Diplomacy of fencing
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

PAKISTAN and Afghanistan have been having an argument about the causes of the intensification of insurgency in a widening arc in Afghanistan for the past several months. President Bush was part of it first during his February visit to the region and then again in the famous tripartite consultations with Presidents Musharraf and Karzai in Washington.

That Pakistan has now announced plans to fence and mine the 2,400-km border selectively shows that one of the interlocutors is succumbing to a counsel of despair if not simply ratcheting up the level of the tactical game being played in the region.

If the purpose was to deflect a rising chorus of allegations about why the Taliban were resurgent in Afghanistan, Pakistan is opting for a measure that is universally condemned these days. It is also associated with horrific suffering in Afghanistan, and happens to be a known impediment to rehabilitating Afghan refugees particularly in farming and pasturing. Pleading that landmines would be laid only on the Pakistani side of the frontier will not make the slightest difference to the moral opprobrium.

The global outrage at human losses caused by mines is expressed in the intense interest in the issue at the United Nations and in the large campaigns to ban landmines. The 1997 Nobel Peace prize went to one such campaign. A major anti-personnel mine ban agreement, the Ottawa Convention, stood out as a cooperative enterprise by governments, UN, the Red Cross and almost 1500 non-governmental organisations. By November 2006, 151 countries had ratified or acceded to the treaty that came into force on March 1, 1999.

The amended Protocol II of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons focuses specially on landmines, booby-traps and other devices of a similar import. There is a large pile of reports on the subject and inter-agency cooperation in the United Nations has kept the question of explosive remnants of war in public awareness and advocacy. Israel’s deliberate attempt to cause long-term hazards for civilians south of the Litany River attracted worldwide disapproval.

In this international climate of opinion was it even prudent on Pakistan’s part to brandish this threat in a territory where freedom of movement has been a valued right since times immemorial? Even if the army uses extreme care in designating areas to be mined and then provides highly efficient monitoring and surveillance systems, the psychological backlash would all be directed against Pakistan. The measure is an open invitation to Kabul to revive its traditional claim to be the defender and guarantor of the well-being of the border tribes.

The tribal belt has a great deal of legend and mythology attached to it and invading it with devices that are now universally condemned for their capacity to kill and maim indiscriminately will add one additional item to the litany of human rights abuses and violations with which Pakistan is routinely pilloried.

The one group that may not be much worried about it is the Afghan resistance. During the last 30 years they have used more than one hundred routes and trails across the frontier and they will not fight shy of frequent gun battles to keep as many of them open as it would only enhance their appeal to the people. If the flurry of reports from international sources is to be believed at all, the Taliban already enjoy better resonance with them than the officials who were to carry out the much vaunted development projects in the area.

Pakistan sent its army into the tribal lands without much homework relying on a quick fix that would offset American pressure. It must not rush into fencing and mining in another similar ploy to head off international criticism particularly when there is very little chance that allegations from President Karzai and his international backers would abate. Adding yet another futile talking point to the rather stale repertoire of Pakistani spokespersons is far too great a price for more alienation that would inevitably re-fuel the Durand Line controversy.

Mr Karzai has been rather theatrical; his calculated outburst in Kandahar accusing the Pakistani government, though, fortunately, not the Pakistani people, of trying to enslave Afghans and reduce them to the status of doormen at Karachi hotels was doubtless provocative. It is as much for the Pakistan government as Kabul to explain why this “incident” took place despite the great opportunity that came Pakistan’s way in the shape of Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri’s Kabul visit. But more to the point are statements from western sources confirming Mr Karzai’s allegations of cross-border interference that is well beyond the widely accepted limited movement through the peculiar configuration of this long frontier.

Consider the following comment in the latest policy report of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on what it describes as “the most intense and deadly insurgent violence since the Taliban’s fall five years earlier”: “The Taliban, Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami and fighters linked to Al Qaeda have used Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) bordering on Afghanistan’s south eastern provinces, to regroup, rearm and launch cross-border attacks on Afghan and international troops”. Consider further what the ICG has to say about the Miramshah accord that all of us have been extolling: “Infiltration into Afghanistan appears to have increased since the military, having suffered major losses, opted for a policy of appeasement of the Fata-based militants, signing peace accords, first in South Waziristan in April 2004, then in North Waziristan in September 2006.”

The ICG report’s in-depth analysis often gets marred by a poorly sketched political framework for explaining the backwardness of the tribal areas. For instance, it has difficulty in making up its mind about the role of the “maliks”. At one point it seems to be lamenting that Pakistan has perpetuated them as instruments of the British colonial policy with a view to denying the people a status equal to the other citizens of Pakistan.
At another, it also seems to accuse the religious parties, especially that of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and the military alike of getting the maliks supplanted by religious activists who have now created a mini-Taliban state. The authors had apparently interviewed too many Pakistanis and had not found enough time to synthesise their own conclusions. Without that, there is always the risk of falling into the pitfall of shoddy studies on the mullah-military alliance particularly popular with western readers.

Be that as it may, the indictment of Pakistan for having provided bases for militants to re-group, re-arm and launch attacks across the border has to be taken seriously.

Similarly, it needs to be established whether the upsurge in resistance inside Afghanistan is the result of Pakistani “appeasement” or other factors intrinsic to the failure of the Karzai government, the International Security Assistance Force and the Nato forces and the larger international community that has not fulfilled the commitments made in the wake of the Bonn agreement. For reasons which are not difficult to guess, the report is timid on these non-Pakistani factors. But where then is Pakistan’s counter-narrative? Instead of being upfront about it, Islamabad now wants to hide behind a fence and landmines.

Talking of narratives, a distinguished academic and a frequent flyer to Afghanistan in all seasons, Barnett R.Rubin, has a long essay entitled ‘Saving Afghanistan’ in the January-February 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. After celebrating the success of Nato forces in turning back the Taliban offensive of the summer of 2006, he informs us that “the main centre of terrorism of global reach” is in Pakistan, that Al Qaeda has succeeded in reestablishing its base in the Pashtun tribal belt and that the “intelligence collected during western military offensives in mid-2006 confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was continuing to actively support the Taliban leadership, which is now working out of Quetta”.

These judgments are reinforced in a later section of the essay called “Sanctuary in Pakistan”. He argues that 9/11 changed Pakistan’s behaviour but not its interests.” (Five) years later, he says, “the safe haven Pakistan has provided, along with continued support from donors in the Persian Gulf, has allowed the Taliban to broaden and deepen their presence both in the Pakistani regions and in Afghanistan.”

I can think of any number of fellow Pakistanis who say that they ought to sympathise with their government’s Afghan predicament but they don’t as it remains in a perpetual state of denial. I can imagine that the official reaction would be that Bush and Condoleezza Rice whom our leaders meet frequently do not make these allegations and that they are not overly exercised over opinions of the media and non-governmental analysts. There are many points made by these analysts that deserve serious thought. Above all, we need to think with gravitas about political reforms in the tribal belt.

The Musharraf era has left all past political structures there too debilitated to be revived. The president may not even want to do much till a failsafe device to elect him again in uniform is perfected. But the storm gathering over the region makes it important that he defines the future status of the tribal areas sooner rather than later. The moving finger writes and moves on. Let us at least read it.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.
Lessons from Lebanon

By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

WHEN I wrote about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon a week ago, there was already much despondency in the air about the state of the world. Since then, the few remaining lights on the global horizon have been going out one after another and the gloom is much deeper. The descent into a Hobbesian anarchy in interstate relations brought about by the illegal occupation of Iraq has been greatly accelerated by the continued destruction of Lebanon.

Nothing illustrates it better than the determined effort by Tel Aviv and Washington to block initiatives for a ceasefire that would enable the international community to address the causes of this latest conflict in the Middle East in a relatively calm atmosphere. At the G-8 summit, the president of the United States made a tasteless remark about Syria to his staunchest ally, Tony Blair, which was relayed to the entire world by microphones that someone had forgotten to switch off.

It was an alarming indication of the large measure of truth in the reports claiming that the Israeli invasion plans had been shared with the United States at least one year ago and that Israel had been assured of an uninterrupted military campaign lasting three weeks. The paralysis at the United Nations reflected the same agonising reality that Israel was free to continue its offensives in Gaza and in Lebanon without even a proforma demand for cessation of hostilities.

Nothing, however, has shed more light on the nature of this conflict and its real objectives than the 15-nation Rome conference. Its proceedings, if available in detail, will bear scrutiny at many levels. But what already lies in the public domain reveals a distressing juxtaposition of two dominant strands: an eloquent and impassioned appeal by President Fouad Siniora for an immediate reprieve for his devastated country, Lebanon, and a granite-like resolve by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to deny it. She said that Siniora had put a human face on the unfolding tragedy but refused to give that tragedy a higher priority than the attainment of questionable strategic objectives underlying the licence given to Israel to wage war with impunity.

Speaking for the dead and dying in Lebanon, President Siniora asked: “What future other than one of fear, frustration, financial ruin and fanaticism can stem from this rubble?” To underline the futility of this conflict, he concluded his anguished address to the conference by quoting from Tacitus: “They created a desolation and call it peace.” In the first two weeks, what Israel has destroyed completely or damaged grievously includes three airports, three ports, three dams, 62 bridges, 72 overpasses, 5,000 civilian homes and 152 commercial factories and other businesses. It is bizarre that a person of Dr Rice’s background speaks so uncritically of the birth pangs of a new Middle East.

Dr Rice knows her Tacitus as well as any historian or politician but her sights were set far beyond the wasteland of south Lebanon on Syria, Iran and any organisation in between that dare oppose the project for a new Middle East. As to the anguish of the Palestinians and the Lebanese, they should be happy that their suffering represented the birth pangs of this new order. They should also know that their pain would last a while. The Rome conference, we are told, was stuck for almost an hour on the right word in the reference to be made to a ceasefire.

Apparently, all but two participants, US and UK, wanted to say that the Rome group would work for “an immediate ceasefire”. Dr Rice insisted that it would “work immediately to bring a ceasefire”. Apparently, the work that she wants the group to undertake immediately is to devise a mechanism that would disarm the Hezbollah, ensure that it would not reassert itself, and also neutralise Syria and Iran. Apart from giving Israel enough time to cripple the military capability of Hezbollah, Washington seeks to deploy an international army that is willing to assume the responsibility of a rapid deployment force virtually with no mandate other than protecting Israel against the Hezbollah.

Dr Rice was the winner in the Rome debate but far too many elements in the situation militate against the eventual success of the policy that she forced the conference to adopt, probably with the degree of acquiescence varying from state to state. First and foremost, the military situation has turned out to be far more complex than anticipated. The nature of weapons in the hands of Hezbollah was known but what has surprised the world is its ability to hit targets well inside Israel despite being under constant bombardment from air, sea and, on the ground, by Israeli artillery and armour.

As this hostile pressure on its positions turns to desperation, Hezbollah may fire off rockets with a longer range (as it already claims to have done) that Israel says have been delivered to it by Iran.. At the time of this writing, its fighters are still imposing a high cost on the Israeli troops advancing into Lebanon.

Secondly, the goal of disarming Hezbollah may turn out to be unachievable. Opinions in the Arab world about its provocative cross-border raid into Israel at the beginning of hostilities were divided but the staggering lack of proportionality in Israel’s retaliation has obscured that split. The conflict imposes great attrition on war materiel in Hezbollah’s arsenal but it can, in the short run, be compensated by change of tactics and, in the long run, by unstoppable re-supply. A point will come when Hezbollah will return to the war of ambush and sudden attack making Israel pay an ever-increasing price.

Hezbollah has no analogy with Al Qaeda. It is a deep-rooted national resistance movement, with a strong political wing and a disciplined military arm, thrown up by the prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. If an international force pushes the disarming process too far in an attempt to secure a full implementation of resolution 1559 of the UN Security Council, Lebanon’s fragile confessional and sectarian balance will come under strain and Dr Rice will end up with another Iraq rather than a pro-western democracy of the “New Middle East”.

Third, the very idea of drafting Syria to help neutralise Hezbollah without a comprehensive Middle East settlement is a non-starter. France and the United States, not the best of allies most of the time, collaborated to bring about the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon knowing full well that it would further empower the Hezbollah leadership. Now that no Arab army other than Hezbollah has resisted the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Syria should not be expected to compromise its position in the Arab world by weakening it except in the framework of a broader settlement. Such a settlement seems to be conceptually beyond the present US administration and an Israeli government overshadowed by the hawks in the nation’s military.

Iran’s involvement with Syria and the Shia minority in Lebanon has a long and impressive history. I have a vivid recollection of Iranian ideologues building up this relationship to preserve their self-image of a millenarian Islamic revolution when fighting Iraq, a Ba’athist Arab country. It was important for Iranians to avoid categorisation of what they called “an imposed war” as a conflict between an Arab and a non-Arab Muslim country and the Levant was a befitting theatre from where to project Tehran’s Islamic credentials.

Today, the stakes are different; a network of kindred forces in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon creates a new dynamic demanding a new balance between conservative and radical segments of the Islamic world, between nationalism and internationalist Islam. As long as the United States threatens Iran with regime change, Tehran cannot permit a dilution of its influence in the region. As in Syria’s case, Iran will have to be associated with the larger settlement.

Dr Rice has explained it time and again that the United States opposes an immediate ceasefire as it cannot let the situation return to status quo ante. She has also asked Damascus and Tehran to make their choice. As things stand at the moment, the United States, too, has to make a choice. It has to disentangle its interests, the global interests of the greatest military power in human history, from the narrower interests of the militarists in Israel.

It is in Israel’s long term interest to stop acting as the proxy power in the Middle Eastern theatre of imperial wars. The Abdullah plan that offers it security and prosperity behind pre-June 1967 borders still provides the basis for a lasting peace. For the United States, underwriting Israel’s land grab has meant a progressive loss of “soft power” to which the region would have been particularly receptive. The present conflict is another painful reminder that Washington is still held in thrall by the Jewish lobby and its allies amongst the so-called Christians for Israel.

It seems that not enough lessons have been learnt from the fiasco in Iraq. So far, the enduring legacy of the Bush presidency is chaos in everything that it has tried to reshape — from the project of peace amongst the nations of the world to global warming. Some of the most sophisticated minds in the United States tell us that a great new debate about the purpose of their country’s pre-eminence is already underway. They do not explain why this debate does not inform decision-making even in the twilight years of the current administration. As America waits listlessly to become benign on a future date, possibly the first of January 2009, hundreds of human beings perish every day as already discredited projects continue to be pursued with relentless military force. It is a depressing thought.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.



The perfect storm

By Gwynne Dyer

IT has the makings of a perfect storm extending right across the Horn of Africa. The fifteen-year war of all against all in Somalia is threatening to morph into an international war bringing chaos and disaster to the rest of the region, and the Al Qaeda-obsessed securocrats in Washington are the ones to blame.

The Somalis have nobody to blame but themselves for their basic plight. Although Somalia has only one ethnic group, one language and one religion, its people are deeply divided by clan, and when long-ruling dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, the clan leaders were unable to unite and form a new government. Instead, the country fell into civil war and anarchy.

A US-led military intervention in 1992 tried to restore order, but after 18 American soldiers and a thousand Somalis were killed in a single day (the “Black Hawk Down” episode), US forces pulled out. By 1995 all the other United Nations troops had followed, and Somalia was abandoned to its fate as a real-life version of the Mad Max films: no government, no police, no schools, no law, just the trigger-happy troops of rival warlords roaring around in “technicals” mounted with machine-guns or anti-aircraft cannon, stealing and killing to their heart’s content.

But US interest in Somalia re-ignited after the terrorist attacks of 2001, because as a Muslim country without a government it seemed a potential haven for Islamist terrorists. At first American policy concentrated on re-creating a national government, and by 2004 a transitional regime blessed by the United Nations and the African Union and led by one of the warlords, Abdulahi Yusuf, was installed in the town of Baidoa. But he was not in the capital, Mogadishu, because the three warlords who ruled that city rejected his authority. So did most other Somalis.

Meanwhile, a different kind of authority was emerging in Mogadishu: the Islamic courts. It was an attempt, paid for by local businessmen, to restore order by using religious law to settle disputes and punish criminals. Each clan’s court has jurisdiction only over its own clan members, but it was a start on rebuilding a law-abiding society, and in 2004 they all joined to form the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). Unfortunately, the mere use of the word “Islamic” spooked the US government.

As usual, Washington’s response was mainly military. It decided that the Union of Islamic Courts was a threat, and in February CIA planes delivered large amounts of money and guns to the three warlords who dominated Mogadishu. They named themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, and started trying to suppress the UIC.

Rarely has any CIA plot backfired so comprehensively. Volunteers flooded in from all over southern Somalia to resist the warlords’ attack on the only institution that showed any promise of restoring law and order in the country. By early June the last of the warlords had been driven out of Mogadishu, which is now entirely in the hands of the UIC, and for the first time in fifteen years ordinary citizens are safe from robbery, rape and murder.

It is by no means clear that the UIC must fall into the hands of Islamist radicals who will turn Somalia into a safe haven for anti-American terrorists. Left to their own devices, the moderate majority of Somalis can probably ensure that what finally emerges is a moderate Islamic government with strong popular support. But Washington panicked, and last week it let Ethiopia send troops in to protect the isolated “Interim Government” in Baidoa. That probably means renewed war, and across borders this time.

Ethiopia has five times as many people as Somalia and has already fought two border wars with it, in 1964 and 1977. (Somalia claims most of Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, where the people are mostly Muslim and ethnically Somali.) But now it’s more complex:.

Ethiopia is a largely Christian country with big and restive Muslim minorities, and President Meles Zenawi is terrified that militant Islamists in power in Somalia might help those minorities to rebel, but this would not be happening without Washington’s consent. It is exactly the wrong response.

On June 10, Abdulahi Yusuf’s unelected “parliament” in Baidoa voted to seek foreign troops, on June 20 the first Ethiopian troops were spotted in Baidoa — and on the same day Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, the UIC’s deputy head of security, declared: “God willing, we will remove the Ethiopians in our country and wage a jihad against them.”

Just when Somalia was about to escape from its long nightmare, a new and worse one has appeared: the prospect of a war that would consume the entire Horn of Africa (for Eritrea, teetering on the brink of another war with Ethiopia itself, is already sending aid to the UIC). The entire Horn of Africa could spend the next five years going through a catastrophe similar to what the Great Lakes region of Africa suffered in the later 1990s.

Sometimes you really wish that the State Department, rather than the Pentagon and the White House, ran American foreign policy.—Copyright



Lapses in education system

By Dr Tariq Rahman

IN the last days of 2006, the education ministry came out with a White Paper titled ‘Education in Pakistan’. It is a draft document, of course, and is meant for discussion. It was prepared after much discussion and is the product of hard work and good intentions. A lot of it makes sense.

What I am about to criticise, or discuss, is only a part of it. I hope it does not give the impression that there is nothing positive in the paper. I am giving my opinion on areas I disagree with or find myself able to comment on.

The White Paper points out that there are gender, geographical and economic disparities in our education system. It talks of English-medium schools and the fact that the private sector has captured some 30 per cent of the education sector. But it stops short of saying that most of the private entrepreneurs are there to make money. It talks of public-private partnerships as if that will reduce the burden of fees on parents. Moreover, it approves of the private sector’s expansion in higher education.

If the existing apartheid is allowed to carry on to the university level would we have a less unjust society or a more unjust one? The White Paper does not say so nor does it actually say much about ending apartheid education. As for awareness, it has been there since the 1970s. Before that, the state pretended that the rich did not have a parallel system of education.

The document does not mention the schools of agencies of the state or those supported by state functionaries. There are the so-called public schools, cadet colleges, cantonment board schools, Fauji Foundation schools, PAF Model Schools, etc, which are patronised by the armed forces. They do not follow the policies of the education ministry as far as the medium of instruction or the curricula are concerned. Instead, they veer more towards the elitist English-medium model. They are given large areas of land, endowments, and gifts and so on. In short, they are subsidised in varying degrees by the state.

This being so, does the Constitution allow them to function in elitist ways? This question was raised in a 1966 report on student disturbances where it was said that using English as the medium of instruction in cadet colleges was a violation of the principle of the equality of all citizens. However, Justice Hamoodur Rahman, the president of the commission, could hardly rock the boat too much so the state of affairs remained as it was. This paper does not mention it at all.

The document then goes on to consider the medium of instruction. Some of its policies are most enlightened on the face of it. There is the provision of using the mother tongue up to class five. This is exactly what Unesco’s paper (2003) on this issue says.

But this is to be left to the discretion of the provincial governments. We have always had this liberal provision in our Constitution but the problem is that it is not easy to implement.

In Sindh, urban Sindh goes into revolt the moment someone talks of using Sindhi instead of Urdu. And, most urban Sindhis do not have Sindhi as a mother tongue anyway.

In Punjab, middle-class Punjabis are reluctant and embarrassed about making any serious effort to substitute their mother tongue for Urdu. In the NWFP, some nationalist Pashtuns might agree to teach everything in Pashto but in Hazara, Chitral, Kohistan and some other areas they do not speak Pashto.

Moreover, inner cities do not use Pashto as a mother tongue. In Balochistan they did try using Balochi, Brahvi and Pashto for classes one and two in 1990 but the parents knew their children would be over-burdened because richer children were learning Urdu and English only.

In short, such experiments fail because they are tried only on poor children. Moreover, our provinces are not linguistic units nor are there any benefits or returns for learning our languages. Thus, if mother tongues have to be preserved, honoured and encouraged then areas speaking the same language must be demarcated first.

Interesting books supported by poetry, drama, films and features of local events — here I agree with the White Paper — should be prepared because local colour is important. Then a certain language should be taught but taught to all. Cantonments and big cities cannot be spared though they will plead to having different mother-tongues. But, if we spare them, Pakistan’s indigenous mother tongues will remain impositions on the poor while the rich will acquire languages with cultural capital i.e. English and Urdu.

We should be like the Catalan-speaking area in Spain and French-speaking Canada where you have to speak Catalan and French no matter what your mother tongue is to get public education or jobs.

The White Paper says that English should be started from class three onwards. Moreover, it should be the medium of instruction for mathematics and the natural sciences and higher education. Urdu, it says, should be taught from class one where it is not the medium of instruction (only rural Sindh and some parts of the NWFP) and should be used for the social sciences.

Again, this policy is for the poor and the powerless. The rich and the powerful will study everything in English throughout — all the way from pre-nursery to university. Those who study English as a subject — and we know how awfully it is taught — will never be able to compete with those who study everything in it. The apartheid between the arts and sciences will widen. Even now the arts students in colleges study in Urdu while science students attend lectures in English. This tendency will be strengthened.

In the interest of equity, it is not possible to teach everyone in English. The resources and expertise are not there. It might, however, be possible to teach everyone in their mother tongue (up to class five) and link languages such as Urdu till school (12 years). English should be used from class 1 but as an auxiliary language.

The four-year Bachelor’s degree can be in Urdu with very strong support of English. The university, meaning a two-year Master’s and research degrees, should be in English. This is not a good system but it is a more equitable one. One assumes the elimination of those bastions of privilege — the elitist English-medium schools.

The state should make its own schools so good so as to eliminate them and to create at least a few really superior schools in all big cities to be attended purely on merit.

The White Paper has very positive proposals about teaching elementary students. One is glad to see that the environment is mentioned. To this should be added women’s rights, animal rights (they make dogs fight bears in our villages), pro-peace lessons and messages against honour killings and forced transactions of girls. Children should be shown films because school teachers have a tendency to make everything too boring for them.

Another welcome recommendation is that curricula and textbooks should not foster, or lead to, sectarian attitudes. This is very well but there was no book encouraging sectarianism earlier. There are books in madressahs conveying beliefs of sub-sects. Such books convince people about the correctness of their own dogma and, therefore, the falseness of others. But this is part of South Asian Islam. Nobody can change this. Nor is it necessarily violent in nature.

Sectarianism of the violent kind was the product of the excessive religious zeal which Ziaul Haq’s regime created. Even that would not have led to so much killing if there had not been a policy to use religious cadres to carry on a proxy war with India in Kashmir. The White Paper has not mentioned this policy nor has it promised that it would never be used again.

Even worse, it does not specifically mention that there should be no hate material against foreigners, including India, while not concealing the truth about historical events. It does not tell us that students should be told about Pakistan’s failings of policy and excesses against East Pakistanis in 1971. Unless the truth is told how can there be a break from the past?

Although it is a commendable effort, the document evades major issues of class and the state’s role in producing wrong and hate-filled history. We need people-friendly policies. This means that class apartheid which goes by the euphemism of ‘medium of instruction’ should be dealt with. It also means that we should promote democratic values and stop teaching the kind of books which create a garrison state.
The Libby verdict

THE conviction of I. Lewis Libby on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice was grounded in strong evidence and what appeared to be careful deliberation by a jury. The former chief of staff to Vice-President Cheney told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists but rather had learned it from them.

But abundant testimony at his trial showed that he had found out about Ms Plame from official sources and was dedicated to discrediting her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Particularly for a senior government official, lying under oath is a serious offence. Mr Libby's conviction should send a message to this and future administrations about the dangers of attempting to block official investigations.

The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims, and by the aggressive and occasionally reckless response of senior Bush administration officials -- culminating in Mr Libby's perjury.

Mr Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq.

In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr Wilson.

US ‘viceroy’ to the UN


ZALMAY KHALILZAD is not the kind of soft-spoken diplomat who goes over well at the United Nations. President Bush’s choice for US ambassador to the UN, dubbed “the viceroy” during his stint as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, is a neoconservative hawk known for his autocratic style. Yet he is also charismatic and can be charming; certainly compared to his predecessor, he’s a breath of fresh air.

Former Ambassador John R. Bolton was a spectacularly poor choice for the UN, given that he was appointed at a time when the US should have been focusing on mending fences with the international community after ignoring its reservations on the invasion of Iraq. His arrogant refusal to compromise in a forum in which compromise is a necessity for progress only exacerbated American isolation. Bush’s decision in 2005 to install him as a recess appointment when it became clear that he wouldn’t be approved by the Senate was an unconscionable end run around constitutional checks and balances.

Khalilzad is a polished and experienced foreign service official who is quite capable of flexibility, as he proved during tough negotiations over the governance of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Insiders expect him to sail through the Senate confirmation process.—Los Angeles Times

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our struggles will not end but ,certainly,life.