Why send troops to Iraq?

President Eisenhower famously said: "If a problem can't be solved as it is, enlarge it." This is exactly what President Bush is trying to do as the Iraq war enters its second year. He is desperately trying to internationalize the campaign and involve Muslim countries in the "pacification" of Iraq. He is trying to have it both ways.

He urgently needs other nations to play a larger role in helping to establish a secure environment. Yet, he will not yield a large enough political and economic role to the United Nations that would make it possible for other nations to participate.

After months of chaos and loss of life, there is increasing worry in Washington that the US is carrying too much of the financial and military burden in Iraq. There is also mounting public concern about the number of US soldiers who are being killed and injured everyday.

The growing vulnerability of American troops in Iraq, mounting domestic concern about the number of American casualties, tepid international support and the fast deteriorating security environment have changed the political and diplomatic landscape and forced the Bush administration to do some rethinking.

Washington's response to the situation in Iraq in the fourth year of the 21st century is the same as London's at the beginning of the 20th: call for reinforcements from other countries (like Pakistan) to fulfil the role of loyal provider of brave soldiers for a war not of their making.

During the First World War more than 12,000 Punjabi and Pathan soldiers were hired by the British to fight the Turks in Mesopotamia as it was then called. Many refused to shoot and kill their Muslim brethren.

Some defected to the Turkish side. The bulk of Punjabi and Pathan soldiers surrendered to Turkish forces in Kut in May 1916 after a siege which lasted 147 days. Of the soldiers who left Kut in captivity, more than 4,000 died.

A century later, our role as a source of auxiliary cohorts for the American empire in Iraq is being reprised by President Musharraf. Surely, he is not oblivious to the lesson of imperial history?

Isn't it ironic that at a time when countries like Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic are pulling out their troops from Iraq, Pakistan is on the point of entering the fray? Considering all this, it seems rash even to entertain the notion of sending our troops to Iraq.

Why expose them to mortal danger? But, as the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is what we are about to witness.

A Foreign Office spokesman at his weekly news briefing acknowledged having received a formal request from the United States for sending troops to Iraq to protect the UN mission.

"We have made no commitment so far," he said, adding that a decision would be made as soon as the UN mission was set up there and Pakistan was intimated about the strength required.

In my experience in government when you say you will consider something, you have already put your foot on the slope. How can our government be unaware of the deep sense of resentment and anger among the people of Iraq against the UN? Iraqis make no distinction between the UN and the United States.

A people who endured the rigours of the most comprehensive economic sanctions in history for 12 long years, are unlikely to forget either the harm done to them by the United States or forgive the UN which acted as a conduit for channeling American power. The US-inspired UN sanctions were brutally effective in bleeding Iraqi civilians.

Thanks to the UN, the Iraqi economy is in a state of total collapse. The medical system lies in ruins owing to the lack of equipment and medicines. Public water and sewage systems have collapsed.

Malnutrition has become a serious national problem. In 1990, Iraq was rated 50th out of 130 nations on the UN Human Development Index. By 2000, Iraq had plunged to 126 out of 174. UNICEF estimates that 500,000 children died as a result of the UN sanctions.

Among those who have been irked by the heartless decisions of the UN 661 sanctions committee in Iraq is Hans Von Sponeck, former German head of the Baghdad-based UN Office of Humanitarian Coordination in Iraq (UNOHCI) from 1988 to 2000.

So acute was the food deprivation of the populace, Von Sponeck told the international community, that eggs and chicken became currency. Von Sponeck also talked about the rise of prostitution.

"In Baghdad you see prostitutes in the street in the middle of the night, something unheard of in Arab countries," he said. The arrival of open prostitution in Baghdad was symptomatic of both the economic degradation of the populace brought about by stringent UN sanctions and the resulting loss of self-dignity that affected men and women alike.

Americans are coldhearted when it comes to dealing with Iraq and the Iraqis. In an interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS's 60 minute programme on May 12, 1996, Madeline Albright, the then US secretary of state, was asked: "More than 500,000 Iraqi children are already dead as a result of UN sanctions. Do you think the price is worth paying?" Albright replied: "It is a difficult question. But, yes, we think the price is worth it."

The legal position is laid down in the Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations and is quite clear. They provide that America as an occupying power has a duty to keep order, keep civil administration functioning and provide for immediate humanitarian needs. Given this, Pakistan is under no obligation to send its troops to Iraq in aid of the US or the UN.

Where then is the justification for sending our troops to a country on fire? Why expose our soldiers to unnecessary hazards when our vital interests are not at risk?

Our military involvement in Iraq would undoubtedly enable a sizable number of American troops to return home. But our troops would then have to face guerilla attacks and organized resistance put up by Iraqi freedom fighters.

How can our troops protect UN personnel in Iraq if American soldiers remain on its soil and aggression continues unabated and unabashed? Why should we assume responsibility for the protection of UN personnel under the overall command of the American occupying power and become its accomplice in the crime? How can policing be done by our troops who, like combat troops the world over, are trained to kill, not police? What happens if there is another attack on the UN office in Baghdad or elsewhere? Will our troops shoot into the crowds and kill their Muslim brethren? How can our troops go to Iraq as scavengers of the American campaign? How can Pakistan keep supporting the US government as it tramples on the sovereignty of Muslim nations?

First Afghanistan and now Iraq. Have we become a doormat on which the US government can wipe its bloodstained boots whenever it likes? Why meddle in the affairs of a Muslim country in the throes of a revolution, struggling to rid itself of foreign invaders?

The ouster of Saddam Hussein has not made the world or Iraq a better place. America, the occupying power, has aroused bitter anti-American sentiments in the Islamic world and triggered a bloody war of liberation.

While Iraqis feared their ruthless ruler, what they feared even more was life without him. Today, their worst fears have come true. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but he stood up to America.

Why does our government believe it has a God-given duty to fight someone else's war or defend someone else's empire? We have enough problems of our own. If there is confrontation between our troops and Iraqi civilians, which is inevitable, and there are casualties, the blood of innocent Iraqis and Pakistani soldiers will be on our hands.

When the history of the American invasion of Iraq comes to be written, let it not be said that our troops intervened in Iraq not to help the Iraqis regain their sovereignty but as mercenaries hired by the Americans to do their dirty job and perpetuate their illegal occupation. This is an administration that prefers to do business behind closed doors.

Under American pressure, the decision to send troops to Iraq has already been taken. What is lacking is a fig leaf, the semblance of some form of legality, however tenuous, to justify the decision.

Today, our military rulers seem indifferent to the lessons of history and are on the verge of making a tragic mistake, proving correct the saying, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".

There is an old Russian saying: "Once you let your feet get caught in a quagmire, your whole body will be sucked in." Today we have reached a stage when the true interests of Pakistan require the people to speak up. After all, "to sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men".

Urdu as Punjab's mother tongue

With no authoritative response coming from any quarter concerned and hardly anyone who is anybody taking notice of it, and the mischief having been set afoot taking its course to the pleasure of some who leave no opportunity to degrade the national language by raising bogeys such as the one now very much in the going that English is the language of power, it was heartening to hear Fateh Mohammad Malik snap back at the Indian Punjab chief minister's naive, untimely and uninvited suggestion to his Pakistani counterpart to do away with Urdu as the medium of instruction in his province and replace it with Punjabi as they had done in theirs.

To give Captain Armender Singh his due, we may assume he was simply gushing forth with characteristic Vesakhi gusto and had permitted no deep thought or design to go into his good neighbourly advice, but as to his ignorance one can be sure he had no idea that Lahore, where he made this faux pas, has been, is and will remain Urdu's qibla-e-awwal, and Punjab its first hatchery where Turks, Pathans and Persians first camped on their way to Delhi.

Mr Singh also perhaps did not know that exactly one hundred years back on February the first, 1904 this very proposal put forward by Sir Chatterjee, the vice-chancellor of Punjab University, had been rebuffed by the people of the Punjab most vociferously.

The proposal had virtually caused a storm of protest among the educated circles particularly and the lay Muslims generally. Newspaper editorials and a spate of articles articulated the absurdity of this proposal and described it a dangerous conspiracy against the cultural and political identity of the Punjab. Chatterji's motives were questioned.

It was asked why the university platform was used to float that mischief. The protest became so loud the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab Sir Louis Dean had to come to the rescue of his vice-chancellor. The critics did not spare him even. He was asked if he would replace English with the Yorkshire dialect, as the education medium.

The March-April issue of Muqtadera's Akhbar-e-Urdu is devoted to establishing the Punjab's formative role in the birth and development of Urdu. It presents a weighty collection of research and opinion by eminent scholars of Urdu from the earliest period when Urdu's origin first became a subject of discussion and debate to this present time.

A whole galaxy of names from Maulana Mohammad Hussain Azad, Sir Abdul Qadir, Munshi Mahboob Alam, Hafiz Mahmood Shirani to Drs Syed Abdullah, Jamil Jalbi, Aftab Ahmed and Anwar Sadeed, Atash Durrani, Nabi Bakhsh Baloch, Shohrat Bukhari, Sufi Tabassum, Anwaar Ahmed and other scholars appears in support.

The issue is discussed from a variety of angles to make it a very comprehensive study. It is a work of great dedication and love for the national language.

It is remarkable to note that these scholars had no inferiority complex with regard to Urdu although most of them lived and worked under British rule. In fact they regarded English as the language of mental subjugation and servility.

To return to Fateh Mohammad Malik's reply to the Indian Punjab's Mukh Mantri which he bases on just one month's articles and editorials published in the 'Paisa Akhbar', Lahore, from February 26 to March 25 1909, and the upshot of which was that Punjabi and Urdu were basically one and the same language.

Punjabi was Urdu's older form and Urdu its refined and developed body. Advocating the adoption of an older version in place of a developed and refined form of the language could only be a folly or a conspiracy against the Muslims.

The real intention was that once Punjabi had been introduced as a medium of instruction, it would be heavily sanskritized to give it a scholarly look and then its Quranic script will be changed to Gurmukhi.

That would ultimately deplete Punjabi of all of its Arabic and Persian vocabulary and divest it of its Islamic identity, which the great Sufi poetry had embellished it with.

Once that happened the Muslims of the Punjab would slowly but certainly lose all contact with the wellsprings of their culture. The lengthy editorial of 26th February cites the unpopularity of Gurmukhi in schools in Lahore, Amritsar and even Nankana Sahib where the Punjabi branches had to be closed down due to insufficient number of students.

The reason was the introduction of Sanskrit words in the textbooks, which the Sikh children could not understand. In the 6th March editorial Paisa Akhbar argued that Gurmukhi and Punjabi were being promoted after the failure of the Nagric script to counter the popularity of Urdu.

And projecting the same line of thought the editorial of 17th March made the unabashed declaration that Urdu was the mother tongue of Punjabis and as such all advantages that one could derive from education in one's mother tongue were being provided by Urdu.

Having been born in the Punjab, Urdu could not be a stranger in the Punjab and that was why the government had made it the official language of administrative and judicial proceedings.

This debate went on in most print media of the time including Makhzan. Allama Iqbal took position on this issue. His Tarrana-e- Milli had by then been published.

Ultimately this debate culminated in Hafiz Mohammad Shirani's epochal book "Punjab mein Urdu" which provided the scientific basis to the strong and revolutionary claim that Urdu was the mother tongue of the Punjab, because the Punjab had mothered it.

Can Chaudhry Pervez Elahi fathom the true implications and objectives of his Indian counterpart's suggestion? Its rejection might have been one of the factors that led the Punjab to split in two.

So Urdu may not be that powerless after all. Given its due place it can yet be harnessed to achieve cohesion down to the micro level where the Sahib and the Chaprasi live in two different worlds.

Canal water shortage

There is a long-standing demand for the construction of an overhead bridge or an underpass at the railway crossing on Multan-Bahawalpur Road near the Small Industrial Estate here.

During the Nawaz government, approval for the construction of an underpass was accorded by the Punjab government, but after its removal the scheme was abandoned for unknown reasons. Efforts for the acceptance of this demand have not been given importance by the government.

Recently, Bahawalpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Abbas Raza drew the attention of the Punjab chief minister to this issue and wrote a letter to him about it.

The Bahawalpur railway station is located on the main Lahore-Karachi railway line. About 100 mail, express, passenger and goods trains pass through this crossing every day.

At the same time hundreds of buses, coaches and other heavy vehicles cross through it. The crossing has to close intermittently to allow the train to pass. Within minutes long lines of buses, trucks, coaches and tractor-trolleys are formed causing great inconvenience to the business community, passengers, students and the patients.

The Punjab government, therefore, should examine afresh the demand for an overhead bridge.

* * * * *

The canal water shortage here is affecting the cotton sowing and the standing crop of sunflower in this area. During the month of March, the wheat crop was damaged leading to a decline in its yield in addition to the shrivelled wheat grain, caused due to the abrupt rise in temperature.

The irrigation authorities released the water in the canals recently, but it was not enough to meet the needs of the farming community. As the quantity of water is low, the cultivators of tail-end are suffering loss and farm land could not be irrigated within the stipulated time.

Tenants and small farmers, unable to sink their own tubewells, want the Irrigation Department to facilitate adequate supply of water to them in accordance with canal discharges.

There is an urgent need to increase the supply for the sunflower crop, otherwise it will also suffer losses like wheat. In case of delay in regulating the water supply, cotton will not be sown and sunflower crop will also suffer.

* * * * *

Pakistan Seraiki Party chief Taj Mohammad Langah has tried to win the support of local leaders of Bahawalpur Ittehad, which stands for separate provincial status for Bahawalpur.

At a function here the other day to mark the anniversary of the police firing here on April 24, 1970, on a procession demanding a separate Bahawalpur province in which two persons were killed, Taj Mohammad Langah advocated the establishment of a Seraiki province.

* * * * *

The population of Hasilpur city has exceeded 0.1 million. New housing colonies are being developed around the city, but the congestion of the local graveyard is not being considered by the tehsil municipal administration. The residents are of the view that agricultural land adjacent to the graveyard may be acquired by TMA for its extension.

BJP responds to polls by highlighting its Hindu supremacism

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the dominant partner in India's ruling National Democratic Alliance, has responded to a spate of unfavourable exit polls in India's multi-phase general election by highlighting its Hindu supremacist agenda.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti - infamous for their role in inciting anti-Muslim violence - have been given greater prominence in the BJP campaign, particularly in the pivotal state of Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the shadowy Hindu nationalist service organization and militia which provides the bulk of the BJP's cadres, is said to have assumed direct control of the party's campaign.

According to recent opinion and exit polls, the NDA will at best win a bare majority of the 545 Lok Sabha seats. The more probable outcome is that it will fail to reach the 273 seat majority mark.

Should the NDA fall only a dozen or so seats short it will likely be able to cling to power, at least in the short term. But the more its seat tally falls below 260, the greater the likelihood of a hung parliament.

Since the rival alliance led by the Congress, India's traditional governing party, is given no chance of surpassing the NDA's seat total, the balance of power would fall to a disparate grouping of caste-based and regional parties.

In the event of a hung parliament, only after a frantic and probably protracted period of manoeuvring and horse-trading would a new ruling combination emerge - a government that could be led by the BJP or by Congress or even by neither of them, but which would be on life-support from the outset.

The BJP advanced the date of the elections from the fall, believing that it could capitalize on the popularity of its peace overtures to Pakistan, the disarray in the ranks of the Congress, and an economic upswing spurred by an inflow of foreign investment and last year's bumper harvest.

To consolidate its already strong support from big business, the BJP initially made much of the fact that it intended to make economic development - for example, the need to press forward with deregulation and privatization - not its Hindu supremacist agenda the pivot of its election campaign.

But the BJP's claim that India is poised to become a great power by 2020 due to the NDA government's pursuit of neo-liberal policies and military prowess, including the deployment of nuclear weapons, has failed to resonate outside the most privileged sections of the population.

Indeed, the BJP's "India shining" rhetoric has served only to underscore its indifference to the plight of the vast majority of Indians, for whom the dismantling of India's nationally protected economy has meant increased poverty and economic insecurity.

Over the course of the nearly three-month-long election campaign, the opinion and exit polls have shown a steady drop in support for the BJP and its allies. To arrest the decline, the BJP has given increasing prominence to its Hindutva or Hindu supremacist agenda.

Both the BJP's "vision" statement and the NDA manifesto highlight the so-called Ayodhya issue. (In the early 1990s, the BJP led an agitation for the building of a temple to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya that resulted in the razing of the Babri Masjid mosque and arguably the worst communal violence since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.)

The BJP and NDA policy documents also pledge legislation to bar those of non- Indian origin - read the Italian-born, Catholic Congress leader Sonia Gandhi - from holding high office.

Now the BJP is turning to Modi and Bharti in an attempt to mobilize sections of their Hindu chauvinist base that have been perturbed by its abandonment of bellicose anti-Pakistan rhetoric and in the hopes of channelling the popular resentment over the lack of job and other opportunities against Muslims and other minorities.

As chief minister, Modi played a major role in precipitating the February-March 2002 Gujarat riots that resulted in the deaths of 2,000 Muslims and rendered tens of thousands more homeless.

Bharti was one of the principal leaders of the Ayodhya agitation. "To improve our nominees prospects," a senior BJP leader told the Hindu, "it is essential to ensure good turnouts. If this has to happen, our workers have to go from door to door to persuade voters to come out. And Modi can inspire them to give all that they have."

The prospect of a minority government and especially of a hung parliament has caused consternation in business circles. The Bombay stock exchange lost 3.6 per cent of its value on April 27, its sharpest drop in more than three years, after exit polls from last week's round of voting showed the BJP-led NDA failing to win a majority in the next parliament.

The more perceptive bourgeois commentators recognize that all of the parties, from the BJP and the Shiv Sena on the far right through the Stalinist Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist), have supported economic "liberalization".

Their concern is that the jockeying for political advantage among the myriad parties will lead to a weak government, unable to take unpopular measures. As it is, business has been pressing since the beginning of the decade for the NDA to make good on its pledge to "reform" India's labour laws by gutting restrictions on the contacting out of labour and making it easier for companies to lay off workers and close down factories.

Declared the Indian Express in an editorial published on April 30, "The concern of the markets is not that a BJP-led coalition would be replaced by a Congress-led coalition. Rather, it is that neither national party may end up leading any coalition". -Courtesy: World Socialist Web Site.