Growing discord in Europe

THE recent ill-fated European Union summit will probably be remembered as one of the worst in the bloc’s history. Leaders failed in spectacular fashion to agree to a new financial blueprint, and the first-ever draft EU constitution has been put on ice following its stinging rejection by French and Dutch voters three weeks ago.

EU leaders are currently engaged in unusually vicious sniping over who is to blame for the current crisis, with France and Germany pointing the fingers at British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The British premier has in turn warned of a “crisis of leadership” in the EU and said sticking to outdated policies will mean the decline of Europe.

Europe’s current disarray is not just the result of quarrels over cash and the constitution — and nor is it merely a question of personality differences among its 25 leaders. The crisis spotlights key questions about EU identity, economic future and global role that EU leaders have carefully side-stepped for almost 50 years.

The budget collapse is a boost to Eurosceptics and others — especially in the United States — who believe the 25-nation bloc has been getting too big for its boots. But for many Asian countries, seeking to build a multi-polar world by balancing US power with a stronger, more confident Europe, the EU’s identity crisis is certainly not good news.

In talks in Washington immediately after the EU summit debacle, US president George W. Bush underlined his support for a strong Europe. “My message to these leaders and these friends was that we want a Europe strong so we can work together to achieve important objectives and important goals,” Mr Bush told reporters.

The EU also did its bit to reassure the US, insisting that it would not become introspective or concern itself only with its internal decision-making and institutions.

“It’s no surprise that in this process some problems may occur, but the European Union is there,” said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. “We are on business. We are deciding. We are taking decisions every day internally and externally.”

Asians have also been stressing that they do not want an inward-looking Europe. In fact, an unravelling of the EU will have repercussions beyond Europe. The bloc has long been an inspiration and model for many countries seeking a similar form of regional integration. However, if the most sophisticated experiment in regional cooperation and the pooling of sovereignty now fails, others could be discouraged from embarking on a similar path.

After the crushing “no” votes on the constitution in France and the Netherlands, the unedifying spectacle of bad-tempered leaders engaging in recrimination and finger-pointing is also unlikely to restore ordinary Europeans’ confidence in the EU. But even this dark cloud could have a silver lining: The turmoil offers EU leaders a unique opportunity to begin a total rethink and reassessment of Europe’s raison d’etre. Most importantly, the EU must start listening to the concerns of its citizens — and providing them with reassurance about the future.

Signs that this will happen are bleak, however. For one, EU leaders have for too long relied on the application of skilful first-aid remedies and quick- fix solutions to keep European integration on track. Putting the EU back on its feet again this time around will not be that easy, however. The cracks are wider, the disagreements more acrimonious and relations between leaders worse than ever before. Key EU players are also weakened domestically.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder may be ousted in September by Angela Merkel, the conservative opposition leader. In France, many of President Jacques Chirac’s countrymen are looking ahead to the 2007 presidential race, and to the current favourite, the bright and aggressive Nicolas Sarkozy. And the European Commission’s chief Barroso lacks the authority to play peacemaker.

Above all, the EU is split into two seemingly irreconcilable camps. France and Germany — joined by Spain, Italy and the three Benelux states — remain committed to building a politically integrated EU, with strong institutions and a joint foreign and defence policy.

The budget debate, meanwhile, has brought the issue of Europe’s economic future to the fore. The gap is wide between Mr Blairs’ liberal reform and deregulation agenda — favoured by most of the new EU states — and the social welfare model espoused by France and Germany.

The British leader tried to use the summit debate on the EU financial plan to ensure a complete reorientation of EU spending — and its focus on agriculture which devours 40 per cent of EU finances. Mr Blair insisted that he would only give up the British rebate if France agreed to rejig the entire 100 billion euro annual budget by cutting agricultural expenditure.

An EU seeking to compete with the US, China and India must redirect money towards biotechnology, high-tech and education, Blair insisted. Blair has promised to use Britain’s presidency of the EU, starting on July 1, to push his reform agenda. But with tempers still expected to run high for several months, most other Europeans are unlikely to be in a mood to listen to the British leader.

The German and French leaders are playing especially tough. While not referring to Mr Blair directly by name, the German chancellor said recently that the EU’s “values” were under threat since the collapse of the summit last week. “There is a special European social model to protect that has developed on the continent,” said Mr Schroeder. “Those who want to destroy this model due to national egotism or populist motives do a terrible disservice to the desires and rights of the next generation” the chancellor added.

The British leader, however, has many allies. He has strong support from Sweden, another country that had threatened to veto the talks unless there was some movement on farm subsidies. Swedish prime minister Goran Persson visited Mr Blair in London recently and emerged after the meeting full of praise.

Mr Blair himself insisted that he is a “passionate European” in an emotional speech to the European Parliament on June 23. The premier also challenged EU leaders to embrace change and gear up for competition from Asia’s emerging economies.

The British prime minister also insisted that Europe should be confident enough not to see future enlargement as a threat or a zero-sum game in which old members lose as new members gain. He said expansion provided an “extraordinary, historic opportunity to build a greater and more powerful union”. “If we stop enlargement or shut out its natural consequences, it wouldn’t, in the end, save one job, keep one firm in business, prevent one delocalization,” Mr Blair insisted.

But EU lawmakers gave a mixed response to the emotional speech, sometimes breaking into spontaneous applause and at other moments heckling the British leader. The message that Europe must keep pace with a changing world was accepted by most EU deputies. But many also voiced scepticism that a British leader known to be wary on many EU issues could lead the bloc into a brave new world. “We will be on your side when your actions reflect your words,” said Hans-Gert Pottering, leader of the assembly’s majority conservative group.

Several Euro MPs also pointed out that a country which was not a member of the eurozone, had opted out of the Schengen frontier-free area and was demanding a lower ceiling on EU budget contributions could not claim to spearhead the drive for a stronger Europe.

Pre-empting critics who say his EU commitment remains suspect, Mr Blair insisted he believed in Europe as a “political project,” adding: “I would never accept a Europe that was simply an economic market.”

The British leader’s unusually strong pro-European rhetoric clearly struck the right chord. Blair’s message was “music to our ears,” said the EU assembly’s president Josep Borrell. “Welcome to the club,” was the wry comment by the leader of the Parliament’s green group Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

Most observers said there was no doubt: Mr. Blair, with years of experience in battling opponents in the British parliament, put in a polished performance at the EU assembly, successfully wooing critics with pledges to work for a strong Europe and insisting on the need to listen to the concerns of ordinary Europeans.

EU officials noted that Mr Blair’s message had been “moderate and reassuring” on several fronts. First, the British leader did not say he wanted to jettison the European social model, only adapt it to the modern world. Second, while underlining that farm spending was too high, Blair admitted that changes in EU agriculture expenditure could not be made overnight.

But while strong on grand statements, the British premier’s speech included no coherent strategy on how to turn his ideas into reality. Mr Blair was especially careful not to give any promises on clinching a rapid deal on a new EU budget or on reviving efforts to secure approval of the bloc’s failed constitution.

Despite his fairly smooth debut at the European Parliament, Blair faces a tough six months ahead in the European hot seat. The British leader’s relationship with France’s Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany remains tense following last week’s summit failure to clinch a new EU budget deal.

This makes it even more imperative that the focus over the next year or so must be on restoring trust between Europe and its citizens — and among rancorous EU leaders. That is an uphill task requiring a serious review of just why EU leaders have been unable to convince ordinary Europeans of the benefits of their Union.

Issues of identity

I HAVE been reading a volume, entitled, “The Final Settlement,” prepared by a think-tank in Mumbai, called “Strategic Insight Group.” It identifies the “pre-requisites” for a durable peace between Pakistan and India. I shall mention one of them here, for it is both intriguing and provocative.

The group maintains that contradictions in Pakistan’s self-perception work as a major obstacle to peace. Some Pakistani spokesmen trace their national origin to the All India Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, making their state a protest against Indian dominance. Others trace it to Mohammad bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh in 712 AD, which makes Pakistan a “representation of foreign conquests.” A final settlement between the two countries will require Pakistan to perceive itself not as “non-India” and “not in terms of protest or conquest but simply as a normal and progressive state.”

The group goes on to say that Pakistan is currently witnessing a contest between the advocates of socio-economic modernization and the proponents of religious orthodoxy. Peace will more likely be made if the balance of power shifts in favour of the progressive and modernizing forces.

Some of our own commentators have sought to establish our “non-India” character by appealing to our nativity. Mr Aitzaz Ahsan argued a few years ago (The Indus Saga) that the areas now composing Pakistan are the inheritors of a civilization that flourished in the Indus Valley several thousand years ago, and that it was distinct and separate from the civilization that developed in India of which the Indus Valley had never been a part. More than an affirmation of the Muslims’ separateness from the Hindus, the establishment of Pakistan in 1947 was a reaffirmation of the separateness of the Indus Valley from India.

In a recent article in this newspaper (June 17) Sardar Aseff Ahmad Ali holds that our allegiance to Islam is only a part of our identity. Unwilling to say that we are in any sense “Indian,” he observes that we are South Asians, and that we are the people of the Indus Valley. But, unlike Aitzaz Ahsan, he sees the Indus Valley as a part of the sub-continent. Its civilization is not to be regarded as unconnected with developments in the rest of South Asia.

He argues that religion alone cannot explain our nationhood: Muslims in other lands — Turks, Iranians, Egyptians, Iraqis, etc. — have each their own distinct identities, and they are proud of their pre-Islamic history. Why, then, can’t we take pride in the Indus civilization? We must seek our identity in our own land.

Pakistan is not the same as India. True, but I should like to submit that the term, “South Asia,” has come into usage mostly since independence, and that the word, “India,” can be used in more than one sense. India is a state, but it is also the name of a landmass, a geographical region. Pakistan may then be seen as a part of the Indian subcontinent, just as it is a part of Asia. India is also the home of a complex and advanced civilization of which we do partake to some degree.

Civilizations are not self-contained; they interact with one another. There is evidence that the Indus Valley did interact with the Iranian and Mesopotamian cultures. But what happened when Harappa and Mohenjodaro became extinct? According to the Cambridge History of India, some of the hymns in Rig Veda mention the Indus and all the five rivers of Punjab. A map showing territorial delineations around 500 BC places all of the Indus Valley in India. The rule of some of the ancient Hindu kings extended all the way into Afghanistan.

It would then be reasonable to conclude that as the Aryans consolidated their hold on the land, and as their men of learning articulated Hindu philosophy, codes, and mythologies, a two-way process of interaction materialized. The Indus culture found its way into India, and the Indus Valley itself was first Hinduized for some two thousand years, and then Islamized for more than a thousand.

As we stand today, we are a mix of the aboriginal, Dravidian, Aryan, Semitic, and Mongol ethnicities; our beliefs and cultural expressions represent a mix of animist, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Judaeo-Christian, and Islamic influences. These elements are at peace with one another in the personalities of most of us, as if they had been homogenized. It is hard to see why anyone of us has to apologize for the presence of a Hindu element in our identity: after all, the ancestors of many of us were once Hindu, and in today’s Pakistan many millions of Muslim individuals (Rajputs and Jats among others) carry last names, denoting caste affiliations they share with Hindus and Sikhs across the border.

The ordinary Pakistani links the matter of identity with his family, clan, tribe, village and, if his horizons extend that far, with his district and province. He is content with these identifications. The worrisome problem here is not that he is caught up in a crisis of identity, but that his identification with Pakistan remains nebulous. This applies to folks in the minority provinces more than it does to the Punjabis. The issue of identity becomes relevant in domestic politics basically with reference to the striking of a balance between the interest of the collectivity (the nation) and that of the regions and localities. The purists among us maintain that all elements in our identity other than the Islamic deserve to be expelled. But it so happens that the vast majority of Muslims in the world will not accept this advice. They want to keep Islam along with everything else that makes them what they are. Let me take a moment to recall an interesting incident. About 20 years ago, a friend of mine set out to establish a Pakistan Society of Western Massachusetts. The project encountered opposition from some of our other friends who argued that since we were all Muslim the fact of our being Pakistani was of no consequence, and that any attempt to firm up our Pakistani identity would dilute our Muslim identity.

The same argument has been made within Pakistan. The Punjabi and Urdu-speaking elite who dominated our government and politics argued that since we were all Muslim it did not matter who ruled and got a larger slice of the “cake.” All talk of provincial rights and under-representation of other ethnic groups in governance was said to be simply mischievous. The majority of the Pakistanis in western Massachusetts did not accept this reasoning and went ahead to establish the organization referred to above, which is still thriving. Nor has the idea of Muslim nationalism done any better in Pakistan: it has not kept the country together; its failure dramatized by the secession of East Pakistan in 1971. In the same vein consider also the emergence of sub-nationalism and the persistence of separatist feelings in Sindh, Balochistan, and to some degree even NWFP.

Those of the ruling elite in Pakistan who did not look to Islam as an integrating agent (for instance, Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto) were nevertheless unwilling publicly to set aside the idea of Muslim nationalism. They chose to be ambivalent. They relied upon a “strong” central government to keep the country together. The present regime, headed by General Pervez Musharraf, is doing the same. But we know that reliance on a “strong centre” is just as unavailing as reliance on our common allegiance to religion for promoting national solidarity.

Reconnecting with our Indus legacy, which in effect means recognizing the presence of a Hindu element in our identity, may facilitate the process of reaching some kind of reconciliation with India. But it is not likely to be any more effective in bringing about national integration or unity than the other two agents mentioned above. A Sindhi nationalist may argue that if Islam is all that matters, he does not need Pakistan to be a good Muslim. Nor does he need a political union with the Punjabis and others to be able to honour his Indus legacy.

India, Iran, Egypt and numerous other countries have been in place for hundreds, even thousands, of years. They have their share of ethnic divisions and internal conflict. But that fact does not diminish the sense of belonging to the country that the people in each case have. They continue to be Egyptians, Indians, and Iranians even as they differ or fight amongst themselves. That is not the case in our country. The Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch, and Pakhtun identities have existed for hundreds of years. But Pakistan is only 58 years old, meaning that we still have to get used to the idea of being Pakistanis.

This will not happen until opinion-makers in the minority provinces begin to feel, and tell their audiences, that being Pakistani is something good and profitable. They will not develop this feeling until they have a satisfactory level of participation in this country’s governance. They cannot have that kind of participation if authority and power vest mostly in the central government. They can exercise power effectively only if it resides in the provincial governments. Hence their demand for provincial autonomy.

I am inclined to conclude that Pakistani nationhood will not mature, and national unity and solidarity will not materialize, until the bulk of decision-making power is transferred to the provinces. There was much talk of provincial autonomy a few months ago and General Musharraf’s government appeared ready to concede it. The government was said to be contemplating constitutional amendments that would enable it to transfer power and functions to the provinces. But that talk has abated, and folks like Nawab Akbar Bugti have become mysteriously quiet. I will say that if the plan for provincial autonomy has somehow been swept under the rug, those who have swept it are no friends of Pakistan.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

Justice above prejudice

THE current world perception is that it is General Musharraf at one end and fundamentalists at the other who dominate the community life in Pakistan to the exclusion of law and reason. Musharraf has only confirmed it by owning that he himself, and not any adviser or agency, had stopped Mukhtaran Mai from going to the USA.

This impression tallies with the true picture of Pakistan’s conventional society which is that the common run of people are inherently moderate and decent and its courts punish or acquit criminals on evidence. The morals of the people and impartiality of the courts and other institutions get subverted only under extraneous pressures or inducements.

That, sadly, now happens often and Mukhtaran Mai’s case is its most sordid example. The people at home and abroad have come to believe that she was gang-raped on the orders of a village panchayat (an assembly of elders). And since then while the rapists are free to roam the earth, the wronged woman is under strict surveillance and denied freedom both of movement and expression. This impression originally fostered by frequent press reports and angry protests by human rights activists is now being sustained by foolish behaviour of officials of the state and the so-called custodians of the women’s honour, the likes of Nilofar Bakhtiar, who have otherwise done little in the past five years to change the laws or to eradicate social practices which repress or insult women.

The facts of the case as borne out by a high court judgment, in essence, are that Mukhtaran Mai was raped by one man, and not by a gang of men, and the rape was not decreed by the panchayat but committed in defiance of its wishes. The rapists, except for one, are now free because they have been acquitted by the high court.

Any restriction imposed by the government on Mai’s speech or travel is unlawful — which the human rights organizations or her well-wishers can challenge in a court of law.

After recounting the squalid background to Mai’s rape (her teen-age brother’s sexual liaison with a sister of the rapists - now convicted or acquitted — and Mai’s brother in turn accusing them of sodomizing him), the Multan bench of the Lahore high court, in the concluding part of its order in appeal announced in the first week of March, observes:

“The testimony of the prosecution witnesses neither inspires confidence nor can be termed as evidence having come from an unimpeachable source. It has already been held that the prosecution story does not ring true and [the] possibility of fabrication and false implication cannot be ruled out as the FIR was lodged after consultation and deliberations and the delay of at least nine days in lodging the same had not been explained. After perusal of the whole evidence on record we are of the considered view that the occurrence had not taken place in the manner narrated by the PWs. The statement of the complainant regarding convening of Panchayat and the decisions taken therein was all based on hearsay ad thus was inadmissible in evidence.

“The prosecution also failed to lead any independent evidence that the members of the Panchayat had taken the decision that rape should be committed with the complainant. The four appellants who allegedly committed the occurrence were a party before the Panchayat and not members thereof and their so-called act, which even otherwise is not borne out [by] the record, could not be considered as decision of the Panchayat.”

After discussing all the evidence, the court held that the offence of Zina under the 1979 Hudood Ordinance was proved only against accused Abdul Khaliq (he had taken the plea in defence that Mukhtaran Mai, in fact, was given in marriage to him as a result of a settlement which was later denounced by the opposite party). Since gang rape was not proved, his death sentence was converted to 25 years’ rigorous imprisonment.

All the other accused were acquitted. Going a step further, the court has recommended action against the trial judge for sentencing three among the accused to death when there was “not an iota of evidence on record” against them.

The basis of comments by the New York Times and other foreign and local media should have been the facts as they have been determined by the high court and not as they were alleged by Mukhtaran Mai and other witnesses in the trial court. Such is the universally accepted principle. It is unfortunate that the government’s ill-conceived and unlawful action in preventing Mai from going to America impelled the world and local press alike to disregard the facts established through judicial scrutiny in favour of one-sided allegation.

Pakistani society may not have been able to ensure equal rights for women but it takes pride in protecting their modesty. In the villages and walled cities the saying goes that daughters are common to the community or, as Chaudhry Shujaat is wont to say, “Dhiyan sanjian” or put another way “Hamsaiy manwajai” or neighbours are born of the same mother.

This sentiment still holds sway. Through a strange quirk of misfortune, in the Mai case, the crime investigation agency and the trial court, the press and the official spokespersons and human rights activists have all combined to tarnish this image. Didn’t they, all of them, consider it both unthinkable and incredible that three real brothers with the permission of the elders of the village would one after the other rape a helpless widow in their own house where the wives of two of them were also present?

It seems the champions of Mai’s cause either had an axe to grind or were just trying to be good Samaritans. The image of gang rape that they have foisted on Pakistan is the last obloquy our conservative rural folks deserve.

President Musharraf was wrong in stopping Mai from going to America, but his hunch that it would bring Pakistan more bad name was right. Once the Supreme Court has delivered the final verdict, which is expected soon, the president should arrange for the American press and Condoleezza Rice, hurt by Mai’s plight but not by Guntanamo Bay, to hear the tragic tale told not by Mai alone but also by her tormentors — the head of the panchayat and the men who spent four summers in death cells in the infernal heat of Multan though there was “not an iota of evidence” against them.

Justice must rise above prejudices and pressures, whether at stake is the honour of a helpless woman or the liberty of a man not so helpless. The Mai episode aside, an uneasy feeling keeps growing that justice as a value to cherish is in its last throes in Pakistan. That may be left to be explored further another day.

Capping the CAP

MIRACLES do happen. The European Union is starting to dismantle its outrageous sugar policy that keeps EU prices at three times the world average, thereby preventing many developing countries from exploiting their own advantages in growing the crop commercially.

The proposals — to cut support by 39 per cent — were not exactly an act of altruism by the EU because the subsidies have already been declared illegal by the World Trade Organisation and they are only part of the cornucopia of subsidies that Europe’s sugar farmers receive.

But at least the EU is trying to do something about it rather than fighting the ruling. The big question now is whether the EU has the strength to face up to all the farmers and sugar producers who view subsidies as their divine right and who are already making their deep opposition known.

The only growers that merit sympathy are those developing countries that are part of the EU’s Alice-in-Wonderland support system. They will need significant help for some years to enable them to diversify into making products for which there is a genuine market.

Otherwise, the new agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel is absolutely right when she says: “There is no alternative to profound reform. The easy option would have been to sit on my hands.” Although it is not directly connected, the EU’s sugar statement coincides with Tony Blair’s insistence that Britain will only give up its “rebate” in exchange for radical reform of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) itself.

—The Guardian, London