Whither the OIC?

ONE does not have to be paranoid in thinking that the Muslim world is coming under a siege, as pressures increase from the West and others to ‘do more’ to curb Islamist extremism; or else, there could be dire consequences. In pursuit of the war against terrorism, two Muslim countries – Afghanistan and Iraq – have already been invaded and occupied by US forces. Iran could be next on the list. Some observers think that there might also be an attempt to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear capability, in the event that Muslim extremists make a bid for power in Pakistan.

Israel, which continues to occupy Arab and Palestinian lands, claims that Palestinian terrorism and the threat posed by Hezbollah prevent it from making peace. India claims that Muslim terrorists in Indian-occupied Kashmir and in India itself pose a threat to its peace out security. Russia has been at war with Chechen Muslims, some of whom have resorted to terrorism.

It seems that the image of Islam has taken a beating in the recent past. In many countries, Muslims are seen as potential terrorists and saboteurs. This has been mainly because of 9/11, which has left an indelible impression in the West about the threat posed by Islamist terrorism, represented by Al Qaeda.

The subsequent terrorist attacks on trains in Spain and the UK, and the reported plot unearthed in Britain to blow up several planes on the trans-Atlantic route have reinforced concerns in the West that, at least, a section amongst Muslims represents a threat to its peace and security.

Islamist terrorism has also raised its head in Indonesia and some other countries. The rise of jihadi groups in Pakistan and elsewhere, the suicide bombers, the sectarian killings in Pakistan and, now on a much larger scale, in Iraq, all suggests a pattern of violence and militancy that is being widely associated with the Muslim world.

On the other hand, many in the Muslim world see sinister policies in the West and elsewhere aiming at harming the Muslims. With western backing, Israel has been on a path of aggression against the Arabs and Palestinians for more than half-a-century. Its occupation of Jerusalem and other Arab territories has outraged Muslims all over the world. India’s occupation of Kashmir has been like a long-festering wound for Pakistan. The genocide of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s caused deep anger and dismay in the Muslim world. In particular, after 9/11, the impression that Muslim countries are being targeted one by one has caused deep concern among the Muslims all over the world. The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have led to unprecedented anti-American feelings in the Muslim world. Many fear that there is an irreversible movement towards a clash of civilisations.

Under the circumstances, Muslims want that the OIC (the Organisation of Islamic Conference) should play a more active role on the world stage in order to protect Muslim interests. Muslims have always had a sense of belonging to a global Islamic community and, in the present context, they would like the OIC to emulate the relative success of several regional and multinational bodies in promoting active cooperation among the Muslim countries.

The OIC at present has a membership of 57 states, drawn mainly from Asia and Africa, which account for more than one-fourth of the UN membership. They occupy a landmass stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Some of the leading oil-exporting countries in the world are members of the OIC. A stoppage of oil supplies from these countries could cripple the world’s economy. Five of the world’s main waterways are located in the Muslim world – Suez, Persian Gulf, Gibraltar, Bosforus, and Malacca. Some Muslim countries are ranked as medium sized military powers, and one of them (Pakistan) has nuclear capability.

No doubt, the Muslim world possesses several important assets. If united, it could be a force on the world stage. In actual fact, this is not so. At present, the OIC can really be described as a paper tiger. It is more froth than substance. It is prolific in passing resolutions but hardly ever implements them. As a result, the world takes little notice of this toothless body. This is both frustrating as well as perplexing for most Muslims.

The question arises as to why the OIC has remained ineffective even though the Muslim world is large in size and has important resources. Different observers offer different answers.

A pet explanation is that the anti-Muslim forces keep conspiring to prevent Muslim unity. It is also argued that many rulers in Muslim countries are like puppets that need to have close ties with the West in order to remain in power. It is said that most Muslim countries do not have genuine democracy. Their rulers do not represent the true aspirations of their people. Only democratic leaders could infuse a new spirit in the OIC.

Interestingly, the record shows that the only time the Muslim world took a firm stance against the West was in 1973 when King Faisal imposed the oil embargo. He could not be described as a democrat.

There are some more valid reasons that explain the ineffectiveness of the OIC. Firstly, the hard fact is that national interest is the driving force in the Muslim world, as is the case with other states in the world. To give an example, most Arabs feel sympathy for the Kashmiri Muslims fighting against Indian occupation. But when it comes to policies, Egypt, Syria, and the PLO give primacy to their need to maintain good relations with India, which is seen as a very important country. Clearly, national interests here override Islamic sentiments. Similarly, the need of Gulf states to maintain a good equation with the West, their principal buyer of oil, prevents any decisive action in support of the Palestinians.

Secondly, the Muslim world is not a homogenous entity. It is spread over a large area. Hence, the various Muslim states have differing preoccupations and priorities. Moreover, there exist serious differences among the various Muslim countries. Among the Arab states, there has long been a divide between the radicals and the conservatives. Nasser led the revolutionary, republican Arabs and was pitted against the pro-West Arab monarchies. He believed in pan-Arabism, socialism and secularism. The Nasserite tradition, which remains a part of the Arab political thinking, is anathema to the conservative Arab regimes.

The Gulf states have also been distrustful of Iran and their concerns have been heightened even more since Islamic revolutionaries came to power in that country and adopted a republican, anti-West platform. Since then, the Shia-Sunni split has widened and has now reached almost the proportions of a civil war in Iraq. The Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War (1990-91) and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 have seen an accentuation of differences in the region. The sectarian split in Lebanon has divided the Arab states. In North Africa, Morocco and Algeria have had serious differences and Libya has been at odds with nearly everyone.

But it is not only in the Arab world that differences exist between Muslims. Pakistan and Afghanistan have had a strained relationship ever since Pakistan came into being. The emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan caused strains in Kabul’s relations with all of its neighbours: at one time, Iran seemed poised to go to war against the Taliban regime.

With all these ideological, political and sectarian differences, the Muslim world rarely shows unanimity on key issues. The OIC cannot act as a united and cohesive body when its members remain so much divided.

Another reason why the OIC has not been effective is the divide between the rich and the poor states in the Muslim world. There are about a dozen oil-rich Muslim states whereas the majority of OIC members are poor. It seems that the richer states are wary of any plans for Islamic unity as they feel that the onus for financing would always fall on them. Experience has shown that whenever any long-term projects for collaboration in the Muslim world are put forward (the Islamic Science Foundation, joint defence production, establishment of high quality universities), the affluent Muslim countries shoot down such proposals.

Some Muslim experts have argued in favour of the establishment of an Islamic common market, but this looks like a non-starter at present. The existing disparity between the rich and the poor states has resulted in strong and weak currencies and contrasting tariffs that would discourage any integration. The affluent states would also not be prepared to allow easy travel for fear that they would be overwhelmed by a flood of migrants from the poorer countries.

Another reason for the ineffectiveness of the OIC has been that some member states give a higher priority to their regional bodies (Asean, GCC) as against the OIC. The Arab states seem to place a higher emphasis on the Arab League as compared to the OIC. Perhaps they are worried that a really effective OIC would eclipse the role of the Arabs on issues of importance.

The absence of dynamic leaders in the Muslim world is also preventing an effective role for the OIC. As a result of all these factors, there has been a lack of political will among the OIC members to work jointly on an effective Muslim platform.

One way out of this dilemma is for a few key Muslim countries to take the lead in adopting a common stance on key issues. If the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Malaysia could agree on a common course of action, it is likely that the others would follow suit. The current crisis being faced by the Muslim world certainly warrants a stronger role by the OIC. Failure to do so could do long-term harm to Muslim interests.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Enough of military rule

WHEN on that fateful October 12 evening in 1999, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s elected government was overthrown in a lightening coup d’état, there was no political, constitutional or economic crisis in the country. The prime minister enjoyed an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly and a comfortable one in the Senate.

Although the economy was not booming, some important institutional reforms had been initiated to steer economic revival in the right direction. Competent professional managers were appointed as heads of leading banks and other financial institutions to take them out of the monetary mess. The privatisation process was streamlined. A legal forum was provided to settle defaulted loans.

Mega projects like the M1 and M3 motorways and the coastal highway were started, while the M2 linking Lahore and Islamabad, which was started during his first tenure, was completed. The naval port at Ormara became operational and considerable spadework was done on preparing the feasibility for Gwadar port.

Parliament was functioning smoothly and legislative work was being done, not through ordinances but acts of parliament. The infamous constitutional amendment Article 58 (2) b, which gave the president the power to dissolve the National Assembly, was struck down with the support of all national political parties.

Pakistan was pursuing an independent foreign policy. Relations with neighbouring Afghanistan and Iran were cordial. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore and the landmark Lahore declaration was seen as a breakthrough in Indo-Pak ties. In spite of tremendous US pressure, Pakistan successfully conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Then the ominous Kargil adventure took place. General Musharraf in his autobiography has stated that the prime minister had been formally briefed before launching the operation. But in an interview last year, Mian Nawaz Sharif denied that he was taken into confidence by the army high command. Unlike in India, no commission of inquiry was constituted to probe the matter.

However, it is no secret that the Pakistan army’s light infantry division and the freedom fighters suffered heavy casualties, and it was only because of a hurriedly arranged meeting with President Bill Clinton that an all-out conflagration was averted. A rift leading to mutual distrust between the prime minister and the chief of army staff soon developed. The army’s top brass was already sulking over the resignation of former COAS General Jahangir Karamat.

There was an uneasy truce between the prime minister and the COAS, and a looming apprehension that one of the two was going to strike. It was against this backdrop that Nawaz Sharif sacked the COAS on October 12, 1999. The army defied those orders and swiftly moved to oust the prime minister.

Military dictators on assuming power try to seek legitimacy for their rule. The legitimacy to General Musharraf was provided first by politicians who welcomed the coup and then by the Supreme Court that validated the army takeover and gave a grace period of three years for holding general elections.

It also authorised the military regime to amend the Constitution, where considered necessary, for the smooth functioning of the government.

Unfortunately, every military ruler in Pakistan has felt temptation to prolong his rule. General Ziaul Haq used Islam to carve out support for himself and sought legitimacy through an infamous referendum. General Musharraf chose to take a leaf from Zia’s book and assumed the presidency, initially through an equally farcical referendum, and later by virtue of the Seventeenth Amendment made possible by the support of the religious parties.

The amendment consolidated his position and he was able to retain the office of chief of army staff as well. September 11 and the consequent US largesse in exchange for support in the war on terror boosted his position.

One of the vices of personalised totalitarian rule is that the ruler gets surrounded by sycophants and is isolated from the public mood. Some populist dictators have enjoyed long periods of unfettered power. But they have either headed liberation struggles or were revolutionaries who demolished the old order and brought in social change. Indonesia’s Sukarno, Algeria’s Ahmed Ben Bella, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and China’s Mao Zedong are some examples.

However, Pakistan has been ruled by four military dictators for over 30 years. None was a liberator or a populist revolutionary. Ayub Khan came to power when the country was about to hold general elections under its newly framed 1956 constitution. It was a case of naked personal ambition. He left behind a crippling economy as a direct result of the 1965 war and sowed the seeds of political dissent in East Pakistan.

When people finally rejected his brand of democracy, he was forced to hand over the reins of power to General Yahya Khan whose stint as president of Pakistan proved to be a nightmare that saw the country break up and the Pakistan army surrender.

General Zia sent a popular and dynamic prime minister to the gallows. He could not tolerate his own nominee Muhammad Khan Junejo and sacked him arbitrarily only because the latter wanted to take to task those officers responsible for the Ojhri Camp disaster. Ziaul Haq left behind a legacy of heroin and Kalashnikov culture as well as a sectarian malaise that has ruined the very fabric of civil society.

General Musharraf could not tolerate his own nominee Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali who had sound political credentials. Instead, he brought in a Manhattan banker for the high office of prime minister.

General Musharraf staged the coup only because the prime minister wanted to replace him. He is on record as having said that had Mian Nawaz Sharif not removed him the latter would have remained prime minister. He announced a seven-point agenda to justify his coup. This included good governance, eradication of corruption, genuine democracy, empowerment of the people, independent foreign policy in the national interest and economic progress.

What this country has seen in the past seven years is just the opposite. The general law and order situation in the country has deteriorated. Street crime and acts of sectarian violence are on the increase. Structures of civil administration have been demolished in the wake of the ill-conceived devolution of power. Police highhandedness is on the rise as seen in the law-enforcement agencies’ crude behaviour during the lawyers’ protests recently.In the realm of foreign affairs, we don’t seem to be following an independent policy. In spite of its all-out support for the US, Pakistan is being blamed for not doing enough and is being branded as a terrorist-exporting country. The ill-conceived army action in North and South Waziristan and the subsequent one-sided ceasefire, has weakened the writ of the federation. Relations with Afghanistan have never been so bad.

In spite of withholding moral support for Kashmiri freedom fighters, India has become increasingly more hawkish. All the while, General Musharraf has been saying that he has put the country on the path of genuine democracy while his prime minister claims that the country has achieved unprecedented economic growth.

The recent judicial crisis has come as a rude shock to General Musharraf. The manner in which he summoned the Chief Justice to the army house and chose to meet him in uniform was not palatable to the people in spite of their long exposure to the army rule. Although the information minister insisted that the president met the Chief Justice on the latter’s request, nobody believed him as the initial government handout had stated that the Chief Justice was called by the president.

The subsequent shameful treatment meted out to the Chief Justice and the most repulsive conduct of the police was perhaps one of the darkest hours of our national history. The emotional response of the people to the Chief Justice episode is, in fact, an articulation of the feeling that the nation’s patience had been running out and that enough is enough.

Mercifully, in this emotionally-charged drama, there were some moments of comic relief. Firstly, when the worthy law minister gave a new meaning to the English phrase “long arm of law”, and then when the honourable information minister advised the lawyers not to indulge in politics.

Perhaps he forgot that it was barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his lawyer colleagues, like Liaquat Ali Khan, who led the independence movement from the front. Rather than advising the lawyers, he would have done better to advise the generals to shun politics.

The writer is former chief secretary, Punjab.

It is Iran’s oil, not nukes

THE Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she said. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."

It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush/Cheney/Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (until their masters got the wind up) is both farce and distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to General Leonid Ivashov, Russia's leading strategic thinker: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets, and there are 20 such facilities. Combat nuclear weapons may be used, and this will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."

And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, except for the noise of "news" in which powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious, but dare not make sense of it lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapses, and the truth is revealed.

"The days of Britain having to apologise for the British empire are over," declared Gordon Brown to the Daily Mail. "We should celebrate!" In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British policies. And since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified official files make clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world - from imperial military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". "Rejoice!" said Thatcher. "Celebrate!" says the paymaster of Blair's bloodbath. Spot the difference.

We need to look behind the one-way moral screen, urgently. Last October, the Lancet published research led by Johns Hopkins University in the US that calculated the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street acolytes derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. They knew that the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and that other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure of Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million.

"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference." Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side".

As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 9/11 - and it beggars belief that Blair did not know that. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oilfields among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by American and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.

Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway the other prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non-existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with an American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years IAEA inspectors have said that they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent security council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.

Until recently the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few knew that British intelligence set out systematically to destroy secular Arab nationalism and in the 1980s recruited and trained young Muslims as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union. The fuse of the bombs that killed 52 Londoners was lit by "us". In my experience, most people do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with the double standards of rampant power and the media's notion of approved evil – of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government. Certainly, they would agree with Robert Jackson, the chief counsel of the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether we do them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." Like Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On March 20 Baltasar Garzon, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued General Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" – Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.

These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the reich of Blair/Bush. However, we also live in the most dangerous of times. On April 6 Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the MoD has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie,

Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?

— Dawn/Guardian Service