A ‘proflict’ in America: NOTES FROM DELHI

WHAT changed on September 11, 2001? The answer has become even more crucial with the success of American arms in the war against the Taliban; a war that began amid much apprehension about American ability and even more cynicism about American will.

For Americans the world changed on September 11. For the rest of the world, America changed on September 11. The difference in perception is not ornamental. It might be legitimate to argue that when America changes the world changes as well. It is the privilege of any superpower to define the prevailing morality of those regions it commands, and there is little doubt that no nation in history has been as powerful as the United States is today.

The whole world may not be equally obedient to Washington, but if you want to see the image in terms of a queue, then there is a clamour in the front to fawn, and only a thin fag end of sceptics at the back. No responsible government has discovered either the will or the justification to challenge American policy on war, peace and economics with any seriousness. Of course the two could be related; you discover the will only if you first find sufficient justification.

How did the world change for America? That is easy. It came indoors. America has always seen itself as the largest island on the globe, a golden glade of internal prosperity and external trade, ever reluctant to engage in the messy conflicts of others, except as agent provocateur, or to defend its economic interests in vital areas that provide the raw material for its consumption and energy needs. In part this must be because of its history as a refugee island: it is a country that has been settled by refugee invaders who escaped the horrors of their parent countries, usurped the land of native Americans and ultimately replaced them through a policy of decimation and colonization. Americans had escaped from a terrible world of bloodshed in Europe and Asia, and they were reluctant to bring home body bags in the first and second world wars as well.

Their first major, independent, armed excursion in world affairs, Vietnam, taught them that their previous reluctance had been wise. Insular by preference, democratic by conviction, and gregarious by nature, Americans have little appreciation of the pools of anger created by their policies and their status as the pre-eminent power of the era.

Were Graham Greene to mention an ugly American today, he would certainly be interrogated by George Bush’s thought police; and much of the interrogation would be by officers who felt genuinely puzzled and hurt by this allegation. The Atlantic has often been referred to, in typical British understatement, as a pond. Terrorists targeting America did convert the Atlantic into a pond on September 11. America has to face a simple fact, that this continental island is no longer a safe haven, and this has changed every equation in its book dramatically.

How did America change for the world? In various ways. Some countries, India among them, had the private satisfaction of watching America wake up to a problem that it had only paid lip-service to. But terrorism is a symptom of something sharper. America’s attitude to conflict resolution used to be words. It did not have more than words for Afghanistan after it won its proxy war against the Soviet Union and disappeared, leaving Pakistan holding the baby and various militias crying uncle. Afghanistan is the first instance of a new phase of American participation in conflict resolution.

Is that good news? So much depends on the answer.

The suicide bombings that hit Israel last week prove one thing unambiguously: the American victory in Afghanistan has had no impact on the motivation of others who see no way forward in their cause other than suicide missions. The defeat of the Taliban (widely, and I believe sincerely, welcomed by most of the Muslim world) has not intimidated those Palestinians who believe Israel’s occupation of their lands to be unjust and blame America for perpetrating this injustice. There was no doubt about the outcome in Afghanistan when those suicide missions wreaked havoc in Israel. Kabul had already fallen and Kandahar was no more than a mopping-up operation after that.

This in turn brings us to a critical point: you cannot intimidate those who are ready to die. If the United States wants to end terrorism, then it must work to change the ethos that persuades young men and women that there is a cause strong enough to die for. The immediate reaction of the White House was anger, and when anger is in the air the vane shifts almost automatically to Yasser Arafat.

This is temporary give and take, with much of the giving and taking being done on television screen. Which, by the way, is more incendiary? A gunfire war or a propaganda war? A frustrated Ehud Barak called Arafat a terrorist. Is he talking about the man he supped with just a year ago at Camp David in the benign presence of President Bill Clinton? Did Tony Blair have long meetings with a terrorist only a few weeks ago? Or did Arafat briefly retire from terrorism and has now returned to it after the Americans have delivered their sharpest message ever against the problem with their victory in Afghanistan? As one perceptive diplomat said, the world’s leaders no longer feel accountable for the language they use.

Washington has to take a decision, and do so sooner rather than later: does it support the creation of a Palestine state because it believes that this is the correct thing to do, or did it make statements to this effect only because it wanted the help of some Muslim countries for its own needs? There is obviously going to be overlap, but the world is waiting to see how the balance tilts when interests are weighed against convictions. There have been hints that Washington has recognized the need for a viable Palestinian state, rather than a Palestine that is full of holes and moles.

Washington faces an unfamiliar twist, which is a price, perhaps welcome, of its single-superpower status. After Afghanistan, all conflicts, even the most vicious ones, are between friends of America. In the good old days, up to the age of Ronald Reagan, there were good guys and bad guys. All you can say now is that there are good guys and pals. Palestine is as happy with American mediation in its conflict with Israel as Israel is. India and Pakistan are now competitive about which of them is closer to George Bush, a sort of my-bush-is-bigger-than-yours game. China takes as much comfort in visits from the American President as Taiwan. Is this the elixir for eternal life?

Regrettably, no. Their competition for the love of America does not make regional antagonists less hostile to each other. Washington’s reluctance to intervene in the dispute over Kashmir is sensible; why should America purchase the distrust of one friend or the other over a dispute that it can do little about in any case. If anyone in Islamabad has visions of the American Air Force over Delhi and Srinagar, then he is clearly dining at Barmecide’s feast.

This is the danger with too much friendship. Everyone may end up praising food that does not exist. Barmecide, a great noble of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid, at least until his head was cut off, would invite beggars from the street, seat them on the most comfortable divans and then order his servants to bring out a dinner of many courses. With each course, and each sherbet he would strew the air with phrases of praise for the food and drink, and, if his guests were sensible, they would join in with even greater compliments about the food, the chef, the service, the grandeur.

The trick was that no food was ever served, and everyone participated in maintaining the illusion, both the well-fed host and starving beggar. A Barmecide’s feast is an excellent metaphor, but not a good policy for international relations. Sometimes, though, the temptation to use the metaphor becomes irresistible for superpowers.

Far better for Washington to serve wholesome rice and dal with the rider that this is a realistic option, and good for health. Guests at such a table might be unhappy at the difference between reality and expectations, but at least their children will bless them for not returning hungry, and angry, and having dined on empty words.

Should there be a new word in the post-Taliban era? Conflict is too redolent of the past that we want to leave behind us. How about ‘proflict’? It sounds like the opposite of conflict. Better still, it means nothing. As yet.

In hiding

The White House, in the name of security, is killing the holiday spirit in the nation’s capital even as it delivers body blows to the District of Columbia’s already-battered post-Sept. 11 economy. President Bush, who from all signs doesn’t seem to have it in for his new Washington neighbors, ought to intervene and call off the Grinches who would close the White House for the holidays and further send the District of Columbia’s economy down the tubes. A presidential reprieve would be a welcome present for the season.

How can the country meet the president’s demand to show terrorists that the nation can’t be cowed if the White House prevents the capital city from returning to its routines? The White House ought to come out of its hiding mode. The president should say no to the Grinches.

—The Washington Post

In defence of modernization

IT IS almost a commonplace in developing countries, especially the ones that are Muslim, that while modernization is welcome, westernization is not. Some of their intellectuals have argued that western prescriptions for reversing their political and social decay have failed, and that one should look to one’s native sources of wisdom for effecting improvement. To date nativity has been rather unyielding in offering solutions.

In any case, the proposition that modernization and westernization are two distinct processes so that we can adopt one and discard the other is, for the larger part, invalid. For one thing, many of the ideas and practices that we call “modern” originated and then flourished in the West. In that respect, then, modernization and westernization are the same.

Modernity is not to be placed in opposition to that which we regard as “ancient”. Rediscovery of many of the modes of thought and action associated with ancient Greece and Rome stimulated the emergence of modernity and its subsequent advance. It is much better understood as a departure from that which was medieval. First and foremost, it signifies a new way of generating knowledge, commonly known as the scientific method. A proposition is valid not because conventional wisdom says so. It is valid if observation and analysis of relevant facts, with interpretations or conclusions tested and validated in the laboratory or out in the field, confirm it. This methodology has enabled the West to master science and technology and achieve economic and political predominance. In this regard, modernization and westernization are coterminous, and I cannot imagine that Muslim intellectuals will want to reject them.

Beyond science and technology, the most radical departures from medieval practice are the demise of feudalism, as a system of holding landed property and wielding political power, and passage from inherited status to contract as the determinant of reciprocal rights and obligations among persons. Feudalism gave way gradually to the pressures of an alliance between kings (who wanted to be rid of the autonomous and often rebellious feudal lords and their shifting and opportunistic allegiances) and the rising commercial property holders, who wanted political influence and freedom for their commerce from tolls, taxes, and regulation imposed by a multiplicity of fiefdoms.

Feudalism was followed by several other systems of thought and rule. Of these, absolute monarchy, communism, socialism, fascism, and the harsher types of authoritarianism have been in decline for periods of time. Varieties of capitalism and democracy appear to be the currently dominant western ideologies.

In a related dimension of modernity, a centralized state, whose writ reached all parts of its territory, replaced the earlier dispersal of political authority among the feudal lords. The process of integrating the king’s territory into a state required the extension of the individual’s loyalty beyond his family and immediate surroundings to larger entities, such as country and nation, which in their entirety he would never see. Thus arose the ideas of nationhood, nationalism, and the nation state. And extensive and well-organized bureaucracy had already existed in the Catholic church at the Vatican, and in a rudimentary form in kingdoms, but now the modern state acquired a large, elaborate, and complex bureaucracy.

Accepting the modern state, but worrying about its tendency to centralization and excessive bureaucratization, the more influential political theorists (notably John Locke in England and Thomas Jefferson in America) asserted the primacy of the individual and the sovereignty of the people in politics. The former idea invested the individual with “reason”, and with the right to choose his beliefs, opinions, occupation (within bounds of law) and modes of participation in politics, among other things. It required limitations upon the state’s authority to regulate the individual’s behaviour. This is not to ignore the opposition, that is, the advocates of a highly centralized and active state — for instance, Thomas Hobbes in England and Alexander Hamilton in America. The point to be emphasized here is that they were not as influential in the making of the western democratic culture.

In the realm of societal organization, modernization has not entirely abolished class divisions but it has certainly blunted them. It espouses equality before law, and promotes that of opportunity, political participation and civil rights.

All of this is at once modernization and westernization. Apart from secularism, certain issues relating to sexual behaviour, and some concerning the status of women, what is here to which Muslim intellectuals or politicians will want to object?

We now enter the rocky terrain of secularism. In common parlance the term means separation of church and state which, in turn, means that the state itself professes no religion, favours none over others, and takes no responsibility for enforcing law and rules of morality that believers in one or another religion may regard as divine. The state in the West has incorporated much of the Judeo-Christian law and morality into its own laws, but it requires obedience to them because they are its laws, not because they are the laws of God. The rest of the divine law and morality is left to the individual to follow, or ignore, as he may wish.

This position is easier for Christians to accept than it is for the Jews and the Muslims. Jesus brought no new law, but Moses and Muhammad (peace be on them) did. For the Christians law is the same as the Judaic law, but they have found ways out of the obligation to enforce it. First, Saint Paul held that the law was not all that important. If a man objected to circumcision, which the law required, or liked to eat pork, which the law forbade, he might do as he wished and still be a Christian.

Second, having died on the cross, Jesus had already paid for the sins of his followers. For good measure, if they are Catholics, they might confess their sins to a priest and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness, which would be forthcoming. Since the West is mostly Christian, secularism has had fairly good receptivity. A few sects — for instance, Calvinists in Geneva and Puritans in Massachusetts in America — did call upon the state to enforce the divine law, but their advocacy did not gain many adherents.

Initially, secularism became a preferred political doctrine to put an end to wars of religion, mainly between Catholics and Protestants in England and France. Subsequently, it became the ground for discouraging governmental discrimination against religious minorities. But note that its progress has been slow and uneven.

In the United States, the Constitution of 1787 ordained the separation of church and state, but it took public officials and the society at large nearly two hundred years to become secular-minded. Even now a degree of bias against religious minorities persists. The United Kingdom is secular for most practical purposes, but not so formally. Elizabeth is Queen by the Grace of God, defender of the faith, and head of the Church of England, and the Lords Spiritual (bishops) sit alongside the Lords Temporal in the House of Lords.

Formally and officially, Pakistan is an Islamic, not a secular, state. However, many of its political and intellectual elite are secular-minded. They are so inclined not because they are under the spell of the West, but because an essentially secular disposition, concurrent with respect for religion, has been a part of our native tradition and historical experience. Outlawry of secularism may be an urgent issue for the country’s islamic parties, but for the “silent majority” it would appear to be a “non-issue”.

There are aspects of western culture — food, clothing entertainment arrangements of personal appearance, notions of friendship, love and marriage, family structures and affiliations, forms of artistic expression, among many others — which have little, if anything, to do with modernization as described above, and which people in developing countries may or may not adopt. If a Pakistani likes to hear Bach or Beethoven, let him, but if western classical music is “noise” to his ears, he can stick with Ghulam Ali and Iqbal Bano. There is nothing wrong with broadening one’s awareness of beauty, but it is foolish to downgrade or ignore one’s own culture.

Women all over the world have been striving for equality with men in various spheres. They have achieved some successes but their work is not quite done yet even in the West. I intend to address myself to their struggle in Pakistan in a subsequent article. Suffice it to say now that discrimination against them does not issue from public policy but from the traditional outlook of certain segments of society. Nevertheless, they are going forward. Even as more of them wear the “hejab”, education, commerce, banking, professions (including politics), and the public services are opening up to them as never before. In this area, the tension between our native/Muslim tradition and modernization or westernization appears to be subsiding.

Sex out of wedlock has gone on in all societies since times immemorial. The issue is not whether it will continue. It is whether government and society may accord it overt acceptance or tolerance. This has been happening in the West during the last fifty years or so. This is then a part of western civilization we ought to reject. Certainly, we should not legalize it. If we cannot eradicate it, which most probably we can’t, let us keep it covert as our ancestors over the last many centuries had done.

President-PM partnership

AS the military campaign in Afghanistan heads towards a desultory end, a debate has begun on Pakistan’s gain or loss in it. The arguments advanced and conclusions drawn are premature and, mostly, unedifying.

The general and critical refrain is that the financial benefit received or promised is too small for us to have forsaken a steadfast friend in Taliban for mercurial Americans. Its disparaging implication is as if Pakistan had sold its soul for money. Little thought is given to the point whether the part Pakistan played was right and in its own national interest. Most people and parties agree that Pakistan could not have lived with an enduring image of being an ally of a rabble militia the whole world, Muslim countries included, refused to recognize and deal with.

The essential point to emphasize however is that it is too early to assess Pakistan’s loss or gain, whether financial or political. The Taliban have been defeated but the threat of a guerrilla warfare looms. Whether the coalition of disparate forces that assembled in Germany would be able to avert it and bring peace and stability to Afghanistan is yet to be seen. The ongoing bloody wrangle over the control of Kandahar doesn’t bode well. A judgment of success or failure on Pakistan’s Afghan policy since 1979 and in its current phase thus should be reserved till the implementation of the Bonn plan over the next two years.

Whatever the ultimate judgment on the Afghan policy, the Musharraf government is now much better placed to tackle Pakistan’s own constitutional and economic problems than it was before September 11. The mainstream political opposition — the PPP and the MQM in particular — are inclined to support him, agitation on the streets has died down and the clamouring clerics have also quietened down.

The 1973 Constitution didn’t work because, to begin with, it vested all powers in the prime minister, it didn’t work either when the Eighth Amendment made the president the centre of power. It again failed when the power was returned to the prime minister through the amendments made by Nawaz Sharif in his second term. When the prime minister was all powerful, he could be removed only by military force, as were Z.A. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and when the president got the power he dissolved the parliament and thus removed the prime minister, as were Mohammad Khan Junejo and Benazir Bhutto.

The consequences of these changes, whether capricious or well-considered, were many and disastrous — polarization of society, brake on economic progress, increased corruption and disorder and the country’s tarnished international image. Not to be forgotten is the baleful effect on the superior judiciary which was frequently called upon to arbitrate in this power play under stress and temptation.

In this background of constant failure and fatigue, the country deserves a new Constitution now. In any case the present constitutional framework is so riddled with contradictions through extensive amendments made to protect personal positions and by fractious court rulings that it can no longer meet the needs of the nation.

Besides creating a balance in the powers of the head of state (president) and the head of government (prime minister) which should make change in government possible through elections rather than coup or dissolution, a new Constitution is necessary to eliminate or modify some features of the old which are either redundant or have served the purpose contrary to what was intended.

Making the Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the Constitution by Zia-ul-Haq has made no difference to the legal scheme of the Constitution, nor to the rights of the citizens. It however, carries the hazard of coming into conflict with both for it was never drafted for constitutional interpretation and enforcement. It should be deleted. If any pronouncement of the founding fathers must appear in the Constitution as a guiding light for the law makers and interpreters it should be the operative part of the Quaid-i-Azam’s August 11, 1947 address to the constituent assembly. To the dead we owe only truth.

The state’s intervention in matters religious has given rise to hypocrisy and tensions resulting in immoral behaviour, murders and estrangement. The atmosphere thus created has landed the country in the quagmire of Afghanistan. Combined with the separate electorates it has caused the exodus of non-Muslims. Particularly missed are the skill, diligence and money of the migrating Parsis and Goanese Christians, and painfully galling is the alienation of Sindh’s large Hindu population.

Provinces enjoy few powers and little influence in the present constitutional arrangement which in turn recoils on the local councils on which the Musharraf regime has staked all its ingenuity. Leaving aside the political aspirations inherent in provincial autonomy, more powers have to be assigned to the provinces if the devolution, grass root plan is to make an impact.

The Constitution can be amended by the prime minister, as Nawaz Sharif did more than once, if he has two-thirds majority in the parliament — national assembly and the senate. That is a route to autocracy. The new Constitution should require two-thirds vote of each provincial assembly before it is amended. The most critical constitutional question, however, remains the division of powers between the president and the prime minister without deviating from the parliamentary form of government which is a universal wish of the people as well as condition laid down by the Supreme Court.

For that the model of the constitution of France’s Fifth Republic promulgated by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 may be followed. In essence it strengthened the powers of the president and delegated greater non-political responsibilities to the local and regional councils and administrators. That pattern answers the expressed urges of General Musharraf. The circumstances are also similar. France had witnessed 12 turbulent, unsettled years of the Fourth Republic before the advent of de Gaulle. So has Musharraf here.

France thus has parliamentary form of government which is characterized by a strong role of the president without the prime minister losing stature. Roughly defined, the president dominates the foreign policy and defence while the prime minister is responsible for internal policies without losing control over civil services and armed forces. Over the past four decades a partnership between the two is established which works causing differences but no conflicts or dismissals.

The Constitution of the Fifth Republic was drafted by a group of experts, not by the parliament, and approved in a referendum. That route could be followed by General Musharraf as well. But since the electorate here wouldn’t be able to understand the constitutional intricacies to vote upon it, the Constitution may be drafted by a mix of politicians and lawyers drawn from all the provinces and approved by the federal and provincial legislatures when they come into being after the general elections.

As an illustration, the drafting panel from Sindh could possibly comprise Mumtaz Bhutto, Hafeez Pirzada, Rafi Raza, Mustafa Jatoi, Illahi Bakhsh Soomro, Prof. Ghafoor Ahmad. Meraj Mohammad Khan, Aftab Shaikh and Makhdoom Amin Fahim. Similar panels could come up from the other provinces. General Musharraf thus will have the satisfaction of following the example of one of the best known generals and symbol of resistance to foreign invasion in the modern times.