The Supreme Court’s verdict in the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) case followed by its pledge to come down on mega loan defaulters has come under some scathing criticism in a section of political circles. It is alleged that judicial activism has not only undesirable political implications but also goes beyond the apex court’s constitutional role. Is it so?

The arguments against the judicial activism are of two types: legal and political. We begin with the former.

The basic legal argument against judicial activism is that it runs counter to the principle of trichotomy of powers and sovereignty of parliament as contained in the constitution of Pakistan. The principle of the trichotomy of powers provides that the legislature, the executive and the judiciary have their powers and functions defined in the constitution and it will amount to constitutional impropriety if any organ oversteps its jurisdiction and interferes in the functions of the other.

No doubt, the constitution of Pakistan establishes the principle of the trichotomy of powers, it does not provide for complete separation among the three organs. For instance, the executive appoints members of the superior judiciary and parliament is empowered to fix the number of judges of the Supreme Court. On its part, the superior judiciary can determine the validity of laws passed by parliament as well as the acts of the executive.

Article 175 (2) provides that no court shall have any jurisdiction except conferred on it by the constitution or any ordinary law. However, in case of a dispute regarding the scope and limits of the jurisdiction, the same is to be settled by the judiciary, and ultimately by the Supreme Court, as this involves interpretation of law and the constitution. Parliament can dilute the powers and functions of the judiciary by amending the constitution. But such amendments themselves are open to judicial review.

Judicial activism is being exercised by the Supreme Court under Article 184, which is its original jurisdiction. Para 3 of the article empowers the court to make an order if it ‘considers’ that a question of public importance with regard to enforcement of any of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution is involved. Again, it is for the apex court to decide whether the matter is important enough to warrant the invocation of the original jurisdiction of the court. The suo motu power is exercised under this article.

Article 187 empowers the Supreme Court to issue all such directions, orders and decrees, as it deems necessary, and secure the attendance of any person and production of any document for doing complete justice in any matter before it. Under Article 190, all executive and judicial authorities shall act in aid of the Supreme Court.

There is a widespread misconception that parliament in Pakistan is sovereign. Rather sovereignty is vested in the constitution. An act of parliament is valid only if it does not conflict with the constitution. If a dispute arises as to the validity of an act of parliament or an executive order, it is for the superior judiciary to decide. Having said that, it does not mean that the judiciary’s power to interpret the constitution is untrammeled. Rather it is also limited by the constitution. The courts cannot declare any action which is manifestly unconstitutional — such as abrogation of the constitution — to be constitutional and thus valid. Similarly, the courts cannot assume the power of amending the constitution. That power is exclusively vested in the legislature under Article 239 of the constitution.

It was held by the Supreme Court in State versus Ziaur Rahman and others (PLD 1973 SC 49) that: “In the case of a Government set up under a written Constitution, the functions of the State are distributed among the various State functionaries and their respective powers defined by the Constitution…. It cannot, therefore, be said that a Legislature, under a written Constitution possesses the same powers of ‘omnipotence’ as the British Parliament. Its powers have necessarily to be derived from, and to be circumscribed within the four corners of the written Constitution.”

Though parliament is empowered to amend any provision of the constitution by a two-third majority, any amendment to the constitution has to be within its basic framework, otherwise it will be invalid. Thus parliament can introduce minor changes to the constitution; it cannot re-write or deface the constitution by changing its essential character. For example, while parliament can rename the Supreme Court as the Federal Court or fix the number of judges, it cannot abolish the court itself. The former will be a change within the basic framework of the constitution and hence an amendment; however, the latter will not qualify as an amendment to the constitution.

The dilemma of the judiciary is that if the courts remain silent on the acts of omission and commission of the government and do not exercise their constitutional jurisdiction, they are accused of being docile to or colluding with the rulers. And if they do, they are charged with having a political agenda.

Having looked into the legal arguments against judicial activism, let us turn to political arguments. It is averred that judicial activism will undermine the authority of parliament and the executive and thus weaken democracy. At a time when democracy is struggling to take root and the government is grappling with the grave menace of terrorism, the argument goes, judicial activism will make the writ of the executive weaker.

The argument is a fallacy. Judicial activism is the effect rather than cause of ineffective role of both parliament and the executive. If the other two organs would have been alive to their role, the judiciary would hardly have asserted itself the way it is doing. Here are some examples. To begin with, the executive did little to prevent or mitigate the recent sugar crisis. The sugar shortage would not have arisen had the government in the first place imported sugar in time and later acted against politically powerful cartels, which created artificial shortage to raise prices. Nor did parliament, for obvious reasons, carry out any meaningful debate on the issue. This left the judiciary, the ultimate protector of the rights of the people, with no option but to intervene.

Secondly, the popularly elected parliament did not pass a single resolution condemning the subversion of the constitution and dismissal of the judges by General Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007. It was left to the Supreme Court to invalidate those extra-constitutional acts. Similarly, the judges were restored only under duress; otherwise the government was dilly dallying over the issue by constituting committees which it knew well was an exercise in futility.

Thirdly, the PPP government had all along defended the NRO and the benefits accrued under that as a brilliant example of the political astuteness of the party leadership and even tried to get it through parliament. When the NRO came up for hearing in the Supreme Court, the court could either validate or invalidate it. Validation of the NRO was out of the constitution as it conflicted with several provisions of the constitution. Besides, even the major beneficiaries of the NRO did not defend it in the court. Hence, the court had to declare the ordinance unconstitutional. Moreover, if the NRO was void, it was so ab initio and similar were the benefits derived under its umbrella.

Fourthly, the mutli-billion rupee Punjab bank scam should have been resolved by the executive itself rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court. Fifthly, we all know that loans worth billion of rupees were waived by banks for political reasons. But has parliament taken cognizance of the matter? Has it passed any law providing for recovery of defaulted loans? Finally, despite its commitment from day one, the PPP government has not repealed the seventeenth amendment to the constitution. Suppose the amendment is challenged in the Supreme Court for being in conflict with the basic character of the constitution. The SC would either validate or invalidate it for being incompatible with the basic character of the constitution. The decision either way will arouse criticism.

It is said that in western democracies, courts exercise judicial restraint and do not dabble into political questions. No doubt, in such countries political questions are normally not brought before the courts — the major reason being that they are settled at the appropriate forum.

However, in case no other remedy is available or works, then judicial intervention is the answer. An obvious example is the 2000 disputed presidential election in the USA, which was settled by the Supreme Court.

Political, and not judicial, activism is the answer to the political problems. However, the way to attenuate judicial activism is not to hold the decisions of the courts in contempt or stifle the independence of the judiciary, but for the executive and parliament to play their role in a befitting manner. As long as parliament remains inert and the government follows a laissez-e-faire approach, judicial activism will continue to fill the void.

For the past 63 years, South Asia has remained in a state of tension. The eight countries that make up this geopolitically sensitive region do not share a friendly and harmonious relationship with each other. This is despite their efforts to come on a single platform of Saarc to develop a major economic and political bloc. All smaller countries were enthusiastic about this model of cooperation to succeed in gaining progress and getting rid of pervasive poverty. But in the end it just collapsed.

All these countries have a closely interwoven history and common ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious heritage but still they failed. It happened because all the contiguous states on India’s periphery are fearful of its hegemonic designs and its policy to dominate and dictate.

In case of India and Pakistan, given the historical divide between Hindus and Muslims, it is understandable that a certain amount of acrimony and distrust would impact their relationship. Instead of accepting Pakistan’s emergence in 1947 as a reality and resolving bilateral disputes in a spirit of understanding, India adopted a belligerent course. The resulting discord and three wars have plagued their relationship to this day, both countries diverting huge and precious financial resources to defence and development of nuclear weapons.

Even if Indo-Pakistan relationship is set aside for a moment as one of peculiar nature and even if Pakistan is presumed to be responsible for all the wicked behaviour, the question arises why do other countries of the region find it so difficult to forge a closer relationship with India? Why is it that India has failed to evoke trust and confidence among its neighbours to make any worthwhile collaboration impossible, including Saarc? Isn’t it time for hostilities to give way to a congenial environment among South Asian neighbours too?

The fact is that for regional alliances, political or economic, to succeed it is imperative for all stakeholders to treat each other as equals, irrespective of their size or strength. This comes with respecting each other’s sovereignty, willingness to set aside political differences and showing a degree of flexibility to promote a common cause. In case of South Asia, this has not happened. India has disputes with almost every neighbour, which has strained their relationships for years at end.

In Sri Lanka, India overtly and covertly supported the insurgency against the state by LTTE, a nationalist Tamil group in the northern Jaffna region of this small island country, which kept it politically and economically destabilised for decades. In the end, India paid a price for interference when its prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by a Tamil activist for having betrayed the movement.

With Bangladesh it is locked in an unresolved dispute over Farakka barrage that deprives Bangladesh of its water share. Despite the gratitude Bangladesh owes to India for having militarily dismembered Pakistan in 1971 to midwife its birth, relations between the two have often sunk to the rock bottom on a host of issues, including border dispute.

The tiny mountain state of Nepal has complained of persistent Indian dictation and interference in its internal affairs. That India employs economic blockades and manipulates transit facilities to this poor landlocked country for arm twisting is no secret.

Although not a part of South Asia, China’s relations with India for decades have remained frosty, at best. They went to war in 1962 over a border dispute. Competing for regional leadership, it does not hesitate to antagonise China by hoisting Dalai Lama off and on to keep the issue of Tibet alive. Lately, having aligned itself with America to contain China, India is bargaining for a tense Sino-Indian relationship in the years to come.

With Pakistan, India maintains the worst of relations mainly because of Pakistan’s political and military standing and its ability to reject Indian domination. Outstanding disputes including Kashmir, water distribution, dams that India constructs in violation Indus Water Treaty and border issues have remained unresolved.

By joining the American bandwagon in Afghanistan and positioning its troops in the name of infrastructure development, India created enough concerns for Pakistan. But by its collusion with CIA and Mossad to take out Pakistan’s nuclear assets through subversion in Fata, the NWFP and other areas using the militants of Tehrik-i-Taliban, India is slamming shut the door on the peace process that Pakistan has been persistently trying to keep open ever since 1947. With a history of constant endeavours to balkanise Pakistan, Indian military build up in Afghanistan is seen by Pakistan’s military as an effort to put it in a nutcracker.

That growing Indian influence in Afghanistan is a destabilising factor in the region, is acknowledged even by Gen McChrystal in his recent review of the war in Afghanistan. The make and types of sophisticated weapons, communications equipment and satellite pictures of troop movements recovered from the militants provide undeniable evidence about Indian involvement.

Mr. Ehsanullah Aryanzai, advisor to the Afghan regime has said that India is using Afghan soil to conduct anti-Pakistan activities. The executive editor of ‘News Indian Express’ has acknowledged the evidence of Indian activities in Balochistan in the issue of July 31, 2009. And evidence was recently handed over by Pakistani prime minister to his Indian counterpart.

The Indian psyche that breeds arrogance and expansionism is clear from the words of Pundit Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who said ‘India must dominate or perish’. Perish it will not. So dominate it must. To Hindu extremists, all others on this land are aliens who do not belong there and this includes Muslims and Christians. This justifies the commonly witnessed ethnic cleansing of non-Hindus and leads to the ultimate dream of the creation of Vrihata Bharat — a Greater India.

To ensure that this fatherland is reunited under Hindu rule, India pursues designs of expanding its boundaries to eventually include Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, and Bhutan and create the huge Indian empire.

It would be very naive not to see the direction towards which India is headed. Far from becoming the sole ruler of the entire Indian Ocean, India is destabilising South Asia and working its way towards its own disintegration. This is not only because it is surrounding itself with angry and insecure neighbours, but also due to its troubles at home.

shahidrsiddiqi@gmail.com

ONLY hours after the three-day Food Summit began in Rome in mid-November, some 60 heads of state and dozens of ministers rejected the UN's call to commit $44 billion annually for agricultural development in these nations.

This is a healthy sign. Although the decision is more political and smacks of international dishonesty in alleviating hunger, I personally feel it is a blessing in disguise. If the rich countries had committed $44 billion annually for agricultural development, the entire money would have gone in for aggressively pushing for infrastructure development including GM research facilities and industrial farming systems based heavily on external input supplies that have already played havoc with farming in numerous developing countries.

Africa for instance would have received much of this investment for its highly flawed Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), headed by Kofi Annan. Not drawing any lessons from the Green Revolution debacle in India, AGRA has all the ingredients to unleash a terrible farming crisis, building on a highly unsustainable farming system, in the years to come.

I am therefore not surprised to see the frustration being voiced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director General Jacques Diouf: "I am not satisfied that some of the concrete proposals I made were not accepted,'' he told a news conference. “There was no consensus on this and I regret it.'' The reason is obvious. While the summit agreed on the need to increase agriculture's share of international aid, it did not allocate the $44 billion annually — 17 per cent of overall foreign aid — the FAO says is necessary to feed a population that is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050.

The FAO has taken a U-turn in its clear position on the race by food-importing countries and private companies to buy land overseas for domestic food and agriculture needs. Terming this land grab as 'neo-colonial' system, the FAO chief Jacques Diouf had earlier said that the risk was of creating a neo-colonial pact for the provision of non-value-added raw materials in the producing countries and unacceptable work conditions for agricultural workers.

Jacques Diouf stand was however diametrically opposite to that of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC, a think-tank that always thinks in favour of the agribusiness industry. Joachim von Braun, IFPRI Director General said importing nations realised that dependence on the international market made them vulnerable — not only to surging prices but, crucially, also to an interruption in supplies. “They want to secure the supply lines of food,” he had said. IFPRI had, therefore, called for a code of conduct for the investing companies and countries.

In my opinion, these companies and food importing countries are no better than food pirates. They are literally snatching food from the hands of the hungry populations in the countries that are leasing or selling their limited land resources to foreign investors.

But just prior to the food summit and ostensibly to please the investors as well as the food importing countries, the FAO has gone in for a complete turnaround, seeking now a voluntary code of conduct. I am in fact shocked at this U-turn as I had thought that the FAO was still a shade better than the World Bank/IFPRI. But I feel I must change my opinion now. I increasingly find the line that separates the World Bank/MNCs and the UN/FAO has now blurred considerably. They now appear to be merely two sides of the same coin.

Javier Blas of The Financial Times ( Nov 18, 2009) reports: The United Nations has started drawing up a code of conduct to regulate overseas investment in farmland, but the voluntary rules will not be ready for at least a year. The code is the first attempt to control the growing trend of so-called “farmland grab” deals, which involve rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea investing in overseas farming to boost their own food security.

The trend gained prominence after an attempt by South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics to secure a large chunk of land in Madagascar contributed to the collapse of the African country’s government. Diplomats are concerned that African countries, many of which face problems of chronic hunger, are giving away vast tracts of farmland almost for free in return for vague promises of job creation and spending on infrastructure.

The report further says: The UN and the World Bank are walking a tightrope in drawing up a code of conduct, however, as they do not want to undermine all foreign direct investment in agriculture, which they believe can offer opportunities for development. The difficulty was reflected in a declaration from the summit that aims to “facilitate and sustain private investment in agriculture” while seeking a study of “good practices to promote responsible international agricultural investment”.

But the blurred line that I talked about is in the next para: Guidelines would be non-binding, UN officials said. They would focus on making sure that “existing rights to land ...are recognised” and “investments do not jeopardise food security”, according to a World Bank draft policy paper seen by The Financial Times.

In future, please be sure that the World Bank and UN FAO policy papers are no different. You can read them as one.

The writer is a New Delhi-based food analyst.

Price of partnership with the US By Tayyab Siddiqui
Sunday, 10 Jan, 2010

The current phase of Pak-US relations offers an interesting study of the two states engaged in strategic partnership and yet wary and suspicious of each other’s real intentions and agenda. There is a huge trust deficit acknowledged by both and hence, if this partnership has to prosper, the factors responsible for the credibility crisis need to be addressed by both sides.

It is a known fact that President Musharraf had no option but to submit to the US demands following Secretary Powell’s telephone in 2001. Hence Pakistan became a reluctant partner in the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan. During the Bush Administration, this equation remained intact, significantly augmented by the personal equation between Bush and Musharraf. There were warnings from different US sources that Pakistan was not living up to the commitments and was periodically asked to “do more.” On the whole, however, the partnership survived.

The inauguration of the Obama Administration, the departure of Musharraf and induction of a democratic government are the new realities in the region, deeply disturbing the status quo. Afghanistan has been on top of the foreign policy agenda of President Obama since his election campaign days. He made a break from Bush’s policies and a determined effort was made for a new beginning with the Muslim world. However, Obama’s failure to assert leadership in dealing with Israel has disappointed the Muslim world. For Pakistan, quite a few US initiatives soured the relationship. First and foremost has been the drone issue. The US unilaterally decided to employ drones. Pakistan’s protests were ignored and the strategy did not work as much as was expected. Last year, more than 50 drone air strikes killed 400 people, mostly civilians. Obama’s stated objective — “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to prevent their return to either country in the future” — overrode “the strategy of dialogue, development and deterrence.” The result was obvious. A wave of anger has swept across the country, intensifying anti-US sentiments and acts of violence and terror.

The Afpak strategy announced last month after a three-month review of American war strategy is bad news for Pakistan. The strategy has shown a callous disregard for the concerns and interest of Pakistan. Under the strategy, Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be treated as a single arena of conflict. Zardari has rightly rejected the strategy, stating that “Pakistan and Afghanistan are distinctly different countries and cannot be lumped together. Pakistan is a functioning democracy, diversified economy and a powerful national army. Afghanistan is a state shattered by decades of conflict, ethnic divisions and foreign invasions.” There is deep disappointment in official circles that the services rendered and sacrifices made in this war on terror have neither been duly acknowledged nor compensated.

Pakistan has paid an enormous price in blood and money. More than 3,000 security forces have lost their lives. The number of IDPs from Swat and South Waziristan have exceeded a million people, having a huge drain on national resources. Military operations in Swat alone have cost $2.6 billion and total loss to the economy is estimated in the range of $50 billion. While unveiling the Afpak strategy, President Obama made generous references to Pakistan’s role. He underlined that “our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.” Addressing the Pakistani nation, he said, “America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity, long after the guns have fallen silent.” These assurances are welcome but the history of interstate relations is replete with broken promises. Wars have their own dynamics and in this case there are many variables and the developments cannot be expected to follow a set pattern or projection.

It appears that in the final outcome, Pakistan will be a great loser. The New York Times has reported that “Mr. Obama has authorised an expansion of the war in Pakistan as well, if only he can get a weak, divided, suspicious Pakistan government to agree to the terms.” Contradicting earlier press reports, Obama has warned that the US would launch strikes inside Pakistan if it had “actionable intelligence” about the presence of top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in a particular area. Obama has also authorised Special Forces to invade Pakistani territory in pursuit of Taliban and/or Al Qaeda fighters. General Jones, the National Security Advisor, has in his meetings with Pakistan leadership bluntly told them: “Obama would not see the border dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan as a barrier if he was responding to Taliban strikes emanating from Pakistan.”

It is high time our leadership prevailed on Obama to get the terms of engagement clearly defined and reciprocal obligations well pronounced. Even a minor miscalculation can upset all the projections and throw the region into flames. The US administration must realise that there has been a qualitative change in the war against terror following end of the Bush era and advent of a democratic government in Pakistan. The US strategy in the region must reflect these changes. President Obama knows too well that every partnership has a price. Pakistan has already paid more than its due share. The partnership can remain intact only if US performance and role matches Pakistan’s. The US must respond positively to the issues critical for Pakistan’s future.

The price tag for the strategic partnership would be a comprehensive document taking review of the last seven years of the war against terror, adjusted in the light of political, strategic and military developments. The following provisions would be crucial in restoring the confidence and trust between the two allies. The major areas of concern to Pakistan can be summarised as: 1) U.S. mediation on the Kashmir issue; 2) Offer to increase package for economic uplift (for every $1 in Pakistan, US spends $30 in Afghanistan); 3) Write-off the existing loans to provide Pakistan relief from the burden of foreign exchange and liabilities; 4) Adequate compensation for the families of civilian victims killed in drone attacks (German forces in Afghanistan during operations killed 30 civilians. The German Defense Minister and Head of German Armed Forces have resigned over the affair and compensation is to be provided to the victims’ families); 5) Urgent and positive consideration to nuclear cooperation along the Indian model.

The Obama Administration must be reminded of its own assessment that Pakistan’s cooperation is indispensable for success of Afpak Strategy and failure is no option. Addressing US concerns and achieving its goals are as important as Pakistan’s. The leadership in both countries must rise to the occasion.

The writer is a former ambassador

AS the Great Depression set in, several social programmes were launched in the US throughout the decade of 1930s to stimulate the economy but there was little success. Then, the US entered World War II, and unemployment was reduced from 13 per cent to 2 per cent within a year. So, the inference is that war is the answer to depression and economic crisis. The fact remains that it was the deficit spending and injecting money into the economy which helped the US wriggle out of the depression. War only provided political support to the need for higher deficit spending.

However, to overcome the current recession, the US government has adopted anti-recession policies that mainstream economists contend are neither necessary nor desirable. It has extended large bailouts to private companies, mostly to financial institutions, and also to the ailing auto industry that was once the crown jewel of US capitalism. The crisis has given rise to calls by economists for return to regulation after having realised that deregulation was one of the factors that sowed seeds of the current financial crisis and created distortions in the economy. Major regulation reforms in the energy and health-insurance sectors are being resisted by big corporations (e.g., health-insurance companies) and from conservative groups. There has been little mass mobilisation in favour of new regulation paradigm or an expanded social-welfare state.

In earlier times it was assumed that there was an economic trade-off and that military spending had to take place at the expense of other sectors of the economy. However, one of the lessons of the economic expansion in Nazi Germany, followed by the experience of the United States itself in preparing for the Second World War was that big increases in military spending could act as huge stimulants to the economy.

In just six years under the influence of the Second World War the US economy expanded by 70 per cent, finally recovering from the Great Depression. The early phase of Cold War era thus saw the emergence of what later came to be known as “military Keynesianism” which meant that by promoting effective demand and supporting monopoly profits military spending could help place a floor under US capitalism.

John Maynard Keynes, in his landmark “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, published in 1936, in the midst of the Depression, argued that the answer to economic stagnation was to promote effective demand through government spending. The Keynesianism that came to be known as “military Keynesianism” was the view that this was the best remedy and had the least negative consequences for big business if there was focus on military spending.

The first to theorise this tendency was Polish economist Michal Kalecki. For him this new military-supported regime of accumulation that came to characterise US monopoly capital by the mid-1950s established a strong political-economic foundation for its own rule based on the following triangle — Imperialism contributes to a relatively high level of employment through expenditures on armaments and through the maintenance of a large body of armed forces.

Kalecki’s ideas were developed further by Baran and Sweezy in 1966 in their work Monopoly Capital. They argued there were at least five political-economic-imperial ends propelling the US oligarchy in the 1950s and 1960s toward the creation of a massive military establishment. This could be secured by following means.

1. By defending US global hegemony and the empire of capital against external threats in the form of a wave of revolutions erupting throughout the world or in terms of a monolithic Communist threat centred in the former Soviet Union;

2. By creating an internationally “secure” platform for US corporations to expand and monopolise economic opportunities abroad;

3. By forming a government-sponsored research and development sector that would be dominated by big business.

4. By generating a more complacent population at home, made less recalcitrant under the nationalistic influence of perpetual war and war preparation; and (5) by soaking up the nation’s vast surplus productive capacity, thus helping to stave off economic stagnation, through the promotion of high-profit, low-risk (to business) military spending.

Today, in what has been called a “unipolar world,” US military spending for purposes of empire is rapidly expanding. In recent years, the United States has expanded its military bases to around seventy countries and has its troops in various capacities (including joint exercises) in perhaps twice that number. Washington is thus not just spending money on the military and producing destructive weapons, or engaging in wars and interventions. It is also building a lasting physical presence around the world that allows for control/subversion/rapid deployment.

SOFT power theorists argue that in a globalised world the powers of persuasion are as important as, if not more important than, the persuasiveness of power. The former includes a country’s cultural appeal, international marketability, mass media projection and civilisational prestige. Combined, these different aspects of soft power can win hearts and minds and thus facilitate the attainment of national interests.

The latter includes the more traditional combination of military assets, intelligence resources, raw economic muscle, administrative capacity and political will. These old-fashioned manifestations of hard power are, it is proclaimed, no longer as relevant as soft power. Satellite television channels can trump ballistic missiles. The global appeal of curry in a hurry beats hard power projection through aircraft carriers and Harriers.

One thing that soft power is a testament to is the ability of the human race to delude itself. It is remarkable that a hypothesis as intellectually bogus and empirically fragile should be projected as a legitimate new way of looking at old problems. The soft power world view is substantially invalidated by historical experience, events and trends of the contemporary era (1990-present) and future possibilities arising from historical experience and the dynamics of contemporary issues.

Historically, a country’s soft power is a consequence of it having, or having had at some time in the past, great amount of hard power. The global penetration of the English language, for instance, is part of the British imperial legacy, which includes the birth and rise of the United States of America, and the resultant dynamism of the North Atlantic economy. The popular appeal of Marxism-Leninism and the proliferation of fashionably leftist third world bourgeoisie was a direct effect of the Soviet Union’s astonishing transition from the feudal age to the space age in less than 40 years (1922-1957).

Before the Second World War various race theories were propagated and accepted as legitimate hypotheses. The relatively benign civilising mission of the British in India subscribed to the same pseudoscientific social Darwinism that animated the genocidal fury of Nazi Germany, the relentless aggression of Imperial Japan or the crased greed that killed millions in Belgian controlled Congo. Differences of degree granted, superior technological, military and economic power justified exploitation and oppression. It was America’s hard power that won the west from the Native Americans and Mexicans though the American pursuit of living space at the expense of its less powerful neighbours might be romanticised in countless Hollywood westerns. The ease with which the Ottoman Caliphate was disposed of by the Turkish nationalists, much to the chagrin of idealistic Pan-Islamists in British India, demonstrates yet again the illusory nature of soft power and its necessary dependence on hard power. Historically, therefore, power is power. A vast empire that possesses a sound economy, a powerful military, a competent administrative elite and a pragmatic leadership with enough political will to deal effectively with challenges, can also enjoy cultural prestige and charisma. Depending on the duration and success of that empire, its intellectual and cultural legacy may well outlast its physical dominion. This, however, does not alter the terms of causation for the imperial legacy is an effect of hard power control.

Other nations and states of more moderate strength and disposition have a proportionately moderate cultural impact and appeal. Thus, Malaysia is admired for its political stability and economic prosperity amidst cultural diversity. South Korea is envied, along with Taiwan, for making a single generation leap to mature industrialisation. Some very small states, like Singapore, Monaco or Luxemburg, are greatly admired on account of their wealth. Certainly, without their wealth such states would be little more than cartographic curiosities. Their profile is a direct result of their extraordinary economic wealth. It can be pointed out that these historical examples from the period of archaic globalisation or the Cold War are no longer as relevant in the face of the tremendous integrative forces unleashed since the late-1980s. Walls have come down, regional economies unified, the Internet unleashed and the world turned into a global village. Of course, one can’t have a village without a village idiot and the behaviour of the United States since its triumph over the Soviet Union has demonstrated how infectious idiocy is in the global village.

The events and trends of the contemporary era should serve as a powerful corrective to the soft-power-hearts-and-minds approach. Take globalisation of communications, which brings people into intense, often unwanted, contact with other cultures, worldviews and tendencies. By doing so, conflict is stimulated and a possibility for greater mutual understanding is opened up. Which way people jump depends on the hard power configuration that prevails at the time. If a dialogue is initiated, its terms are modified by the hard power balance.

Just because kung fu movies are popular in the West and McDonalds in the East does not mean that the US and China will agree on military procurement and investment, energy policy or the environment. It is the Chinese accumulation of hard power, particularly in the military and economic spheres — ICBMs, submarines, massive foreign exchange reserves that incidentally help the US finance its over-consumption and trade surpluses — that worries western governments and some of China’s neighbours. The 2008 Beijing Olympics was the soft power fruit of hard power seeds carefully nurtured over decades of market socialism.

The popularity of American fast food or pop music or political theories does not translate into agreement with its strategic policies. During the Shah’s rule in Iran perhaps half a million Iranians were sent to study in the US and many of these American-educated men and women became the spearhead of the 1979 revolution. In Pakistan, democratic governments have traditionally been more hostile to US policies in the region than non-democratic dispensations due to the overwhelming public antipathy towards the American government.

With US hard power in decline following a decade of imperial misadventures, flawed domestic policies and strategic overextension, there is little doubt that Washington’s ability to influence the global village is also going to decrease. But that doesn’t mean that people will stop wearing jeans or listening to rap music or eating at Pizza Hut. Soft power just doesn’t matter strategically or diplomatically unless backed by hard power.

Closer to home, the popularity of Indian movies in Pakistan is cited as an example of Indian soft power. By that argument, perhaps, the popularity of Frontier cuisine and shalwar kameez in India can be cited as examples of Pakistani soft power. Even if the whole of India were to start eating tikkas and wearing garments popular in Pakistan, one finds it difficult to see a situation in which the two countries would as a consequence start to agree on a mechanism to normalise their strategically adversarial relationship. Nor can people-to-people contact alter the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship even though, on balance, at the individual level Indians and Pakistanis get along quite well with each other.

The only part of the world where the soft power approach seems to have made headway is Europe and more specifically the European Union. This achievement, however, is made possible by the Europe’s outsourcing of the rather distasteful hard power issues and problems to the US. The present peace of Europe is to a very substantial degree enabled and sustained by the US strategic umbrella. Post-1945, if the US had not aggressively contained the Soviet Union there is little doubt that the whole of continental Europe would have fallen to communism.

The beginning of a new decade furnishes an opportunity to reflect on what has been and on what may be. Looking towards the future, soft power rhetoric is set to confront some very hard realities. There are simply too many people on this planet for the majority of them to be sustained at a standard of living comparable to the industrial democracies. Depletion of natural resources is likely to impose harsh limits on economic and population growth.

The failure to hammer out a real compromise at the 2009 Copenhagen summit has left everybody more vulnerable to climate change. Large parts of the world, including South Asia, are experiencing administrative breakdown and gross socioeconomic inequities. Other parts of the world are likely to spend the next generation coping with the fallout of US imperial misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On an overpopulated, resource-starved, economically imbalanced, and environmentally degraded planet, soft power will be utterly meaningless. Those powers that possess the requisite ruthlessness, military capability, material superiority, effective administration and political will, are likely to prevail. Those powers that are deficient on these and other indices of hard power are likely to perish or be marginalised. The hard power outlook for South Asia is bleak and being lulled into smug complacency by soft-power mantras will only serve to completely compromise the region’s future.

The writer is a faculty member of the Department of History at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

THE year 2010 had no sooner made its debut on the calendar than the speeches and statements made by President Zardari started to dampen its spirit. Using offence as the best tool of defence, he has assumed an aggressive tone, albeit it with somewhat disjoined and incoherent accusations against “Pakistan’s (i.e. his) enemies.” Analysts of his statement have had a field day, and he has made no progress in promoting his case.

The political weapon that he wants to use against his opponents is the same Musharraf-distorted constitution which he used to get his appointment approved by the members of assemblies who nevertheless follow strict party discipline in their pattern of voting. The 1973 constitution contains this procedure for a ceremonial president. The result is that the wide gap between what the public opinions hold about him and the endorsement from members of assemblies is getting even wider.

He may not be much savvy in the art of politics, notwithstanding his claim, but he has a bevy of advisors who could put him on the right track, that the road to survival is to do something about the unbalanced picture of his regime: power and perks with a very thin record of legislative measures.

He claims that he would fight the internal and the external conspiracies against ‘democracy’ with the backing of the masses. It may be an unrealistic expectation on his part because people want roti-kapra-makaan and the average person in the country is finding it very difficult to make his both ends meet. The burden of the IMF conditionalities has hit him hard, being in the lower income group. With the recent delivery of the 4th tranch of the loan, we need to remind ourselves that the crunch time is just around the corner. And the World Bank has been making its clarion call about Pakistanis living beyond their means.

Now who are these Pakistanis? Not the ones who have to think about their day’s take to feed the family. But then the targets of WB warning are easily recognisable: The ones who use the state as a fathomless treasury including those who enjoy protection of long motorcades, and others who have special taste in conspicuous consumption.

For the average person, the reality on the ground hits hard, constantly. He has to struggle for basic necessities of life. Reports in the media for example indicate that prices of pulses, flour, sugar, cooking oil and rice are constantly on the rise. Still, by some miracle the Federal Bureau of Statistics data seem to `reveal` a sharp decline in inflation measured by CPI. This presents a puzzle because the two do not correspond. But in fact the situation is not intractable. The problem is with governance.

One of the most important sources for formulating meaningful policies by the government is the availability of comprehensive, reliable and easily disseminated information about facts and figures of the economy. This, as many observers including this writer, have emphasised, is possible if an autonomous Bureau with adequate budget and modern paraphernalia is established, not keeping it as an adjunct to the ministry of finance. The Musharraf regime made use of this arrangement by cooking up its economic surveys (as did Ziaul Haq) and by advising about the miracle that an `authoritarian` regime could perform in economic growth. As we all know, it all turned out to be a Big Bubble. This matter then was urgent enough to call for immediate action by the civilian government with larger than life cabinet and nothing seems to have been in the offing. Instead they rushed to knock at the door of the IMF.

The history is about to repeat itself. With the established burden of external debt incurred especially through IMF facility, the economy should be prepared to cope with its amortisation. There does not seem to be any sign to indicate any notable trend in the revival of the external sector of the economy to meet the challenge. The same old remedy would probably be used, of fiscal restraint financed through indirect taxes. The rich who have shall be given more, the poor will pay taxes. Mr Zardari should know that leaders do not get backing from masses who are struggling with daily life.

About the prices of commodities. A lot has been written about the situation with regard to sugar. It is broadly common with other goods. The question is about structural reform to correct supply-demand relationship, about management at the local level, at the level of brokers and wholesalers and smugglers. A complex situation of this kind cannot be solved by throwing it to the so-called free market mechanism. A judicious policy of effective regulation supported by corrective steps in the real economy would be the only viable solution. Our policy makers should have learned some lessons from the fiasco of Structural Adjustment programmes.

Mr Asif Zardari talks about ‘some harsh decisions’ he has made as being the cause of his troubles. It is not difficult to identify these decisions relating to political issues. These were not his ‘harsh’ decisions, they came with the job and he messed them up. Kerry-Lugar Act, for example, has aroused criticism from many quarters. The fact is that the bill went through several stages in its draft, and keeping the parties affected by it informed would have been an act of courtesy and statesmanship.

Once again, however, imbalance is the problem. There is a vast area of economic issues in the domain of public policy which is being ignored. Concerning the constitutional framework of the country, the Musharraf legacy continues. There is reluctance to dispense with the 17th Amendment. Perhaps it is because a possible Punjabi prime minister might be lurking in the background, as some observers suggest. Perhaps it is more complex than that. The Amendment would likely be kept, with some powers ‘transferred’ to Prime Minister Gilani. The prospects are not very promising for the political economy of the country.

Balochistan situation has been brought under control, but a lot more work needs to be done. The NFC Award is welcome news but cannot be used to claim redemption. In order to move the economy forward, many obstacles have to be overcome. Some of them are easily identifiable. For example, the nation must be taken into confidence to find remedies for terrorism; actions must be taken to diffuse political instability by following the constitutional prerogative; the real and perceived corruption in government and in government-business relations must be curbed.

These are the prerequisites for taking necessary steps to encourage real investment in the country, and to promote equality in distribution of incomes. The old insiders of the PPP, the party in power and with links in all sections of the country, should reflect on the irony that met the founding leader and his promising daughter. Z.A. Bhutto started his progressive agenda in Lahore where the party was formed. He went through two phases in his economic programme, over-exuberance in the first phase, with disastrous policies of nationalising some key industries and educational institutions. In the second phase, Bhutto got carried away with some understandings with ‘waderas’ of Sindh and southern Punjab.

After his successful negotiations with Pakistan National Alliance (1977 elections), however, he was a different man. Predicting the future is like reading tea leaves in a cup. But it is possible to suggest that if he had survived the scheme of the wily General Ziaul Haq in which the general had accomplices from among some civilian groups (ZAB could not be trusted by vested interests), the story of Pakistan would have been written differently, though he would have faced difficulties with the religious parties for giving massive concessions to them.

Similarly, Benazir Bhutto returning to Pakistan in 2007 was a different person. She had done a lot of thinking by that time about Pakistan and about the place of Islam in the country and she had explained it in her book. She would have served the country well and would have gained the confidence of the masses. The successors to these two Bhuttos do not match up as leaders, by any yardstick.

The party is not only in need of a strong leader but also must have infusion of new thinking, some new ideas, about progress, economic reform and social justice. Mr Zardari should ponder on these facts. Carrying portraits of Benazir Bhutto is no substitute to real action.

WHILE terrorists are on the rampage, society is in disarray and the economy is in a shambles, there is a split in public opinion on whose war we are fighting.

Is the fight against terror being waged in the country’s mountains and plains, in the streets and markets, in mosques and on campuses, essentially America’s war and Islamabad is being used merely as a pawn on the chessboard of Washington’s counter terrorism strategy? Or is it our own war, which we have to wage and win with or without the US involvement.

A section of intelligentsia as well as politicians argues that the war against terror is essentially America’s war — a reaction to the 9/11 attacks — and the hell that let loose on the people of Pakistan is the result of the country’s role of a frontline ally of the US in the campaign against extremism.

Therefore, the argument goes, the only way to rid the country of this menace is to shun the alliance with the US. Once Islamabad plainly tells Washington, the argument continues, that it is no longer going to play the frontline state role, the militants will cease their activities and peace and order will return.

The proponents of the above argument make much of the fact that suicide terrorism began to strike Pakistan only in the wake of the country’s post-9/11 alliance with the US. Hence, the assumption that if there were no such alliance (the cause), there would be no incident of suicide terrorism in Pakistan (the effect).

The argument commits the familiar fallacy of regarding mere succession with causation. No doubt, suicide terrorism has struck Pakistan only in the wake of the country’s post-9/11 alliance with the US, the cause of the malady is much older.

To trace the roots of terrorism, one needs to go back to Pakistan’s involvement in the US-led war against its prime antagonist, the erstwhile USSR precipitated by its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

The year also saw the advent of the Islamic revolution in Iran, hitherto the key ally of the US in the region. The change in Iran struck at US influence in the region. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was seen by Washington as a move in Moscow’s global strategy — expansion of communism.

Hence, when the USSR sent its troops to Afghanistan, the US reaction was prompt and tough. Washington wanted to secure the support of neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, so that it could launch an effective anti-Moscow campaign. The US could not get the support of India and Iran for different reasons: India was an ally of the USSR, while Washington-Tehran relations were on the ebb. Then Central Asian Republics were at that time constituents of the USSR federation.

However, in Pakistan the US found the ally it needed and it was through the former that the latter found its war against the USSR in Afghanistan. The only way the then military regime of Pakistan, itself looking for legitimacy as well as political and economic support, could justify its involvement in the Afghan war was by giving it religious meaning.

Hence, the Afghan war became a jihad and the Afghanis on the US side mujahideen. The people of Pakistan were made to believe that the communist USSR invasion of Afghanistan had endangered Islam and therefore it was the religious duty of the government and the people to fight in the war on the side of America, which was said to be fighting for Islam.

However, the Americans had no love for Islam and their interest in Afghanistan sprang from their counter-communism strategy. Hence, in the wake of Moscow’s decision to pull out from Afghanistan in the second half of 1980s, the US involvement in the war fizzled out leaving the various Afghan factions to fight among themselves for supremacy.

For Pakistan the impact of the Afghan campaign was disastrous in at least two respects. One, since the Afghan crisis was portrayed as a conflict between Islam and kufr, it gave birth to the breed of zealous religious militants, who knew only one way of living — living by the sword.

Two, it gave wide currency to the notion that Pakistan should be made the citadel of Islam and that it was the duty of Pakistanis to actively support Muslim resistance movements all over the world.

The Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan also made the jihadis believe that they could defeat an adversary however stronger and bigger. Hence, the jihadis made their way into different countries to take part in Muslim resistance movements. In turn, Pakistan received militants from different parts of the world, who found in the country a safe haven.

The 9-11 brought US back to Afghanistan and restored Islamabad’s status of the frontline ally of the US. But ironically the fundamental character of the US adversary had changed from communists to Islamists — the Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters — the very people it had earlier used to defeat the USSR. For the jihadis, the US invasion of Afghanistan meant that once again Islam was in ‘danger’ not from communists and their ‘stooges’ but from Americans and their ‘puppets’. The 9-11 suicide attacks brought home to the Taliban the effectiveness of that weapon in wreaking havoc. And they have used this diabolical weapon with tremendous success. But who is the victim of this weapon and other activities of the Taliban, such as burning of schools?

They are mostly the poor people and petty but brave officials of security agencies. Just as Laertes in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet was prepared to cut the throat of his enemy in the church if need be, the Taliban would not desist from having young zealous but misguided people kill themselves and others in mosques. Laertes would at least think that if he took a life in the church he would risk damnation.

But our suicide bombers and their mentors believe that their attacks will open for them the gates of the paradise.

Whether the planners and executors of suicide attacks will go to the paradise or condemned to the hell is a question we need not go into. However, they have certainly turned our society into an inferno. While Americans are safe in their home (and there is no reason why they should not be), our people are suffering physically, emotionally, economically. Women are being rendered widows, children turned orphans, and parents are being made childless. Businesses have been forced to shut or dislocate, growth and investment fallen and people made jobless. Hyper fear and an acute sense of insecurity is what the people have thanks to the Taliban’s jihad. Still it is said, it is not our war but America’s!

We as a nation are wont to blaming others for our acts of omission and commission. We are under the delusion that the big powers are conspiring against us for being a potential citadel of Islam and a nuclear power. This makes us look for the source of our problems outside us, while more often than not it is within us.

We need to identify our enemy. America is not our enemy; it may not be our friend either. American policies are guided by national interest and we should not expect a country to have policies otherwise. Our enemy is the people who would have us believe that Islam provides only for a monolithic society in which different cultures or sub-cultures cannot co-exist; rather they have to be merged with the “Islamic” culture. If preaching cannot effect that merger, force can, and must be, used. Such an interpretation of Islam legitimises the use of force to remove cultural diversity breeding mayhem and chaos as jihadis wade through blood to purge society of what they consider to be un-Islamic beliefs and practices.

Such a diabolical ideology, which has manifested itself time and again in both sectarian and non-sectarian bloodbath before and after the 9-11 incidents, would hardly die or even attenuate if Pakistan were to shun its alliance with the US.

The remedy lies in combating the forces which either propagate this ideology, by word or by the barrel of the gun, or become a convenient tool in its hands (such as poverty, unemployment, backwardness and illiteracy).

While the government’s resolve to weed out extremism is commendable, attention should also be given to monitoring the activities and curricula of the madaris — the breeding ground of extremism — as well as addressing the economic factors which abet terrorism. For the latter, generous economic assistance from developed countries is needed.

IT seems the year 2009 has ended on a crucial and essential step being taken to improve the education system of Pakistan. A new Task Force has been announced to build capacity for the implementation of Education Sector Reforms by Prime Minister Gilani in Islamabad on December 15.

A day earlier, the UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, had already announced the setting up of the Task Force to the House of Commons. However, since the National Education Policy has not specified any clear goals or apprised decisions on language policy, Mr Brown made the announcement during a statement about his recent visit to Afghanistan.

He said: “And as part of our partnership with the civilian government of Pakistan, the new education task force jointly headed by Michael Barber and Minister Shahnaz Wazir Ali, and focused on implementing education reforms, is meeting for the first time today in Islamabad. £250m of our development assistance to Pakistan is directed towards education, as I have agreed with President Zardari and earlier this month with PM Gilani, because nothing is more important in addressing the root causes of so many of Pakistan's problems than building a strong universal state education system, free from extremist influences, and offering a viable alternative to low quality private schools — which include the poorly regulated and extremist madressahs.”

The Task Force consists of 11 members and four directors. A number of members are from the education ministries of the four provinces and seem a natural adjunct of the Task Force. The secretaries of education must be conversant with the reforms and their implementation process. Two members are director of Education, Fata and Dr Memon, Director of the Agha Khan Institute of Educational Development, Karachi. Ms Fareeha Zafar from SAHE is another worthy member having worked diligently for quality education for many years.

The Task Force aims to turn the government’s commitment to provide education for all primary age children into a reality. This is a positive development. There are more than six million children in Pakistan who are not in school and it's vital for their future, and for the country’s future that these children have the chance of an education.

The co-chairperson Shehnaz Wazir Ali at the inaugural meeting pledged to ‘devise an effective mechanism to ensure the upgradation of the educational system and meet modern-day requirements’. She dwelled on Task Force’s main objectives, namely, to monitor and supervise the different phases of implementation of the education policy.

For the purpose inter-provincial education ministers’ forum (IPEM) will be created to check any stumbling block in its implementation. Private and public sector partnership is essentially needed to remove disparities and implement a uniform education system in the country.

The other objectives are:

1. To increase the capacity of the federal and provincial governments to implement the education reforms set out in the National Education Policy.

2. To support the federal and provincial ministries and prioritise and identify clear goals for improving the school system.

3. To set targets for improvement and cascading them out through the system.

Among the directors, there are two international experts from USAID and DFID, UK, a representative for religious education and the fourth from an NGO, The Citizens Foundation. Almost all members have busy schedules running their organisations but it is to be hoped that they will find optimum and quality time to push through the reforms.

However, what lies ahead for the Task Force members is no easy task. Our national education policies have lacked clear cut implementation goals. In fact, most policies have failed miserably at the implementation stage leading to the dismal scenario that education faces in Pakistan today.

It has also been seen that education was never a priority with most governments, elected or otherwise, and fewer and fewer concerted attempts were made to enhance our capacity for reform. Even the present National Education Policy 2009 has a chapter on ‘Implementation’ but no concrete steps has been advised. It is all up in the air as previous chapters note the gaps and the failings of the past and suggested actions stated for the future.

Thus, the Task Force has a two fold agenda ahead of its intervention in the education system. Firstly, it has to prioritise policy directions without which no reform can be successfully implemented. Secondly, it must then ensure a proper tiered implementation plan to process the reform agenda.

The priority policy decisions are basically three and will consist of instructional language, religious education and teacher education. Decisions about these three priorities need to be taken firmly and uniformly on a national scale for quality education to become the norm.

For example, decisions about language policy i.e medium of instruction at primary and secondary level and the role of English as a second language for school, college and university levels must be clearly defined. So far the National Education Policy leaves it to the discretion of the provinces to choose what suits them. However, such grey areas in the policy can only lead to more confusion.

The Task Force must push through one concrete language policy for the country and define capacity building measures to implement it. For instance, if in Punjab, Urdu medium government schools are being replaced with English medium schools, then what criteria is being followed to implement this.

There is already a dearth of English Language teachers in Pakistan in the private sector as well as in the public sector. Were capacity building measures taken before the implementation of this reform? If not, then the reform is doomed to failure as substandard teaching in English language will most probably produce students with low comprehensive skills.

Second priority is to do with a clear cut policy decision on teacher education. Here, the Task Force has to focus on a very tightly built, radical and comprehensive approach. The National Education Policy 2009 stipulates that from now on B.A/B.SC graduates will be required for teaching in Primary schools and M.A/M.SC post-graduates in Secondary Schools. It seems that with the fall in education standards, the policy makers in this instance are just taking short term measures.

The in-service teacher accreditation requirement of the B.Ed degree has to be scrapped as the course is based on pre-partition colonial times. To raise standards, teachers all over Pakistan who are in service or wish to join the profession have to be made to go through a basic, standardised certification course after their graduate and post-graduate status. This one measure will ensure a single approach or mindset of teachers in all institutions. Only then will an across the board agency for change towards raising standards is bound to occur.

The Task Force can institutionalise this teacher certification course for 6 months initially. The six month period should comprise a practicum component of 2 months of apprenticeship or internship in schools. The mandate to run this course can be given to all public and private sector colleges and universities in the country. They can hold classes in the afternoon, evening and at weekends to facilitate in-service teachers. The coming summer break can be utilised as well to facilitate the teaching of this course. Thirdly, the format for religious education must be revised to create responsible, honest citizenry for Pakistan.

The time for emergency measures such as these are crucial for the success of a body like the Task Force. At the same time other interventions such as the pre-STEP initiative by USAID needs to become a part of the ongoing Task Force mandate as well. As often happens, the overlapping of reforms creates a hurdle in the way of proper implementation of a systemic effort to upgrade the system. It is to be hoped that the Task Force will take a long, hard look at what it has to accomplish in a short term as well as in the long term. It will also be helpful if the public at large is taken into confidence and measures taken are explained, tracked and monitored through the print media, internet, radio and television.

The writer is an educational consultant based in Lahore.

PRESIDENT Obama was visibly piqued. The Christmas-day would-be suicide bomber — a 23-year old Nigerian Muslim — very nearly succeeded in triggering the greatest tragedy of Obama’s infant presidency. It was a call too close for comfort to any American, much less their commander-in-chief. No wonder Obama was so incensed, all the more because the air piracy had spoiled his family vacation in idyllic Hawaii.

However, Obama’s response to a tragedy that didn’t happen typically revived George W. Bush’s legacy: knee-jerk and over-reaching.

In his January 7 speech, Obama sounded eerily like his dubious predecessor, the war president. He minced no words in playing to the gallery at home to the hilt and reminded anyone who might have expected to hear differently from him that his country was at war.

However, as per Obama’s own admission, the US came close to witnessing another 9/11-like cataclysm because of the abysmal failure of dozens of air security and intelligence agencies charged with ensuring the safety of homeland and all Americans at home or abroad. The people manning these costly outfits were, apparently, found sleeping at their watch.

What would, otherwise, explain the criminal negligence surrounding the episode if not the so-called wizards and sleuths dismally dozing at their wheels?

The would-be bomber had all the tell-tale signs about him proclaiming his ill intent. His father, an affluent former chairman of a major Nigerian bank, had himself reported his son’s strange behaviour to the American Embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. Yet, his visa to the US wasn’t revoked. He’d bought a one-way ticket to Detroit, and paid for it with cash; that, alone, should have shown the red rag to the intelligence watch-dogs. But no one, apparently, saw anything unusual in it.

Most disturbing is the lackadaisical performance of the security apparatus at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. Security at this major European air hub has been assigned, for years, to an Israeli enterprise, by the name of International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS). Its top management is made up of ex-officers of Israeli intelligence with a worldwide reputation for being the best in the field. However, in this instance it made a hash of its job and failed to detect the explosives the bomber was carrying in his underwear.

The Obama administration’s wrath has been pointedly directed at 14 mainly Muslim countries — including Pakistan —that neither planned nor abetted the abortive criminal act and, in fact, heaved a sigh of relief that the bomber didn’t succeed in his diabolical plan. Under stringent new measures quickly put into place at all American airports, the nationals of these ‘rogue’ countries will, henceforth, be subjected to humiliating body searches, naked screenings and intrusive interrogations. Nearly 650 million people — of these 14 countries — will be paying a horrendous price in targeted humiliation for the criminal conduct of a solitary rogue.

This retribution is reminiscent of what George W. Bush did in the wake of 9/11; he recklessly invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and hadn’t sponsored any of those suicide bombers who wreaked havoc on the US.

Obama’s ill-thought comeuppance against such a large chunk of the Islamic world flies in the face of his avowed policy to seek a new relationship of trust and mutual respect with it.

That was the message of his sermon, of last June, delivered from the pulpit of Cairo University. The Muslim world had welcomed the new American President’s noble gesture and initiative with an open heart. But the wheel seems to have turned full circle — and back to the old rut — within 7 months.

Of all the Muslim states thus ticked off, it’s Yemen that is apparently being primed to receive the lion’s share of Obama’s get-tough measures.

For quite sometime now, especially since the American forces started getting bogged down in Afghanistan and a resurgent Taliban got a visible upper hand in the teetering ‘war on terror,’ the US intelligence community has been shouting from its roof-top that Al Qaeda was casting its net wider, beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The success of the Pakistani army in hounding out the Pakistani Taliban and their Al Qaeda sympathisers from sensitive areas of Pakistan has been cited as another compulsion on Al Qaeda to look for other, more accommodating, sanctuaries.

Yemen is where the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden hails from. In its rugged and inhospitable terrain has Osama his ancestral roots. But Yemen has been a cockpit of internecine wafare among its own people, not only now but in the past decades, too. It had fought a costly civil war for nearly two decades before its two halves became one country, at the close of the 80s when the patron-saint of the Socialist South Yemen, the erstwhile Soviet Union, itself ran out of steam and crumbled.

The US intelligence wizards have long remonstrated that Yemen is a fertile breeding ground for Al Qaeda, and a hard-to-scour training ground for terrorists. Osama bin Laden is said to have a cult following among the ill-educated and unemployed Yemeni youths largely because their country is dirt-poor and promises them no future. The number of Yemeni detainees at the ‘Gulag’ of Guantanamo testifies to the US sensitivity with regard to Yemen as an active bastion of Al Qaeda. Even today, Yemen has the largest contingent — 90 — of detainees still languishing at this notorious concentration camp.

Yemen was also the site of the 2000 bombing of a US naval vessel, USS Cole, which saw 17 American sailors killed. It was an incident that rudely rattled American nerves ahead of the cataclysmic 9/11 a year later.

Because of the notoriety his country had acquired with the Americans, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was one of the first Arab rulers to denounce the horror of 9/11 and offer every co-operation to US to combat the scourge of terrorism.

Saleh’s willingness to hitch his wagon to Washington could well be a Hobson’s choice. He’s currently engaged in a sectarian conflict in the north of his country, in which the Saudis have also become his allies. Riyadh smells in the conflict an insidious campaign by arch-rival Iran to stoke the fires of discontent among the Shia Zaidis of northern Yemen. Tehran denies the accusation.

However, the Shia-majority northern Yemen sits too close for Saudi comfort to their southern region of Najran. So the Saudis, off their own bat, have become heavily engaged in full-scale combat in that sensitive region. They got a hefty nod of approval for their jingoism there from their GCC partners at the Summit in Bahrain last December.

Saleh is also saddled with a potentially explosive insurgency in the south, where socialist influence is still rampant and has been fuelling a seething resentment against the northern elite’s provocative neglect of the rights of the people of south Yemen.

Washington is keenly conscious that these brush-fires of Yemen — a huge landmass as big as France, with a difficult and daunting terrain — have the potential of flaring up into a full blown civil war that could further weaken the tenuous hold of an autocratic Ali Abdullah Saleh, and augment Al Qaeda’s influence among the Yemeni youths.

But the US angst is not so much because Yemen may disintegrate or splinter, which would be disastrous for American efforts to combat the Al Qaeda menace in that country.

A greater alarm is on account of Yemen serving as a forward base of Al Qaeda for the spread of its influence in neighbouring Arab countries, and, more ominously, into Africa. The fact that Somalia — a country that has been a crucible of conflict for two decades — is within hailing distance of Yemen forces Washington to hit the panic button.

But even before the Christmas Day bomber made his botched attempt to terrorise the Americans, Obama had been under intense pressure from the likes of Dick Cheney and his cabal of neocon hawks to flex his muscles more robustly. So Obama, perhaps, now sees an opportunity to blunt the charge against his lack of ‘presidential posture.’ Putting the heat on Yemen may just show that Obama has some backbone.

A combination of stick-and-carrots for Yemen is what Team Obama deems best in the immediate circumstance.

Carrots for Saleh have been carried by General David Petraeus, chief of the Central Command of US military forces overseeing the two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was rushed to Sanaa in a surprise visit to confab with President Saleh and announce the doubling of the $ 67 million Yemen received from Washington, in 2009, for counter-terrorism.

But typical of a governance posture honed by George W. Bush as his trade-mark, the Obama administration isn’t shying away from telling the world that no options are being ‘taken off’ the table for Yemen.

When asked if US troops might be dispatched to Yemen, Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, answered: “We’re not talking about that at this point at all.” However, he committed to provide the Yemeni government with “the wherewithal” to take on Al Qaeda and dismantle its setup.

So the use of force by the US, on it own or through an obliging government in Sanaa, is not being ruled out. Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have both forcefully articulated the need to combat the threat Al Qaeda poses to US interests, and the interests of its allies in the region.

Yemen is getting under the American skin not just because it has become, or has the potential of becoming, another outpost of Al Qaeda, which, per se, should be a casus belli for a global military power that has made an open-ended war against terror its policy signature. Equally important, if not more, is that Yemen could lend Obama a face-saving if the US gets a Vietnam-like drubbing in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban and is forced to flee from there.

There are portents aplenty that even though he has been muscled into injecting more troops into Afghanistan, Obama is also desperately looking for an exit strategy. It would be a tough call for him to save face and get out of there unscathed against a Taliban rebounding with force and enjoying the advantages of home terrain. However, if in the process the focus could also shift to Yemen it would serve as an escape chute to Obama to cover up the near-certain debacle in Afghanistan.

It’s unlikely that the US military involvement in Yemen, whenever that happens, would be based on land forces or trigger a full scale invasion on the lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. The forbidding Yemeni terrain and a worn out US army should dent any such scenario. But the use of American air power, especially Drone attacks of the kind inflicted on northern Pakistan with impunity, is a plausible option. That would also be an easier sell to the American people fed up with wars of no results or, at best, shady outcomes.

However, plans for Yemen seem open-ended, just as they were for Iraq and Afghanistan. A pointer to it is the international conference on Yemen, later in the month at London, called under the aegis of US and UK entente. Apparently, these two former and current imperialist powers don’t want to learn from their mistakes.