Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Dear Hillary, which Pakistan are you talking about?

By Qalandar Bux Memon
Tuesday, 24 Nov, 2009 | 01:51 PM PST |


‘Osama Bin Laden resides in Pakistan.’
So goes the mantra of the US government. This is followed by the assertion that ‘Mullah Omar’ resides in Pakistan. Both might be true. My cousin, who lives in Sindh province, was given the first name ‘Osama’ and certainly in a country full of mullahs there must be a few hundred conjunctions of Mullah and Omar ... giving us many Mullah Omars in the Islamic Republic.

Another mantra – that of most mainstream western media outlets – is to present Pakistan as a country on the brink of failure and sunk in violence. This is aptly summed up in the Newsweek headline of Pakistan as ‘the most dangerous place in the world’. And there is, again, partial truth in this. Besides the occasional US drone attacks, the US-sponsored renditions, MI5/ISI torture nexuses and Taliban attacks, the gravest danger we face is in crossing the roads – road accidents in our country are among the highest in the world.

It simply is not a safe place to be, nor is Pakistan a state that we Pakistanis can run ... we are corrupt, violent, harbourers of terrorists (in the same way Saddam harboured nuclear bombs) and simply do not understand Islam (which, as the US State Department and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office via their spokespersons at the Quilliam Foundation will tell you, is a religion of peace and in harmony with Western foreign policy!) In fact, the Quran enjoins us to servitude to the US State Department. So goes the line of these sponsored Muslim spokespersons.

US governments and their aides in the Western media know realpolitik. The image systematically created of Pakistan by these sources has an operative function of furthering US and Nato intervention in this region. The logic is simple but all the premises are false and based on a distortion of facts, history and most conceptions of justice – Christian, Islamic, liberal and Marxist.

It runs thus: America has a right to pre-emptive action against those planning to attack it or its interests. Islamists are planning to attack America or its interests. Pakistan harbours Islamists. Therefore, America has a right to pre-emptive action against the Islamists harboured in Pakistan. I do not believe that the State Department or the FCO care much for Pakistan, its people, or its realities – the US has a long history of murdering the people of the Third World, from the Philippines and Vietnam to Iraq and Pakistan today - for them it’s a market they want for their companies and a region for their ‘war’ in Afghanistan. The image of Pakistan they manufacture, however, does not and can not correspond to the myriad of realities that exist there. It is not meant to.

What then are these realities? Here allow me to throw some of these realities at you by telling you of only a few of the people of this soil.

Let’s take Shah Inayat, a Sufi saint who in the early 1700s set up a commune on theological lines in defiance of the Mughal Empire. He held that the land belonged to God and that only those who worked to grow the crop were entitled to it. ‘Those who sow should eat’ was the commune’s motto. His thoughts convinced peasants far and wide not to pay crop shares as tax to either the Empire or local landlords. Oral history suggests that the commune grew to over 40,000 strong. As it acquired more members so too did it attract the wrath of the Empire. Emperor Farrukh Sayyar sent in troops; upon their arrival they besieged the commune, but it resisted for months. Having failed with force, the Empire turned to cunning. Offering peace terms and swearing on the Quran to guarantee Shah Inayat’s safety, they angled him out of the commune, arrested and then beheaded him. In Pakistan’s Sindh province, Shah Inayat’s name is well known and he continues to inspire calls for social justice.

Or take the poet Shaikh Ayaz, who, for those who know his work, is considered to be the foremost poet of the 20th century, comparable to Pablo Neruda or Nazim Hikmet. Ayaz was born in 1923 in the city of Shikarpur. A firebrand poet, he was imprisoned for his anti-establishment views and his first book was banned by the colonial government upon publication. In 1965 more of Ayaz’s books were seized and banned as his defiant poetry challenged the republic’s pro-war rhetoric against India. He lived and understood a Pakistan that was not confined to Jinnah and Iqbal, the military state’s two symbolic heirlooms, but one nourished by the soil’s deep connection with Hinduism, Buddhism, river gods, Sufi saints and the civilization-giving river ‘Sindhu’ (Indus). Connected to this 5000-year-old history Ayaz was able to defy mullah, general and invader. Listen to the confidence in his civilization in this short poem entitled The Conquering Ant:

After his attack and conquest
Alexander the Great
Took with him

Two philosophers from Sindh

And he asked them on the way,
What is the philosophy of Sindh?

One of them said,
‘An ant in its home in Sindh
has a grasp on matters philosophical
greater than that of Aristotle’.

The other said,
‘An ant going along its way
Is a conqueror greater than Alexander the Great’.

The Americans and their sponsors will not tell you about him – after all, he would not bow to any invader!

Again let’s take David Barkat. David, 55, lives with other Christians in the Kachi abadi (slum) in Lahore, where he migrated in 1991 to make a living. He sells oranges and peanuts from a small stall in the winter, and ice in the summer, working from 6am to 8pm. If he has a good day he makes around 130 rupees (about 94 British pence). From this income he has to support his family and keep up with bills, food and other necessities…to give you an idea of the difficulty involved, twelve bananas in the market were going for 60 rupees today. None of his three children got any formal education: ‘I cannot even dream of getting my children educated’. They had to work to help the family survive from a young age. David survives by his own ingenuity and his community’s. He relies on an informal support network for interest free loans and other help.

The state and NGOs have been absent. ‘I have been waiting 25 years for the government to provide us with help and work effectively… and I will continue to wait’. David knows that neither army commander General Kayani, nor President Zardari, opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, Hillary Clinton or American Viceroy for Pakistan Richard Holbrooke know or care of his needs or the Pakistani Christian community’s – and so he gets on with his life, as he should and as we all do – despite the US bombs and colonisation, despite the Taliban and the intrigues of the elite and intelligence agencies - with ingenuity, wit, and the wisdom of generations.

How ridiculous to us, then, seem the views of Newsweek magazine, CNN, BBC, the UK and US governments and Mrs Clinton’s imperial visits. They know how to cut political deals, but nothing of Pakistan’s realities. What we Pakistanis, home and abroad, must avoid is the internalisation of this propagandist image of Pakistan and Islam – no easy task given that most of our intellectuals, military brass, mullahs, and the political class have auctioned themselves off. We are part of the long chain of civilizations and in our daily lives we live a beat of our ancient soil and its history. It’s the beat, to remind you of Ayaz’s poem, of the self-conquering ant going about its daily routine. It is civilization.

This is an article by Qalandar Bux Memon, editor of Naked Punch, from the www.thesamosa.co.uk, a new UK-based politics, culture and arts journal, campaigning blog and website.

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Can Obama stand up to Israel?

By Helena Cobban
Tue Nov 24, 4:00 am ET


Washington – President Obama urgently needs to distance Washington from the provocative – and illegal – actions the Israeli government has been undertaking in Jerusalem.

He needs to do this to save the two-state solution that he supports between Israelis and Palestinians. He needs to do it, too, because it will help protect US troops around the world. Jerusalem is a core concern for many of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, and with US forces now facing tense situations in several majority-Muslim countries, Washington has a stronger need than ever to keep the goodwill of the peoples of those lands.

This is one of the main findings from a study-tour of the region I co-led earlier this month. In Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and the West Bank, strongly pro-US leaders underlined to us the importance of Jerusalem to their own political fortunes and those of other American allies throughout the Muslim world.

Israel took control of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the historic, walled "Old City," in the 1967 war. Since then, Israeli governments have invested heavily in implanting Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem, while squeezing out the area's indigenous Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians.

In recent months this campaign of ethnic transformation has intensified. On Nov. 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans for the construction of 900 new housing units in the southeast settlement of Gilo. He reportedly did this right after Mr. Obama's special envoy to the region, George Mitchell, had pleaded with him not to. But aside from expressing "dismay," have we seen any visible consequences from Washington? Not yet.

Today, Jerusalem is a tinderbox. If it ignites, American interests will be at risk, because Washington is seen as acquiescing in Israel's harmful actions there.

In decades past, when policy differences arose between Israel and the United States, many of Israel's supporters argued that it was on the front line against terrorism, so Americans should not second-guess its judgments or policies.

That was never a wholly convincing argument. But now, the situation has turned quite around. Today, it is American men and women who are on the front lines and it is their – and our – interests that are most at risk.

By not holding Israel to account, Washington is needlessly – and recklessly – offending hundreds of millions of Muslims on whose goodwill our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere depend.

While in Jerusalem, we saw Israel's destructive policies firsthand. The Jewish state is:

•Expanding the large Israeli-only settlements that ring the city to the east, north, and south.

•Supporting smaller settler "outposts" in the heart of Jerusalem's remaining Palestinian enclaves.

•Completing the 24-foot-high Separation Wall that encloses many Palestinian portions of the city and slices through the center of others.

•Delegating responsibility for archaeological excavations in sensitive areas to settler organizations that have worked feverishly – and quite unscientifically – to push tunnels right under the historic "Muslim Quarter" of the walled Old City.

•Making it almost impossible for the city's Palestinians to expand their housing stock, and conducting regular demolitions of Palestinian housing it deems "illegal."

All these Israeli actions are themselves illegal under international law, since Israel controls East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank only as a military occupying power, not a rightful sovereign government.

Imagine if, when the US military occupied Baghdad after 2003, Washington had taken steps like these! Fortunately, it didn't. Instead, it steadily delegated authority back to Iraqis themselves.

The US is far and away Israel's biggest external supporter. The aid America gives to her allies should not be unconditional but used to uphold US interests. In the Middle East, that means US dollars and diplomacy should support a fair and sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the rule of law in an otherwise chaotic world.

It's true that over the years many Americans have become persuaded that Greater Jerusalem has been "unified," that it all belongs to Israel, and indeed is "Israel's eternal capital."

The rest of the world – and international law – doesn't agree. What people in other countries see is Israel thumbing its nose at international law as it works to transform the city's ethnic composition.

This is disastrous for Washington's peace diplomacy, which has always been based on the principle that the city's final disposition should be negotiated, rather than unilaterally determined through the creation of new facts on the ground.

In his landmark Cairo speech to Muslims in June, Obama said he would "personally pursue" a two-state solution "with all the patience and dedication that the task requires." Today, Obama may feel that the political price of standing up to Israel – which few US presidents have done – is too high. It is high – but the risk that continued acquiescence to Israel's policies in Jerusalem poses to American lives (and those of Palestinians and Israelis) is now even higher. This is Obama's chance to set a new, just course for the Middle East on a firmly pro-American basis.

He can do this by linking US aid to Israel to its compliance with international law in the city, by supporting action by the UN Security Council to uphold international standards there, and in other ways.

The 250,000 remaining Palestinians of Jerusalem desperately need this action. So does Obama's peace diplomacy.

And so, too, do the 200,000-plus US service members deployed today in tense, majority-Muslim lands.

Helena Cobban, a longtime correspondent and columnist for the Monitor, was recently appointed executive director of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest.


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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Middle East peace: Is two-state solution kaput?

By John V. Whitbeck
Tue Nov 17, 4:00 am ET


Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – The seemingly perpetual Middle East "peace process" is now at a moment of truth. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said so himself at a press conference on Nov. 4.


Palestinian hopes that the Obama administration would remain resolute in insisting that Israel halt further expansion of its settlements on Palestinian land have been dashed. An especially low moment came when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently used the word "unprecedented" to praise Israel's minimalist promise of restraint in its settlement expansion program. In rapid reaction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he did not wish to seek reelection because it was now clear that the US would not stand up to Israel.

Washington's capitulation raises the possibility that "the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live as equals," Mr. Erakat told the press.

His verbal bombshell just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine.

Throughout the long years of the so-called peace process, deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which for all Israeli governments has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative. For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success," permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building bypass roads for Jews only, and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.

In everyone's interests, this must change. For there to be any chance of success in any new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences that Israelis would find unappealing – indeed, at least initially, nightmarish, since democratic demographics would inevitably spell the end of Jewish supremacy in the "Jewish State."

The Palestinian leadership, with or without Mr. Abbas, should now announce its willingness to resume negotiations with Israel but only on this express and irrevocable understanding: If a definitive peace agreement on a "two-state basis" has not been reached and signed by the end of 2010, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy – through full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of the land which, prior to 1948, was called Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion and with equal rights for all who live there, as in any true democracy.

The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which, since March 2002 has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law, will expire and be "off the table" if a definitive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement has not been signed by the end of 2010.

At this point – but not before – serious and meaningful negotiations can begin. Given how far Israeli settlements have encroached on Palestinian land, it may already be too late to achieve a decent two-state solution, but a decent two-state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is indeed too late, then Israelis, Palestinians, and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative.

It is even possible that, if forced to focus during the coming year on the prospect of living in a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens – which, after all, is what the United States and the European Union hold up in all other instances as the ideal form of political life – many Israelis might come to view this "threat" as less nightmarish than they traditionally have.

In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa's racial-supremicist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremicist ideology and political system and imposing fragmented and dependent "independent states" on the natives could never have achieved.

This is not a precedent to dismiss. It could and should inspire.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck."

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