18 days that shook the world

WHEN relative calm returns to the world, and sober historians begin to reflect on the period through which we are living today, they may reach a conclusion very different from the one conventional wisdom arrived at a few months ago. They may well decide that what really changed the world was not the terrorists’ attack on America on September 11, 2001. In the historians’ final analysis the process of dealing with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq may prove to be more of a turning point than a single event — the September 11 terrorists’ attack.

“Nine-eleven” exposed America’s vulnerability. It also drew attention to the fact that stateless forces such as Al Qaeda could do grave damage to a powerful country. The terrorist attack also led to the war in Afghanistan, the removal of the Taliban regime and the installation in Kabul of a government friendly to the West, in particular to the United States. “Nine-eleven changed the world” became a popular cliche. But what really changed the world was the way the United States handled the Iraq crisis.

As Gerard Baker of the Financial Times wrote a day before the Security Council met on February 14 to hear for the second time from the UN weapons inspectors, “Great, fissiparous forces are behind the events that have driven the civilized world to diplomatic disarray in the past few weeks. The imminent and unprecedented exercise of US hegemony over Iraq is splitting a nervous and volatile Europe from an increasingly aggressive US. Europe’s nations are themselves asunder on how to deal with it. A new world disorder is busy being born.”

A new world “disorder” is coming at an awkward time for Pakistan. It is taking shape at a time when a new regime in Islamabad is confronted with a number of complex foreign policy issues. These include -to name a few - relations with the United States, the on-going conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir, developing relations with a new set of leaders in Beijing, the turmoil in the Muslim word, preserving the country’s nuclear deterrence, and reviving the economy with the help of foreign capital flows. For these reasons it is of critical importance for the Pakistani policy-makers to fully comprehend what is happening in the world around them.

Writing about a process while it is still evolving has many hazards. It is only the clarity that distance and time brings which helps identify the real markers in human history. Nonetheless, let us review what happened in the eighteen days between January 18 and February 14 that really changed the world for good.

On January 27, Hans Blix, the United Nations chief weapons inspector, delivered his first verdict on Iraq. He told the members of the Security Council that Iraq “appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance...of the disarmament that was expected of it.” Blix’s colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, who also spoke on the same day, suggested that Iraq probably did not have nuclear weapons and was probably not engaged in developing them. Blix was not able to provide such an assurance on chemical and biological weapons. He was also not prepared to say that Iraq was not developing missiles that could go beyond the range of 150 kilometers permitted by the Security Council as part of the regimen under which the country was required to live.

The findings by Blix lent support to the view held by a number of senior officials in the administration of President George W. Bush. According to that position, the only option left for the world was to use military means to cleanse Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. But the real importance of the Blix statement was that a multilateral institution — in this case the United Nations Security Council — was prepared to force errant nations to follow the rule of international law. The law had been laid down by 17 resolutions passed by the Council since the early spring of 1991. Iraq, at that time, had agreed to disarm in return for cessation of hostilities. Its disarmament was to be carried out by a strictly defined plan of action laid down by the United Nations.

The most detailed of this series of resolutions was passed by the Security Council on November 8 as America began to assemble a large force around Iraq. Washington’s action convinced the world community that it had to act to avert another war in the Middle East. After weeks of intense negotiations, the 15 member states of the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 laying down clearly what Iraq had to do to avert war.

That Washington had turned to the Security Council for a mandate for action against Iraq was itself a development of considerable import. It was a decision arrived at after a prolonged and difficult debate within the Bush administration, the details of which were provided in Bob Woodward’s best selling book, “Bush at War.” The option for following international law was advocated by a former general, Colin L. Powell, US secretary of state. Called variously the “reluctant warrior,” the “pragmatic soldier” and the exponent of something called the “Powell doctrine,” the general had argued with great passion and conviction that America, despite its enormous power, could not afford to act alone.

In fact, precisely because of its unmatched power, it had to ensure that it undertook risky ventures not alone but in the company of world nations, big and small, strong and weak. Building international consensus was the route to take and it was not in the long-term interest of the United States to act unilaterally as proposed by many in the Bush administration. Powell’s view prevailed and Resolution 1441 was the consequence.

By developing a detailed legal framework and by authorizing the United Nations to ensure that international law was being followed, the world community was setting a powerful precedent. It seemed for a while that the world’s nations were working together towards bringing about change on the basis of agreed principles. They were developing a legal framework for bringing a nation defying international law to fully comply with it. Some of the norms of good behaviour Iraq was expected to follow had been codified in international treaties. Some others were accepted as important parts of civilized behaviour.

In other words, the view that a new international order must be based on law seemed to be prevailing when the Security Council passed Resolution 1441. The resolution represented an agreement among all nations that the world’s collective will should not be imposed by the might of one country. Law takes away individual will; it imposes obligations determined by a collective will that transcends the wishes of individuals or small communities.

What was important about the dispositions of Blix and ElBaradei — both lawyers of some standing — on January 27 was that they were made strictly within the legal framework prescribed for them by the Security Council. With firmness laced with caution, that must be the hallmark of all law enforcement agencies, Blix laid down his case against Iraq in minute detail. He was providing evidence gathered from an on-going investigation. He had not yet reached the stage at which he was prepared to throw up his hands and send the matter of Iraq’s compliance back to the Security Council.

But President George W. Bush, who delivered his State of the Union address to the US Congress a day after Blix and ElBaradei appeared before the Security Council, was of a different mind. He said that his and his country’s patience was exhausted. America was prepared to act alone or along with a “coalition of the willing” if the United Nations was not inclined to authorize military action.

President Bush’s State of the Union address will not be remembered in history for the “near-ultimatum” he issued to Iraq. It is of historical significance for two other reasons. It moved quite a bit further the new doctrine of pre-emptive strike on which the Bush administration had been working for several months. America was not prepared to wait for a “Pearl Harbour” to happen or for another “nine-eleven.” President Bush told the world that the appropriate course for America “does not depend on the decision of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.”

The American president was signalling to the world that his country had the right and the will to strike in anticipation of unpleasant events rather than meting out punishment to those who have done it wrong. In that context, Washington went way beyond the pale of recognized law, including international law. The hope created by the passage of Resolution 1441 by the Security Council and the grant of considerable enforcement authority to it and its various organs was now dashed. Pursuit of legal means to achieve compliance takes time. But the American president said clearly that America believed that time had run out.

It is the second element in the State of the Union address that will hold even greater significance for future historians. At the conclusion of his hour-long speech the American president adopted a strong religious tone. He concluded his address with the following words: “We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know — we do not claim to know — all the ways of providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.”

This resort to strong religious belief was not lost on those who listened to President Bush. According to one analyst, “Maybe this single-mindedness of the president’s is the product of his deep religious belief — the conviction that he has been chosen for the task of decking Hussein. This too is unsettling, especially in Europe, which is much more secular than America. Destiny and providence are siren’s call that assures some, unnerves others... But this reliance on providence, this tendency to see things in black and white, this contempt for the lives of the contemptible no matter what else may be at stake (capital punishment in Texas, for instance, or collateral damage in Baghdad), is hardly reassuring to those who are looking for reasoned judgment, not quasi-religious conviction. Rarely does Bush explain. Usually he just declaims — quick sound-bites of the ‘game is over’ variety.”

This turn to religion — Christian evangelism in the case of Bush — was worrying since it happened in the midst of a campaign directed by the US Justice Department to register all young men who had arrived in the US from Muslim countries around the globe. Unwittingly, it appeared, the Bush administration was in the process of creating a deep divide between the West and the world of Islam. This was not a clash between two civilizations whose occurrence Samuel Huntington had predicted but a crusade between two religions.

Yesterday’s friends, today’s foes

SO, now it is Gulbadin Hekmatyar whose scalp the United States wants. Who is this bloke anyway? He is the same opportunist Afghan whom the United States virtually worshipped because he was their man in the fight against the ‘Evil Empire,’ to borrow the words of President Ronald Reagan. It was the ‘evil empire’ then; it is the ‘axis of evil’ today.

Hekmatyar was the man who betrayed his own people to fight the war that was to bring the Afghan state and people to this almost irreparable ruin. If ever a politician was a perfect weathercock, it was Hekmatyar. He happily ran with the hare and cheerfully hunted with the hound, with complete approval from his master.

Who that master of Gulbadin Hekmatyar was in those days when the US-led coalition pampered him no end? It was the United States. Here it would be less than honest to omit mention of the US surrogate of that period, the late General Ziaul Haq of Pakistan. Duped by Washington, Ziaul Haq was dreaming of extending Pakistan’s ‘zone of influence’ not only up to Afghanistan but far beyond.

How far-sighted the Americans were and how wise was our Ziaul Haq? All those who then befriended the US in its fight against godless communism, have now turned out to be the arch and implacable enemies of the United States. Or, perhaps it would be nearer the truth saying that America has turned thirsty of the blood of those who spilled blood in its war against the Soviets.

The Osama saga is exactly the same. Osama was virtually spawned by the United States and nursed and nurtured to become a warlord in aid of the US campaign to destroy the Soviet Union. The moment it thought the war was over, the US abandoned everyone who had fought for it. The fact was that if the Soviets had expired, the war the US had started was far from over. It was to return to it in, for all one would know, September 2001.

Osama is a former US ally. So is Gulbadin Hekmatyar. In fact, the credit or blame for whatever goes under the name of the Taliban belong to none but the United States and its Pakistani allies of that terribly accursed phase. We cannot forget that, as prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s role was not innocent. Did she not foist Taliban generalissimo Fazlur Rahman on top of her ministry of foreign affairs?

It was said of revolutions that they invariably devour their own children. Here is the United States, the model anti-revolution giant, chasing its own babies of yesterday and thirsting for their blood. Osama, Saddam, Hekmatyar and many more represent Washington’s angels of yesterday and devils of today. Is it not something of a wonder how short-sighted and opportunist superpowers can get? Is it not a phenomenon that would destroy belief and sear hope?

Miscalculation is understandable because to err is human. But miscalculation on such a massive scale, and with such persistence leaves one simply aghast. Instead of trying to grasp the fact of having made egregious mistakes and making due amends for those mistakes, the United States now wants to punish the victims of its own horrifying blunders on world scale.

Look at Tony Blair. He is now very close to being the Peter Pan who would neither learn nor unlearn anything. He does not seem to have any idea of his own country’s history. The year 1956 is not pre-history. What did Tory Prime Minister Anthony Eden do to Egypt? Precisely what the US has been doing over and over again. Its Afghan misadventure is only a more recent example. The US misadventures during the last half a century would add up to a fearsome catalogue.

It is also chastening to recall that in 1956 the United States did not go along with the British in Anthony Eden’s catastrophic adventure in the Suez. Indeed, Washington gave its chief war-time ally a mouthful and more. Anthony Eden fell, not Gamal Nasser.

The US did not support Britain in its Egyptian fiasco. Tony Blair is spoiling to jump into what should look like an inferno to anyone with a pair of eyes or a smattering of history.

One is also reminded of the way the United States abandoned His Imperial Majesty the Ariyamehr of Iran. Once described as the bastion of security in the Middle East, the Shah and his imperial majesty went up in smoke and he headed for the United States for shelter. He was denied permission to land on the land of promise, the temple of freedom and what have you. That Shah lies buried out of his own land.

These are only a few specimens of the wisdom, consistency, commitment to moral values that adorn the record of the superpowers that run roughshod over this planet. Instead of being a blessing today, they are the bane of the human race. This planet is not safe in their hands. This would sound like a message of doom and gloom. Yes, that’s what it is bound to sound to those who are listening.

The big match: ALL OVER THE PLACE

ON March 1, Pakistan will play with India in the World Cup. For cricket fans in the subcontinent, it will be a match even more important than the final.

It will be the first time that the rivals will meet sine the Indian government linked cricket with cross-border terrorism and snapped cricket ties. It was an astonishing linkage but it did not meet with any disapproval from Indian cricket fans. It was a small sacrifice they were being asked to make.

The alternative would have been to ask the cricket fans to go on hunger-strike. India, of course, could have refused to play its World Cup match against Pakistan, as England refused to play in Zimbabwe for a host of patently bogus reasons, but this would have meant forfeiting the points. Sometimes, principles have to be abandoned at the altar of expediency.

In theory I should be looking forward to the big match and it should be a great game of cricket. But will it be a game of cricket? If Indian cricket fans can go on the rampage after India lost Australia, imagine what will happen if India should lose to Pakistan? An unruly mob attacked the home of Mohammad Kaif, prompting some to wonder whether added to the cricket brew was some communal seasoning. In communal riots in pre-partition India, it was not uncommon to settle some personal accounts.

In the 1987 World Cup, when Australia beat Pakistan sweets were distributed by Hindus and this enraged the Indian Muslims and four or five people died. When England beat India the following day, sweets were once again distributed, this time by Muslims, and a few more people died.

In 1996, the late Farooq Mazhar and I went to Banglore to watch Pakistan play India. This is how I had described the scene at the ground: “ When we got to the ground, surprisingly without too much hassle and a minimum of jostling, the Chinnaswamy Stadium was almost full and there were long queues that stretched halfway to Calcutta, or so it seemed. Where would these people sit?

There was a sea of flags, the Indian tricolour. The crowd was already boisterous, though it could not be described as a festive mood. The occasion was too serious and the crowd made its intentions clear as it set up a crescendo of boos when it caught sight of a Pakistan player who had gone out to have a knock-up. There was no goodwill, only malice. The atmosphere was charged, it was electric, it was nasty as it might have been in ancient Rome when the gladiators fought. It would prove to be a shamelessly partisan crowd, utterly graceless, a crowd that wanted only one decision and it was too frightening to contemplate what might happen if there was some other decision. There was the stench of hatred, from the rotten carcass of jingoism.”

Nor did our own public cover itself with glory. On our way back, there was a lay-over of a few hours at Delhi and we took a room at one of the hotels near the airport. The Pakistan team was also at the same hotel. Riaz Khokhar was our High Commissioner then, and he had invited the team to a lunch at the hotel. When he learnt that I was also at the hotel, he extended me an invitation. The players were downcast, which was understandable, but they were also frightened. Their families had received threatening phone calls, the houses of one or two of them had been stoned. There was a report that the team would be met by a mob, a sort of ‘welcome’ committee. The travels plans of the team were changed and, in the end, they sneaked back home, almost in disguise.

National pride has been hijacked by multinationals and big business houses. So much passion has been created, so much emotion is being paraded, particularly in India by massive, patriotic advertising, that Indian team and the players have either been turned into demi-gods or clowns.

There has been an attempt to match this in Pakistan but we don’t have the same kind of money that the Indians have. Still, it would be interesting to know how much money has been spent on ‘selling’ national pride. It would run into millions. This is a criminal waste of money. It has also created a very dangerous mood. One team will win and the other will lose. Neither victory nor defeat will be accepted. Perhaps, it might be best if the match was to be washed out.

Most of all, I fear for the Indian Muslims, fear what the thugs of Bal Thackeray will do in Mumbai or the hoodlums of Narendra Modi will do in Gujrat. Neither need much provocation to bring out their knives and their torches and kick up a storm of communal frenzy.

I will watch the match but will do so nervously and with great trepidation. This is not what game of cricket is about but this is what happens when national pride is turned into group hatred.

Law of averages

AT a high school in Kennesaw, Ga., to sell his tax cuts, President Bush repeated several of his favourite sound-bite statistics to argue that his plan would help ordinary Americans, small-business owners and senior citizens. But as any math teacher there could have attested, Bush’s arguments rely on a misleading use of averages to make his foolhardy plan appear fair.

“Under this plan, 92 million Americans receive an average tax cut of $1,083,” Bush said. “That’s fair.” No, it’s deceptive. The vast majority of taxpayers — 80 per cent - would receive less than that amount, according to data from the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Centre.

For the truly typical household — filers in the middle fifth of the income spectrum — the average tax cut would be $256. Almost half of all taxpayers would see their taxes drop by less than $100. At the top of the income pyramid, however, the tax savings would be huge; the top 1 per cent of filers would receive an average tax cut of $24,100. The average tax cut touted by Bush is more than $1,000 only because the savings for the wealthiest Americans are so large.

“We estimate that 23 million small-business owners across America will receive an average income tax rate cut of $2,042,” Bush said. “That matters.” Again, misleading. As with the individual taxpayer statistics, the Tax Policy Centre estimates that nearly four out of five tax filers with small-business income would receive less than that amount. More than half would receive $500 or less.

Nearly a quarter would receive no tax cut at all — a group that doesn’t drag down Bush’s average because it’s simply not included in the calculation. But a small number of wealthy individuals with small-business income would receive huge tax cuts, once again inflating the average.

“It means that 10 million seniors, nearly one in four, who receive dividend income will get relief,” Bush said of his plan to cut dividend taxes. “Now, that’s important. ... Getting rid of the double taxation of dividends is an incredibly positive thing for the quality of life of our seniors.” Some seniors would see their quality of life improve a lot more than others, however. You can probably guess which ones.

A big slice of the dividend tax cut — 37 per cent — would indeed go to seniors. But the majority of elderly people — the two-thirds with incomes below $50,000 — would save on average $325 or less. Meanwhile, a small number of high-income elderly would reap most of the benefits.

More than three-quarters of the part of the dividend tax break that would go to the elderly would flow to the 19 per cent of senior citizens with incomes above $75,000; 43 per cent of the benefits would go to the richest in that group, the 2.5 per cent of senior citizens with incomes greater than $200,000. They would save an average of more than $5,000.

Bush must know how phony his “averages” are. Any time a salesman has to resort to such deceptive tactics, the customer ought to be wary about what is being sold. —The Washington Post

Reshaping Middle East: then and now

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate committee meeting recently, “I think there is also the possibility that success (in Iraq) could fundamentally reshape the region in a powerful, positive way that will enhance US interests”. The 20th century began with western powers seeking to impose a new order on the Middle East. The 21st century has begun in a similar fashion.

It all started in 1919. The Ottoman gamble had failed. Turkey had joined the war on the losing side. The Empire had melted like snow. The Arab territories had gone — from Mesopotamia to Palestine, from Syria down to the Arab peninsula. Between January and July 1919, much of the modern world was sketched out, bankrupt empires carved up, new countries created — Iraq, Yugoslavia and Israel — whose troubles haunt us till today. “General attitude among Turks”, reported an American diplomat, “is one of hopelessness, waiting for the outcome of the Peace Conference”. Like so many other people, they hoped the Americans would rescue them.

Almost everyone in Paris assumed that Muslims would simply do as they were told. When Edwin Montagu, the British secretary of state for India, cried, “Let us not for Heaven’s sake, tell the Muslim what he ought to think; let us recognize what they do think”. Balfour replied with chilling detachment, “I am quite unable to see why Heaven or any other power should object to our telling the Muslim what he ought to think”.

“An American official told us in confidence”, an Arab official said in private, “that an intervention in Iraq would be a prelude to political and geographic upheavals in the region”. The Islamic world faces its greatest threat today. This is the darkest era in the history of Islam since the 13th century. The United States entered the great war only when a German submarine sank a Cunard Liner, Laconia. It entered World War II when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Not before that. Today America is hunting for a pretext that would justify unprovoked aggression against Iraq.

Today we live in a world in which the United States is the only superpower. No nation currently has the power to challenge it without risking a devastating response. And yet the United States claims a right to use preemptive military force against any country and change its regime. Rumsfeld articulated a novel doctrine to justify preemptive action by stating that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of weapons of mass destruction’!

Some of the most intractable problems of the Middle East today have roots in the decisions made in 1919 in the salons of Paris right after the end of World War I. Among them one could include the crisis over Iraq and endless struggle between Arabs and Jews. One day during the peace conference, Arnold Toynbee, an adviser to the British delegation, had to deliver some papers to the Prime Minister. “Lloyd George to my delight had forgotten my presence and had begun to think aloud. ‘Mesopotamia; Palestine... yes...the Holy Land...Zionism... we must have Palestine; Syria...h’m...what is there in Syria? Let the French have that”.

Thus the lineaments of the peace settlement in the Middle East were exposed: Britain seizing the chance; the need to throw something to the French; a homeland for the Jews, oil; and the calm assumption that the peacemakers could dispose of the former Ottoman territory to suit themselves. For the Arab Middle East, the peace settlement was the old 19th century imperialism again.

At their meeting in London in December 1918, the conversation on the Middle East between Lloyd George and Clemenceau was short and good-humoured. “Well”, said Clemenceau, “what are we to discuss?” Lloyd George replied, “Mesopotamia and Palestine”. Clemenceau: “tell me what you want”. Lloyd George: “I want Mosul”. Clemenceau: “You shall have it. Anything else?” Lloyd George: “Yes. I want Jerusalem too”. Clemenceau: “You shall have it but Pichon will make difficulties about Mosul”. Mosul was about to become important because of oil. Britain and France got away with it temporarily because the United States did not choose to involve itself in the spoils. Its turn would come later.

At the luncheon meeting with Ibn Saud on board the cruiser Quincey, in the Suez Canal, President Roosevelt brought up the question of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He made a long appeal on behalf of the Jewish people who had suffered so much under Hitler. Ibn Saud gravely replied that he did not see why the Arabs had to expiate the sins of Adolf Hitler when there were other countries in a much better position to help. “Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their land to the Jews”, he said. The president assured the King that he would make no move hostile to the Arabs. But the matter did not end there.

Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt, realizing that his chances for re-election were dim, called in some of his advisers to discuss whether or not, because of the Jewish vote in the United States, the embargo on arms to Palestine should be lifted to help the Zionist organization battling the British. The president turned to General Marshall and asked for his view. Marshall said he assumed that the president wanted his opinion. Marshall who in his military tradition did not exercise his right to vote, said, “I am not going to vote anyway but if I were I would vote against you if you so demeaned the office of the president of the United States”. Truman hastily said to the general, “This is what I expected from you”, and decided not to lift the embargo.

But against the advice of all his advisers, and within minutes of the declaration of independence by Ben Gurion, Truman announced recognition of the Jewish state. Today, Jews wield decisive influence over US foreign policy in the Middle East. Those who criticize Israeli policy invite painful and relentless retaliation and even loss of their livelihood. Presidents fear the Jewish lobby. Congress does its bidding. Prestigious universities shun academic programmes and grants which Israel opposes. Giants of the media and military leaders buckle under its pressure.

“My greatest complaint”, Tocqueville wrote almost two hundred years ago, “against democratic government, as organized in the United States, is not, as many Europeans make out, its weakness, but rather its irresistible strength. What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny”. Two hundred years ago, the United States was militarily weak and economically poor, but to millions of people in other countries America was the hope of the world because of the timeless values it stood for. Two hundred years ago, America caught the imagination of the people because of the ideals which it stood for. Americans were seen as altruistic, reliable and generous.

Americans did not need to keep telling themselves, “We are the greatest”, or “if we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future”. Today America’s example is tarnished by military adventurism and conflicts abroad. America seems to be experiencing what Toynbee called, “the dark night of the soul”. Most of us who once admired America now see it as a swaggering giant, imperialistic, pushy, condescending and self-certain. Today I know no country in the free world in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind or true freedom of discussion than in America. A powerful minority has enclosed thought with a formidable fence. Woe to the man or woman who goes beyond it.

Today America stands alone. Washington prefers to call it anti-Americanism. This is not true. It is hostility to American foreign policy that is characterized by unilateralism, militarism, and cynical self-interest. Against the advice of the whole world, Bush is threatening to unleash a totally unjust, unwarranted and unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq to capture its oil resources and reshape the region as Britain and France sought to do in the salons of Paris in 1919.

Once again, America is on the wrong side of history. By attacking yet another Muslim country, America shall be giving a most dangerous stimulus to Muslim passions throughout the Islamic world. Sooner or later, sullen resentment may burst into savage frenzy. And if that anger results in another September 11, it will mean the end of open society everywhere and the death of all that makes life worth living.

In another century it was said that war was too important a business to be left to the generals. Today world peace is too fragile to be left to the whims and ambitions of one man who is playing with fire. Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never believe that war will be smooth and easy, or anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”. Let Bush pay heed to these weighty words.

Iraq is now in the gunsights, in imminent danger of losing its sovereignty and going under American military control. Iraq, the land of Hammurabi who gave the world the greatest civilization that has yet appeared on earth, will soon be laid in thrall and recede into darkness. We do not know if Iran and Pakistan will not suffer a similar fate. What Bush does not seem to realize is that it is simply not America’s national prerogative to impose a new Pax Romana. The lesson of history is that the pursuit of empire is a prescription for certain failure. Every great empire in history, no matter how powerful, has fallen eventually to its own hubris, having built a tide of resentment among its subjects or enemies. The American empire is no exception and will almost certainly meet the same fate.

A few days ago I saw on television pretty little Arab girls in Baghdad, clad in uniform, with their satchels hung from the shoulder, going to their school. And I felt, with a spasm of mental pain, a deep sense of the strain and suffering borne by the innocent people of Iraq and the grimmer fate that awaited them. The amazing part of it is the cheerfulness and fortitude with which ordinary Iraqis are seen doing their jobs under nerve-wracking conditions. “Everything seems”, as Goethe said, “to be following its usual course because in terrible moments in which everything is at stake, people go on living as if nothing was happening”.

Instinctively, we in Pakistan turn away from the tragedy about to be enacted in Iraq. Yet instinctively also, we know that we are not isolated from these suffering people. As long as we do not feel ashamed to be alive while innocent Iraqis are about to be killed, we will remain what we are: accomplices by omission and commission.

To watch this criminal folly, this Greek tragedy unfold itself, to wait for the catastrophe, suffocated by a sense of one’s own irrelevance which one is unable to prevent, the deafening silence of the Ummah, fills one with choking, impotent rage and despair. No one can prevent the Americans from attacking Iraq, but what prevents brother Muslims from taking to the streets and protesting against an unjust and unprovoked war as millions are doing across the world?

Why is there no spirit of prot-est in the Islamic world?

Why is the voice of protest so muted?

Why lend our silence to an unjust war? Why become accomplices and partners in crime in somebody else’s war? Why sin by silence? Who will give voice to this oppressive silence?