Alsir Sidahmed

DAYS before the 11th anniversary of the Sept.11 attacks on New York, two different events have put the spotlight back on the issue. The call by Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu that both Gorge W. Bush and Tony Blair should be tried for their role in Iraq invasion, which was based on a lie and what was revealed by the US National Security Archives at George Washington University from the CIA declassified information that blamed “analyst liabilities,” for mistakenly calculating that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in effect possessing weapons of mass destruction.

Tutu’s call to send Bush and Blair to the Hague to be tried before the International Criminal Court (ICC) like their African and Asian peers stands very slim chance, if ever. Late British politician Robin Cook, who was a leading voice against his country’s involvement in the war, would not have approved the move to get his prime minister to The Hague. After all he sent a message, when he was the foreign minister that the ICC was not setup to try the kinds of prime minister of Britain.

But the significance is that 11 years after the event, the moral cause is still vivid, fueled by death of 4,486 Americans, 32,000 wounded, 110,000 Iraqis killed in addition to more than a million displaced.

And all that is because of a deliberate lie.

Also few days ago researchers at the George Washington University managed through a “mandatory declassification review” request to check on internal CIA documents that blamed the failure of the spy agency on “analyst liabilities” such as neglecting examining Iraq’s deceptive attitude. Such negligence led to the disastrous mistake regarding the failure to locate the weapons of mass destruction, the prime cause to launch a war by choice without an international agreement, nor even a domestic support as Cook told Blair in his resignation message.

But now it is simply obvious that it was not only a war by choice, but equally by design. It was the ideology of the neoconservatives pressuring their CIA leadership to come up with the much awaited evidence to justify the intended course, and those leaders on their turn pressured their subordinates to produce the smoking gun.

It is no secret that the then Vice President Dick Cheney had set up a parallel line to collect and disseminate information on Iraq. And when President George W. Bush opted to use his state of the union address to build his case against Iraq, none of the official US agencies was ready to endorse the claim that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger to make a bomb. And the president of the United States found that he has to quote British intelligence as a source for this piece of information.

But for the real push of war against Iraq, the credit should go in the end to Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary, who as early as the first war against Iraq when it invaded Kuwait back in 1991 was pushing for regime change in Iraq. It was Bush Sr. who was strict on complying with the UNSC resolution that called for evicting the Iraqi army out of Kuwait only.

In the first meeting after Sept. 11 to discuss how Washington was going to react to the event, Wolfowitz was quick to propose attacking Baghdad, though no connection whatsoever has been established between the Baathist regime in Baghdad and Al-Qaeda.

It was this determination that drove the search for information “make up” to justify a war that had already been decided, and not mistakes committed by the CIA analysts.

Eleven years after Sept. 11, one thing is crystal clear the sympathy that the world has expressed toward the United States has evaporated following the hijack of the event by the neocons to settle imaginary scores. And because it is an ideological war it ended up with two disasters: Washington found itself in an awkward position wherein it had to borrowing to finance its wars. And these wars though ended after paying a hefty price, but it also resulted into giving Iran the strategic advantage after the American troops knocked down its two enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moreover, President Barack Obama, who inherited the tough job of bringing back American soldiers and reviving the economy, is fighting for his neck in a tight race with the neocons who are grouping around Mitt Romney.—AN

By Humayun Gauhar

Should one treat the symptoms so that the disease becomes tolerable or cure the disease so that the symptoms go away: that is the question. India and Pakistan are taking the former route. Thus the disease will not be cured. That danger will remain that it will flare up again one day again.

India’s response to this formulation is disheartening. One feels that one is barking up a sapling rather than a tree. It seems that one is ahead of time, maturity and understanding on both sides.

Indians need to get over themselves and their poverty-hiding overblown ‘economic miracle’ and their recent alliance with America’s China-centric geo strategic obsession that will only damage it in the long run as it has Pakistan and much of the rest of the world. It took Abbotabad and Salala for us to get over our geo-strategic ‘importance’ that is actually a curse. It finished our six-decade long crush on America a crush that is actually mental colonization.

India will get over itself when the hollowness of its ‘economic miracle’ is exposed and they see abject poverty and human degradation around them, caused not least by their bad blood with their entire neighbourhood. A legless economy based on services, assembly and reverse engineering of foreign goods is inevitably shown up one day.

Peace is the only option, but only a peace that is acceptable to all protagonists lasts. That is honourable. Else it is not peace at all, only an illusion of it – a diplomatic ceasefire. India and Pakistan are champion self-illusionists. Illusions evaporate fast. Disputes are the music that makes us dance to the tune of the hegemon.

Pakistanis are a very optimistic people. Any India-Pakistan meeting and they feel that peace is at hand, which shows that we are basically a peace-loving people. Which makes our lack of peace at home ironic, but that is another subject. So when the Indian foreign minister came for talks this week we went through naive excitement for the umpteenth time. The only outcome was an easier visa regime and agreement to talk more. Good, for people should realize that crafting peace from intricate and emotional disputes is a long process in which progress is made inch-by-centimetre.

But we should realize that treating symptoms does not cure the disease. We think that if we tackle the symptoms first the disease will either go away or be submerged in the plethora of growing mutual economic self-interest. Were that such was the case. See how Quebec has raised its head again violently and how Scotland is inching towards independence peacefully. Peace in the subcontinent will not come until the people of Kashmir are happy with their lot.

It bears repetition: India’s state terrorism begets and reinforces freedom struggles that it calls non-state terrorism. Blaming Pakistan deflects attention from its state terrorism. Sure Pakistan gives the Kashmiri freedom struggle succor as any adversary would, like India did East Pakistan’s ‘Mukti Baheni’. But it was our own state terrorism against the Bengalis that was the root cause. India took advantage, as any adversary would. If Pakistan were to ignore Kashmir the struggle might lose some of its teeth, but only for a while. It will soon grow new ones.

The revolt in Kashmir is a creation of Indian intransigence that Pakistan takes advantage of. State terrorism begets non-state terrorism. Non-state terrorism will remain no matter how many treaties you sign while brushing core issues under a carpet dyed with blood and woven with the weak threads of bilateral trade, tourism, film production and cricket matches. As long as state terrorism persists non-state terrorism will continue. Period. I cannot understand why the world cannot comprehend such a self-evident truth.

India is a large country with a small country mentality. Pakistan is a relatively small country with a big country mentality. Our complexes come from the millennium-long Muslim rule over India – we cannot forget that Muslims once ruled over the Hindus and Hindus cannot forget that Muslims once ruled over them. We should realize that eventually all became Indians, regardless of religious persuasion. Our enmity was caused by Britain’s divide and rule policies. Both should have disabused themselves of such complexes by now. India, I feel, is beginning to get out of this mindset but it will not be totally eradicated until future generations of both countries, less burdened by stories of slavery and Partition, are at the helm. Land and population sizes don’t matter, the human condition does. That the majority of our peoples live in abject poverty makes us puny. By that measure – and the human condition is the only relevant measure – Singapore is a much bigger country than either India or Pakistan. Its real resource is the high quality of its leadership and its better human capital. By these measures, India and Pakistan are pathetic.

Strong and wise rulers on both sides can bring detente. Neither Zardari nor Manmohan Singh can be accused of either strength or wisdom. Cleverness, yes; strength, hardly; wisdom, not a jot. Only strong and wise leaders can ‘sell’ an inevitably compromise-laden agreement to their peoples without their patriotism being questioned.

It is anomalous where real power lies in both countries. In Pakistan internal security, defence and foreign policies are in the purview of the military and intelligence agencies – as it is in America too. The rest is with Pakistan’s ceremonial president because he is also co-chairman of the ruling party by virtue of being Benazir Bhutto’s widower – a constitutional anomaly for he is a partisan president. Regardless, that is where his power comes from. In India, an Italian catholic lady is leader of the ruling party only because she is Rajiv Gandhi’s widow. That is where her power comes from. The military leaderships of both countries have to be on board in any deal. That’s realistic. While our army’s role in policy-making is well known, the Indian military’s role is camouflaged.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh belongs to the small Sikh minority and is keenly aware that he has to go the extra mile to ‘prove’ his patriotism in the backdrop of the Sikh rebellion for an independent state, the storming of the Golden Temple and the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Pakistan’s prime minister is in office at Zardari’s pleasure – and now a hyperactive Supreme Court’s pleasure too.

Should we forget Kashmir the core issue and the UN resolutions requiring a plebiscite there? Or should we sort it out first? Or, should we put it on the backburner and normalize relations in other areas – what India calls ‘Confidence Building Measures’? Kashmir will not let us forget it as long as a freedom struggle rages there. It will continue raging whether we support it or not. As long as it does, the sword of Damocles will keep hanging for it takes only one madman on either side to start a nuclear conflagration. Best to do all three simultaneously, what Musharraf and Vajpayee called a ‘Composite Dialogue’, and hope for the best. What is needed is statesmanship on both sides and lots of guts. Leave it to functionaries and you will continue nitpicking for another six decades.

India and Pakistan should stop tussling over an America-free Afghanistan and arrive at a mutually acceptable understanding. Afghanistan may not want either of us anyway. As if killing ourselves over Kashmir isn’t enough, we cannot go killing ourselves over Afghanistan too.

America wants peace for its own reasons. It realizes that war between India and Pakistan could be another World War in which the US and its traditional allies will suffer unacceptable multi-sectoral damage, regardless of what happens to India and Pakistan. What it actually wants is to free India from ‘Pakistani sniping’ and make it its South Asian watchdog, free to focus on creating an economic and military bulwark against growing Chinese economic and military might.

The conundrum is that while America wants India-Pakistan normalization, it doesn’t want them ganging up either to form a South Asian Economic Association that has the seeds of becoming another giant. China and even Russia could come into the fold. Can you then imagine what a ‘monster’ the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with the South Asian Economic Association could become? Soon energy-rich Iran and the Central Asian states would want part of the action – and Afghanistan too. America won’t like that, but then what America wants and what it gets are two different things.—OM

Mahir Ali

THE VETERAN Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi began his Syrian peace mission on a sombre note this week, having previously described his chances of success as negligible. He wasn’t being unduly pessimistic, in the wake of Kofi Annan’s failure — albeit not for want of trying — to achieve a breakthrough.

The obduracy of the regime in Damascus is not the only problem. Incompatible geopolitical interests, both within the Middle East and on a global scale, also stand in the way of a possible compromise that could at least staunch the flow of blood from Syria’s multiple wounds.

On an extraordinarily violent day in neighbouring Iraq this week, almost 100 lives were lost in car bombs and other attacks across the country. That happens to be the average daily death toll in Syria, where 23,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the past 18 months.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nixed the Russian proposal for a fresh United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria, claiming that such a move would be pointless “without teeth”.

Her impression that Damascus would be inclined to simply ignore a resolution that lacked the threat of dire consequences is probably not inaccurate. At the same time, Russia and China are understandably wary; after all, it wasn’t that long ago that UN authorisation for protecting lives in Libya led to a Nato military intervention aimed at regime change.

It is more than likely that Bashar Al Assad, too, cannot bring himself to overlook Muammar Gaddafi’s fate. His determination not to surrender is no doubt based on other calculations as well, but his declaration in a recent interview that his administration would in due course be able to pacify the nation testifies to a disconnect with reality.

He is fatally mistaken if he seriously believes that time is on his side. On the other hand, his level of international isolation is nowhere near that of Gaddafi. In the eyes of some observers, that is precisely the problem.

Given the broad antipathy Tehran attracts elsewhere in the Middle East, its keenness to preserve its sole dependable ally in the region is understandable. It has been accused of flying reinforcements, in the shape of weaponry as well as manpower, to the beleaguered Assad regime. Like so much else in the Syrian context, the extent to which this may be true is indeterminate.

Amid the fog of war, it is all but impossible to sift through the propaganda on both sides and come up with indisputable facts. As Antonin Amado and Marc de Miramon commented recently in Le Monde Diplomatique, “Syrians have been fighting for democracy since March 2011 in a popular uprising that has been brutally repressed and widely documented. But a media war is also being waged, and that has gone largely unreported by western news organisations…

“To the embarrassment of the opposition army, the presence in Syria of jihadist groups, some claiming links to Al Qaeda, is an established fact [although] separating the revolutionary wheat from the jihadist chaff often turns out to be difficult.”

It is notable, though, that reports of radical jihadist involvement in the conflict have intermittently surfaced in Western media, including outlets eager to promote military intervention in Syria, regardless of the broader consequences.

For instance, The Washington Post’s correspondents reported from Aleppo last month: “A shadowy jihadist organisation that first surfaced on the Internet to assert responsibility for suicide bombings in Aleppo and Damascus has stepped out of the shadows… Here in Aleppo, the Al Nusra Front for the Protection of the People of the Levant, widely known as Jabhat Al Nusra, is fielding scores of fighters, some of them foreigners, in the battle for control of Syria’s commercial capital.”

In July, The New York Times published a report about “a video of masked men calling themselves the Free Syrian Army and brandishing AK-47s … In the background hang two flags of Al Qaeda, white Arabic writing on a black field.” It went on to say: “The evidence is mounting that Syria has become a magnet for extremists, including those operating under the banner of Al Qaeda.”

Meanwhile, earlier this month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted: “A new ally has joined Israel in the struggle against [Lebanon’s] Hezbollah. Al Qaeda recently published a harsh attack on Hezbollah, in which it calls on [its sympathisers] to renounce the organisation ‘if they do not wish to be the target of Al Qaeda attacks’.” It cited a statement by “the commander of the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade in Syria, Majd Al Majd” as the source for the quote, describing Al-Majd as a Saudi citizen who is on Riyadh’s most-wanted list, and who, according to Jordanian intelligence, “oversees nearly 6000 militants that entered Syria from Iraq and Turkey”.

Other reports have mentioned a CIA presence on the Syria-Turkey border tasked with seeing to it that weapons shipments to the armed opposition do not get into the “wrong” hands. If one were to start enumerating the ironies inherent in the unfolding events, where would it end? Suffice it to say that the minorities in Syria — notably the Alawites (whose predominance in the ruling clique means that even those who oppose Assad face reprisals) and the Christians — have cause to be wary of what the future holds. At the same time, although it is likely that some of the atrocities attributed to government forces were in fact carried out by opposition militias, it seems unconscionable to portray the regime as anything other than the primary perpetrator of violence.

Whether Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi’s initiative for a contact group comprising Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran will lead anywhere is uncertain, but one must hope that all parties with a finger in the Syrian pie are at least aware of the profoundly dire consequences of deepening sectarian divides across the Middle East.—KT