Promise of tax relief

THE pre-budget season is a period of vague official promises of tax relief. It is also a period in which the tax collecting officials look for large new sources of revenue, failing which they increase the existing taxes. It is also a season marked for trade and industry clamouring for large tax concessions, and the common man sceptically hopes for some relief from his oppressive cost of living.

The stark fact is that while agriculture contributes to 25 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) it pays no federal taxes. Wholesale trade with its many bigwigs contributes to 16 per cent of the GDP but pays two per cent of the taxes only, while the transport contributes to 12 per cent of the GDP but pays only one per cent of the GDP.

Despite that a great deal of the financial resources of the country are transferred from urban or non-agricultural areas to the farm sector or those who own farms in the rural areas while not actually living there. Last year officials told us that about Rs 100 billion were transferred to agricultural areas as support price for agricultural products. This year so far about Rs 90 billion has been transferred, says Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Of that Rs 25 billion is to raise the support price for wheat from Rs 350 to Rs 400. This process will continue as long as we sustain the support price to prop up agriculture both when there is a shortage or when there is a large surplus, as has happened this year with 15 million bale cotton output.

The support price for wheat has been increased by Rs 11 for 40 kg to Rs 400 now. The gainers have not been the small subsistence farmers who produce enough to eat but the large surplus farmers who live in the towns and cities. Although they benefit from such support cushions, they refuse to pay income tax, and resist land reforms.

The feudal lords are often the prime ministers, chief ministers, federal and provincial ministers and members of the assemblies. And they are well represented in the armed forces and the bureaucracy. So the system remains strong.

Similarly, to collect some income tax from the wholesale businessmen with their capacity for hoarding and price manipulation the government came up with a six per cent withholding tax on imports. But says Abdullah Yousuf, chairman of the Central Board of Revenue, that they have passed on this tax to the consumers and that contributes to inflation. He was addressing the members of the Management Association of Pakistan, who pleaded for tax relief to make the cost of doing business in Pakistan less expensive.

He also said that transport sector which contributed 12 per cent to the GDP with its large fleets of buses, mini-buses and now long buses covering long distance, its fleet of trucks and taxis, and their constantly rising fares and freight rates pays only one per cent of the total tax collection.

As a result, the large burden of 60 per cent of the taxes fell on the manufacturing sector. And the industrialists complain of 40-odd taxes they have to pay. That breeds corruption in the government at federal, provincial and local levels. And paying so many taxes is exhausting and time-consuming. Promise of a substantial reduction in the number of taxes imposed on industry has not borne fruit. And that is a major disincentive to investment or for making the industry fail soon after they commence production. So Karachi alone had about 4,000 more or less sick industries, failing in their obligations to the consumers, workers and minority share-holders, and discouraging new investment until recently.

In addition, Abdullah Yousuf says, there are 27 provincial taxes on the small and medium industries. The prime minister and other officials have promised substantial relief to the SMEs, and they have been reaffirmed now. We have to see the budget to ascertain what extent of relief has become available. On his part the CBR chairman has promised to make the 27 provincial taxes payable through one-window as he has no jurisdiction in respect of provincial taxes.

Federal officials argue the central taxes cannot be reduced as there is a deficit in the budget of Rs 250 billion. In addition, we are told, the tax-GDP ratio in Pakistan is only 10 per cent which they want to be raised to at least 15 per cent. Mr Shaukat Aziz has voiced that hope several times.

This ten per cent ratio does not include provincial and local government taxes. It does not include the development surcharge on oil and gas which this year is to yield Rs 74.806 billion while last year it provided revenues of Rs 70 billion. The total surcharge revenues from oil may eventually be less this year as the government for a while did not pass on the full burden of the enhanced world oil price to the harried consumers.

The government has also made a large saving by privatizing a number of loss making enterprises whose total deficit was Rs 100 billion to Rs 130 billion. In addition, considerable saving has been made in the debt payments of reducing the foreign debt burden from over 38 billion to 32 billion dollars, inclusive of the new loans secured at the nominal IDA rate of 0.75 per cent.

Of course, there has been an increase in the outlay for the public sector development programme which this year is about Rs 202 billion. There will be an addition to the poverty reduction budget as well.

In a country in which revenue collection was falling far below the targets and the budgets were being revised downwards too frequently, tax collection now is distinctly in excess of the target. During the nine months of the current financial year ending March, the actual collection of taxes at Rs 401.27 billion was Rs 6.17 billion in excess of the target of Rs 391 billion. The vast improvements in the profits of the corporate sector should have made a distinct contribution to that, though not the boom in the stock exchanges that eventually burst.

There is a tendency of tax reduction around the world to boost investment, particularly foreign investment, and to increase economic growth particularly to reduce unemployment. A flat tax wave is sweeping Eastern Europe initiated by Estonia in the Baltic coast. Eight countries, including Russia, have adopted a uniform rate. While Estonia began with a single uniform rate of 26 per cent in 1994, Russia has now a personal tax of 13 per cent. Slovakia has opted for a personal and corporate tax of 19 per cent. And all the governments of these countries are flourishing, and their performance is being watched by their western European neighbours who are heavily taxed and have serious economic problems.

In Pakistan, Mr. Abdullah Yousuf says, the IMF wants the maximum tax rate of 35 per cent by the year 2007, but he is opposed to that in view of the resource constraint but then this is a political decision which the government has to take at the top.

The fact remains that high economic growth leads to higher revenues in spite of evasion by many tax payers and resort to corruption by many tax collectors. Even if agriculture is not taxed, the industrial and service sectors can contribute higher revenues as they are doing now. Recent developments show that fair taxation of the real estate deals involving trillions of rupees and capital gains tax from shares sold at high prices by the flourishing speculators can bring in a great deal of revenues.

The World Bank, which has been generous with its loans to Pakistan, wants the tax revenues of Pakistan to rise to Rs 950 billion through the next budget from Rs 796 billion this year. And it is coming up with a great deal of financial assistance at nominal rates to reform the taxation system and reeducate the tax collectors.

But as long as taxation remains high and too numerous there will be massive evasion as well as corruption in the taxation services. And when evasion becomes easy many more will take that easy route as is happening in Latin America. Brazil has 61 taxes, and when its popular government proposed another tax, sales tax, there were massive protests.

Our taxation officials talk of only 1.4 million people filing income tax returns after an increase of 14 per cent. They are talking of only whose who pay income tax. Which is the lesser part of the tax collection of Rs 174 billion while almost everyone pays tax of 15 per cent, which will this year provide Rs 249.200 billion. And the sales tax is to spread to new areas, including more services and professionals, to raise far larger revenues, which will raise a storm of protest from doctors, lawyers, architects etc.

One newspaper report says the prime minister has advised the CBR to reduce the tax on income tax payers who number 1.1 million. Of them 46,000 are salaried employees whose tax is deducted at source. And of the 45,000 registered companies only 12,000 file income tax returns.

A good taxation system is based on a reasonable tax structure. All those whose income is within the taxable orbit should be taxed in full. But a country in which one third of its people live below the poverty line and the landed rich, who invariably rule the country but do not pay income tax, and the large income groups identified by the CBR chief pay too little of taxes, the tax revenue is bound to be small. Low salaries amidst high inflation will encourage corruption, while heavy taxation or too many taxes will breed evasion. Fair remedies should be sought for both instead of forcing those who are taxed to pay more taxes.

The government should benefit from the tax reforms being introduced in many countries where taxes are being reduced and larger revenues collected. The tax payer is now a more discerning citizen watchful of the manner the government spends the money it collects as a tax. He should be reasonably satisfied if he is asked to pay more taxes. The benefits the people get in return for the taxes they pay and how well the tax revenues are used by the government are becoming more important. Too many officials living in luxury at the expense of the people and using official facilities too freely will not encourage the people to pay more tax.

Settling Kashmir issue

A WIN, win, win solution of the issue of Kashmir is feasible — a win each for Pakistan and India and a win for the people of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. Each of the three can settle for more than what they now have in real terms.

The sole mention of Kashmir in the Constitution of Pakistan is: “When the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir decide to accede to Pakistan, the relationship between Pakistan and the State shall be determined in accordance with the wishes of the people of the State”. Pakistan considers the entire territory of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir as an area under dispute. It does not recognize the Indian jurisdiction over any part of the former state.

However, Pakistan has taken the position that any solution of the dispute which is acceptable to the people of the former state is acceptable to Pakistan. It no longer insists on the enforcement of those parts of the resolutions of the United Nations which would have resulted in the entire state either acceding to Pakistan or India. General Pervez Musharraf has declared that neither the conversion of the Line of Control into an international border nor independence for the state is acceptable to Pakistan.

Since Pakistan considers the former state of Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory, it does not claim sovereignty over any area of the state. The area Pakistan calls Azad Kashmir has its own president, parliament, prime minister, supreme court, high court and other institutions. It has wide internal autonomy. On behalf of the government of Azad Kashmir, Islamabad is responsible for defence, foreign affairs and immigration questions pertaining to the area.

In such a situation, if a solution can be found which gives Pakistan a certain status in the territory now under India’s control and makes legal certain aspects of its authority in the areas lying to the west of the Line of Control, it would be a net gain for Pakistan.

India claims sovereignty over the entire territory of the former state. However, along with the government of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan exercises control over certain areas of the former state which lie to the west and north of the Line of Control. It is generally believed that should Pakistan and Azad Kashmir agree, India would accept the Line of Control, with minor changes, as the international border — that is, relinquish its sovereign claim over what is with Pakistan and Azad Kashmir as of now.

New Delhi ceded parts of its sovereignty to the state legislature in Srinagar under Article 370 of the Constitution of India. It is generally believed that India is prepared to enhance the autonomous status of the former state as long as it does not amount to independence. Declared Prime Minister Narasimha Rao of India in 1995: “Independence no, autonomy, sky is the limit”. The declaration has been reaffirmed recently by Kanwar Natwar Singh, India’s Minister of External Affairs.

In such a situation, if a solution can be found which gives India a certain status in the territory now under Pakistan’s control, in lieu of conceding wide autonomy to the state as well as giving Pakistan a certain status in the part of the state now under India’s control, it would be a net gain for India.

Apparently, people in large numbers in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir do not wish to be ruled either by India or Pakistan. They would like to be independent. However, neither India nor Pakistan is ready to consider this option as a solution to the dispute. The opinion in the international community also does not seem to favour the emergence of a new independent state in the region. For the time being, those who are for complete independence may consider fulfilling their aspirations to the extent of the widest possible autonomy. That will be, indeed, a big change in their favour from their present status.

The win, win, win solution may be based, therefore, on the following premises:

DEFENCE: Authority to defend a territory with armed might is one of the basic tenets of the exercise of sovereignty. Let India and Pakistan continue to be responsible for the defence of the borders of the former state against any power as they do, and at places they do, today. India’s de facto authority as it exercises today along the Ladakh border becomes de jure. Pakistan does the same along the Khunjrab border in a legally recognized manner. If they wish they may form a consultative body on defence matters of which the government of the state may also be a member.

India and Pakistan agree to enter into a treaty with each other that the two countries shall not prepare for or wage war in the territory of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. In so agreeing, the need for defending the Line of Control along almost 800 km ceases to exist and the way is cleared for the withdrawal of their forces stationed along this line.

India and Pakistan agree that the former state shall reunite as an undivided entity. This agreement shall fulfil one of the basic nationalist aspirations of the people of the former state.

The state of Kashmir pledges not to build an army of its own and India and Pakistan agree to relinquish the role of their armies of coming to the aid of civil power in the state. These undertakings shall strengthen the internal autonomy of the administration of the state, much to the relief of the armies of India and Pakistan.

No longer required along the Line of Control and to act in aid of civil power, India and Pakistan agree to withdraw their armies from Kashmir except from the borders of Kashmir with China.

FOREIGN RELATIONS: At present the foreign relations of a part of the former state are conducted by Pakistan and of the other part by India. In the proposed solution, India and Pakistan may jointly be responsible for those aspects of relations which affect the security interests of either country including those of foreign investment, aid and grants. The state may exercise authority in establishing ties with other states in commerce and trade and other matters with the agreement of Pakistan and India.

ACCESS AND TRADE: Citizens of Kashmir acquire the right of entry and of doing business in Pakistan as well as India as if they were citizens of India and Pakistan as well. The communication, transportation, educational and other infrastructural facilities of India and Pakistan may be available to Kashmiris without any discriminatory restrictions. The produce, manufactures and services of Kashmir should have access to the markets of India and Pakistan without any duties or charges; similarly, Indian and Pakistani produce, manufactures and services should have free access to the markets of Kashmir.

The citizens of India and Pakistan are able to travel throughout the former state without let or hindrance. Since the sights of the two countries are on a visa-free regime within the Saarc areas, a beginning with removing travel restrictions with Kashmir may prove to be auspicious. These measures will be a big gain for India and Pakistan and an economic boom for the state of Kashmir.

The currencies of Pakistan and India may be made legal tender throughout the former state.

PASSPORTS: Passports issued by the state of Kashmir have the status of those issued by the state before 1947. Visas issued by Pakistan and India to be valid for Kashmir.

INDUS WATERS: The status and validity of the Indus Basin Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan remains unchanged.

AUTONOMY: Subject to the foregoing, the legislature of Kashmir, by whatever name called, may exercise full autonomy.

FINANCES: Pakistan and India agree to give substantial budgetary support to the state government for the next 20 years.

Pakistan’s security will be greatly enhanced. From the northern and central parts of the Line of Control, Indian army positions will move far away to the east. The need for defending the Line of Control along almost 800 km ceases to exist. Pakistan’s defensive position at the Chinese border will remain unchanged.

Pakistan will not only legally acquire certain aspects of sovereignty now available to it in the areas to the west of the Line of Control, but also enhances its status in the areas to the east of the LoC.

Pakistan’s right to travel and trade in the entire state and its right to defend the Khunjrab border will acquire legal sanction. The citizens of Pakistan will be free to travel and trade in the areas of the state hitherto inaccessible to them.

India’s security concerns will be well protected and its right to defend the Laddakh border remain intact. The need for defending the Line of Control will cease to exist.

Citizens of India will be free to travel and trade in the areas of the state not accessible to them so far.

Kashmir will become almost independent with a friendly India and a friendly Pakistan on its sides. The unity of the state will be restored. It will acquire an identity as an autonomous unit in South Asia. Its defence against China, India and Pakistan will stand guaranteed without any budget expenditure on its part. The Kashmiris will become almost citizens of the three domains.

The gains for Pakistan, India and Kashmiris will be a true gain for South Asia and, indeed, for the whole world. The spectre of nuclear war will be lifted forever. The long-term prospects of peace and prosperity will be greatly enhanced.

New course for Kosovo

SIGNIFICANT differences between the first and second Bush terms continue to emerge. After studied silence in her White House years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is beginning to reveal her style and values, clearly with presidential approval.

She seems to be a pragmatic conservative, oriented toward problem-solving, pursuing essentially non-ideological policies. She is careful (and politically smart) to keep faith, in all her statements, with neoconservative values, but she is also finding high-profile, low-cost ways, such as extensive travel, to improve America’s shaky image and relationships around the world. Several recent events are worth attention:

* The dramatic policy reversal — personally shaped by President Bush — resulting in a decision not to veto a UN Security Council resolution authorizing a role for the International Criminal Court in Darfur. This was the first time in four years that the Bush administration had departed from its practice of opposing anything having to do with the ICC.

* Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s well-orchestrated trip to Sudan, following the UN vote, to hammer the Khartoum government on Darfur. Zoellick became the first US official to embrace the suggestion of several people, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Sens.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jon Corzine, that NATO could play a role in support of an African Union peacekeeping force. (Next: Appoint a high-level special envoy for Darfur and a separate, full-time ambassador accredited to the African Union.)

* The appointment of outgoing World Bank president James Wolfensohn to the new post of special coordinator for development of Gaza — an inspired choice, given Wolfensohn’s reputation in this field; also a rather bold one for an administration that has famously subjected its appointees to a political litmus test that the liberal Wolfensohn, a Bill Clinton appointee, could never have passed.

One notable policy change has gone virtually unnoticed — the one concerning Kosovo, where, after four years of neglect and mistakes, the administration has made a major shift. Ever since the 78-day NATO bombing campaign freed the Kosovar Albanians from Slobodan Milosevic’s oppressive grip in 1999, political control of Kosovo has been in the semi-competent hands of the United Nations, while NATO has maintained a fragile peace between the majority Albanian and minority Serb populations. Under Security Council Resolution 1244, passed in 1999, the final status of Kosovo was supposed to be worked out through negotiations that would result in either independence, partition or a return by Kosovo to its former status as part of a country once known as Yugoslavia, now “Serbia and Montenegro.” But instead of starting this process years ago, Washington and the European Union fashioned a delaying policy they called “standards before status,” a phrase that disguised bureaucratic inaction inside diplomatic mumbo-jumbo.

As a result, there have been no serious discussions on the future of Kosovo for the past four years, even as windows of opportunity closed and Albanian-Serb tensions rose. Finally, bloody rioting erupted last March, leaving eight Serbs and 11 Albanians dead, a thousand people injured and the region teetering on the brink of another war. Tensions have remained high ever since; just two days ago there was a bomb attack on the offices of an opposition party in Kosovo.

Last month, after warnings about the explosiveness of the situation from Philip Goldberg, America’s senior diplomat there, Rice sent Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns to Europe for meetings with the nearly moribund Contact Group (the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Russia and Germany). Burns told them that the situation in Kosovo was inherently unstable and, unless there was an acceleration of efforts to determine its final status, violence would probably increase, with NATO forces, including US troops, tied down indefinitely.

Under American pressure — always the necessary ingredient in dealing with the sluggish, process-driven European Union — a new Contact Group policy has begun to emerge. This summer a special UN representative will “determine” that Kosovo has met the necessary standards — self-governance, refugees, returnees, freedom of movement, etc. — and is therefore ready for status talks. (Of course, this should have been done years ago, but better late than never.) Then will come the really tough part: What should Kosovo’s final status be? Separate nation, Serb province, partition?

Although no one is talking on the record in Washington or in Europe, I find it hard to see any ultimate outcome for Kosovo other than independence, perhaps on a staged basis over the next several years. But such an outcome requires strong guarantees for the endangered Serb minority that remains in Kosovo — between 100,000 and 200,000 people. The protection of Kosovo’s Serbs will require some sort of continued international security presence. In addition, the deeply divided Kosovar Albanians, whose last prime minister is now facing war crimes charges in The Hague, must achieve a much higher level of political maturity.

Ultimately, Belgrade will have to accept something politically difficult: giving up Serbian claims to Kosovo, which Serbs regard as their historic heartland. The Serbs will have to choose between trying to join the European Union and trying to regain Kosovo. If they seek their lost province, they will end up with neither.

But, if it can opt for the future over the past, Serbia would have a bright future as an E.U. member, and the ancient dream of an economically integrated, peaceful Southeast Europe (including Greece and Bosnia) would be within reach. The European Union, however, must make a real deal on Kosovo an integral part of the membership process for Serbia.

There are many complicated subplots here, involving Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, the United Nations, the E.U. and NATO. But for now the important thing is that after ignoring the issue for four years, the administration is doing something in the Balkans, where nothing happens without US leadership.

Given that instability in the Balkans — and Kosovo is highly unstable now — has historically spread into other parts of Europe, and that the region lies in the heart of the growing NATO sphere, this is the sort of problem that must be addressed before it grows again into a major crisis.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer was a presidential envoy for Bosnia and Kosovo during the Clinton administration.

Prospects of Arab democracy

AT last month’s anti-war conference in Cairo, Egyptian delegate Kamal Khalil excoriated President Mubarak’s regime over “torture, poverty, unemployment, corruption, tyranny and despotism” — then added that the “liberation of Jerusalem starts here with the liberation of the people in Cairo”.

This linkage of domestic reform with the external foe dramatized the quandary lying in wait for President Bush’s crusade for “freedom and democracy”.

God-given rights of all peoples are the panacea that will, among other things, end international terror and induce the Arabs to make their peace with Israel. So what, in this era of American-sponsored diplomacy and reconciliation, could this self-styled democrat possibly have meant by this reversion to the militant rhetoric of yesteryear?

The extent to which Bush is contributing to the winds of change now blowing across the world’s last monolithically tyrannical region is passionately debated by the Arabs, perplexingly confronted, as they feel themselves to be, by two Americas, the new missionary one of Bush’s second term and the old unrepentant superpower. The US as a promoter of democracy is a far from new idea. But the scope, fervour and lofty expectations Bush has invested in it are new. Yet, at the same time, never has imperial America, with which the missionary one is inextricably intertwined, been as rampant and detested as it is today.

For Bush didn’t embark on this radically interventionist, quasi-colonial phase of America’s relations with the Middle East only, or even mainly, to confer democracy on it. He did so for other reasons, too, that had far more to do with the traditional drive for strategic and economic dominance — as well as with an Israel whose influence on US policy has reached unprecedented levels.

In fact, the rationale for Arab democracy comes partly from Israel itself, in the person of the rightwing zealot Natan Sharansky, whose thinking, says Bush, is “part of my presidential genes”; the thinking being that, since democracies are inherently peaceable, only a democratic Arabia will take Israel to its bosom.

This contradictory America feeds the tension between two broad camps into which the Arab world itself breaks down: on the one hand old-school nationalists and Islamists who in recent times have supplanted them in mass appeal, and on the other newly emergent democratic forces who blame post-independence nationalist regimes, in their despotism, for the region’s ills. As ever, the nationalists and Islamists give priority to the external problem, imperial America and Israel, while the democrats give it to the internal one, and to ways in which missionary America might be used in their reformist cause.

The more that imperial America inflames nationalist sentiment, the more it plays into the hands of regimes that appear to stand up to it, and the more difficult it is for democrats to work against them. And anyone can see that, after Iraq, Syria has become a key target of imperial America, perhaps all the more alluring because, as some in Washington say, it is the “low-hanging fruit” that, unlike Iraq, is harvestable by merely political and not military means. Lebanon’s “democratic uprising” furnished a great new opportunity to weaken or bring down the Ba’athist regime.

Naturally, the Ba’athists raise the nationalist banner in their own defence. But the more obviously home-grown and authentic — not just American-inspired — the momentum for democratic change becomes, the more nationalism, as a pretext for preserving the despotic existing order, falls away. Indeed, the democrats argue, nationalism versus democracy is a false antithesis, in that to be democratic — and seek to profit from something the US at least ostensibly wants too — is not to be anti-nationalist.

On the contrary, said Shibli Mallat, a legal adviser to the Lebanese opposition, “democracy always serves the national interest more earnestly and effectively than despotism ever can. Just imagine the political authority with which Egypt, Lebanon or Syria will be able to oppose Israel’s occupation policies once we have democratic governments here!”

So, even if the first contested Iraqi elections in 50 years were missionary America’s doing, the main point was that, however flawed they were, most Iraqis took to them with the enthusiasm they did. True, it was for its own strategic reasons that the US leapt to Lebanon’s support. But that hardly impugned the credentials of a movement that, in one demonstration, put a quarter of the country’s population into Martyrs’ Square in Beirut, or obscured the basic reason why Lebanon so threatens the Ba’athist regime, which is the potential domino effect inside Syria of its “people power”.

For could any Syrian fail to grasp that what the Lebanese were rising up against was the extension, on Lebanese soil, of what they themselves more drastically endure at home? Namely the oppressions of a once-revolutionary order that has lost its legitimacy as surely as the now-defunct Soviet-style “people’s republics” on which it was largely modelled, and whose nationalism has become little more than a rhetorical tool to suppress democracy.

No one knows how Arab democratization will proceed. In the latest UN-sponsored Arab Human Development Report, the Arab authors express the hope for a “historic, peaceful redistribution of power within Arab societies”, but also the fear that if the people’s “understandable thirst to be rid of despots” goes unquenched, change will come in “chaotic upheavals”. Either way, one thing is already clear: imperial America will not like the democratic Arabia that missionary America will have helped to spawn.

Already it is uneasy about the kind of Shia Muslims, Islamist-minded and Iranian-influenced, who, in the shape of prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and the United Iraqi Alliance, triumphed in the Iraqi elections. It will be even less pleased if Hamas does so well in coming elections that it demands to form the next Palestinian government. Secular modernists, the dissident intelligentsia and human rights activists are to the fore in demanding an end to the Syrian-backed “intelligence state” in Lebanon, saying “Enough!” to the electorally irremovable Mubarak dynasty in Egypt, and chipping away at the Ba’athist monopoly of power in Syria.

But Islamists everywhere would be the first to profit from their success. Hezbollah would doubtless retain some special place in Lebanon’s confessional system. Egypt’s Muslim Brothers have now joined the pro-democracy demonstrations as the most popular and organized opposition force in the country. Last week their heavily repressed Syrian counterparts, also sensing that opportunity beckons, in effect told the Ba’athists: with America at the gates you either convene a “national congress of all political parties” that will set up “a democratic republic” or face your own destruction, and perhaps Syria’s too.

A democratic Arabia of this kind would soon pose a challenge to what the once American-supported despotic one left behind, with slogans like “liberating Jerusalem by liberating Cairo” leaving little doubt where that legacy would come under the heaviest strain.

Americans and Israelis would soon find out what an occasional Israeli commentator, contradicting Sharansky, at least implicitly concedes: the Arabs’ hostility to Israel never had much to do with their lack of democracy; much more with the fact that, in its treatment of the Palestinians, Israel remains far from democratic itself.

— Dawn/Guardian Service

A new Pope

“AN adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelty.” With those words, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, concluded the last sermon he gave before the cardinals of the Catholic Church held their conclave in Rome.

It is not for us to comment upon matters of Catholic doctrine, or indeed upon the internal deliberations of any religious institution. But as the international reaction to the death of Pope John Paul II demonstrated — and as the multinational, flag-waving crowd in St. Peter’s Square yesterday proved once again — the leader of the Catholic Church has extraordinary political and moral influence around the world. There are areas in which the new pope could have a tremendous impact, on both Catholics and non-Catholics, in this country and everywhere else, for better or for worse.

Pope John Paul II was famous for reaching out to other faiths, and there’s reason to hope that his successor may continue that tradition. Pope Benedict XVI could do great good by expressing clear and open opposition to bigotry and religious prejudice in a world containing far too much of both.

We also hope that this pope, like his predecessor, will stand up to the world’s dictators and for the rights of Catholics and others to practice their faiths freely. Because of his church’s presence in almost every country, the pope is unusually well placed to speak about human rights abuses, respect for human dignity and the rule of law.

There’s less reason to hope, perhaps, that Pope Benedict XVI will rethink policies that we believe have harmful effects, but it’s fair to point out that it’s not only Catholics who suffer from some of those. Certainly we hope that the pope’s admirable profession of “adult faith” does not mean that the church must continue to impede the distribution of condoms in Africa and in other developing countries, where greater use could inhibit the spread of Aids and prevent thousands of premature deaths.

We also hope that the new pope has the courage to intervene, rapidly and decisively, to make clear a policy of zero tolerance when it comes to child abuse by priests. And we hope he’ll weigh the possible benefits of new medical technologies, and not dismiss them out of hand. It is an extraordinary pulpit that the former Cardinal Ratzinger has been given. If he uses it well, the whole world will benefit.

—The Washington Post