on a moral plane, Osama Laden and Mr Bush are in very close competition. Except that there is no price on Mr Bush’s head. And it is Dick Cheney who keeps disappearing. traditionally, it is the vice-president who is supposed to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. But in the present case, given the state of Mr Cheney’s vital organ, it may well be Mr Bush who’ll have to take charge in case anything untoward happens to his deputy.

The Al Qaeda chain of command is more mysterious, and it is hard to tell whether there is anything to the rumours that Osama’s Egyptian deputy was among those killed in the bombing runs on Tora Bora. It’s an intriguing possibility, however, that perhaps the US doesn’t really want to capture or kill Osama. If his demise could be verified, it would become that much more difficult to continue the so-called war against terror, which essentially amounts to replacing potentially hostile governments with compliant regimes. After a brief hiatus Iraq seems once more to be on the agenda as the next target.

Much has been made of post-September 11 terrorist threats, but nothing has happened — apart from an apparently deranged Jamaican-British Muslim’s apparent attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight. Had the FBI or the CIA unearthed other deadly plots, they would surely have trumpeted them as justification for the carnage in Afghanistan. Could it be possible that Egyptian and Saudi Al Qaeda operatives are far more keen to return quietly to their homelands than to perpetrate another hostility?

Should the Pentagon and the state department begin to suspect that Osama is indeed on Pakistani territory, the US is unlikely to hesitate to extend to this nation the sort of privileged treatment that has been practised northwest of the Durand Line (for obvious reasons, India would like nothing better). Not so much, perhaps, to capture or murder Osama as to establish a bigger foothold.

Don’t be too surprised if he turns up subsequently in Sudan or Mindanao, Chechnya or Indonesia. Osama could prove indispensable as a quarry. One is forced to wonder: did he know this when he (presumably) ordered the destruction of the twin towers?

From clans to countrymen

CLANS and ethnic groups that have feuded for centuries still need persuading that they constitute one nation. The government has no revenues from taxes or customs collections.

Members of the defeated fanatical Taliban movement are still on the loose, potential enemies. Millions of land mines dot the mountains, valleys and desert floor, threatening death or disfigurement to any who stumble upon them. Years of drought have destroyed whatever farmland remained.

The new Afghanistan has become the poster child for massive, sustained, international aid, dependent for now on the kindness of outsiders. In its favour are pledges of support from the international community and a desire among its people to end the fighting, feed their families and educate their children.

The 30 temporary cabinet members are old enough to remember an Afghanistan at peace in the 1960s and ‘70s and young enough not to be frozen in the hatreds of the past. The better the government does, the deeper will grow the support. —Los Angeles Times