Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry presided over the meeting of the Commission, the highest forum in the country which has been functional to make appointments to the superior judiciary. -File Photo

ISLAMABAD: The Judicial Commission of Pakistan in its meeting on Saturday recommended confirmation of services of 14 Additional Judges of the Lahore High Court and 4 of the High Court of Balochistan, besides, making nomination of 10 new additional judges for the Lahore High Court.

Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry presided over the meeting of the Commission, the highest forum in the country which has been functional to make appointments to the superior judiciary under the 18th Amendment.

The Commission recommended elevation of six Sessions Judges including Abdul Waheed Khan, Mahmood Maqbool Bajwa, Mohammad Yunus , Ejaz Shah, Abdul Sattar Asghar and Kazim Shamsi besides, nominating four lawyers including Shahzad Ghaiba, Ameenuddin Khan, Altaf Ibrahim Qureshi and Ameen Bhatti as Additional Judges of the LHC.

Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel, Justice Syeda Tahira Safdar, Justice Mohammad Noor Muskanzai and Justice Justice Mustafa Ghulam Mustafa Mengal were the additional judges of High Court of Balochistan whose services have been confirmed.

It also recommended three further names to be appointed as additional Judges in the High Court of Balochistan. These were Abdul Qadir Mengal, Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Hashim Kakar.

Other members of the Commission are Justice Javed Iqbal, Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani and Justice Nasir ul Mulk, senior judges of the apex Court, Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq, Minister for Law and Justice Maula Bakhsh Chandio, Pakistan Bar Council member Dr Khalid Ranjha and Justice (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry.

All the four Chief Justices of High Courts including Chief Justice Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court (LHC), Chief Justice Sindh High Court Mushir Alam, Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa have also been a part of the Commission.

The following day students from Sana’a University asked me to attend a vigil in front of the Tunisian embassy. The crowd was shouting: “Heroes! We are with you in the line of fire against the evil rulers!” We were treated roughly by the security forces, and we chanted: “The night must come to an end” — the mantra of the revolutionaries in Tunisia.

The demonstration was astonishing; thousands turned up, and Sana’a witnessed its first peaceful demonstration for the overthrow of the regime. “Go before you are driven out!” we cried.

That night student and youth leaders visited me, along with the human rights activist Ahmed Saif Hashid and the writer Abdul Bari Tahir. We agreed that we could not let this historic moment pass us by, and that we too could spark a revolution. We decided there was to be no backing down, despite the repression we knew would come. The rallies grew daily, even though the government deployed thugs against us.

After a week of protests I was detained by the security forces in the middle of the night. This was to become a defining moment in the Yemeni revolution: media outlets reported my detention and demonstrations erupted in most provinces of the country; they were organised by students, civil society activists and politicians. The pressure on the government was intense, and I was released after 36 hours in a women’s prison, where I was kept in chains.

After my release I continued to demonstrate. Invitations were sent to all parties — including the people of the south, the Houthis in the north, the tribes, trade unions, civil society organisations and the army — to join the peaceful student revolution and demand an end to the regime.

We encouraged them to overlook their differences and assured them that Yemen would be better off without Ali Abdullah Saleh; that the Yemeni people could resolve their own problems, including the war in Sa’ada, the issue of south Yemen and the question of terrorism. We believe we can establish a civil state with the rule of law. This was the message in the first weeks of the revolution.

Around the country in places like Ta’az, Aden and Al-Hadidah, tents sprang up for vigils, copying Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Hundreds of thousands poured into these “squares of liberation and change”. With the inclusion of all sections of society, the revolution had outgrown the student movement.

So what happens when the regime falls, as it must? We are in the first stage of change in our country, and the feeling among the revolutionaries is that the people of Yemen will find solutions for our problems once the regime has gone, because the regime itself is the cause of most of them. We are not blind to reality, but the fact is that the revolution has created social tranquillity across the country as the people put their differences to one side and tackle the main issue together — no mean feat, given that there are 70 million weapons in Yemen.

In five years my country has witnessed six wars, but now the people’s guns are silent; they have chosen peaceful change.

Despite the fact that hundreds of protesters have been killed by the regime, not one police officer or security agent has been killed by the masses. Even Ma’arab, the most unruly and turbulent province, has witnessed its first peaceful demonstrations.

Violent tribesmen who have fought each other for decades have come together in “liberation squares”; blood feuds have been forgotten. When snipers killed more than 50 protesters and wounded 1,000 on the Friday of Dignity, it was the young who arrested the culprits; not one was attacked or injured, despite the anger and the blood that had flowed in the streets.

For the first time people in the south stopped calling for separation, raised the national flag and demanded an end to the regime. It’s been truly historic. The country is united.

Saleh’s regime carried out 33 years of rule through blood and corruption. We have brought it to its knees through our determination, and through the steadfastness of our young people who have confronted the bullets of the regime with bared chests. With politicians and members of the army standing beside us, our success will go even further.

We cannot let the bogeyman of Al Qaeda be used to stall historic change; Saleh invokes this threat in an attempt to cling to power, as if he is the only one capable of bringing stability and tackling terrorism. It would be foolish to believe his lies.

Let us be clear: the Yemeni revolution has already brought internal stability to a state riddled with war and conflict. I call on the global community to support the peaceful revolution as it did in Tunisia and Egypt. I call on the United States and the European Union to tell Saleh that he must leave now, in response to the demands of his people. They should end all support for his regime, especially that which is used to crush peaceful opposition — tear gas canisters have “Made in America” on them. They should freeze the Saleh family’s assets and those of Saleh’s henchmen and return them to the people.

If the US and Europe genuinely support the people, as they say, they must not betray our peaceful revolution. It is the expression of the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Yemen.

— Dawn/The Guardian News Service

Tawakkol Karman chairs Women Journalists Without Chains. She is a human rights activist and leader of the popular revolution movement in Yemen.

But the tragedy at the small village located on high ground near Jerusalem on April 9, 1948 will continue to be remembered as much for its brutality as for the failure of the Arab leaders and media to handle it properly. The result was as great a disaster as the massacre itself.

The number of those massacred by the Phalangist militia in 1982 at Sabra-Shatila in Lebanon far exceeded the number of
Palestinian civilians butchered at Deir Yassin. But its psychological impact gave the Zionist leadership almost what it wanted
— a Palestine without Palestinians.

Israeli leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, subsequently condemned the massacre, motivated as they were as much by rivalries among different Zionist militias as by the anxiety to mollify the liberal sections of society in Europe and North America, which were shocked by the scale of the atrocity.

The western media downplayed the tragedy, especially the sexual assault on women, but later evidence confirmed rape and murder. In his book A History of Israel: from Zionism to Our Time, Howard M. Sachar speaks of bodies being mutilated and “thrown into a well” (p333). Later, the Palestine (‘mandatory’) government held an inquiry into the massacre, and the British officer who investigated the tragedy confirmed, “There is … no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. Many infants were also butchered and killed … Women had bracelets torn from their arms and rings from their fingers, and parts of some of the women’s ears were severed in order to remove earrings” (cited in The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan p300).

Because it was close to Jerusalem and its inhabitants knew that its strategic location would attract the attention of military leaders on both sides, Deir Yassin elders had sought and secured a sort of ‘no war’ agreement from Haganah, the leading Zionist terrorist organisation. However, this failed to shield them from terror, for the two most fanatical of Haganah’s factions — Etzel and Lechi — violated the understanding and carried out the massacre. Subsequent research showed that Haganah knew of the planned massacre but kept quiet.

The diabolical mind behind the deed was Menachem Begin, who, like most Zionist leaders, was born in Eastern Europe but claimed Palestine’s ownership. Begin had also blown up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, leaving 91 Arab, British and Jewish civilians dead. This man was Israel’s prime minister when the Phalangist militia carried out the Sabra-Shatila massacre more than three decades later when Israeli forces occupied Lebanon.

All along the mandate (1917-1948) the Arab leadership had emphasised upon the Palestinian people the need for staying on and defending themselves instead of fleeing terror. In fact, the Arab high committee announced punishments for those leaving their ancestral homes and threatened to blow up any house which a Palestinian would sell to European settlers. Even the Zionist media carried these appeals, because it didn’t wish to give the impression that the establishment of Israel would lead to ethnic cleansing.

Violence had been going on in Palestine for decades, and when the UN announced the partition plan and the Palestinian leadership and Arab governments rejected it, it was obvious there would be both internal chaos and an invasion from neighbouring Arab countries. Zionist terror had already forced Palestinians to leave many cities, including Haifa and the Jewish part of Jerusalem. Palestinian society then was hardly the modern society it is today. The migration of a large number of political activists, local councillors and professionals in what was a small middle class had deprived the Palestinian people of political and social leadership.

As the date for the British withdrawal neared, Arabs started leaving the zones allotted to the Jewish state. The Deir Yassin atrocity had a devastating effect on the Palestinian people, causing a panic flight. Instead of telling their people to draw strength from the tragedy and redouble the resolve to fight, the Arab leadership and media painted the tragedy in a way that tended to add to Palestinian fright.

A minimum of 800,000 Palestinians fled their country, presenting large parts of their homeland on a silver platter to the European settlers. Many would never see their country again. This was what Palestinians today call the nakba (catastrophe).

According to Tolan, many Palestinians were told by their leaders to leave temporarily, because they would be able to return after the disturbances were over.

The massacre and the subsequent Palestinian flight were considered by many Zionists to be a divine gift. John Rose in Myths of Zionism quotes Begin as saying in his book La Revolte that after Deir Yassin, Zionist militias ran through Palestine “as a hot knife does through butter”. Without Deir Yassin, he said, there would be no Palestine.

Chaim Weizmann, who later became Israel’s first president, saw a divine hand in the Palestinian exodus in the aftermath of Deir Yassin, while Ben-Gurion remarked it was “a miraculous simplification of the problem”. Reacting to the use of the word “miraculous” by several Zionist leaders, Afif Safieh, a Palestinian activist in Britain, wrote, “I have always considered God to be innocent.”

The writer is a member of staff.

Protesters in Yemen and Bahrain clashed with the police as the Egyptian model fired them on, while Libyan revolutionaries, filmed in fatigues and knitted caps, took on Muammar Qadhafi’s forces. The youth now veered towards armed uprising.

Arab youth have raised their voice in a resolute call for governments to reform, against the aging rulers and political elite of the Middle East. When 60 per cent of the population is under 25 and educated, the region is nurturing radical youth movements fretting about the future while the rest of the world is galloping towards prosperity. So clearly when Egypt protested it wasn’t an Islamist revolution.

And clearly much to our dismay Pakistan is not Egypt. It doesn’t seem to go that way although people are disturbed by a wobbly government tethering on the precipice of political upheaval, constrained on a tight leash by the military establishment.

Look to the moderate minority (civil society, progressive politicians, and rights activists) and they are ill-equipped to take on a self-serving government, religious extremists and the feudal class. Secular student groups don’t figure because universities double as ripe recruiting grounds for religious parties, among others.

Interestingly, in Pakistan it’s the extremist parties who take to the streets at the slightest, indoctrinating the masses with rabid ideology; they have yet to show those numbers in parliament. So freedom’s domino effect won’t take Pakistan by storm anytime soon.

If we talk of what is different in the brave new Arab world then it’s a pragmatic post-Islamist generation making no ideological appeal but calling to end corrupt dictatorships. These regimes have touted Islam as important but not always inclusive of political systems, rather for moral policing and socio-cultural re-Islamisation. “The only power you could rely on is the young people because they didn’t have a future,” explained Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Laureate and Egyptian opposition figure who has supported youth movements for over two years.When Egyptian protesters smiled through uncertain days and nights without violent resistance earlier this year, they were not critical of US policy in the region. Also, there was a stark sense of unity and purpose among men and women, Christians and Muslims, young and old, with Arabs from all walks of life crowding together to protest: a sea of humanity.

In contrast street protests in Pakistan have largely involved political parties or civil society, and have not been entirely youth-led or ideology-free. There has been no ouster of unpopular or corrupt governments because ever since 1947 the state has managed rather efficiently to use religion to fracture the nation. The 2008 lawyers’ protests might have helped unseat General Pervez Musharraf without changing the political system or instituting wide-ranging reforms.

Ironically the existence of institutions — the judiciary, free press, elections and opposition parties — however weak, allows the country to survive political instability and economic pitfalls. Limping along in Pakistan’s case is the judicial system (in Tunisia the courts are not as independent) and unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the press is relatively free. The Committee to Protect Journalists says press freedoms in Egypt were deplorable in 2010, and another press-monitoring organisation claims Tunisia provides the ‘most repressive’ conditions for journalists.

So, having experienced experiments with democracy, quasi-free elections, and when all fails military interventions, Pakistan’s Generation Y (ideology-driven, born from the ’70s onwards) with minimal secular education and without the spirit of nationalism or unity, has no understanding of how to mobilise and come onto the streets, like the Arabs or even the Turks.

They don’t have it in them to become thinking youth leaders, accustomed to being led by the religious ilk.

Meanwhile young Arabs with no association to political Islam have learnt about peaceful resistance online through the years, being better educated than previous generations who were forced through the ’70s and ’80s into silent submission. This generation has not only attracted young Islamists to become part of their revolt but have in ways for the first time proven that radical Islam is not the only alternative to authoritarianism.

Young Arabs in Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia are independent pluralists, like those Iranians who filled the streets of Tehran and 18 other cities to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009, young men and women who had to face a stiff government crackdown. Plainly put, it seems as if the Arab youth want democracy and an end to bad governance and high unemployment.

The Middle East youth movement is about security and employment, as there is persistent agitation in the region for social and political reform. Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East, edited by Tarik Yousef and Navtej Dhillon, says that young people (15-29 years old) constitute about one-third of the region’s population, that ideological concerns won’t hijack the Middle East but with more than a 100 million young Arabs pressing for change, with young people in eight Arab countries coming of age, governments cannot turn a blind eye to reforms.

The frustration of the Arab youth has led many to warn the region is a ‘powder keg’. But who could have imagined the explosion, despite key US interests in financially propping up once stable authoritarian regimes. Not much remains predictable in the Middle East.

razeshtas@gmail.com

Four days into the Libyan uprising, Houni suggested Saif strike a conciliatory tone. He should apologise for those who had died in the country’s east. He should insist too on the necessity of reforming his father’s four-decades-old regime, announcing a tranche of long-promised laws to usher in new freedoms.

“I wrote down what he must say,” Houni recalled the other day. “I said he should say sorry for the victims. But he went to his father and his father did not like it. So his father changed the speech.”

When Saif appeared on television, he looked and sounded every inch his father’s son, waving his finger angrily, and saying the words that have since become notorious: “We will fight until the last man, until the last woman, until the last bullet.”

Houni left Tripoli the following day. Shortly afterwards he issued a furious open letter to his former employer, accusing Saif of “donning his father’s cloak, which is contaminated with 40 years of his deeds”.

Once regarded as the Qadhafi family’s friendly, reform-minded western face, Saif, supported by his brother Saadi, has emerged in the past few days as the most visible figure in the regime’s efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict on its own terms.

One influential figure, who knows the regime and members of the Qadhafi family well, is convinced that Saif speaks for the family with his father’s support.

“They are looking for a way out,” said the source. “It makes sense for Libya if there is a good exit [for Qadhafi]. What I understand they are saying is that the sons want to continue playing a political role [after the regime has fallen] by having their own party.

“They would accept an interim government and a transition period. What they will not accept is being forced to leave the country. It is what Saif has been working [on]. It is about getting the sides to sit down together and talk and also about having an exit strategy that is not insulting to Qadhafi: that leaves him but without power. That’s what Saif is fighting for.”

It is precisely this plan, the source confirmed, that Muhammad Ismail, Saif’s senior aide and fixer, is said to have presented during a confidential visit to London last month where he met British officials.

The proposal, however, has been rejected emphatically not only by Libya’s rebels but by western governments — the UK prominent among them — which insist on the departure of Qadhafi and his sons.

But questions remain. Is Saif the bellicose son of a tyrant, the would-be reformer educated at the London School of Economics, or something in-between?

Houni believes Saif was earnest about his desire to reform the regime, before he made the decision to adopt his father’s hard line.

“It is complicated. Saif was serious. Now [after that speech] no one in Libya takes what he has to say seriously any more. No one will accept what he has to offer. He spent five years trying to bring about change but his father would not have it. He might want to talk about negotiations but it isn’t possible.”

Anger suffused Houni’s open letter to Saif, in which he charged him with betrayal.

“I was at your side for over a decade,” Houni wrote. “[Then] one unfortunate night, at one frightening moment, came that speech in which you threatened the Libyan people with civil war, the destruction of the oil industry, and the use of force to decide the battle. You chose your side in this conflict very clearly: you chose the side of lies.”

Houni’s argument that Saif was once serious about reform appears to be backed by other evidence, not least a leaked cable sent in 2009 by the then US ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, which discussed Saif’s inner circle rejecting reports he might accept the position of “general co-ordinator” to which he was appointed by his father in early October on the grounds that he did not “want to be tainted by the current political environment”.

Internal rifts

In all the deeply opaque dynamics of power at the heart of Qadhafi’s regime it is this, perhaps, that remains most hidden from view — the often dysfunctional relationships within Qadhafi’s family and between the brothers. It is not just Saif’s father who has been a stumbling block, Houni believes.

While Saif’s brother Saadi has been supportive of him, he believes he faces opposition from three other sons: Hannibal, Khamis — who commands an elite military unit — and Moutassim, Libya’s national security adviser.

Moutassim and Saif, in particular, are understood to have been fierce rivals for several years, not least over access to senior US administration officials.

While Houni is convinced that Saif did really once want change, others are sceptical about the entire reform agenda that Saif once championed.

Among those sceptics is Omar Ashour, an Egyptian academic who teaches conflict resolution and Islamic radicalism at Exeter University.

A year ago Ashour was invited to Tripoli by Saif Qadhafi to speak at a conference. The theme was reform and a desire for reconciliation with some members of the regime’s former foes in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

“I was invited by Saif,” Ashour said. “His proposal was to transform Libya by reforming education and the media and politics.

His speech was all about reconciliation. What struck me, however, was not what he was saying but how he was openly opposed by other factions in the regime who did not want any reconciliation, who said: ‘These people are the enemy’.”

Ashour has had a lot of time to think about what he saw in Tripoli a year ago and to make a judgment of the character and motives of Saif Qadhafi.

His conclusion, as Saif has emerged as one of the main movers in attempts to open negotiations for a ceasefire with the west to bring an end to the conflict in Libya, is an instructive one. For all Saif’s talk about reform, Ashour is now convinced the real issue has never been reform in its own right but rather a strategy to preserve the regime and his family’s position at the head of it.

As the likelihood grows that the crisis would inevitably end in ceasefire talks, the problem of judging how to distinguish what Saif says from what he and his brothers want has become ever more acute.

“I think what I saw was a tactic for prolonging the life of the regime,” recalls Ashour. “And Saif has only been able to speak the way he has about reform in the past because he has had the support of prominent figures in the internal security services,
including Abdullah Senussi [the head of military intelligence] and Abdullah Mansour, while being engaged in a struggle with those opposed to any reform.”

Which leaves a final and intriguing question: whether his long-offered promises of reform — which were always in the end blocked by other factions — created the conditions for the revolution against the Qadhafis in the first place.

Saif’s talk of reform goes back to 2003. He had set a deadline — including 2008 for a new constitution — and promised new laws, 21 of them, which would have gone a long way to transforming the country. But not one of those laws has ever been put before the people’s congress.

As recently as 14 months ago Saif was telling journalists that what Libyans needed most were open elections — “freedom like in Holland”. Speaking last month to Time magazine, he had a different agenda, which perhaps reflected where he stands himself — distinct from his father and his brothers and the factions opposing him.

Then, what Saif wanted to talk about was not Libya’s future but how he felt he had been betrayed by the hardliners, who blocked democratic reforms out of “stupidity” — and by his closest reformist allies who fled or joined the rebels.

He seemed unable to separate his family’s future from the future of the Libyan people. — Dawn/The Guardian
News Service

In the middle of the nerve-wrecking high-wire act by an unrepentant and unyielding Qadhafi, someone at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington has dug up a long-forgotten Lenin saying that sums up the essence of the ongoing spectacle in the Arab world in its entirety: “There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.”

But even Lenin couldn`t have presaged that his dictum of decades happening in weeks would come true, almost a century later, in an area that most pundits of world affairs had long come to refer to as half-asleep, half awake.

With this perspective in mind, what`s going on in Libya and at least three other fire-zones — Syria, Yemen and Bahrain — isn`t just spectacular but also mind-boggling. But Libya, of course, is the one hogging the centre stage because of the ferocity of the struggle between a despot who wouldn`t yield to all the pressure being applied on him and a rag-tag band of rebels.

Qadhafi has long been the maverick in the comity of nations. In his own immutable style, he has engineered the launching of a thousand Tomahawk `cruise` and other missiles against his army by a western coalition cobbled together under the US command, and sanctified by the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 that gives the coalition a huge leverage to use all necessary means to loosen his grip on power in the name of protecting the Libyan people.

Apparently, the western scramble to help save the Libyan rebels is being justified on the basis of humanitarian concern for the lives and welfare of those in the sights of his guns. There`s hardly a doubt that the western military intervention came not a moment too soon for the beleaguered rebels who, on March 17, the day the UN resolution was passed in New York were in imminent danger of being decimated by the Qadhafi forces` onslaught against Benghazi.

So it`s Qadhafi`s refusal to bend to the wind blowing against him that has opened the way for western military intervention in Libya on the side of the civilian population. Few at this stage would be able to recall what the western military power did to Libya exactly a hundred years ago, in 1911.

Libya had been set upon, a century ago, to date, by an imperialist Italy following in the footsteps of the Roman Empire that had subjugated North Africa and used it as Rome`s granary. The rape of Tripoli at the hands of Italian invaders had sent a shock wave across the Muslim world, which at that stage was largely under western colonial domination and, therefore, unable to do much beyond shedding tears. Allama Iqbal had penned, in remorse and utter grief, some heart-rending couplets to portray the tragedy; the last of the couplets saw the poet presenting the blood of the martyrs of Tripoli to the Holy Prophet of Islam (PBUH) in a vial in Paradise.

The rape of Tripoli and subjugation of Libya at the end of a heroic struggle by its people — led by the legendary Omar Mukhtar — was the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire. The then European colonial powers, France, Britain et al . were hell-bent on squeezing the last drop of life out of the Ottomans and just winked at Italy rendering their cause a big service in Libya.

So history is repeating itself in Libya. However, as Marx had so aptly observed, this second repetition of it is nothing short of a tragedy. What an irony that whilst a century ago the people of Libya were at one in resisting the European imperialist thrust with their blood under the command of a real freedom fighter, the people of Libya — at least those who have risen in arms against an unyielding dictator — have themselves invited the western military intervention today.

A century ago the capture of Libya by the Italians triggered a chain of events in which Arabs were inveigled into rising in revolt against the Ottomans. The Arab revolt led to the fall of Jerusalem to the British in 1917, prompting the then arch-imperialist British PM, Lloyd George, to boast that it was the “last and most important of Crusades.”

Today, Qadhafi is denouncing the western military assault against his forces as another `Crusade.` A crusade the current UN-sponsored Operation `Odyssey Dawn` may not quite be but it`s not, at the same time, a purely humanitarian undertaking that every western leader, from Obama to Cameron to Sarkozy insists it`s.

Obama is already being hailed by a section of the western media — led, in this instance, by The Economist — for having enunciated an `Obama Doctrine` with abiding humanitarian concern for oppressed people anywhere as its lynchpin. This was the theme Obama dilated upon at length in his address to the American people on March 29, the day 40 ministers, including those representing Nato countries as well as Arabs from Jordan, Qatar, UAE and Iraq, met in London to plan about what to do next in Libya.

Libya is obviously being treated as a very special case on the scales of humanitarian concern. However, the West is once again caught at an awkward tangent in its profession of humanitarian concern and practice that may not quite square with such concern universally. Had there been the element of universal concern ruling the roost with these champions of humanism, they should be equally engaged in Bahrain and Yemen, which isn`t the case.

In Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh`s autocratic regime, which is a mirror image of Qadhafi`s, isn`t being inconvenienced because Saleh is a front-rank ally in the war against Al Qaeda in Yemen. So his excesses against the Yemeni people demanding his political demise are being winked at because of the fear of Al Qaeda capitalising on the situation.

In Bahrain, the humanitarian handicap is more complex. Bahrain has an umbilical cord connecting it to Saudi Arabia, and the latter shudders at the thought of Bahrain`s Shia majority taking control of the country, which may, then, quite possibly provoke the Shias on the east coast of Saudi Arabia to be accommodated at the same level. So, Washington has chosen to turn a blind eye to the Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain to the aid of its beleaguered royals. The misery of the Bahraini Shias gets worse because the Saudis take instant fright to their beliefs and perceived links with Iran.

Back in Libya, however, the juggernaut of conquest rolled out by Italy a century ago is playing out to its fullest potential under the US and Nato military lust. The latitude of UNSC resolution 1973 is being used and abused to the hilt. Somebody very aptly asked if Qadhafi`s tanks could fly? Why would they, otherwise, be targeted under a `no-fly zone`? The answer to that is that the UN mandate gives the `friends` of the rebels the right to deploy any means to protect them against Qadhafi`s marauders.But the rebels aren`t doing too well against the better-equipped Qadhafi army on the battlefield. So the word from London, on the authority of David Cameron is that the 40-ministers` conclave did mull over the possibility of arming the rebels with western weapons. Obama is believed to have signed a secret order to do just that. Qadhafi, the incorrigible Caligula of our times is whetting the western appetite for an encore of the imperialist era.

However, the western sense of humanism would come alive with full vigour if the nascent movement against Bashar Al Assad`s regime in Syria spirals into a serious challenge to the regime`s power. Syria has been in the gun sights of Washington for decades, especially since the Iranian revolution which brought the two countries into ideological proximity of each other. Moreover, Syria`s physical proximity to Israel makes it an automatic target for the neocons and the Zionists.

Against this backdrop one should be quite prepared to the Obama Doctrine getting quickly into its elements, given half a chance in Syria. In his own words, Obama would be `on the right side of history` in going to the aid of the Syrian people, an overwhelming majority of whom has no sectarian affinity with the ruling Alawites, who are but only a miniscule element of the Syrian demography.

If that comes to pass, history of western imperialism in the Arab world would come full circle. The onslaught begun in Tripoli in 1911 reached its apogee with the fall of Damascus, the jewel in the Ottoman crown, in 1918. The words uttered by the victorious British General Allenby, at the tomb of Salahuddin Ayubi in the heart of Damascus would remain etched forever in Muslim conscience: `Saladin, we have returned,` hectored a jubilant and beaming Allenby, rubbing salt into the Muslim wounds. One may wonder who would be hectoring this time around; not Obama, we hope?

The writer is a former ambassador.
K_K_ghori@yahoo.com

In recent years, Pakistan has been drifting away from its South Asian roots towards the Arab Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. It all started with Z.A. Bhutto, with his Islamic Summit and the Islamic bomb in search of a new strategy for improving security of the country. This was followed by General Ziaul Haq with his dream of establishing a commonwealth of Muslim states with him as its chief patron.

As a consequence, school textbooks were revised to emphasise the (Arab) Islamic connection. Pakistan`s history now began with Muhammad bin Qasim, not Mohenjo Daro and Harrapa. A stadium was named after Muammar Qadhafi as well as a big mosque named after Faisal in Islamabad to show the nation`s regard for this link. (Of course, there is a Persianised Shahra-e- Quaed-i-Azam in Lahore to test the vocal chords of the average Pakistani. No wonder that `The Mall` continues to be the popular name for the busy central link. Why not just Jinnah Road?) Also Pakistan has been a source of skilled and unskilled labour supply to many countries in the Middle East, and a policy of offering agricultural land to the Gulf princes has been pursued by all political parties in power.

The Middle East policy may be explained partly in the context of the India-centric strategy. But the cost of promoting this pseudo-weltanchauung is astronomical, as it ignores the reality of geography, of Muslim South Asian heritage in religion, culture, literature, philosophy and arts, linking all the centres from Aligarh, Nadva, Lucknow, Delhi to Lahore. And the contributions made by the well-known sbelowufis, for bringing to the subcontinent the message of Islam, is as much part of Pakistan as of Muslims of India, as their popular landmark mausoleums remind us.

During the so-called decade of democracy, Benazir Bhutto made use of Umra diplomacy to keep in touch with the Saudis. Newaz Sharif has not been far behind in his enthusiasm about the Arab link. Compulsory teaching of Arabic in the educational institutions, for example, to familiarise students with the Quranic Arabic is one thing; it is quite another to require Arabic as a modern language; the two do not necessarily connect with each other for religious transformation. No wonder, the attempt at Arabisation being made in Pakistan has been laughed at by many scholars in the Middle East.

The current situation in the Middle East should persuade the people at the helm of affairs to rethink about this false endeavour. Whatever pattern the current revolution will take, it is reasonable to argue that with the passage of time, the Middle East will never be the same again. To stem this tide the Saudi monarchy, for example, is beginning to sense the danger, but does not realise that offering stipends and subsidies will not meet the basic needs of the younger generation. Nor will the tokenism to introduce municipal self-government. Then, there are questions about human rights, not only for the Shia minority but for women as well. The country needs social and economic reconstruction.

The monarchy has strong grip on the country, and whether it will survive beyond the present aging king is a question mark. In the meantime, they use Wahabism to legitimise the regime and offer assistance and subsidies for oil exports to other Muslim countries including Pakistan to win friendships abroad. They have boosted their security by having US troops stationed in the country. In spite of these measures they do not seem to be quite sure how they will adjust to a new Middle East as it begins to take shape.

In the meantime, they will try to defend the status quo in Bahrain, where their troops are now stationed to support the Sunni al-Khalifa family ruling over Shia majority. If the Shias should win there, this would have repercussions in regard to their own Shia population, and will also boost Iran`s position. Similarly, inYemen, the president who has ruled the country for 32 years with an iron grip is getting support to resist change.

Egypt, not Saudi Arabia, holds a unique position in the Middle East and is destined to play an important role in the final outcome in the region. How the revolution will play out in that country is difficult to answer. The movement can be in danger of getting compromised if elections are either too early or too late. And then the part the Muslim Brotherhood would play would have a significant effect on the political structure which will replace the system developed by Hosnie Mubarak. At present the party is engaged in a vigorous internal debate about democracy and its place in the new political system in the country. It is important to note as well that with Mubarak removed from the scene, there will be no status quo ante for Israel.

Looking at the rest of the Middle East, Algeria has an authoritarian regime and at present is living through a post-civil war trauma, which was bloody and cost around 200,000 casualties. Last month the government lifted the state of emergency. Morocco seems to have escaped this windstorm, with an accommodating monarchy and a stable political system. Jordan is trying to contain its own unrest. The current main trouble spots then are Libya and Syria.

There are two notable regional players, Iran and Saudi Arabia, who have direct stake in the changes which are taking place in the Middle East. And in the international arena, what role the US (and Nato) as well as China plan to pursue will have an important impact on the situation. All four of them have over-lapping and conflicting objectives. Middle East has always been an arena for this kind of diplomatic game.

The US, for example, supports stability in Yemen and Bahrain from the point of view of its security. In Libya, however, it agreed to start the no-fly zone (euphemism to deny state of war) provided there was regional support for it. This was offered by the Arab League, where Saudi Arabia is an important member. In the Nato, Turkey is a reluctant ally and supports an early ceasefire. If this should come to pass, then Libya would become a divided country, with rebels holding on to the areas on which they have gained effective control. How would China view this development will depend on how it can save its interest in Libyan oil, though it must be worried about the tottering of Middle East dominoes, representing authoritarian doctrines.

Syria has been under a secular, single-party Ba`athist rule with Bashar al-Assad as president. His father, Hafez al-Assad established the regime with liberalised but state-dominated economy, broadly on Chinese model. Relatives of the Assad family pervade the government and dominate the economy. Ba`athist party has a strong grip on Syrian politics. Hafez al-Assad, for example, is known for having ruthlessly suppressed a revolt by Muslim Brotherhood when he bombed the city of Hama to kill about 35,000 people in 1982. Bashar inherited the notorious emergency laws from his father`s regime after his father`s death in 2000. The civilian campaign is focused on these emergency laws. Turkey`s Recep Tayyib Erdigan has advised Basha`ar al-Assad to implement the reforms without delay.

Stakes are high concerning stability of Syria for Iran, a strategic ally of the country. It is through Syrian conduit that the Shia groups in Beirut get support from Iran, and Hamas is also a direct beneficiary of this arrangement.

One could safely assume that Saudi Arabia is not going to escape the winds of change blowing across the entire Arab World. It would be in the interests of Pakistan, as a South Asian nation, to recognise and support the emerging progressive forces in the Middle East, and not endorse the reactionary status quo seekers loaded with petro-dollar diplomacy.

The writer is a retired professor.
izzud-din.pal@videotron.ca

Was economically and politically Pakistan better off during the Bhutto era (1971-77)? Was he was an exponent of democracy or mobcracy? And whether he had a fair trial and was rightfully convicted? On questions such as these public opinion remains sharply divided. On the last question, the ruling party has decided to file a reference in the apex court. Whichever way one answers these questions, it cannot be denied that the late prime minister left an indelible mark on the country`s history.

Mr Bhutto founded the Pakistan People`s Party (PPP), which to date remains Pakistan`s largest and the most popular political party having a nationwide appeal and an across-the-country base. The PPP was founded in opposition to Pakistan`s first military ruler Ayub Khan in whose cabinet Mr Bhutto held the portfolio of foreign minister.

The philosophy which the PPP espoused at the time of its birth was democratic socialism, which meant establishment of an egalitarian society through democratic, constitutional means. Mr Bhutto was fortunate that he did not have to wait too long as Ayub Khan was forced by country-wide agitation to step down in March 1969 paving the way for Pakistan`s first general elections in December 1970. The PPP won the election in the western wing and eventually formed the government in 1971 after the separation of the eastern wing.

Mr Bhutto was avowedly committed to a command or socialist economy, which envisaged the state as the major player on the economic scene. Therefore, after attaining power he started a nationalisation programme. In the first phase of the programme, a number of basic industries were nationalised. In the second phase, the state took control of financial institutions including banks and insurance companies. And in the third and final phase, rice-husking units were nationlised.

The nationlisation policy of the Bhutto government has come in for sharp criticism. It is alleged that nationlisation of industries and financial institutions did serious damage to the efforts for economic development during 1960s and resulted in economic inefficiency and mis-allocation of resources. Some critics have even alleged that nationlisation was not occasioned by any philosophy or doctrine; rather it represented the attempts of feudals led by Bhutto himself to clip the wings of industrialists, who had grown immensely strong under President Ayub.

Undeniably economic growth slowed in the wake of nationalisation. This is corroborated by the fact that whereas during 1960s, Pakistan`s economy grew on average at 6.8 per cent per annum, during 1970s, growth rate fell to 4.8 per cent per annum on average. It is also true that most of the nationalised units went into loss, because decisions were not market-based. However, rapid economic growth is not the only macro-economic objective of a government. The government has also distributional objectives so as to reduce economic disparities. During 1960s rapid economic growth was accompanied by concentration of resources in a few hands.

Hence, when Bhutto assumed power, there was a popular demand for breaking the concentration of economic power. And it is doubtful whether that was possible without the state increasing its economic role. Besides socialism was still a powerful economic doctrine during 1970s and a party`s pursuit of socialist ideals was not surprising. Today of course things are much different as governments all over the world are pursuing market-based policies. In Pakistan as well, all major political parties including the PPP are wedded to market economy.

Mr Bhutto had the credit of forming the first popularly elected government of Pakistan. However, it must be admitted that it was not the PPP but the Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman that had won the popular mandate to form the government having emerged as the single largest party in the elections. If Mr Bhutto were a democrat at heart, he must have accepted the Awami League`s right to form the government. But never for once did Mr Bhutto call for transfer of power to the Awami League.

Initially Mr Bhutto was installed as president but later became prime minister after the promulgation of the 1973 constitution, which remains the party`s most significant contribution to date. Constitution making has remained a serious problem in Pakistan. It took the country nine years to draw up its first constitution, which was abrogated only after two and half years. The second constitution, the 1962 constitution, was a mockery of constitutionalism as it had made the president all-powerful but responsible to none. The 1973 constitution, which is still in force despite having been suspended thrice by generals, is an excellent document. It not only provides for a responsible form of government but also reconciles the apparently conflicting principles of full provincial autonomy and federation`s integrity. What is remarkable about the constitution is that it was adopted unanimously by the people`s representatives.

Above all, Bhutto deserves the credit of inculcating political consciousness among the people. With Bhutto, democracy was restored in Pakistan after a long spell of despotism. Democracy is essentially a faith in the power of the people, and only politically conscious people can constitute that power.

Thus a foremost task of a leader in a democratic polity is to infuse that consciousness in the masses. Before Bhutto the people were merely passive spectators in the game of politics and were markedly deficient in political consciousness. Politics was entirely dominated by feudals and the country lacked a politically influential middle class, which is so vital to the success of democracy.

Though during the Bhutto period feudals continued dominating politics — Bhutto himself being a feudal lord — a politically conscious middle class came into being. Since that class had pretty adequate representation in the legislatures, it wielded some influence as well.

Bhutto made the masses realise, in a way none had done before in Pakistan, that they were not a non-entity, and that they had their rights as well as obligations as citizens of a democracy. The popular expression ruti, kapra aur makan was not merely a political slogan but a driving force in arousing the masses. Without having access to these necessities of life, the people cannot be free. As one great revolutionary leader of the last century puts it, a starving man has no opinion. And only a free people can fulfil their responsibilities as members of a democratic order.

Bhutto also took the momentous decision that Pakistan start its nuclear programme in response to that of India. Whether that was a right decision or not, we need not enter into that debate. But the fact that the Bhutto government did not knuckle under tremendous pressure to abandon the nuclear programme testifies to the strong character of the man at the helm.

The late prime minister will also be remembered for presiding over a fundamental shift in Pakistan`s foreign policy. Disappointed with the US role in 1971 Pak-India war, Bhutto decided it was high time Islamabad shunned its dependence on Washington and instead looked to the Muslim world for support and strength. The hosting of the second OIC conference at Lahore in 1974 created at least a semblance of Muslim unity.

The Bhutto regime was not without its dark side. The late prime minister had indomitable lust for power, which made him frequently overstep his authority. He was given the mandate for a democratic, responsible government but he tried to turn the same into a licence for authoritarianism. His amendments to the 1973 constitution by force of brute majority, his attempts to encroach upon provincial autonomy guaranteed in the constitution, manhandling of opposition leaders both inside and outside parliament, and his humiliation of his own partymen who dared oppose him are some of the examples.

His creation of the federal security force (FSF) to harass and victimise the opposition and his intolerance of any criticism show his dictatorial bent of mind. If democracy is the government of the masses, it is also the rule of law in an environment of political tolerance. Bhutto`s intolerant attitude and his extra-legal steps weakened democracy. It is pertinent to mention that throughout the Bhutto era, emergency remained enforced in Pakistan and he never shrank from using the powers that emergency provisions had conferred on him.

Bhutto tried to strengthen himself at the expense of institutions, whereas the success of democracy depends not so much on strong leaders as on strong institutions. The personality cult of which Bhutto and most other democratically elected leaders in Pakistan have been guilty may be so important for dictatorship but is definitely a lot detrimental to democracy. That Bhutto tried to put himself above institutions nothing demonstrates this better than his dealings with the armed forces.

Instead of strengthening his grip on power by strengthening democratic institutions, Bhutto tried to do so by appeasing the senior command of the army. Under Bhutto, the size of the army increased and public discussion of the troops` debacle in Dhaka was banned. To ward off any danger of coup d`etate , he appointed a junior office as the army chief. But ironically that very person whom the late prime minister believed to be meek and personally loyal to him toppled his government and had him hanged.

While the release of the American has come in for sharp criticism at the hands of a section of society and politicians for allegedly being yet another instance of shameful surrender to Washington’s dictates, the drone strike precipitated an unusually tough reaction from the civil and military establishment. Both the Raymond Davis case and the drone attacks are a commentary on Pakistan-US relations.

Raymond Davis had killed two people in Lahore in what he called self-defence on January 27, 2011 and was immediately put behind the bars. From the very outset, the American authorities in Washington and its mission in Islamabad had maintained that being a diplomat, Mr Davis enjoyed complete immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and therefore he should be released forthwith.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations deals with the privileges and immunities of diplomats. Article 29 of the Convention states: “The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.” Article 31 adds: “A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State.” However, under Article 32, the immunity may be waived by the sending state (in the instant case the USA). Under Article 37, the immunity is also available to administrative and technical staff of the mission.

In addition to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, there is also the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, which defines the privileges and immunities of consular officers. Article 41 (1) of the Convention states: “Consular officers shall not be liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a grave crime and pursuant to a decision by the competent judicial authority.” Article 43 adds: “Consular officers and consular employees shall not be amenable to the jurisdiction of the judicial or administrative authorities of the receiving State in respect of acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.”

The above provisions show that whereas the immunity available to diplomats is complete, that of a consular officer covers only the acts performed in exercise of consular functions and certainly does not extend to “a grave crime.”

It follows that if Mr Davis was a diplomat or a technical or administrative officer of the American mission in Islamabad, he could not be arrested and tried on any ground including homicide. On the other hand, if he was merely a consular officer, he did not enjoy immunity on the charge of homicide. Therefore, the important question was whether Mr Davis was a diplomat. Article 1 (e) of the Vienna Convention defines a diplomat as “the head of the mission or a member of the diplomatic staff of the mission.” Under para (d) of Article 1, the members of the diplomatic staff are the members of the staff of the mission having a diplomatic rank. Did Mr Davis have a diplomatic rank?

The question was to be settled by the Pakistan government — ministry of foreign affairs to be precise. Both the above referred Vienna Conventions have been incorporated into the Pakistan’s domestic legal regime vide the Diplomatic and Consular Privileges Act of 1972. Section 4 of the Act provides that If any question arises whether or not any person is entitled to any privilege or immunity under the law, “a certificate issued by or under the authority of the Federal Government stating any fact relating to that question shall be conclusive evidence of that fact.”

However, despite passage of one and half month, the foreign office did not come up with a categorical response affirming or denying whether Mr Davis was entitled to diplomatic or consular immunity under the Vienna Conventions and the domestic law. In all probability, the American was not a diplomat, otherwise the government would not have wasted a moment in declaring the immunity available to him. This is corroborated by the statement of former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi that the record available with the ministry did not confirm diplomatic status of Mr Davis.

The Foreign Office’s dilly dallying over the diplomatic status of Mr Davis sum up the basic character of Pak-US relations. Pakistan is a politically unstable, economically fragile and aid-addict country, which needs American capital as well as goodwill of multilateral donors to meet its widening current account and fiscal deficits and keep the wheels of the economy moving. On the other hand, the US, the globe’s sole superpower, needs Pakistan to win the war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates — the foremost item on Washington’s national security agenda.

When a politically and economically vulnerable country like Pakistan is so vital to the national security of a superpower, the logical result is increased interference in the domestic affairs of the former ranging from governance to the macro management of the economy.

Besides, we, the Pakistanis, have the incorrigible habit of looking to foreigners — mainly but not merely Americans to be sure — to settle domestic political issues thus inviting and re-inviting external intervention. Contrary to what they may state publicly, our leadership, elected or unelected, wearing the garb of democracy or in uniform, religious or secular, leaves no stone unturned in courting American friendship and good-will.

Hence, in the instant case, from the very outset both the federal and Punjab governments sought to shift responsibility on each other as neither wanted to annoy either Americans or the public. In the end, courtesy another Muslim country, an ‘amicable’ solution to the problem was found and Islamic law was used to let Mr Davis off the hook. However, the fundamental question regarding the status of Mr Davis — a spy, a diplomat or a consular — remains in the dark.

Raymond Davis had killed two Pakistanis and the case may be treated as a past and closed transaction. However, hundreds have been perished in drone attacks. The matter has repeatedly been taken up with Washington at the highest level and on each occasion Americans have assured to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty and our leadership pledged to safeguard the motherland’s territorial integrity at all cost. Yet it is unlikely that the strikes will come to a halt, as they form an important part of the implementation of US counter-terrorism strategy.

How can a country repeatedly violate the sovereignty of another in violation of international law and the UN Charter, kill its people and get away with that? The answer is that states differ in their capacity for and susceptibility to foreign interference. Whereas some states pursue remarkably independent policies, others are sovereign in name only and in practice are no more than satellite states. Generally, the more powerful a state, the more sovereign it is. Hence, in practice, state sovereignty is manifested in national power taking all its elements into account. In the end, a state must be capable of protecting its sovereignty.

Is Pakistan capable of that defence? Our nuclear power status coupled with a massive military might have constituted a strong deterrence against US raids in our territory. But we need to look at other elements of national power in which we are deficient. Undoubtedly, the economy is the Achilles’ heel. Decelerating economic growth, growing fiscal and current account deficits and falling levels of investment and savings mean that the economy is in a dismal situation and in dire need of foreign capital. An economy too weak to walk without the crutches of foreign assistance is a drag on national power and hence sovereignty.

There is no dearth of political leaders who aver that Pakistan should break the begging bowl and take bold decisions notwithstanding the state of the economy. Some even maintain that Pakistan should go to war against the US. Every nation, no doubt, has to take some bold decisions. But such decisions require a credible leadership — another element of national power. Do we have such leadership? Do we have leaders who can stand by the people in their hour of trial, who can share their enormous wealth with the masses, and are ready to part with their privileged position in society?

It is a nice political slogan that the nation should prefer eating grass to begging for foreign assistance. But who will eat grass? The leaders who say this have a most luxurious lifestyle, which will make even the richest in the developed world envious of them, live in palatial houses, drive in imported bullet-proof cars, and have scores of gun-totting body guards. A country can hardly take bold decisions when such leaders — on either side of the political divide — are around.

hussainhzaidi@gmail.com

Having confronted some of the most traumatic events since the last world war, it has yet again demonstrated its indomitable spirit.

Japan’s recent triple-whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown brings out some of the best as well as the worst features of this small nation’s character, where group ethic is far more important than an individual’s ego.

Busloads of Japanese tourists are often seen in foreign lands, led by a tourist guide with a Japanese flag in hand who shepherds them through airport lounges, hotel foyers, art galleries and dining halls (a cynical friend conjectured they would jump into the swimming pool, if the guide so wished).

But the Japanese are no automatons, the cultural traits ingrained in them are the result of centuries of hardships endured as a result of the complex interaction between the country’s lack of natural resources, the abundance of human ingenuity and perseverance and proneness to turbulent natural and man-made disasters.

Despite undergoing all these misfortunes, which Emperor Hirohito termed as enduring the unendurable in his surrender speech to the Japanese nation, Japan emerged as second largest economy in the post-war world, a position it only recently lost to the world’s most populous and dynamic country, China.

The Japanese tragedy whose human, economic and environmental dimensions are yet to be unravelled completely is both poignant and pregnant with lessons for other countries, including Pakistan, which have had frequent brush with disasters, both natural and man-made.

Despite the extensive damage and deep trauma, Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami disasters seem to have had little effect on its culture’s impeccable manners and its stoic national character in face of adversity. The mundane example of an injured woman pinned under furniture apologising to rescuers for causing trouble illustrates the nation’s trait of exhibiting concern for others regardless of the magnitude of one’s own suffering.

However, some chinks in the Japanese moral armour are becoming visible under the stress of the March 11 disaster. For instance, panic buying was rare and people stood in queues to get their share of the goods in short supply, but online buying, especially from offshore sources, has added a new dimension to this form of behaviour. Being faceless, it probably overcomes the sense of shame and the proverbial loss of face, associated with the Japanese character.

Japan is, of course, no stranger to earthquakes, which are a matter of almost daily occurrence and earthquakes of intensity below 6.0 are treated as non-events.

Japan has rebounded from even greater disasters such as the Edo fire of 1657, the Kanto earthquake of 1923, which measured 8.3 and killed 140,000 people and nearly destroyed the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, through continual improvements in the safety code and construction designs of new buildings.

The 1923 quake kicked off a national effort to rebuild Tokyo into a world-class city. The 1995 Kobe earthquake, though smaller in intensity, caused widespread damage in one of Japan’s major industrial cities, and reinvigorated the efforts for improved safety and rescue through strengthened coordination with the Self-Defence Forces and creation of crisis management centres across central and local government.

Along with the enhanced participation of Japanese civil society, especially youth through the newly-discovered tool of social networking, these measures have greatly taken the edge off the massive impact of the disaster unleashed on March 11.

A major lesson of the Japanese experience is the need to continually improve the standards and arrangements of safety and rescue over time commensurately with the Nature’s raising the bar of destruction for the next disaster.

Unfortunately, not all countries are endowed with the human and financial resources to engage in this highly loaded game against brute forces of nature. Pakistan’s official response to 2005 earthquake and 2010 floods, despite massive infusion of foreign aid, stands in marked contrast to Japan’s and shows the lack of commitment of its political elite to ameliorating the suffering of its people. Disasters often become opportunities for the misuse of public funds and foreign aid for government functionaries.

Notwithstanding its unceasing efforts to reduce the vulnerability to and increase its resilience from the effects of such disasters, the nation seems poised to encounter a fresh challenge not only to its prosperity, but also to its existence in the form of a threat of an implosion of one of its nuclear power plants, notwithstanding the heroic attempts to prevent a meltdown in one of the stricken reactors.

Even though Japan was forced to disavow its nuclear ambitions after being made the first victim of atomic bomb, it did not by any means acquire immunity to the nuclear peril.

Ironically, while it survived the US atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and emerged as the second largest economy in the world, it succumbed to its thirst for energy in pursuit of prosperity by its over-reliance on nuclear power generation whose dangers were laid bare after the Three Mile and Chernobyl nuclear power plant disasters in the US and USSR, respectively.

How Japan and many other countries were beguiled by the temptation of nuclear energy for power generation is in itself a fascinating story. In a revealing article, a Yale nuclear scientist, Prof. Jonathan Schell, has shown how difficult it is to put the genie of the split atom back into a safe bottle.

The idea of atoms for peace was first floated in 1953 by President Eisenhower to overcome the collective guilt and embarrassment suffered by the US for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and as a camouflage for its avoidance of internationally-supervised nuclear arms control.

Instead, Eisenhower proposed to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers and put it into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace chiefly those who would use it to build nuclear power plants.

There were, however, a few unwelcome flies in this ointment for an energy-hungry world. Firstly, the technology of nuclear power proved to be an open spigot for the spread of technology that could also be used to produce nuclear weapons. Secondly, it required the burying of nuclear waste for the tens of thousands of years for its radioactive materials to decline to safe levels, which mocked the meagre ingenuity and constancy of a species whose entire recorded history amounts only to some 6,000 years.

Lastly and more relevant to the nuclear disaster facing Japan is the added risk of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, a tsunami or high floods near the location of a nuclear plant which could seriously damage the plant and release high levels of radioactivity to the environment. Of course, it could be argued that technological innovations and design improvements could circumvent many of these drawbacks in the future. However, there seems no earthly need for scientists to give a helping hand to the already sufficiently powerful primordial forces of destruction threatening our planet.

Japan’s tragedy will hopefully serve to teach the world a momentous lesson in nuclear prudence. It may help to persuade humanity to give a more serious thought to reviewing the use of nuclear energy more wisely and of weighing even-handedly from the viewpoint of the welfare and sustainability of human existence the various available technological options for producing energy, as well as for disbanding the nuclear arsenals around the world which pose even graver threat to its existence.

There are encouraging signs that many countries, especially China and India, have already started rethinking about their plans to build more nuclear plants and to increase their reliance on alternative sources of energy. But the world should not wait for a more monumental disaster to do away with the existing and escalating stockpiles of nuclear weapons and to find ways of permanently banishing them and preventing future disasters.

This will not only create the fiscal and economic space for developing cheaper and safer energy sources, but will also allow the world to achieve the elusive goal of eliminating poverty.

smnaseem@gmail.com