Iraq: the hard road ahead

EVEN a cursory look at US media will show the significant transformation that has taken place in the American mood since the end of the Iraq war. At no time was this more visible than on the recently observed second anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.

The certainty of the last year, the absolute resolve, the unshakeable confidence that seemed so American are now conspicuous by their absence. The early successes in Afghanistan are long forgotten. The main aim of the military action — to take Osama bin Laden dead or alive  is rarely mentioned.

Even the elation over the quicker military success in Iraq has given way to a rising sense of alarm as American soldiers continue to die. The frustration of the troops and their relatives who expected a short war and a quick trip back home is rising. The main aim of the war to rid the world of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction  has become a political scandal in Britain and an embarrassing awkwardness in the United States where the reason for the Iraq war is now rationalized as ridding the world of a terrible dictator and bestowing the gift of democracy on the Iraqi people. What is even more unnerving is the fact that despite the $25 million rewards for information, the Americans have so far no clue whether Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are alive and, if so, where they are to be found.

There are numerous reasons for the somber mood. The Iraqi occupation is costing Washington $3.9 billion a month, not to mention the continuing loss of American lives. The amount for the fiscal year beginning October 1  $87 billion  would more than double the cost to date of what Mr. Bush calls the ‘war on terrorism’. It is greater than the world’s annual official foreign aid total for all countries.

Another cause for concern is that the US-led occupation forces are now faced with a war of attrition that is becoming increasingly more lethal and sophisticated. They have not only failed to meet the basic needs of the Iraqi people, such as regular supply of electricity and water, but have also been unable to control the roads and borders of Iraq. Since the efforts to improve the lives of weary Iraqi people are proceeding too slowly to win their hearts and minds, resistance to occupation is becoming more widespread and effective.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was expected to have a sobering effect on the so called “rogue states”. But as the Americans find themselves on the brink of a quagmire, the post-war developments have only emboldened the “axis of evil”. The North Koreans are openly defiant; Iran’s nuclear programme continues to be active; and Syria is once again permitting Hizbollah to use its territory for attacks on Israel. The Bush roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears to be in tatters. And there is no sign of an emerging democratic transformation elsewhere in the Middle East.

Given the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, Mr. Bush will probably get the money he has asked for. But he may have to pay a political price for it. US officials, however, insist that the American taxpayers would not meet the entire bill because a substantial part of $87 billion would be met from Iraqi oil revenues, seized assets and international contributions. The following are the important items of breakdown indicating how the money will be spent:

* In Iraq about $51 billion will be spent on military operations. Of that, $800 million will provide transport and support to troops of coalition partners that are willing to commit.

* Another $300 million will go toward buying body armour for soldiers and $140 million will be used to deliver heavily armoured Humvees to protect US forces.

* About $20 billion will be used for Iraqi reconstruction, somewhere between 20 and 40 per cent of the estimated cost. Of that amount, about $5 billion will be spent to train border guards, a new Iraqi army, police force as well as for building a judicial and penal system. The other $15 billion will go toward building and repairing infrastructure.

* In Afghanistan, about $11 billion will be spent to support the US military’s efforts to “track down terrorists and provide stability.”

* Washington also intends to take $400 million from existing accounts to accelerate progress in Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Mr. Bush’s request seeks $800 million to address “critical remaining security and reconstruction needs.”

The Bush administration’s move to seek United Nations help in securing and rebuilding Iraq has been described by Britain’s Guardian as “a humiliating diplomatic climbdown.” According to the Financial Times, the US is going “meekly, co-operatively, multilaterally to the institution it derided and mocked only a few months ago.” The senior Democrat on Senate’s armed services committee, Senator Carl Levin says the administration’s task is now more difficult because it delayed so long in trying to involve the United Nations — “Their go-it alone chickens are coming home to roost,” says the Senator.

France reiterates that the best way to get things under control would be to transfer authority from the American occupiers to the Iraqis themselves. The French argue that an interim Iraqi government should take over within a month and that the UN, not the United States, should oversee the transition.

The Americans reply that they want to see the Iraqis governing themselves at the earliest practical moment. “The worst thing that could happen,” argues Secretary of State Colin Powell, “is to push this process too quickly, before the capacity for government is there and the basis for legitimacy is there, and see it fail.” Iraq’s foreign minister says he hopes to see an elected sovereign Iraqi government in control sometime in the second half of next year.

The old problem, however, continues. The Bush administration is intent to retain full control in Iraq because it does not want to share future benefits with those countries (read France) that opposed the Iraq war. Also, it hopes to establish new US military bases in a pro-American Iraq.

As Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has pointed out in an article in the Financial Times, occupations and post-war reconstructions are always difficult and rarely successful. He has advised the Bush administration to “ swallow its pride and get out as quickly as it can before Iraq becomes America’s Chechnya.”

The yearning for democracy may be a powerful trend in many parts of the world but nationalism and the desire for self-determination are even stronger and they continue to inspire resistance movements around the world. The lesson of the 20th century history is that it is extremely difficult for even great powers to occupy foreign countries and govern them by force.

France and Germany have described the new U.N. resolution, proposed by the United States, as “not dynamic enough, not sufficient.” They demand more responsibility for the Iraqis and the United Nations. It is too early to say if the United States will succeed in getting the umbrella of UN legitimacy to provide cover for other nations (including Pakistan) to contribute the desperately needed troops in Iraq. So far there are no signs of movement on the part of France and Germany. It is, however, obvious that in order to create consensus on the much needed UN resolution, the United States will have to make some concessions.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

BJP back on its destructive track

WHETHER history repeats itself or not but it comes back full circle to memories long familiar to people. Some 12 years ago, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) started a rath yatra to polarize society in northern India. It generated passion which ultimately made the crowd to pull down the Babri masjid. Never since partition there had been so many killings as were in the wake of the yatra.

Blessed by the RSS, the BJP is back to its destructive best. It has renewed its old agenda: an agitation to build temple without awaiting the court’s decision on ownership. This may be yet another exercise in whipping up religious sentiments and stir Hindus and Muslims with all pernicious results.

When L. K. Advani led the yatra he was the BJP president. Today even when he is India’s deputy prime minister, he has attended the RSS-BJP meeting to finalize the campaign to build the temple. The first brick is the booklet which the BJP has printed on Ram temple. Advani has contributed two articles to the booklet on his thoughts while under house arrest after the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992.

Whether the two articles would incite communal passion or not is debatable. But the pertinent question is: Why should the No 2 person in the government be associating himself with extremists and fundamentalists, who look like re-igniting the mandir-masjid controversy that may throw northern India into a communal cauldron?

It is clear that the BJP wants to bring the temple issue on to the centre-stage for its Hindutva agenda which, it believes, sells. But should the country’s deputy prime minister be a part of it? He has sworn loyalty to the Constitution which is based on the country’s ethos of secularism. Is he not violating legal obligations even if he does not bother about the morality aspect?

The deputy prime minister also behaves in an irresponsible manner when he says that the Archaeological Survey of India report on excavations at Ayodhya has “strengthened” the case for a temple on the disputed land. The court, which ordered the excavations, is yet to give its judgment. His observation could be tantamount to influencing the verdict.

One feels disappointed when the ruling party does not observe even a modicum of decorum. How should one point a finger at rowdy parties? The latter will quote chapter and verse from the statements of the BJP leaders to justify their behaviour. Advani is already involved in the demolition case which the CBI has brought against him. Even otherwise, his comment before the judgment does not add to his stature nor to the democratic system which he, as the home minister, is expected to protect.

It is obvious that the BJP has felt it necessary to bring the temple issue to the fore even before the end of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule. The BJP had given an undertaking to the constituents that the party would keep the temple question aside till the NDA was in power. The alliance still has one year to go. There is seemingly no danger to the government. It comfortably sailed through the no-confidence motion only last month.

What it indicates is that the BJP is worried over the Lok Sabha election which is one year hence. Maybe, the split with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of dalits has hastened the thinking. The BJP was depending on the BSP to get its votes, averaging 15 to 20 per cent, in the Lok Sabha polls and before that in the state assembly elections in Delhi, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan scheduled for this November.

With political calculations going awry, the fall-back on the tried temple issue was a natural option. Even otherwise, the BJP had little choice when the RSS, its mentor, told it to make up with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Sangh parivar member, which was hell bent on duplicating Gujarat by polluting the atmosphere in the name of the temple.

The party does not seem to realize that Narendra Modi has become a millstone around its neck. In fact, the observation by the Chief Justice of India that he had no faith in the Modi government or its prosecuting machinery to get justice for the victims has sent shock waves throughout the country. Some of the Hindu intelligentsia, which was with the BJP on building the temple, has felt so horrified over Chief Justice’s remarks that it is distancing itself from the BJP.

The party would have served its cause better if it had asked Modi to resign. Defence Minister George Fernandes, who is the blue-eyed boy of the RSS, has naturally said that Modi was not obliged to resign legally. This is true. But there is something called morality which George forgot long ago. What else is ‘raj dharma’ (calls of governance), the words used by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee after the carnage in Gujarat? The Chief Justice used the same words while chiding Modi.

Vajpayee, who used the words ‘raj dharma’, is conspicuous by his silence. His assurance at Chennai that India will not go communal is correct because the country may not stay united in the absence of pluralism. But shouldn’t the prime minister do something to strengthen the ethos of secularism? He should assert himself to stop at least the BJP from reopening such issues which may rip the society apart.

Sticking to Modi on the one hand and reopening the mandir issue on the other may create fire and fury. But such a scenario does not help the nation. At a time when fundamentalists and terrorists want to destabilize the country, the BJP’s approach should have been to create an atmosphere of consensus. When it says that the mandir issue can be settled either by the court’s verdict or through negotiations between Hindus and Muslims, then why threaten with an agitation?

What the BJP leaders or their think-tanks do not realize is that neither Modi nor mandir sells any more. People are tired of their projection again and again. As UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has said at a press conference the people are worried about poverty and unemployment and have little time for the temple.

The problem with the BJP is that it has no issue other than the communal divide it wants to pursue. Some in the party probably realize the lessening returns.

Still their mind does not go beyond Hindutva. In fact, this is the sum total of the BJP’s achievements during its five-year rule at the centre. Apart from communalism, it has distinguished itself in two other fields — corruption and nepotism. There have never been so many scams as are during the Vajpayee’s rule.

And anyone who had anything to do with the RSS has been well rewarded.

One does not know what the BJP can do to retrieve the situation in Gujarat. But it can possibly solve the mandir problem. The Muslim community may well be inclined to offer the site of the Babri masjid to the government provided there is a constitutional amendment to let religious places remain as they were when India won freedom on August 15, 1947. It means that the RSS must honour the mosques at Mathura and Varanasi. But then what happens to its Hindutva agenda?

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi

Switzerland: freedom or more wealth?

THE simulated rock camouflage screens masking the embrasures of the mountain fort’s 105mm guns were lowered, allowing me to look down to the town of Orsihres, 350 meters below us, and on to the narrow road leading to the strategic Grand Saint Bernard pass.

Switzerland is only now beginning to reveal its deepest military secret: the hundreds of large forts and smaller defensive works built from 1940-1960. Upgraded, upgunned and made proof against nuclear contamination after World War II, the near invisible Swiss forts, dug into the sheer walls of its mountains, covered with lethal interlocking fire all passages through the nation’s high Alpine region.

From heavily defended Orsihres to Montreaux, at the eastern end of beautiful Lake of Geneva — a mere 50 kms — there are at least 14 major forts, and hundreds of smaller bunkers for mortars and machine guns. At the centre of this valley of death lies the mighty fort of Dailly, along the defile of St. Maurice, the Gibraltar of the Alps, an entire mountain turned into Europe’s most massive fortress.

I mention these forts again because a pack of American lawyers and professional victims’ groups seeking to extort money from Switzerland are accusing the Swiss of collaborating with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy during WWII. These claims are lies. After the fall of France in 1940, Hitler and Mussolini were preparing to invade Switzerland after it refused to join the Axis. Hitler sneered he would quickly crush ‘these insolent herdsmen and cheesmakers.’

Switzerland, then a nation of only five million, mobilized 800,000 men. Swiss citizen soldiers were ordered to hold the mountain forts and passes, and wage guerilla war. ‘Leave your wives and children behind. Fight to your last bullet; then fight to the death with your bayonet’ came the chilling command. This little nation, since 1291 Europe’s oldest democracy and freest nation, would not be conquered. Hitler and Mussolini wisely backed off.

After WWII, the Swiss briefly feared invasion by the US and Britain. Then, from 1960-1990, Switzerland became the target of potential Soviet invasion. The Red Army, in a mirror image of Germany’s WWI Schlieffen Plan, devised a massive strategic outflanking movement of NATO armies in Germany: an attack from Czechoslovakia, west through neutral Austria, then into Switzerland. Soviet tanks armies would race across Switzerland’s flat northern plain on a Zurich-Neuchatel-Geneva axis, drive into France’s Rhone valley north of Lyon, then come up behind NATO forces, cutting them off.

The Swiss reacted to the Soviet threat by keeping 600,000 men under arms, upgrading their forts, and came close, in the early 1960s, to building nuclear weapons.

Now that the Soviet threat is gone, the Swiss are slowly reducing their defences and plan to cut their citizen army to a paltry 190,000. But today, as in the past, each Swiss male is liable for military service and keeps his automatic weapon and ammunition at home. As Machiavelli rightly observed, ‘the Swiss are most heavily armed, and most free.’

The cold war may be over, but Switzerland today still finds itself under foreign threat. The US and EU are heavily pressuring Switzerland to lift its vaunted banking secrecy and reveal names of account holders. Recently, Switzerland reluctantly agreed, under threat of severe economic reprisals, to withhold taxes from accounts of EU depositors in its banks, and remit them, without naming names, to the appropriate governments.

The Swiss, who are intensely passionate about their liberties and independence, are also under other pressures from the European Community, which now surrounds it. The EU is trying to get the Swiss to adopt its semi-socialistic labour laws, human rights legislation, commercial codes and mind-numbing regulations on every product from chemicals to cheese.

If the Swiss refuse to comply with ‘Big EU Brother’, they risk being shut out of the EU market around them. The Swiss are finding themselves in much the same position as Canada does with its huge, often testy American neighbour.

Like the rest of western Europe, Switzerland’s population is aging, and foreign workers must be imported. Today, 25 per cent of the total population is foreign born, and growing. Many Swiss, particularly in rural areas, feel their nation is being sold off, its cherished values of hard work, thrift, and honesty lost, and its pristine, crime-free society undermined by waves of newcomers from poor nations.— Copyright Eric Margolis 2003.

Restoring the glory of the Indus

THE 20th century was cruel beyond description to the environment of the delta of the River Indus. Its life blood was brutally drained away by building scores and scores of canals on the rivers Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab, and Jhelum and on the Indus itself.

In the beginning of the last century, the great river used to discharge into the sea a minimum of 70 cubic feet per second in winters and hundreds of thousands of cubic feet per second in the rest of the year. The tides pushing the saline water of the Arabian Sea affected only the lowest reaches of the delta. The rest of the vast lands were blessed with sweet water. Nature excelled in its bounty for the people of the delta. It was a wetland of the world famous mangrove forests.

The Indus of yesteryear was an artery of huge commercial importance. Thatta was a great port. The British had established an inland port in Multan. More: the river was the vehicle for the spread of the Sindhi and Saraiki civilizations right up to the districts of Multan, Bahawalpur, Mianwali and Khushab. It was a highway of strategic importance. The British invaders secured for themselves, from the rulers of Sindh, the freedom of the river as a military, political and commercial objective.

What is left today is a sad sad tale of ruin and deprivation. However, a new leaf in the life of the delta can be turned. The glory of the Indus can be restored. Engineering ingenuity can face up to the challenge.

Engineering and historical research can determine the point beyond which no saline water intruded into the Indus stem a hundred years ago. A barrage should be built across the river at that point to stop all sea water from creeping upstream. Another barrage should be built at the mouth of the Indus. This barrage should have a two-way flow barrage which permits a desirable amount of sea water into the Indus whenever required, and which also can discharge the Indus water into the sea.

This arrangement should permit regulation of salinity in the lowest reaches of the delta as it had obtained for thousands of years. Above all, through proper regulation of the flow, it should restore the pre-20th century levels of water in the delta and allow the growth of the mangroves and help bring back the environment that was the glory of the Indus. Ocean-going vessels can ply up to Hyderabad and create a new wave of prosperity which has been robbed from the area during the last century.

This vision can be fulfilled most economically if Pakistani engineers and builders are assigned this project. The cost should not exceed more than a billion dollars a year over a period of four to five years.

One may even look beyond restoring the glory of the delta of the Indus. When the provinces of Pakistan are free from the coercive rule of highly centralized government at Islamabad and the country has established itself as a genuine democratic federal polity, the provinces might be able to come to a consensus for a magnificent Greater Indus Project.

The waters of the Indus and its tributaries can be regulated to bestow truly dream-like benefits to the people of the country. For example: The Indus can be transformed into the mightiest fully regulated waterway of the world. Huge river barges and small ocean-going ships can ply straight up to Attock and Nowshera. The warm water connections can pierce more than 1,700 kilometres into the Asian mainland, knocking at the gates of Afghanistan, making it the cheapest trade route to Northern Pakistan, north-western India and the heartlands of Central Asia. Thousands of tons of cargo can be transported each day at a cost less than five per cent of the cost of transportation by road. The deprived Sindhi and Saraiki-speaking areas along the Indus in three provinces shall be the first beneficiaries.

Fifty-thousand million watts can be added to our hydel-power generating capacity. Nearly two million acres of most fertile land can be reclaimed for agriculture, industry, forests and nearly a dozen perennial wildlife sanctuaries and national parks.

The calamity of floods can be a thing of the past, saving billions in damage every year.

If foreign designers and constructors are kept out, the cost of the Greater Indus Project should not exceed $75 billion over a period of 25 to 30 years which should be affordable in a wisely managed economy.

The view from Monrovia

AFRICAN peacekeeping has perhaps at last found the right turning on the dangerous road of ethnic strife, tribal war and warlordism that besieges too many countries in Africa. When President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, engineered, or rather enticed, the removal of the Liberian despot, Charles Taylor, to exile in Nigeria last month it turned the page on a new chapter in African peacekeeping efforts.

It has been nine years since the U.S. /UN debacle in Somalia when the U.S. command of the UN peacekeeping force decided to cut and run after the gruesome death of 18 American soldiers. This was followed by a period during the Clinton Administration when the U. S. stood back from Africa’s wars. The administration effectively vetoed a major peacekeeping operation that might have stood a chance of forestalling the Rwandan genocide.

The combination of a rebirth of political confidence in now democratic Ghana, Senegal, Mali, South Africa and, most importantly, Nigeria, together with the surprising decision of the Bush administration to play back up to Nigerian-led diplomacy and peacekeeping in Liberia and to support UN peacekeeping in the Congo, has transformed at a stroke the outlook for dealing with African wars present and future.

It can be seen here on the streets of Monrovia. After 23 years of on and off war which has witnessed atrocities of unbelievable cruelty there is now a semblance of peace. Fighting is still going on in the bush with the rebel movements unwilling or perhaps unable to persuade their troops to down arms as the recent peace agreement mandates them to do, but the capital itself is taking its first tentative steps to normalcy.

The markets have been reopened. The streets have been cleared of accumulated rubbish. UN agencies are chlorinating 5000 wells and the Red Cross and others are battling the outbreak of cholera that has so far claimed a thousand deaths. The Nigerian and other West African peacekeepers appear omnipresent and this time they seem disciplined, effective and well trained - unlike 1995 and ‘96, when a badly conceived, badly led, peacekeeping operation led my Nigeria’s military government brought dishonour on the country.

Its soldiers were brought ignominiously home, a thousand in body bags, after earning an appalling reputation as rapists, looters and brutalizers. Today, in total contrast, observers, including the UN chief representative, the American ambassador and American officers on the ground, speak highly of their proficiency.

When Obasanjo flew into Monrovia the crowds thronged his route, waved and shouted, clearly immensely joyful. He had a sober yet essentially idealistic message both for the interim government of President Moses Blah (Taylor’s deputy) and for his own troops. He reminded the government, still peopled with the ranks of mass murderers whose hatred for the rebels runs deep, that “you need to forgive one another. The only thing that can give peace is love.” And to his troops he said, “even if you are provoked you must not provoke. You are here to help serve not to harm or oppress.”

In conversation on his three hour plane ride from Nigeria, Obasanjo talked in detail of how this peacekeeping effort has been a breakthrough. “African-led diplomacy, combined often with African troops, backed up by the UN and now the U.S. (‘if we don’t have superpower support our chances of success are slim’) is the recipe for success”. He sees this pattern as one to be replicated elsewhere- including in the Congo where this week the UN began a large scale deployment in the country’s violence-torn eastern provinces.

One cannot underestimate the sea change that has come about. This generation of West African leaders, many of whom like Obasanjo came to power by the ballot, seems more confident, less seized with living out a reaction to colonialism and more prepared to work hand in hand with the western powers and the international community at large. Likewise the U.S. and its western allies, in particularly Britain and France, seemed to have found a way to work with African leaders without being counterproductively overbearing.

Nevertheless, there is one thing that spoils the picture and will perhaps be the stumbling block that stops Obasanjo winning the plaudits he seeks, both at home and abroad. It is the refusal to countenance handing over Taylor to the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone. He gets angry at the suggestion this must be done. “By giving this one man asylum I have saved thousands of lives. What more does the international community want?” Actually the Security Council for now is giving him an easy ride on this one. — Copyright